What did the old masters use to say? What did they call this time of year when the world was not so old and weary? So much in need of sleep, like he is now. The man is nameless in the crowds, but now there is no crowd around him. He stands alone on the hill. His hill, made of ants and blue and hopes and soil. His hill always, where he stood once when...when what? What's there to tell about the past, he wonders, as he looks into the murky dusk and frowns?
The past is gone and now, it is sale time.
The masters called it that, not so much for the money but for the washed-up sins. Half-off perils, they liked to joke and the young man would look up at them and laugh, because it was funny then. Sale-time seemed like a joke to him, but no longer.
'You must never let the daylight catch you unawares,' they told him and he understood, at once. There was something sickly about the day time, something dangerous that he did not find at night. He's always been a night person and now he stands here, witnessing the beginning of this glorious time and not able to do a damn thing. Everything he once owned has been taken for him and who is he in the shadow? Nameless. Lost and forgotten.
Later tonight, before the dawn comes, before treacherous day, the masters will come back. One by one, they will touch down on Earth, taking in all that's happened since they've been gone and they will begin setting up their stands. Stools high up, but small and uncomfortable. They do not do it for comfort and to be honest, it's a bargain deal. They'd take a lot more than mild discomfort for a price such as this. They will sit on their high-perched chairs, always ready to spring up and greet a customer, voices soft murmuring, begging, coercing, convincing. Pulling unsuspecting fools into alleys and by-streets.
Unsuspecting.
The man spits the word out, because it still burns his tongue. When he was young, he was taught to believe they were not unsuspecting customers. That there was no such thing. How can there be? In dealings such as this, you do not go by without knowing what it is you're doing. It is unwise.
No, their customers know full well the price of their sins, they feel the little hungry mouths nibbling at their souls, tiny sharp teeth sinking deep into the skin of their existence.
And even now, it's hard to think it isn't so. Drilled into him, yet chosen to forget. Dropped off baggage. He's come here, atop his hill and waiting for the inevitable to happen. Where are you now, my long-ago masters? What deals do you hope to strike today?
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He can already see them now, going back down in a week's time, greeting each other with a sly grin and a whistle. Bragging about the deal they got, dripping juicy details into their competitors' ear. His masters will have a hard time, but they will come out delighted on the other side. They always do. And he'd like to think he's come to stop them, but he knows better than that. What is there for a renegade like him to do?
He's been cast out, he was not good enough. He used to have a real sight, they'd say, he could smell sin a mile off, the torturous pain of the eternally damned, but then something happened that no one could quite place. He lost his touch. Tragic really, he promised so much. He could've been better than all of us. Well, I wouldn't quite say that. No, I suppose not, still a real shame. Yes.
A shame he had been and shame was not taken kindly by the masters of his house, so they sent him away, without even waving goodbye. It simply was not done in their profession. It does not do to be melancholic because once you slack off, you risk getting trapped under the avalanche. One guilty moment is much like the next and sooner rather than later, the sadness swallows you up. No trace left of you on either side. So they'd let the young man go and didn't dwell on it too much, a loss though he may be.
And every year, he comes. To the hill, to the life he might've had once, if his eyes hadn't gone blind, if the screams of the sinners hadn't drowned out the sound.
'I can hear them,' he murmurs, over and over, but just in his mind. There is little point for his voice out here. No one can hear him, and yet someone might, so best be cautious.
I can hear them. I can hear them.
And worst of all, it seems sometimes that the tormented sinners can hear him back. That's what did it in the end. He could've been a great peddler. No, not even that. He could've been a king, selling the momentary impression of immortality for the real thing. A great trickster, but the sinners got to him, their screams as they burned in the fires of eternal Hell rising loud in his ears until all he could see was red.
Every year, he stands here secluded, knowing his masters and his long-ago friends are coming out this night, raking souls back into the underground with them. And him stuck here, between the noises of his past and those of his future. For there is no forgiveness for the peddlers of sin, no chance of redemption or anyone turning a blind eye.
And he doesn't want it. He doesn't require anyone's forgiveness. He just wishes that the noises would stop.
But the time draws near now, light is creeping ever closer and the old masters are bound to be out now. He has people to meet and deals to seal. And perhaps the dead will shut up.
to be continued
