chapter 7; Lipton and Christ reunite

Though the steady build up of traffic that began at about 4am had not troubled Lipton a rustling and muttered swearing did. Throughout the night the odd vehicle had spun around his island of safety and Lipton snuggled in to himself and finally as rush hour coagulated into a homogeneous mush of sound he lost consciousness. The crack had been a daft idea and like all stimulants precluded the loss of self most seek at the end of the day. Someone was on his roundabout and an itinerant life had taught him that virtually no one went in amongst the bushes and trees that were scattered around the centre of these islands that had so often provided a safe, untroubled campsite. Only the annual strimming and pruning but the chance of catching this council workers day out were 364 to 1. A stench of rotting flesh overwhelmed the street shaman, so repugnant he involuntarily retched though brought up nothing from his stomach. Lipton had learned to keep down ayuashka, something even the most highly powered of his profession never mastered. Nevertheless the reek of putrefaction was troubling.

Keeping frozen Lipton readied his hunting knife. Rupert Bunsen may well have survived the demonic explosion that saw his Noah project destroyed by the collective he and Skree had drawn together. The Druids and Witches alongside the two shamanic brothers had not all survived but it was without doubt that serious forces would by now be hunting them down. The achievement had been a historic strike against the grey that he and Skree had committed to fighting, both in the full knowledge that they would most likely be ultimately killed. The pagan mystics had their battles and won more than they were due. Someday they would be caught. It was inevitable. Lipton thought Skree may have survived but it was unlikely. The lonely trip back alongside the Druid lad he had grown close to had felt like they were the last two. Only the sackful of body parts they had salvaged, a gruesome jigsaw of a man and Jack of Clun had left him there in Porlock Weir, the only other who may have survived. He knew not even that the meat had made it to the traveller site. And Lipton had no clue if the man he had become something like a freind to, could endlessly overcome death.

“Lipton, you cunt! Show yourself! It’s your old freind, the one and only, son of god! Jesus Christ! I’m back and this time I’m fucking Righteous!”

Oh fuck! Thought Lipton. How the fuck had the lamb of god found him? How the fuck did he do any of his tricks for that matter. There was no sense in hiding given he’d homed in on him despite his best efforts to hide away.

“I’m over here! But don’t think you’re getting a hug! Pleased as I am to see that you’re still alive you’re clearly some way off full reanimation!”

“Ha, ha, ha!” Cackled Jesus, “you don’t look too clever yourself!”

Lipton could see Christ was still on the mend. His matted hair was drawn across his cheek in a failing attempt to see the exposed jaw and rictus grin of teeth. The eye on that side of his face was a milky globe , its mechanism exposed. Choosing to look at the old tramp from his ‘good’ side, Lipton was able to keep a grip on the impulse to vomit.

“What the fuck happened to me! I’ve been on some benders in my time….well I’ve been on one really, but it has lasted over 2000 years. But I have absolutely no memory of what happened. I remember the journey across the sea with all the crew, but from there I have no recollection whatsoever! I came to over a period of months. Stuck in a fucking trailer, back on Crankshafts site. That cunt has never got over the excellent and outstanding performance of a sexual nature to reinvigorate his and his Mrs love life! I wish I’d never bothered for all the thanks I get. Soon as the old physical repair work was done I came out and left them to it. Miserable cunts! You’d think they’d have a few bevvies ready but just like usual. It’s me who has to get the drinks in. Talking of which,” and with a theatrical sweep of his hand, Christ did his famous party piece and swung two unlabelled bottles of wine, “red or white?”

Lipton took the white, plunged the cork using a clipper lighter and took a long , deep draughty.

“Well, Jesus Christ, do you remember a lunatic, armed to the teeth that came in pursuit of our merry bunch?”

Jesus shook his head looking genuinely bemused.

“Well, we had a bit of luck! The Clun Witches had summoned up a conger eel, demon hybrid. Like a writhing mass of eels, the thickness of your arm, but en mass something like the length and width of a small train of maybe three carriages. You were blown into a number of pieces just before the action. The crazed copper blew a hole into the Noah spacecraft that housed roughly the thousand wealthiest people on the planet and the demon conger eel hybrid ate the fucking lot of them! Well, a few got away. Bunsen himself I think but in all the chaos I don’t know who lived but I do know most died. Me and Brock, we hung around for a couple of days, we gathered together what we could find of you, then we thought we’d best get out of there. Clearly anyone alive was on Bunsen island and any chance they got they’d be coming to kill us. So we sailed home. I was sectioned and I’ve not long been out of the mental health institution. Good to see you’re on the mend, mind.”

Christ looked at ground before him and shook his head. “Sounds like I missed the party. What about Skree? I take it……”

“Sadly so. There’s no way that any of our lot survived, bar Brock and yourself, of course.”

Lipton had seen Christ off his face. The man was always having a laugh. Never took anything too seriously. It was the character trait that made the man bareable. His personality could be incredibly irritating and he had no concern about the damage and hurt he caused with his endless womanising. His seemingly insatiable appetite for sex and drugs and the desire to keep the party going, forever if he could. The lord of the dance, some had called him. And Lipton considered and could not think of a single instance where the man had been self reflective. But, here, in the centre of a roundabout, outside of Bridgewater, Lipton saw tears. Only the briefest of trickle, but as lorry and car circled around them, invisible through the trees and bushes, Lipton knew that Christ had loved them. Loved those who had risked everything and most had paid the ultimate price, in their collective mission to stop the richest, greediest people. If he had a single value he held precious, beyond all other it was that money, and those who sought it out, those who set up banks outside the temple, money was the least valuable commodity that we have.

Lipton gathered some dried twigs, stirred around in the embers from last night’s first and got flame. And so the two brothers sat opposite each other, drinking their wine in silence, thinking of their fallen freinds.

Sent from my iPhone