Act One.
Eleven forty eight, dark night, London, England. The year, twenty fifteen. January the twenty fourth.
Nineteen fifties smog burns the eyes again. Coal burns in many a fireplace and there’s lead back in the petrol again, or that’s what it all smells like. Smog in the brain again, the book is the word, the church is the state and the priest is the prime minister, an old, balding, grey skinned, born again rider of the apocalypse baptist to boot.
Billy Johnson dropped his black plastic recycling bag full of household rubbish on the pavement next to the overflowing containers just to the left of the grubby, graffitied entrance to a privatised tower block in the London borough of Kingston upon Thames where he owned a small flat. A flat on the seventh floor on The Cambridge Estate. He felt in his trouser pockets for his keys.
Bill felt surpassed, but, unlike most oldies fast closing in on retirement age he had, happily, managed to avoid lashing out, lashing out at the nihilistic, drug ravaged younger generation, at the politicians and their airy fairy ideas of freedom and respect, at the decadent modern world with its lack of discipline and respect for church and state and its elders. He felt no part of any of that trash. No part at all. No, Bill felt surpassed and mildly surprised by it all, irrelevant but safe and comfy in the knowledge that he had never really amounted to much and never would, even after his death, and what did he care?
Anyway, he had had an inkling of a job well done, he had played his part and his part had been minimal against The Born Again Priest and company, but essential, though he was never to know that. He was a good agent.
He was becoming irrelevant and, like a salesman desperately trying to sell electric typewriters to desert tribes with only a waterwheel to generate power, his mind had been overacting and thrashing about in all sorts of exaggerated ways, trying desperately to get its wares taken notice of. But, he reasoned, what did he care about becoming obsolete? Not a jot. He knew he had been a good agent, done his best.
He was not at all depressed at any of that, that was not why he was standing at his seventh floor balcony window feeling furious and hurt. He was feeling a deep anxiety for something far closer, far more intimate yet universal for the middle aged. Everyone around him, close to him, family and friends, fellow agents, you name anyone and they seemed to be dying or close to the dying, and they were not dying in glorious cinematic battles or in part of a twisted, intricate spy drama on the point of saving countless innocent lives or rescuing damsels in distress, no, they were dying horribly painful sordid deaths from the results of diseases he would rather not name, even to himself. They were the ones dying as real life heroes with real life heroes at their sides, in agony, and this made Bill deeply sad.
Bill Johnson was in a reverie up on the seventh floor, thinking of flying.
The gigantic carnival float of a hand whose job it is to dole out everyone’s quota of irrelevance moves over the land in stereo surroundsound thunderclaps and biblical black cardboard cut out clouds, absolving those who are no longer relevant, germane, like a priest absolves the sinful as they cannibalise the body and blood of Mr J. Christ.
Gigantic dirty fingernails too.
Absolved of relevance. That is, if you’re lucky. If not, this papier-mâché apparition might just chop you down with a nice little paralysing stroke or a teasing little cancer just to let you know you had really got on the wrong side of John Doe. Euthanasia? Painkilling drugs? A condom to protect you from aids? No way. What you need is a nice natural death just like the nice natural birth and lifestyle we have always ordained for your submission. Carved in stone for your submission, cash most definitely in hand please, collection box on its way.
Bill Johnson’s reverie flickered into anger. You must mightily rail against it all. He felt a falling sensation in the pit of his stomach. He glanced at his watch.Twelve fifty two and a bit, or something like it.
Act Two
Twelve forty eight, dark night, Madrid, Spain, The year, twenty fifteen. January the twenty fourth.
Nineteen fifties lead back in the petrol again, or that’s what it all smells like because the air cooks solid chemical cold and refuses to move. Nineteen fifties in the brain again. Smog in the brain again, suffer the little children. The church is the state and the priest is the president, and an old, balding, grey skinned born again opus dei catholic death’s head to boot.
Miguel Iglesias dropped his black plastic recycling bag full of rotting vegetable matter on the pavement next to the overflowing wheeled containers just to the left of the elegant CCTV protected entrance to a privately owned block of flats a couple of streets back off the Castellana, Salamanca district, where he owned a small flat. Galvanised containers they were. He buzzed to be let in.
Don Miguel was a pleasant, thoughtful man, but he and his company and workforce had become increasingly, alarmingly irrelevant and increasingly and alarmingly radical and, like a salesman desperately trying to sell electric typewriters to nomadic tribes well equipped with GPS and instant connections to internet via the latest mobile technology, his business, on the verge of bankruptcy, had overacted and thrashed about in all sorts of exaggerated ways trying desperately to get its wares taken notice of, and they were having some success, at the expense of common sense that is. Not success in numbers that is, but in influence. You grease my palm here, I will grease yours there and suffer the little children to come unto me to be molested. Morally bankrupt, but rolling in grease.
Miguel had not been feeling at all comfortable with the born again fanaticism of the new salesmen for a very, very long while, so, as arranged, after a tender kiss, Jesús shot him up with a healthy dose of pure heroin and he dressed up in all his finest raiment, starched dog collar and the finest of silver crucifixes, and zipped himself up in a heavy duty black body bag of the type that his organisation frequently shipped to the world’s trouble spots as their charitable donation to disaster relief, gold embossed Vatican City seal and dedication from John Doe included.
The altar boy he had borrowed for the afternoon and evening, Jesús, zipped him up the rest of the way, checked for passers by on the street down below and when there were none tapped his companion and friend on the leg and Don Miguel Iglesias The Younger, eighty seven years old, cardinal of the church of Rome with hidden humanist leanings, jumped into space from the balcony rail of his seventh floor Madrid flat, plummeted an instant, glanced off the edge of a galvanised rubbish container with a black rubberised lid, and hit the concrete curb with a dull thud, twitched a little and died painlessly stone dead, no lights, no angels, no guilt no last judgement, nothing at all, a fitting personal revenge taken against the church that had left him in the lurch.
Jesús looked at his watch. One fifty two and a bit, the precise same moment at which Bill Johnson felt his stomach speak to him about a flight he was not about to take.
Flashbulbs lit the Madrid street explosively that night. Diamonds lit the night.
Billy Johnson and the background radiation left over after the explosive end of Don Miguel Iglesias recommend this link, "RAZONES POR LAS QUE MOLARIA SER OBISPO. EL CAMINO AL CIELO, EL CAMINO DE MARTÍNEZ CAMINO SA." although they've changed the title a teency weency little bit here. Touch on the link below,-
PRIESTS/CURAS
