Tours of the Black Clock

78

AUGUST 1942. ENGLAND FALLS. The invasion has been a savage four months and has cost the Germans, but this is the end. London, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh are all gone, only the seaport of Glasgow holds out besieged. The news comes over the radio this evening as I hold you by your ankles and feed on you, you bursting at my lips rapid-fire. The Germans, knowing what it will be, have not jammed the broadcast but rather pick it up from London and send it out to all Europe; it’s the prime minister. “We survive bombs,” he says, “we may survive tanks. We survive the blade, and bullets. We survive history of a thousand years, the caprices of political tempests. But defeat, that we choose not to survive. It finishes, countrymen. I’m sorry. If the damnation of an eternity for whatever follies I’ve committed would spare my nation this, I would with gratitude be so damned. As it is, damnation is insistent with no exchange for it. God save the King. God save the Empire.” There’s a moment of black quiet and then a muffled pop; the weight of him can be heard thudding against the microphone. The ooze of him can be heard this thousand miles. In that black quiet perhaps he snickered to know that where he once thought lay the century’s conscience there’s only a oneliner, a vaudeville smirk. I leave you to your spasms. When you ask, “Why are you going?” I answer, To Megan; I have to. “Don’t leave,” you say. Don’t leave, he calls from the corner. You bastard, I answer him. Halfway down the stairs you ask me one last time.