He’s coming.
He’ll never make it. All the airports are watched. He’ll find a way.
What if he does? It’s too late for you now, anyway.
For me, maybe. But there is more of me in them than you know. The Story is mine, you fool. The wars, the disease, the corruption. Anyone
can see the end is near. The only question is not if but when. What will an old man do about that?
Me? Nothing. It’s them you must worry about.
The end is inevitable. Wherever you have planted a seed, I have sown a weed. Where you have given hope, I spread despair. I have corrupted the innocent and poisoned the pure. My voice spreads like a cancer in the minds of Hoomanity, urging them to pollute and destroy the Story itself. I am the secret face of their inner yearning for self-destruction. I am their death wish.
We shall see. There are other voices yet to be heard.
‘All right, move along. You wanna talk to yourself, you do it somewhere else. You’re scaring the kids,’ the cop barked, and patted warily the torn trouser leg of the tramp with his truncheon.
The hobo in question was skinny and small but the policeman knew from experience how they could be the most dangerous when they went nuts. Jeez, how did these guys get to be like that? He looked pretty young by the acne on his face but his teeth were bleeding and receded, and he mumbled some nonsense about secrets and stories. It was only the real crazies who hung around New York in the winter: those with any sense hopped on a freight train south.
‘I said come on, buddy. Move along.’
The tramp’s eyes flickered open feverishly and the cop took a step backwards under the piercing glare that seemed to strip the skin from his bones.
‘Why did you join the force, officer? Was it the power of carrying a gun and a club? The money? The prestige?’ The hobo’s voice was shaky but fearless. It emerged from his small head in a shrill volley of words like sharp flints.
The cop scowled and swung his truncheon into the thigh of the hobo, who grunted in satisfaction. ‘Ah, the violence,’ he chuckled, and pulled himself up from the sidewalk where he lay. He lurched off into the flow of human traffic that is Manhattan.
The cop watched him depart uneasily. He looked at the club in his hand and wondered why he had reacted like that. The bum had put his nerves on edge. He put his club back in its holster and continued his patrol, wondering just why he had joined the force.
Meanwhile, the tramp let himself be guided by the flow of traffic like a pinball being flicked around a table. Everyone assumed he was drunk or worse, and avoided making eye contact even as he bounced off them. Only the young stared at him curiously as their parents pulled them quickly away.
He was not surprised by the reaction. He, who had lived among Hoomans for longer than anyone, was used to being almost invisible in their company. It was ironic, then, that he could see them more clearly than anyone. True, he had trouble making out whether they were male or female, old or young – but when it came to seeing into their souls, he was in a class of his own. Gazing down the packed sidewalks, he saw nothing but cocktails of desire and emotion on two legs, pursuing their own self-interested paths.
‘If only you could eat your precious money,’ he teased a passing businessman who was tinged with the brown-gold glow of greed and love of wealth. The man jumped away, afraid that he was about to get mugged.
The hobo’s attention was attracted to a well-dressed woman with the green and scarlet hues of deceit and guilt wrapped around her like a cloud. ‘You’ll have to tell him the truth sometime,’ he called merrily. ‘Why not tell him before he finds out for himself?’
She stopped and stared at him in utter shock before fleeing in tears. No one else paid him any attention at all. The arrival of an alien wouldn’t have held up the flow of traffic in rush hour, much less some street prophet voicing hidden truths. He leant against a lamp-post and he seemed so frail that it was a wonder he did not blow away in the wind. His face trembled as though there was a battle going on inside his head, and he grimaced his way free. Frowning, he tentatively closed his left eye. Now, through his right, he saw a Story where self-interest made the world go round. The eyes of all who passed were pools of desire and fear; their lips span webs of deceit; their words, faces and manners were simply masks for souls too lost and scarred to face the light.
Then he closed his right eye and opened his left. Now he saw a Story that gravitated around love. Each Hooman seemed to be a single candle flame that longed to unite with the others. Lost and afraid, their hearts were full of reserves of courage and creativity that helped them make meaning of their own personal stories.
Then he took a deep breath and closed both eyes. He never knew where this would take him: a battlefield in Ethiopia, a family dinner in Ohio, or inside the belly of a whale migrating north through the Atlantic. In addition, these days the visions were often accompanied by two voices arguing over their dominion. How well he knew those two – had he not been the first to understand?
But what he witnessed on this occasion astonished him. Behind his eyelids he saw a vision of an Indian clown and a young white boy climbing a mountain path. Suddenly, he understood everything.
‘At last, it is time,’ he murmured. ‘It has been so long.’
The vision shifted to take him through the front doors of a hospital in New York and down the corridor to the psychiatric wing. He saw a private ward and understood what he must do. He opened his eyes and walked out in front of a bus.