XII – The Hanged Man

Torchlight flared red with the wind as they danced by the riverside, and cast shadows on sweaty faces. Charles wore white tie and she a long, pearlescent dress; they made it, stumbling and smiling, to the survivors’ breakfast, arm-in-arm, then they went back to her place and slept.
After Cambridge he worked in the civil service. He lived in a flat in Islington, and found a new girlfriend on the dinner party circuit. Until, eighteen months later, she couldn’t cope and nor could he. No hyacinths could straighten this one out. He left her in silence, in a rose-garden in winter.
He went abroad and found pain. Agony. Locked in a Turkish jail for seven months, raped and beaten and interrogated with batons, and the madmen screamed on the rocks outside, and he sobbed until his throat bled.
Then he was released, because Turkey and Great Britain were on the same side, they were best pals, they were rubbing cheeks to ward off the grim gaze of the Great Bear. He went home, back to Islington, and found himself in the violet flames of the November Riots. The skies burned purple and black, lightning spat on the palaces of Chelsea, convicts and royalty ran naked in the streets.
Nobody had a clue what had happened. Gargoyles came alive and eat schoolchildren (they said); at night, anywhere in the world, you could hear the boom of field-guns and Molotovs as men tried their best to save the world with death.
The summer heat had been intolerable; now winter dragged on, pipes burst and froze, pensioners dropped and the living shivered and wept.
It was then that Charles Parris, after the torchlight and silence and agony and the shouting and reverberation, after all of that formative shit, walked from Islington to Westminster on Twelfth Night, barefoot and mad, his hair suddenly white, the violet glare of the sky in his eyes.
He went straight to the empty crucifix in front of Buckingham Palace, the one stained with oil and burnt gristle from a thousand immolated victims.
The frost took hold in his hair as he swayed, inverted, lashed to the crossbar with baling twine, his eyes wide and his hands folded behind his back. Nobody dared touch him or make a sound, and as the sun crept into a grey sky, leaves budded from the blackened wood, and flowers fell at the foot of the cross.

XVIII - The Moon

the moon its hughe cycloptic eye winks at us. we hace no hair because we werent good enough orclean enough we just couldnt fucking wash. so what are we diong to the aerth what are we doign? answer we cant fucking take care either we just fill the lakse with posion we choke the frogs with shit and fuck we jam the pretty flowers of god fullof ash and chemical waste jism. so the moons winking it says look here you say this barrne waste? you see this this is you in the enxt hundred thousand years baby ths is yiu youre next

II of Wands

Back in Croydon again. Only there are no saints anymore. There are only sag-breasted harlots, flocking to the chainstores on the high street.
They undress themselves in the dark. Present their nakedness to me on threadbare sofas, and I sob. The young men are all gone, the young girls are all gone, along with flowers and soldiers; only tombstones remain.
I am fucked ceaselessly by ageing women. I am reversing the drop in the Croydon birth rate single-handed.
The war thunders on. At night I listen to the owls hooting in the abandoned tenements. The young and the poor are dying, fighting in a pointless war. I can hear the trickle of water from the tap I can’t turn off; the plumbers are bleeding on a foreign shore.
We are too sickly to fight, for now.
It won’t be long. The bugles will draw us, weak, useless, from sad shires, and the war will thunder on. The earth is cleansing herself; mankind will wipe itself out and the rotting dead will refresh the soil. Croydon will perish, along with civilisation. Praise God Jesus. Praise the Lord.

XX – Judgement

Let me tell you a joke. The quickest and cruelest of all. It goes like this; everybody dies.
And afterwards?
Well, I don’t know.
Judgement is not the business of the living.

We didn't bring anything into this world; we definitely won't take anything with us. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Praise God.
Those born of women don’t live very long and are not very happy. We grow and are cut down like flowers; we flee like shadows and don’t stay.
In the middle of life we are in death; who can we go to for aid but you, Lord, who are right to be angry that we have done wrong?
Yet, holy Lord, all-powerful God, kind and holy Saviour, don’t give us the bitter pain of eternal death.
You know, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; don’t close your kind ears to our prayers, but spare us, holy Lord, all-powerful God, kind and holy Saviour, good judge forever; don’t let us, in our last hour, turn away from you.

Κύριε ἐλέησον
Χριστὲ ἐλέησον
Κύριε ἐλέησον

As God in his great kindness has been happy to take the souls of our dear dead brothers and sisters, we give their bodies to the ground. Earth turns to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Yet I will show you something strange. We will not sleep, but we will all be changed; in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the last trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised free from sin and decay. For this rotten body must become the body which cannot be harmed. Then this saying will have come true; Death is defeated. Death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory? Praise God, who has given us this victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

X of Wands

Billy took the C-Train out of Lucky Town and crossed the South China Sea at six hundred miles an hour, while the God-Rocket hissed through the skies and headed up and out for Lady Luna, in geosynchronous orbit over the Mare Tranquillitatis.
Billy didn’t relax until he disembarked, on the first dry land station. He had a large suitcase in one hand, and wore the insignia of the 3rd Lunar Marine Corps on the back of his polycotton bomber jacket.
He flashed his travel-card at a taxi driver and took a ride along the coast to his wife’s house, fifty miles south. The house was made of ecologically-farmed logs, and looked like it grew out of the forest, projecting over the beach.
Billy climbed out of the car, nodded at the driver and walked up the dirt path to the front door, let himself in and whizzed up a bowl of instant noodle soup. He checked the fuel level in the car, packed clothes for himself and his wife into the boot, and waited for her to come home.

I – The Magician

I called her up the night before and got the answer phone.  She was probably out, dancing. I said; “All that I have is all that I am, and that would be yours, if it wasn't sacrificed to the cause.” It was better that way because things got confused when I spoke to her.
We didn’t sleep we checked our weapons and went over the plans. Then it was morning and Giacomo gave us the last little words before we strapped up and went out into the world. Down Hope Avenue to the great gates with the pictures of the moon and the God-Rocket. Then the gates exploded and we ran through and the guards who were on our side started shooting the other ones. It was strange to go down the corridors I had seen so many times in photos and videos and architects’ plans.
Everything went to plan until we made it down the last set of staircases and went through the door into the room. Giacomo said it was a large stone room but when I arrived the walls were made of flowers and there was very little space. And I was the only one left.
The man we had come to kill was facing me across a table. He was wearing a red coat and he kept his right hand behind his back. “Hello, Jamie,” he said. “You’ve got me cornered now.”
“Where is everyone? What have you done?” I asked.
“Jamie, I haven’t done anything. What have you done? I was only trying to help.”
“Oppressor,” I spat.
“Well, it’s a shame we can’t get along. I’ll have to send you away again, Jamie. Bad luck.” Then his right hand came out and there was a brilliant light.
This is all I can remember.

X of Cups

They closed down the factories, and cleared us off the piers; my wife and I stood arm-in-arm, both of us in tears. The soldiers took the terraces, and put curfew in place; they gave the traitors walkie-talkies and armbands.
We gathered in the Dog and Diogenes to discuss revolution. Then suddenly there were jobs. You could earn thousands a week as a guinea-pig for the Projects, or test new equipment for the Lady, and later, for the Moon itself. It might be dangerous, but there was money, and purpose, and we were all together for once.
Nobody wanted revolt then. It was a new dawn, a new age.
God, what a thing it was, to be alive after catastrophe and war, and see men living in the skies, aiming their carbon-fibre Babel at the stars.