Ruin Nation (19 page)

“It’s good to see children planning ahead,” says another.

“Damn right,” agrees a third. “But I wouldn’t want my kids doing it. No way. No kid of mine’s gonna earn more than his father.”

We decide to hit the town or, more accurately, nose around the crack dens on our isolated stretch of road. We fail to find any amenable women so we move on. We check out the local landmark, the great, grey, steel-
girdered remnants of a bridge and note that it’s been hit by an aircraft: an airship, we reckon from the billowing fabric. A mangled propeller creaks above our heads, spinning like a pinwheel in a nest of wreckage, and it’s decided that I should climb up into the dark shards to check for survivors. Now, I’m no fool. This isn’t about survivors. It’s a test of nerve. So I figure I’ll climb up just high enough to get a better look, shout down some juicy details (severed limbs, that sort of thing) and then shimmy down, home and dry, with a little credibility in my pocket. 

So I’m shinning my way up some bit of structure; I can’t recall what exactly, but I remember it being cold to the touch and scaled with jagged rust flakes. The shitty, brown river’s squirming I don’t know how far beneath me, and I’m thinking, what the Hell am I’m doing? And then I know what I’m doing. I’m falling. And I don’t see my life before my eyes. I just see black.

I figure the World mustn’t want me in it anymore. It’s trying to suffocate me beneath an avalanche of pain. I feel like my eyes have been soaked in lemon juice and tapped back in with a mallet. There’s agony in other places, too, but the concussion’s got me, scrambling the signals to my brain, so I don’t know what does and doesn’t hurt from one minute to the next. I could cheerfully die. And, when I finally open my lead-weighted eyelids, it seems I have. I’m face to face with Jesus.

Now, if you’re familiar with me and my beliefs, you’ll know I have no problem with the Big J. I think he had some quite intelligent things to say for himself and wouldn’t recognise the corrupt, misogynist cult that was created in his name. He certainly wouldn’t appreciate his posthumous rebranding from religious firebrand to soppy proponent of castrated love. It would make him sick. That’s why I burned all his churches down.

However, that bullying piece of shit he calls his father is another kettle of fish entirely. So I figure I’ll extend the hand of friendship to Mr Christ but, if talk turns to his
wanker Dad, well, I won’t be pulling any punches.

I ask what’s going on. He says nothing. I ask again, but the Risen Lord remains
unobliging. He has an oversized fingerprint on his forehead. That’s unusual, I think to myself.

“Moving in your mysterious ways, are you?” I ask. But Jesus isn’t moving at all. He’s six inches high and made of plastic. And he’s attached to the wall in front of my face. So it’s a disappointing conversion back to atheism for yours truly.

I’ve woken up in bed in a white room with clean linen and clean underwear. I don’t appear to have been interfered with in any way.

Now a good practice, when waking in a strange environment, is to examine the ribcage for stolen organs. It’s wise to check that all your parts are present and correct before accepting breakfast. Lucas taught me that. It’s whilst executing these basic checks that I look down and discover a terrifying anomaly: Jesus again, staring blankly from the region of my crotch.

What kind of mentality puts the face of the Messiah on the front of a pair of y-front underpants? One slip of the contents and it looks like Jesus is sticking his tongue out.

“Christ!” I accurately observe.

I can’t find my clothes, so I wrap myself in a sheet, noting that, although I may not’ve lost a kidney, I’ve still got a pretty nasty gash on my side. I make for the door. The sticky handle slips in my fingers. I figure it’s blood from the graze on my palm. But the gashes’ve scabbed over. And there’s blood on the handle, clear as day. I feel a chill creep up my back, a chill that grows and grows as I twist the knob and nothing seems to happen.

But the door’s not locked. That was my worry and I’m glad to be proved wrong. I step out onto a dark landing. I reach out for the ivory white banister and I scream silently. What my bleary eyes took for the handrail turns out to be a scrawny arm. And that arm retracts, lightening fast, into the hunched figure of possibly the most peculiar person I’ve ever seen.

Christ, it’s repulsive – almost rodent-like. But what sex is it? I can’t tell from the black, basin-cut hair. It watches me from dark sockets, twitching its head like a housefly.

“
Fuuuuuuuuck, you’re ugly,” is a thought that shouldn’t get said out loud, but does.

The creature’s response is surprising. “Yes, the good Lord has gifted me rather idiosyncratic features. Not for me the sin of vanity.”

I don’t know what to say. I’m still feeling woozy. I’m unsteady on my feet. I reach out to steady myself on the
actual
banister, but it’s further away than it appears and I fall flat on my face.

“Sorry,” I say, picking myself off the floor, “but since I left Jesus, I’m having problems with perspective.”

The little creature’s face takes on a thermo-nuclear glow. “Yes! Yes! I know! Jesus puts everything into perspective!” And it raises its hands to the sky, flinging blood from bandaged palms up the wall and all over me. I dry retch, thinking of HIV and hepatitis.

Now I’m nervous. I decline the offer of a dirty handkerchief and wipe my face with the sheet. I laugh awkwardly. The creature turns and beckons me down the creaking stairs. What can I do? I’m not armed. I follow at what I think is a safe distance, through a bead curtain and into a pine-floored room. The walls are bright white and bloodied, red handprints everywhere. What isn’t spattered or smeared is
Jesussed. I mean, it’s got a picture of Jesus on it. If The Lamb of God isn’t starring beatifically from over here, then he’s starring beatifically from over there, usually above some ditty declaring his greatness whilst ignoring his dislike for anything resembling a graven image. Handmade pro-God tapestries adorn the few surfaces the Big J. hasn’t got to and Mary, Mother of God, gets a look-in on a cushion cover.

Getting haemorrhoids on that hard floor – God forbid they sit on the Holy Virgin’s face – sit two more creatures, imploring the gigantic Jesus above the mantelpiece for assumption. They’re small, spindly and I could probably snap them with one hand. But they’re still truly terrifying.

They say God heals the sick. He also recruits them. Four more creatures sit in four wheelchairs, systematically gouging themselves with kitchen equipment. The most senior of these figures looks up from the steak knife embedded between the radius and ulna of his left arm and saws – in, out, in, out – to the sickening sound of tearing sinew.

“Good morning,” he purrs. “You’ll forgive us for not greeting you… en masse, but we find the stairs so much trouble, these days. Our piety has left us somewhat debilitated. But I trust Novice Peter has been taking care of you?”

“Yes, Elder Adam,” Novice Peter replies, tugging the forelock of his appalling haircut. “But soon I hope to be a cripple, too, Lord willing.”

It’s not a recognisable word that comes out of my mouth.

Elder Adam wheels forward, leaving burgundy daubs on his tyres. He’s so close I can feel the heat from his decomposing mouth. “Well then,” and he reaches into his cardigan to produce my papers. “Well then, young Hugo…” and he taps my photograph with the talon that sprouts from his bandaged mitt, “welcome home, brother.”

“I…” I start, but the words stick in my dry throat.

Elder Adam smiles wide and warm. “You have questions. It’s only natural.”

“How did I get here?” is my eventual croak.

“Ah! You’ve found your tongue, child. Well, the good Lord put you on this Earth to glorify him.”

I nod furiously. I figure it’s best to agree. I’ve heard of religious extremists scoring the soles of a captured nonbeliever’s
feet before. Then they can preach all day and he can’t run away. That’s God’s love for you.

“
Er, yes. I… I understand that,” I say. “What I meant is… how did I get here… in this place, with… with you?”

“You cried for help and we answered. You went to the bridge,” answers the female Elder Paul. “That was your cry!”

It seems they’ve got me figured for a suicide attempt.

“You went to the bridge,” Elder Paul trills in her soprano voice, “and you jumped. But we caught you. And we know what you did was a sin, but the Lord forgives those who repent.”

Obviously ‘caught’ me metaphorically, I reason, or I wouldn’t feel like I’d been hit by a truck.

“Many of our brethren come from the bridge,” Intermediate Solomon explains excitedly. “It is the duty of those still afflicted with the curse of walking to find souls to save. And what a soul you are! You already wear the wounds of the stigmata! How pious you must have been before your deviation from Jesus!”

Suddenly, everyone’s studying me. And so I check out my reflection in the polished wooden floor – all wrapped in white linen, with my injured head and hands, and the great gash in my side. I look like I’ve been crucified by work-experience centurions.

“Yes, it is an auspicious occasion,” confirms the very-pregnant Under Elder Eve who’s clearly been under Elder Adam.

“God must truly be thanked for bringing you home to us!” says Novice Luke. “You are a sign, my prodigal one, a sign that even the most devout, even those that bear the true, God-gifted wounds of the stigmata, may fall from grace. You are a reminder that we must not backslide. We must slash our devotion into ourselves, lest we forget!” And he takes up some bladed implement.

“Please!” I say, attempting a calm voice and failing miserably. “Please! Don’t slash anything! Look: I don’t have the stigmata. I’ve never had the stigmata!”

“It’s useless to deny,” says Novice Peter.

“You
can’t
deny it,” says Elder Adam, “the evidence is clear to see, as plain as day; the wound of the crown of thorns etched into your forehead!”

“It’s acne and a head injury!” I bawl.

“No!” cries our maniacal collective simultaneously. “It is the wounds of Christ!”

“As is this!” Elder Adam whispers, unwrapping the swathes of dirty bandage around his hand and letting the loops fall silently to the floor. He takes a pen and jams it through the rot-edged sphincter in his palm, pushing a plug of congealed matter out onto the rug. His expression remains beatific throughout, suggesting that, not only is this perfectly normal behaviour, but a noble pursuit children should be encouraged to emulate.

“Disinfectant,” I creak, backing as far as the walls will allow.

“No disinfectant,” says Novice Peter, “because we are pure both in faith and physiology. There was no disinfectant for Jesus, after all. And what right do we have to something denied to Jesus? No, there will be no disinfectant for any of us, including you. For what is rot, anyway, but the slow return of our bodies to the Lord, bit by bit.”

I don’t like the sound of ‘including you’. Something about it sets me climbing the walls, searching behind the hangings for some kind of window to jump out of.

“Yes, we are pure,” says Elder Paul in her increasingly high-pitched voice. “As were you – to bear the mark of the crown of thorns. But do not fear. You can be again.”

“I’ve never been pure!” I scream. “This isn’t stigmata. It’s a great, big spot brought on by drug use and adrenal stress!”

“Let he who is without sin,” answers Novice Peter with his truly horrible grin. “The straight and narrow path may prove difficult to see at first, but turn it to the side and you will find it to be the broad, shining blade of the Stanley knife.”

“But I’m
really
bad! I’m pure hate!”

“Then it’s a good job we found you.”

I tear at the Jesi (is that the plural?), ripping down the images, searching desperately for the deity that disguises the door.

“Ah! The Devil is once more within him,” observes Elder Adam. “See! See how he desecrates our home; our faith! Seize him gently, brethren, and scourge him
til he sees the Bright and Shining Light.”

Now call me old-fashioned, but I don’t fancy being scourged. Fair play, it was nice of them to lend me the Jesus y-fronts, but I don’t intend being
razored to within an inch of my life for the privilege. It’s just not cricket, kids.

What are my options? Well, I don’t stop to consider them. I see Elder Adam’s huge, serrated knife waving about and I decide I’m taking it off him and sticking it into the first freak who comes near me. It doesn’t matter that it’s still imbedded in his forearm.

So I dive forward and the next moment’s like something out of The Sword in the Stone, only with an old man replacing the chunk of rock. And I’ve got my foot on his shoulder. And I’m yanking the knife handle, and he’s screaming at me. And there’s this almighty ripping sound, a fountain of arterial spray and…

Well, Elder Adam may love God, but I doubt the Good Lord returns the sentiment with the same degree of intensity. Because I extract the knife, but not without removing one of his ears in the process. I slip and slice the thing clean off. It arcs through the air and lands in Novice Peter’s lap with a big, wet plop.

“My God!” Peter cries.