Ineffable

VIII

  “It’s a beautiful day,” said The Ringmaster.

  “Is it? Is it really?” replied Delilah, the bearded whore.

  The troupe marched with more zest than they had the previous night. It was a short run between their encampment and town, and compared to the journey they had just ended, it was the equivalent of stumbling upon an outhouse in the dark. The Ringmaster and his ten whores sat tall and noble upon their steeds while the rest of the troupe danced and pranced about; some jumping and skipping while others moved like the wheels of a carriage, cartwheeling their way into town. There was a buzz and an energy that the troupe hadn’t felt in some time, and some had never felt at all.

  “Why are you so glum?” said The Ringmaster. “It is show day, the most magnificent day in the omniverse. Don’t you feel the energy? Don’t you just want to climb something really tall, or shout out to the heavens…It’s glorious to be alive,” he shouted. "Hallelujah. Praised be to Light. I thank God I’m alive,” he shouted even louder, thrusting his cane into the air. “The feeling of air and the breath of God upon my skin, and Light, his golden watch, upon my face. Hallelujah, praise the lord, Praise be to…..”

  The Ringmaster stopped abruptly.

  So too did the jubilant jeering.

  “What?” he asked, finally turning to Delilah. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “It’s not nothing. It can’t be nothing. There has to be something, or else I wouldn’t have said anything. What? What’s the matter?”

  “It’s not important, don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worried,” he said. “I'm discontented. And so are you. Something has you riled, all tense and…..well, not acting like a number one at all.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well this,” he said, shaking his jazz hands in her direction. “It’s not you. You’re much more evolved than this type of ….. I don’t know. This type of behaviour, this childish sulking, it’s something I’d expect from a seven or a nine.”

  Behind them, whores seven and nine both lowered the heads. It wasn’t so much being openly shamed as they were; it was in knowing that it was true. That’s why their heads hanged as low as they did; looking as if their necks had been snapped.

  “Just tell me,” ordered The Ringmaster.

  He sounded crazed and belligerent. He sounded like he wanted an answer. And maybe that’s what he thought she needed to hear, to keep what was really bugging her to herself, and to tell him what he wanted to hear. And though he sounded as if he were extracting puss form a sore, most of the swelling was in the back of his own mind. He said, “Hurry up then,” but what he hoped was that she would take her time. Then he begged her to, “Tell me what’s wrong.” And hoped to hell it was none of lurid and treacherous things he had done when he thought that she wasn’t around.

  “Is it something I’ve done?” he asked.

  It was like there was a fire in his head that was melting the skin on his face and boiling his brain into a sticky and malodorous jelly. His ears tingled, the hairs on his neck all stood on end, and he got this feeling in his stomach as if he’d swallowed a whole potato, and it was quickly burning its way to his intestines. He felt like this, every time she caught him lying. And he tried to play cool. He tried to act stern and magisterial, as if he were exercising her of a deep seeded demon, of her unconscionable jealousy, and of wickedness, which was the scourge of women far lesser than she. He tried, in his brutish and didactic address, to bully her into not only admitting that nothing was wrong but into acting like it too; regardless of how she felt.

  “Your beard smells particularly delicious,” he said, changing the mood.

  He leaned his face against hers, taking a deep whiff of the long and smooth hairs on her face, before massaging lightly, the part of her beard that bristled lightly against her bosom.

  “What perfume did you use? What is that delectable scent?”

  “Just some petals and herbs,” she said, acting coy, and still fused by rage, but by one that was becoming faint and indistinguishable from the host of other new feelings that were rising to the surface; feelings that were quickly distracting her from the clarity and reason of her poor demeanour.

  The Ringmaster whiffed once more, this time burying his face into hers and moaning loudly. “I’m deadly serious. I haven’t smelt anything so….. I don’t even have the words to describe it, or how I feel. It’s delectable. It’s suave, it’s mauve, or it’s wisteria. Mmmm,” he said as if he had just licked the scent from a crack in his bottom lip. “You know what it is?” he said.

  Delilah turned to him, curious.

  “It’s rain. It’s rain isn’t it? The smell of rain on warm bitumen, and the touch of light drizzle on sunburned skin. It’s relieving. It’s fresh. That’s what you smell like. Relief. Salvation. A cure to life’s perpetual sting. What is it? It’s rain isn’t it? It’s rain,” he said.

  “Alligator piss,” she said, smiling to herself, feeling proud. “And some candle wax, a pinch of beetle dung, and some other things.”

  “This is one of your scents? You made this yourself?”

  He sounded genuine in his surprise. But it wasn’t the kind of token surprise that had one feeling inutile and for the most part, lucky. This was the kind of avid surprise that made one feel singled out, and more than they had ever imagined themselves being.

  “I did,” she said. “It was nothing, though.”

  “It’s not nothing,” said The Ringmaster, this time in playful and inspiring intimidation.

  “I suppose,” said Delilah, her cheeks turning red.

  “I want you to tell me everything,” he said, certain that she had now forgotten, or at the very least recovered, from the thought of his constant philandering.

  As they rode their steeds, she spoke, and he listened to her every word.

  Behind them, on a rickety old wooden carriage that was fit for little more than dragging along a pile of sticks, and with wheels that were as round as the sharp corners on an even rectangle, The Young Cripple sat, awkwardly, but nevertheless she sat, holding onto the sides so as not to fly off with every nudge and bump, and ignoring the foul flatulence that spilled like a leaking tap, from the horse which dragged her along.

  There was something about arriving in a new town that inspired The Young Cripple to ignore the tumult of her continuous pain. The thought of new places was always so fascinating; electrified by wonder and what-ifs, even if, like other hundred thousand towns through which they had passed, they always ended up looking and sounding the same, like a less articulate version of her father.

  But that didn’t mean that this town would be no different. Just look at it! She had never seen anything like it before, at least, not outside of a comic. It seemed as if whatever architect had drawn this city, had set their table on an oddly lean, or that they themselves, had had a crooked arm or a crooked eye, just like she had crooked legs, and they had drawn the whole town at an absurd angle.

  In how they stuck out, the buildings, houses, and towers, they seemed to defy gravity or common sense for that matter. They were erected on all sorts of angles, sticking out in all sorts of ways. From a distance, it all looked like a poorly assembled collage, as if each part were stuck over the other with only the bigger picture in mind.

  The closer they got, though, the stranger it all seemed as each house and building seemed to warp back to a sense of normality and appeared to be standing upright and sane, as any building should. The Young Cripple wiped her eyes, thinking it was they which were crooked, or her perception distorted, as it seemed all that time on the road, as she eyed a perpetual bend on the horizon, that which never came.

  And the absence of colour, oh my!

  The Ringmaster sat high on his steed, facing his troupe and accompanied by his cherished whore. He looked pleased and confident. He looked well fed and rested.

  “You each have your readers, your cleansers, and your binders. And you each h
ave your mission. Everything has already been said. Let me just reiterate a thing or two. I cannot stress the importance of listening. It is what we are here for; to hear, to listen. Let them tell their stories. Write down every word, every syllable, and every pause and mutter. It all matters in the end. And when they are done, not when you think they are done, but when there are entirely expelled, and their eyes are like exhausted deserts, when they are free from their turmoil and their past. When their minds are like blank canvases, then and only then, do you commence with the reading. I cannot stress this enough. Then and only then! Do not be perturbed by what you see here, and in the eyes and in the colour of those we have come to save, by what you cannot. Though we see darkness, remember that they too are human, for when they look at us, they see colour, and their eyes fill with Light. Go with The Sun of God. Go with Light,” said The Ringmaster.

  “And as such, we go as one,” sang the troupe, before erupting into a cheer, but quiet cheer, the kind that wouldn’t fault a librarian.

  Beside her lover, Delilah reached her hand out to take his, but The Ringmaster had already taken his reins and was leading his horse down the cobblestone road.

  “My love,” said Delilah. “Shall we not pray and heal together?”

  The Ringmaster didn’t turn. He raised the back of his hand.

  “Heal with the girl. May Light be with you,” he said.

  “Amor, please,” she shouted. And “Motherfucker,” is what she thought.

  The other whores all sniggered. Delilah turned and scowled in their direction. It wouldn’t be long now until their master found himself someone new, someone more beautiful than she, and someone whose beauty was not stained by pestering jealousy, and the fear of being replaced. She knew this, and yet, as much sense as it made, she couldn’t convince herself to feel any different. Such was the course of her love.

  “Where do you think he’s gone?” said one whore to another.

  “That funeral woman. I bet he bedded her. And I bet that’s just where he’s going,” replied the other whore.

  “We’ve only ten horses,” said whore number seven. “If he chooses her and if he falls in love, then which one of us will have to go? I don’t know what else to do,” she shouted hysterically.

  “Shut up,” said Delilah, slapping whore number seven. “Have trust and have faith in our Master’s love. He knows what is best. His will and his plan, they are beyond your gossip and conspiracy. Have faith for God’s sake. Faith in him. Faith in yourself.”

  Delilah now led the troupe.

  “On our master’s words and wishing, let us cleanse this town of illness.”

  The troupe spread apart, moving in pairs, door to door throughout the city. They carried binders and electronic equipment in their hands and merry smiles upon their faces. Those who were first to their doors stood quiet and pensive. They didn’t rush to knock or to be the first to claim salvation. They stood and waited while the others spilled through the town like a colourful wave, breaking away in pairs at each door and waiting like the others behind, while the wave made its way through every nook and cranny, through every cul-de-sac and dead end, and through every dark and seedy corner of this cursed, grey town. In a short time, the entire troupe stood in pairs, at the doorsteps of every house and shanty. And they stood, as you know, quiet and pensive, waiting for their command.

  “You,” said Delilah, hinting at The Young Cripple. “Come,” she said, tapping her leg as if the child were well-groomed with obedient manner, but still stinking, filthy, and with matted fur; the kind of dog one would prefer to pat with a stick, or with the bottom of one’s Wellingtons.

  The Young Cripple hated Delilah, just as the wife of a drunk might hate, the knuckles on the bastard’s fist, or how a mother might hate, the bloodied syringes that dirtied up her son’s room.

  A horn sounded.

  Then three bells.

  Then, at once, the knocking on doors.

  “Hi,” the entire troupe said in unison. “Do you have a personal relationship with Light?”

  As the troupe worked their magic, and their feet wedged against shutting doors, The Young Cripple hobbled along, trying to keep up with Delilah who was already at the door of a house, hardly giving her the chance to catch up.

  “You have to wait,” whispered The Young Cripple, but whispered in a way that was akin to shouting. “Father said so.”

  Delilah squirmed in her skin.

  “If you were mine I would have aborted,” she said.

  “Excuse me?” said The Young Cripple.

  “You heard me,” said Delilah, as the girl approached. “If I were carrying you, I would have drunk excessively, and thrown myself down a flight of stairs, repeatedly.”

  The Young Cripple made her way onto the porch. It was difficult as many of the wooden steps were missing, and the house itself had all of its windows boarded up.

  “It looks abandoned,” said The Young Cripple.

  “Just because its eyes are shut, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t long to see. Whoever lives here is afraid, that is all. Look around at this grey disparity. Who wouldn’t shut themselves away, board up their eyes, and imagine Light? Get ready; we’re already late because of you, and those useless legs.”

  The Young Cripple struggled a bit but managed in the end to take off the heavy rucksack without losing her balance. “It might be easier for you to carry,” she said, “on account that you have that horse and all.”

  “I am a whore,” said Delilah. “Do you know what that means?”

  The Young Cripple shook her head.

  “Whores do not carry things,” she said. “Servants and peasants, and proles and slaves, they carry things. But whores….whores do not exert. They do not lift or pull. And whores do not push and shove. Whores,” she said regally. “Whores are delicate. They are cared for and attended to. Whores are like sunsets and beautiful flowers. Whores are like anniversaries, to be well spent at their every passing and occasion. Whores are…”

  “Shall I knock or….”

  “Your eyes are too close together,” said Delilah, crassly, knocking the girl’s hand away.

  “Yeah, well your beard isn’t straight.”

  “At least I have one. Cripple.”

  “Stupid head.”

  “Orphan.”

  “Bitch.”

  “Slu… Hi, good morning,” said Delilah, turning to the door with a disingenuous smile on her face. “Do you have a personal relationship...”

  “Fuck off,” said The Father, slamming the door shut.

  The Young Cripple sniggered. “Want me to try?”

  “Shut up.”

  Delilah had never had a door slammed in her face before, or even a face turn away for that matter. What type of decrepit man would treat a whore in this lowly manner? He must have been mistaken or caught glimpse of the girl instead.

  “Hide your face. It’s off-putting.”

  The Young Cripple stuck her tongue out. She didn’t believe the horrible things Delilah told her, only the horrible things she told herself. She knew her face wasn’t mangled or pudgy, and she knew her eyes weren’t disproportionately positioned, even though they probably were. If Delilah said it, there was no way it could be true.

  “Cover those things,” said Delilah, hinting at the girl’s deformed legs. “Haven’t you a dress or something? I can see your knees. My God!”

  “Can I borrow your shoal then? You don’t need it. It’s not even cold out.”

  “Could….say could for god sake. Try not to be such an imp with your requests. Besides, a shoal provides more than comfort. It endows one with style and elegance, the traits of a refined whore. These are traits my dear of which a thing of your calibre and breed could never bear, so long as you get about with those metal stirrups and dress like some impoverished tramp. And that hair of yours….like a horse’s bed. Unsightly. Unwomanly. Unwhorely. If you were mine, I’d shave it off and parade you round as a boy. Now shut up,” Delilah said, “and let me w
ork my magic. All men are mine,” she said, masturbating her thick brown whiskers.

  Knock, knock.

  “Who’s there?”

  “A bearded whore,” said Delilah.

  Leaning against the door, The Father quietly loaded shells into his shotgun. His expression was disturbed as if what she’d said made no sense, which, of course, it did not.

  “Go away,” said The Father. “I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

  “But my dear,” said Delilah, “if you turn me away, you will break my heart; a pain for which only a kiss can cure.”

  The Young Cripple mocked her, sticking her finger in her mouth and pretending to be sick. “Shut up,” said Delilah, kicking her legs.

  Knock, knock.

  “You must be so alone, in this great big house, this enormous house,” she said, emphasizing her adjectives. “Surely a strong man like you would take a few minutes with a demure whore such as myself, to talk, if that is what you want to do.”

  The Young Cripple shook her head.

  “You’re gross,” she said.

  The Father’s breath quickened and his hands shook frenziedly. His heart was beating so fast too, so much that time itself felt like a vortex of pending death and urgency, which was spinning sickeningly in circles around his head. He hadn’t the nerve to negotiate, or the coordination to cock the goddamn gun.

  “My love. May I call you that?”

  “No,” said The Father.

  “Then what is your name?”

  “I have no name,” he said.

  “But everyone must have a name.”

  “I have no reason to be spoken to, or spoken of. I have no name, no past, and no culture for you to decipher. I. Am. Not,” declared The Father.

  Delilah did not take rejection well. Her methods became direct.

  “Fuck me then. Bed with me, and make whatever kind of love to me that you desire,” she said, pushing her breasts into the spy hole. “If not for you, then for me. Surely you have a heart that beats, and that wouldn’t leave a lady in such distress.”

  The shotgun cocked.

  “Unbelievable,” she said, marching off the porch and storming down the driveway, clanking her angry heels as did.

  She muttered to herself something about sexual dysfunction and bestiality. It was an insult of some kind, but more than that, it was her way of feeling less estranged and perturbed by what others thought of her when they weren’t fanning her affection, or goading their way into her good favour, and in turn, between her slippery sheets.

  “Goat fucker,” she screamed, stumbling up the road towards the next house.

  The Father turned to see if she had gone, or whether it was just a ruse.

  The Young Cripple turned to leave, being pestered and buggered by her father’s whore. As she did, her legs let out a whining screech and The Father turned quickly, gun in hand. He pressed the barrel against the door, at the height of a man’s chest.

  “Fire,” he thought.

  His hands shook and sweat stung his eyes.

  “Fire the goddamn gun. Just fucking shoot. Shoot.”

  The Young Cripple’s legs sounded like a cannon, or some great ramming instrument, being dragged along The Father’s porch. “Kill them, before they find the boy.” He hadn’t the courage to peep through the hole. He stood paralysed with the gun aimed at the height of a man’s chest while The Young Cripple stood with her ear against the door, at the height of the gun’s barrel.

  The Father’s finger touched the trigger.

  “Hello,” she said. “Are you still there, sir?”

  The Father backed away from the door, but the gun stayed aimed at where he assumed the girl’s head may be. “What do you want?” he said.

  “Only to talk is all.”

  “You’re a child.”

  “I am,” said The Young Cripple. “But I’m not all bad if that’s how most kids are.”

  “Go away, you’ve no business being here,” said The Father, backing up, with fear inching his finger towards the trigger. “I haven’t had to hurt anyone yet, but I will if you don’t leave right now.”

  “It’s ok. I won’t do any bad. I promise. I’m just a kid.”

  “That’s exactly what I was afraid of. Go away. Leave here. Leave this town. Don’t ever come back, no matter what you hear, no matter what anyone says. You come back here, and I’ll kill you. You hear?”

  His back was now resting against his son’s door, the locks and bolts digging painfully into his shoulder. He stood braced, though ready to fire, and more than willing to do so, knowing that it was a child on the other side of the door.

  “I’m sorry sir,” said The Young Cripple. “I’ll go now.”

  She turned and hobbled off the man’s porch, joining Delilah up the road somewhat, at the door of the man’s neighbour. In his house, The Father lay in a crumpled mess outside his son’s room with the shotgun at the other end of the hallway. It was quiet now. The troublemakers were gone. It had been enough, all this time, to simply board up the windows and propagate an air of disregard, abandon, and senile wreckage. Obviously it wasn’t enough. And if this was going to become a thing, if they were going to return, especially that child, then he would have to do something more drastic, and something more patently obscene, if he wanted to be alone; if he wanted to protect his son.

  “They’re gone. You’re safe now, you needn’t fuss,” he said, through his son’s door.

  And he spoke in such a way as if his vigil were a burden that he was forced to carry, as if it anchored him to some part of his past, some great heaving stone that he could not shift, and from which he could not escape. He spoke as if he hated the boy, as if he were keeping watch over the very cancer that had buried his wife and daughter. And he spoke with such dispassion and neglect, as if, aside from the padlocks, chains, and boarded windows, it were enough to keep the boy safe.

  But the boy was not in his room. He was not on his bed, or under it. He was not in his closet or outside of it. He was not laid about on the floor, or curled all foetal-like, as his father was, on the ground, ‘neath the last lock on the door. He was not on the walls, on the ceiling, or floating about. He wasn’t secure and he wasn’t safe; in his room, in his cage, in the house.

  He was, by now, near The Ringmaster’s carriage, lurking about.

  “Hi, do you have a personal relationship with Light?” asked Delilah.

  The woman at the door looked at her strangely and then invited her in. There was no need for coaxing or any kind of learned trickery at all. Delilah was pleased with herself, and she made this known, flicking The Young Cripple’s ear as she walked past her into the living room.

  “It’s so sticky,” said The Young Cripple. “It’s hard to breathe.”

  The air was dank and musky. It felt as though not a single draft had passed through, not since the last time somebody died here. The Young Cripple and Delilah made themselves comfortable in the living room, as comfortable as one can be in such a place.

  The walls were covered in portraits of a woman, a woman who was not her. There were rough sketches, some drawn with pencil, and others in rich watercolours, of which all were seemingly infinite degrees of grey. In some paintings, the subject looked sublime, draped in sunshine and her lover’s adamant affection. In others, she looked tormented, cyst-laden, and in one, in particular, as if some faceless demon were clawing its way out of her screaming mouth.

  “Would you like some tea?” asked the woman, coming in from the kitchen with a silver tray in her hands. “And a biscuit? They’re pineapple, I think.”

  The Young Cripple looked at the tray. The tea and biscuits were both the same colour. It was hard to stare at them, and not think of the ghoulish images of death and disease, which decorated the room.

  “No thank you, mam,” said The Young Cripple.

  “Don’t be rude,” said Delilah. “Take a biscuit, my dear.”

  The Young Cripple smiled at Delilah and then at the woman who looked as if s
he didn’t mind either way. And the young girl wore that same shit-eating-grin as she chewed endlessly on the one biscuit, fighting the urge to gag and purge, and for the sake of being polite and mannerly, finding the will to swallow this fetid, grey mash that kept catching and sticking to the back of her teeth.

  “If you’re not doctors, then what are you doing here?”

  “We heal souls,” said Delilah. “We can heal yours, and…” she said with a fretful pause, looking at the images of death around the room. “And, uh, we can heal the souls of the person, or persons closest to you.”

  “What does it matter, if I cannot have her back if I cannot hold her if I cannot hear her voice? What’s the point? What is there to save? She’s already dead. Her suffering has ended,” said the woman, clinging to a photo of her wife.

  “If she has not made peace with Light, then her suffering will continue for eternity. I’m sorry to say such a thing, but it is true. Only God can forgive,” said Delilah.

  “Forgive what? Itself? Forgive her? For what? For loving me? For being loved? What did she do to deserve this? What did any of us do to deserve this?”

  “For forgetting.”

  “Forgetting what?”

  “That she is Light. That she was not her body or her flesh. That she was not one desire or the other. That she was Light, just as we all are Light, through the passage of time, how we travel through space and matter, inside these vessels we call ourselves.”

  Delilah nudged The Young Cripple who then opened her rucksack and pulled out a diary, pencil, candle, a single match, and a cumbersome device with two metal paddles, wired to an electronic reader.

  “What is her name?”

  “Was,” said the woman coldly.

  “Is, my dear, is. None of us ever die, for we are not our bodies, those which age and fall apart. We are Light, and Light is ageless. It is infinite, and it is everywhere, and it is in everything at all times. What is her name? To save her soul, I must know how to call her.”

  The woman stared at her lover’s picture.

  “Isabella,” she said, a tear escaping her eye.

  “Beautiful name. Is that her?” asked Delilah, pointing to the one side of the wall, the portraits painted with an amorous and considerate stroke.

  “She was everything to me.”

  “And she still is.”

  “But she is gone.”

  “Do you feel her inside you? Do you feel her in your heart? Do you still love her?”

  “Of course.”

  “You still love her because she is Light, and she is inside of you. When we fall in love, we give part of our Light to the person we admire and adore, to the person to whom we commit ourselves,” said Delilah, thinking strongly of The Ringmaster as she spoke, and feeling a wave of scalding jealousy searing her thoughts and her fingertips; inspiring her to leave right now, to forget the healing of this poor woman, and to find the skanky bitch who was fucking her lover, and beat her to death. “So you see,” she said, chewing the inside of her cheeks, “right now, Isabella is with you. She is inside of you. She lives with you, in your heart and in your lungs, and she is kept alive just as you are, with every breath that you take. Her Light is in you, just as your Light has travelled, beyond this life and beyond death, with her, into infinity. So by healing you now, by cleansing your Light, so too do we cleanse hers, for you are infinitely joined through heaven and hell, just as you are, here on Earth.”

  “Heaven? Hell?”

  “The pleasant and the severe. The infinite and the void. Splendid, never-ending repose, or eternal misery and suffering.”

  “The latter is my life.”

  “This torment you feel, is it unyielding?

  “It is.”

  “It is as such because Isabella is in hell right now. Her torment and suffering, the blackness being etched up her Light and soul; it is felt and lived by you here on Earth, for her Light that is within, it too suffers. The Light you too share is a bridge that connects you through the land of the finite, and into the architecture of the infinite. The hell that you feel in each breath that you take, and with each beat of your heart, this suffering which courses through your veins and sweats from your pores, it is the same suffering that your wife endures. And it is the same suffering that she will endure for eternity if we do not save your souls, here, and now.”

  “Help me,” said the woman, obliging.

  “Take hold of these paddles,” said Delilah.

  The woman took the two metal paddles in her hands. She didn’t question the strangeness of it at all. And almost immediately, she started to feel the sting of her agony quench, as if their confidence and belief in what they had preached, were some cooling balm that spread across her searing agony and depression.

  “These paddles help us to read the quality of your Light. Do not be frightened at all by the buzzing sounds or even the small discharges of electricity as we speak. These are designed to innerve your Light, to urge it to fluctuate, and to liberate the black substances and the illness of melancholy that attaches itself to your soul. It will feel strange at first. You will want to pull your hand away. That is why we have to strap your hands to the device,” she said, explaining what The Young Cripple was doing.

  “While you tell me your story, my assistant here will scribe word for word. It is important that you leave no detail, no matter how trivial or insignificant it may seem. I want you to start from the beginning; from as far back as you can remember, from when you were a little girl. I want you to tell me your story, your life.”

  The Young Cripple finished strapping the paddles to the woman’s hands. Then she arranged the electronic reader, so its dials were easily within Delilah’s reach. “Test one,” she said, giving the woman no time to brace. She turned the dial to the first notch, and the woman flinched, unready for what happened.

  “It’s ok,” said Delilah. “This is just to test the cleanser.”

  “Ok,” said the woman, shocked by the sudden charge.

  “Test two,” said The Young Cripple turning the dial to the fourth notch and sending a higher voltage of shock to her fingers.

  The woman jumped in her bones. There were eleven notches, and by the end of the healing, the woman would be an expert in each. For now, though, she settled. She told her story and while she did, Delilah flicked the dials of The Cleanser high and low, depending on the volume of the woman’s depression. All the while, The Young Cripple busily scribed every word that she said, and between every word, a description of her silence and an approximate weight of her every breath.

  By the end of the healing, the woman was spent. She lay on her sofa feeling twisted and turned, stretched and yanked, like some dirtied rag, having been soaked and scrubbed, and returned to its original white. Her hands were crimpled, and they wouldn’t stop shaking.

  “That’ll stop eventually,” said Delilah, hinting to the woman’s hands.

  “Is it done?” she asked.

  “The first part yes. Your soul is cleansed. And so too is your wife’s, Isabella. Her soul too has been unhinged from its place in hell. It is free, but it is yet to return to where it belongs. It is yet to move towards The Light.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “My assistant here, she is going to tell you a story. It is the story of Light, of kindness and salvation. It is a story of sacrifice, for love. For the love of humanity. It is the story of The Sun of God, about its birth, and upon the great sadness of its death. After this story, your soul, and your wife’s soul, they will at one with Light. They will be forgiven. And she will live on in Heaven with your Light, as you live on here in Earth, with hers. And when you die, you too will move towards the Light, and you will be together for eternity.”

  The Young Cripple read the story she had written. She read the story that was being read in every house across town at this very moment. It was the story of a young girl with the courage of a lion, whose fate, one day, would be determined by the covetous faithlessness and disloyalty o
f her closest companions, and who would die for the rest of eternity on every eve, because of a wretched sin, born in the heart of humanity.

  She read the story fifty times, and when they weren’t sure of its permanence in the woman’s thoughts and in her heart, The Young Cripple read it fifty times more. She read it to the point where the woman was so familiar with the words that could mouth along as if she were humming her favourite song - until, as a final test; she was asked to recant the entire story herself. And she did so, word for word as if it were true; as if it had happened. She did so without exaggeration or fictitious account as if she were listing the ingredients in her favourite kind of salad.

  As they packed their equipment and left, the woman wept a peculiar and congealing kind of sadness.

  “You did ok,” said Delilah, climbing onto her horse.

  The Young Cripple smiled. Still, it was Delilah saying it. Her logic, the only tool she trusted, said that because of that, it mustn’t be true.

  “Where are we going? The next house is that way?”

  Delilah and her horse cantered off in the direction that The Ringmaster had taken. She had faith in her lover, she did, but it wasn’t he that she mistrusted, it was every other woman on this planet.

  “Sluts and bitches,” she said, between gritting teeth.

  She imagined his big toe being kissed, massaged, and masturbated, and the soles of his feet being chewed upon and licked lavishly. Her nails dug into the palms of her hands, and her spiked heels, into the barrel of her horse.

  “Wait up,” shouted The Young Cripple, hobbling in her metal braces.

  “Hurry up,” replied Delilah, for her jealousy had thin patience.