| Wake Up Call “I am of those bigots who thinke malice a deeper sinn than poore frailtie of flesh.” Charles II Muffled horns bellowed on the Thames. Big Ben, like a chocolate tower iced above frosting clouds, tolled twelve. Fog and city lights mixed in pale green. Lamp posts at the embankment were beacons in the haze. A woman’s figure roamed by Westminster Bridge. The fog scattered in her path but soon reshaped behind her as a protective veil. Rain started to fall and she stopped under a lamp post. Light etched her features in the swirling mist. The chalk blue highlights that Degas used tinged her pallor, sculpting her tiny nose, smudged cheekbones, and high forehead into an odd beauty hidden under dirt and sorrow. A shawl’s remains were threadbare around her concave shoulders, mildew stained her shredded skirt, and her feet were wrapped in rags. She moved close to the lamp. Tears welled in her deep eye sockets and joined the rain to wash away the dirt. She swiped her face with bony knuckles and moved once more. The fog paused; shamed by its neglected duty it raced to shroud her again. The rain stopped. An illumining moon broke through the fog, exposing her beneath the spires of Westminster. She vanished into the Abbey, a fragment in its vastness. Her skirt left a moist trail as she glided towards the Lady Chapel. The monarchs whose bones rested there, beneath prone effigies that in places had crumbled but were still regal, retained the privilege of a living guard. An old watchman made his rounds among them and augmented the dimmed main lights by scanning various areas with a flash light. He came to a standstill but couldn’t hear her; and didn’t feel it when she gave his arm a kind pat. Then her hand slipped away. She shuffled toward some stones above a burial vault. There she gazed down, and there dissolved. |
Only their invisible state stopped them from greeting the audience. Still, Charles waved and beckoned them all in. He scanned everyone as they found their seats, and settled on an older duo who waddled down the aisles and captured his eye through their sneers for everyone else. He coasted behind them and pushed the man, who stumbled into his lardy wife and mussed up her coiffed blue hairs, which were reedy and fluffed in the manner of countless old women with nothing but time and almost none left, but delude themselves into thinking they can hide and in the supposed, sad concealment only amplify decay. The man shuddered as her ice blue eyes shot through him. He attempted to touch her but she manically swatted him with her handbag, wobbling his double chin and sending his upper plate flying. Nell then dug unseen fingers into her blubbery shoulders and pushed her down. Nell recoiled from the doyen’s special stink, a vile combo of anile discharges and cheap perfume, that reeked so even death couldn’t stop the stench from stabbing her nostrils. The woman’s husband tried to assist her, but Charles booted his ass and down he sprawled, on top of his yelping spouse. She cried, and her tears made her make up abstract art. The spirit was pleased. He again entertained lavishly and was entertained. His excitement now demanded the attacks become sport; his goal that each attack be more inspired than the last. Nell rose to the challenge as four couples found their row and sat. She moved behind the women and grabbed their purses. Nell tossed them in the air. The ladies shrieked and their bags fell. Charles assumed a fencing pose. He swung his walking stick and lopped off some hats without injuring anyone. A sexy thing slinked toward her seat, and flaunted her all in a firm red dress. Before she could sit the only deceased man there, very much warmed, slithered behind her. He licked her swan shaped neck and his tongue’s corpse cold moistness tingled her flesh. Then he shoved a hand down to squeeze a tit. Nipples tightened into pebbles. Thrilled, she moaned. But then reality hit. A hand cupped her tit but where was the hand? Her eyes popped and elated coos became scared sighs. Nell’s turn. Two rows of seats yet to be filled kept opening and closing. They banged and flapped like chained vultures desperate to fly. Charles approved her cleverness with a light and regal clap. Most of the crowd, seeing but unmolested, became a panning camcorder that recorded the havoc. They fell over each other into the aisles, and panic had them scrambling toward the exits. They knocked down Sir Ajax, who threw up his arms and demanded they stay back. Two ushers helped him up. His suit was beaten up and his maestro mad hair was askew. The ushers brushed at him, but he pushed them off with “fuck off.” Tom gulped up his gin. Nick leaned against the curtains. Then every sandbag snapped off the rafters. Though Tom was sloshed he pulled his friend away from the missiles, which dived and smashed down in multiple thuds that Tom’s liquored up mind turned into the carpet bombing of Dresden. Queer, dead silence followed for a time. The King thought some sort of coda would be a cheery way to round things out, so he made the set pieces collapse like the final scene in Wagner’s Ring. Ugly ripping noises sliced the air as the curtains tore off their anchors, gracefully cascaded to blanket the stage, and God Save The Queen accompanied the descent from the orchestra pit on an organ all heard but no one seemed to play. Nick and Tom waddled over the curtains, which settled into a billowing heap. Ajax joined them. He grabbed Tom’s bottle and gulped whatever was left. Nick pivoted toward the music, which sent him into a rage. Charles sat at the organ. His unseen fingers pressed keys and played away as Nick tore a long chunk of wood from the mangled background, raced down to the organ, and swung the makeshift club onto the keys, smashing the hell out of them. Stagehands tried to pull him away but backed off, afraid his fury might turn on them as Nick pounded the organ’s legs until the only one left to support the leeward hulk couldn’t hold its weight, and the useless trunk collapsed into a tangled mess of pulleys and wood and ivory and wires, which could only serve as kindling but from which the National Anthem still played. His passion spent, Nick sunk onto the organ bench and let the club limply slip from his hand. The King was touched. Charles stood behind Nick and patted his shoulder -- but smiled just the same. |
The ghosts became mortal again. Since the living were so stubborn other tactics had to be used against them, Charles explained to Nell. Phantoms can only do so much, he said; they can only use so many tricks and cause so many terrors, while some Higher Caveat dictates their limitations. If they happened too often the novelty of their acts would vanish. They would stop terrifying and start to bore, and discover these mortals were not such fools after all. Regardless of its effect, their status restricted action and physicality with spare recourse to eerie stunts would help them even more. But she knew she had a sneaky lover who loved scents and sights and taste, extremes of heat and cold, what death denied him and his awesome rapacity could again access -- life. His own was a strategized reaction to loss. He was weaned in fun and caged in a sensual existence that barred unpleasant truth. The Civil War ripped the Prince from joy and that painful severance damaged him forever. After the Restoration sadness disjointed his smile, and he spent the brief time left to him so hell bent in relentlessly pursuing lost joy that he measured his every act of statecraft against its effect on his own ease. Tom dulled sense with drink but Charles had sensation. Nell knew he couldn’t act without Higher Consent. Neither was she duped when he said their fresh shells abetted her cause without also admitting they were excuses to indulge his lust for life, even if his was a short term loan. Nell knew she had a sneaky lover. |
The King’s words flowed dreamlike, and in the way of dreams only cryptic pieces lingered which recorded the insight of a vital witness, however prejudiced. The mist became clouds that billowed and veiled Charles; but the writer was absorbed in his scribbling and only noticed the King’s lulling cadence. Color drained from the tale as if siphoned by a vampyre; and the narrative went on in black and white; clouds thinned, and split to expose a scaffold against a dreary sky. Whitehall Palace was clear in the background. The sun’s rays broke through the haze. A hooded but shirtless executioner held an axe over his shoulder. Two helmeted officers stood huddled with an elderly bishop, as if nearness made false strength. The prelate wore his full vestments and quoted from his bible. His prayers and gloomy mien showed a faith that dreaded consequence, but the twin roundheads were faithfully determined and cold as their armor. The condemned stretched out his arms. The headsman raised his axe, and the blade gleamed as if meant to slice through the sky. Time passed. His downward swing was abrupt and a thud, no sound else, was heard. The head was raised by the hair for everyone to see. None among those below the scaffold, witnesses to the sanctioned murder of a king, dared gloat. More than some were gratified but most had the same thought -- if their monarch could legally be killed, who then among them was safe? The images misted over but were soon exposed as smoke like Satan’s breath hovered over a battlefield. The fresh but crownless King, smudged with earth, viewed his losses from a hill. His retainers nervously trotted their horses around his begging flight while his soldiers withdrew as best they could over horse carts, poleaxes, ordnance and the muddied corpses strewn akimbo in their path. This was a patchwork army like a vagrant’s dirty pants; both the living and dead were doomed to fail. The fallen were at rest -- the living stumbled. |
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