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The voice was muffled but the images were clear. There was fire, a burning furnace. The voice was muffled, enveloped by the building, but the portraits were obvious. A cross, a lifeless body, death. The voice seemed to echo across the cavernous building, the howling wind taking it from neighbour to neighbour, a whisper that seemed to say: “Let me tell you how this works...” The voice merged with the sound of traffic outside: “...you will hide, I will seek”. The noise of a collision, shouts, a scream, angry voices, the sound of sirens: “I will seek and I will find. Let me explain how this works... .” Maybe I imagined the voice; maybe this was my imagination raging, creating: “you will be behind a shop, in a church, under a girl. I shall hunt you down and when I find you, my wrath will come upon you. You will close your eyes and pray for forgiveness... .” The man on a cross in front of me; the sound of my neighbour checking his phone; that voice: “...keep a record of sins....” I left the church and began my life.
To a nation that did not call on my name
This was how I understood the rules of the game and so I hid. Hid in religion and sex, life and death, anywhere where it seemed God might not find me. Yes, He whispered but no, I didn’t hear Him. I refused to hear him. I ran. Life became a constant movement, a motion neither forwards nor backwards, but movement nonetheless. Hunted by God, by His wrath, I lost myself in girls. Lingering by bars, I would smile, alcohol dulling the build up of sin within me, until at mine, theirs, behind a bar, we’d reach the moment of orgasm: a movement against eternity, an escape from the present. The point of explosion a pistol shot against the past (his threats), against the future (the furnace), against the very present in which I thought I wanted to live.
I said, 'Here am I, here am I.'
Living in the present, I would clothe myself in riches. My clothes were an expression of my soul, which I thought was alive, which I thought was vibrant, which I thought was fighting death, actively taking up arms against it. Days would be spent going from shop to shop, my soul in my credit card, leaving a little of its essence at every counter. Nights would be spent going from bar to bar; an echo of that voice in the sirens outside, in the shots of sambuca downed, a short fire on the drink before it sank into my throat and outside, to the next bar.
I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me
Religion for the soul and sex for the body. I took to going to church: an intellectual exercise, a concession to the demands of society which needs an outward holiness to match an inward depravity. My words were kind; my children got into the church school; my smile was sincere; my life appeared to change as I married, leaving the drink and girls for weekends away. Married life kept me in the city, the sirens, the screams surrounding me as I walked through the streets, as I hid in the respectability of society.
My sins are too numerous to enumerate, my desires too deep to contain. I walk again past the church where I first heard His voice. My wife is dead (road accident, sirens) and my children have embraced the god I hid from. The fire continues to burn but the church appears to still be standing against the storm clouds. My life is lost, has spent its life in hiding, and I am close to death.
I was found by those who did not seek me.
I lie on my bed: death surrounds me but no longer is it a burning fire. I lie on my bed: death surrounds me but it is his death, his cross, his body. I lie on my bed, and as the cool air clears my room I take that final step at the end of a long life in hiding. I step out of my bed - naked, alone - and stare out of my window as the church spire appears to be reborn, appears to break forth from the bonds of this life, seems about to break into heaven.
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