02-11-2021, 08:08 PM
The dog cut her howl-in-progress short as Near stepped into the hallway. In the wishful theater of his mind’s eye, she recognized him and wagged her tail, offered up a droopy-faced glance of pure canine appreciation. In reality, she looked annoyed at having been interrupted, and he found himself batting back acknowledgement of how the night had left him craving any indication of appreciation from anything in his general vicinity -- dog, kid, oil portraits on the wall -- just some scintilla of warmth to counteract the spreading chill: he had never belonged in The Reaches and he was in no way equipped to deal with whatever the hell the kid was doing.
“Come on,” he said anyway. Lew stared. “Come on.”
On the stairs, out of Jude’s line of sight, Near took the opportunity to fiddle with his phone again, dialed up: The Epistle of Jude, often shortened to Jude, is the penultimate book of the New Testament and the Bible as a whole and is traditionally attributed to Jude, the servant of Jesus and the brother of James the Just. Atheist or agnostic or damned or whatever he was, Near had, before the great undoing, doodled through enough religion-focused lectures to know that everything went to shit in the ultimate book, which was mostly likely not a literal prophecy but a metaphor for everything going to shit in the first century AD. Or maybe it was a metaphor for whatever was happening right now. Jude cometh before the shitstorm. Thanks for the warning, Pops.
He scanned the sitting room for a coat and found none, noted the out-of-commission gun still leaned against the couch where he had left it. Lew at the back door, stretching. Mill, who wrote a tedious defence of Utilitarian ethics, which sounded okay until you rode that wave out far enough and realized it was about to reach ground on an impossible shore where the world contained just one extremely happy person.
From somewhere, above, small, his name. What he claimed as his name. Had the kid said his name?
“What store?” Flustered. He didn’t know where to answer. Or where there was a store.
“Come on,” he said anyway. Lew stared. “Come on.”
On the stairs, out of Jude’s line of sight, Near took the opportunity to fiddle with his phone again, dialed up: The Epistle of Jude, often shortened to Jude, is the penultimate book of the New Testament and the Bible as a whole and is traditionally attributed to Jude, the servant of Jesus and the brother of James the Just. Atheist or agnostic or damned or whatever he was, Near had, before the great undoing, doodled through enough religion-focused lectures to know that everything went to shit in the ultimate book, which was mostly likely not a literal prophecy but a metaphor for everything going to shit in the first century AD. Or maybe it was a metaphor for whatever was happening right now. Jude cometh before the shitstorm. Thanks for the warning, Pops.
He scanned the sitting room for a coat and found none, noted the out-of-commission gun still leaned against the couch where he had left it. Lew at the back door, stretching. Mill, who wrote a tedious defence of Utilitarian ethics, which sounded okay until you rode that wave out far enough and realized it was about to reach ground on an impossible shore where the world contained just one extremely happy person.
From somewhere, above, small, his name. What he claimed as his name. Had the kid said his name?
“What store?” Flustered. He didn’t know where to answer. Or where there was a store.