Wednesday 24th September 1997: fires in Indonesia
What an idea of his parents to call him Jesus!
And now, of course, he had to put up with such a name. There were others, like the film-maker Jesus Franco. He too had been a bit ashamed, since he called himself "Jess". Jess Franco, now that was a more serious name for a film-maker, someone who had made "The Necronomicon". Did you know that it's the name of that damned book used by the delinquent characters portrayed by the great American author Lovecraft?
It happened whilst Jesus was reading "L’Humanité" newspaper.
It was the first time that the phenomenon appeared. It had terrified him.
This is what was written in the paper: The pollution resulting from the huge forest fires on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, which have already affected a number of countries in south-eastern Asia, could reach Manila by mid-week.
While Jesus was reading, sitting on a wooden chair, his back straight, arms stretched, hands holding the paper right in front of himself, a long flame suddenly sprang from each of his fingers.
"Shit!" he exclaimed!
He remembered the idiotic tricks of students reading L’Humanité, lighting the newspaper with a lighter hidden behind the square expanse of printed paper, held taut at arm's length.
He
let go of the paper and stamped on it to stifle the flames.
And yet he was alone in his flat.
The flames were extinguished but he still felt an unpitying burning. Tall flames continued to rise from his fingers. He screamed in pain and fright, and ran towards the sink where he turned on the water. The flames died out and the coolness of the water gave him a great sense of relief.
But then, a smell of burnt fabric caught his attention.
The
flames were going up his arms and had already burnt the sleeves of his
pullover!
He bent over and flushed all the surface of his arms under the stream
of tap water.
Hardly worth it: the flames were now eating at his chest!
An
acrid smoke filled the kitchen. Abandoning the sink, he ran towards the
bathroom. The pain was atrocious, the smell too. It smelt like grilled
pork chops.
He laid down in the bath, clumsily managed to grab the shower and turned
on the cold water. The jet extinguished the flames which he watered, but
as soon as he went to water another spot on Jesus' body, the flames took
hold again.
Phosphorus! His body had become phosphorus!
As his head caught fire, he screamed even louder. It was a bestial cry from the depths of his fear of dying and the abominable suffering which sometimes goes with it. A long yellow flame jumped from his wide open mouth.
And his very last thought was: "But what the hell! Can't anyone hear me screaming?"
Tuesday 29th December 1998: rockets fired against El Khemis
"Hell! It's so hot here!"
He
opened his eyes to understand where he was. His vision remained blurred.
Weary, he fell asleep again.
It was the coolness which woke him again. A pleasant, light, fresh wind
caressed his face. A vague memory of a barbecue and grilled meat haunted
his mind, but it stopped at that.
His eyes opened and his vision was clear and precise. However, he seemed to remember that he was totally short-sighted. Here was good news at last; he wasn't short-sighted any more.
"He's waking up!"
A smiling face with a hint of concern in its eyes entered his field of vision. A woman. A woman who seemed to be extremely competent.
"Sir... Sir...? How are you?"
Jesus! Indeed that was his name: Jesus!
"Fine, why?
— Why? You were in a coma for a long time.
— Coma? How could I have been in a coma? How long?"
Indeed he felt perfectly fine, as though renewed.
"Perfectly! I feel perfectly well! So how long then?
— Over a year... (She hardly hesitated in telling him, given his superb appearance and energy...)
— What? Over a year? And what happened to me?
— Er, we don't know. You were found unconscious with your clothes burnt, but you had been mysteriously spared."
He got up suddenly, pulling out the tubes to which he was connected, the anger mounting in him.
"Over a year! Are you crazy?
—
Sir! Sir! You're mad?"
But nothing could stop him. The shouts of the woman doctor, nothing. He
demanded some clothes and went home.
It was rainy and cold. It was obviously winter.
But
there was somebody else at home. The flat had been let, of course.
He went to his bank and asked for a chequebook.
In short, he had to completely reconstruct his life. Go back to his employer to be taken on again, but there was no longer a place for him. Okay! He'd just go and find another job...
He rented a small, furnished flat. The first thing he bought was a television and a cable television subscription with all possible options, including cinema.
His preferred station was TIC (in other words "The Information Channel").
Indeed he was watching the news on that station just at that moment. Somebody wearing a tie was saying: A dozen rockets —"heb-hebs" — fell on the town of El Khemis just over an hour after the break in the fast began. The inhabitants had been apprehensive about this month of Ramadan, especially after the terrible attack on the town's market on 3rd December which had left fifteen dead and twenty-three wounded. Everybody remembered the little market seller, a boy of about 10, his body charred and lifeless, still holding the packets in his little hand which he was offering to the market-goers.
The
screen showed archive footage of Algeria, soldiers wearing black balaclavas...
At the same time, and for the second time, the GIA perpetrated a massacre
in the village of Beni Amrane in the Aïn Defla mountains, about forty
kilometres from El Khemis. Fifteen members of one family were massacred,
eight of them children. An explosive had been used to blow in the metal
door of the house. Axes, pitchforks and knives were used to slay the family.
"Hell! What a massacre" exclaimed Jesus...
Just at that moment he heard voices behind him. Arabic. He could hear Arabic being spoken! That rasping language which seemed to emanate from the depths of the guts of the big men looking at him, their eyes full of hate.
Above their frail bodies dressed in khaki, their heads wrapped in turbans through which only black eyes were visible, eyes which seemed to be sending sparks, swirled violent phrases which Jesus could not understand.
There were three of them. One carried an axe, the other a pitchfork and the third, a large knife.
"Shit! What the hell are you doing there?"
The man with the fork stepped forward and planted his tool with its three sharpened points in Jesus' stomach. He felt as though cold was shooting through his internal organs, and then the pain. A hot pain which replaced the cold. He tried to move back to escape this iron which was skewering him. But the Arab followed his movement through and pinned him against the TV. The second Arab moved closer, raised his axe and struck on the right shoulder, deeply cutting through the flesh and collar bone. Blood was spurting as the man raised the instrument again. The man with the pitchfork was still holding on. Jesus screamed in pain and powerless rage. And in terror. The axe fell on the other shoulder and blood gushed, Jesus' arm was suddenly hanging from his shoulder, held only by a shred of flesh. A purple jet bubbled over the television which was still transmitting the identical suffering and the same violent death to the whole planet. Then, Jesus lost consciousness for a moment. But he was brought round again by a coldness in his neck. He opened his eyes and saw the knife blade of the third Arab drawing away from his face - red with blood.
"The bastard's just slit my throat!"
And again he thought: "Didn't anyone hear me screaming?"
Monday 15th February: frozen to death
The
ceiling. The first thing he saw on opening his eyes was the ceiling.
A noise in the background disturbed his sleep, a conversation. Two men,
looking as though they were completely convinced of their intellectual
superiority, were discussing people's opinions on television.
He
propped himself up on one elbow in order to see better around himself.
A flat. It was night, the light was on. He looked at the time in the corner
of the television screen: 17:30.
He got up. He thought a moment and it came back to him: his name was Jesus. But what on earth was he doing there?
A newspaper. He needed to read a newspaper. He went out into the cold to get one. Le Monde, it was called.
It was Monday 15th February. But the paper was dated the 16th.
Jesus returned home, settled down, made himself a chocolate drink and gobbled down the madeleines which he had bought himself at the Casino supermarket on the corner.
He ate whilst he read.
A
homeless person aged about forty was found frozen to death by passers-by
in Saint-Etienne. A post-mortem is to be carried out to determine whether
the man's death was irrefutably caused by the sudden drop in temperature
to around minus ten degrees Celsius, which occurred in the hours leading
up to the discovery of his body.
Suddenly, thick steam rose from Jesus' bowl and a small fog came out of
his mouth when he exhaled. All of a sudden it was freezing cold. Without
warning.
Jesus suddenly understood the reason: he was condemned to bear the stigmata of humanity's suffering. He got up quickly and tried to move towards the door. But congestion got him first. He collapsed, a true statue of ice, and broke into thousands of pieces. At the same time, the atmosphere liquefied and his flat imploded with a dreadful and loud crash.
He had not even had time to scream...
Then,
everything accelerated.
From February until 31st December 1999, the media reported: murders, NATO
bombings, civil wars, coups, famine, misery, epidemics, pollution and
more.
Everything happened quickly and Jesus lived, suffered and died all of
this at an accelerated pace.
He didn't have time to scream any more and nobody cared.
Jesus
regained consciousness on New Year's Eve 1999.
He had forgotten everything.
The second millennium was just beginning.
He had time.
Still a thousand years in front of him.
But what an idea of his mother to have called him Jesus!
Jesus? His mother?
But who was his mother?
- Givors, 15th May 1999.
Alain Pelosato Bio:
Alain is a prolific French novelist (including The Company of the Clones, Ruins and Flower of Sulphur), journalist and the managing editor/publisher of Europe’s largest circulating genre entertainment journal, Science Fiction Magazine. He also was the Senior Editor for the French language ecology magazine, Naturellement, from 1996 to 2001.
He is a graduate of the National Institute of Sciences Applied and a member of the L'association des Journalistes-Écrivains pour la Nature et L'écologie (Association of Journalist/Writers for Nature and Ecology) and the European Science Fiction Association.
He also has published the novels 12 Girls of Lilith (Pierre Dagon), The Dragon of Niort (Guillaume Darnaud) and Lovecraft With Espérance (Pierre Dagon). He also published the nonfiction title, Song of the Meuille (Editions Naturally).
Autographed copies of his novels can be purchased from Alain himself for €10 via check or international money order sent in care of:
Alain
Pelosato
1, Place Henri Barbusse
69700 Givors, France
