Back to Vanilla (15 page)

By now he was sobbing
in her arms as the kettle steamed beside them.

At this moment, Grace,
with her uncanny instinct for this kind of timing, appeared and
Megan gestured to her to finish making the tea, while she led her
dad back into the lounge.

“It’s all right. Work
stuff,” Megan mouthed to her as they left the room.

“The granddad was
fine. Seriously, no injury. Untouched. A few bruises, I mean, but
fine. But it was all absolutely meaningless. Nothing could… nothing
will… take that pain away ever. How could it? It’s just so fucking
unfair. So. Fucking. Unfair.”

Grace came into the
room with two brimming mugs, which Megan took and placed on a
table. Gesturing Grace to follow her out of the lounge, she
explained to her daughter what had happened, before hugging her and
sending her back upstairs with a bowl of cornflakes and four dried
apricots.

“I’ll pop up later,
sweetheart, if you’re awake. Your dad’ll be okay, don’t worry. Love
you.”

In the lounge, Rich
was by now considerably calmer, his hands cupped tightly around the
mug, staring vacantly into it.

No words spoken, she
lifted the cushion on the armchair in front of the TV and picked up
the
Sunday Times Magazine
that lay beneath
it and placed it on the sofa next to him. Walking into the hallway,
she opened the door to the cupboard under the stairs and pulled out
an old metal biscuit tin from the top shelf, too high for even
Grace, as yet, to reach.

She put the tin on top
of the glossy-fronted magazine, sat down by his feet, and watched
while he began the ritualistic crushing of the green buds and used
two large papers to roll up. None of it ultimately mattered, she
sensed that, and tonight was not the night to say what she wanted
to say.

They sat together
covered by the duvet that Rich would later use to sleep on the
couch, and stared blankly at reruns of
The Fast Show
on TV,
huddled close, smoke from a steady flow of joints mingling with
incense and dancing gracefully from above their heads towards the
two open windows.

Upstairs,
slUtty-fUckgal’s phone twinkled in her empty bedroom, buzzing with
messages. Sitting with her head in what seemed like its right place
on his shoulder, downstairs, both starting to relax into sniggering
at familiar jokes, she simply couldn’t have cared less.

If I don’t
warn the lost, who will?

“
And I sought for a
man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap
before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found
none.” (Ezekiel 22:30)

You’ve all heard the
story. You know the truth, you just refuse to listen – when Adam
and Eve sinned in the garden, God called them to account saying,
“Adam, where are you?” as they hid from Him knowing what they had
done was a sin against His name.

You? Arrogant and
vain, you do not hide. You, the 21st-century Adam and Eves, you are
proud to be naked, be boastful in your nakedness and to mock the
Lord your saviour, and yet still he stands ready to welcome you
back. It is not too late. I am here to tell you that it is never
too late to throw away the sinful trappings of your foul existence
and enjoy in total the filling of the Holy Spirit.

Using me as His
mouthpiece, right here, right now, He invites you back into His
holy light and bids you, throw away the trappings of your filthy
sodomite lives. Give up the drink and drug-fuelled insanity, throw
away the nipple-sucking clamp of your wide-screen HD TVs and join
me in the everlasting one true kingdom of the Lord our God.

In Luke 14:23 we are
commanded to “go out into the highways and hedges and compel them
to come in, that my house may be filled”.

Each day I stand
before myself, look myself straight in the eye and ask myself, if I
don’t warn the lost, who will? And this, my friends, is my
commitment to Him, to myself and to you all.

Didn’t Paul, a street
preacher himself, say: “Wherefore I take you to record this day,
that I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to
declare unto you all the counsel of God.”?

I see your looks as
you shuffle past me. Sneers. Denial. Avoidance. I understand them.
Believe me, I truly do. I was you. I was. I was you.

Not any more.

I was that man walking
past, bags bulging with sugary treats, baubles, mind-numbing
alcohol, fags, whatever it takes to ease that nagging pain that
will continue to consume you for eternity, hiding yourself from the
Truth. There is, look deep inside yourselves and you know it, there
is a better path.

I stand here now and I
tell you, leave this world behind. “Or do you not know that the
unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?” That’s
Corinthians! I tell it to you as it is. “Do not be deceived:
neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor
men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor
drunkards, nor revellers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of
God.”

And Hebrews! “Let
marriage be held in honour among all, and let the marriage bed be
undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”
The truth is plain, my friends.

The peace you seek is
all around you if you just open those consumerist eyes, for He is
love and his mercy is everlasting. I speak from the heart, because
I know you, I was you, until I allowed the tale of God’s boundless
love to reach me; until, like I pray you will, I threw away those
trinkets ensuring my future in Hell and heard the Truth.

My friends, I know, I
know this truth hurts, I know my words offend you, but more than
that I know what I must do.

Be offended, it does
not concern me in the least, because my purpose in life is not to
tread softly around your feelings, but to warn you, and to save
you. If I risk offending you along that way, so be it. Your soul is
worth it.

My goal, and I will
shout it loud from the rooftops as long as I have breath in these
lungs, is to not offend my holy God and to share the message he has
given me.

If I don’t warn the
lost, who will?

It was Sunday
morning in the O’Hare household. Her children having been fed,
washed and bundled into the family car with a remarkably minimal
amount of protest, even from Grace, who ordinarily railed against
anything that hinted at being seen with her parents in public,
Megan contemplated the next few hours alone.

After last night and
the events of the whole weekend, she found herself consumed by a
contradictory but increasingly familiar heady mix of denial, shame
and excitement. She focused on the banalities of her daily routine,
washing dishes, putting clothes into the machine, emptying and
pushing around a vacuum cleaner.

When her mind strayed
from this path, she reeled it back in. It was an hour and a half
later when she took a cup of tea up to her room and flopped down on
to the bed, underneath which was the phone she had ignored, like an
endurance test, for more than 23 hours.

The locked screen was,
as she’d hoped, alight with colours, a surge of adrenaline coursing
through her system, much as she tried to damp it down. Each message
medium shone in a different hue, but Kik, their system of choice,
was the dominant one, with its monotone words filling up the small
space of the front of her iPhone 5.

Luke_66:
But how are you, babe, and how did it
go?

She read backwards
from this, the last of his texts, which had begun with his urgent
delight at the way their meeting that Friday afternoon, just over
40 hours ago, had gone, leading into a series of assumptions about
her level of busyness, before eventually fading into the concern he
expressed in the last few messages and then into a total
silence.

She knew he would be
watching for the “R” that showed she had read what he’d sent, and
sat there wondering where her replies should start. The beginning
seemed like a logical place.

SuzyTD:
Hey.

His response was
immediate.

Luke_66:
Hey, hey, hey, disappeary girl. You
okay?

SuzyTD:
I’m okay. I’m okay. Sorry to vanish on you. You
good?

Luke_66:
All the better for hearing from you. I’ve been
worried. You okay? How’d it go?

SuzyTD:
No need, no need. I… I didn’t do it.
Couldn’t.

Luke_66:
Need to talk? I’m home, but we always need
milk… I can pop out and call you in ten, 15 maybe?

SuzyTD:
Honestly? Thanks. I hate to be a pain in the
arse, but today I think I’d like that. I don’t feel like typing
this out.

The call that
followed was a purely functional exchange of information, but the
tone had undeniably changed, softened maybe; they were now players
in a fantasy that had extended its fingers firmly into the real
world. Fucking undeniably changes things.

No, she hadn’t gone
through with it, not yet; she hadn’t told Rich about what she’d
done, what she wanted; yes, she still intended to, as anything else
would be a lie and that was unacceptable. She was doing things in
her own way and at a pace that felt comfortable, she told him; she
wanted to be sure that she could handle whatever reaction got.
Somehow she would make things work, she would fix them.

She thought that
Luke_66 seemed more interested in her sharing her misgivings with
him than she was in offering the information. Perhaps it was a
genuine interest, perhaps a mere curiosity, a natural gathering of
information about a woman he was involved with on whatever level,
but his questions made her more possessive about her family life
than she might otherwise have been.

The fact was that her
plan had not come together; she had not yet informed her husband
that the get-out-of-jail-free card that she’d earned 12 years ago,
shortly after Grace was born, when she found a midweek hotel
receipt in the pocket of her idiot husband’s jeans, had been well
and truly cashed in.

It was, however, a
conversation she undeniably needed to have with Rich. She was
regretting the fact that the issue had formed part of their pillow
talk, hers and Luke_66’s, in those three-and-a-half hours they
spent in the hotel he’d booked specifically on the 365 route.

For now, she walked
alongside Luke_66, on the phone, as he wandered around Asda,
hunting for eggs, bread, fruit, rice and the “something special”
his wife had added to the milk list, and breathed a sigh of relief
when he eventually lost connection in the frozen-fish aisle.

She drifted off to
sleep, there on her bed in the daytime, a luxury so great that she
didn’t even begrudge the loss of that precious alone time, and
awoke with a smile to the beep of a message 42 minutes later.

Somehow, nothing quite
compared with the written words, appearing right there in front of
her.

Luke_66:
Hey Sister Suzy. How’s it going?

SuzyTD:
Hey, you caught me having a crafty snooze…
How’s life? You jerking off again, naughty boy?

Luke_66:
Oh my! You keep walking in and catching me. I
feel, I feel so bad for letting you down like this. But when I
think of you… Oh, Sister, it brings part of me to life that I’ve
never really noticed before. And I keep wanting to touch it. I know
it’s wrong, isn’t it?

SuzyTD:
Such a naughty, naughty, naughty boy…

Luke_66:
Don’t be cross with me, Sister. I try so hard
to please you. I hate it when you get angry with me.

SuzyTD:
Jesus teaches us to show mercy… you know that.
Would you like me to help you? I mean, I think I know what the
problem might be. I think we could maybe fix it together… I could
use my crucifix...

Luke_66:
Could you? Could you really, Sister? I do so
love to make you happy. You know I do… I hate it when I disappoint
you.

SuzyTD:
I know, baby boy. I know you don’t mean to be
bad. Close your eyes. I want to try something that might help you
out. Do you trust me?

Luke_66:
You know I do… You’ve been like a mother to
me, Sister. My eyes are shut. Tight. I won’t look. Promise.
x

SuzyTD:
Okay… so how does it feel if I do this…? I
think you might remember it, dirty boy, from Friday… You seemed to
like it then…

Luke_66:
Oh, I did. I truly, truly, did. You have a
gift there, Sister, a natural talent. Seriously though. That was
amazing.

SuzyTD:
You think?

Luke_66:
I know. Oh, yes, I do know. So warm and so, so
wet. You have a very clever tongue.

SuzyTD:
You care to show me how good that feels, what
happens when you remember, when you think about me doing that to
you, naughty boy? I’d really like to see. It would help me think…
of a suitable punishment.

Luke_66:
Does this help, Sister? I tried not to make it
look too big. I didn’t want to scare you.

SuzyTD:
Thank you, baby boy. That really helps me out a
lot. That looks swollen. Does it hurt? I think I know of a place I
could maybe put it until it feels slightly… better?

Luke_66:
You rubbing right now, dirty, dirty lady? A
special place? That sounds… intriguing. I wonder where it could be.
Can I… May I please be permitted to see, Sister_Suzy?

SuzyTD:
This is the place, Luke. You like? I know how
innocent you are. I’d so hate to scare you. Do tell me if I
am.

Luke_66:
Oh, Miss. I love. So smooth and pink. It
glistens. You’re saying that if I put my… special thing… inside
there, it might feel better?