The Gods

By Dave Jeanes

Some people didn’t believe in Spaceships; until they saw a Spaceship. Some people didn’t believe in time-travel; until they travelled in time. Some people were prepared to believe in anything – even parallel universes. Some people didn’t believe in anything. Some people believed in something they could only hear. Some people believed in something only they could see. Fortunately, the Gods believed in them all…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781326816520

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The Gods

THE GODS

Written by DAVE JEANES

Bristol, England. 2016

"No more silver rain will hit your ground

No more guns will sound, no more life be drowned

No more trenches where the soldiers lie, no more people die

Beneath that big black sky."

(Geoff Lynne. 1971)

The Fall

Miller stood on the gravelled road by the electrified fence and watched the carrion begin to circle over the animal’s kill. The sky was clear but the night was darkening, no moon but a red glow on the horizon. Miller wondered what the morning would bring.

The flock had been unaware of the cat’s approach. They had scattered like sheep when the poor unfortunate one was caught and had retreated to the far southern corner of the field, from where they had baa-ed pathetically as the single lamb was ripped apart. They would need gathering together before nightfall.

Miller, his shotgun broken over his arm, studied the fallen creatures closely. The cat lay still, but Miller stared at it intently watching for the slightest movement. Did animals play dead? He didn’t know and wasn’t taking any chances, - the big cat had already taken over a dozen lambs from Miller’s land in the last two seasons. Miller felt in his left-hand greatcoat pocket for two more cartridges, warming them in his palm for a second or two before pushing them home into the barrel with a calloused thumb. Snapping the gun shut he squelched through the muddied gateway and advanced cautiously down the hill. The ground was pitted and rutted due to the animals and the last rains of September and Miller watched his footing carefully. An engine sounded elsewhere in the valley, - his neighbours probably, hearing the shot, their curiosity aroused; it wasn’t only his land that the black cat had preyed on. For months the local newspaper had been full of reported sightings of the animal and Miller had been amazed to finally catch a glimpse of it: a slight, stealthy shadow moving slowly and effortlessly in the twilight, under the shadow of the plane trees, along the ridge of the pasture. Perfectly at one with nature but to Miller, who had inspected the view a hundred thousand times, the shadow looked wrong and the cat’s timing couldn’t have been more off. Miller had silently loaded and levelled his gun at the creature in the time it took to bring down its latest prey. One shot was all he’d had time for but it looked as though it had killed the animal. Miller pondered as he crossed the last few yards to where the big cat lay. Maybe there would be a reward? Not that he needed the money, - he had plenty of land. Six hundred acres bequeathed to him, as the eldest grandson, on his grandfather’s death-bed, - the king of all he surveyed… Still, the farmers from the surrounding area would be grateful to him for ridding their lands of the beast, and favours could be called in, - which was always handy come Harvest time.

The cat lay on its side, - as animals do. Miller had shot it in the shoulder; an open, gaping red wound that seeped blood, but it wasn’t dead, - not yet anyway. It turned a yellow eye on Miller and growled pathetically with what strength remained. Miller watched it impassively from behind the gun. He thought about the lambs he’d lost but he could also see things from the cat’s point of view. Cats are natural born killers; - they kill to eat. Not like men, who kill for other reasons.

But where had it come from? How did it come to be habited here, in the wilds of West Dorset? Was it an unwanted pet? Discarded by some misguided parent of an ungrateful child? Or had it escaped from a zoo? Miller doubted the latter, - there were no zoos within a hundred miles of Willow farm. Many had speculated in the local rag, - speculated on its species as well. To Miller’s eyes it looked like a jaguar. Its tail was long and bedraggled as though it was too heavy for the animal to lift off the ground and out of the Dorset mud. The cat looked as though it had seen some rough times as well. Scars around its eyes and several bare patches along its flank bore testament to the many battles the creature had fought over the years of its life. All over now anyway, thought Miller and cocked the gun. One shot to the head and that would be that.

What happened next took him by surprise: At the top of the hill a vehicle scrunched up the gravel sounding its horn in friendly greeting. Miller turned, distracted by the noise, - and in that instant the cat sprang at him. The first thing Miller noticed was the smell. The mixture of the open wound combined with the animal’s fetid breath overwhelmed his senses. The cat wrapped its forearms around Miller’s chest howling at its own pain and wrestled him off his feet. Moments later he was flat on his face with the cat’s powerful hind legs shredding his clothes and then tearing into his skin and muscle. He was powerless to move. Vaguely he was aware of shouts from his visitors but the cat held him in a well-practiced, vice-like grip, the claws of its front feet embedded in Miller’s chest. The continual scraping of its hind legs cut huge pieces of flesh from his body and Miller began to die. He experienced a sudden, strange feeling of peace as the searing pain stopped abruptly, - the cat had severed his spinal cord. The next moment his neighbours arrived with their guns, tearing down the hill, their throats full of curses.

The first shot went straight through Miller’s shoulder. Ironic, he remembered thinking at the time. The next cartridge took the heart out of the cat. Drifting in and out of consciousness from somewhere he couldn’t quite identify, Miller heard the voices of his friends.

‘Damn, ‘e’s ‘ad it.’

‘What a mess! What a smell!’

‘Told you, didn’t I?’

And so to Paradise, thought Miller. Leaving behind all the muck and blood and bone of life to, well, what? God alone knew. Time would tell.

He drifted away.

In Old England Town

Running a Builders’ Merchants’ yard is tough, very tough. Adaptability is the key; learning how to guess market trends and warehousing and storing goods appropriately. Big Geoff had been at it for two years now and it was starting to come more easily. All the same, he didn’t like the look of his colleague’s new pet.

‘Where are you going to keep him, Vernon?’

‘He can stay here in the mill. No-one ever comes down here.’

Geoff was not so sure. ‘What’s he going to eat though?’

They watched as the animal tore apart a huge seagull that had been nesting on the roof and had unfortunately strayed on to the ground.

‘That answer your question?’ said Vernon.

‘And what about its defecations?’

‘You mean its pooh? I’ve been training it,’ said Vernon proudly. ‘It does its business in the sawdust skip.’

‘That’s all very well. But I’ve got to account for that sawdust. They in the office can tell by the amount of timber you’ve milled how much dust there ought to be. What are they going to say?’

‘It’s not that is it? You just want all the dust for young Featheredge.’

‘Do you mean Angela?’

‘Yeah, - that bit of stuff out Morecambelake you’re shagging.’

‘That is simply not true Vernon. We’ve got to get rid of the stuff somewhere, haven’t we? We’re not allowed to let it go to landfill anymore. Anyway, it’s a good deal. She comes in with a few beers every now and then in return, doesn’t she?’ He watched the animal, which was now squatting in the corner of the skip. ‘God alone knows what her horses are going to think when they smell that…’

The warehouse was separated from the office by the shop. The warehouse was cold, dark and forbidding. Humid and airless in the warm months and a definite no-go area in the cold months when the shop staff would huddle around their boiler. The forklift trucks came and went, seemingly without heed or caution and the regular customers knew to keep away. Any new customers soon discovered that a world turned in the yard and the warehouse that was beyond their comprehension. The Yardies worked to their own timetables and criteria, - knowing what had to be done and how to do it. In the shop it was a different story. Here the customers held sway, were treated to tea and coffee, - were listened to and their needs fulfilled. Sometimes their needs only amounted to being pointed in the direction of the competition’s premises but in the main, money changed hands and the wheels of industry turned.

Beyond the shop were the offices where the telephones were king. They were never allowed to ring more than twice before an operative was on the line to handle the enquiry. From the corner of this room the manager surveyed his empire. It was a comfortable seat, apart from the times when Area would visit and scold him for his sales figures, but that was rarely and for most of the day he was left to watch and brood. The yard, he left to the Yardies. He had enough to do as it was, - there were rumours in the air about redundancies…

For Big Geoff, King of the Yardies, the animal was just one more thing he had to deal with. Vernon was a seasoned hand, -  had been at the firm longer than Geoff. Years longer, in fact. He was a twenty-year man whereas Geoff had only recently joined, three years ago. His will to succeed had propelled him to the job of supervisor in record time and maybe that was something that Vernon resented, Geoff didn’t really care so long as he was paid. The animal however, gave them both something of a problem.

‘Suppose someone’s looking for it?’

‘Well, what if they are?’ said Vernon, pragmatic as ever. ‘Who’s to say that it didn’t just turn up a couple of minutes ago.’

‘It’s starting to eat the seagulls, Vernon!’

‘Good. There’s too many of the buggers anyway.’

Geoff frowned. ‘You haven’t trained it to do that, have you?’

‘What if I have? We’ve always said that they’re a bloody nuisance, - nesting on the roof and dive-bombing the customers. Doing us a favour he is.’

Geoff scratched his ear thoughtfully. ‘I doubt the wip-wop will see it that way, still…’

It was true. The seagulls were becoming a nuisance. More than once, the delivery of a customer’s brand new kitchen had carried complaints of bird-lime on them and although the staff were as vigilant as possible, the birds’ digestive systems were weak and diseased from months of junk food. The effort of flapping their wings caused their bowels to open and close without will. The local newspaper, - the wip-wop as it was known, because of the noise the printing press made when it was being printed, had offered a reward for a successful idea that dealt with the birds.

‘You never know; I might win that competition.’

Big Geoff sighed. ‘I hardly think that having a wildcat eating the things was the kind of idea they were looking for, mate.’

‘I said we should have got an owl.’

‘The owl would not have worked, Vernon,’ said Geoff patiently. He had heard the idea before. Attach a cardboard owl onto a pole on the roof and the seagulls would see it as a natural predator and keep away. It didn’t work though. Near the coast, there were a dozen houses with owls attached and their roofs were as stained and mottled as any of the others that had no owls.

‘What about a peregrine falcon? They’re nesting down on the cliffs again. We could get a chick out of one of the nests.’ Vernon asked.

Geoff raised his eyebrows to the heavens. ‘Vernon, for goodness’ sake! You’re already asking me to harbour a lynx or a jaguar or whatever it is. On top of that you want me to bring a bird of prey into the branch? Is that what you’re saying? Besides which, which one of us is going to climb up the west cliff in full view of a brood of falcons and nick one of their eggs?’

Mention of the cat left Vernon feeling all paternal and protective and he wandered off into the mill to look for his young charge. Geoff watched him thoughtfully. The trouble with Vernon was that the real world seemed to pass him by.

First Movement

Vanessa wiped her floury hands on her overall and picked up the post.

‘Junk, junk, junk, - ah, here we are.’

It was a brown envelope, one of many that came through his door these days. The message printed on the reverse, - If undelivered please return to Department of Health and Social Security. She slit it open with the bread knife.

‘Payday,’ she said brightly. ‘You know what that means?’ He nodded dumbly before he could think of an answer. ‘What do you fancy today, - a little nip of scotch?’

Miller’s encounter with the jaguar had left him in a wheelchair, - his legs inoperative, despite the surgeons’ insistence that everything was wired-up correctly, and his right arm paralysed by the shotgun cartridge. A year had passed and in that interminable twelve months Miller had been seen by virtually every NHS and DHSS employee in the area. Once the surgeons had finished with him it was the job of the occupational therapists, or OTs, as they liked to call themselves, to carry on the task of getting him to walk again. Miller couldn’t see the point. On his fortieth birthday, some years ago now, he had treated himself to an eye test only to be told the depressing news that he would have to wear glasses for the rest of his life. To Miller, it was a reminder of his own mortality. Yes, your eyes were fine when you started but now they were on the way out, - just like you. Miller viewed, albeit myopically, the loss of the use of his legs with the same fatalism. He couldn’t see the point of trying to walk again. More to the point, there wasn’t any point. The farm was taken care of by people who were paid by the State and all his needs were taken care of as well. He had a motorised wheelchair that he could operate with his left hand by a joystick controller and spent his time looking out of the farmhouse window at the hands toiling in all weathers in the fields and sometimes thanked his lucky stars that he was warm and cared for, - farming was a tough job. People were interested in his legs though, and for one good reason. Waking up after the operation Miller had the hardest and most persistent erection he had ever had in his life. The trouble was it wouldn’t go away. He spent his waking hours waiting for it to abate enough for him to pass water through it and even then it was unsatisfactory and very painful. To the OTs of course, it was proof that there was life down there somewhere and they used every method at their disposal to try to get his legs working again. Miller never got used to the feeling of someone frowning at his penis. A confirmed bachelor, married to his work, it was the ultimate in excruciating embarrassment.

‘What are you thinking about now?’ his consultant asked him at one recent meeting. Wires and electrodes plastered to his nether regions, dignity left outside the consultant’s door, Miller shrugged before thinking of an answer. The consultant peered at the screen of something that looked like an oscilloscope. ‘Must be something, old man. Something must, get it going, so to speak.’

‘It just does it, that’s all,’ said Miller.

‘What about sex?’

‘What about it?’

‘Does that help it at all?’

‘I don’t know, ‘Miller stammered. ’I live alone, you see.’

‘I wonder if masturbation would help?’

‘Well, you carry on. Don’t mind me.’

‘Have you tried that?’

‘Not since I was about fourteen, no.’ replied Miller, indignantly.

‘Well, do you think it would help, - in your case?’

‘My right arm is paralysed Doctor!’

‘Ah, - I see.’ The consultant brooded for a while. ‘Maybe if you had it off…’ He came and removed the electrodes with a practised hand. ‘Alright, cover yourself up. I’ve seen enough for now.’ Miller pulled his gown over his exposed parts with his good arm. The consultant wrote something in a small notebook. ‘I think we’ll try a sex therapist.’ He passed over a slip of paper. ‘Give these people a ring. They’ll arrange to see you. Try to be… like you were to me just now.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Miller. ‘It’s pretty much always like this.’

As it happens, the words, It’s pretty much always like this were the first words he spoke to the sex therapist, although this time he said them more sheepishly, almost by way of an apology. The therapist was unfazed, - as though she was used to men coming into her office and revealing themselves to her, - which may well have been the case.

‘Please don’t be embarrassed Mr. Miller. Believe me, you have nothing to be embarrassed about, - compared to some of my patients. Nevertheless, I am a professional person. I can put these things behind me.’ Her cheeks coloured slightly at her own remark. ‘So to speak, anyway,’ she concluded. ‘Tell me, how long has it been like that?’

Miller was not in the mood to be patronised. ‘It’s always been that long.’

‘What I mean is, - was it like that before the accident?’

‘What accident?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry; I apologise.’ She consulted her notes.

‘Why do people do that?’ Miller asked.

She looked at him over her glasses, perched on the end of her nose. ‘Do what?’

‘Say, I’m sorry. And then say, I apologise? I know what, I’m sorry means. You don’t have to say, I apologise as well. I mean, I do understand English, you know.’

‘Of course you do,’ she said, one eye still lingering on Miller’s notes. ‘I had been led to believe that your condition had been brought about as a result of an accident with…’ she consulted her notes, ‘…a Jaguar?’

Miller nodded before replying. ‘A big cat. Yes. A jaguar.’

‘Oh, that kind of jaguar. I thought it was a reference to a motor car.’ Her eyes widened. ‘And how did you come into contact with this jaguar?’

Miller didn’t like the question. ‘Doesn’t it say in my notes what happened?’

The therapist read for a while. ‘Oh, yes,’ she decided at length. ‘I see. And your… what shall we call it? Your willy? Your John Thomas?’

‘I believe the correct name for it is a penis,’ Miller said reproachfully. ‘And yes, it’s been like this since I woke up from the operation.’

‘I see,’ said the therapist again. She steepled her fingers. ‘And what was the first thing you saw when you woke up?’

Miller was guarded. ‘Where is this going?’ he asked.

‘Well, I mean, was there a pretty nurse leaning over you or anything?’

‘A pretty nurse?’

‘Yes,’ the therapist enthused. ‘You know, perhaps her uniform was unzipped a little too low. She leans over you to puff your pillows. Your eyes linger on her cleavage…’

‘Have you been in an NHS hospital lately?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Surely it’s your job to know what you mean. Anyway, no, I don’t know what you mean. If you’re implying that some NHS employee was so attractive to me that I sustained a twelve-month erection just by looking at her I believe you’re due for a holiday.’

All things considered, his appointments with the therapist were the most embarrassing hours of his life. After a while, she came to see him rather than the other way around. In a way he was relieved. Vanessa Whitstone was an attractive woman, shapely and curvaceous. Somewhere in her mid-thirties, with a look in her eyes like she knew what she was up to. Over the weeks and months they talked. About sex mainly. About what he liked and didn’t like. She found that he didn’t like pornography, stockings or suspenders but he did like striptease, nakedness and oral sex. She said she needed to find out what made him tick, below stairs.

‘And then what?’ asked Miller one wet Wednesday morning. ‘What do you do with all this information? Can I expect a prostitute to turn up one morning instead of you?’

‘Why? Would you like that? Do you think it would help?’ Before he could think of an answer, something else occurred to her. ‘And what do you mean, instead of me? Don’t you like me? Sexually, I mean.’

Miller tried to think of an answer. ‘Well, I have developed rather a soft spot for you.’

‘Doesn’t look like it from where I’m standing.’ Miller shuffled his robe around to try and cover his embarrassment. ‘You don’t have to cover it up, Chap,’ she said brightly. ‘I like it. I think it’s rather flattering actually.’

‘It doesn’t just do it when you’re here,’ he tried.

She put her hands on her hips and gave him a coquettish look. ‘Well now, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’

Her body appealed to him though. Despite the fact that the fat of years had begun to accumulate at her folds and creases, she was still as fine a specimen of womankind as he had seen. His previous encounters with the opposite gender had been largely limited to drunken fumblings with the harvest girls, - tanked up out of their tiny minds on lethal white farm cider, he would pull them behind the haystacks and goad them into removing their wet T-shirts. As he had been doing this since he was in his early twenties, the village girls had grown wise to his tactics. That didn’t stop a plentiful supply of them turning up every year though. Their increasing plainness was not an issue to him. You never look at the mantelpiece when you’re stoking the fire.

Vanessa seemed to like him though, and after several months of careful question and answer sessions had decided that the best thing for all concerned was that someone should come up and, do for him.

‘I know some lovely girls, kindly souls who would be only too glad to come up here and sample the scenery and the fresh air. Instead of rotting away in the town. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of all the arrangements.

And she did. Miller watched as her car drove off down into the vale and out of sight a couple of days later and as the big old Humber disappeared it was replaced by a bright red Skoda coming towards him. The Skoda contained Charley…

After the initial introductions, Miller showed her around the place. She walked by the side of his electric chair, sometimes shying away as his grasp of the joystick caused the chair to swerve. At the bench they stopped and she sat down where he could see her again. She was a young woman, twenty-something, Miller guessed, with a full, hourglass figure. Where Charley curved, Miller’s eyes lingered longingly. She was different to Vanessa, not just younger and more vivacious, - she was more real somehow. Like life hadn’t decided what box to put her in yet. She was her own person. Streetwise in the countryside.

‘I’m gonna smoke, OK?’

He watched her as she went through the ritual of rolling; papers, tobacco, - fierce concentration on her face as she rolled. Her hair tumbling over her eyes. And then a match, a flame, a private inhalation, a public exhalation.

‘Bad for you,’ he said.

She turned and blew smoke at the sun, squinting into the light. ‘I tried speed once, - at a party?’ She said it as though it was a question. ‘I wasn’t fooled into it; we all knew what we were doing. But, you know what? It was crap. Felt crap, - my body didn’t like it, my head certainly didn’t like it. I never did it again. Things I don’t like, - why should I?’

‘Dreadful way to die though, lung cancer.’

‘True. Still, the way I look at it, who knows where I’ll be in thirty years? I could be in a wheelchair by the time I’m your age, - you are.’ She tapped her tobacco tin with her little finger. ‘These little buddies, they make me feel good. Give me a good feeling. You should look out for the things that make you feel good in life. God knows, there aren’t too many out there. When they start to give me a bad feeling, then we won’t be friends anymore but, until then…’ She left the sentence half-finished. He nodded, thinking of an answer. He smiled, half to himself, half to her. She was probably right. She blew smoke at him and wrinkled her nose. ‘Covers up the smell of sheep as well.’ She