Coffee and Sugar by C. Sean McGee (ready player one ebook .txt) 📕

They all yelled, each and every one of them, thinking that Joao would recognise their voice especially, amidst the taunts and screaming from hundreds of desperate and addled followers, each saying the word Joao more personable, more caring and more understanding than the last.

Joao ran and he didn’t stop, not for his falling lungs or his elastic legs. He ran until he was so far from where he started that he had no real idea of where he was.

He was somewhere downtown, on a street he didn’t know that was off many streets he had never heard of or seen before. He crouched behind a large skip bin that was placed crudely over a kerb near a construction site that was heavily boarded and while he crouched, he listened to his heart exploding in his chest, thinking he had never felt as scared as this in the whole of his life.

The ordinary and mundane had never been as appealing to him as it was right now; cleaning a floor, opening a can of vegetables, peeling the sticker off of the tomato sauce bottle, sweeping vomit, tucking his father into bed, watching the television or combing his hair, anything at all was what he would rather be doing and anywhere but here was where he wished he could be.

He looked quickly to his left and to his right but the street he was on was a desert of commotion. There was an old stray dog sitting by a bench seat across the road and he was scratching with his hind leg behind his ear and flapping his tail up and down against the ground as he did. The dog had a pained expression as if the attendance to its itch with his digging and scratching claws might be incredibly galling or insatiably good, it was hard to tell really whether the it was enjoying it or not.

Joao watched the dog and cast his stare on the shrub beside that grew unbaited from a hole in a red wall that stood erect behind the scratching dog. There wasn’t a lot of shrub as the hole wasn’t that large but it did look like the arm of a tree had pushed straight through the bricks to find itself some sun and Joao trained his eyes on the waving green that was picked on gently by the light breeze and he imagined; as he had done constantly of late, the small green shrub being parted lightly by the hand of a girl.

But as he stared out across the road, his mind felt funny and as he thought; as he had become so accustomed to, of a delicate hand parting the leaves but when the brush was cast aside, he saw his own face looking back. The hand was not his but his face was there. It was far from the opening and there was a rope around his neck keeping him hanging from a branch that was off at a height somewhere that he couldn’t see.

The dog stopped scratching and skipped gingerly across the road, stopping by Joao for a second to sniff his hands and to look him in the eye before pitter pattering away into the construction site behind, slipping through some loose panels and disappearing amidst the sprawl of rubble and flapping tarpaulin.

Joao followed, looing quickly behind as he darted to the fence and peeled back the broken panels so as to squeeze his skinny frame through. He took one last look at the deserted street before letting loose of the panels that jumped from his hands and swung like a pendulum in a heavy scraping swish before the two pieces came to a rest, one sliding over the other and both making invisible, the entrance behind the fence.

The bricks crumbled and crushed under his feet and though he tried to make secret of his pass behind the broken panels, he could do little to dampen the sound that invited cautious ears to his arrival.

The ground was hidden under a loose mount of rubble, broken bricks and half mounted walls that teetered on edge of collapse, moored by thick metal tubes, wires and piping that ran between the brickwork and pressed deep into the ground.

Joao made every step a tentative one, feeling the tip of his foot touch the bricks before the rest of his body followed. The tarpaulin tickled as it flapped under the course of the wind, its sharp corners lightly whipping the back of his neck while above him, the rest of the sheet pushed in and out as if it were breathing, being pushed down upon by the lightly blowing breeze.

And as he walked through a plastic sheeting that covered an entry into the building, the light vanished almost entirely and he stepped forwards, blind and calling quietly to the dog that was sitting a way off in the distance, in a dark part of the building in which he could not see, sitting and watching as Joao patted at the darkness with his wavering hand, whispering a coming command to the dog to which sat, waited and watched, alongside its master.

“Do you believe in god’s plan?” spoke the voice of a man, leaning down in the further dark and patting the small dog that sat beside him which lifted its snout high so that the man’s massive fingers and coarse nails could scratch against his skin in a fashion that his own could not.

Joao knew the voice immediately.

It was loud and booming like the sound of rolling thunder muted by guarding hands clasped over frightened ears.

“Come here son, let me show you something.”

The man stepped out from the retreat of shadows with the dog tailing by his feet. He swept the fearful Joao up in his arms and rested his assuring hand on the boy’s shoulder in a way that maybe his father might have done had he ever assumed the rank of good man or half descent father. Regardless, it took some of the paint off his red hand and he walked with The 13th Apostle into the construction.

“You see this here” he said, waving his arm around to point out an empty part of the site, “this is going to seat twenty thousand people and outside, we’re building a space outside with enough standing room for fifty thousand more. That will make us the biggest church in the known world, in god’s world. That’s his plan, to set his stage for the lord’s return and the apocalypse and you can be a part of that Joao” said The 13th Apostle.

‘The apocalypse?”

“In building that stage.”

The 13th Apostle turned and held his two great hands on Joao’s shoulder and the warmth that exuded from him filled Joao with a kindly confidence that made him swell with intrigue. The Apostle looked him in the eye without discipline, without disappointment and without disregard; a look that felt as foreign to him as his was to The Apostle, as he scrunched and grimaced his face in estranged appreciation.

“Are you ok son? You’re not retarded are you? Charity said you were a little strange.”

“I’m sorry sir. I’ve been feeling really strange in the past days. Real funny and stuff. Not retarded or nothing, just kind of funny, kind of sad. Do you think people can be saved? That Jesus can save everyone?”

“Well I know he can or I wouldn’t be here doing this now would I, dedicating my life to his word, singing his name and turning to him like the flowers do, the morning sun. Do you have a question in your faith?”

“No sir. I love Jesus. I just wonder… why he loves us, you know?”

The Apostle leaned down on one knee and even now as he lowered himself to the ground, he still towered over Joao, casting his shadow behind him like a fisherman’s net.

“All Jesus wants is for us to pass this test. And it’s never too late for any man, no matter how deep his wrong, to find Christ in his heart and be saved. That’s where people like us come into the equation Joao. It’s our job to help them open their eyes. Once they have Christ in their heart; and you know this,” he said adamantly, “their lives will find meaning and they can start to make better, all the hurt that they done. But Jesus, he is a patient man and he’ll wait an eternity; if that’s the time a man needs, he’ll wait that eternity, to answer that man’s prayer and when that man calls out the Lord’s name, when he’s down on his knees under the banner of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, when he gives his heart and soul into the hands of the son of god, when he casts off his fear, when he lays that first stone himself, you know what Jesus says?”

Joao wanted to shake his head but he stood dumbfounded.

“He says, welcome home my son. That’s what he says.”

Joao smiled.

“So everyone can be saved?”

“That’s right.”

“Everywhere? I mean, on the hill too?”

“Everyone can be saved Joao, but not everywhere. You can’t strike a match in the middle of a hurricane. You gotta hold onto that match until the storm passes and then you can do what needs to be done. That hill, it’s not part of god’s plan. Nobody on that hill wants to be saved; you gotta get em when they come down. Here is the only place we can save them” said The 13th Apostle.

“My daddy, he drinks a lot; a lot more than he did, since we moved onto the hill.”

“Is he violent? Is he out of control?”

“I don’t know. I don’t see him much anymore. He’s out most of the night and he’s drunk and asleep when I get up in the morning. I just clean up a bit before I leave. I think he’s real sad. He wanted to be like you and Jesus. He wanted to be a good man, to be famous.”

“And what about you Joao? What do you want?”

“I want to matter” he said.

“You matter to someone.”

“No, I don’t” he said.

“You matter to your mother and father, your family, you matter to them.”

“They’re mean, all of them. I’m no use on the farm and here, I can’t do anything right. My daddy drinks and he’s using drugs and I can’t stop him. And I think he might be seeing a girl, from one of the bars.”

“You sit in the desert too long and you’re gonna thirst.”

“I think about dying sometimes.”

Joao wept as The 13th Apostle took his great arms and pulled Joao close to his chest with such force that it felt as he if might squeeze all of the sadness and disbelief from his pores like an old and worn sponge.

“What if I told you Jesus has a plan for you? What if this is your plan?” said The 13th Apostle.

Joao didn’t respond. His tears spoke of his despondence. The Apostle squeezed him tighter, pressing his firm hand against the back of Joao’s head, almost smothering him as he wept against him cathartically.

“Your coffee,” said The 13th Apostle, pausing slightly so Joao could silence the flight of his sniffling and tears, “how do you do what you do?” he asked.

Joao gripped The Apostle’s waist and pulled his head away from his chest. His nose was running horribly and there was a long wet stream along The Apostle’s chest but The Apostle didn’t seem to care. Joao wiped away the hanging snot from his nose and sniffed heavily of what beckoned to follow from his wiping hand.

“I close my eyes and I just imagine stuff. I see stuff. I feel stuff” said Joao.

“Don’t be modest Joao. That’s not