by David Keenan
I says to her, what, wait a minute, what did you just say? I’m just saying, she says, that the place is impregnable, Sammy, that I’m safer here than anywhere. The whole fucking city could go up at any moment. I could get snatched by the Ra on my way home from work and imprisoned in a safe house and tortured by a pair of gangsters. Sure, you were never tortured, I says to her. Now you’re just getting into sexual fantasies. I pounce on her and she pretends to fight me off before we make love one more time, but all the while I’ve got this phrase in my head, the Europa is a mighty fortress. There it is again. But what is it that’s speaking? You need to go, Kathy says, rushing me out, and I’m still doing up my tie as I walk along the corridor. I’m high. I’m feeling great. I’m bouncing along on that soft carpet with the pattern they had. I take the lift to reception and I’m about to step out when I see Tommy. Fucking Tommy’s standing at the desk, at reception, talking to one of the girls. He’s pointing to something up above him and she’s nodding. He points up, again, toward the ceiling, and the doors of the lift close and I take it back up and I get out, randomly, on the fifth floor. And suddenly everything is up in the air.
*
Wait, what about this one, listen to this one, this is a classic:
Paddy’s wife comes home from the doctor’s and Paddy says to her, did that doctor tell you what was up with you, and his wife says to him, no, the only thing he says was that I had a beautiful pussy, and Paddy says, what the fuck, and he loses it, and he goes battering over to the doctor’s and he barges in on him and he starts laying into him, he starts giving him a right pasting, and all the time Paddy’s screaming at him, don’t dare you comment on my wife’s pussy, how fucking dare you, he’s saying, and the doctor he says to him, Paddy, you’ve got it all wrong, all I says to her was that she had acute angina.
*
We’re up The Shamrock, it’s Saturday night, and Tommy’s up onstage giving it plenty. One singer, one song, some cunt shouts. I never knew what the fuck that meant neither. I’m sitting next to Patricia. Look at that wee bastard, I says to her. I think his da was a fucking negro, I says. Where the fuck did he get that tan? Working in the streets, that’s where he got it, Patricia says. Working in the streets since he was seven year old and his da made him go out and sell newspapers down the bottom of the Crumlin Road. Let me tell you, darling, I says to her, but there is no sun in Ireland strong enough to inflict that degree of tan. That’s fucking genetic, so it is.
That would mean his da wasn’t his da, Patricia says. That would mean he was a bastard. He is a wee bastard, I says to her, what did I tell you?
She was a good-looking doll. And smart too. She was in the Mensa. Plus she was obsessed by all the popes. She studied them, read all the books. She knew everything about the popes. Plus she was in love with Tommy. Crazy in love with him. All the ladies were. Women would walk up to him, this is in the street, this is at the fucking train station, and they would ask him if he would like to take them out for a coffee. You ever heard of a woman asking a random guy out at a fucking train station before? In Belfast it was un-fucking-heard-of, believe me. Till Tommy started the trend. Everybody was uptight before that. Till Tommy came along. They talk about the Swinging Sixties and the free love. The era of Tommy was the era of free love in Ireland. When he was born it was the equivalent of the Beatles shopping up in Belfast. Only he had short hair and a handmade suit and a floor-length Crombie and a slouch hat and he would’ve shot a hippy in the fucking face as soon as look at him. Plus he never touched drugs. Except for marijuana. And LSD, once. But wait till I tell you.
There he is onstage: look at him there in the spotlight. Patricia’s mouthing the words along with him and the women are weeping, no word of a lie, the women are wiping their made-up eyes with their beautiful silk handkerchiefs, and it was so sexy, all of the boys from back then, all of the boys have a thing to this day for silk handkerchiefs, ask any of them, it was like lingerie for your face, weeping into your lingerie like it was wet between your legs, and of course we would get them to wank us off with their hankies, these silk hankies, these ladies of Belfast, what a turn-on, and then Tommy starts up again, he opens his arms up and out, just like Como when he’s reaching for a crescendo, and he starts to sing.
Don’t look so sad, I know it’s over
But life goes on and this ol’ world will keep on turning
Let’s just be glad we had some time to spend together
There’s no need to watch the bridges that we’re burning
It’s the song that came over me in the hotel room with Kathy. Only Tommy has turned it right back to the beginning. He’s singing how it began, I says to myself, and how it ends.
I felt dizzy, like somebody had shuffled the cards of my life and everything was in a different order. Then he skipped a verse. He skipped the verse whose arms I had lain in at the hotel room (leaving a little gap in the song) (a little gasp) and went on to the next verse.
I’ll get along, you’ll find another, and I’ll be here if you should find you ever need me, don’t say a word about tomorrow, or forever, there’ll be time enough for sadness when you leave me.
Patricia passed me one of her silk handkerchiefs. It was damp and I could smell her perfume. I held it over my mouth and my nose and I closed my eyes as tight as I could.
*
The morning of the big day. We’ve arranged to meet at the shop, just like normal. I walk in and Barney is playing this music, this fucking hippy-music bollocks. What the fuck is this? I shout through to him. It’s Dark Side of the Moon, he says. Pink Floyd. It’s a concept LP about life, he says. I’d take life behind bars before I had to sit through this pish, I says to him.
Barney’s in the back room, going through boxes of comics. We’re sitting on a fucking goldmine here, he says to me. Look at this stuff. This is all original Gold and Silver Age material. What’s the Golden Age, I says to him, what’s that mean? Gold is the best, he says, when it was all new. Silver is when they knew a bit more about it. What then? I says to him. Bronze, he says. What’s that? I says to him. Average, he says.
What age is Ireland in, do you think? I says to him. Gold, he says without a pause. And how do you figure that out? I says. Because we’re making it up as we go along, he says. Because we’re right here, at the beginning. These are the golden years, my friend.
We should do one of them conventions, Barney says. Beavis says we’d clean up. Barney, I says to him, I cannot believe you sometimes. We’re trying to bring an end to the fucking future and you’re making plans to go to some fucking comic geeks’ meeting? Have we not got nothing more important to be thinking about, don’t you think? Anyways, Barney says to me. There’s Tommy.
We can see him through the window, across the road. He’s with Mack. Fuck is he doing with Mack? Barney says. No one says he was coming this morning. Tommy and Mack are killing themselves laughing about something or other as they cross the road. When did they get so friendly?
Alright, Oddjob? Mack says. Barney was still wearing that fucking bowler. Excuse me but what in the fuck is this music about? Tommy says to him. It’s Dark Side of the Moon, Barney says. It’s a concept LP about life. Fuck you know about concepts? Tommy says to him but Mack’s big into it. Fucking Floyd, man, sweet, he says. Tommy takes this leather briefcase that he’s carrying and slaps it down on the desk. Fuck me, go easy with that, Mack says to him. You’re telling him not to bang it off a desk but you’re telling me to drop it down four fucking floors to the ground without it going off? I says to him. We open it up, the briefcase. It’s like a fucking homemade abortion in there. I thought you said these guys were boffins what could float a nuclear bomb through your granny’s letterbox? I says to Mack. Look at the state of this. There’s a lump of Semtex with blue packing tape wrapped around it and there’s a couple of wires attached to a gold wind-up clock that your old dear might have had on her mantelpiece. This is it? I says to them. I cannot believe my lamps. Does the trick, my friend, Mack says to me. Who
put this together? Barney says to him. Jimmy McFlint, Mack says. What?! Barney says. McFlint with the squint? Not bad for an uneducated Irishman. Look, Mack says. This is guerrilla warfare we’re engaged in. It’s all about improvised explosives. You mean making it up as you go along, I says to him. That’s what I says, he says. Naw, you never, I says to him, you says improvised. You’re trying to make it sound smart when really you’re fucking busking it. Alright, Mack says to me, fucking busking-it explosives, you shower of cocks, does that make you feel more confident? We’re running a fucking rebel insurgence here, he says to us. Excuse me if it’s just not professional enough for you.
I could have taken Mack right out the game then and there, only the repercussions weren’t worth thinking about. Alright, I says to him, alright, I’m just fucking concerned for the fucking reality of this fucking assignment, I says. Look, he says. All you have to do is you set the fucking alarm on this clock, which is easy, like, just turn this knob and it moves the wee hand here, see, then pull this wee knob out and that’s it ready to go off. Sure, that sounds just like my average Saturday night, Barney says to him, but by this time Mack is in no mood for jokes. Stop acting like fucking clowns, he says to us. I’m telling you, he says, see if the IRA could dispense with Irishmen altogether, we’d be one fuck of a formidable fighting unit.
*
Saturday afternoon. Kathy doesn’t work weekends, so as I know she’s safe. We leave Barney in the shop and me and Tommy go about setting up a false trail. We visit Tommy’s da and talk to the foul curtain for a bit. Everywhere we go we’re cat-rough and deliberately announcing our presence, setting up a sneaky alibi just in case it’s needed, drawing attention to ourselves as much as possible.
We dropped into The Tim’s Harbour and drank a pint of porter and got into a mock brawl so as the landlord had to separate us and chuck us out. Now we’re on Great Victoria Street and there isn’t a cloud in the sky. The colours of the trees against it, like blue blood. What a feeling. And now the trees are shaking. There’s no breeze but the trees are shaking. I start to getting the shakes myself. The fucking shivers, more like. The shadow of the Europa, running toward us. That’s where it will fall, I tell myself. It’s all mapped out. It’s all written in the stars, Xamuel, down to the silhouette of its dead body lying there on the street. No one dies, I hear Miracle Baby say. The Europa is a mighty fortress. It’s the biggest day of my life. One man can make all the difference in the world.
We walk past the entrance. I peel off from Tommy without a word. I turn on my powers of invisibility. I start to whistle to myself. I push open the door and walk through the screening area. Nothing happens. No alarms go off. Nobody even looks at me. I catch a pair of peelers out the corner of my eye, talking to each other, on the other side of the glass. They don’t even turn around. I’ve got the briefcase clasped, tight, beneath my arm. Then I float across reception like the Holy Ghost. This is how the IRA got bombs into buildings. With the blessings of the Holy Ghost Himself.
I see this wee bird on reception, this wee bird that knows me. Now she’s looking over at me. I can feel my invisibility fleeing. I can feel it running down and out through the soles of Pat’s snakeskin shoes. It’s harder to be invisible with women. The Virgin Mary is higher up the pecking order than the Holy Ghost. Fact.
She cries out my name. Xamuel. I can’t believe it. Xamuel. We’ve barely spoken before and here she is, fucking shouting for me across the reception area. Xamuel! People are looking round. Tourists in fur coats and with expensive luggage stood around in groups are looking at me. The pair of peelers manning the door turn to face me and now they’re looking at me all shady, like. A valet dragging a pair of cases comes to a dead stop in front of me. There’s a split second where I think the game is up.
Sharon. The wee bird’s name is Sharon. Somebody left something for you at reception, Sharon says to me. Becoming a regular round here, she says to me, and she winks. The peelers turn away. The tourists start talking again. The room starts moving. Something in me wants to say something to her, tell her to get the fuck out while she can. But it would risk everything. So I says to her, when’s your lunch break, love? Another half-hour yet, she says to me. Here, love, I says to her. Here’s a couple of quid. Treat yourself to a pizza pie.
I’m breaking every rule in the book. Except one. Except for the most important one. Rule number one of all rule number ones. Walk in like you own the place. Besides, I says to myself, no one dies. Sharon hands me a letter with my name on it. Xamuel, it says, with an X. My name underlined, twice. I take it to the lift. I want to get the fuck out of reception as soon as possible. The door of the lift closes. I’m in there on my own but the mirrors are making me look like I’m surrounded by endless versions of myself myself myself. Which one of youse is going to do it? I says to myselfs and they says it right back to me. Which one of youse is going to do it? they says. Not one of you cunts will take responsibility, I says to them. Fuck youse, I says to them. I’ll fucking do it myself. Then we’re all in on it. We put the fucking briefcase at our feet. And we all open the letter at the same time. That’s when the explosion went off.
*
Neutrino, The X-Ray Kid and The Anomaly enter The Anti-Matter Universe.
Neutrino activates a second self which stays outside as a safety measure in case they need to beat a retreat.
They pass through a fissure and enter a space and time where everything is inverted.
Backward takes you forward, down is up, thought follows actions, the future gives birth to the past.
They are in search of The Singularity, the creation of a mad demiurge that stands at the centre of The Anti-Matter Universe like a mighty fortress.
They enter The Entropic Garden, a place where their actions give birth to terrifying stresses and strains all around them, causing the stars to bleed, the ground to give way.
They do battle with The Equator, who causes their limbs to be swallowed up by the air.
With every move fleshy wormholes open all around them, suppurating sores on the body of reality itself, which becomes an all-devouring mass that swallows and regurgitates at the same time.
Even Neutrino’s armoured bodysuit is no match for its appetite.
The X-Ray Kid focuses his eyes and sends a beam of light as far ahead as he possibly can.
But there is nothing beyond, nowhere to escape to.
They have walked into a trap.
It was The Singularity that had come in search of them. Now there is no end to the flesh.
Neutrino’s struggles are causing him to be swallowed all the faster.
The X-Ray Kid focuses an intense eye-beam on the ghastly folds that have Neutrino in their grasp but even as it howls in pain – before the beams have even struck it – it seems to grow stronger with the attack, gaining force and fury from what, in The Anti-Matter Universe, is merely the transference of powers.
Then The Anomaly makes his play.
He stops moving. He surrenders.
He gives in to the back and forth, to the trap of the flesh, to the calling of The Singularity.
He refuses to resist.
The flesh around him recoils and extends itself in horrifying reconfigurations.
It opens huge waste pipes around him and exposes the great effluvial channels that run beneath the universe. But The Anomaly refuses to be drawn into wonder.
Even as Neutrino screams and appears to be on the verge of being torn and quartered by the force of their assailant.
Even as The X-Ray Kid appears to turn on The Anomaly himself, his eyes tearing through him in an attempt to rearrange his cells for what he perceives as a moment of mutiny or just a lack of heart for the battle.
As The Anomaly renders himself motionless in the tumult, the tumult itself accelerates, to the point that it starts to feed on itself.
The great Canals of Slurry that run beneath become super-heated and trigger a series of elemental transformations.
The waters start to run clear
.
The sound of teeth rending the air.
The sound of the air swallowing itself.
Neutrino drops to the ground with a klang!!! as the endless flesh turns itself inside out in a series of shuddering orgasms.
Don’t fight it, The Anomaly commands his brothers.
Neutrino and The X-Ray Kid are stood in wonder.
Is it not beautiful, Neutrino says, as he himself is lifted up by his own power.
He goes to take his helmet off.
No! commands The Anomaly. Don’t go too far! There are temptations on all sides, he says, even as the great Canals of Slurry now flow like the rivers through Eden, pure and bright and slow, even as the flesh gives way to soft grass and lush trees and the sound of birds appears on the horizon. Even as they walk forward together and the vegetation parts and a great smoking tower is revealed to them, a great smoking tower that is in great pain, even as they realise that truly this is a mercy killing and that The Singularity tricked them with the notion of a mission, with the idea of a quest, for good against evil, when really the universe was upside down and they arrived, truly, as a relief force, as warrior monks in the charge of the sacred flame, not so that others could live, but so that they could finally die.
There is so much longing not to be built.
They look around at each other and for the first time realise the gravity of their mission.
They have been called.
The X-Ray Kid locks the three of them in a beam from his eyes and they rise up above The Singularity and gaze down into its blasted heart.
Every breath, the constant circling of blood inside this great black tower, feels like a pained eternity. Together they let go.
All of their muscles loosen.
All of their thoughts dissolve.
They enter The Singularity and they raze it to the ground.
Before them stands a new tower.