on the frame, then called the dog to see what he’d done. “This is Juliet,” he told the dog; then he remembered Juliet was someone from long ago, and this was just a dead street kid whose name he’d never known.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he murmured. “I should have asked her name. That’s what clean people do — they ask each other’s name.” He leaned over the corpse and shouted, “Why didn’t you tell me your name? Stupid!”
The dead girl answered with silence... not a profound silence, just the flat silence of death. When the living don’t speak, they’re always saying something with their silence; but a lifeless body has no implied message, no secret it might whisper if coaxed or intimidated. The corpse was now an “it,” not a “she” — a thing lying on rubble, as meaningless as air.
“Oh, Juliet,” he said. “Where did you go?”
He bent down, and the dog came forward, too, snuffling at the corpse. For a moment Rogasz watched, wondering what the dog would do... if the smell of cooked flesh would stir its appetite. But then he thought he didn’t want the dog to do anything to Juliet, so he took a burned chunk of pew and threw it off some distance so the dog would have something else to occupy its attention.
The dog ran to fetch, although it was a small dog and a big piece of wood. Growling happily, the dog began to drag the burned lump back toward the vampire.
Rogasz turned toward the organ pipes rising at the front of the church: a wall of pipes, a barricade that must be hiding something — the god who lurked in this place. “I’d like to mourn,” he called to the god. “I really want to feel that something has happened here. That something important has changed. I knew her, I played music for her, and she died. That should change me. What was it all for, if it didn’t change me?”
The god gave no answer.
“I have a dog now,” Rogasz told the god behind the pipes. “I have a dog named Skeeters and I’ll take good care of him. He’ll love me and I’ll love him, and we’ll play together all day long... in the sun. I’ve spent a day in the sun and I have a dog who loves me. What else do you want?” He grabbed a blackened chunk of brick and stood up suddenly. “What else could you want?”
With all his strength, he heaved the brick at the organ pipes, striking the largest pipe dead center. Metal clanged and crumpled, leaving a teardrop-shaped dent.
“What else do you want?” the vampire screamed. “Isn’t this enough? Juliet’s dead. Isn’t that enough? I’m burned and I have a dog. Isn’t that fucking enough?”
He pulled the knife from his thigh, loosing a spray of burned red blood. With a roar of fury he scrambled over the ruins of the church — nuggets of stained glass, the altar with its charred swath of linen, the roof beams fallen on top of the pulpit — and he propelled himself in a frenzied leap onto the organ’s remains... a palisade of sooty, paint-blistered pipes, barring him from God on the other side. He could hang there by jamming his hand into the mouth of one of the pipes, sharp metal cutting into his fingers; and with the other hand, his right hand, too burned to play piano but still strong enough to hold a knife, he slashed at the pipe barrier and howled, “Stupid!
“Stupid!
“Stupid!”
Rain fell soon after sunset... just a light shower, but enough to bring Rogasz back to consciousness.
He hung, arms outstretched on the rack of pipes, both hands thrust into mouth holes in the flues. His knife had fallen some time ago, after failing to do more than damage the false gold paint.
The dog had run off, upset by the vampire’s shouting.
Rogasz released his grip and dropped to the ground, landing heavily on the scattered debris. It was slick with the rain; he slipped and went sprawling. If he injured anything, if he broke bones in the tumble, he was no longer able to feel such insignificant pain.
Juliet’s face was wet in the twilight, her clothes lightly soaked. He didn’t like seeing her that way, but he didn’t want to cover her up. The rain had made the charcoal letters of her name bleed down the frame where he’d written them. Rogasz stared at them for a time, wondering if he should wipe the words away and write them again. No. The frame was wet, all the charcoal, too; he might not be able to write anything this time, and a streaky epitaph was better than nothing.
“I could have saved you,” he said. Gently, the vampire laid his hand on her cheek. “I could have made you like me; then you would have survived... like me. You wouldn’t thank me for that, not in the long run. Still, maybe I should have given you the choice. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
He bent over and kissed her cracked crusty lips. “You died in a church,” he whispered to her silent face. “You’ll be all right. And here...” His knife was lying atop the rubble a short distance away. He retrieved it and folded the girl’s limp hands around it, laying it across her chest. “This will keep you safe.” He was tempted to add,
Instead, he said, “I don’t know.” He kissed her again. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”
He smiled and patted her hands, making sure they held the knife firmly.
When he lifted his head from Juliet’s corpse, the Adversary was leaning against the ruined piano. “So,” the Lost One said, “how are you feeling tonight?”
“I don’t know.”
“Redeemed?”
Rogasz let himself take a deep breath. “Unlikely — I haven’t done anything to deserve it.”
“What did you want to do? Slay a dragon? Heal a leper?” The Adversary waved his hand dismissively. “Melodramatic crap. A childish need for flashy resolutions. Same as if you dropped to your knees and wailed that you were finally embracing God. That’s not salvation; that’s just trying to be the star in some grandiose show. Trust me, I know what salvation isn’t.” He laughed. “Still, you survived the whole day.”
Rogasz shrugged. “I’ve survived a lot of things.”
“True.” The Adversary pushed himself away from the piano and sidled forward over the debris. “Who’s the girl?” he asked, nodding toward the ground.
Rogasz opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Just a street kid,” he said at last. “I’ve been calling her Juliet.”
The Adversary raised his eyebrows. “And you’re Romeo?”
“No. I’m not Romeo and she’s not Juliet. She’s just dead.”
The Adversary stared at Rogasz silently. “You sound calmer,” he said. “More at peace than when we last spoke.”
“Just too burned out for rage. A day of shock therapy. Don’t expect it to last.”
“Nothing lasts, little brother. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Everything changes in time.”
“Have
“That’s up to you,” the Adversary replied. “But if a vampire can find a moment of grace... who knows who might be next?” He gave the ghost of a bow. “Stay sane, little brother; I look to you as my inspiration. Stay sane, stay sane, stay sane.”
With a backward wave of his hand, the Adversary walked into the darkness. Full night had fallen: a night rinsed with soft rain.
Rogasz decided to wait beside the corpse a while longer — maybe the dog would come back.
Author’s Notes
I’m normally a pretty cheerful guy... but when I saw the movie
I should know better than to see certain types of movies. If I’d seen a movie about the Care Bears, heaven knows what I might have written.
