The Messenger

Workshop traffic seems really down . . . don't really know if it's worth posting this but what the hell. What's here is probably about 1/5 of what the finished product should look like.



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It wasn’t dawn which awoke the messenger Janus Morgan, though no roof nor blanket covered his eyes. He opened them to a blindingly bright morning already well advanced. There was an incessant low metallic rumble and the ground was shaking, rattling his teeth and throwing pieces of decaying walls down onto him. Janus managed to raise his head and focus his eyes through the rancid sulfurous smoke on the end of a procession of heavy vehicles, carelessly painted in the deep mottled greens and grays of military camouflage.

Janus was sprawled atop an uneven pile of filthy rags, rubble, and powdery dust. Ashes and dust coated his face and clung to his hair. His simple clothing was brittle and faded, unraveling at the edges. The inside of his mouth was swollen and parched and dust scratched his throat. His whole body was seized with a profound weakness, rendering his limbs heavy and helpless. Pain like a steel knife pierced his throbbing head, while his stomach leapt and churned and made him gasp for air. With grim effort Janus reached down to the pocket on his leg: it was torn and empty. No.

Money. They gave him money and he lost it. His trembling hand probed every corner of the useless scrap of fabric. What happened? He had been sent to do a job, come back here to correct a mistake, his mistake probably, and all he had done was waste his time and throw away his money and now it was too late. But was it really his mistake? How could it have been? No, it was their mistake and maybe this was another one. They sent him to the wrong time or the wrong place and his mission was doomed from the start through no fault of his own. They didn’t know what they were doing. Janus could tell that plainly by their clipped, casual speech and the way they haughtily dismissed his concerns. But they had given him money, Janus knew that quite well, and now it was gone and he didn’t know where to go or what to do.

Janus thought carefully. He was now fully conscious of himself and his surroundings, still in almost unbearably bad physical shape, and realizing that the missing parts of his memory were not going to return. His first task then would be to list what he did know, and one fact stuck out above all others: he was a messenger. It brought him great comfort in the midst of the crippling pain and nausea to repeat that slowly to himself. Eventually it led to a further useful discovery, that there must also be a message and a recipient. His duty would be fulfilled and his burden released when he succeeded in delivering his message to the intended recipient. What burden? No matter. Small punishment was this discomfort for his deliquence.

Janus struggled to his feet and reflexively slunk into the shadows, away from the mangeled road where the military vehicles had been. He crept through a twisted and menacing network of narrow alleys where every structure crumbled and heaved and threatened to collapse upon itself. The surface of the ground was loose gravel broken by patches of foul-smelling black mud. Those parts of the walls not scorched by smoke were covered by layers of faded spray paint which had at last been scratched upon, vandalism vandalized anew. Janus noticed one pattern that had not been defaced: SLS in fat letters like balloons stuck together. He emerged into a wider open space and abruptly turned away from the menacing laughter of five burly youths with matching red bandanas under their caps. They had for him no attention and Janus limped on, keeping as close as he could to one of the raw brick walls.

Janus staggered and swooned as his eyes adjusted to the brightness. Bits of glass sparkled among the smashed jagged chunks of pavement which stretched away toward a high road. The road passed through lines of squat bunkers before being raised on broad concrete pillers and finally forming the top of a massive barrier running away from Janus as far as he could see.

Next to the road soldiers strolled casually in front of a concrete wall three times their height. Here, just outside the North Gate, the buildings appeared intact, if piecemeal, and they turned away from the crumbling waste to face the lean, ordered city behind the wall. At this slow hour of the morning the girls were lounging about on the stoops, calling to each other from house to house in a mockery of friendly greeting. The last of yesterday’s soldiers and students trailed silently toward the gate as the first of today’s emerged. Janus coughed and then retched, hands on knees, trying to think around the stabbing pain in his head.

"Don't go near the city road!"

Janus turned to locate the speaker and his vision darkened. With his face and necck tingling he stumbled and grasped about for support as if the the ground was trembling.

"The city road. Stay away!" Janus's fingers brushed an arm thrusting toward the road but then his knees buckled and the ground caught him as he rolled gently back. Now the man who had warned him stood close over and feebly shook the loose shoulders of his garmet. "Hey, you need help."

A small crowd of red clad toughs had begun to surround the pair. One stepped forward while each of the others shifted anxiously, almost oblivious to his fellows, eyes fixed on the target with the urgent anticipation of a killer. The leader spoke: "What you doing with that shiner, Danny?"

"He sick. He need help."

"He ain't sick. He wasted. Go on out of here and let us take care of him."

"Naw man, he just fell over while I was talking to him. Ain't drinking or nothing. He really sick."

"Take him over by Hyun-Soon's then, I don't give a fuck. Get him out of here."