Mister B. Gone

* * *

But first, the Secret. It's important stuff I'm passing on to you, the kind of stuff that could change the world if the world would listen.

But no. The rings on the hands of the Popes just get larger and more polished over the passage of years, and the spittle on the lips of the men who kiss those rings — the men who rule in public places puppeteered by private hands — becomes more toxic and turns to pure poison by the lies and obfuscations they utter.

So, whether I have the Secret or you do, it doesn't matter. It won't change anything. Just let me unburden myself of the Secret, then you can burn the book and we'll have the best of both worlds, won't we?'

But be very quiet now. Because even when nobody wants to hear it, a Secret's still a Secret. It still has power. Maybe it's just that its moment hasn't come yet. Ha! Yes. That's possible. Perhaps even probable. Yes, I think probable. Its moment hasn't come.

But when it does, you'll have something worth living for. Imagine that! What it will feel like to get up in the morning and think: I know why I'm alive; I have a purpose, a reason to draw breath.

Imagine that.

Imagine thinking, and while you're imagining, listen:

I've got a Secret that the world's going to need one day.

* * *

Demonation! How lucky I was to have a father who hated me. A father who left me burning in that fire of confessions 'til I was a walking scar. Because if that had never happened, then I'd never have been able to pass through crowds of Humankind the way I did. I would never have dared go down into Joshua's Field if I'd been whole. And without Joshua's Field there would have been no meeting with my —

— my —

— teacher, was he?

— beloved, was he?

— tormentor, was he?

Yes. That he was. No doubt of that. I swear he created five New Agonies, made just for me, and all made of love.

I'm talking about Quitoon, of course. Until him I hadn't known it possible to have a God in your private Heaven: or to love and hate him with such intensity. To want him so close sometimes that in the throes of my telling him I wish I could just dissolve away into him, so that the two of us would never again be parted. And then he says something to hurt me: a deep hurt, a bitter hurt, the kind of hurt that only someone who knows me better than I know myself could say.

And even as I think of this, as I do now, I realize that the Secret that was hidden in Gutenberg's house had been with me all the way along.

I didn't see it, of course, because I was too busy feeling sorry for myself, thinking I was the only one who'd ever loved and hated the same soul at the same time. Not until Gutenberg's workshop did I realize that the scrawl of contradiction that caused my head and heart to roar and blaze was writ large in the very workings of the world.

It was love that moved all things. Or rather, it was love and its theft, its demise, its silence, that moved all things. From a great fullness — a sense that all was well with things, and could be kept so, with just a little love — to an emptiness so profound that your bones whined when the wind blew through them: The coming and going between these states was the engine of all things. Is this making sense to you, not just as words, but as feeling; yes, and truth; truth undeniable, truth irresistible? I'm watching your eyes following the lines of my memories and my musings, and I wonder: Are we connected, you and I?

We might only have each other now. Have you considered that? True, you may have friends who insist on telling you their petty little aches and pains. But you've never had an intimate who was demon, have you? Any more than I've ever reached out to one of your kind to ask for anything, as I have reached out to you. Not once have I requested a single thing, even a donation as inconsequential as a flame.

Anyway, the workshop. Or, more particularly, the Archbishop (who had, by the way, the rankest breath I have ever been obliged to inhale) who told me to:

'Get out. Immediately! You've no business here.'

'He's my business!' I said, pointing at Quitoon. 'And that woman beside him, she's not a woman at all she's — '

'Been possessed by an angel,' the Archbishop said. 'Yes, so I see. There's another one behind you, demon, if you care to look.'

I turned, in time to see light spilling from another of the men who had been working on the press. It poured from his eyes, and from his mouth, and from the tips of his fingers. As I watched him he picked up a simple metal rod, which he lifted up, intending, I'm sure, to beat out my brains. But once the rod was held high it caught the contagion of light from his eyes, and became a length of spiraling fire, which threw off flames that fluttered overhead like a swelling cloud of burning butterflies.

Their strangeness momentarily claimed my attention, and in that moment the man-becoming-angel struck me with his sword.

Fire, again. Always fire. It had marked every crossroad in my life. Its agonies, its cleansings, its transformations. All of them were gifts of fire.

And now, this wound, which the man-becoming-angel delivered in its less than perfected state half a step short. It was the saving of me. Any closer and the blade would have cut through me from shoulder to my right hip, and would certainly have brought my existence to an end. Instead it inscribed a line across my body but only sliced into my scarred flesh an inch at most. It was nevertheless a dire wounding, the fire cutting not only my flesh but some fleshless part of me too; the pain of it was worse than even the cut, which was itself enough to make me cry out.

With both my substance and my soul slashed wide, I was unable to return the blow. I reeled away, bent double by the pain, stumbling blindly across the uneven boards, until my arm found a wall. Its coldness was welcome. I pressed my face against it, trying to govern the urge to weep like a child. What use was there in that, I reasoned. Nobody would answer. Nobody would come. My pain possessed me; as I, it. We were our other's only reliable companion in that room. Agony my only certain friend.

Darkness closed in around the limits of my sight, and my knowledge of myself went out like a candle, which then lit, flickered back into life again, and again went out, and was again lit, this time staying alight.

In the meantime, I had sunk down against the wall, my legs folded up beneath me and my face pressed to the wall. I looked down. Fluids blue-black and scarlet came out of me, running down over my legs. I turned my face away from the wall a few inches to see that the two fluids, unwilling to be intertwined, were forming a marbled pool around me.

My thoughts went to Quitoon, who had been standing beside Hannah when last I'd seen him. Had the angel already smothered him in her brightness, or was there something I, a wound within wound, might still do to help him?

I willed my shaking arms to rise, my hands to open, and my palms to push me from the wall. It was hard work. There wasn't a sinew in my body that wanted to play this fool's game. My body shook so violently I doubted I would even be able to stand, much less walk.

But first I had to see the state of the battlefield.

I turned my unruly head towards the workshop, hoping I would quickly locate Quitoon, and that he would be alive.

But I did not see him, nor did I see anybody, other than the dead. Quitoon, Hannah, Gutenberg, and the Archbishop, even the demon who had been poised outside the window, were gone. So, too, were those few workers who had survived the demon's assault. There were only the bodies, and me. And I was only here because I had been mistaken for one of them. A living demon left amongst the human dead.

Where had they gone? I turned my stuttering vision towards the door that led back to the way I'd come,