The War
The witch lifted up her gown to reveal a horrid stench the likes of which I’d never smelt and it wasn’t what was under her skirt, she released a little creature hunched over, like a half baby thing with a thin white skin and she said “so now you see what there is” and I had my hand to my mouth, or more, I had my shirt over my mouth and nose. “I wanted you to give me what I wanted not give me this, thing”. The thing as it was fell over and hugged itself, like it was dying and I moved over to it but the witch hissed at me and said “don’t you dare touch it!” and I stopped there and asked “what is it?” and she said “This thing came from me because of you”. I moved back, put my clothes back in place, looked at the thing and then back to the witch. “Do I need to do anything with it?”. “No” she answered. “You gave me nothing”. “I can only give you what they give”. “They?” There is nothing for me here, only waste and disease. I give her the five hundred dollars, collect the little dying thing in my arms, against her screams for me to leave it alone, I push her over onto her bed and get the hell out of there.
Antoine calls and tells me a name. I barely get to say anything back, really, I say ‘ok’ and that’s it. The thing squirms next to me in the passenger seat. I don’t know whether to clothe it or kill it. It has the face of a man but the body of an infant platypus, that’s the best way to describe it. It has the essence of wings and the legs of a chicken. Perhaps it is a child angel? Who knows what she is capable of producing. She brought Angela back to life, her rotten corpse giving me a few more lines from her dead carcass, her jaw barely able to make the sounds needed to tell me who her killer was. She was yelling for most part, screaming about how the afterlife is so horrible and all that hate inside coming out in a gross guttural blathering until she gave up a name and we could let her soul rest and her body went limp as soon as I called it off and snuffed the blood candles. Fucking witchcraft.
I don’t know why but I wake up and have to vomit. I can only get as far as the sink and it comes out, it’s yellow and black and blood. Christ what the fuck is happening, these black magic arseholes getting inside me. I go back to bed and the thing is there, already bigger, about two feet now, its wings growing and its face more beautiful than you could imagine, I start crying and holding my stomach, something is wrong. I move it over and there is mucus or whatever it is on the mattress. I try to pick it up but it starts to beat around like a wounded bird so I leave it. I get my phone and call the witch that gave it to me but she doesn’t pick up so I call Damien instead. He answers straight away and I tell him what I’ve got. He laughs and tells me to feed it fruit and I ask him what to do and he tells me to wait until it’s bigger and moving and I ask “then what” and he says “just call me”.
Days pass, I leave strawberries near its face and watch it grow and shed its soft early feathers and grow proper limbs and more and more it smells of flowers and not the gross death smell the witch had. I decide to leave it in my apartment and go out. It’s not five minutes after I get a coffee that an old man in a brown suit stops me and says “Do you know of the Christ Saviour” and I tell him I do and he says “He knows about you too” and I say “I know” and he holds my arm and says “He wants to love you” and I let him go and know that he is both right and assuredly has no idea what he is talking about. I have a new born angel of god in my bed. If I told him that he would try and give it to a priest or someone or else he’d have a half alive child thing in his hands and he would be killed by a demon as soon as he left his domicile. The people do not know about the war but some of them can feel it.
It’s a child now, what looks like a ten year old boy but it’s not a boy, it has large wings and thin legs and a face that looks like a Botticelli painting and makes a soft lyrical sound like a woodwind instrument coming from a soprano. It hums a faint melody that makes me cry again. I cry as I make a pot of coffee and roll a cigarette and finish my coffee and pour myself a scotch and want it to stop this crying/singing/soulful lament thing but I go back in the room and see it’s even bigger and I put a few apples and half a watermelon near its face and it looks at me and I cry harder. I leave and smoke my cigarette in the kitchen. As I finish my cigarette, dousing it under the tap and throwing it into the trash it appears in the door frame, full, glowing, looking right at me with its soft wings loosely spread. “Hello” I say and it sings again and I can do nothing but cry.
“It’s here” I tell Antoine and he tells me “Ok good. Did you call Damien?” “Yes I called him, maybe two weeks ago”. “And?” “And? What do you mean…um, yeah, he told me to feed it fruit”. “Ok good. And you did and now you need to call him again”. “Christ Antoine, this thing, I…I can’t fucking look at it….every time it’s like…fuck”. “Ok ok calm down. Call Damien right now ok?”. “Sure”. I call Damien of course and he tells me to wait, that it’s not the time yet and that he doesn’t know what he wants to do yet. I tell him “Great! What the fuck do I do in the meantime?” and he tells me to put handcuffs on it and I explain there are no hands anymore and he says “well lock it the fuck up somehow” and I say I will. I walk into the room and it is perched on my lounge and I gesture for it to move but it actually speaks now and says “you are a child of Yeshua” and I know what it is saying and I rush over to it but it moves so softly and quietly that I am crying again as if its movements sung to me and it says “Your soul wants love, not this” and it moves again, this time next to me and it lets me know it is okay for me to lock it in the basement so it follows me down and lets me close the door on it.
It is the morning and I open the door to the basement and bring Damien down with me and his eyes roll back and his fingers become like daggers and his voice, deeper than always tells me “is this the place Jeremy” and I am scared and say “yes” and he moves past me into the darkness and I scramble back up the stairs and turn on the lights and he is on the bird creature and they are struggling and its feathers are coming off and Damien’s claws are going into it but it looks like the white creature moving under him rises over him and it’s singing a soft song and now it has its feet on Damien’s neck and is standing over him and breaking his body into two pieces and when it is done it rushes up from the basement and past me and out through the front door and as it does it changes into something I have never seen and it disappears so fast, leaving me with a warmth I’ve never felt and the heat becomes hotter and hotter and in my chest I feel it hard until I can’t stand up anymore.
