by Kevin Brooks
‘I know,’ I say. ‘But I'm right though, aren't I?’
The vicar smiles at me.
I smile back, imagining God being arrested and charged with a zillion counts of failure to report a crime. I imagine him having his almighty fingerprints taken, being interviewed by the police. I imagine him conferring with his lawyer. I imagine him on trial, standing in the dock, swearing to himself to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth… so help me Me. I imagine him being taken away in a police van, taken away to jail. I imagine him being locked up in a cell, with a horrible little bed and a horrible little sink and a horrible little lidless toilet…
And I don't know why I'm doing all this.
I don't know why I bothered coming up here at all.
Know thine enemy?
I have no enemy.
There is no God.
And this man, this vicar… he's just a man. He's just an ordinary man (wearing a slightly silly collar) who believes in something that doesn't exist. There's no point in asking him questions. There's no point in talking to him.
I don't want to talk about God.
I just want to kill him.
The rain isn't falling quite so heavily now. Jesus is cautiously poking his snout round the corner of the church porch, sniffing the fresh scents spirited up by the rain, and Mary is just sitting quietly on the cold stone floor, staring doggedly at the vicar's right shoe. The vicar, meanwhile, is looking at me in that silently thoughtful way that people who think they know more than you do. He has his faith, I suppose. And I guess he means well. But I know that if I was an evil person, and I wanted to do something bad to him, his faith wouldn't do anything to stop me.
‘What does he actually do?’ I say to him.
‘I'm sorry?’
‘God… I mean, what does he actually do?’
‘Well,’ the vicar says slowly (he's very fond of saying ‘well’), ‘it's not really a question of what God does –’
‘It is for me.’
‘Well, I'm sorry, but it's not that simple.’ He looks at me then, and I can tell by the soundless whirring of the cogs in his brain that he's about to start sermonizing at me… and I really don't want that.
‘I think I'd better go,’ I tell him, getting to my feet.
He looks at me, slowly nodding his head. ‘Well… if you ever want to talk to me again about anything, anything at all…’ He pauses, showing me the genuine concern in his eyes. ‘I can't promise you any answers, but sometimes it just helps to talk.’
‘OK.’
‘No matter what you do or don't believe in.’
‘Yeah… well, thanks. I'll bear that in mind.’
He smiles. ‘Good.’
‘I'll see you later,’ I tell him.
‘I hope so.’
And, with that, I'm gone.
shimmer
Q. How do you kill something that doesn't exist?
A. It depends.
Q. On what?
A. On who or what that non-existent thing is.
For example, if the non-existent thing you're trying to kill is:
(1) Superman
then all you have to do is throw some kryptonite at him. But if the non-existent thing you're trying to kill is:
(2) a vampire
you could try all kinds of things, including:
(a) driving an aspen, ash or whitethorn stake through its heart with a single blow
(b) firing a silver bullet blessed by a priest into its heart
(c) pouring boiling water, boiling oil or holy water into its grave
(d) placing a coin in its mouth
(e) decapitating it with an axe
(f) burying it at a crossroads
(g) chaining it to its grave with wild roses
(h) boiling its head in vinegar
(i) cutting off its head and burning it
(j) driving a nail through its navel
(k) putting poppy seeds in its grave
(l) removing its heart and cutting it in two
(m) slicing off its toes and hammering a nail through its neck
or (n) putting a lemon in its mouth.
If, however, the non-existent thing you're trying to kill is:
(3) a werewolf (or any other kind of werebeast/shapeshifter) then you'd be better off:
(a) shooting it with a silver bullet
(b) cutting its heart out and burning it
(c) smashing its skull, then removing and destroying its head
(d) blowing it up (perhaps by tricking it into eating some explosive)
or (e) dropping it into a giant meat grinder.
OK, so if God was some kind of Superwerevampire and I wanted to kill him, then (in view of his super-supernatural resistance to death) I'd probably need to try all of the above, and that would mean getting hold of a whole load of stuff. I'd need:
some kryptonite
an aspen, ash or whitethorn stake
a silver bullet
a priest to bless the silver bullet
a gun to fire the silver bullet (unless the silver bullet just happened to be the right kind of bullet for the pistol that Dad left behind, in which case (I presume) I could use that
some boiling water, boiling oil or holy water
a coin
an axe
a shovel (or spade) for burying
a crossroads (for burying at)
a chain
some wild roses
vinegar
two nails (both large enough for navel and neck)
a hammer (for nailing)
some poppy seeds
a lemon
some explosive
a giant meat grinder.
Now (if you count the boiling water, the boiling oil and the holy water as three separate items, and the two nails as one), I make that twenty-one items in all. And out of those twenty-one items, I'd say that fourteen would be quite easy to get hold of, three would be quite difficult but possible, three would be virtually impossible, and one would definitely be impossible. Other impossibilities would include:
locating God's grave
locating his navel, neck, head, heart, mouth, toes, etc.
locating anything about him full stop.
Q. How do you kill something that can't be located (because it doesn't exist) ?
A. You look to where it does exist.
Q. Where does God exist?
A. In the pages of a book, and in the minds of billions of people.
Q. So where does that leave you?
A. God knows.
I can't kill billions of people, can I? I mean, even if I wanted to (which I don't), it simply isn't feasible.
No.
So, if killing billions of people isn't the answer, what is the answer? All I can think of right now (and right now, by the way, it's around six o'clock in the evening and I'm sitting on my bed with Jesus and Mary and we're surrounded by pages and pages of useless information taken from various sad websites, and it's raining outside and I've got ‘Shimmer’ playing incredibly loudly, over and over again)… and all I can think of right now is spending the rest of my life destroying every single Bible in the world…
And I really can't see that happening.
‘Can you?’ I ask Jesus and Mary.
Jesus is sleeping, so he doesn't answer. But Mary gives me a very small wag of her tail – just a one-off wigwag – and that tells me all I need to know.
‘I'm wasting my time, aren't I?’ I say to her.
yes
‘I'm losing my way.’
yes
‘I'm trying so hard to be all right that I'm making myself not be all right.’
yes
Q. What do you wish?
A. I wish I could reach inside my heart and make things never happen.
god help me (1)
My name is Dawn.
I'm thirteen years old.
My name is Dawn.
I don't want to think about it.
; But every day it hurts more and more and the cave in my head gets smaller and smaller and the cave in my head gets darker and darker and the cave in my head gets colder and colder and if I don't get out of it soon, I think this cave is going to kill me.
Dawn is a daughter.
Dawn is a sex thing.
My name is Dawn.
I'm thirteen years old.
God help me.
her way of praying (2)
Downstairs, in the front room, Mum's in her armchair, smoking a cigarette and drinking her drink, and I'm on the settee, with Jesus and Mary snuggled up on either side of me, and we all seem to be watching Zoo Vet at Large. The curtained darkness of the room is illuminated with the flashing light of the monstrous TV, and every now and then, when the picture on the screen suddenly brightens, the TV light catches the cloud of cigarette smoke that's hanging beneath the ceiling, and just for a moment the cloud is a lightning cloud, and I'm not sitting in the front room any more, I'm sitting outside and a storm's about to break and I seem to be some kind of giant.
‘Are you all right, love?’ Mum says to me.
‘Yeah,’ I tell her. ‘I'm fine.’
She picks up the TV remote and smiles at me. ‘Do you want to watch something else?’
I shake my head. ‘This is OK with me.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I can see what else is on if you want.’
‘No, really… this is fine.’
She looks at me for a moment, her head wobbling slightly, then she plucks her cigarette from the ashtray and turns her attention back to the TV. I watch her – sipping her drink, smoking her cigarette, staring glassy-eyed at the TV screen
(she's keeping time
keeping time)
and I wonder so much about her.
What are you thinking, Mum?
What's in your mind?
What are you feeling?
Do you feel anything at all any more?
Is there anything left of you?
I'm not sure if it's possible to love someone too much, but I think that's what happened with Mum. She loved Dad so much, so overwhelmingly, so totally without condition… she loved him so much, and she still loves him so much, that everything else means nothing.
Even her love for me.
That's not to say that her love for me isn't true, because it is. It's true, it's real, it's bigger than a planet. It's the only thing she cares about now. It's all she has left. But, even so, I still don't think it's big enough to change anything.
I could be wrong, of course.
I'm wrong about lots of things.
‘You haven't forgotten I'm going to the doctor's tomorrow, have you?’ Mum says to me now.
‘No… your appointment's at five, isn't it?’
She nods.
I look at her. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’
She smiles. ‘No, I'll be all right, thanks.’
‘Are you sure? I don't mind…’
She shakes her head. ‘It's just a review…’ (She mispronounces it, slurring her words – juss-a-vuhvu – but I know what she means (I speak fluent DrunkMumish). She has to see her doctor once every six months for a review of her prescriptions. The doctor doesn't do anything. He just asks her if everything's OK, she says yes, and that's about it.)
‘I'll get the bus,’ she says.
‘Right.’
I look at her – cigarette, drink, remote control glued to her hand, dead eyes staring vacantly at TV adverts for stuff she couldn't care less about – and I wonder how long it's been since we actually talked to each other about anything. And, just like so many things, I can't remember. Or I don't want to remember. Or the Dawn that can remember doesn't come out of her cave any more.
‘Are you OK, Mum?’ I a quietly.
‘Hmm?’ she says, her eyes still fixed on the TV screen.
‘Are you OK?’
She looks at me, her face naturally blank for a moment, then she smiles and says, ‘I'm fine.’
‘Really?’
She nods, still smiling, but I think she knows that I'm not looking for a smile, and I think that scares her to death. Which is why I don't usually do anything about it. Because it's too hard for me to do anything else. Because that would be too hard for her.
It's what we do, every day of our lives: Mum smiles, I accept it, and everything's fine. We love each other. We don't have to talk. We don't have to go where the scary things are. It's what we do.
But today feels different.
I don't know why.
It just feels different.
‘It's all right,’ I tell her. ‘I mean, I'm not trying to… you know… I'm only trying to…’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘It's all right.’
‘I just thought –’
‘I'm fine.’
‘Yeah, but you're not, are you? Not really.’
The way she stares at me for a moment, with a look of anaesthetized surprise on her face, it's as if she can't really believe what she's just heard. Like a drunk who's just been slapped in the face, she knows it's happened, and she knows it's supposed to hurt, but she's not really sure if it does or not.
‘I don't know…’ she mutters, stubbing out her cigarette and shakily lighting another one. ‘I don't know…’
‘It's all right, Mum,’ I tell her. ‘You don't have to –’
‘It's so hard,’ she says very quietly.
‘I know.’
‘I feel so…’
I wait, holding my breath, waiting for her to tell me how she feels… but it's just too much for her. She can't say any more. The words simply won't come out. Her mouth has tightened, her eyes have closed, her jaw is clenched, and all she can do is shake her head in suffered silence, trying to
hold back the tears. And I know that
(it's her way of saying a prayer for me)
and I know that I hate myself for hearing a song in my head when all I should be hearing is Mum's stifled sobs, but there's nothing I can do about it. I can't do anything about the things in my head. And even as I get up from the settee and go over to Mum and hold her tightly in my arms, and her tears soak into my skin, and her shaking soaks into my bones, and the sound of ‘Her Way of Praying’ retreats into the inner silence inside me, even then I can't stop hearing another song in my head…
Another time.
Another Dawn.
Another song.
god help me (2)
A hymn.
Dad's hymn.
have you been to jesus for the cleansing power?
are you washed in the blood of the lamb?
are you fully trusting in his grace this hour?
are you washed in the blood of the lamb?
are you washed in the blood?
in the soul-cleansing blood of the lamb?
are your garments spotless? are they white as snow?
are you washed in the blood of the lamb?
He plays it late at night when he's drunk out of his mind
are you walking by the saviour's side?
are you washed in the blood of the lamb?
do you rest each moment in the crucified?
are you washed in the blood of the lamb?
when he's drunk out of body and soul
when the bridegroom cometh will your robes be white?
pure and white in the blood of the lamb?
will your soul be ready for the mansions bright?
and be washed in the blood of the lamb?
when he's drunk himself out of himself
lay aside your garments that are stained with sin
and be washed in the blood of the lamb
there's a fountain flowing for the soul unclean
o be washed in the blood of the lamb
he weeps.
are you washed in the blood?
in the soul-cleansing blood of the lamb?
are your garments spotless? are they white as snow?
are you w
ashed in the blood of the lamb?
God help me.
mushroom
I don't say anything to Mum as she sits there crying her heart out, I just hold her tear-soaked head in my arms and wish that things were different. I wish she wasn't crying. I wish I could stop listening to the storm in my head and the sound of the rain outside, and I wish I could do something to help Mum. But I can't.
And I hate myself for it.
It's so pathetic.
But I just can't find anything else. I can't find the right words. I can't find the right emotion. I can't concentrate. I can't think. Whatever's inside me, whatever I'm feeling… it feels like it belongs to someone else.
Another Dawn.
A sex thing.
A daughter.
Mum's crying so much now that at some point I start wondering how long a person can cry for. I mean, there must be a limit, mustn't there? You can't keep crying for ever. The tears have to dry up eventually.
But Mum doesn't seem to have any problem. She just keeps on crying, sobbing, weeping, howling… and she doesn't stop until the doorbell suddenly rings, and Jesus and Mary leap off the settee and go running out into the hallway (ROWROWROWROWROWROWROW).
Mum straightens up and starts wiping tears and snot from her face.
‘It's all right,’ I tell her. ‘We don't have to answer it.’
‘No,’ she sniffs, ‘we'd better see who it is.’
‘It doesn't matter, Mum. It's not –’
‘Go on,’ she insists. ‘It might be important.’
We look at each other for a moment, and I realize what she means – i.e. that it might be someone about Dad – and although I don't think that's very likely, there's a part of me, a guilty part, that's secretly glad of the opportunity to do something other than hold Mum's head in my arms and listen to her cry. So, only half reluctantly, I go over to the front window and pull back the curtain to see who's at the door.
I'm not really thinking about who's going to be there – although, I suppose, in the back of my mind, I'm probably expecting it to be someone collecting for charity or something – and so, when I pull back the curtain and see two figures I recognize, it gives me a bit of a shock.