Warning to the reader: This chapter contains explicit content which may not be suitable for all readers. Discretion is advised.
Darkness, as though midnight, extinguished the light of the afternoon sky. Fires flamed in metal barrels, the odor of burning manure. Cries of the dying and the damned. His ears heard the lament. No pity. Neither love nor hate. Acquiescence. Submission to his wrath. But not repentance.
An arm reached out. The man lay in the street and reached out to touch his heel. Red blisters covered the arm from the tips of the fingers to the edge of the bare shoulder. Pus, white and green, oozed from the sores. Red and white and green flowers attracting flies which drank of their nectar. No strength remained to bat away the flies. They buzzed and called to their lovers. Biting, drinking, mating, depositing feces and seed. Maggots crawled across his flesh. An army of maggots on his flesh. The smell. Of decay, of death. He pulled his heel away and headed down the street. His head didn’t turn as the man called out for mercy.
The path back, the safest way home for Jeremiah, led through the camp. Thousands of tents lined the broken streets, the alleys littered with the last shreds of life. Canvas, shingles, torn cloth, paper, mounds of dirt and brick and mud. A shelter which provided no shelter. A house with no door, no protection against the stronger man who coveted what little was inside.
They lay half in, half out, emerging at the sound of footsteps or the passing government vehicle. The strong men arrived and tore off the walls. Jeremiah hid in a crevice between the crumbled steps and the crumbled building.
“Give me your food!”
“I have none.”
“Give me your daughter!”
“I already sold her to my neighbor.”
The strong men tore away the rest of the walls. Their batons thudded on human flesh. Bones cracked and bodies fell to the ground. Red and white and green covered the batons; crimson streams flowed over the ground, the dust licking greedily at the rivers of blood.
She hid beneath a pile of matted clothes in the corner where they found her. Pure, white, full flesh. Healthy, not wasted like the masses. They licked greedily. Their stomachs rumbled at the sight of the pure, full flesh. White arms grabbed at the stones as they dragged her across the ground. The car door slammed; wheels churned down the broken street.
Jeremiah emerged from the crevice. A woman walked down the street with a box, searching, stooping. The refuse lay in the street. Human refuse lined the gutters and the sidewalks, between the broken, discarded needles. Her hand retrieved the refuse and put it in the box. A needle went into her pocket. She continued. Seeking, bending. Her expression more dead than alive. Another pile of human dung. Fuel for the fires that burned along the street. Fuel for the fires that cooked the flesh they found or bought or stole.
“I know who you are. What do you want? Do you seek to cast me out?”
He wrenched his arm away. Eyes met. Soulless, lifeless.
“I know who you are.”
Arms flailed. Conversations with imaginary monsters, with monsters more real than vision could perceive.
“Fifty-five. I definitely saw fifty-five. They asked to taste me. I said no. You can’t taste me. They sent fire from their eyes and it burned a hole in my skin right below the breast. I could feel it burn. Then they disappeared. No no no no no. Up there. Right up there. No no no no. I can’t go with you. Take me. Up there. I see them. My mother is with them. They want us to come over.”
They groped around as blind men. As men with eyes but no sight. The gray sun poured down but gave no light to the blind men.
“Who’s there?”
He didn’t respond. Mouths opened and closed like gnashing teeth. Their faces contorted. The painting come to life. The scream come to life. Outside the gates. The wailing and gnashing of teeth. Inside, the bride and the bridegroom in the corner. The black suit. The red dress. Her life on the dress.
Depart from me for I never knew you.
Jeremiah took off, faster now. His hands buried into his pockets; his head buried into his chest. The camp disappeared behind him. The earth beneath his shoes turned to iron. No dew fed the wild grasses. Not even weeds grew through the cracks in the barren ground. A grasshopper turned its alien head towards him and went back to chewing on the last green in the park.
Beyond a rusted bench, a body rested at the summit of a short rise. Large black birds sat on top of the body, their beaks pecking at the viscera flowing out like a pink river. Cawing. Clawing. Talons reached down to tear off chunks of intestine. Another group arrived, called by the wind to join in the meal. Jostling for position. A fight for the riches inside. The man’s eyes rolled as a beak tugged at his bowels. His tongue rolled as if to speak. A shout and the birds flew away. A howl as a dog, eyes wild, came up the rise. Its pack joined the leader.
“We have found a meal,” they howled at the sky.
They bowed their heads and gave thanks but the meal didn’t satisfy. They saw Jeremiah and gave chase. He ran to the next camp. To the safety of the living dead.
Inside the wall of tents, the wild dogs gave up the chase. Wandering through the streets with tails held high. They sniffed at the bodies.
Wasting away. Muscles atrophied so they could barely lift their heads, could barely wipe away the diarrhea as it splattered down their legs. Tumors, the size of pinecones, the size of a wallet stuffed with cash, grew on their exposed skin. Red and black. Unnatural. Their bodies turned against them. They scratched at their skin. Picked at their putrid flesh. Swollen. Their faces flushed with fever. Flesh hung off in long strips, off their legs, their arms, their backs. Black, distended, decomposing. The dogs sniffed at the wounds, licked the wounds, tasted the human refuse as it splattered down the legs. A cry from the street corner. They descended on the dogs, grabbing one. Grabbing another. A rock exposed their brains, stopped the fight. Over the flames of human dung, they roasted their meal.
Jeremiah squeezed his eyes shut as though he could make the images disappear. He had seen it before, years ago in a vision and a dream. The suffering, the death. He tried to warn them. Now, the images appeared again, this time while awake. Everything the Lord said would happen had.
Do not pray for these people.
“Why, Lord, would you show this to me? Why have you spared me to see it, to live long enough to see it with my own eyes?”
They walked around in their fine clothes and gave thanks to their gods, but their bodies were tombs filled with death, with uncleanness. They wasted away until they couldn’t hide the sin anymore. It clung to them like the black, rotting skin clung to their bones.
And this is the judgment, that light is come into the world, and men have loved darkness rather than light for their works were evil.
“Oh, God. Will you deliver me from this evil? Will you make my eyes see anymore?”
Open your eyes and see, son of man. Open your eyes and write down what you see. Let the generations to come know what has taken place.
A pile of bricks stood in the middle of the plaza, stacked by human hands. Fashioned into a form almost human, it rose to twice the height of man. Eyes on every side of its head stared down on the people gathered around it; a mouth of mud gave neither blessings nor curses.
Lines of men and women, some clothed, some not, danced around the candles which lined the base of the pile of bricks, the statue erected by human hands. The dancers wailed and moaned, slashing at their shrill bodies and letting the blood roll onto the base. A prayer spilled from their lips and scattered into the air.
Everyone gave freely of their bodies. No shame entered their consciences in the moment they shared with one another.
and it shal be ‘good.’ And man shal with man
Together they lay as man lies with wife until exhaustion poured from their bodies like sweat. Finished, disgust filled the one. A brick rose into the air and fell on the other’s head. Over and over. A gray gel leaked onto the street. Candles licked at the air, orange tongues tasting the ecstasy. Gray and red dripped from the bottom of the brick and added to the base of the statue.
ye weary Come laden rest i do not have
Jeremiah circled the plaza, the place where his warnings fell on deaf ears. The fountain had long been removed, only a section of the retaining wall remained. Like every plaza and street in town, piles of human refuse coated the surface and sunk into the ground. Scores of people waded through the muck. Thin, withered spirits hungering and thirsting to justify their own righteousness.
There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire. A thing which I did not command nor speak of, nor did it ever enter my mind.
A face of the statue watched Jeremiah as he neared the far end of the plaza. A group of men blocked his exit. In the street, a woman moaned, her strength depleted, her round, bloated stomach weighing on her with life.
your choice
No one told her to push. Her body contracted on its own. Pain jolted down her legs with each contraction, but she couldn’t muster the will to relieve her of her burden. The men pushed each other aside to be the one to help the woman.
your body
Dirty, rotting hands reached inside her. Scaly hands pulled the child into the light. He cried. Dirty, scaled hands tore at the limbs. Wild dogs with human faces tore at the limbs, ripping them from the sockets God had knit together in the womb.
Teeth gnashed in a frenzy to fill aching stomachs.
The woman, alone, dragged herself out of the street, holding her womb, waiting for the afterbirth. She held her tongue as the afterbirth spilled onto the ground so no one would hear and steal her treasure. Guarding it in her skirt, she staggered to her feet to find a firepit. Wild dogs with tails held high set upon her, tearing, ripping, lusting after the flesh she hid.
Jeremiah entered a building and ran up the stairs to hide himself. Gray light poured through an open door at the end of the hall. He tucked himself into a closet by the stream of gray light. Footsteps followed him up the stairs and down to the end of the hall. He peeked through the crack in the door and watched three men enter the room.
“I have no child. See for yourself.”
“I know you hid him here.”
“I have no child.”
The woman whimpered as the man’s hand struck her face. A table crashed to the floor. Dishes crashed onto the floor. Doors swung open and slammed shut. Footsteps thudded across the cement floor.
“See. I told you I have no child.”
“I know he’s here somewhere. We’ll be back for him.”
The three men marched out the door and down the hall. The woman peeked her head around the corner. Jeremiah watched from the closet.
“Come out, my son. They have gone. Here, help me pick up the table and bring me the knife.”
The child obeyed. The young child obeyed and lifted the table with all his strength.
“They won’t take you, my son. They cannot have you. You are mine. You will always be mine. Come. Give it to me.”
The boy brought his mother the knife. It sliced across his neck. A pot waited to collect his blood. He grabbed at his neck as life bubbled from his veins. Staggering, falling into a chair. Gasping with eyes wide. His mother removed his pants and sliced a strip off his thigh. The meat went over the fire.
Jeremiah stared past the gray light through the window. In the middle of the plaza, a face of the brick statue stared back. A smile spread across its mouth of mud.