Prelude
He moved secretly in the dark to a higher perch for a better vantage from which to see the eternal city. The name was a mockery. A final pathetic painful joke told by those who never really knew her. She was not what she used to be. It was like looking at a well preserved corpse that drunken people tried to animate in their own horrific stupidity. An attempt to claim that life was still somehow within. But it was a corpse all the same and the people who lived in her were eating her alive…parasites slowly decomposing her until there would be nothing left. Perhaps this was what continued to draw him back again and again…he could identify with her.
Roma had died a long time ago, betrayed by her own children and left to the ravishing hands of the Huns, Visigoths and Vandals. The rampaging darkness from the north had raped her and stolen her beauty while the strange exotic Mohamadians had stormed up from the south to finish her off. Together they washed away her children and left these lost vagabonds in control. There was only one true Roman left in all the world to mourn her death but there were no tears in him. He could stand here and look out over the pale moonlit bones of his mother and yearn for older days, better days…but they were not to be. Nothing was the same any more and he was as dead as she was…perhaps moreso.
In the pale moonlight he was cold stone; an empty statue doomed to non-existence forever it seemed. He was the unbound golem of a dead Jewish carpenter, animated but empty and without words. When he began to doubt all that had happened and sought sunlight or the solace of the empty churches, his creator would make himself known again in pain and the world would rush in proving through an aching 2,000 years of vagabond wandering existance, that doubt was futile.
He could stand in this place for days…weeks even if it weren’t for the rising blight…the so-called life-giving sun that seemed only to destroy what little life was left of his soul. He had done it before…taken to the catacombs after the invasions and laid in a grave nook for weeks; unmoving; neither cold nor warm…hoping perhaps that the gnawing emptiness would leave and he would some day simply feel the grace of fading away. Of course he had long since lost hope that his end would ever come. So he waited, followed the rules and waited.
Marius Longinus Albinus, one-time centurion of Rome, stood unmoving on the topmost bones of the old imperial palace on Palatine Hill and studied the lights of the imposter that called herself Rome but was not. Below him was the Circus Maximus…a ghost now, but once a place of life, blessed brutality and laughter.
The herald of dawn, Aurora, was rising in the east in all her disgusting, rosy hope-filled joy and with it shades of the sickness stirred within. It was time to crawl into the earth like the cockroach he was. He could not do this for much longer…he yearned for an empty place. A place without history, at least not his history. He yearned for the west across the great sea…soon he would journey.
There were dreams. One would think that the dead do not dream but they do…most vividly, and the dreams of the dead are not pleasant. Marius remembered. In the sleep that was not sleep he saw the images of a lost life and what once was. Flashes of life, like colour developed in black and white chemicals rolled as sepiatone through his inner being. There was Sabina in all her glory…all that he had ever wanted wrapped in bronze skin the colour of Mediterranean sand and hair of honey. Lost to him because of duty. There was Aurelia who stood in his mind’s eye as his strongest accuser and his heart would burst with shame and sadness if he had one; if he could feel anything. If there were feelings they were far away, like distant echos bouncing off unreachable canyon walls – somehow this was worse.
Chapter 1
Simon was still in the bar, bleary from pain and tequila when Marius suddenly loomed over him like a white marble obelisk and bared his fangs as he spoke:
“What is it you want Simon, ” he asked in a deep, somewhat sonorous voice. “Tell me what consumes you?”
Simon was afraid to say it.
Even in the depth of this stupor, some sensible part screamed at him to remain quiet, but it was as if the truth was dragged from his lips unwillingly.
“I want him dead,” he said plainly. “I want him gone as if he never was. But first, I want everyone he has ever loved to suffer and die. I want him to know their pain and to know he caused it…for taking her from me.”
Marius listened attentively and then watched Simon quietly for a moment with practiced studiousness before he spoke through a small slit of a smile.
“I can make this happen, you know, ” Marius said as he casually wiped the bar with a cloth. The lights flickered overhead. “Every bleak and horrible word, beyond even your worst imagining…I can make them scream even beyond death, and he will feel all of it before the end…I can make it…exquisite.”
Simon just stared at him, and he knew the truth of it as he listened.
“Do it.” Simon responded almost without thought.
“Are you certain?”
“Do it. “
“I will tear his sanity from him as flesh is torn from the living bone.”
At this Simon shivered involuntarily. It moved through his entire body from tip to toe. What was he doing? A small, quiet part of him asked this question even as the larger, more eager part assented.
“Do. It.” Simon said once more, slowly, punctuating each word. He pushed that small voice, the voice the only sane part of himself, back, deep into the quieter part of his mind and locked it away…maybe forever.
“As you wish.”
“How much do you want? What will this cost me?”
“Oh my boy, ” said Marius. “The deed itself is the cost.” And then he laughed. A cold, hollow, chilling sound that echoed off the walls and felt like the prairie winter wind raking across Simon’s skin.
Simon awoke the next morning laying on the ground and soaked through in the morning dew as the first rays of sunrise slanted across his vision. There was a curious fox sitting not six feet away staring at him as though he didn’t belong here.
Slowly sitting up letting the fog in his mind clear, Simon looked around and realized he was in the town cemetery. Further investigation revealed he had been asleep on his mother’s grave which gave rise to confusion and muffled sobs rising deep within his chest from a freshly awakened old grief he had tried to stiffle in recent months.
Simon had no memory of how he got here. He remembered driving out of town in unquenchable pain and then waking here this morning, his car parked along the side of the narrow gravel road maybe eight meters away.
He turned and looked at the grave stone and let lose all of the pain that he had been struggling to keep at bay for so long. He wailed and sobbed and shook at the violence of it, all the while feeling as though another version of him was calmly, emotionlessly, hovering above watching it unfold with mild disinterest and perhaps even annoyance.
Finally, after exhausting what seemed an endless resevoir of tears Simon stood and looked down at the name on the stone – Margaret (Tristitia) Fescher.
“Oh mum,” Simon sobbed. “I fear I have sold myself to a darkness that is going to consume me…I’m afraid for the town mum…I’m so afraid…I don’t know what I’ve done.” He trailed off, new sobs wracked his body as his knees gave way and he curled up on the grass beneath him throwing up.
The fox, unimpressed, moved on.
Chapter 2
Simon was a good man.
By all accounts 32-year-old Simon Fescher was perhaps one of the nicest people who had ever lived in the small town of Abadon, Manitoba, population 2,458 depending on the day and the latest news from the Happy Hearts Care Home or the regional hospital 17 kilometres away.
Simon was born in Abadon, grew up in Abadon, and with the exception of two years for college in Winnipeg, Simon had lived in Abadon his entire life and planned on dying in Abadon and being buried next to his mum in Holy Blood Cemetery on the hill overlooking the western prairie.
His college degree had been in Business Administration and was meant to help him as he learned to take over the family business, a regional ag sales and rental company that had been started 45 years earlier by his grandfather as more of a fix-it-all kind of mechanic garage.
Simon never felt he needed to go to college, but his mum insisted.
“An educated man is a respected man,” said his mum who had never gone to school past grade 9 in order to help on the farm and with the business.
In Simon’s experience this was not necessarily true given that most of his friends made fun of him for moving to the city for school and claimed he had a sort of ‘better than everyone else” air since he came back.
He didn’t feel like he had changed, although the city was a pretty amazing place with its high rises and the worldly peers he met. Students from India, and Ukraine, and other exotic locales Simon had only read about or saw on the internet.
Simon had never even seen a person of colour in real life until he went to school in Winnipeg. Abadon wasn’t exactly a destination so much as a place you were from. It wasn’t on any of the major highways. It was 4 hours from Winnipeg and about 5 minutes from the North Dakota border.
To Simon it was home. It was where he met Andrea, the love of his life, his wife and the mother of his daughter Esther.
Met might be too strong a word. In some ways Simon and Andrea had known each other from the womb. Their mothers were best friends and neighbours growing up. They attended the same church together. Simon and Andrea were dedicated in the same ceremony and baptized in the same lake on the same Sunday.
Getting married just made sense. In fact, that’s essentially how 21-year-old Simon, fresh home with his diploma, proposed after a church potluck one summer Sunday at the local park. He asked Andrea to go for a walk down by the creek, got down on one knee, held out his grandmother’s wedding ring and said:
“Andrea, we’ve known each other our whole lives. You love God, and I think you love me. We just make sense you know. I know you’d be an amazing mother and a good wife – would you marry me?”
In response Andrea said matter-of-factly:
“Simon Feschel, it took you long enough. Most of my friends were engaged in high school and here I am practically an old maid waiting for you to get back from college. You’re lucky I waited.”
“So…that’s a yes than?” Simon asked.
“Of course it is foolish boy,” she said. “Get up now before those pants get so dirty they won’t come clean.”
Simon and Andrea were married three months later in a small church ceremony with just their families and a few friends.
From there they moved into Simon’s grandparent’s house who had taken the opportunity to move into the assisted living facility in town with the understanding that Simon would buy the house from them over time.
Getting a mortgage was fairly straight forward given that Simon’s uncle Fred was the local credit union manager.
“I’m co-signing and since you’re part owner now of the business there shouldn’t be a problem,” Fred had said. “A man needs to give his wife a good home.”
There was always a sense that Uncle Fred might have been a tad annoyed by how the business ownership had been given to his older brother Bob, Simon’s dad who had died years earlier when a tractor he had been working on managed to roll right over him.
Simon’s grandfather had simply said – “that’s the way of things Freddy. To the eldest the spoils. Don’t worry, it’ll make you work harder and build character.”
Well, he wasn’t wrong about the working harder part. Fred worked himself to the bone every day of the week excepting the sabbath and it had definitely paid off.
Chapter 3
Nearly nine months nearly to the day after their wedding Simon and Andrea welcomed little Esther into the world. It was a delivery not without its complications.
“Simon. Simon. Siiiimoooon?!”
It was Dr. Schengler’s voice sounding like it was coming from a thousand miles away. Simon slowly looked up.
“Are they ok doc? Is Andrea ok? Is the baby ok?”
“Simon, Andrea is going to be ok and you are now the proud father a beautiful baby girl,” said Schengler.
“A girl? Oh wow…” he trailed off looking at the wall. “What happened doc?”
“Well Simon I won’t go into the technical details, but Andrea suffered what’s called a uterine tear. Worst I ever did see in all my years. But she’s a tough girl and refused to give in.”
“Could we have…I mean…how?”
“Oh, it’s nothing you could have done anything about,” said Schengler placing a fatherly hand on Simon’s shoulder. There’s no warning about these sorts of things. Sometimes they just happen.”
“We prayed everyday for a good birth,” said Simon. “I don’t understand how this could happen.”
“Well maybe your prayers are the reason you still have a wife and now a daughter,” said Schengler. But Simon, you need to know…Andrea will never have any more children. It’s not going to be possible. You’re going to need to tell her when she’s well enough to hear and we’ll schedule some follow-ups to keep an eye on things.”
No more children. Simon heard the words. Each one landed like the blow of boxer closing in on a win – slow, powerful and deliberate. He understood them. He and Andrea had always talked about lots of kids…a “real litter” she would joke, and he would laugh with her.
Chapter 4
Marlene Wainika was not from Abadon. Oh sure she had lived there 34 years but this was not nearly long enough to “be considered “from” a town like this. Heck there were people second generation who weren’t necessarily “from” the town. No one ever said it, it was more of a vibe you picked up. For those that were the subject of it though, well it may as well have been shouted from the rooftops –
“MARLENE WAINIKA IS NOT ONE OF US!”
Frankly this suited Marlene just fine. She came here as a young 20 year old bride from the city. Married to Stuart “Stew” Wainika…a man of little repute and less ambition, son of dead parents, brother to none, inheritor of a small patch of land just outside town.
To Marlene, Stew may as well have been a prince. He owned his own house! At 21 years old even. Heck he owned a farm…(no one local would ever have called the 7 acres that Stew owned a farm). Stew was in the city to pickup an odd piece of machinery he couldn’t get in Abadon. Instead of just getting Triple F to order it he went himself to avoid what he called “being gouged”.
This was not lost on those of the locals who held sway via gossip and coffee talk. Though as much an Abadoner as anyone Stew lost what little prestige his parents (God rest their souls) passed on to him as a result.
So there was Stew, all 6’4″ 146 lb beanpole of him, standing in her father’s driveway haggling for the piece of equipment he dad had stolen only the week before.
“Listen, I ain’t paying that,” Stew said. “I know what its worth. I own mah own farm, I ain’t no ignorant city prick you can just screw over,”
Stew had Marlene at “I own my own farm.”
Marlene hung around in the background while Stew and her father yelled back and forth at each other for a while. She kept giving sidelong glances at Stew until he finally caught one out of the corner of his eye. When he did Marlene just pulled up the corner of her mouth in a sly smile and stared right at him. She called it hooking the fish and it worked more often than naught.
It worked like a charm. She could see it in his eyes and the way his speech stumbled ever so slightly.
Harnessing Chaos 