Handsome Freaks
A Serial Novel
by Ezra Vancil
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Ch1-P1 | Ch1-P2 | Ch2-P1 | Ch2-P2 | Ch3-P1 | Ch3-P2 | Ch3-P3 | Ch4-P1 | Ch4-P2 | Ch4-Pt3 | Ch4-Pt4 | Ch5 | Ch6 P1 | Ch6 P2 | Ch7 | Ch8 | Ch9 | Ch10
This is an original STEEM series novel. I'm writing it as I go, so bear with me. If you like odd dramas about odd things, strangely funny and sad, freaks, bearded ladies, emotional pain of invisible boys–you might like this. Enjoy and RESTEEMs, upvoted and comments most pleasant.. thank you.
Missed the last Chapter, CHp 10? Read it now << Chapter 10
For more convenience, I'm will have at some point an updated Novel index here soon!
Chapter 10 Part 2: The Sword Of Napoleón
The Catholics, Protistans, Conservadores, Leberales and even the Marxists in their tattered coats, all gathered as one people in the square.
The fires incircle the horizon of Valencia. All but homes and churches were burned that night. And though the old buildings were mostly constructed of stone and were easily whitewashed and rebuilt in the coming year, this night seemed to be an epic transition; a great revolution that should change the course of history.
The people had resin together over one common indignation: the murder of the impoverished priest, Father Demissie, by the ghost pig, as they called him—But his name was Pio Piccolo and he was a very quiet young man.
It was not only the peasants that raged; it was the merchants, the clergy, the mothers and the widows. Even those that were high above—the ones that the people truly raged against—joined in Frey. Those were ones that ruled, from the superior bloodline; the gentlemen, the magistrates, royalty, and bishops; they rode their carriages into the square to make their full support known by their presence.
For they knew—as all those educated in the secrets ages of the past understood—that this was one of the unavoidable irritations in the cycles of history. The poison of an unjust world had to be purged from the blood of the tired common man, and could only be done with blood—the blood sacrifice.
The ArchBishops, they were fully aware of the contradictions taking place that night on the square of Valencia. That of the people singing from one side of the mouth glory to King Jesus—the man of peace—while spiting guile on one of his sheep with the other half. Yet, it was known—as it has been known by all who are above the thrall— that there has always been but one religion under the sun. Whether they are called Christian, Catholic, Jew or the irreligious Marxists, this night was a ceremony of that ancient religion. This was a shadow dance of the pagan’s wicker man—the strong man caged and readied for sacrifice. This was an echo of the fiery seat of Moloch with the innocent placed on a burning thrown, his ashes dissolving into the fiery pit of the iron stomach of The Lord.
For if by war, or by sacrifice, every generation must raise up it’s effigy to the gods. Those in power, they knew who those gods were, for they sat enthroned, as all of their lineages had before them, on their throne of power.
This drama was but a small irritation to those who sat upon that ancient throne. Instead of a lazy slumber by the warm fires in their sprawling estates; they would sleep tonight by the cold fire of the people's rage. But even the richest landowner must take personal stock of his cattle from time to time.
But to the peasants and the common folks, it was a night of grandeur that seemed even the archangels of the heavens looked upon, but in the end, this firey night would not even be remembered by history.
As in all times before, seats of political power would switch places, scapegoats would be sent off to prison, but in the end, those ancient gods that sat in their carriages tonight; they owned the land, they owned the Marxist, the Conservadores and Leberales, the Priests, the wives and the widows; furthermore, they owned the scribes who wrote the books of history as it was meant to be written—for the profits of the gods. This night in the city of Valencia, it profited the gods for the boy Pio to be hung.
Pio Piccolo laid naked in a makeshift cage that the townspeople had constructed from fresh timber and iron fencing. The seven by seven-foot box stood in the courtyard ten feet from the gallows, which they had also built from new pinewood. The square was crowded with open fires, vendors of gruel and wine. Roasted pigs on spikiest were the choice meal that night.
Pio looked at his swollen hands and noticed the familiar transparent quality of his skin and bones. Like his father Elmo, and his brother Piero—Pio was also a very quiet man; sometimes so very quiet that his body threatened invisibility. His hand was only a faint cloud of matter. He passed it through the bars along with the cloudy skin and bones of his arm with no obstruction whatsoever.
He could easily walk through the bars—he knew it was so. He could also easily have bent the bars with his strength. But, Pio was tired the day he was to hang. Not so much in body, but in his soul he was tired. He was bloodied from the crowd's beatings and the scuffed rashes of rope burns. Steams of blood made river-like paths down his legs and back; the blood mingled with the urine of certain men who jovially pissed through the bars while cursing his soul. Even, once in a while, a priest hiked up his purple robe and relieved himself on Pio’s naked body, yet, he did so in a much more proper and dignified manner than the peasants.
Through the night's cackling and murmurs, Pio could hear the mob singing together as one voice. Sometimes it was a song he knew from the taverns he had visited. Sometimes it was obviously a Christian hymn. He of course—because of his mother Zola’s hated for both church and Tavern—did not know many of the songs. But as he lay in his cage, one song began to rise up softly from the women surrounding the gallows. The melody floated through his cage like a scent of perfume. It felt like a warm hand caressing his skin. The beautiful voices seemed deeply out of place on that awful night. The women sang the Saint Patrick’s Lorica, a prayer of protection.
The melody was a familiar to Pio. His father often hummed the song under his breath as he worked. Pio had not heard it since early childhood, until that night.
“Be thou my vision O Lord of my heart
None other is aught but the King of the seven heavens.”
At the end of the women's first verse, the bars of his cage seemed to become as faint and immaterial as his hand was.
Pio heard the sound of his Father's chisels as they pecked and peeled hardwood. He could smell the raw pinewood scent that permeated the walls of the woodshop behind the small apartment on ViaGambito. He looked around and saw all of the magnificent carvings on the walls. That of crucifixes, varnished flowers, and great scenes of history hanging by iron hooks. Outside of the shop, he could see the day was at its end. The moon full and glowing, had just peaked over the trees.
Pio could hear his father singing Saint Patrick’s Lorica as he shaved thin chips of wood from a large timber block. He remembered the sculpture well from his childhood. It was the crucifix commissioned by the Bergamo Village Parish. The one His father never quite finished. For years later he watched that sculpture rotting beside the woodshop, untreated and in the elements. With a perfectly ornate cross completed but Christ still unhappened. Pio observed that he was now a child again. His relatively small figure sitting on a stool by candlelight watching this same scene he had lived once before. Though he could still hear the women sing:
“Be thou my speech, be thou my understanding.
Be thou with me, be I with thee”
Though the Piccolo family did not attend the Perish chapel of Bergamo—like all other families—most of Elmo's sculpting was in fact commissioned for Bergamo Chapel and other nearby parishes.
In the early days before he had built the woodshop behind the apartment, Pio remembered that he had carved crucifixes on the dinner table between meals. Until Zola told him that she had not invited Christ into her heart; so he surely was not invited to her dinner table.
Pio intuitively recognized the night of the vision he was ensconced in. It was the night he asked his Father if God existed. This was brought on because of Zola. She had told him and his brother Piero that God was a ghost and ate little boys who did not wash their pene, as if it were his ano in the bathtub.
He remembered his father’s awkward way of speaking. He would act as if he had not heard the question; until he was satisfied that you had forgotten you had asked it. Then, he would stop what he was doing and reply in short ongoing intervals. He never gave just an answer though. His responses were paced and formulated with more questions.
“Be thou my battle-shield, be thou my sword.
Be thou my dignity, be thou my delight.”
Elmo answered only after Pio had forgotten he had asked the question. He then stopped his work. “Pio...” he said. “Have you ever asked: do my hands exist?”
“No papa.”
“Then, have you ever asked: does the moon exist?”
“No, I have not papa.”
“Or your mother, or your father? Do you ask if they exist?”
Pio now recognized himself as an onlooker and not the Child, Pio. He observed himself poised in his seat waiting to answer each question as if he were on the stand before the Juez.
Elmo continued. “It seems we do not ask this question of existence about anything else, Just God? Why is that, you think, Pio?”
“I don’t know papa. I guess it is because we have all these things in our possession—we can see them. Why would we ask if they exist?”
“Yes. Of course..” Elmo said, stopping and itching his head. “So if you are thirsty and desire a drink what do you do?”
“I drink.”
“And, If you are hungry, and desire food?"
“I eat.”
“What if you are cold?”
“I warm myself by the fireplace.”
“And if you are lonely?”
“I watch you carve your Christ.”
Pio could see his father’s playful way of talking to him. He at once longed to be a small child yet again. Before he grew so large, before the pig fat soap, the rooftop, and pigeons—before his mother left him alone on the train with her purse.
“Be thou my father, be I thy son.
Mayst thou be mine, may I be thine.”
It was that night as Pio remembered that Elmo finally finished his response. He had, of course, forgotten about the question altogether. But, Elmo was not through. He brought it up again, as he laid Pio in his small bed; the one that his feet hung over the edge.
“Are you sleepy?” Elmo said.
“Yes, I am papa?”
“What do you do when you are sleepy?”
“I sleep.”
Before Elmo blew out the candle that night he said his final response.
As that beautiful melody continued in some distant fog of reality, he heard his Father’s final words that night.
“Pio, it seems that everything we desire exists. Does it not?”
Elmo blew out the candle.
With a warm stream of urine splashing on his face, Pio shook to a wakeful fright. He saw the bars of the cage again. He looked up at the distorted laughing face of a drunken man who swaggered back and forth pissing through the bars. He was singing now with the enchanted women the final verse of the Saint Patrick’s Lorica.
“Be thou my shelter, be thou my stronghold.
Mayst thou raises me up to the company of the angels.”
The drunken peasant shoved his still dripping penis back into his stained trousers and pushed his face to the bars.
“You look like you were sweet dreaming son, had to remind you of your nightmare.” He said, then laughed.
Pio stood, wiped his face with his hand and looked out through the bars. The buildings surrounding the square were only smoldering now. He saw that most of the people who had gathered were sleeping, their fires now just glowing embers. The sun was beginning its morning, behind the hills in the distance.
From the corner of his vision, he saw a man in a black robe walking briskly through the square. His face obstructed by a hood that hung low over his face. The man stepped over the dormant peasants and merchants making his way to the Gallow that stood looming twenty feet tall over Pio's jail.
Whereas just moments ago Pio no longer wished to live. The vision of his father and the remembrance of his tenderness continued as warm passion in his belly. He desired now to live.
The ominous man in black neared the Gallow, now ten feet away. Pio was sure he was death's servant, the noose-man.
He held his hand in front of his eyes, and with little concentration, it began to lose its density and materiality. He pushed through the cage all the way to his shoulder. But then felt the mass of his body solid against the bars. He heard a woman scream.
He looked up and saw that the hooded man was climbing the Gallow ladder in a haste.
The peasant woman shouted out. "¡Despierta despierta! He is truly a ghost... El Diablo en carne!" She began kicking the sleeping mob. "_Despierta despierta! The bars have grown through his skin!" She said, slapping men on their slumbering heads with her flat hand.
Pio pushed with all of his strength against the bars. They began to bend, but also his chest began to slide through the bars, the rest of his body now as transparent as his hand. He felt a blast of heat and pain against his left cheek. A merchant was waving what was left of a roasted pig and beating him mercilessly. Many of the men, police, and priests made it to their feet and were picking up whatever weapons they could find as Pio struggled to push through the bars. Onn Policeman reached the caged and instantly rammed his rifle but into Pio's nose. He was stunned by the biting pain but found the fall had released his naked body from the bars. He lay on the ground, free from the cage, but men surrounded him in a horde.
Pio heard a booming voice from the Gallow's stage. "Attention, ¡Atención!"
The crowd turned to look. He dropped his hood and Pio knew who the man was. It was the Abogado of the municipal court, Geraldo James; standing on the stage of the Gallows with a gold-handled short sword. HJe raised it, pointing it at Pio who lay on the cobblestone, slightly transparent and naked.
"This is an innocent boy." He boomed. "I am the man you want. I slew the Priest with the sword of Napoleón!"
...to be continued.
Missed The Last Chapters?
Ch1-P1 | Ch1-P2 | Ch2-P1 | Ch2-P2 | Ch3-P1 | Ch3-P2 | Ch3-P3 | Ch4-P1 | Ch4-P2 | Ch4-Pt3 | Ch4-Pt4 | Ch5 | Ch6 P1 | Ch6 P2 | Ch7 | Ch8 | Ch9 | Ch10
I'm Ezra Vancil a Performing Songwriter, writer and artist based in Texas. Thanks for reading. If you like, please RESTEEM, UPVOTE and follow 
All mages except public domain, gallows original public domain creations.