White and Other Tales of Ruin

I look at her, thinking, trying to decide whether or not I have. “Not as such,” I say. “Not really. I don’t think so.”

“And what does that mean?”

I shrug. “I’ve got faith in someone, but I don’t really think she exists.” If you know someone’s faith, you know their soul. I feel that Jade has always known my soul, and I think I may love her for that.

“I can’t come, Gabe,” she says. “It’s not too bad here. I know a few people. I’ll survive.” She nibbled at some fruit, but I could tell that she was less hungry than me. “You could stay?”

“You could come.”

We leave it at that.

V

As I board the ship, a roll of Jade’s bribe money sweating in my fist, I hear a sound like a swarm of angry bees. I glance up and see the flash of sunlight reflecting from one of the Lord Ships. It is at least two miles out to sea, drifting slowly across the horizon, but it provokes the reaction I expect.

The whole harbour side drops to its knees. Soldiers go down too, but they are soon on their feet again, kicking at the worshipping masses, firing their guns indiscriminately into huddled bodies. I search the crowd for Jade, then look for the alley she had pulled me into on that first day. I see the smudge of her face in the shadows, raise my hand and wave. I think she waves back.

The ship remains at anchor long enough for me to see the bodies piling up.

Hell

“ May you live in interesting times.”

— Anon

When she was thirteen, religion found Laura. She didn’t go looking for it, of that I was sure, but just as an insidious cancer had taken my wife seven years before, so religion stalked my lovely daughter and eventually stole her away. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. God is always so easy to blame.

She left in the night without saying goodbye.

The day before, we’d taken a trip to the local park. Laura wanted to find a suitable location for a photo shoot — she had dreams of becoming an actress and was slowly composing a most impressive portfolio — and I had a day owed to me at work, so we agreed to make an afternoon of it. I carried the picnic hamper and Laura nattered every step of the way, her non-stop chat and nervous laughter inherited from the mother she had barely had time to know. The hamper was heavy and the day was hot, we had jam tarts and cheese and cucumber sandwiches and bottles of beer for me and orangeade for Laura. She spoke of her hopes for the future, while my thoughts drifted to the past. I’d often come to the park with Janine, my wife, Laura’s mother. I smiled inside, a sort of comfortable melancholy that had all but replaced the raging grief. Then Laura tripped me and stole a bottle of beer from the spilled hamper, I ran after her and tackled her onto the grass, and the afternoon turned into one of those times you never forget, taking on a hue of perfection that cannot be eroded by the tides of time. For those few hours everything was faultless. Bad news was something that happened to unknown people in far-away lands. On the way home Laura hugged me and kissed my sunburned cheek, and she told me she loved me. And I knew that I’d be fine because in her voice I heard Janine. In her smile I saw my wife.

She left in the night without saying goodbye.

There was a note in her room to tell me why she’d gone. She’d scribbled it in a hurry as if afraid the dawn would find her out. It spoke of God and fear and faith and perfection and guilt and envy, and I thought she meant that she felt bad living as she did. But in truth, that note only went to confuse me more.

If only I’d known then that she had not even written it.

I tried to cope, I did my best, but in the end I went the only way I could to survive. I turned to Hell.

It had been a terrible six weeks since Laura had gone. I hadn’t heard a word from her, and although the police stressed that they were hunting high and low, they drew a blank. The International Police Force had been notified and her details had gone onto their database … although in a way I hoped I’d never hear from them. If I did, it may mean that her genetic fingerprint had been matched with that of a body pulled from the Volga in Moscow, or her dental records related to what was left of a car crash victim in France, a million possibles snicking and snacking through the organisation’s computers until match was found, match, a convergence of information that would mean a lifetime of misery for me instead of a vain, empty hope.