And still ah went on thinking. How will ah die? How will ah go? Ah cannot destroy all of them, so what will ah do? Shall ah just wait for them to kill me? To crucify me too?
Euchrid looked at the shotgun, turning it in his hands. Tears rolled down his cheeks. He had scared himself.
Or is there a better way? A nobler way?
He bowed his head and walked inside, still turning the shotgun in his hands. The door slammed behind him. Final.
Ah walked up the steps and opened the front door of the shack. The door slammed behind me. Kind of final.
And… and inside… and inside… you know, it’s hard for me to admit this, to come right out and say it, but ah will, ah will… inside mah shack, there in front of mah subjects – O for shame, for shame at mah lack of spunk, mah lack of pluck – and me, their terrible master! Yes, there with all mah dark-eyed subjects playing audience, ah took some certain steps to end it all. Yes, end it all. To defer mah celestial mission permanently and for all time, and in doing so deny mahself mah seat in Paradise, mah place in the Kingdom of God. And ah can barely remember even doing it.
Ah entered the shack. Right. Ah remember that. The slam of the door. But what happened then was lived by some other part of me, some part that isn’t telling, for the next thing ah recall ah’m down on mah knees with the shotgun clamped between the jaws of a pig-trap and both its barrels jammed in mah mouth. Ah knelt there a while, peering down the length of the shotgun. Ah noticed a taut line of twine attached to both triggers and running the three or four feet to the doorway where it was tied neatly around the doorknob. Ah guess ah was waiting for a visitor to come and kill me. An intruder! Yes! For ah was convinced they would come. Ah had heard them there, behind the wall. Ah had. ‘So let them come,’ ah thought. ‘Let them come. What’s good enough for mah deadtime is good enough for mah livingtime too. Come on,’ ah thought. ‘Ah’m waiting,’ ah thought.
And ah waited. Ah did. There, on mah knees. One. Two. Three hours, until mah skull split, teeth ached, jaws cramped. Yet still ah waited, sucking death, for someone, anyone.
And they came. They did. Only not through the front door.
They – it – she was just there, and very gradually, very wondrously revealed.
First ah became aware of a faint flimmering of light behind me and to mah right. So stealthily did it encroach upon mah awareness that ah could not pinpoint the very instant of realization. But first it was the light, that is sure. A silver-blue effulgence unmistakably supernatural in its nature. But if it were not the light, if it were not that, then it was the glow of shifting wings and the rank gusted air that stormed suddenly and whipped up the floor trash – the paper, the shavings, the gauze strips, the feathers, the moulted fur. And if it were not any of these things, then it was the voice, yes, the voice that betrayed the identity of mah erumpent, mah shuffling, mah extravagant caller.
‘Remember Euchrid, there is a sin unto death,’ came a voice, and gingerly ah slid the barrel out of mah mouth and turned mah face toward it. Could it be? Could it be…
Mah angel. Mah long lost guardian angel. Mah straight and guiding hand. And O how wonderful, how awesome was her blaze! Ah climbed to mah feet and stood before her. Stiff, ah stretched, arms raxed outward, and ah beheld mah winged theophany. Glory! Glory!
‘You have not yet been summoned. Withhold yourself, for the time of your calling is ripe. There is corrupt fruit to be plucked. Do His work, justly and goodly, and you will be thuswise received,’ she said, sort of chiming. And ah noticed that sometimes mah angel seemed to be clad in clinging veils of web, while other times she wore nothing but her teasing pinions, opening them wide when she spoke so as to reveal to me all the luminary delights of her body. Then lowering her crown of golden locks, she would draw silent, wrapping her wings about herself like a sleeping bat or a blue flame, when ah gathered she tuned in on some Godly advice – instruction, warning, or whatever.
And ah inclined mah head and closed mah eyes and listened, and slowly came the pulse of His voice, the double-beat, the low chant and its portentous climb – the time is nigh the time is nigh the time is nigh, it said – and ah wondered as ah deciphered the chant, nigh for what? And word by word, chant by chant, instruction by instruction – go down to the town go down to the town go down to the town – God spelled it out for me. And in time ah learned the business of mah existence, plain and simple – dressed in your best dressed in your best dressed in your best dressed in your best. And with His most precious portent God illuminated the grinding darkness that had whelmed me all mah life, and ah saw the way in which mah life – mah cog – slotted neatly into another smaller cog from which an axle turned that sprung a mechanism which, in turn, ignited a tinder attached to a long wick that fizzed and spluttered down to a pyramid of red sticks – till death us do part till death us do part till death us do part – Boom!!. Till death Booml Till death Boom! Till death…
KILL BETH BOOM!
And so ah began the preparations.
‘Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…’
Ah ground the sickle’s screaming lip into the whirring whetstone, pausing to catch mah breath and to sprinkle a little water around. Then leaning into the spin ah resumed grinding, pumping at the treadle furiously and feeling a trifle uneasy that the sickle had kept screaming all through the breather, irrespective of the simple laws of logic. Sparks spat at mah guiding hand. The winch belt whirred up its own rolling rhythm, and ah sat huddled over the bucking contraption as the entire machine whirred and creaked and shogged, until the sickle grinned evil in mah fist, screaming-keen and sharp enough to skin shit.
All sun and no wind and the air hazed in the heat. Ah slashed mah way across the yard to the great gates of Doghead and mah mind jabbered and rhymed, as it so often did. God surged through me as ah razored the space before me – the blistering, the stifling, the still, still breath kill Beth kill Beth kill Beth.
Ah climbed up the gate and looped four lengths of rope to the four iron hooks that ah had screwed along the top of the gate earlier. Then ah followed the lines inside, checking as ah went the forked posts that kept the ropes aloft and tapping the ropes occasionally with the flat of mah sickle for tautness, making sure the steel eye-hooks held fast in the doorframe. And lastly, kneeling by mah panting tea chests, ah checked each rope was securely fastened to its kennel’s wire screen.
Each cage was a wrestling knot of expectancy. Ah had instructed mah beasts earlier on their pending release, their mission of death. Ah had explained to them that the laurels of Glory lay in the spilling of blood, and they had drooled hate as ah clued them in on the enemy. And as ah briefed them on the rudimentary aspects of unarmed combat – go for the throat, bark a lot – they sharpened their fangs on the wire screens and low growls rose deep in their throats. ‘Kill for your King and die for your God. You will find Glory in the spilling of blood,’ ah told them, and it was then that the fearless brutes began their blood-curdling whirring, their freedom song, their serenade of sadness for all of brute creation, yoked or harnessed or bridled or locked in bestial dungeons or scumbered tea-chests filled with straw.