Tradegy Of Crows: Chapter 2 (1)
Scott W. Hazzard

 

Chapter 2

Jeff Clark knew that the sparks came from the cutting torches. He knew that the wailing sound came from the cranes over the casting deck. He knew the heat was resident in everything. He knew it was best to wear a mask in that place. Yet, sometimes, he could forget the purpose of a hundred tons of molten steel. He could stand quiet and still in the orange spray and remove all sense of the science behind it. He could not breath. He felt cooked air rising against the metal cap upon the factory rafters. His ears were rejecting the wobble of mechanized screams. The sparks could have been shooting stars.
***

Virgil never liked this part. Screaming. Moaning. Torment. That doesn�t cover it, really. Those terms describe physical pain, everything from skinning a knee to burning alive. Of course, what happens beyond the gate goes beyond the capacity of language, lopping all description of earthly pains and the earthly pains themselves into the same pile of trivialities. If a human being ever really thought about it, he could probably imagine some of what occurs just beyond the gate. A man, who arrives too late to save a life, might consider that the worst sound is not screaming, but is in fact, an unfinished scream. A doctor discovering a fatal disease might wonder what is worse, the inability to be cured or the mere knowledge that a cure is impossible. Imagine that hopelessness was suddenly a heaping stew in which each individual incident of hopelessness cried out for recognition at the same moment, every moment, for eternity. Give that any visual representation that feels adequate. A person might be able to image some of what is there. Virgil thought of all the details, the heaving reds, the churning blacks, the airy, broken ghosts of burning limbs, and none of it held up with absolute horror as a backdrop. It was something you couldn�t tell anyone, and so he had to bring them in, screaming and crying themselves, all sounds fading in the dark whirl along their path.
Hazzard was swearing aloud in conjunction with his steps in a rhythm that matched a television preacher�s calls for collection. Other than that, he was holding up pretty well. Beads of sweat slid off the tip of his nose or fell from his hair to the shoulder buckles on his jacket. His teeth stayed locked together. A rancid breath of wind kicked at the group, and Hazzard saw Brian steady his hat with one hand and cover his mouth with the other. In the background, unlit figures heaved in accordance with a disjointed cacophony of sound. The wet clap of flesh smacking together, the bubble and trickle of exploding ebbs of hot body fluid, and snaps and grinds of what looked like� he didn�t look too long before he had to cover his own mouth, too.
  And then there was the screaming, like some watery sonic run-off from a planetary burst, the aftershock of a supernova. Yet, it wasn�t at all astronomical. It had no quality of otherworldliness. On the contrary, it was reality with the volume turned up and the speakers rattling into shrieks of dying static. There was a music of pleading, each note struck from a long lost someplace in an agonizing depth of noise. Each crackling broke down into itself under the weight of so many lost screams like a million unfinished stories cropping up into imagination then fizzling out.
Hazzard tried to view just one. He strained to find a reference point in the dizzying tumult. He sought out a single set of limbs, a single a set of motions, something he could separate and analyze. �Why is this happening,� he thought he said, but he couldn�t hear himself. There was a thrash of black and red, but not just that. The glow of red and the softening folds of darkness were easily the most comfortable colors to recall. Every color was there, though, in its gaudiest, raw form. It was not a psychedelic kaleidoscope, but a heap and splatter of hues farmed together upon unseen, relentless pressure. It squeezed in on him, and his vision compressed into a fine, forward view. Through barely open eyes, he caught a glimpse of a steady face in the stir of bodies. Amidst the moans and shrieks, the face stayed in a solid position with a peculiar appearance of austerity. Blue eyes pressed their intensity across the shadows. Hazzard froze in place. The heaving and tossing rhythm of the sorrows brushed the blue eyes under a tumble of lamenting forms. Hazzard thought he screamed, but no one could tell. Shadow and distant flame slowly overcame all other images, the sound washed backward into a hum and a misty warmth upon their backs. No one turned around. The group stared forward towards the guide who seemed brighter and taller, like the walking likeness of a white, marble monument. Silent tears were shed, and beneath the swish of feet on dry, dusty ground, a murmur from the back repeated, �wait� wait� wait��

***

The record halls were dim without the glow of angels at work. Two of them were barely enough to light a small section of the corridor outside Uriel�s former office. He had a cubical actually, inside an office of sorts. Some of the doors led to executive offices. Some led to filing rooms. Others led to large rooms cut up by cubicles. Executive angels usually took pride in whatever workspace they had acquired. Neatness was never an issue. It was more or less a certainty. Due to the uniformity of cleanliness, Uriel�s old cubical was very difficult to find. He had to search his memory real hard in order to figure it out. At first, he was trying to remember how long it took to get from the main corridor to the office, how long it took to get from the office door to the cubical, or how long it took to get from the cubical to the nearest filing room. He wasn�t sure. She was very impatient.
Eventually, Uriel decided that a certain desk must have been his. It most certainly wasn�t. In fact, they were in the wrong office at the time. She quickly discovered that when she examined a few folders left inside a desk drawer indicating the �importance of universal health care system that doesn�t bankrupt the American people�.
�This isn�t right!� she exclaimed. �This is the Bureau for the Conception of Good Ideas�
�How do you know that?� Uriel asked annoyed by the whole search.
�Because, they�ve got letterhead,� she said holding up a document pointing to a nifty graphic in the upper left hand corner. You wouldn�t think that someone good put the letters BCGI into a clever, concise jumble of elegantly overlapping texts, but angels excel at this sort of thing.
�Hey, that�s a pretty neat little logo,� he said mildly intrigued. �I wonder why we never had one.�
�These Good Idea people, always have these� well, good ideas,� she said shoving the papers back into the desk. The Bureau had truly excelled in coming up with truly good ideas. Implementation was a difficult duty delegated to several thousand other departments. None were completely responsible for successful implementation, though. The Bureau had come up for several concepts, even claiming credit for Peace and Love, holding some kind of celestial copyright. Yet, this still did not make them responsible for all the problems caused by the pursuit of Love and Peace. After all, they were merely �concepts� and application of said concepts was the responsibility of �other departments.� They had everything from screenplay ideas to theories on alternative forms of government. All of these things were good ideas. They didn�t deal with any other kind, but a lot of these good ideas were good, just not because they were useful. Some had merely been hatched and filed in order to produce a fuller scope of the nature of goodness. Mostly muses ran that place. They had very small cubicles and lots of blank paper. In order to form one solid, completely good idea, it usually took the amendments of three or four thousand sub-muses. Thus, the offices were extremely long, each cubic packed with a few unfinished ideas that hadn�t run the gambit yet. Uriel looked at some of the memos tacked on the side of the cubical. Several great ideas for Internet companies were scribbled out with red pen. This particular muse had been very proud of some of his suggestions. One of his old memos had been tacked on corkboard and framed above his desk. It read:
No, no, try it with helium, instead.
------------------------------------------------------------
And how about letting the guy on the right go first.
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Someone has to do something about all these deer.
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A little ointment will clear that right up for sure.

These were good ideas, out of context for sure. Uriel wondered what it was like to have a more expressive job. He hadn�t had the opportunity to come up with anything new. He didn�t even have an idea for an adaptation on anything old. The watchers ran things pretty much the same way they did when he was in the command position. The record halls had been the same as always. Heaven was the only absolute. Everything else was under constant review and amendment. Still, even the reviews and amendments were planned in accordance with the absolute. Thus, nothing was ever entirely new. Ideas came out whenever it was timely. A lot of time had gone by, and Uriel had not felt anything pertinent pushing towards the surface. There were other things in his head, always, and these things he kept quiet about. It wasn�t important. It was never a good idea. Uriel looked again at the post-it notes and empty cubicles wishing there was someone capable around, some cherub who could spare one good idea to stop the ball of bad ones rolling quietly to conclusion.
�Well,� she said. �We�re going to have to try some of the other offices. This may take longer than I thought. If you could please, try to remember where you used to work, that would be a great help, really.�
Uriel led the way out of the office and down the corridor. He didn�t know where he was going yet, but he figured he�d better show some confidence before she finally had enough of him. She followed holding her head in her hand. Uriel supposed she was thinking of her excuse.
�If you want to blame this all on me,� he said. �I don�t mind.�
�Let�s not talk about that now,� she said forcing a laugh. �It�s not a problem yet, so nobody can be blamed, okay?�
�Yeah,� Uriel replied. �Sure.�
The light of two angels turned corners in the darkened halls. They walked past his office twice before, Uriel recalled the door. He had been on the right floor, right corridor, but wrong office. Nothing had changed about it, Uriel hadn�t thought clearly. Part of him was designing his excuse. A larger percentage of his mental faculties were still devoted to watching. He was watching her movements, discovering her uniqueness, and trying to the rip the essential difference between her sound and the sound of all things. Beyond that, he was composing, sculpting out the beginnings of her sex. He was seeing the thin, sharp lines of her eyebrows. He was seeing the long lashes with their infrequent waving in the subtle kisses of her eyelids. Angels didn�t have to blink, but she did, whenever her neck leaned over and her head bent down to view something below. She anticipated the hair sliding out from behind her ear. Just before the twirl of it clapped against her cheek, she would blink, or else something similar to that. Her fingers would return to brush the hair back into place. She had a ritual preoccupation with it, and he could never consider anything else to do in defense. He thought about drumming his fingers against his leg, at set intervals, but he�d eventually forget. He tried humming a specific tune; sometimes he�d change it by accident. But the eyes, the hair, and the fingers that followed were a perfect constant. It was the same constancy in everything, the music of the spheres, the workings of the gears in the time clock at work, and the courage displayed in every instance of Michael as told by the angels again and again. If they asked him, if for some reason they didn�t already know, he�d tell the higher angels that it was all her fault, that he had tried to stop her. She�d be shamed with a name that would recall all her misdeeds. And he could say that name to himself over and over again.
***

�Excuse me,� one of them said to the guide. Things had died down a bit since that incident at the gate. It really wasn�t an incident per se, more of the same. The entrance was always shocking to a certain degree for the new comers. Virgil was well aware that the living mind has major troubles coping with the sudden arrival of certainty in the existence of the supernatural. In the old days, he never had anything even close to an incident. Warriors of old paddled into Styx with some deal of horror, but most had been hoping to find it in the first place. These early visitors were avid soldiers or at the very least, respected musicians. Either way, they possessed a certain integrity that didn�t allow for complicated, internalized, philosophical debate. They had expected the worst, and the worst was Hell. The stories told afterward were all remembered differently, but explained by strong systems of thought. Religious and philosophical interpretation was added in the literary work that followed the expedition. Virgil liked it that way. It had been a long time since he could follow the modern ideas of philosophy and religion. This rising tide of acceptable non-belief was baffling, as well. Still, he understood that if you work in the industry itself, you have no choice but to believe or hold your breath, stick your fingers in your ears, and shut your eyes. Of course, being a dead soul, breath, ears, and eyes weren�t much more than metaphorically significant.
�Excuse me,� one of them said. Virgil was very considerate to the needs of the tourists, but after these non-believers became more prominent in the literary community, tours became more like baby sitting. He had to hold up a tour once because one of the tourists had decided to curl up in a ball screaming, �What�s happening? What are they?� and other such things. Back in the old days, when people came to Hell, knowing it was Hell, they didn�t scream ridiculous things like �Where am I?� They shuddered, yes, but not because of the supposed �impossibility� of what they were seeing. Instead, these early poets, warriors, and indeed flutists, were overwhelmed with a glimpse of a place they knew to be inevitable. An early arrival to Hell felt like an early culmination to life. Thus, the entrance was frightening, because it had to do with certain death, not confusing life experience. These new tourist were all so insistent upon the rational aspects of their own existence. Yes, they are. Yes, they exist, but all things don�t bend to that existence. It�s quite the opposite. They act as if their personal existence was created in some independent dimension and transported in at the age of 18. Still, Virgil was very aware of the difficulties a tourist endures upon entrance into a predominately spiritual realm.
�Excuse me,� a voice said. In their world, they called it the fantastic. Of course, what was most fantastic to Virgil was the widespread ignorance of the so-called �fantastic� elements in life. And that was another thing. No �elements� of the fantastic existed in anything. It was all very connected. The ameba was the organism that most closely resembles the universe. The consciousness, as any of the so-called �hyper-conscious� would have figured out if they were even remotely conscious of more than themselves, is a drop of water in the infinite pool of spirituality. All these epic insights claimed by deep thinkers are nothing more than the reflections and refraction of divine light from several skewed angles. The human mind is nothing, but a crystal bathed in light. Cutting one or two colors from the spectrum is hardly an achievement.
�Excuse me,� the voice called. And the ridiculous notion that God is dead, Virgil thought, is laughable considering the fact that the word �God� is very present even in the phrase �God is dead.� Of course, Virgil had no real time to think about these things, because the tour demanded his attention. It wasn�t his place to theorize or pontificate upon the complex nature of the modern soul or the change of religious sensibilities amongst any given culture. His main purpose was to guide, explain, and urge onward. A lack of faith in tomorrow�s thinkers was irrelevant. He had a job, and he did enjoy doing it� because it gave him things to think about, thought patterns to consider and quickly, defeat with bitter intellect bred of experience and forced idleness.
�mmm, Excuse me,� the voice returned. Virgil turned to face a young man in a brown cap with a shiny, black brim. He was a neat looking young man with finely cut and combed reddish, blonde hair. He had little red blooms on his cheeks. The rest of his face was very pale, exceedingly so, even for someone who had just entered Hell. Most people didn�t speak to Virgil until they reach the shore. Virgil was sure that sooner or later one of them would venture to ask a question. He was also certain that the question would be boring.
�I just have a slight, mmm, er, question,� he said moving his right hand with his speech. �If I could.�
He was being cautious, and that was to be expected. They were always cautious at first, asking for explanations. Slowly, they would move to requests, and a few would dare to demand certain favors, �Can I see so-and-so?� or �I don�t like burning flesh. It smells disconcerting. Can we skip this part?� Virgil stood patiently.
�Yes,� he said.
�I just wanted to know,� he began. �I mean, if you could tell me, because I�ve read this in� well, you know where� I�m guessing� so I was just wondering��
�Yes,� Virgil said.
�Where is the one who made the great refusal?� he asked before coughing into his fist. �I mean, I�ve read it� that��
�These are the souls of the forgotten. An uncertain soul becomes confined here, entangled with the bodies of those base angels who chose neither obedience nor rebellion. The world should bare them no recollection. This is their torture. It�s no use casting your thoughts upon a single soul here,� Virgil replied. The young tourists were always expecting Hell to be exactly the way it was represented in the books. That was probably the source of the inquiry, so Virgil dismissed it quickly, sounding as authoritative and mysterious as possible. That usually worked. Still, there was something else, something very peculiar about that question. Of course, it was only by chance that someone would ask such a thing. After being a tour guide for such a dreadfully long time, Virgil bore very little knowledge of the workings of that particular group of individuals. He figured it was an aftereffect of their punishment. Recollection of those lost souls was impossible, so why bother trying? An attempt to recollect anything of that horrible entry into Hell would merely end in ambiguous chatter. The one who made the Great Refusal? After some time goes by on earth, no one recalls with certainty whom that was or why he was ever said to be there. That was the nature of their punishment for sure. Virgil wondered, though, quite often, if anyone of the forgotten could transcend their punishment and be efficiently remembered. That would be interesting, but most impossible things are often a little interesting. It probably ends there. No one tries such things.

 

 

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Copyright © 2001 Scott W. Hazzard
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