Vampire Messiah
Waging A Conspiracy Of Hope
And Saving The World One Bite At A Time
Tom Douglas
Published by Tom Douglas at Smashwords
Copyright 2012 Tom Douglas
All characters and places within this work of fiction are either fictitious or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living, dead, undead, or vacillating now or in any post-modern hallucinatory pressnt, past or future is purely coincidental.
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Book One
Death
It was magic, what Bleddyn Wolffe did to save the world. You would really have to wonder about anyone unhappy with that, but if a bloodthirsty demon’s Righteous Rage destroyed your life in the process of saving all humanity, could you not find at least a sliver of compassion for such an unfortunate soul? It will change nothing. I will still be tormented until the end of time, blaming Bleddyn Wolffe for a gift I never wanted, I gift I can never return, a gift that transformed us all.
His first name, Blade-In, reveals all you need to know about his true nature. If you are unlucky enough to run into the fiend, don’t mention me; he’ll just say I am an ungrateful, unreliable witness, and it’s time I shut up. Then he’ll dance about and laugh his head off, singing ridiculous songs celebrating my misfortune. Don’t let any of his charm dissuade you from the obvious: Bleddyn Wolffe is a monster, and he did monstrous things to save the world.
But let me tell it from the beginning, so you can make up your own mind. It all started and ended with a headache…
***
Bleddyn had lounged for several nights in the lecture hall where I held my class, always wearing some ridiculous costume or other. From his first appearance he made us all feel like we were a serious imposition on him. Sometimes he’d arrive in total silence, slipping in after I’d started lecturing; other times he was in attendance before anyone else. Not quite disappearing in the darkness, he would settle in some back row as far away from me as possible, under a bank of flickering fluorescents, and he would act bored and pretend to sleep. Periodically, the light exposed him in a staccato of strobe-like stills, and I would see his arms and legs flail about like the final horrifying scenes in the first Alien movie. That should have been a rather huge clue…
As far as I knew then, Bleddyn only ever appeared in my class in the main lecture hall. He spoke to no one that I ever saw, yet his manner of dress made him anything but a wallflower. And he moved about mysteriously, just suddenly there, or not there, never uttering a word. Usually he was still lounging when I was the last to leave. Or he was gone a few moments after arriving, only to drop in later. He didn’t snore; in fact, until that night he never disrupted my classes in any way. He was just there, irritating me.
Students mumbled insults and I couldn’t stop the jokes at his expense. I mean he was chilling, disturbing just to look at. Of course, that a person looks bizarre is no excuse for disparaging laughter. It’s not even a safe thing to do with someone you worry might have psychotic tendencies. I know this, and so do you, but that weirdo’s secretive comings and goings and his crazy look invited verbal attacks.
He would wear costumes. Twice, he was Napoleon. Another time, Ronald McDonald. I had to stifle a laugh the evening I saw a nursery rhyme character in a lace hoop-dress and bonnet. On the night in question he looked as he had for several classes – like an unhinged Goth crossed with a punk-documentary extra, sporting clothes designed to make him look scary, I suppose. A black doo-rag over a concussion of red hair. Skin-tight black trousers. Leather wrist straps. A crimson shirt. Disco style. Students who got a closer look told me the piercings in his face and ears weren’t in and of themselves a surprise, just that there were so many more than seemed necessary. The pointless sunglasses gave the Goth an insect-like look, facial tattoos hardly softening him up. He also had a stupid black coat-cape flung across his shoulders, and after draping shiny military-style boots over the seats in front of him and looking to have fallen asleep, students chuckled away, whispering joke-names for him such as Captain Corpse, or The Dark Bored Lord. I didn’t think he took any notice.
I usually liked visitors and course auditors, and I know it was illogical to hate him, since his weekly dress-up was harmless enough, however eccentric. But facing a snoozing, fiery-haired Goth with no aspirations for academic credit proved too much. He planned to learn nothing from me that class – or ever – and in fact he never did.
I chose the easiest approach: I ignored him. I was being dysrational, it’s true: there was no green skin or neck bolts and an ugly circular scar around his scalp where a criminally insane brain had been transplanted. But my reaction to him was as if I’d seen Hollywood’s idea of Frankenstein’s monster – not just a mock-up – attending university.
So there I was, early in my lecture, beside my desk, surveying an audience of about seventy students. I swept a hand up to deliberately shield my eyes away from the upper corner of empty seats where I knew Bleddyn was or soon would be.
“Anybody care to answer? Intuitively, maybe? I bet you can figure it out… Yes?” Students smiled but said nothing. A minute passed. “Okay, Ms. Khalima, help us out.”
“Well… Satya… And ahimsa…” A young woman finally explained, raising one elegant olive-skin hand as she spoke, a single gold bracelet sliding down her forearm. “Satya I’m pretty sure means truth… And non-violence: ahimsa.”
“Yes. Thanks for sharing your expertise, Ms. Khalima. Excellent. Well… What else can I – or anyone – add to that?” I shook my head, moving behind the lectern, staring at the surface of a scuffed, pocked desktop. Looking up again at my students, I contentedly added nothing. And it was then my head started to ache. I tried to ignore it.
“Okay,” I said, “I’m not telling you anything new: Gandhi was a pioneer in what we now call direct-action politics – you know the stuff: marches, strikes, sit-ins, protests, letter campaigns, graffiti, door-to-door work, community activism of all sorts, and so on. However, lots of people collectively pioneered massive, non-violent demonstrations in the century before. Daniel O’Connell’s work is just one example. We talked about him already. O’Connell wasn’t a radical, but Gandhi and MLK and others learned from O’Connell’s experiences. So, just like those activists of direct-action, we as educators are always getting better at what we do in fixing schools, in the democratizing of education and in getting better results. How? From thinking deeply about our history, from careful analysis, from discovering ever more effective direct-action.”
My class of student teachers was usually keen to get to the bottom of the main ideas I was supposed to share. It made teaching this course easy. That headache’s sudden onset, however, did not put me at my best.
“So the question to consider, while studying this week’s readings, is this: In the face of a corporate media critical of the teaching profession and scornful of direct-action politics, how are we as educators going to help change the world in the classroom?”
I paused as a few suggestions were thrown out and discussed, my headache growing worse by the second. From inside my knapsack, the intro to Hendrix‘s All Along The Watchtower rang out. Embarrassed, I made a face and excused myself, fishing out the phone.
“Hello,” I said quietly. It was Tezu Daizan, the most wonderful nanny a family could wish for, but she had uncannily bad timing whenever she called me on a teaching night.
“Not sure right now…” As the private conversation continued, I pulled out migraine medication and fumbled with the blister-pack. By now, my head was really killing me. I popped the pill and chased it down with tea from my thermos. Tezu reminded me my children wanted to be woken when I got home – just to say goodnight. Louis got on the phone.
“Hey, you! Ready for bed? So tired from what? All the hide-and-seek fun? I see… … Louis, tell Olivia she has apologized enough, okay? …I love you too... So much! What will I do with all that love? Okay, I’ll try. Bye now. One… Two… Three… Bye!” I looked out at the eavesdroppers who chuckled, raising my eyebrows to say mea culpa.
“Sorry. Family. Now, where were we? Oh yeah. The big challenge. Someone just said it really well. Jamie said we have to explore ways to teach students about the things they take for granted. All their privileges and all their responsibilities. I totally agree; that is how we can help young people explore their own social identities. And of course we have to do the same. Once we as teachers start to get a strong handle on culture, class and gender in our own lived experiences, then we’ll be making real progress as transformative teachers. But you know that already, that’s why you were picked for this program.”
I took a deep breath in the naïve hope the headache would pass. Rolling my head around to take the tension out must have looked odd, like I was seizing or drunk.
Marie-Claire asked, “So in a way, this class is really about us?”
The words brought a flush to my face. “I couldn’t have put it better.”
That’s when that crazed, fire-haired Goth who was going to ruin my life yawned loudly with derision. Students looked back as if to respond, but I waved them quiet. I was off balance and in pain, but wanted to carry on and forget him.
When a friend of mine got a pre-migraine aura, she wolfed down Mars bars. I ate one now while the conversation continued, but it didn’t help, and I was near calling an early end to the class. My head, nose and eyes hurt so much entire areas of vision faded in and out. I pinched my forehead between a thumb and middle finger, squinting while students reviewed a class-designed self-evaluation. They lead their own discussion about a peer-evaluation based on criteria put together in our first meeting, while I struggled with a knife point gouging the inner surface of my skull, stabbing repeatedly just behind my right eyeball.
I tried my best to focus on the class and got a bit of a break by doing what I did every class: screening short, thought-provoking multimedia presentations students had made in previous years. Then, ready to call it an early night, the students asked me about the mid-term exam.
“Oh, that! It wasn’t my idea! I’m really sorry. The University’s Board of Governors recently mandated at least one written exam per course. Something about ferreting out plagiarism. So here’s how it works: come in next week and just write me a thoughtful response to this question. Here, I’ll write it down.”
While talking, I blindly wrote, “If you could fix schools, in even small ways, what key things would you do? And why?”
Tossing the chalk in the holder, I rubbed my hands together. “You’re going to be the system soon, and then reflection gets harder. You know what McLuhan said about fish being unable to discover water – they live and breathe it. So I want to see evidence that you are not…”
I paused, at first awed my head had totally cleared. Then out of nowhere I felt a terrific snap and stab deep inside my skull. Was this what a stroke felt like? An aneurism? It was all but impossible to stand – and then, wonder of wonders: Words! Words simply flowed out of my mouth. I closed my eyes and blurted out in perfect calmness, “So I want to see evidence that you are not from, say, the fish family Trichomycteridae and of the genus and species Vandellia cirrhosa.”
I was frantic: Did I say that? Did I just refer to a fish of some sort? Is this what it’s like to have a stroke, or temporary, biology-glossary Tourette’s? Or did that irritating Stanley Fish article I re-read before class somehow trigger a memory short-circuit? What will be my next outburst? Am I having some sort of deep-brain disaster?
The words sounded so odd. I started to believe I really was stroking out, and just before I collapsed, the dense fog of headache was no more, and my mind felt fresh as morning air after a night of thunderstorms. I made a face in wonder, shook my head and carried on.
“Okay. So. You’re not fish. But you catch my drift. Show me in this mid-term that you are casting about for what schools take for granted, that you know a little about what real education reform can look like. Tell me about a strategy you’d like to explore that will help students remember you as a teacher who taught – by example – the things modern society steals from us too often, but we were born for: sharing, caring, empathy.”
Pacing a little, I stopped, so happy to feel good. “We know where real power lies. By ourselves none of us can change much of anything. Alone, we aren’t going to rupture the overriding cultural control mechanisms of the Euro-American empire. Transformation takes time.”
My head stayed clear. On two recent occasions when a fierce migraine had threatened to make me cancel class, the suffering had also vanished without warning. Such episodes left me wondering if some biomedical wing of this building vented a toxic sedative into the air duct system just as my class started, poisoning everyone deep in the bowels of a half-forgotten engineering complex.
Ilham, the student with the bangle, looked up: “Professor, what about a spiritual plan, or even a psychic transformation within schools?”
“Of course – why not!” I smiled encouragingly. “Take it wherever you want it to go, Ms. Khalima. But can true democracies have state-sanctioned religions, if that’s what you’re thinking?”
“No. I’m thinking more about something that has no clear logic. Something more based on, how do you say it, mythos?”
I wanted to be supportive especially of Ilham, a close friend of my children’s nanny; I had a soft spot for her, too. “Oh, I see! Yes, find the room for mythos too. It’s your story. It’s your mid-term.”
“Because, then,” Ilham continued, searching for the right words, “because after all, this logic view, this scientific view, vision – it is really just a different, ah, magic? No, I mean a different mythos, no?”
“Your comments suggest you have been exploring issues in the neutrality of scientific knowledge? Wonderful. Yes. All assumptions about the adventure that is the world, of humans, of power, of time… It is all in some sense based on mythos, on a set of foundational beliefs.” I hoped she felf encouraged.
“So, it is an excellent point you are making, that there is nothing really objective. All narratives, even our favourite, are myths. Maybe we need more mythos in our world. Perhaps we are on a continuum.”
Another student enthusiastically interrupted. “Yes! I agree: Buddhist thinking is that we are forced to think within a world we have chosen to think into existence.”
One particularly cerebral young man had a funny look on his face. “What if nothing will change schools fast enough? Nothing we know of? What if my analysis says it’s not possible to steer the capitalist juggernaut off course in time for radical or progressive transformation in any institution? That we face disaster? Political, populational, ecological, economic… Doom?”
At that moment, Bleddyn Wolffe noisily lurched upright in his chair like a hyperactive zombie, violently stabbing his index finger at me and shouting over the heads of the audience.
“Yeah, professor! Answer Steve’s question! What if nothing but a rainbow of magic can save the world? What if Saint Søren was right and the world really will end amid the general laughter of wits too busy enjoying the joke! What about that! Ha! You’ve got no answer for that situation; do you, pro-fffessssoooorrr?! Ha ha! Sorry! Ha!”
The Gothic nightmare didn’t sound sorry, but I tried to stay calm amidst the murmurs and rumblings. As matter-of-factly as I could, I smiled grimly. “You’re a big-picture person, Steve. Nothing wrong with that. But sometimes we lose sight of the individual trees for the forest. I refuse to believe we’re doomed. Change is inevitable. And change for the better is possible, of course it is. But no one is going to do it for us.”
Steve gave me his attention. The Goth didn’t. He sniggered loudly to himself. “Trees for the forest?” and “No one is going to do it for us?” Bleddyn Wolffe settled back like the corpse he normally mimicked.
I paused. “Steve, and our inquisitive gentleman at the back? Even little things can make a difference. Yes? It’s important for us to believe so, in any case, since an action hero is not flying in to fix the world. No, we don’t have the power to drive the moneylenders from the temple. Not yet we don’t. How about someone giving these poor fellows some hope!”
An older student four rows back said: “Well, teachers need to nurture the roots of empathy everywhere. We already have programs to bring moms and babies and even dads and babies into elementary classrooms. We can build on those. And I don’t think we need airy-fairy rainbow magic to do it. I think that is magic.”
“Excellent, Mr. Lawson! Anything else? These gentlemen need more! We can’t let cynicism win!”
Marc spoke up, “I think we should challenge homophobia every time we hear insults. That alone will keep any one of us busy in the schools I’ve been in, let me tell you!”
Feeling mildly dazed again, like my headache was about to return, I spoke as clearly as I could. “See? Not to single you out, Steve. Or you, mister… er. I think we all can despair at times. But simple acts of caring help us feel we are making a difference in schools. We may open up new ways of seeing in our classrooms – even just for a little while. And none of that is irrelevant, I think. I hope.”
Bleddyn Wolffe looked sound asleep.
“You are right about something, however. There is no one evil ring of power forged in Mount Doom. But maybe in our classrooms hide the Samwises of the world, those individuals whose fierce love and strength and hope make them the true heroes of the human story...”
I could hear a quiet tide of air in the vents, and was grateful that it was time to go.
“We can only save the world together. As teachers, we help shape the ones who are going to change humanity. What an honor! Even if not in my lifetime – we will make schools, and the world better – most likely in ways we can’t even imagine.”
It was time to stop.
“Forget this trivial exam. Go home and do some living.”
***
I thought I was alone in the lecture theatre once the last few stragglers had chatted me up and reluctantly left. But hearing a noise as I tidied my papers, I looked up to see the Goth was still in his predictable location, draped like a giant flag; he had no plans to leave until he was good and ready. I climbed the stairs to wake Captain Corpse, and on reaching him, went to rap a knuckle on his boot to encourage him to head home…
—He was in my face in a silent blur of red and black! In a strange way I felt I had not actually seen or heard him move. I knew what fast looked like, having taken self-defense courses where martial-art masters moved with incredible speed and agility. But this Goth was just there, in my face. We stood inches apart, me a good head and shoulders taller and a hundred pounds heavier. But he scared me. His face was smooth-shaven, piercings in all the usual-unusual places, face and neck tattooed like a Māori warrior, hair blazing off in all directions from under his black headgear. With his sunglasses now high on his forehead, strange, hard eyes burned into mine. He was studying me intensely, breathlessly, while a sinister, joyous smile came to his lips.
“I’m Bleddyn Wolffe! Welcome to Everybody! Ha ha!”
The young man’s unblinking blue-green eyes glowed in their sockets, hypnotic and compelling, the whites glistening like wet leather. He was so close I was breathing on him. I tried to look back with the same ferocity, but his steady gaze chilled my core. So unnerving in his black and red and silvery metal jewelry, a bullet of ice shot up my spine. I wanted to turn away, but his eyes alone held me there, and for the first time I saw his bizarre, fish-belly smooth skin and ruby-red mouth.
Humming, he grinned maniacally and addressed me again.
“Welcome to the human ray-eee-ace, with its wars, disease and brutality… Ah, well look at you, Bear!”
“Excuse me?”
“You with such innocence and grey-eee-ace! Precisely what I expected. Such a great pretender! Precisely. You’re ready! To restore some pride and dignity, I mean, given your background. White-bread childhood, a youth lived in bliss, top marks in school, swimming lessons, bikes and blades, ’boggins and skateboards, goalie pads in the garage! Bet the Bear-cub had all his shots, didn’t he? To a world in decline. Ha ha!”
He sang and joked; later I noticed he was the only one laughing. He threw himself into an aisle seat, taking me in with a look of satisfaction.
“Can’t be too careful, professor. You talk the talk. I’ve attended your – well, I guess you’d have to call them lectures? Your disquisitions, Bear. Still, you don’t exactly swish the swash, do you, now? Not back then, either. I very much doubt any human being could have passed a happier childhood, never really venturing beyond where the sidewalk ends. Pretty much ad calendas graecas, so to speak.”
“Ad cal—?”
“Not much of scholar, are you?” He swooned, hand on his forehead, then was right up in my face again. “Relax. Forget your teenaged angst, the heartbreak of middle of the road subdivisions. No bloated babies came with the scenery for you. Hello! I’m Bleddyn Wolffe!”
The Goth reached down and aggressively shook my hand, releasing my fingers just before he broke a bone. My palms went clammy, and I mumbled a reply. The young man spoke so fast his words were often indecipherable gibberish. I thought: He’s speaking English, but I can hardly follow what this guy’s saying.
“Like Orson Welles in Long Hot Summer, Bear? Yes, ha ha!”
Then he shouted out more lyrics, imitating earlier student presentations, injecting excellent electric guitar and percussion sounds. I had no idea how he did it, but I saw psychosis and wanted to get away.
“Feather in his mane, showing no fear, of a twisted shady fool! I tell you that’s right, ah-ha, that’s right. Though, Wardell?” The Goth went on laughing with delight, dancing up and down the stairs. “As a once-upon-a-warrior, with airy-fairy, almost cult-like ideas of justice and equity, well— Doesn’t it get to you? Doesn’t your voicelessness drive you crazy? He’s gone crazy, completely crazy, on the day I tried to tame the Wardellian horse! Yeah, yeah, yeah… Crazy that you can’t get heard, Wardell? Denied airtime? The thoroughness of the co-option! What kind of knight wants his broadsword fixed affectionately above a dusty mantle? What kind of a social justice warrior are you, anyway? You got your educator. Lectures like he’s a whiz! Quoting songs ’bout social justice. Yeah, that’s where the money is. Ha!”
It took a while to process his quick speech. His accent alone had a strange quality, like he wasn’t a native English speaker. But it might be a put on, I said to myself.
“You’re the put on, old boy!”
“Pardon?” He carried on like he hadn’t heard me, or didn’t care.
“I almost liked your lesson tonight, Wardell. Almost, because I mean, well… Man, how you drone! Talktalktalk! This is what democratic schools look like, blabidyblahblah… Blah! You positively bombinate!”
“I do not! How dare you—”
“All that crap about freedom and power and who exacts what and who concedes blahblahblah. Blah! Oh, please! You could put a dead activist to sleep droning about how people should be in the streets screaming about injustice – not that you’ve done much screaming lately, Bear. No grapeshot, tear gas or Hamburger kesseling in your life anymore, I should say. The closest you’ve been to violence for quite some time now is with your outrage dribbling over a Pablo Neruda poem, or watching some post-war German drama on the telly – three men, standing on stage, facing each other, screaming at the top of their lungs! Ha ha! Sorry. Cherman drah-mah. Zat choke? Hit alvays haas me screemink!” He chuckled as he swerved his way back to the foot of the stairs.
“Honestly, Wardell: you drive away the joy of joy with your flat tire lectures! No need for an abhorsen in your neck of the woods, that’s a given. Nix that! I can hear the bells now. Hey-ram-a-lhama-ting-a-ling-a-lang-dang-doodle PING! You’d send the dead back to the grave and they’d beseech you to let them stay there!”
At the time I didn’t know the futility of debate with Bleddyn Wolffe, so I tried. “Look you! I don’t know who you are—”
“I’m Bleddyn Wolffe!” He threw himself into an aisle seat.
I headed quickly down the stairs. “Yeah, I’m— That’s nice. Good. Okay. I’m Wardell Church. I’m just a teacher. I do my best, so—”
“Yesyesyesyesyesyesyes! Of course you do, Professor Wardell Church! And why not indeed? Why not in-deed?”
Looking over my shoulder, I saw him do a sort of dance in his seat, pumping his arms and shoulders in one direction, then the other. If music was inspiring him, I heard none until he started bellowing, wagging his finger at me: “You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone, you’re gonna feel what it feels like! Oh, come now, Wardell. You serve the Movement quite well, my little whipper-snapper, you’re infinitely better read than your typical adversary, running circles around reporters and critics who foolishly climb in the ring with you – always all-England with you, old boy, what? Just don’t try going head to head with me, please.” He started shadow boxing, doing so far too fast.
“Ah, okay. Look, I haven’t. And I’m kind of insulted. And please stop calling me stupid names. I don’t even know you.”
“Well let’s fix that! …But are you upset, Bear? You big cubbly cub! I hope you don’t mind me telling the truth about you. Because you to me? You’re like capoeira to my real jiu jitsu. And mine ain’t Brazilian, let me tell you! In fact, I haven’t had a Brazilian in quite some time! No! What you’ve got is a good dance, my little sphinx, but it’s kind of hard to beat to! Ha ha! There I am waxing poetic!”
He was instantly at the auditorium desk, in close examination of me, strangely indifferent, unblinking, apparently sucking in… Something. I don’t know what he was getting out of this, but he went on talking and talking. And he said I droned.
“Look, what do you want?” I asked, quickly hiding my nervousness.
Bleddyn ignored my question, just like he almost always would. His face was a menace of expressionless. I asked again what he wanted, but he just started snapping his fingers and shuffling his feet around my desk, on to another song.
“Revvin’ up my engine, Bearie, like a seven-forty-seven, baby, shiny, lanky long and lean. What a see-eee eeen!”
“Look! Stop! What do you want? You’re making no sense, singing songs and, and insulting me because I haven’t carried a bullhorn through Rosedale lately! Interrupting my class tonight. Why are you here?”
Bleddyn stopped, standing statue-still.
“Because I want to be. I’m here to tell you something, Wardell.”
“Okay. Tell me, so I can go home. I don’t have time for this crap.” I sat in the desk chair, put an elbow up and rested my weary head, pretending to be interested. “Please, do tell.”
He did. “You’re a margin man, Wardell. On a train going nowhere. Like, as I said, the Movement. Drowned out by the media whores and other mainstream sellouts. Still, I like you, Wardell. I even like your carapace-like demeanor… Say! Beverages! You want to get some nepenthe or stale coffee? Diet cola? I know you like it with a slice of lime.”
I stood up and went back to my knapsack. “I haven’t time for this.”
He stood there with three drinks! A pop for me, and two steaming coffees – which he said he could and would consume if he wanted to. He opened the cola can and handed it to me; pulling a slice of lime out of thin air and cupping the hot drinks to warm his hands, he started singing again while his fingers moved in a blur. “Can’t tink, on da brink, can’t stop this pounding klink in my head all night like a tree-day drink; Tell you what you gonna do: You put the lime in the cola-pop and drink it all up!”
He sat in the front row, sighed and made some lame joke about not caring for alcohol but did enjoy lingering over his cups nonetheless. I thought to myself: Now this is getting really strange.
“Strange how you always order cola with a slice of lime, Wardell?”
“Eh?”
“Why a slice on the side, my good man?”
I mumbled, still on guard, “Force of habit, I suppose. Look, I—”
“Is that so? A man of habits. Well, I never, Wardell.”
I felt uncomfortable; only close friends called me Wardell. “Look, do I know you? Bleddyn Wolffe is it? Are you all right, Mr. Wolffe? Are you all there? Are you high? Are you stoned?”
Am I stoned? I was really thinking.
He threw back his head, roaring, “Like Asoora Puggsa!? Surely not!”
“Who?”
“A drug-addled Southeast Asian god ripped out of paradise, and none too happy about it. I empathize with him completely. So will you. I too have a bit of a temper when the kae flower blooms! Ha! Never mind: se non è vero, è ben trovato, no?”
“You know, look, I don’t speak—”
“Of course you don’t; it means this is an awfully good hallucination, if it is one! Enough about me, Bear. Let’s look at you!”
He set down his drinks and jumped to his feet, strutting around the desk and chair, eyeing me up and down, down and up like I was a horse he was thinking about buying, tsk-ing and frowning and kvetching Oh my, and Isn’t that a sorry sight, I better check his teeth of course.
He sat again and sipped his coffees, making faces. “Listen, Church, I gotta tell you, that pep talk? Tonight? Most cute.” He raced to the lectern, javas in hand, and in a bombastic professorial tone – with my exact voice – boomed out to an imaginary sea of faces: “Okay, girls and boys, you gotta commit to rupturing the hegemonic discourse to earn this credit…
“Oh yeah baby! ‘Practice of freedom’ and all that blather. Sweet, Bear. Moving. Remember from whom you stole that last little gem?” Perched now on the edge of my desk, he slurped his coffees, lips smacking loudly. I furrowed my brow and felt my head start in with a whole new pounding. While thinking about dialing for help, I tried to answer him: “I seem to recall that in the foreword of Paulo—”
“No matter, Wardell. It was Richard Shaull. That’s what you were going to say. Naaawt to worry! We’ve got plenty of time to reminisce. Sorry we’ve never formally met before. But I’ve watched you for a time, as it were,” he gestured to the back seats of the auditorium, “from the mountain top. Poor me, alone, sitting up there deep in the night, staring out from the gloom in a lambent of light… Seems it is indeed time to get to know each other.” He bugged out his eyes, smiling theatrically. “Oh, yes. We must now do that. It is my wont.”
Perhaps this guy has wireless ear buds, I thought, as he began again to move like he was listening to music.
“I like this, the part you co-opted tonight for all that one-with-humanity freakshow: “If you don’t even like, like the life you lead, I want you to stand up! Throw your hands in the air, pack your bags, it’s time to ride the our-turn train! Great stuff no, Wardell? ’Course Henry’s mullet could have derailed any train; certainly the meth rode him off the tracks. I’m surprised at the selection – not really pop populare. No matter; an excellent choice from the hobo’s rock star. Now, where were we?”
“You changed the lyrics. They’re different. You got them wrong.”
“So? Shit happens… I wish I’d had a prof who taught like that!”
“Look, I mean it, whoever you are—”
“I’m Bleddyn Wolffe.”
“Yeah, well, ‘Bleddyn Wolffe Welcome To Everybody,’ I think you said, I don’t feel so well, so I’m going to go home. It’s been really, really nice meeting you. I’ll see you…”
“Oh yes, you’ll see me all right! I’ll take you home and talk you all night long!”
“That’s nice. So…” He was in my face, frowning; I tried to pack.
“You disappoint me, Wardell.”
“Sorry?” As I looked up, he vanished! I scanned the theatre and found the youth sitting in the farthest reaches of the auditorium. My vision more acute than usual, I saw him there clear as sunshine.
“Here I am about to promise you the power to oversee Lord’s Cricket Ground, to take a place in the infinite forever-now, and all you want to do is talk about going home, ’cause you don’t feel well. Boo hoo. Damn! This is the defining moment of your existence: Four Ahau, Eight Cumku! I represent the eternal feminine, ready to birth you forward, to restart your long count, and me being as friendly and kind as only I know how. But as always, your selfishness will out. ‘What’s in it for me?’ you’ll whine. The ultimate gift, the goddamn holy grail is within your grasp, and what thanks or even politeness do I get? Nothing. It’s forever this way with you unenlightened lot. All about Wardell. Meantime, the right answer should be simple.” He paused.
“So what is it?” I focused on the back row, the lights above him still sputtering away.
“What’s what, Bear?”
“What’s in it for me? This gift you mentioned? What the hell are you talking about— Look, forget it. I don’t care. I’m just gonna go…”
Bleddyn Wolffe stood beside me and I jumped back startled, his hard eyes fixed tight on my face, his look decidedly unhappy.
“Wardell, listen. I came here to see you, planning to like you. And I do. Why? Because you reject random chance and simultaneously disavow destiny; because you understand nothing is pre-ordained, written in the stars. And yet it’s all here for a reason. You embrace the paradox. Like you, I believe that we can be anything… I can make things happen for you beyond any dreams.”
“Look, Mr. Wolffe: I hardly think you or anybody else can lead another person to enlightenment, if that’s what you mean.”
He grinned happily. “Well, of course you’re right, Wardell. But still, wouldn’t you like to become awesome like me?”
Strange doesn’t describe my feelings when Bleddyn asked that bizarre question. My head was pounding, vision off, judgment seriously impaired, my mind a pane of glass the moment before it shatters. Am I hallucinating? Coming down with something? An infection? A virus? The headache, my eyes… I wondered. I really hoped I was sick.
And then the bone-white, black and red accented youth began to jump and dance about in a frenetic hopscotch. Bounding his way across the auditorium, no sooner was he there, he was retracing his path – never looking where he was going – finally stopping directly in front of me, jumping like a Masai on amphetamines. Through the theatre he tore, like a cartoon character, whirling and spinning, a back flip here, an in-air somersault there. All the while he whooped and hollered, reciting lyrics from the presentations screened earlier in class.
“This time the bullet cold-rocked ya!” Flip! “A yellow ribbon,” Flip! “Instead of a swastika!”
Bleddyn laughed like a demon, dancing and jumping, his ridiculous cape billowing behind him like a sail: “Nothin’ proper ’bout ya propaganda.” Every single move was an astonishing act of gymnastics, yet the gag man strung it all together as if he was playing. “Fools follow rules when the set commands ya!” His acrobatics moves finally brought him standing stock-still in front of me, where he asked me if I liked his gazelle-like stotting. And during the whole mad performance, I hadn’t thought to even move.
“Man! Those lines! And the build-up!? Ah, man!” The tattooed face faked orgasmic exhaustion. “Ah? The first sound in most phonetic alphabets, Bear, expressing deep physical or emotional satisfaction.”
His head shaking in self-admiration, Bleddyn stopped, not even panting after the physical demands of what he had just done.
“Now that is out-rageous poetic genius! A Zack Attack! Ancient now, but still – still! For my money Leonard Cohen has nothing on this dude, and I love that useless high priest of existential, erotic despair, too!”
Then Bleddyn’s smile fixed me with an intent I couldn’t read, sending a shiver up and over my scalp. He never broke his gaze, just softened and chuckled. “My jump there? I should have gotten full marks, but some judge would have docked me for the provocative word!”
Blinking, shaking my head as if removing cobwebs, I stupidly said, “You seem to be under the impression that I know you, Mr. Wolffe.”
He walked on his hands across the backs of the seating; up and down the rows in the theatre, moving slowly, deliberately at first, then faster and faster. With the doo-rag forever poised on his head, he left a colorful distortion in the air – a huge hairy caterpillar with a red underbelly, blotches of crimson on monochromatic legs, the feet waving madly. Again he sang loudly – his voice coming at me like a chorus of fifty.
“Can you hear us? Are you listening! No power without accountability!”
I kept saying to myself, This isn’t happening, Wardell. You’re having a waking nightmare or coming down with something. Seeing things. Hearing things. Talking to imaginary people. Must be a poison or a flu or worse. Come on, Bear. Snap out of this. Get yourself home.
“Not to brag, Billy-boy, but I’ve seen a good deal of creative avant garde and ho-hum music videos over the years. Yes, my well-intentioned giant child, even as far back as Fischinger‘s work in the twenties, not to mention the Silly Symphonies, and the Soundies – those of course go without saying! Ha! There I said it. I-said-it-I-said-it-I-said-it! But I’d honestly have to conclude, much of the modern fare still resonates with Jutra’s work in Mouvement Perpetual all those many years ago – don’t you think? And I so wish I could have asked him exactly who was that stranger in the woods – not me, that’s for sure!”
“I don’t follow…”
“Ha! Here I am reminiscing on poor Claude’s demise – like a poor expendable Inuit elder, wandering off from a famine into the nothingness of a brutal Arctic winter – and you don’t follow! Professor! Respect!”
I swallowed hard. “There’s a point to all this?” Wanting to get away, my chest and throat tightening in panic, I forced myself to slow down, to will myself to survive, to make no mistakes. My pathetic training in meditation left me deluded; I was hardly prepared for what was coming.
“Don’t be too sure, professor! I know all about you. Well, I never exactly knew you, not biblically anyway, never kissed your feet, as it were, ha! Sorry. But my, shall we say, research, shows you have grown a good deal since your early drib, drub, drab years. I only took a mild interest in you in the midst of all that hand-to-gland combat on white-knuckler, exam-cramming session-nights, Ha! You grew into a whacking good student ‘bater at McMaster, my little Hand Solo.”
He stood nearby, swinging his arms erratically, then dropped a fist close to my face. Slowly unballing his hand, he grinned; his palm held three dead blue bottles, flattened and messy, but recognizable. I’d paid them no heed during the lecture.
“Calliphora vicina! Deconstruct that! This one’s a large specimen. Robust, calypterate, quite a metallic sheen. Well, alulalulalee! Ubiquitous. Some species are synanthropic, it’s true!” Still laughing, he let the dead flies drop to the desktop, then licked his palm and dried it on a napkin pulled from nowhere. Bleddyn whispered with ferocious excitement, “You ain’t seen nothing yet, Dubya Church!”
***
I decided a worse catastrophe than a migraine was responsible for this illusion. Bleddyn did jumping jacks so fast his arms and legs blurred into black and red sails, like a night creature with giant featherless wings; I thought to myself, He’s like a bat!
“I must make an aside here, my friend,” he shouted, “I don’t know if I much care what you think of my behaviour, but when it comes to my appearance, you have no right to an opinion, really. Come on, man! Thought to yourself? Who else could you think to? And ‘night creature with giant featherless wings’? You great hairy ape – your own ill-fitting quasi-agitprop gear isn’t even clean-looking.”
I shook my head.
“Your wardrobe’s a disgrace, Bear! I prepared for this occasion, dressed to advantage in attire reasonable for any respectable gentleman with an eccentric style and eye for the current night-life dead look.” He stopped. Perhaps he was interested in seeing me see him, I was unsure.
“Of course you aren’t sure. Back to my exposition. Academically aside, Bear, you were skittish at first; you still are, but no matter. You settled down to become a somewhat clear, analytical if superficial simulacrum of a social scientist. A regular little Kafka, what with your strength, wholesomeness, appetite, voice, rhetorical skill… Okay, not so big on the self-satisfaction and froideur, but certainly you have stamina, quickness, insight and generosity. Franz’s papa would have been proud. You did come together after a pathetic start in the arts – oh, Lord, that was a joke now, wasn’t it? I mean you didn’t really like reading.”
It struck me I was definitely talking to an illusion. This thing was a product of a fever or something, surely. Despite the pain I was in, I still defended myself: I didn’t fail in the arts! I was just young and worried about avoiding an economic dead end. I didn’t want a useless education.
He interrupted my thoughts by shouting: “Useless! Now who’s deluding whom, hm? If an arts degree isn’t economically useless, Wardell, it isn’t worth anything at all! Not a quip from your paltry vault of vague anamneses or a splinter of a dream deferred either, my transparent little raisin!”
I studied the crazy young man in front of me, puzzled by his words, his singing and gymnastics; he was now sliding under the theatre’s pivoting seating, cushions dipping, then springing free as he slithered up one row and down the next, like a hypnotizing wave.
“Oh, rollin’ and glidin’ and slippin’ and slidin’, c’est ma-jick!” And when he wasn’t singing, he talked nonstop. “And yoouuuuu, and your sweet delight— You see Wardell, to me you are a man never satisfied with easy answers, am I right?” He didn’t wait for any easy response.
“You’ve always been on an unwavering relentless search for new knowledge, am I right? A modern day Siddhartha. Searching, always searching – Ha! Scavenging more like it! You’re an omnivore. It’s just one more reason why they call you Bear, am I right? Cuddly, yes! But I think you fancy yourself scary, too! Ha! Scary Beary!” He laughed loudly, back to springing so high his fingertips grazed the acoustic ceiling tiles.
“Not that you are. You’re about as frightening as an intellectual belch. Yours, not mine. Still, back to your reputation: No posturing for you. No way! That’s the typical game in the ivory towers, but never for Professor Wardell Church! Oh no, no, non!”
My head was positively splitting, as if a surgeon had cut open my skull to stimulate all my pain centers at the same time. I would rather have been pithed. I sat down in the front row of the auditorium, deciding on how to get out and away from this swamp of sensory distortions. I needed the safety of home.
He bowed to an imaginary audience of thousands, tossing them unseen flowers and blowing kisses. Then, sitting without warning in the farthest reaches of the theatre, Bleddyn quietly ignored me. I could see him staring at his nails, moving one hand, then the other, faster and faster until each forearm was a glowing, pale blue blur.
“No reason to get excited! You the joker, the thief, or one of the barf-foot servants?! Ha! Cover me! Here it comes! Here comes the fright!”
Without warning nausea floored me and I clumsily hugged the desk, still fighting the migraine. My neck stiffened; I closed both eyes tightly while flexing my shoulders. With a temporary recovery, willing myself to continue packing my bag with one hand, squinting and pressing my temples with the other, I looked up to focus on the distant dark figure, his arms still glowing.
“You’re not afraid of me, are you, Wardell?”
Careful with my words, I spoke precisely, concentrating hard.
“No, Mr. Wolffe. I’ll be honest, though. I do find you to be just a bit… You’re quite a gymnast, I’ll grant you that.” I spoke without emotion. “And by the way you define yourself as other, with your clothes and so on, but that’s okay with me…” I climbed carefully into my coat, jackhammers pounding my temples.
“Your Bo Peep the other week was something else.” I stopped to take one last look up at the shadow in the darkness, shrouded in his cape-coat, both hands still a flurry of pale blue in those high seats under sputtering fluorescents. “Your dress, your gear, your get up and all… I really love your work. I’m impressed. But I don’t think I’m afraid of you.”
He stood at my shoulder! I tried to turn for the exit, with him now close enough to see my sweat, to smell my fear. He knew what I sensed from him: no breath, no heat, nothing. Biting eyes again bore deep into me; I grew cold and however much I tried, could not mask a shiver.
“Not even a little apprehensive?”
Bleddyn first stepped back, then drew in uncomfortably close, sniffed and blinked.
“Well, shiver me timbers, you certainly should be.”
I refused to swallow, afraid of what might happen next, instead chancing a timid, throaty, “Why?”
“Why?” Bleddyn raised his eyebrows high on his forehead like a cartoon character. “Why should you be afraid?” He held a finger to his lips, miming a man deep in contemplation.
“Because, Wardell, I’m here to do what you cannot do yourself.” He pirouetted inhumanly fast and yanked me close in a rock-hard grip, tearing my leather jacket and knocking the wind out of me, adding with cold-blooded certainty, “I am here to change your life.”
He flashed brilliantly white teeth, like he was mugging to the paparazzi. Without the strength to even fill my lungs with air, I tried to break free, but the grip on my jacket was unearthly strong, and my migraine was still raging. Afraid for my life and deeply afraid to show it, I thought: I’m going to die! I’m not ready! What a horrible sensation!
“Sensational it is, my friend, and most alarming! But you won’t die exactly. We can’t have that!”
He let go, and I fell forward, desperate to catch my breath – only to have the head pounding vanish. I stood up, filling my lungs with the ease light shoots through clean windows. I felt alive! I shook my head in disbelief, then planned evasive action, but Bleddyn grabbed me, and smiled in my face. With flaming hair flopping about, he waltzed us around the floor of the theatre like a pair of ballroom dancers.
“My, we’re having fun, aren’t we, Wardell?!”
“Let me go! Stop it! You’re sick! What the hell is wrong with you?!”
He instantly stood a casual distance away, presenting like an advertisement for some Paris fashion house, an elbow in the other arm’s palm, thoughtfully rubbing his chin. I stared at him, saying nothing, clearly motion sick, when my sense of humor got the better of me. I couldn’t help smirking; just a dry little chuckle at my circumstances.
That was apparently a mistake.
“Ne rie pas! C’est grave! Find me funny do you?!”
In an eye blink, he grabbed me by my torn jacket and catapulted me clear across the lecture hall. I hit the hard cinderblock wall head up, arms out, back square, and dropped directly to the floor, letting out a massive groan. Seeing stars, my ears ringing, I gulped for air like a landed fish. The monster stood with his boot at my throat, happy to ignore me, emotionless as an insect. Pausing, Bleddyn lit a cigarette and took an unnaturally deep drag while more than half the barrel turned straight to ash. He tossed his head back before blowing a smoke ring; it floated toward my face, then up and out of sight. The boot lifted from my neck.
“This is crazy!” I coughed.
My attacker pulled me to my feet.
“Don’t do that. You won’t like me when I get angry. Ha! If you had wanted to see a green hulk of rage, you could have just said so.”
I croaked, “What the hell do you want?”
“I want you... To want me! Ha! Wardell, I want you to embrace this, our collision course!” He spat a flake of tobacco into my eye. “And I would really prefer we get along. So will you.”
Then he started singing again. “Bear’s looking for somewhere to belong, standing all alone – for someone to guide him on his way. Now and for— Ever wonder what it would be like to be immortal, old boy?”
“You are crazy!” I shouted, blinking madly, hardly wanting to follow a word the maniac said.
“This can be so much easier if you pretend to enjoy the ride. Zoom zoom. I always do. You, me? We’re aspects of infinite possibilities, no? I live for the moment. And at this one, I am recalling bewitching lyrics your students deployed tonight. When there’s nowhere left to run, run with me!” Looking away, he went on: “It might very well have been a beautiful day, week, century, sanctuary – after the blood and the colors came out! But I don’t know, or care – I wasn’t up! I was caught in a moment! Ha!”
“Fuck you! You crazy homicidal bastard!”
“Okay, Wardell. I get the picture. That’s the way you want it.”
In a finger snap, seized by the scruff of my neck and crotch of my jeans, I was hoisted high over his head like a bale of hay and hurled deep into the seating area. I struck several solid chair-backs, landing with such a brutal crack, I froze in a dazed, breathless panic, doubting if I could move at all. With the wind knocked out of me a second time, had I felt or just imagined my body drain of energy?
My head hung backwards over a seat, and I saw him two-stepping about, artfully kicking my phone into a wall where I heard the thing break. He muttered to himself that my son had a hanging-up hang-up, then he danced nimbly up the stairs towards me, singing softly.
“Hearse gone ash-tray, keeping up when they go. I went away, just when you needed me so… Ha!” Looking down at my crumpled form, he belted out another melody, stopping mid-verse.
“Looking for popcorn?” he jabbered. “Pecking about like that should be infra dignitatum for a prof. I’m a bit surprised: fashionably stunned people buy their snickersnacks at the conk-session stand!”
I lay frozen in fear. I can’t move – this fucker has broken my back!
“Oh, oh, oh, it’s magic, you know-ow. Never believe it’s not so!” Bleddyn sang joyfully. “That’s gotta hurt! I’ve caused enough suffering to know the real McCoy!” He threw his head back and guffawed.
This guy’s a sadist! I clenched my teeth, his voice sandpaper on my raw nerves. I burbled aloud, “Oh, my god! What… Am I dealing with?”
“Can’t tell if that’s a statement or a question, Bear, but you don’t know the half of it!” Then he proudly went on, “I’m a rickety ravager, a deranged dendrite, a mindless miracle. I’m the Ansel Adams of the inner light, but that’s another photogenic story… I’m the Serge Storms of the Underworld! Better hope I’m not Christian Szell on a bad day! I’m…”
From where I lay I watched him dance up the aisle stairs and go on with his list. What else could I do? He slid over to me, kicked at a steel-framed chair lug-bolted to the floor, and the thing folded like a punched loaf of white bread. He did the same to a neighboring chair; then, crouching in the space he’d made, Bleddyn loomed and coolly added, “Don’t think you can toy with me for a second, Dubya-dubya. Love me, love my work indeed? Well, how do you love me now, my little art critic? Think your inner kid could paint that? Ha!”
My lip had split enough to bleed. With one finger he lifted a drop of blood from my mouth, and brought it to his nose in a cool, disturbingly reverent manner. He closed his eyes as if he was exploring a good wine. Then he sneered. “Drop the performance, now, Wardell. I will not be caricatured – that’s just a rule I have. That’s my domain. Come not between the dragon and his wrath! I can snap you like your favorite biscotti, you nutty, naughty, nougaty newt! Ha!”
Bleddyn knelt on one knee, speaking with his hands, staring at me as I struggled to stay conscious. Upside down, it was even more disorienting to look at him, but I feared moving a muscle. My arm was badly busted – mangled shoulder to elbow, now with an extra, unexpected joint. From the corner of my eye I could see the entire limb blowing up hard and hot, like a blood-filled sausage. I didn’t dare move it. Several ribs on my right side left me afraid to breath deeply. The torture in my arm made my chest seem less important, so I almost forgot about it. Frank blood trickled into my eyes. Tears of rage welled up. I decided to right myself, thinking my spine was not fractured after all, but the raw pain took away what little breath I had. Then Bleddyn, while serenading me, ignored my shrieking protests and rolled me off the chairs and onto the floor.
“Tears from the moon, fall down like rain! Oh, god, she sings it so sadly, don’t you think? Ha!”
“Christ! Please! Stop!”
He sat me up on one elbow as I screamed, panting shallowly like an old dog with sunstroke. “You’re…!” I tried for volume. No one heard me, no one came running. “You’ve broken my arm, you asshole!” With my usable hand, I dabbed at my face, lightly fingering the sticky wetness, staring in wonder at the blood. “Look what you’ve done!”
“Don’t I know it, old boy! No worries – it’s probably just a pigment of your imagination! Pigment? Blood? Get it? And my, you do have an air about you!” Bleddyn sniffed with amusement. “What is that you’re wearing? Top note of caffeine? Something stronger? You naughty thing, you! And is it Orthomyxoviridae I’m detecting? You’re certainly coming down with more than a flu virus!” He sat back on his haunches, licked his lips, bared his teeth, growled and rolled his eyes as they glazed over. Bleddyn looked for all the world like some thumping red, white and black predatory shark heading in for the kill. I shouted and kicked feebly with my legs, unwilling to give in even as I wished for a miracle to stop the agony charging through my shattered arm and head. I instinctively tried to ward him off, but lost consciousness – for minutes or hours, who knows? Looking up, he was still there. I whimpered.
“Now come, come – why the sad face?” he chuckled and scolded; “There is a face under all that hair, no? Woot! Tha’ it is! And why tears, Wardell? This is the beginning! You can’t be reticent now! When is birth not bloody, gory, a bit fulsome? Ha! There’s bound to be some screaming. And yet, parturition is in fact a completely natural process.”
He took a long look at me; I whispered for his help. But Bleddyn puckered his lips, narrowed his eyes and gazed off into space. He lit a cigarette. “Let me tell you an apocryphal little story, my boy.”
“A story?! I’m dying here! Help me!”
“All in good time, Bear. But first, my bedtimer. All right?”
I closed my eyes and set my jaw to avoid sobbing. The evil one blew a haze all around me before he began.
***
“ There was a man in the land of Uz. And that man was blameless and upright, one who worshipped kindness and turned away from evil… That is a very oppositional countenance! Pay attention. You’re facing a three-hundred-pipe problem, Watson. Tsk.”