brigits_flame - Trash
“It’s tragic, isn’t it, the way these people have been treated? To have their…their graves disturbed and their bones tossed aside like garbage in the streets…”
Hands splayed on either side of his head, Saint Sorrows lies down on his stomach. He turns his head to rest an ear against the grass, looking very sad as he does so. When he shuts his eyes and takes in a deep breath, I suppose I could almost believe he’s trying to listen for…something. The gentle tread of spiritual feet? I don’t know. We’ve been sitting in Burr Oak for at least two hours now--or at least I have. When we arrived, Sorrows parked my wheelchair under the shade of this tree while he went off to walk amongst the gravestones. Given that the cemetery is mostly grass and given my history of having my front wheels catch in hidden ruts (with disastrous results), I basically haven’t moved for two hours. I’ve kept busy as a lookout in case of cops, but nobody has come. There isn’t even any press.
Somehow, I think that’s the doing of the blonde Italian currently lying in the grass. He looks so bizarre lying on the ground like that, dressed like the priest he most certainly isn’t, no matter how much Catholic devotion he actually has or manages to fake…
“How much longer are we gonna be here, Sorrows? These spirits…deceased…er… These people clearly haven’t stuck around. They’re probably off tormenting the gravediggers.”
Sorrows opens one eye, then the other; he sits up on the balls of his feet. “You have no patience, Cristina. Or perhaps you have patience for everyone but me.”
“Probably the second.”
“Why is that? Why do you hate me so much?”
“I don’t hate you.” I drum my fingers on the Rorschach lunchbox resting across my lap. “I reserve my hatred for…well, mostly for other women, I guess. I don’t even really hate the Organ Grinder, but when it comes to Annabelle…or Cassandra…”
“Who?”
“Nobody you know, apparently.”
I stop drumming my fingers on the metal surface of the lunchbox. The noise seems too intrusive for the eerie calm of a cemetery-especially this one, where so much…displacement has gone on, for want of a sanitary phrase. Sorrows looks confused.
“If you don’t hate me, then…why are you so hostile?”
“It’s easier to feel hostile than to admit I feel sorry for you.”
“And you feel sorry for me-?”
“Because you’re a manipulating, lecherous drunk who is also easily manipulated by the company he keeps.” The Saint fixes me with a sour look. “Oh, come on. You know it’s true, Sorrows. And I feel sorry for you because you don’t see it.”
“Oh, because you see everything, don’t you? You see it all.” He gets to his feet. Grinning, he strides towards me. “You are the chosen one, the one girl-nay, person-blessed with the Sight in all the world who can see even what is hidden from others, from even the most experienced seers!”
“I never claimed-”
“Ah, no, because you are humble and nothing that happens to you is provoked. It is merely your misfortune to be the source of so much entanglement. ‘She never asked for this,’ I hear Essex and Viticus cry endlessly. But you put yourself in these situations! You never leave well enough alone!
“And what makes you so special as it is? Your visions came late to you; nineteen and barely aware of us! Your artist friend-Sally-bested you by several years.”
“I’ve been a dead man’s storyteller for a lot longer than I could see them, Sorrows. And I don’t need eyes to know how it’s going to play out for you, but you do, and soon. Very soon.”
He chuckles softly before turning his dark eyes on the expansive cemetery. Shaking his head, Sorrows breathes a sigh.
“You’ve listened to nothing I’ve said. But why should I be surprised? The Living never listen well enough. I didn’t, and I am certainly more qualified than you-and yes, I said exactly that. I am much more qualified to say that I never asked for any of the suffering I received, but I have made of it what I could while you continue to have things…handed to you! And if you get into trouble, then you have your Ghost or Essex or Viticus or even my cousin rushing to help you.
“Meanwhile, my Penitents and my Displaced…” He turns back to look at me, hands on his hips. “Why do you meddle so much in our affairs? I understand curiosity, Cristina, but there is a fine line between curiosity and meddling, and you cross it much too often.”
“I meddle,” I say through gritted my teeth, “because half the afterlife is privy to showing up on my doorstep.”
“You could say no,” Sorrows says. “Turn them away. My cousin is a great example-”
“I knew it.” I throw my hands up. The lunchbox nearly falls off my lap. “I fucking knew it! I just knew that this entire trip was about-”
“No. You assume. And you assume it wrongly-” Saint Sorrows frowns briefly. “-but the fact remains the same. You are meddling without thought, simply because you disagree with Edward’s method of ensuring justice.”
“What and you don’t? His method is unjust, Sorrows! You and I both know he had Conradas kidnapped to draw Claudio out of hiding, even if I can’t immediately prove it in court, and then he made Claudio sign a false confession to both free Conradas and protect Sally-”
“Edward’s claim on Sally as his fiancée is legal and binding. He has every right to go after her should he so wish it. And as for my cousin, what about the people he has murdered? Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people; did any of them ask for what came to them?”
“Yes!”
“No.” The Saint’s eyes glare with conviction on this point. “Their deeds were horrifying and worthy of the most severe punishment in Dis, but the right to live was just as much theirs as their victims’.”
“Are you on crack?! Has the alcohol finally done you in?” I ask. “Those people abused, raped, and murdered innocent people!”
“But it was never Claudio’s-nor anyone else’s-place to take upon themselves the role of final judgment! And while you protest that it isn’t fair, us forcing him to answer for his actions, you haven’t the slightest clue of the full-scale havoc he’s wreaked on my end.”
“Then enlighten me. Please. Enlighten me.”
A swift rush of air escapes through my chaperone’s nose. He turns, pacing away from me as he runs his fingers through his hair and mutters in Italian. I open up the lunchbox and reach for the sandwich I picked up at Starbucks. Sorrows comes back almost as soon as I’ve gotten halfway through the thing, but he doesn’t look any less like he wants to ship me back to Texas.
Which, I can’t believe I’m about to admit, would be just fine with me.
“If only you understood,” Sorrows murmurs, looking down at the grass. “I could forgive him for his ignorance in life, and I would be more than willing to get on my knees and ask his forgiveness for the things I’ve done to him and for the ways I have betrayed him, but what he has done to me by continuing… He must be stopped, Cristina. Claudio will not stop on his own. He will only increase in his dangerousness, in his depravity.”
He sits down on the grass, very nearly at my feet. He looks up at me and smiles a little.
“You don’t believe that, do you?” he asks.
I hesitate with a sigh. “I can’t. I believe he can be stopped, and that he must be stopped, but letting Capone do this to him, to put him on trial like this…? Capone doesn’t care if Claudio stops killing people or not. He just needs the good press and you to play the quiet follower.”
“Is that all you think I am?”
This time there is no hesitating. “Yes.”
Sorrows chuckles softly. He smiles in a strange way, not quite with his lips but more with his eyes. He picks at the grass. “For your brilliance, your intelligence…you know very little. Your are naïve, idealistic. I admire that because I think I used to be that way myself.”
“You only think?”
“My dear, I am a hundred and forty-three years old. My life was hard. I’d like to believe I had a period of idealism, but I doubt it.”
“Hm.”
“But all the same… You see Claudio’s deeds as noble because the people he murdered were, by their own deeds, murderers and violators themselves. What you fail to see is that these people-most of whom wind up having their bodies dumped in some river or marsh like so much garbage-become Displaced themselves. Many never arrive at the gates of Dis because they become so focused on finding their bodies.
“The connection between a murdered person and his body is so strong because of what they suffered through, and a Displaced already prone to violence is likely to cause further problems among the Living than would a good Displaced who eventually turned to haunting or possessing the Living.
“Do you understand now?” Saint Sorrows asks. “Never mind that Claudio robbed a person of the chance to repent before his or her eventual death; his vigilante mindset has unleashed more cruelty than he could ever account for. And as much as I understand the sentiments, these people become my responsibility, and I refuse to let more of them get away than already have.”
Well…what do you say to something like that? Nothing, I guess. He’s justified himself for feeling the way he does, but I have my own reasons for involving myself, and Sorrows isn’t going to detract me from that. Claudio deserves a fair trial. Punishing him with Second Death or time in the Institution isn’t going to fix the problem. It only gives Saint Capone more power than he has and deserves as the ruler of Dis. Somehow, I’m sure Sorrows knows that-just as I’m sure he knows that I am more enlightened about the consequences and less convinced to leave Claudio to the figurative wolves because of them-but he isn’t ready to admit he is Capone’s pawn.
Fine. To each their own, for lack of a more original phrase. His epiphany will come in due time.
I put the remaining half of my sandwich back in its wrapper, back in the lunchbox. The snap! of its metal clasp closing into place seems to echo for miles. Saint Sorrows scratches at his jaw, looking around.
“We’ll have to come back tonight.” He gets to his feet. “If they haven’t shown themselves now, chances are they won’t until they can be certain they are safe.”
“Then what does it matter, when we come? They’re just gonna be scared of us anyway, right?”
“It isn’t us they fear. Whether they are aware of it or not, they seek me as actively as they seek their own remains.” Sorrows gestures for me to unlock my brakes as he walks behind me. “How would you feel about going to a museum?”
“A museum?”
“Mm-hm. Just to pass the hours until sunset. Or we could go to lunch and then a museum, provided you are interested in more than a café sandwich.”
I’m not sure what to make of this, considering he just spent the last few minutes basically calling me an ignorant meddler. But something about the tone he uses when he makes his second suggestion about lunch… Wasn’t it Claudio who warned me that his cousin liked to wine and dine his female quarry before going in for the eventual strike? At the same time, probably because of the Antabuse he's been on lately and the clearly-genuine seriousness with which Sorrows takes his job…
“We can go to lunch, but only if you promise to tell me more about yourself. You owe me a continuance of the story you started yesterday on the plane,” I tell him. “And your expository just now doesn’t altogether count.”
Hands splayed on either side of his head, Saint Sorrows lies down on his stomach. He turns his head to rest an ear against the grass, looking very sad as he does so. When he shuts his eyes and takes in a deep breath, I suppose I could almost believe he’s trying to listen for…something. The gentle tread of spiritual feet? I don’t know. We’ve been sitting in Burr Oak for at least two hours now--or at least I have. When we arrived, Sorrows parked my wheelchair under the shade of this tree while he went off to walk amongst the gravestones. Given that the cemetery is mostly grass and given my history of having my front wheels catch in hidden ruts (with disastrous results), I basically haven’t moved for two hours. I’ve kept busy as a lookout in case of cops, but nobody has come. There isn’t even any press.
Somehow, I think that’s the doing of the blonde Italian currently lying in the grass. He looks so bizarre lying on the ground like that, dressed like the priest he most certainly isn’t, no matter how much Catholic devotion he actually has or manages to fake…
“How much longer are we gonna be here, Sorrows? These spirits…deceased…er… These people clearly haven’t stuck around. They’re probably off tormenting the gravediggers.”
Sorrows opens one eye, then the other; he sits up on the balls of his feet. “You have no patience, Cristina. Or perhaps you have patience for everyone but me.”
“Probably the second.”
“Why is that? Why do you hate me so much?”
“I don’t hate you.” I drum my fingers on the Rorschach lunchbox resting across my lap. “I reserve my hatred for…well, mostly for other women, I guess. I don’t even really hate the Organ Grinder, but when it comes to Annabelle…or Cassandra…”
“Who?”
“Nobody you know, apparently.”
I stop drumming my fingers on the metal surface of the lunchbox. The noise seems too intrusive for the eerie calm of a cemetery-especially this one, where so much…displacement has gone on, for want of a sanitary phrase. Sorrows looks confused.
“If you don’t hate me, then…why are you so hostile?”
“It’s easier to feel hostile than to admit I feel sorry for you.”
“And you feel sorry for me-?”
“Because you’re a manipulating, lecherous drunk who is also easily manipulated by the company he keeps.” The Saint fixes me with a sour look. “Oh, come on. You know it’s true, Sorrows. And I feel sorry for you because you don’t see it.”
“Oh, because you see everything, don’t you? You see it all.” He gets to his feet. Grinning, he strides towards me. “You are the chosen one, the one girl-nay, person-blessed with the Sight in all the world who can see even what is hidden from others, from even the most experienced seers!”
“I never claimed-”
“Ah, no, because you are humble and nothing that happens to you is provoked. It is merely your misfortune to be the source of so much entanglement. ‘She never asked for this,’ I hear Essex and Viticus cry endlessly. But you put yourself in these situations! You never leave well enough alone!
“And what makes you so special as it is? Your visions came late to you; nineteen and barely aware of us! Your artist friend-Sally-bested you by several years.”
“I’ve been a dead man’s storyteller for a lot longer than I could see them, Sorrows. And I don’t need eyes to know how it’s going to play out for you, but you do, and soon. Very soon.”
He chuckles softly before turning his dark eyes on the expansive cemetery. Shaking his head, Sorrows breathes a sigh.
“You’ve listened to nothing I’ve said. But why should I be surprised? The Living never listen well enough. I didn’t, and I am certainly more qualified than you-and yes, I said exactly that. I am much more qualified to say that I never asked for any of the suffering I received, but I have made of it what I could while you continue to have things…handed to you! And if you get into trouble, then you have your Ghost or Essex or Viticus or even my cousin rushing to help you.
“Meanwhile, my Penitents and my Displaced…” He turns back to look at me, hands on his hips. “Why do you meddle so much in our affairs? I understand curiosity, Cristina, but there is a fine line between curiosity and meddling, and you cross it much too often.”
“I meddle,” I say through gritted my teeth, “because half the afterlife is privy to showing up on my doorstep.”
“You could say no,” Sorrows says. “Turn them away. My cousin is a great example-”
“I knew it.” I throw my hands up. The lunchbox nearly falls off my lap. “I fucking knew it! I just knew that this entire trip was about-”
“No. You assume. And you assume it wrongly-” Saint Sorrows frowns briefly. “-but the fact remains the same. You are meddling without thought, simply because you disagree with Edward’s method of ensuring justice.”
“What and you don’t? His method is unjust, Sorrows! You and I both know he had Conradas kidnapped to draw Claudio out of hiding, even if I can’t immediately prove it in court, and then he made Claudio sign a false confession to both free Conradas and protect Sally-”
“Edward’s claim on Sally as his fiancée is legal and binding. He has every right to go after her should he so wish it. And as for my cousin, what about the people he has murdered? Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people; did any of them ask for what came to them?”
“Yes!”
“No.” The Saint’s eyes glare with conviction on this point. “Their deeds were horrifying and worthy of the most severe punishment in Dis, but the right to live was just as much theirs as their victims’.”
“Are you on crack?! Has the alcohol finally done you in?” I ask. “Those people abused, raped, and murdered innocent people!”
“But it was never Claudio’s-nor anyone else’s-place to take upon themselves the role of final judgment! And while you protest that it isn’t fair, us forcing him to answer for his actions, you haven’t the slightest clue of the full-scale havoc he’s wreaked on my end.”
“Then enlighten me. Please. Enlighten me.”
A swift rush of air escapes through my chaperone’s nose. He turns, pacing away from me as he runs his fingers through his hair and mutters in Italian. I open up the lunchbox and reach for the sandwich I picked up at Starbucks. Sorrows comes back almost as soon as I’ve gotten halfway through the thing, but he doesn’t look any less like he wants to ship me back to Texas.
Which, I can’t believe I’m about to admit, would be just fine with me.
“If only you understood,” Sorrows murmurs, looking down at the grass. “I could forgive him for his ignorance in life, and I would be more than willing to get on my knees and ask his forgiveness for the things I’ve done to him and for the ways I have betrayed him, but what he has done to me by continuing… He must be stopped, Cristina. Claudio will not stop on his own. He will only increase in his dangerousness, in his depravity.”
He sits down on the grass, very nearly at my feet. He looks up at me and smiles a little.
“You don’t believe that, do you?” he asks.
I hesitate with a sigh. “I can’t. I believe he can be stopped, and that he must be stopped, but letting Capone do this to him, to put him on trial like this…? Capone doesn’t care if Claudio stops killing people or not. He just needs the good press and you to play the quiet follower.”
“Is that all you think I am?”
This time there is no hesitating. “Yes.”
Sorrows chuckles softly. He smiles in a strange way, not quite with his lips but more with his eyes. He picks at the grass. “For your brilliance, your intelligence…you know very little. Your are naïve, idealistic. I admire that because I think I used to be that way myself.”
“You only think?”
“My dear, I am a hundred and forty-three years old. My life was hard. I’d like to believe I had a period of idealism, but I doubt it.”
“Hm.”
“But all the same… You see Claudio’s deeds as noble because the people he murdered were, by their own deeds, murderers and violators themselves. What you fail to see is that these people-most of whom wind up having their bodies dumped in some river or marsh like so much garbage-become Displaced themselves. Many never arrive at the gates of Dis because they become so focused on finding their bodies.
“The connection between a murdered person and his body is so strong because of what they suffered through, and a Displaced already prone to violence is likely to cause further problems among the Living than would a good Displaced who eventually turned to haunting or possessing the Living.
“Do you understand now?” Saint Sorrows asks. “Never mind that Claudio robbed a person of the chance to repent before his or her eventual death; his vigilante mindset has unleashed more cruelty than he could ever account for. And as much as I understand the sentiments, these people become my responsibility, and I refuse to let more of them get away than already have.”
Well…what do you say to something like that? Nothing, I guess. He’s justified himself for feeling the way he does, but I have my own reasons for involving myself, and Sorrows isn’t going to detract me from that. Claudio deserves a fair trial. Punishing him with Second Death or time in the Institution isn’t going to fix the problem. It only gives Saint Capone more power than he has and deserves as the ruler of Dis. Somehow, I’m sure Sorrows knows that-just as I’m sure he knows that I am more enlightened about the consequences and less convinced to leave Claudio to the figurative wolves because of them-but he isn’t ready to admit he is Capone’s pawn.
Fine. To each their own, for lack of a more original phrase. His epiphany will come in due time.
I put the remaining half of my sandwich back in its wrapper, back in the lunchbox. The snap! of its metal clasp closing into place seems to echo for miles. Saint Sorrows scratches at his jaw, looking around.
“We’ll have to come back tonight.” He gets to his feet. “If they haven’t shown themselves now, chances are they won’t until they can be certain they are safe.”
“Then what does it matter, when we come? They’re just gonna be scared of us anyway, right?”
“It isn’t us they fear. Whether they are aware of it or not, they seek me as actively as they seek their own remains.” Sorrows gestures for me to unlock my brakes as he walks behind me. “How would you feel about going to a museum?”
“A museum?”
“Mm-hm. Just to pass the hours until sunset. Or we could go to lunch and then a museum, provided you are interested in more than a café sandwich.”
I’m not sure what to make of this, considering he just spent the last few minutes basically calling me an ignorant meddler. But something about the tone he uses when he makes his second suggestion about lunch… Wasn’t it Claudio who warned me that his cousin liked to wine and dine his female quarry before going in for the eventual strike? At the same time, probably because of the Antabuse he's been on lately and the clearly-genuine seriousness with which Sorrows takes his job…
“We can go to lunch, but only if you promise to tell me more about yourself. You owe me a continuance of the story you started yesterday on the plane,” I tell him. “And your expository just now doesn’t altogether count.”