Junkyard Blues

Chapter Five

23 C Chapter Five ell is a place of untold and unending torture. A place of suffering beyond the grasp of the human mind. A place where the soul languishes in eternity, begging for death to come and erase it from existence. It is managed by a big fiery devil who goes by the name of Lucifer, who is assisted by a couple of demons, red demons with tails and tiny horns. They hover over the soul languishing in the burning sulfur, constantly attending to the soul to make sure it is well immersed into the burning sulfur. It is a wicked place, a place that no sane man would ever want to think about or see firsthand. So, the preacher says… But the stupid preacher was all wrong, completely wrong. Even if his oily mouth was capable of spitting every word out as if it was the gospel truth. That silly preacher was wrong because he had never been there, had never even stood at the threshold of hell. Jude knew all that. The only word of truth in the preachers liturgy was the word; torture. Jude knew all that because with every justification, he thought he was in hell. And that hell was not some lake of burning sulfur and there was no Lucifer around foaming in the mouth or his eager red demons. No, his hell was his new room in the home of his brother, and what passed for burning sulfur was that constant vibration inside his head, that constant vibration of a child’s hopeless crying that seemed to be emanating from deep inside his head. And the best part of it all was that no one seemed to notice what he was going through or what the poor child was going through droning ceaselessly like that. It was the usual family drama, things that were already set on stone and could not be changed. Poor things that were turned into victims for reasons that were only classified as absurd. Jesus! This is why I’ve never wanted to come back, why I wanted to be on my own so that I can’t hear or see all this. He had tried to play it down, tried to believe it was something that was only temporal, that he was only making it a big deal because he had not wanted to be here. But now it looked like it was something that was going to be permanent, something that was actually a big deal (who can listen to the poor H 24 child night after night without drawing that conclusion?). And the crying child was just going to be as normal as a framed picture on the wall, a picture that only he seemed to notice was all wrong. A piece of normal music that only he seemed to notice sounded all wrong. I don’t belong here. But you’re here, padre and there’s nothing you can do about it. For now! Hey, don’t worry you’ll get used to this in no time. Impossible! You think so? Which one’s better the cell or this place? He wanted to tell himself that it was this place, but that tiny voice vibrating in his head told him he was wrong. There were nights he actually wished he was back in the cell (well without the three odd characters). During most of those nights, he had hated the child, really hated the child. But when he thought about it some more, the child was just a poor victim. Just like me. How can they ignore all that screaming? They’re used to it. But who could get used to this? Who could seal off his or her ears to that constant throbbing scream coming out of a child’s tiny throat? A scream that was constant throughout the night, night after night. And when all it wants is simple. It was absurd he concluded. Jude covered his ears with a pillow and screamed silently in his mind, “Jesus, can’t you just shut him up, just make him stop?” But it was a waste of time praying for that to happen. Jesus was not going to come down from heaven and make the poor little thing to stop screaming for what was rightly and justifiably supposed to belong to it at this moment of its life. The child was fully engaged and nothing was going to block that pitiful screaming from getting inside...