Ch.1 - Genesis

'Twas the day I died.

It came upon a dull and uncommonly dreary afternoon when a commotion among those emaciated crowds below disturbed the ever mundane and endless ledger keeping of the day's business. My office on Drury Lane granted me an oppressive panorama of the destitute daily hardship of those downtrodden folk. A whistling draught intruded into my upper office as I looked out. Its bite spirited away the respite and warmth from the coal fire burning in the hearth as it whined through cracks in the building. The roaring wind outside swirled about in unseen eddies carrying tattered rags and bits of rubbish through the street. 'Twixt those weathered and weary residents of the London back alleys, pallid, frail and failing sunlight struggled to illuminate the grey and tired street. Its dull luminescence offered only the briefest breaks from dreariness through the intermittent cracks in the low, heavy clouds. Aside from the unusual power of the wind, like most other days, it was the same. However, a hellish howling shook the foundations of my spirit as it came upon the roar of the ferocious torrent.

Commotion among the crowds of Drury Lane was common, but I had never heard such a raucous wailing of bloodlust. 'Twas peculiar, almost devilish that in that moment of such grated and feverish screaming, the roaring wind ceased. Having ascertained all I could from the upstairs window, my imploring interest in the commotion was not satiated. I peeled away from the window and hurried down the tight, creaky, and cracking staircase of my coin-counting workroom.

My aged and unkempt assistant leered out the window of the lower office. Mouth agape as he squinted down his knobbled, crooked nose. Yellow fingernails scratched the top of a balding, gray head in contempt for the disturbance for the day's work. Despite his irritation, the commotion had drawn his attention as much as mine.

"What's going on Mr. Pickett?" I asked, leaning over his shoulder for a better view of the outside.

"Don't know, sir," he replied with that strangely hollow, raspy tone that elderly folk all seemed to share.

He slunk back into his creaky chair, fluffing absurdly puffed sleeves of his dingy shirt that was much too large for his bony figure. His pointy chin jutted out as his face curled in frustration. Black, beady eyes narrowed as he stared out the window once more scoffing at the ruckus. Such were his conversations. Mr. Pickett was a man of few words; markedly abrasive and quick to temper, even with me.

I was not so easily sated. I'd snatched my coat from the brass hook on the wall and forced my hands through the sleeves as I rushed out the door.

"Mister Solomon, sir, it's a might lively out there, best stay in!"

The din of the overcrowded street drowned his cries of feigned concern. Cold air stole away the breath in my lungs as I stepped out into the ruckus. The brass bell jingled on the door behind me as it swung shut.

All about me, the chaos one might expect of the busy streets of London whirred about, but it was not the ordinary ruckus. This was of some disdain or disgust. Panicked folks darted away like a herd of prey animals fleeing a wolf pack. All but the crawlers and dozing destitutes, who barely offered more than a weak and tired glance.

I zigzagged through the small gaps between folk, one after another to find what might have caused such a stirring uproar. A hard bump on the shoulder or accidental footfall on my toes pressed me backward but pushed through the current to a circle of wide-eyed onlookers.
They bounded around in the front of a ramshackle gin palace, well known for its prostitutes and drunken fisticuffs. A motionless, bloody gentleman lay upon the stoop. Blood stained the black of his coat and trousers all over with a deeper black, but that was not what vexed me. A mud caked indigent curled over his body, crumpled there like wrinkled paper. I couldn't see what he was doing curled the way he was, but he snarled and growled like a rabid mongrel.

Horrid ripping carried over the gasps and cries from the crowd. Teeth tore away skin and flesh as he raised his filthy head from its hunkered position. The soft, wet noise turned my stomach as it skittered into my ears. The man's milky white eyes were as wide as a full moon as he cackled with that chunk of bloody muscle pinched between yellow teeth. All about that circle of disgusted onlookers, both men and women collapsed. I couldn't bear the scene but nor could I look away, until those hollow and milky eyes met mine.

He paused for a moment. His cutting eyes stabbed into my flesh like fire pokers. Red cracked lips spit the raw, torn flesh away as he arched his back and laughed. Streaks of blood wormed their way between his teeth and down the creases of his dirty chin.

"Happy are those who are called to his supper," he hissed.

His voice was a keen razor edge through flesh. It sliced through the commotion as slick and wicked as a serpent's skin and stabbed my heart with a thousand icy needles. Again, he doubled over and harsh, wet, gnawing spilled through the cries of shock and disgust until the host of police arrived.

They pushed through, opening the panicked crowd like a knife through linen. Several pointed and shouted at the ragged, crazed man as they brandished their clubs. He paid them no mind as he continued his ghastly feast.

A surge of bodies jetted forward and came upon him like an avalanche. Grunts and shouts bellowed through the jumble of men. The occasional scream of pain pierced through as the undulating mass of bodies flexed and struggled to restrain the man. Officers darted away, clutching their faces, raked with jagged teeth marks. Blood trickled between their fingers as they cursed and spat obscenities. All the while, the crazed man wailed and laughed, taunting them into a frenzy, until he went quiet.

They ripped him away from the wholly encrimsoned stoop where that unfortunate corpse lay. The dead's mangled face, peeled away like the skin of an overripe fruit, revealing the hot red tissue beneath. Wet and grotesque fissures in his flesh flowed blood like a stream of scarlet onto the cold stone steps.

The police clubbed and kicked at that motionless pile of lunatic they'd pulled away. Their heated battering twisted and broke his figure as they cursed their angry disdain. He lay in the mud all the while his eyes seemed transfixed on me. Those frenzied smoky eyes branded my skin but his haunting, bloodied grin was a waking nightmare. Like the cold, harsh light of a crescent moon, it pulled across his face, stretching the skin like dogs fighting over a piece of cloth.

Unusually gruesome though it was, 'twas not long before the waning afternoon carried on, edgy but nonetheless wholly unperturbed. The police cleared the crowd of mortified onlookers and dragged that vile smiling man away. There would be inquiries, investigations, and perhaps an interrogation of one witness or another, but I knew there'd be no closure to that inexplicable violence. Thus ended another day in the gutters of London - another death, another coin in the coffers. 'Twas morbidly continuous and tiresome. That ghastly spectacle was a harsh schism from the scraping tedium, nevertheless the days carried on. Such was the life of those lowly sods. Some came and went; others came and were never seen again.

Hardship wore a different mask when it dealt with the simple folk. It scourged the impoverished denizens of the alleys with a remarkable ire. Death, disease, and an extreme misery gnawed away at the starving urchins and raddled vagrants. It preyed upon the meek beneath my lofty perch atop the precipice of commerce with a voracious appetite.

Begrudgingly calm or hideously violent death came to the poor in a volume incalculable to most of us well-offs to a point which even the most heinous murder was of little more than daily meandering. Despair walked hand-in-hand with common beliefs of bad luck, or poor decisions. I viewed all of it as merely the inadvertent casualties of business; the natural state of things. That is to say, what sordid fate may have followed the unfortunate bygones of commercial conquest was beyond my control or caring, but it was nonetheless a living hell. London, after all, overflowed with anguish to a degree that did not spare the aristocrats such as I, nor the crawling, haggard paupers. 'Twas similar to any metropolis in breadth, but it stood out by way of the many brutal hardships of day-to-day life. Most days were of little difference from the previous. I spent a vast majority of them counting coins and brokering finance agreements, paying little mind to the seething turmoil that plagued the dark dead ends and back-alley droves until that wailing indigent invaded the trudging miasma of repetition.

My damned curiosity in that commotion indeed ruined me in ways that broke down walls of harsh indifference. That ghastly, grinning visage scraped away at my callous mind, but despite its constant grinding, I was sharper. But as a razor's edge is honed against the grinding stone, something is removed in the process. I thinned both in spirit, and my disregard to the inexorable misery of those beneath my stoic station of wealth.

'Twas that day that sparked an imploring interest to know what great eternity waited beyond the grueling, belligerent toiling. 'Twas that day that I, Jeremiah Solomon, died. Metaphorically speaking of course, but I became something else that day. An other. A nameless outcast. A monster. It started with seeking comfort in the Bible, but year after year, the anemic platitudes felt hollower and more unwelcome. Attending mass only exacerbated the emptiness. I recited the words and prayed the prayers, but it was unfulfilling and lonesome. The festering abscess of that hideous indigent's words lingered in my memories and echoed on the morning I received the eucharist.

The nave of Saint Paul's church was, as always during mass, a stormy sea of anguish. Dissatisfied well-to-dos and disenfranchised paupers sat together in those old, uncomfortable pews, penitent and longing for some divine absolution from impudent woes. 'Twas a forlorn cacophony in such a holy place. All of us there hoped for the holy spirit's deliverance from the cesspool of our perceived misery. The air of the congregation hung sullen and sad. An exquisite emptiness loomed like an unrelenting cloud of smoke, unseen but palpable as the polished marble floor. Grandiose depictions of heaven and promises of blissful paradise spanned the great vaulted ceilings. Fitting, as it was so discernibly out of reach of us accursed earthbound souls.

'Twixt the bowed heads and forlorn worshippers, our reverend stepped through the silent congregation. He fed the body of Christ to each follower and recited his droning litany. Each member replied back the prescribed response: a hushed and monotonous Amen. It had finally come time for my holy communion. He stood before me, placing that contemptible bread in my mouth.

"This is the lamb of god who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to his supper."

Those words—those same hideous words hissed by that frenzied indigent, again sliced my heart like serrated steel. 'Twas dark and wicked, and what little of my hollow faith remained was stolen away, haunted and wounded by those filthy words. I choked on that foul wafer. What spiritual healing a faithful might have received was little more than ashes in my mouth; dry, sour, and wholly dissatisfying. I could not bear to be in that dreadful place anymore. I spat that filthy bread onto the floor and gathered a newfound resolve to find meaning.

"You do not share fellowship with Christ!" He scolded me as though his voice might somehow shout faith into my soul. He had failed.

There among the speechless crowd of the faithful congregation, I stood in the long, varnished pews of Saint Paul and met eyes with the offended clergyman. Deep wrinkles and fissures curled in his face as his brow creased in distaste for my transgression. His gentle gray eyes however did not reinforce his fervent resolve. They cowered at me, frigid and fearful and somehow never quite directly meeting my own. It was though he were looking at the devil himself, afraid but angered that I stood in his hallowed garden of wayward, gullible souls.

"I do not share fellowship, Father," I said. I gave him a reassuring pat on his shoulder. I was unsure why I made the gesture, but the taunting of such a deluded fool was wonderful. "I'm afraid he would not like my company today."

I scooped up my hat and made way through the crowd. The shocked silence in the cathedral was cut only by the knocking sounds of my purposeful steps toward the doors.

His rushed and angered footsteps pursued behind me before he stopped on some metaphorical high ground. "Now the spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils," the foolish man shouted to the congregation.

I no longer cared for the scriptures, but my mind still recited the chapter and verse.

1 Timothy 4:1.

I smirked at the idea that somehow his faith was any better than those foretold doctrines of devils. I turned around and laughed at his unwavering vanity.

"And those among you," I said, raising my arms to those luckless fools and followers, "Those of you who are without sin, let them cast the first stone."

Flamboyant though it was, my arms stretched out wide as though I were Jesus on the cross. My head tilted before I lowered my arms and bowed to him.

I no longer cared about the opinions of ideologues nor the opinions of God. I turned back around, satisfied I'd won the joust. The warm glow behind those saintly depictions of the stained-glass windows above dwindled and grayed, one after another as I made again for the doors. Doors to a new beginning—my own Genesis.