Goatie 19

Reverend Souttar had the soft shuffle of a sleepwalker. Code Blue had come and gone. Droopy Eyes took his arm and helped him sit down on the edge of my bed. I had to get up and stand by the locked door. She poured him water from my jug, tapped his arm to remind him to drink it and hovered about him until he’d taken a sip.

‘Feel better now?’ she asked.

He cleared his throat. I thought he was going to say something, but he preened himself and sat like a crow. He worked a long way around a pause. Perhaps that was his job.

It unsettled me and I blurted out, ‘I though yeh said Vic was deid and buried. How come the governor was harassing me? Practically accusing me of huving somethin tae dae wae it?’  

He looked at me and nodded. She glanced at me and then back at him, before answering. ‘Ex-governor.’

‘Who gies a fuck? Ex-governor, then?’ I felt childish swearing and spreading tittle-tattle in front of a Reverend, even though he was a Proddy.

Reverend Soutar spoke in bursts with an overly loud voice that showed he was a bit deaf. ‘He was a good man. I like to think he’s gone onto be that better version of himself.’

‘Is he deid?’ I turned to Droopy Eyes for the answer.

She shook her head. Waved her hands, making discrete signs, I didn’t quite catch. Her tone jumped up a social class, and she adopted the posture and withering smile of a head girl. ‘No, he’s just taken early retirement…It was rather unfortunate that Victor’s body got mixed up with another unfortunate inmate, and wasn’t properly logged or bagged. Administrative error and algorithims. These things happen in even the best run instructions.’

‘But yeh said this place was the Raft of the Medusa, or the apocalypse. I cannae member which wan. Maybe both. Does it make a difference? Does anythin make a difference? No very Christian o yeh.’

She put a hand on Reverend Souttar’s shoulder as if steadying him and keeping her secrets deep. ‘I didn’t say that.’

I was ready to call her out, but Reverend Souttar made rumbling as if he was about to speak. ‘Feet of clay,’ he said.

We waited for more like a married couple listening politely to an elderly relative.

‘Feet of clay have their merits. You can stand firm. You are not likely to overstretch yourself. Vaunt your ambition or step into another’s light. The Babylonian gods had feet of clay. But you Sir, have the expression on an unbeliever, which is unfortunate because I can also see quite clearly the ancient Egyptian goat god, Knum staring back at me.’

‘Whit yeh tryin tae say, I’m possessed?’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t believe in aw that shite.’

‘Of course, you’re possessed,’ he said in a loud voice. ‘Many are enslaved by their possessions. Many more think then can live without God. Some who cannot.’ A flicker of a smile on his tight lips showed he was a believer. ‘But God holds both in his hands. And He humbles Himself. All He asks is humility. However low or far you can go, God can go lower and further. Be assured, God will meet you there. But you need to let go of your demon.’

‘I’ve no got a fuckin demon.’ I put a hand to my mouth. ‘Don’t be so fuckin stupid. I’d thought that but didn’t mean to say it. I changed tack and flicked a finger in Droopy Eye’s direction. ‘Whit about her? She got a demon tae?’

‘Yes, Lust.’ He grimaced. ‘We’ve been working on it. But I can see why you two get on so well together. Your demon bares its fangs at me. But in Christ I trust. It’s like a dark battery giving power to all those other demons attached to other prisoners.’   

‘Don’t talk shite,’ I told him. ‘And prison guards?  My mouth running away with me, again. I felt the urge to smash him in the face. I took a deep breath and tried to keep calm. ‘She said I’ve got epilepsy.’ I wasn’t convinced, but I wasn’t telling him that.

But I jumped back. The tip of Droopy Eyes tongue darted out of her mouth and seemed forked like a snake’s.      

‘Show him the mark of the beast,’ Reverend Soutar commanded her.  

‘No,’ she said.

He cocked his head, listening and waiting. She held her arm out and cupped her wrist, peeling back her rayon uniform. Above her elbow her flesh had been gouged with stripes old and new. It made me wince and look away.

‘You see it?’ Reverend Soutar asked? The cylindrical Chalcedonian seal. The flying goat mating with with the body of an insect king?

‘Nah,’ I replied. ‘I see fuck aw. Yer fuckin sick.’

Droopy Eyes covered her upper arm. I guess her other arm was the same. Probably, the upper thighs. Bits we wouldn’t see because her uniform covered them. She was sick too.

‘Of course, you can’t see it. Knum the leader of all men to death and destruction covers your eyes. You’ll have his mark too.’

‘I’ve nae marks, ya fuckin idiot.’ I stared back at him, daring him to contradict me. But my mind was roaming, wondering where it would be.

Droopy Eyes held his arm and helped him stand. ‘Don’t talk to him like that,’ she told me.

‘Or whit?’ I was back to being childish. ‘Or whit?’

She helped him towards the door. ‘You’ll find out.’ She banged on the door to get it unlocked and when she turned her head to make sure I got the message, the tip of her forked tongue darted out and as quickly back into her mouth.

I jumped again and she smiled.