More Spirit Than Animal

CASSIE III

Success, the drug. I can feel it coursing through the young man's veins. Not once has he or the people around him questioned where this success has come from. A free art gallery and studio do not make such an intoxicating offer. He will never appreciate or understand the concept of pre-ordination and providential winds fanning the flames. The poor boy will never see that it's not just him and so he won't see it coming. Boy...you are the citadel, the object and the cause of the coming war. And you will fall.

Percy is back at my side and we speak of the boy and his bride as little as we can. Investment in the fate of those who would see you confined to your own disillusions brings only weary indifference. Bless my optimistic husband, a man too humble to hate. He does not have this insatiable need to correct all wrongs. Is that a female thing? Imagine if you knew...absolutely knew what was about to happen and it wasn't good. Vigorous hand washing doesn't cut it.

The hallucinations are coming thicker and faster as if my psyche were in freefall. A sea of faces reflected in the flashing lights of a computer screen show the man in the wheelchair his fingers flying and his eyes flickering along the strings of digits. There is someone at his shoulder, taller, his face hidden, towering over him, his body alert. A sense of jamais vu as I look deeply into the eyes of the operator and the head of his watcher bends in closer and the sense of dislocation is complete. Do I know you? Are you real? The toad? Who said that?

The world has never been older than now and neither have I. But the big picture is never big enough when so much detail is a lie. But I am seeing enough to know that the cogs are grinding. I see Jabba the Hutt, I see an ugly, satchel jawed lascivious creature behind an expanse of mahogany waiting for the call and when it comes he guffaws until his bug eyes weep and his sides ache. A composite no doubt of a man I have never met, my imagination filling in the gaps. Perhaps I am watching the soul and not the body...who knows?

Then he is gone and I watch a tall grey suited silver haired god cross his rooftop suite and pour Peter a glass of something to the strains of Freeloader Freddie. He is making the boy an offer, but the face is hidden now and then we are back in the Hole of the Toad and the Cyber Man in the wheel chair rolls soundlessly over the plush carpet and into the office to flash his genial smile.

'We're in....'

There is more. What a fool I have been seeing so little of the picture. A line of men in the half light each one with his hand on the shoulder of the one in front. Their eyes are hidden but their intent is not. These are men of power. But here he comes, the elevator pings and the doors slide back to let the Man in. Here at last is the one who would bring Armageddon, the one who would clear the earth of its Titans and the Giants and the carriers of the mark of Cain. Here is the Man who would set more in motion than I can see. Clearing vermin away in a holocaust of fire and brimstone raining down upon lowlife amateurs like Di Lauro, who he has tolerated and used for his own ends long enough. But now they and the company they keep, their prey and the law and those in their pockets and the non combatants, legitimising and complicit have reached the end of their usefulness. Only Zander sees the bigger picture and only Zander will plan his very own Armageddon.