Clootie’s Cover
Robert James Tootell
©2012 Robert James Tootell
All rights reserved
Published in 2012 by Robert James Tootell
at Smashwords
Clootie's Cover
i
The Golden Gates swung open and St. Peter and God walked out to see if anyone was there. White clouds lolled in the air, the stars of the heavens shone brilliantly as they always had, but there wasn't a soul to be seen.
'Tsk, tsk,' muttered God, shaking His head, 'what on Earth's happened?'
St. Peter looked at his notes.
'According to my calculations Number One, and not putting too fine a point on it, we're a couple of million heads short.'
God clapped His hands decisively. 'This is no good! Peter, you must go down and see what's going on.'
'Me?' Peter said, 'what would I do down there?'
'Observe! Find out why the flock are snubbing their Holy Father.' God kicked at a loose piece of cloud and thrust His hands into His pockets. 'Take a short nap and look what happens! All hell breaks out! You must be as quick as you can. Something is up down there! We'll decide what's to be done on your return. If my hunch is right, the sweet Fallen Angel himself is at the bottom of this. And Peter, it goes without saying, you must promise not to get involved, it's no longer the Golden Age on the third planet. Our old friend has perfected countless ways of trapping the good.'
He gazed at St. Peter with compassion and pride.
'Just to be on the safe side,' He added, 'leave your keys with me.'
God clapped His hands once. Immediately there was a blinding flash of light, a great flapping of wings, and St. Peter was gone.
ii
Peter found himself sitting on a rock in a large field. Ominous red clouds, like monstrous beasts, swirled above him. An animal screamed in the distance. Down in the valley lay a small village, smoke rising from its chimneys.
He picked up his skirts and walked along the stony path towards the village. After a short while it struck Peter that there were no flowers in the fields, only thistles and weeds, and in the trees no birds sang. He stopped to take notes. The earth seemed dry and infertile. The closer he came to the village the more uneasy he felt. Bones were sticking out of the ground and deep scratches had scarred the trunks of old trees. His skin was bristling with goose-pimples. He came to an old sign. Daubed in an ancient script were the words, Clootie's Cover, All Welcome.
He arrived at the village and fell upon total devastation. The wooden houses were collapsed and defiled, the streets teemed with garbage. The town's chimneys emitted acrid smoke which bore strange fragments of matter - slithers of fabric that fluttered in the air.
'Dear Lord,' Peter muttered, 'what has happened here?' He was just about to take out his notepad when from behind him he heard the sound of screaming. He turned to see a young girl with long black hair running towards him, her arms flailing in the air.
'Please! Please!' she was wailing.
Peter stepped back in alarm.
'They want to kill me, oh you must help me!'
She ran up to him and he caught her in both arms. Peter heard the shouts and jeers of an angry mob. He froze in terror. What to do? The words 'don't get involved!' flashed through his mind. He shook himself to. No, he couldn't let her be killed! Picking up his skirts he took her by the hand and ran with her across the street into an old wooden shack. He bolted the door and stood in the doorway holding his chest, hardly able to take in what had happened. He glanced around at the walls and ceiling. Everything was smothered in black paint. At the back, a shutter was closed over a window. Strange symbols had been daubed on the wooden beams, apparently in gold. The girl was chattering like one possessed, digging long nails into his back.
'...you see, I refused to marry the old man of the village and now they want to punish me! He already has umpteen wives, not to mention his mistresses and slaves. Oh, it's horrible.'
She was trembling and sobbing. His gown became wet with her tears. Peter was overwhelmed with compassion.
'What's your name?' he asked.
'Lili.'
Pause.
Something stirred in the room. The old wooden shack itself seemed to groan. Lili stopped crying and laid her head on his chest.
'And what's yours?' she asked, stroking his arm.
'Peter,' he said in a small voice.
As she spoke a strange sensation swept through him. His heart started pumping wildly. He felt something was pulling him out of his body. He held on to the girl fearing he might fall. Outside a sinister darkness had descended over the village. The girl's bare feet were touching his, they were icy cold.
'Peter,' she whispered, looking deeply into his eyes, 'I must thank you...'
Just then, a blinding flash of light lit up the inside of the room. There was a wild fluttering of wings, a loud bang, and God Himself appeared before the two of them, coughing. The girl uttered a cry of surprise and fell faint in Peter's arms.
'Well well, that didn't take very long, did it?' God muttered, folding His arms. 'I can see already the spell of the Evil One is rampant here on Earth.' He sighed and looked round the walls.
'Dear me, what happened to good taste?'
The girl came to. Her eyes grew large and fearful. She stepped away from God.
'Don't worry,' Peter reassured her, 'it's not the old man - it's only God!'
But she carried on stepping back. Her face scowled and she turned away, burying her head in Peter's armpit. As they stood huddled together in the corner of the room, God narrowed His eyes at her and lifted a finger as if in thought - could it be?
Meanwhile the mob had gathered outside the building. Angry shouts were heard. Someone tried the handle. Then an eerie silence fell, and against the wooden door, three mighty knocks, followed by a chillingly dull thud.
'That is the knock of the Devil!' cried God, and the door burst open.
iii
In the battered doorway stood the old man of the village, Clootie - the Devil himself, surrounded by his mob of gibbering, deformed villagers, more animal than human. His green eyes shone excitedly, his glistening face steamy and contorted. Behind him a natty, leather-clad spiked tail thudded against the ground. He grinned, smacked his lips and stepped forward into the room.
'Saints preserve us!' muttered God, making the Sign of the Cross.
'Well now, look who it is,' the Devil tittered.
The Lord took out a large white handkerchief and dabbed His face and forehead. 'Ugly beast!' He retorted. The Devil laughed out loud. He tapped a monstrous claw against a beam that ran along the ceiling and playfully raised an eyebrow.
God cleared His throat and whispered from the corner of His mouth, 'Peter, what is the standard procedure in situations such as this?' He paused for the reply, eyeing the Devil suspiciously, but none came forth. Someone cried, 'that's it!' - God turned to see Peter and the girl climbing out of the window. Meanwhile the Devil had moved further into the room and was standing not three feet from the Lord, dwarfing the figure in white.
'It's time,' he grinned, cracking the joints of those great claws and stifling a yawn, 'to do battle, yes yes, to find out just who is the true Master of all Matter, living and dead.'
'You are not part of all that lives,' God intoned, swallowing hard.
'Temper, temper,' the Devil chuckled, 'I live, don't I? Am I not as real as You? And what of my esteemed apostates, worthy sons of Belial? Honourable demons of the Underworld, gorgeous banshees of Lethean? Are they not also part of the great plan?' He started picking at a back tooth with one of his claws.
'No plan of mine,' God cried.
'Ah! Point conceded. Your plan excludes, mine allows for everything. Yours is divisive, mine universal. Your Word causes nations to cut each other down through mortal fear, mine leads them through the pits of death fearlessly, without shame.' Rings of smoke appeared about the Devil's nostrils. He paused, as if to gather himself, then continued in an altogether softer, almost feminine manner. 'So who, great Lord of the Heavens, seems to be the true bestower of freedom?'
The Devil chomped his lips and the mob jeered and narrowed their eyes at the pale figure in white. Raising his arm to quieten them, the Devil continued, 'Ah, but one grows weary of overused sophistries. Come, it is time.' He placed his arm around God's shoulder. 'I will allow You,' the Devil went on, 'the decency of determining the means to the end. Oh, but may I make a suggestion?' He raised his voice theatrically, 'that we hold a head-kicking competition,' then lowered it to a stage whisper, 'a particular favourite of mine I must confess - of which I am the Undisputed Champion. But no matter.' He glanced sportingly behind his back and roared in a voice that might have shattered the windows of the entire village, 'The time has come. The Agon begins! Choose your weapon!'
The heavens thundered, wild animals howled in the forests, the mob roared - sensing imminent victory - banging their clubs against the side of the shack. Completely alone now, God released Himself from the Devil's clutches and paced the room, His beautifully manicured hands pressed into His forehead. 'Think! Think!' He seemed to be saying. He was trying to remember wise words He'd once written on a cloud as a message and sent down to Earth, many, many years before. But what were they? Something about a pan? A swordfish? In a flash they came to Him, 'The pen is mightier than the sword.' That was it. He turned triumphantly and proclaimed:
'A poetry competition.'
The Devil twiddled his eyebrows. What sort of trick was this?
'Poetry!' the Lord exclaimed in a shrill voice just a shade too optimistic. 'The winning poem should be the original work of the author, must not have been entered for any previous competition... and may rhyme.' Another idea sprung to mind. 'Also, it must be humorous. Yes! Whoever gets the most laughs...' God added hurriedly, astonished at the sheer brilliance of His Being, '...shall be the winner. There.' He cleared His throat. 'This is the weapon I choose.'
The Devil quietened the rabble with a single raised claw and looked suspiciously at the Lord. Everything fell silent. Poetry? What was the clump up to? Yet as he pondered the effect of a Lordy Sonnet on this unholy rabble, who couldn't understand a simple directive, let alone a romping iambic pentameter, his uncertain frown relaxed into a wide, joint-cracking smile. Yes, he thought, why not?
'Agreed!' he boomed with undisguised delight, as if his worst dreams had just come true, 'let us begin at once.'
They took up their positions at opposite ends of the room, each lighting a candle, each looking up into the murky corners for inspiration.
And so it was that the great battle of words commenced.
iv
Word soon got round that a mighty contest was about to take place between the two great powers that be. The Earth itself seemed to hum in anticipation. The mob had retreated to the squalor of the village square, where a make-do stage was quickly prepared. They squabbled while they waited. God would win, the younger ones foretold, He had Divine Scribes working for Him. No no! Didn't Satan have his own diabolical writers? But look at the form! The form! God has never lost such a battle before. Not so! The history of the world is littered with the triumphs of Evil over Good. Don't your ever watch the news? The older ones agreed, the world was falling apart, the church was a broken institution. And anyway, where had He been all these years? Scuffles broke out, angry men pushed each other, slapped their wives, spat on the ground. Children screamed and pointed grubby fingers at their playmates without knowing why.
Meanwhile, inside the shack it was dark and difficult to write. God tried to think of all the jokes He knew. Only one came to mind, a trifle about some nails and a motel in Birmingham, but this had gone down like a lead balloon at the Eternity Anniversary Ball. No, humour was not His forte - He was no Groucho!
The Devil, on the other hand, was licking his lips and chuckling. He had some wonderfully horrible poems up his sleeve. His eyes shone like cosmic stones, curls of smoke rose from his nostrils as if a pistol had just gone off somewhere inside. He scribbled away on the parchment of dried skin, dipping his index-claw with great care into a wide-eyed blood-well, the head of one of the mob. This would be an easy victory!
Time passed quickly. At last the Devil folded his arms, grinning from horn to horn, he was finished. God peeked out from the corner of His eye. Under the table, a sandal-clad foot twitched nervously. He picked up the small piece of paper on which He had created form from void and bit His lip. It scanned awkwardly and His metrics were all over the place. In point of fact, He wasn't absolutely certain what metrics were. In any case, everything was predestined... He coughed.
They stood up, came face to face in the doorway and held each other's stare with something that might well have been called at one time esteem. But the moment was gone. The candles went out simultaneously and the Devil opened the door, beckoning God to go first. The sky blushed to a deep crimson. As God walked out into the street there was jeering, a cabbage fell at His feet. As the Devil emerged, wild cheering erupted, followed by triumphant belching and hand-clapping.
The whole world had gathered in the village square - the creatures of the underworld jumping about on the rooftops and trees. Lili and St. Peter were seen sitting up a telegraph post, eating cherries and looking on eagerly. Two chairs were placed in the centre of the stage and a microphone set up. To the sound of a slow drum, God and the Devil walked slowly towards the platform, side by side, while the drunken village musician puffed out his cheeks and blew his trumpet. Night had descended, an icy wind blew. Women clutched their children. Men stood on boxes making excited hand-signals.
They emerged on the stage. God remembered to bow just as a crab-pate sandwich flew past, slapping the Master of Ceremonies out of a nervous trance. The Devil raised his arms to thunderous applause. A toothless old hag, topless, her breasts swinging like empty sacks before her, walked cackling up and down in front of the microphone, holding a large card with ONE written on it, before being pelted with tomatoes and laughed off stage. The town drunk, who was lying at the foot of the stage, was singing 'You'll Never Walk Alone,' waving his bottle in the air.
The Master of Ceremonies, eyeing the crowd suspiciously, stepped up to make his introductions.
'My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen-na, Seraphims and Succuba, Demons and Deities, presenting the main event of the evening-ga - sponsored by UNIFEST, the World's Authority on Pathogenic Infestations - the contest for the Championship of the World and Beyond, fighting for the title of Master of All Matter, Living and Dead...'
He dropped the microphone to his waist, grinning with a full set of gleaming white teeth. The crowds screamed and jostled. The two combatants paced the boards behind him, punching the air, gargling, twisting their necks this way and that...
'Introducing - in the blue corner, wearing white and weighing in at zero kilos, Lord of the Heavens, of all things good and righteous,' his voice rising steadily, wavering to good effect, 'the one and only - Go-da.' The crowd tittered, one or two hand-claps arose from the eastern stand. The Devil stepped forward. '...and in the red corner, wearing black, weighing in at six hundred and sixty six kilos,' cat-calls, cheers rising up from all sides, the Master of Ceremonies' voice breaking with feverish pitch, 'Lord of the Night, of all things dark and sorrowful, the one and only - Lu-ci-fer!'
Pandemonium broke out, wild cheering, screaming, cat-whistles. The trumpeter tried to play 'Rocky' but collapsed in a heap with a sorry burp. Vegetables were thrown into the air, firecrackers went off, drunken women started ripping off their clothes, screaming 'chase me! chase me!' It took a full ten minutes for the crowd to be brought back under control.
Finally, the two combatants came together in the centre of the stage. They eye-balled each other as they picked straws. The Devil tittered and pursed his lips, his was the shorter one. God went to sit in His chair. Lucifer approached the microphone grinning broadly amid appreciative applause. A deathly hush fell over the population of the third planet, and in a cheerful sing-song tone, the Devil began:
O Mary wasn't quite all there, in fact she sometimes barked,
'Oh life,' she moaned, 'is so unfair, I'm lonely here in the dark,'
And so she bought a little lamb and fed it only grass,
But every night it howled so much that Mary kicked its... head in!
The Devil grinned, waiting for his just rewards... none came forth. Undeterred, he chuckled wickedly, then guffawed for all his worth, and this proved very effective as the crowd burst spontaneously into exaggerated laughter. Rockets lit-up the night sky and sparklers went off all around. The citizens of both worlds cried, belched, slapped their thighs and asked each other what it meant. This went on for a long time and the Devil was pleased. Not very original, he thought, but what the hell. He turned triumphantly, winked at God and sat down.
All eyes fell on the Lord.
With unsteady step He walked over to the microphone and coughed into it. The strangely angelic sound it produced echoed for miles around and the crowd jeered derisively. He tried to lower the microphone but fumbled it - it creaked into the night like an old attic door. More jeering and outlandish belching. Finally He took out a small piece of paper from a prayer book, held it keenly before Him, and with a high, rather tremulous voice, began to read:
There once was a man called Bulgakov,
Who mixed up his pills for the whooping cough,
His glory was struck
With such terrible luck
That his wife had no choice but to w...
Holy sinners! When the Lord came to the most important bit, the microphone had emitted a horrible noise, which was followed by a horrible silence. He replaced the piece of paper in His prayer book and looked out over the crowd, completely unaware that no-one had heard the punch-line.
A dog barked. The wind brushed through the streets. The Devil was nonchalantly shining a favourite middle-claw on his gown and inspecting it keenly.
God, looking up to the sky, waited, and waited... then muttered something under His breath, which sounded very much like 'have to bring in the sheets,' for the chilling thought had crossed His mind that He - the greatest choreographer and set-designer the world had ever seen - had just died on the stage!
Just at that moment a tipsy giggling could be heard, 't'was the missus, ha ha! the old bag! Wopped it off, she did!' It was the town drunk lying under the boards. His rambling, light-hearted chuckling was so infectious that now someone else joined in. It spread among the rabble, slowly at first, but soon ripples of amusement broke out, and whispers, 'wopped it off? - bit close to the knuckle, that!' Giggles all around. Giggles, and chuckles, and then clapping. Finally, someone threw out a great fat 'Ha!' and it was then, not wanting to be the last to get the joke, that the crowd at last broke into peals of laughter. And where had that horrible noise come from, they nudged each other, from God Himself? The more they thought about it, the more they laughed. It swept through the town like a form of mass hysteria, laughter turning to guffaws, guffaws to screams...
God was delighted - He lived again!
Meanwhile, the Devil had bolted up from his chair. What was this? He pushed his way forward, roared into the microphone, 'I, Lucifer, command thee...' but only a horrible sound blew out from the dodgy speakers. More roars of laughter. He raised his arms in delirious anger. 'Stop!' he cried, 'stop!' but too late, too late... With howls of laughter ringing in his ears, he turned towards God, fear and betrayal burning his eyes... there was a tremendous explosion, a blinding flash - the Devil disappeared in a plume of red smoke.
From thereon in everything happened quickly. The dark spectres of the Underworld let out such a terrible wail... a huge sheet of electricity ripped through the skies and they all burst into flames and were gone. Fires broke out everywhere. The sky was lit up as if in flames itself, the villagers fled in terror - Clootie's Cover was destroyed.
Strangely enough, to everyone present the end to the evening had seemed somehow anticlimactic. 'Debacle!' declared the tabloids. 'What a sham!' screamed reporters. On television, panels of 'experts' calmly discussed the event. Perhaps it was the hyped build-up, or the lack of instant-replays, or just the verses themselves? 'Not at all!' the cheery gardener laughed, 'everyone knows the best poetry is to be found in the corner shop, not on the stage!' What did they expect, the hastily despatched broad-sheets asked with the wisdom of reflective hindsight over the following days, from a poetry competition? That words alone were the answer to the world's problems? In any case an enquiry was promised by the authorities, who apparently had lost a lot of money on the night themselves.
But on the fires raged, causing havoc to all peoples across the globe, and neither the dailies nor the odd sports personality could come up with a solution until God Himself, a trifle over the top some maintain considering the closeness of the result, dealt with everything in one swift action on His return to the clouds, where the whole sorry incident was swept - or rather flushed - quickly under the carpet.
In His happiness, God forgave St. Peter, whose face was covered in cherries, and gave him back his job. As a precaution, however, He installed state-of-the-art video cameras outside the Gates of Heaven, complete with audio-visual domophone and complimentary doormat. Lili - Lilith, as she is better known - was exposed as Satan's long-time accomplice and unceremoniously escorted back to where she hailed from, the Unctuous Pit of Snakes. The drenched people of the Earth doffed their caps and were forced to admit after all that a God with a (dubious) sense of humour was better than a kick in the head. They returned to their nice, humdrum lives; their laborious, mundane jobs, and soon enough Heaven became full once again.
It must be said, much time has passed since then. The great competition has long since fallen into myth. Even so, rumours abound that a furious Lucifer has slipped back to Earth and is masquerading as a transvestite billboard-paster-upper in Berlin - another cover. God, ashamed of His literary effort some believe, remains silent, and keeps His face turned from the people of the third planet. Nevertheless, when men and women of a certain countenance open their prayer books, searching perhaps for that hallowed snapshot of Arthur as a baby, or when they find themselves unexpectedly on stage, holding a microphone or kneeling before a Minister of God during Holy Matrimony, they start giggling, and for the life of them can't figure out why.
***
Clootie’s Cover is taken from a larger collection of 28 stories by the same author entitled Krakow Stories. Please buy a copy of the book, instead of simply downloading free samples, and help keep this impossibly ungodly writer – who is currently living under a bridge contemplating Dante – in good spirits!
He can be contacted at: robzaba@yahoo.co.uk