I Am The Local Atheist

by Warwick Stubbs

  “Hey David!”

  I jumped – “What the?” – and turned around.

  Christie looked mightily pleased with herself about giving me such a fright. She had come into the foyer through the hall doors.

  I held the leaflet in my hand, shaking slightly.

  “How are things going?”

  “Good. Thanks. Christie. Decided to do some physical work. Paid work. To help pay the bills. Cause they need payin’. Y’know.” I needed to calm down. I smiled.

  “Gotta be done, eh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know, since you’ve already had a taste of Charge Up, you could think about doing it with me permanently. I’m sure The Salvation Army would be willing to give you some payment for it, especially if you’re officially employed as a staff member. Alice is looking to pass it on to me completely, which I’m totally keen about, but if she goes on to do other stuff, then I’m definitely going to need some help. What about it?”

  “I’ll think about it. What about Lucas?”

  “Lucas has been pretty adamant about not involving himself any deeper with The Salvation Army, I mean, in terms of being paid for what he does anyway. Which I find extremely honourable. I can’t believe how generous he is sometimes. But I also get the feeling that he can’t commit on a regular basis. Which is a pity, but I guess, you’re in the same boat – gotta go where the money is, right?”

  “Yeah, right.” I smiled.

  “I’ll leave that with you anyway. I know that the kids like you, and Alice has spoken well of you, so there you go.” She smiled. “Well you know you’re welcome anyway. Feel free to come along any time you can.”

  “Thanks.” I instinctively started putting the leaflet back on the rack.

  “Please David. Keep it.”

  I looked at the leaflet as my hand retreated back to me, eyes looking at the words ‘Drug and Alcohol Addiction’. My hands started shaking again. “It’s not me.”

  She nodded politely, a gentle blink. “I know.” Christie started moving around me, heading towards her office. “You must come to a Sunday service some time. If only to make up numbers. Seriously, around here it feels like young people are a dying race and the oldies are repopulating the place.” She threw her head back and laughed as she went through the doors to her office – “Hey Alice, we were just talking about you.” – and closed them firmly behind her.

  I looked down at the leaflet, folded it and put it into a pocket.

  I decided to walk to Mum’s knowing that if I waited any longer I might never get around to it at all.

  The car wasn’t in the drive. Peering through the windows I saw nothing but decided to go in anyway and scout around. The faint smell of whiskey blew over me, but didn’t seem so bad today as it had other days. The kitchen floor was absent of Mum’s sprawled out body – an image I always found hard to forget when walking in through the back door.

  The rest of the house was clear, and pretty vacant as far as bottles were concerned. Maybe things weren’t so bad, or maybe she had decided to go somewhere else instead.

  I decided to call the local pub. “Yeah, hey, this is David.”

  “Who?”

  I sighed. “David. Is Mum around?”

  “Oh, hey David. Yeah, your Mum’s sitting at one of the pokies.”

  “Is she drinking?”

  “Umm no. Apparently she came in, sat down and started playing the slot machines instead.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “Want me to txt ya if she starts drinking?”

  “Yeah that’ll be cool.”

  “I reckon she might be doing one of her resisting the temptation things. She’s doing pretty well David.”

  “Thanks.”

  I hung up the phone and felt for the leaflet in my pocket, wondering if I should take it out and place it on the bench, or near the phone. I put it near the phone.

  Part VII

  – Another life –

  We were sitting at the Fraterniser again, drinking casually by the open window. Lucas seemed far less talkative than he usually was. I had nothing to say – the gusts of wind that blew down the main street seemed to say it all.

  It had been at least two weeks since the last time I saw Lisa. It felt longer, but work was doing a good job of erasing whatever thoughts popped up every now and then. In some ways I didn’t care – I was sick of her asking questions about church and stuff that had happened there; in other ways I did – I missed having someone take an interest in me, or at least someone who was female. For a year and a half it had just been one Work and Income employee and now it was just one male friend, and the only other female that had shown any interest was showing much more interest in him.

  “So how’s things been going with you and Christie?”

  Lucas swirled the foam at the bottom of his glass, smiling at a thought. “Good.”

  “That all?”

  “Uhh, y’know, nothing special, just been hangin’.”

  “Just been hangin’?”

  “Yeah, hangin’.”

  I looked at him swirling his foam expecting a bit more but he was silent. “Oh for fuck’s sake Lucas. Spill the beans if there’s any to spill.”

  He laughed. “No beans.” He sat up and locked his hands together behind his head. “Well, except for coffee beans. But we weren’t doing any spilling of them, that was more the girl behind the counter. Nah, we’ve just been having coffees and chatting about Invercargill. I think she likes having someone her own age to talk to.”

  “Sounds like fun.” I was being sarcastic but he wasn’t listening.

  “I took her for a walk through Queens Park…”

  “Ooooh, romantic!”

  “Yeah, whatever! She had a habit of sneaking ‘Thank God for such a beautiful world’ in whenever I mentioned how nice some flowers looked.”

  “That must have really bugged you.”

  “Yeah, it did.” He paused to cross his arms. “For a while. Guess I got used to it. I just really like being around her even though she is Christian, y’know? Just this really cool vibe that doesn’t ever seem forced.”

  “Right.”

  “She’s been asking if you’re gonna come back and help out at Charge Up.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Didn’t enjoy it?”

  “Nah. Well sort of. It’s different from working with teenagers.”

  “I guess it is.” Lucas sucked on the last of his cigarette as a questioning look passed across his face. “I find the games to be just a bunch of fun. I mean it’s not like I actually contribute much. Alice and Christie just appreciate having a male there I think, to help out, or at least to yell at the top of his voice when the kids aren’t listening to them.”

  “I’m not saying I didn’t have fun, just that I didn’t find myself fulfilled in any way doing it. Not like you seem to be. I think… I think I just want to focus on doing some work at the moment, some physical work; something that gives my body a reminder of why it’s alive.”

  Lucas tapped his beer glass. “I’m alive because my parents fucked.”

  “Umm, yeah. Well, y’know, physically, that’s why we’re here.”

  “Should there be another reason?” He lit up another cigarette.

  “Well, I just mean, like on some kind of spiritual level. Not necessarily religious, just something that makes a person realise that ‘this is the reason I’m alive’.”

  “Sounds religious to me.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. I mean, take your friend Callasandra for example, don’t you think that at some point she realised that she was a painter and that was what she would do with the rest of her life?”

  “I think that recognising a talent and then naming that as the ‘reason’ you are here on earth is vastly different from just accepting the talent and choosing to pursue that for the rest of your life.”

  I didn’t think it was vastly different at all. “Haven’t any of your own friends ever said ‘this is why
I’ve been put on earth, to do this…’?”

  “No. I’ve heard people say that – parents, maybe some people I’ve known; definitely hear it from some famous people – but I always remind my friends that what they do with their own talent is their own choice. It’s not a reason for existing, it’s a reason for living.”

  “Well okay, tell me what particular talent you have that is your reason for living.”

  “I don’t have any talents. I choose to live because I see life as a better option than being dead and buried in the ground.”

  “Everyone has a talent of some sort.”

  “Not me. My parents fucked, Mum didn’t abort me, and now here I am: A walking talking scourge on the face of the planet.”

  I remembered telling troubled teenagers over and over that they were not the ‘source of suffering’ that they often felt themselves to be, that they were beautiful people about to be enveloped by the love of Jesus, that there was nothing to stop them from being loved and loving life except their own will to not accept Jesus into their lives. I had encountered Lucas’s attitude so many times in Youth Group; teenagers who were being blamed for any kind of suffering at home, a suffering I could relate to but understood to not be my own. I used to tell them that God had put them on the planet for a specific reason, that they were all part of God’s great plan and I had thought that that was the reason God had put me on the planet, to bring that message to them. My home life made so much sense in that light. I saved Lisa because of that, but I hadn’t known how to save Mum and…

  and myself. This wasn’t the life I was supposed to be leading. I could swear it.

  Lucas stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “Ah fuck it. I can’t be stuffed having this convo today.”

  “Yeah, it’s bringing me down too.”

  We laughed.

  “How’s the job at the Freezing Works?”

  “It sucks.”

  “No surprises then?”

  “Nah. Have to get up at five o’clock and be there at six. And then spend the rest of the morning bagging laundry that smells like your insides. It’s really weird though, because so much of the environment feels familiar. It feels like a place I’ve occupied before.”

  “Another life, eh?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Another life.”

  * * *

  On the fifth day things changed.

  I had had enough. I hated the job, but I had to see it out.

  I walked through the gates that morning and up the steps, entering the building and walking down the concrete corridor like a man who had traversed these walls for so many years of his life as other workers shuffled past, some rushing ahead, late for their duties. I took my time, I didn’t care. It was just another day at the office; the smell of blood was everywhere, and its depressive smell clung to me.

  “Good morning, and welcome to the Southland Freezing Works Complex. This automated message is provided for the security and convenience of the Southland Freezing Works personnel. The time is five-forty seven A.M. Current outside temperature is twelve degrees Celsius with an estimated high of sixteen…” I rounded the corner that took me to my station. The electronic voice babbled on… “Due to the health regulations, the high possibility of infections of meat routinely handled in the Southland Freezing Works compound, no smoking, eating, or drinking are permitted within the Southland Freezing Works gates. Please keep your protective gear on at all times…”

  I entered Ed’s office.

  “For fucks sake,” he said looking at me. “Bout time ya fuckin’ showed up!”

  I stared at him as if I was stupid.

  “Put your damn overalls on.”

  I went to the locker and stepped into my hazardous environment suit. It spoke to me – “vital sign monitoring activated” – which I thought was weird, to say the least, considering, I had put on just a normal pair of overalls.

  “I’m afraid we’ll be deviating a bit from standard procedures today, David. Hold the fort here while I check the supply room.”

  I sat down in Ed’s seat as he left. Workers eventually started entering and asking for overalls. Some even asked me if I knew if their lockers were going to be fixed. “I don’t know” was the only reply I had for them, but it made me realise why Ed had left me here – so that he didn’t have to deal with these problems himself.

  “My locker has been broken for two weeks now. When’s it gonna be fixed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She looked annoyed. “Give ya’ a bet he’s fixed his own damn lockers though, right?”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  She pushed her way past me to the lockers against the wall where Ed kept his belongings and rattled the doors, banging her fists against them as if trying to make them break open. They wouldn’t budge.

  The worker looked at me. “Just give me my damn overalls.”

  “Sure,” I said passing a clean pair to her.

  I sat for about half an hour looking at the computer screen, looking at the staples on the desk, looking at notes that people had left, looking through the draws to see if there was anything worth stealing (there wasn’t). I decided to go into the room next door and start sorting the overalls that had come down the chutes.

  I was at that for only fifteen minutes before Ed came through the side door shuffling the little mat trolley towards me like a man on a mission. His face lit up with fury. “For fuck’s sake! You were supposed to be doing the mats half an hour ago!”

  He gave the trolley a hard shove. It slammed into the wall next to me, narrowly missing my legs but hitting a floor-level fuse box, toppling over and spilling the mats all across the floor. Circuits overloaded and sparks flew sending green streaks of lightning into my visual cortex. And then the lights died blackening out the room.

  Silence, except for some fuses snapping.

  And heavy breathing,

  and swearwords being mumbled.

  I blinked and saw hunched creatures with long arms and legs mulling about, and then looking at me with one big red eye on each of their foreheads. I tried backing away into the darkness but the lights flickered back on and I was looking around wondering where the creatures had disappeared to. Ed was gone too.

  The mats lay in a sprawled out mess on the floor. I kicked a few away from the fuse box but left the rest as I exited the main building and made my way through the still dark air, onwards on my mission to bag blood splattered overalls into blue bags ready to be whisked away by the laundry truck later that day.

  I started at the place next to the cafeteria. I had no idea what they did in there but the smell wasn’t half as bad as some of the other rotten places.

  More of the same lockers that the workers used hadn’t been fixed and some swung open as I walked past banging my fist against them leaving cigarette packets, wallets and keys open for anyone to come in and ruffle their way through. I could imagine Ed checking everyone’s gear as though he was some kind of security inspector instead of just being in charge of the laundry and being the general caretaker that he was employed as.

  I decided to steal some wallets. It was risky, but it made my heart beat faster, and I knew that people were more likely to blame Ed anyway, at least in the long run for not fixing the lockers.

  The thought brought a smile to my face.

  I grabbed two wallets, a bag of chips and a couple of sandwiches, placed them in one of the empty bags, scrunched it up and held on tight.

  I made my way around to the loading shed where long vent shafts passed across the ceiling to the other end. The lights in between dispersed an orange glow against everything, and threw strange shadows against the lockers where blue overalls were overflowing.

  I took an empty bag that I had brought with me and started stuffing the overalls in as they fell out of the locker and piled their dirty and stinking bloodstains up against my arm.

  There weren’t many other workers in this area. In fact for a while I was pretty sure that I was the only one.r />
  To my left crates were stacked up high, almost to the ceiling where the vents made highways of their own against the tin roof. A large propeller sat lodged in the wall at the end of one of the shafts. It was most obviously an air coolant system sucking the cool air in or the hot air out. At this time of the morning it was turned off. I imagined crawling through the vents and coming out at a similar coolant system, but not being able to get past and lodged in some trap created by game designers to piss the player off.

  Something moved – from out of the corner of my eye; something with red tentacles, but when I looked over to the storage area it was gone. I shoved the rest of the overalls into the bag, tying the end and shouldering it, ready to carry it to the end of the bay where later the laundry truck would pick it up.

  I heard a sound – a squishy flap flap sound, kind of like a tail pounding wet floorboards. It came from behind the crates. There was definitely something hiding over there.

  If I moved now I would be an open target, so I shouldered the bag of overalls and decided to change direction. I made a full circle around the crates, heading for the opposite side of the storage area, passing through and around several pathways before hitting a complete blockage. A dead end.

  Damn these linear games! There were never any alternative routes. I had to go back and carry on exactly as I had planned originally.

  But as I walked out into the open space, the creature charged at me from behind the crates on it’s two stumpy legs; its red-tentacle face firing toxic phlegm which I managed to dodge the worst of, but the off-spray hit me and my suit reacted: “Armour compromised.”

  I fell over but crawled desperately forward gaining my feet again, and diving to my right into a new locker bay where some more doors swung open invitingly.

  I grabbed as many supplies as I could carry – health packs, ammo, batteries for my suit – “Power restored” – shoving them in my loot bag and desperately filling the overall bag to the brim with the dirty laundry from this area.