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

“The prosecution dropped their case. There wasn’t enough evidence to convict me, that and they didn’t find my wife’s body so you know, no body, no crime and they had to let me go” he said smiling, looking like a doting father towards the heavens.

“They had no evidence, not a thing?”

“Nothing. Nothing to link me to killing my wife.”

“Oh the grace of god. And you’re a free man now?”

“Yes sir, a free man”

“Because of Jesus?”

“Because of Jesus.”

“Oh the grace of god. Praise Jesus. You see, all you need is faith in Jesus Christ. And who is that beside you?”

“This is my boy” he said, patting his hands on the boy’s shoulder causing him to flinch and squirm from the pain that writhed from the black and purple bruises that ran from the skin just under his collar to all the way down his back and along his lower legs.

“A Family reunited by Jesus. Jesus Christ is lord, praise Jesus” The 13th Apostle shouted, “now let’s have some music” he said cheering as at the bottom of the screen, deposit details streamed for bank accounts in thousands of cities around the world and showing the ease in making their monthly payments to the world church.

When the song started, Joao was broken from his spell and he looked around at the people beside him, all locked in absolute, stupid wonder, like an infant unto its own reflection or a dog upon a stern request.

Joao ran.

He ran down the hallways in circles.

He ran in circles for minutes and the groups of minutes and then halves of hours until finally he found an exit and he slipped out the door and onto the street.

When he left the building, a woman handed him an easy pay booklet with twelve printed payment receipts that he could pay for at any news agency or bank and make his obligation to the church. He had never had one of these before and regardless of how he felt towards The 13th Apostle, still; receiving this payment booklet, he felt older, responsible, like an adult.

He gently pressed the booklet in half and pushed it into the pocket of his jeans, patting lightly against the bulge before walking off down the road with his reason derailed, thinking of the wrong he had done for a collector of souls.

“Am I like a devil?” he thought, stepping onto the bus.

As the bus sped along the streets; clipping car mirrors and sending zealous bike riders wobbling off onto sidewalks, Joao stared idle out of the window, hardly participating with his eyes at all.

His window passed a thousand sights of which; in the common trait of normality, would have swelled him to swaggering delight, ignoring in absolute monastery, the idea or consensus of keeping one’s business and the perch of one’s stare to themselves or ne’er near strangers.

There was a young man sitting by the foot of a women’s boutique with his greasy hand outstretched begging for loose change and the open wound on his right led pulsed as if it were a thing itself with its own heart beat and emotional complications.

There was a sign leaning against his infected foot that was smeared with the filth from his hands and under his fingernails and it was impossible to read the extent of his plight so instead the young man, who; under a thick scruffy beard and a scabbed and blistered complexion, looked every bit an old man, drew attention to the horrible looking untreated wound on his leg that might have started out as a mosquito bite a year ago but; with enough careful inconsideration in the past however many necessary days, months and years, had become an eyesore that infected the decent passing of wandering attention, having hands reach briskly for jingling and coined empathy in disgusted appreciation for the will of god should one stray from their benevolent path or; for the new age non-believers and systematically clustered non-conformists, the rallied test of their wreckful verdure guised as that ever lingering moralising bitch called Karma, she whose name is spoken of only vehemently and because of whom, good will is only attended to out of boding fear of her just retribution for moral dissent; she, as present, giving and apparent in good tidings as is genuine sensitivity and gentle consideration in a father’s ascetic advice.

Joao didn’t notice him.

He was looking at a woman with a piece of flowered cloth wrapping up her hair who stood at the front of a small hair salon where she worked or refused to leave, holding a long green hose in one hand and a partly dampened cigarette in the other, staring listlessly at Joao through the yellow smeared glass of the pausing bus, with he and his eyes, conversing with the same unmoving concern, watching the smoking woman hosing the sidewalk and the feet of passers-by who hopped and skipped like gaming children to avoid the pith of her absence, looking back over their shoulders with a ‘say-nothing-do-nothing’ type of facial scorn.

The bus started up again, racing through the streets with the conductor hanging out the window, his arm flapping like a one winged pelican trying to shoo off the cars and motorbikes zipping past so that it could skip lanes and make one of many an impromptu stop.

Joao continued staring out the window as more and more people piled onto the bus until the last finite space was sated with bodies pushing against piles of other bodies, their open palms pressed against the backs of butting heads, keeping sweaty strands and clumps of hair from entering breathing mouths with a desperate semblance building into a climate of refreshing panic as the climate abounding fell stinking and warm from unwashed bodies rubbing against one another and unbrushed mouths recycling the musky, humid air; breathing short, fast and terrifically acute.

“Did you get your ticket?” one man said to another.

The other man nodded his head with the tip of his tongue trapped between his yellow teeth. He may have been suggesting something lurid and his friend acknowledged him with a laugh that had the woman beside him clench and shiver as if a fever of decency were trying to shrill of some acrid advance as the man’s sticky breath molested her ears.

The bus was loud and provoking with people shouting from one end to another about football scores and bad decisions and corrupt politicians and police who don’t do their job and football and violent criminals and drugs and car thieves and football and kidnappings and flooding rain and shitty traffic and football and that movie they said was good and that band that did that song and football and more football and even more football and he should have done this and he shouldn’t have done that and I would have done this and I know more than you, cause I know all the names and the plane crash and the car crash and the market crash and that celebrity who threw his three year old daughter out of the fifteenth floor window.

“Twenty million” shouted one person.

“What would you do with that?” shouted another.

Joao didn’t imagine what it would be like to have all of that money. He didn’t need to. If he had all of that money, it would only get spent or at best; saved, with the worry of being spent.

The bus sped along the road and stopped for a moment outside the café. Joao was resting his head on his hands and staring blindly out of the window, seeing everything before him with not enough care or consideration to name a single one.

Caught in his lingering stare; standing at the front of a crowded café, was Fatts, a familiar imposing figure, standing with his arms folded across his massive belly. Behind him, a crowd pushed about inside the café, all stamping their feet and fists and chanting out into the air.

Fatts didn’t flinch or flicker at the commotion behind him which was building into a sure incident. He simply looked quietly and without affection towards Joao, who was looking back; straight through him.

The bus pulled off down the street and after several stops, Joao calmly pressed the red button and squeezed out of the doors, feeling a shudder in his heart as his feet gave way slightly with the ground beneath him crumbling and he slipped into a small puddle of murky water.

The Nice Old Lady across the road, smoking in front of her store, laughed as Joao stumbled forwards and was saturated by a splash of water as the bus pulled away quickly. She didn’t try to hide her smirk or lessen her choir. She roared as if she were sharing the funniest joke she had ever seen and as she laughed, the growing cancer in her lungs laughed with her, casting sticky and coarse phlegm into her throat so her carnivorous laugh went from that of a wretched witch’s cackle to a horse’s bellow to a spluttering engine, submersed at the bottom of a boggy marsh.

With a cigarette still in her hand, she pointed her convicting finger at Joao as her laughter turned to choking tears, holding her other fist against her mouth so as to catch her lungs, should they escape in the midst of this fit.

As Joao brushed the water off of his face and his pants, he turned to see scores of people; directing by the coughing old lady’s pointing finger, all taking time out of their struggle, out of their pith, out of their rush, out of their disconnection, to turn and to laugh at him. Each and every one of them all pointed their fingers just like The Nice Old Lady, inviting anyone who hadn’t seen yet to turn their attention to the soaking boy and laugh as they were laughing and ache as the ached and a great deal of humour shook inside of their bellies.

Joao couldn’t hear the things the people were saying as he turned and made his way up the hill towards his home. He wiped away more of the dirty water that streamed from his hair across his face and focused on every step as he walked up the hill, looking only at the lines where the slabs of concrete came together and pacing his every step so that his feet would fall either just before or just after the line, but never touching.

There was the usual trade of debauch all about him and some hookers whistled out in joyful appeal while others snarled and hurled empty cans and bottles in his direction. It was still the afternoon and they were drinking and cursing and acting like the sun had long been gone.

But Joao didn’t notice. He ignored the hookers, the junkies and the dealers and just kept staring at each step and his only thought was of Charity and how he would like to sit quietly with her watching some television; the Carriage of my Heart, and maybe hold her hand as well.

The thought of Charity beside him quenched the turmoil that was building in his mind; it lifted him from his depression.

When he arrived home, the church was in disrepair, the table he had bought was broken into pieces, papers were scattered all over the floor. There were animal or maybe human faeces in the middle of the room and the walls looked charred and blackened, like someone had tried to take fire to them. It was so different to the place he had tidied in the morning and yet, it looked like he was glimpsing inside of himself.

The phone rang.

At first it sounded like an ambulance’s siren, it caused him the same alarm so he shook of his sombre and picked it up.

“Hello” he said.

“Joao, it’s your mother” Mother said.

Joao wanted to cry, but he couldn’t.

“Hello Mother” he said.

“Where is your father? Put him on the phone” she said.

Joao looked around. He couldn’t see him anywhere, only the trace of him having been here.

“He… went to get bread” he said.

“When will he be back?” asked Mother.

“Soon” said Joao