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take me to church
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
offer me that deathless death
good god let me give you my life
~ Hozier, "Take Me To Church"
...
He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s a ghost. Dead lips flapping, congealed blood pumping through a network of cracked, dry veins, cold heart clenching and releasing like a lizard tail that keeps twitching after it’s been cut off. The man is crying, breathing, begging, stinking—showing all outward signs of life—but he’s a corpse. Rotten and still under muddy earth. The mirrors are draped in black, and his name is a muffled sob on his widow’s lips. He just doesn’t know it yet.
“Hit him, again, Seb. Let’s see if you can jog something loose.”
The corpse stutters and begs, and I shake my head. Useless, Mate, I want to say. Don’t waste your breath. It’ll only get a rise out of the boss, and it’s not going to save you.
I flex my fists, plant my feet, and swing. A wet crack echoes through the concrete room, and the dead man’s head whips back, a spray of blood landing like an abstract painting against the matte grey wall.
“You’re an artist, Sebastian,” Jim says, licking his lips. “I love your work.”
This is the only context in which he will use that word. I love the way you hold a knife. I love your ruthlessness, Seb. I love the bruises you make, the way you make them scream.
Maybe if I add them all up—all the ways Jim loves the pain I inflict—they’ll tally into something more. Something akin to affection. Warmth, even.
The corpse groans and drools, but he doesn’t speak anymore. I might have jogged him a little too hard. He wasn’t going to talk anyway, we all know this. There’s nothing he could say that Jim doesn’t already know. This is a game to the boss, or a message. Kill the right person in the right way, and it saves you having to kill a whole lot more down the line. Plus it gives Jim a chance to engage in his favorite pastime: watching me hurt people. Watching me make new corpses.
Some days, I think I’m a corpse, too. The walking and talking dead, like that show Jim makes us watch, the one about the sad zombies. Has it been decided already? Am I already dead? Certainly. Probably happened the minute I stepped into that alley, destiny set in motion by a shared cigarette and a bloody stain named Eddie. Maybe it happened before then, the moment I was back on English soil, or earlier than that, even—all the way back to diapers and toothless wailing in the night. It was inevitable, I think, that it should all come to this. That I would find Jim, or him me. That we should twine ourselves together, scorpion and frog, waiting for the sting of betrayal. Waiting for the corpse to finally realize he’s dead.
Some corpses walk around longer than others, and I’d say I’m having a pretty good run.
Jim steps close, and I relax my stance. I won’t be doing anymore hitting while his Armani is in range of bloody cast-off.
“Let me see, Tiger.”
He nods to my hands, and I dutifully lift them, knuckles bruised and split and shiny-black under a flickering bulb. He takes both hands and lifts them gingerly, reverently, like I’m a rosary and he’s a repentant sinner.
“Oh, Seb, that looks like it hurts.” His voice is so full of empathy, I can almost believe he cares.
I shake my head no. “I’ve had worse.”
Worse from you. Much.
Maybe I project these thoughts. Maybe he reads all in the set of my mouth or the twitch of my brow. Maybe it’s easily explained, but it seems like magic to me. Like a psychic call-and-response—I think, and he delivers.
I think of pain and he gives me pain. Magic. Repentant no more, he squeezes my hands, grinding knuckles together, tugging open abrasions until they’re weeping red all over his fingers and threatening to defile the crisp white cuffs of his shirt. He worships at the alter of pain, and I am his deity.
Or is he mine?
I don’t know. Do dead men have gods? I always thought religion was the purview of the living—corpses have no need for faith. I’ve never had much use for God, even before I was the walking dead. All those prayers, all those cries for help? Cities in ruin, bombed-out and running rivers of blood. Dead children rotting in the Afghan dust. Where is their God? What has he done?
No. Truth is, no one’s listening. Or if they are, there’s nothing they can do. Silent. Flaccid. Useless gods.
But Jim’s not like that. His religion may be hard and cruel, but it’s real: human sacrifices stacking up at the foot of his temple. Raising kings and tearing down armies. There’s nothing impotent about his power.
I’ll be the faithful, if that’s what he wants. I’ll be the desert wanderer preaching his word.
“And now? Does it hurt?” He leers, hungry and hopeful. “Really hurt?”
“Yes,” I say, my corpse-voice cracking.
“Do you like it?”
I nod. Humiliation wells thick and viscous in my throat, pumps sluggishly through the rubbery recesses of my brain.
“Good,” he intones, eyes shining like onyx. “Take care of that, and we can go home. Have a little more fun.”
He releases me then and steps back, wiping his hands clean on a pocket square. Stained and abandoned, the cloth falls to the ground as I turn to the corpse. His mouth won’t function in that state, but that hasn’t stopped him trying to save his neck. He still doesn’t know, poor bastard, still thinks he has a chance. He pleads with desperate eyes, and I marvel at the determination of humanity. I see it over and over again, the doomed lot of them, clawing and fighting through the last breath. Wasting it praying to deaf gods.
I make it quick and clean up my gear—no need to keep Jim waiting. We’ll leave the thing tied to the chair as a present for the blokes who come later. Maybe it’ll save some trouble down the road. Maybe not. Doesn’t matter to me either way.
Jim has promised an interesting night, and this corpse is going to make the most of what time he has left.