He spotted Steve in the far corner, sitting at the table under the broken plasma screen, reading a book and nursing a pint.
Jake waved to him and walked over.
Robbie rolled his eyes and then walked to the bar to get two lagers.
***
Eve was no longer in the boot but in a meadow. Its grass and flowers were the most vibrant she had ever seen. A brook shadowed by weeping willows and broad-trunked alders murmured softly to one side, its crystal-clear waters teeming with fish. She had been taken from Hell to Paradise.
She tried to imagine the people she loved, and there they were, some of them at least. Her mother, her sister, her girlfriends at school and from the orchestra, as real as they were in the mundane world. But when she tried imagine her brother, her father, even handsome unattainable Damien at school there was nothing, not even a shadow. Eve felt only a passing regret.
“They are a plague,” the voice whispered, and Eve could hear the fertility of the soil and the anger of the storm in the words.
She nodded her assent.
***
They were on the second pint and Steve was going about how call centres were the new factories with the supervisors always on your back and the hourly targets you had to reach. He was working at the new Altringham Midshires that they'd built on the site of the old Erdington Engineering Works.
“Can't wait to start uni,” Steve said. “Fucking awful place to work.”
“Yeah, like speaking to some whiny bitch going on about her mortgage. Just like being a steel worker, that is,” Robbie sneered.
“Or like working in the chicken factory. How long you last there Robbie? Two days?” Steve grinned maliciously. “Guess there wasn't anything worth stealing, eh?”
Robbie frowned. “At least I was working with my hands.” Jake could tell he wanted to punch Steve in the face but after that he'd called Steve a swotty arse-licking teacher's pet one time too often, he knew better.
“And your cock.”
Robbie drained his pint and slammed it on the table. “Fuck this, let’s go.”
“I haven't finished my pint, yet,” Jake protested.
“You got a motor? Then fucking skull it and lets go.”
Jake took a couple of big gulps and then put the glass down. It was still half full of Kronenberg.
Steve looked at him with a mixture of pity, contempt and concern.
“Why do you let him push you around, Jake? Come on sit down, I'll buy you a pint.”
Jake had always liked Steve. He remembered that time he'd told him he should ditch Robbie and the rest of his mates, had told him he had a brain on his shoulders. He'd felt unaccountably proud – Steve was the only one he knew who'd done his A levels, and he'd got good ones at that. But he couldn't look him in the eye now, not with that girl in the boot. So he just shrugged and followed Robbie.
As they walked past the students, a group of girls were laughing and talking about how lovely the weather had been today. Their boyfriends looked perplexed.
“What the fuck are the talking about. It's been bucketing down all day.”
Robbie snorted with contempt. “Women, mate. Who the fuck knows what they're thinking.”
Jake and Robbie sat in the car looking down on Wolverton. It wasn't meant to get dark for a couple of hours yet but the sky was so overcast, the rain so heavy, that the orange street lamps had already come on. “Longest day of the year, my arse,” Jake muttered.
Robbie blew out smoke and the pungent, earthy smell of hashish filled the car. He passed the joint to Jake.
“Longest day of the year? You're a fucking walking encyclopaedia. How the fuck do you know all this shit? You skipped more school than I did.”
Jake shrugged and took a drag. Outside, straggly, sick saplings tried to get sustenance from the soil. Burnt-out cars littered the summit of the artificial modern barrow marking the grave of Calthorpe colliery.
***
Eve stood in the meadow, breathing in the scents of a world unspoiled by man. In the other place, the maimed and broken one, the car had stopped on top of one of the world's great and many wounds. They had tried to make a half-hearted attempt to cover up the scar but like everything they did it was lazy, slipshod and unthinking. Nothing would ever really grow here again, not until the world was healed.
The Goddess appeared before her, her form constantly changing sometimes a nubile young teenager, sometimes a pregnant mother, sometimes an old crone, sometimes a great and mighty tree, a meadow, a river and sometimes something greater, beyond perception, just a sense of the wholeness of the earth and how it grieved.
Her form flickered, stabilised and a brown-skinned woman stood before, her jet-black hair garlanded with wild flowers. A dress woven of living green grass and plants fell down to her shoulders to her bare feet. The dress shifted and moved constantly as small animals and insects moved along the fabric.
“Soon it shall be time,” the Goddess whispered. Then she told Eve what she must what she should have to do. Eve did not flinch. The world was sick and needed to be cleansed.
***
Robbie's mobile phone beeped twice. He picked it up, looked at the screen and showed Jake the text: WTFAU?
Robbie stubbed out the joint on the dashboard and grinned dreamily. “Time to get this party on the road.” He turned his head to the back of the car. “Don't worry sweetie. You are about to have the time of your life.”
The wind gusted, screamed. He looked behind him as they drove down to Anuham wood. The saplings had grown, had become huge trees that loomed over the car as it drove slowly off. Huge gnarled branches reached for them in anger, leaves fell from them in green rivulets as if they were weeping. Then the car picked up speed, the trees receded, returned to the dying withered bushes they had been before.
Jake shook his head and tried to put it down to the hash.
They drove past the old church to Anuham Wood. They could see two dancing points of light just inside the treeline. Aidie and Karl had turned up and were using their mobiles as torches. Who could blame them? It was pitch black outside and still pitching it down.
Robbie pulled up just outside the wood, next to one Wolverton's favourite and longest-established fly tipping sites piled high with tyres, soiled mattresses, sheets of asbestos and other toxic building materials, rusting fridges and washing machines and a whole load of other manky shit whose original purpose had been long forgotten.
One of the teachers had said that Anuham wood was a remnant of the ancient forest that had once covered all of Albion. But then Mr Rodgers was a druid who went to Stonehenge every summer and that Merlin was sleeping the ground somewhere near Dorking so Jake suspected a lot of what he said was bullshit.
Anyway it looked old. The ground was soft and spongy with god knows how many autumns' deadfall.
Jakes' granddad would come down sometimes to collect the mulch that formed at the very bottom of the carpet of leaves. He had said there was no better place for compost.
Jake remembered the times that he would come down with Robbie to collect conkers that had fallen from the heavy branches of the great chestnut tree at the centre of the wood.
Once, he'd heard a woodpecker drilling away at a tree. The knocking sound had filled the whole wood and the fields beyond. More an echo, than a knock. It had been magical, that was the only word for it.
“Oi,” Robbie shouted in his ear. “Time to get sweet stuff out the boot.”
***
They dumped her onto the wet grass. The rain and wind suddenly stopped and the sky cleared. A full moon rode in the sky bathing the whole landscape in liquid silver.
Robbie sighed with relief. “Thank Christ for that. I thought it was never going to stop pissing down.”
Jake glanced at the pile of rubbish again. In the light of the moon it looked almost beautiful, a graveyard, a charnel house for a world about to end. He shook his head. Where the fuck had that come from?
Jake looked at the girl. Her black school shoes and uniform were muddied, her stockings torn but she stared intently at Jake, her face calm, as if she was expecting something from him.
“I think she's got the hots for you mate,” Robbie said cheerfully. He took out a utility from his pocket and cut the ties round her ankles.
“Help me get her up.”
They dragged her toward the trees. As they drew closer, the wood seemed to turn into something from a fairy-tale. The moon's light frosted the trunks and branches of the tree. Silver leaves rustled softly in a gentle breeze carrying the scent of ripening fruit and green sap coursing through the gnarled veins of hazel and oak.
They could see the other lads at the edge of the woods. They'd put their phones away. The smells grew stronger, the weather warmer, the muddy ground became a green carpet and Jake felt the sudden urge to kick off his shoes and socks and feel the lush grass on the bare soles of his feet.
Jake understood then that he couldn't go through with it. It had felt wrong all along but now what they planned to do had become an abomination.
He pretended to trip and crashed into Robbie, bringing them both down to the ground. The girl ran off, swift as a hare.
“Shit, she's gone away you clumsy idiot,” Robbie roared as he got back up. “Quick, grab her.”
Jake stared at the girl as she ran toward the wood. She looked back at him, her face imperious, dismissive. With a single swift motion she broke the plastic bonds tying her wrists behind her back. Then she plunged deep in Anuham Wood and was gone.
But she was forgotten, for everything had changed. It was daylight and they were walking in a green meadow in the cool of a summer evening. A stream ran out of the wood, and Jake knew if he drank from it, it would be the sweetest water he had ever tasted. Robbie was looking around, mouth agape. “I must be tripping, I must be tripping” he kept repeating. Aidie was on his knees, his hands feeling the grass in front of him while Karl was staring at the flawless blue of the sky feeling the sunlight fall on his acned skin.
They gathered together, stood in a circle and held hands. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Anuham Wood towered over them, its trees mighty and they all know that it wasn't a tiny copse any more but a great forest that covered all of Albion.
The sun was hot, too hot, but under the trees they knew it would be cool and shady. Jake looked at the sunlight, how it slanted through the great boughs and the sheltering leaves, how it softened the sun, how the light was most green when it fell onto the inviting carpet of grass, leaves and flowers.
They all knew it would be restful in there, a place of peace where they could forget all their rages, their hurts, their petty concerns.
They walked into the trees, still hand-in-hand, and their faces were filled with bliss.
At first, it was as promised. The air become cooler, the sound of birdsong and the buzzing of insects soothing and lulling. But as they walked deeper into the forest it became cooler, darker, and the birds and insects fell silent. The trees seemed to crowd and they began to stumble and trip on hidden vines and roots.
Robbie let go of Jake's hand. “What the fuck is going on? Are you fucking queer or something, you cunt?” He looked around. “Where's the girl, and where the fuck are we?” He pressed his hands to face. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. She's a witch, a fucking witch.” He began to cry. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”
Karl was six foot two and built like a fucking tank. Jake had never seem scared before but he was shitting himself now as the trees seemed to edge in ever closer. “Fuck me, it's like Mirkwood,” he tried to joke. Then he fell to his knees and covered his eyes.
Aidie turned round and round as the darkness grew heavier muttering “I just wanted a bit of fun. Please, please...”
Jake backed away. “We've got to get out of here. She's angry.”
They all looked at him and nodded but as they stared frantically around them they realised there was nowhere to go. They stood in a small clearing surrounded on all sides by great oaks, elms, beech and ash, their trunks meshed together with brambles and fines more impenetrable than any razor wire.
A woman's voice boomed in their ears. “It is far too late for that, my lost children. Now you must be punished.”
The earth exploded and horrors of teeth and claws and fur burst through the trees. Jake's three friends screamed as vines bound their limbs and hungry maws tore at their flesh. Their screams did not last long. Jake squeezed his eyes shut and whimpered, waiting for the end. He felt hot breath on his face. He opened his eyes and stared into the face of a sabre-tooth tiger, its muzzle and great fangs stained with blood. It stared back with calm green eyes, growled and sauntered off.
“Death is not for you,” the woman's voice whispered.
Jake saw was the great chestnut tree he had loved so much as a child bending over him, enfolding him...
***
When he woke, two women stood before him. One had black hair that reached almost down to her bare feet. Her brown indescribably beautiful faced demanded worship, the green dress she wore contained the world in it. The other was the schoolgirl, except that she was a girl no longer. She radiated light, blinding and cleansing. Her left hand rested gently on top of a wicker seed basket hanging from her waist, her right gripped a long sword. One hand for life, the other for death.
Jake tried to move but something bound him fast
The brown-faced smiled, almost sorrowfully. “Ah, you are back with us. Good. It is time to bear witness to the salvation of her sex and the doom of yours.”
She bent down and kissed Eve on the top of her head. “Go now, child, do my work and redeem the world.”
The goddess turned back to Jake
“If you truly understand, in time something of your sex can be saved. Once the world is healed, we shall see. Now witness the world reborn.” The Goddess walked back into the trees and into the heart and sinew of the world.
Jake tried to struggle but he was fused into the tree, the great chestnut where he and Jake had used to collect conkers. He could see Robbie on the ground, his throat and belly turned open, his limbs chewed and mangled.
Imprisoned, all he could do was sense the changing world through the leaves and branches and roots of the tree. And understood, that soon everything would be different, and that the time of Man was coming to an end, that the Goddess was taking back the realm that he and his kind had despoiled and raped for so long.
Jake would have wept if he could.
Eve burst out of the wood and the old world trembled before her. Soon, concrete, tarmac and steel would melt and return back to the earth as if it had never been. Beast, bird and insect would return tended by the gentle hand of woman. Oh, there would be a price to pay. Screams of anguish from some of her sisters as husbands, fathers and sons fell to her sword.
Birth was always painful
Eve rushed toward the waiting city, and the earth blossomed in her footsteps.
The End Of The World As Seen By The Angel Gabriel
by Dean M. Drinkel
“What we need is hatred. From it our ideas are born.” Jean Genet
“For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to [execute] wrath upon him that doeth evil.” Romans 13:4
“I want that one. It looks like your mother…”
“My mother? I don’t see that resemblance.” He smiled at Doctor Collier, not looking at his wife.
She didn’t take her eyes from the object, the human, who was exhibited in the cage before them.
He sighed when he realised the doctor was waiting for him to answer. “Can we take it?”
“As long as you are sure.”
She nodded furiously; he took a little longer but with a shrug of his shoulders he agreed. “Fine, just be careful, remember what happened to the last one.”
Anger flew across her face. “I didn’t do it on purpose did I? It just wouldn’t stop crying…”
***
Of course there were significant differences between the two humans they had selected from the Institute – this one, for instance, was fully formed. Well, almost. Collier had told them that it was probably in its late teens, not as much as twenty but perhaps eighteen or nineteen? It was male – well, they didn’t need to be told that, it was obvious enough! In the drive back to their house they tried communication but they weren’t successful – it didn’t speak, though it did grunt once or twice when they asked questions of it.
“Do you have a name?” he asked, looking over his shoulder.
The boy shook his head. “Number only.”
“Oh,” she interjected. “That’s not fair, everything…”
“…everyone…”
“…yes, sorry, everyone should have a name.” She closed her eyes. “I know,” she said as she clapped her hands together. “Gabriel.”
“Gabriel?” the human murmured as the car was manoeuvred into the garage.
“That sounds good doesn’t it…Gabriel?” he said as he switched off the engine.
The boy, Gabriel, stared blankly. “Does it matter what I think?”
***
Gabriel had been dumped in his room. He was alone. He sat on the floor, crossed his legs. Some clothes had been laid out on his bed but he hadn’t bothered to get dressed – what was the point? He was naked, as usual. After about ten, fifteen minutes of watching him they said that he didn’t have to stay on the floor and that he could sit in the chair by the window or they could move the clothes and he could lie on the bed and get some sleep if that was what he wanted.
He had replied that he wasn’t sure what he wanted. He didn’t understand all these new words and concepts which they kept throwing at him, he was a simple creature who liked simple things. He wasn’t sure he liked it out here in the world either, back in the Institute everything was done for him, he didn’t have to make any…choices.
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