back / next / Sarcon’s Son 11
Here is a modest chamber of the East Wing. On a cluttered bedside table stands a mug with sludgy remains in the bottom. A spare halo hangs on the bedpost. The sheets are rumpled. One overturned slipper lies nearby. The windowless room brims with radiance in which not a speck of dust hovers.
Sarconsson raises the cup, licks inside, and grins at his girlfriend. “Chocolate,” he says. He puts it down, only to knock over a reading lamp which scatters prayer cards and pushes a tissue box sideways into a cluster of Holy bronze-finish figurines.
One of them, winged St. Michael, falls to the floor where it lands with a hard ching. You’d think Heavenly floors would be cushiony. They look it. The walls as well, all made of opaque light the color of pearl.
The shocking sound rings in the hollow way of empty rooms. This place is empty of many things, but what it’s most empty of is life, although “life” is a funny way to talk about the denizens of Heaven.
The imps are arrived in Lord Judas’ abandoned apartments. On the way, they have taken a round-about self-guided tour through the crooked streets of Heaven’s capital. There’s an unofficial city motto — narrow the gate and difficult the way— that citizens use when grumbling about its claustrophobic lanes. None of this bothers our windy spies. If you ask Sarconsson why and how he is in Heaven, he’ll be hard put to answer. The adventure has however given him fresh vigor.
Cornumsdotter is the one who gets them to the Palace compound and then locates the East Wing. Security in Heaven is lax — celestial beings tend to do little else than sing — so she is able to find a sneaky course over walls and through gates. Once inside the imps wander, gawking like rubes at lavish quarters recently vacated. Room after room has the look of life interrupted.
“Scurry-hurry slapdash,” observes Cornumsdotter. She’s never kept house in her life, but she recognizes the untidiness of an abrupt departure.
Sarconsson puts his nose in the bedclothes. He snuffles. “I don’t smell Jude’s butt.”
“Oh, silly-willy. No Lord sleeps here. This is a littlest room for a littlest angel.”
“I like it,” he says with sudden urgency. “I want it. The room. Can I keep it?”
Surprised, she pats his hairy head. “Dear dumbbunny, the dead live in Heaven.” She flexes one tarsal claw and wipes the top of the headboard. “See? No dust. The dead dump their dust down under when they die. Gives us dirt. Do you deign to die?”
“I dingle-damn deign it all!” Sarconsson hollers and rolls in a frenzy across the unmade bed.
Cornumsdotter hops on. The two of them jump like fleas on the mattress while she whoops so the air rattles. Sarconsson yodels with her.
Yay for Death!
No dust. No rust.
No sticky lust.
No rotten crust.
No decay and no disgust.
Yay for Death!
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” thunders a righteous voice.
The imps shriek and fly straight up where they bounce off the vibrant ceiling and crash back to the bed.
St. Michael rises from the floor, transfigured, in the flesh so to speak, but still bearing a bronze-ish cast to Her celestial skin. (Archangels are sexless but, at the Virgin’s direction, identify as female.) One incorruptible hand dangles Sarconsson by his ears; the other brandishes Her flaming sword.
A covey of Saints emerge from their metal statuettes.
“Trespassers and scallawags,” shouts St. Anne, grandmother of the twin Lords. She is looking freshly immaculate.
Beside her loom mean-girl St. Ursula, clique-queen of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, and baby-faced St. Philomena twirling her anchor like a battle flail, and ecstatic St. Teresa, bristling with phallic bolts of joy.
The imps are busted.