Empire of Light by Michael Bible

Author:Michael Bible
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2018-04-24T04:00:00+00:00

The stars were splendid, mystery abounded. A low electric humming radiated from the city. Forever was hunched in half shadow, half light. His eye patch made him seem wise, but he wasn’t. I held a hot knife between my teeth and rubbed fresh blood on my cheeks. Zorn’s guards killed the deer and Princess cleaned it.

* * *

—

THE NEXT DAY me and Molly went to the trailer early and Miles was up on the roof like always, carrying on. The light from the autumn sun was making him radiate. Molly held my hand as we listened to him rant about the epidemic of loneliness that no one was talking about.

Everyone’s displaced from the world, he said. The waters of despair are rising and no one seems to care as long as they stay dry.

We were together, the three of us, in a place of understanding and contemplation. I wanted to take those days and bottle them. I remember the smell of wood smoke from a neighbor’s chimney and the last of the blue ghost fireflies streaking across the twilight and big gorgeous storms coming out of nowhere. But mostly I remember sitting with Molly as we listened to Miles. It still had the mood of the old times but I could feel things were already changing. Charlie came home around noon distraught.

They fired me, he said. Twenty years I cleaned their toilets.

I thought this might happen, Miles said.

He got down off the roof and walked away into the long shadows at the end of the driveway. He walked with the same pace he used when he quit the team. Slow and determined. His hands behind his back, head bent forward in thought.

Are you going home, Molly yelled but he didn’t answer.

Why does he do this, I asked.

At this point, Charlie said. God knows and God cares.

Molly hugged him.

I’m sorry you got fired, she said. Those bastards never deserved you.

We waited for a while to see if Miles would come back but he didn’t so we went inside. Charlie was in a bad place. The years he gave and the way they fired him had seemed to lessen his spirit, belittle him. He got a drink of water and sat on the couch and put a cigarette in his mouth but his hand was too shaky to light it. Looking at him, watching him, I figured out what we were. All of us wanted to be useful somehow. There was something missing in us and we didn’t match up with the rest of the world.

What am I supposed to do now, Charlie asked.

You could get the band back together, I said.

They’re all dead now except for me, he said.

Charlie knocked over his water and Molly cleaned it up and got him another one.

Do you want a pill, she asked. I stole some from my mom.

What kind of pills, Charlie asked.

Painkillers, Molly said.

She passed them around like a priest with the wafers at communion. They were round white things, tiny pillows.

Should we snort them, I asked.

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