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The Blue Bottle

After his betrayal, Judas Iscariot roams through eternity using many aliases.

By harry hoggPublished 2 years ago 6 min read
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The Blue Bottle
Photo by 五玄土 ORIENTO on Unsplash

Frank stands alone wearing a cumbersome black overcoat, looking out from the clifftop toward the distant but gathering storm. Feverishly he digs inside the coat pocket for a cigarette, pulling out a half-crumpled pack of Marlboro Lights. Then, tapping the corner of the packet on one palm, he slips out a damaged smoke and shoots it to the side of his mouth, where it shakes between his lips while he flutters the lighter’s flame all around it. Frank inhales deeply, taking a moment to study the encroaching violence, its electricity sparking, splitting clouds.

Frank knows he will never find forgiveness, never again deceive, never fulfill anyone’s love, never do anything but live in purgatory repaying his betrayal. There will never be an end, no cancer, no single shot to the head, just living forever with the regret of what he’d done. That dreadful instant in time, that momentary weakness for money, and now living with eternal shame under many pseudonyms.

When Frank opens his eyes, the lights are out on the street. The storm is still ten years in the future and only the clear night sky is visible, with a sliver of the moon illuminating a canopy of stars.

His mind turns back to a time earlier in the evening. Had Rosie guessed, he wondered. Never once, in all the years, had anyone improved on their friendship once they knew his mystery. He drew again on the cigarette, this time holding the smoke in his lungs for a long time. It calmed him. Somewhere in the splintered moonlight, Rosie is walking home alone. She’s thinking about the oddness of the stranger who came into the pub earlier. How their conversation had been unlike anything she’d ever had before.

Would the stranger come for her tomorrow tonight? Their conversation was weirdly fascinating. After serving him his second beer, many of the patrons had left. The stranger seemed friendly enough. She asked where he was staying. Dublin had many bed and breakfast establishments, so she was surprised when he told her he would be stopping at the library.

She laughed at the joke. Libraries, she thought, are almost extinct, and no library stays open after four in the afternoon.

It is a quarter to eleven, fifteen minutes to closing time. What did the stranger mean when he spoke about his travels? As she walks, she recounts every word; so strange was that conversation.

You see, it’s not that I want to go back too far, just far enough to meet up with Raven. Spend some time in the old farmhouse, walk across the small clots of rich soil, reddish-brown, see the tip of his hat; hear the summer wheat in his breathing. I was there only once, but I drifted seaward. I was carried through time on the wild splash and the driving of the tides. We were different, you see. He knew the secret of the blue bottle.

Rosie walks fast, trying to catch her breath. Who talks that way, she wonders. Even crazy people don’t talk that way; drunks, poets, none talk the way the stranger had spoken.

You lose track of him? This Raven person?

Yes, after Lorenzo.

Lorenzo?

Yes, on June 10, 1960, Lorenzo flew in from Cuba. Before that, he’d been living in a room on the twenty-second floor of the hotel Cohiba, in Havana’s Vedado section. Lorenzo is a priest living among money changers and prostitutes. It was his disguise, his acceptance into that community. I first met him in a railway car traveling from Cadiz on his way to Tangier. He was eating a green banana, passing himself off as a Spanish nobleman, a visionary. He appeared very aware of himself. He could have been made of ice. He spoke strangely, as a poet, saying his visions had to be smelled, fondled and listened to. He was a lothario for sure, but his soul was that of a monster. When you got to know him, you discovered strange things, unfathomable, repulsive…and then again, delightful things. Around women, well, it was as if he stirred a symphony inside their hearts. Around men, they became mere skeletons. Either he must die, or it would be me. I killed him under tons of rubble, or so I thought.

You killed a man in 1960?

I hoped I had, Rosie. Unfortunately, he’s still alive. He, too, is looking for Raven. It is imperative I find Lorenzo before that happens. Raven is in mortal danger.

How old were you when you believed you’d killed a man?

It doesn’t matter, age isn’t important.

So, are you telling me you need to go back to 1960 to find him? And kill him?

I need to go back farther, Rosie. Two thousand years? give or take.

You’re just about the funniest man ever walked through that door.

Rosie went off and dried a few glasses and returned to the stranger.

Even if I understand what you are telling me, it’s this thing about time travel…

Then come with me, Rosie. I’ll come for you tomorrow evening.

To where?

To find Lorenzo.

Why are you so fearful of this man?

Lorenzo is life without hope. Forever.

It was just starting to rain as Rosie reached home, a second-floor apartment in the middle of Dublin. The mile and a half walk from the pub had been consumed with thoughts about the stranger. It was madness to have agreed. There’s no scientific evidence for time travel. But the man was the most charismatic person she’d ever met. He was dark, tall, and handsome. He was every woman’s cliché of romantic villain. Why had she agreed? It’s insanity. If he came, she will refuse, tell him there’s no way. His conversation was fun, he was entertaining, but she isn’t about to go anywhere with him.

The apartment is in darkness when Rosie enters, feeling for the light switch, she knows he won’t come there. Was their meeting even true? Has she imagined the conversation, that would make more sense? But, of course, it is true, something deep in the pit of her stomach. She flicks the switch and loses the soothing darkness. With her eyes still accustoming to the dark, she kicks off her shoes and crumples onto the settee, throwing her legs up and lying with one arm across her forehead. Her neck hurts, her feet are tired, and her mind is in turmoil. She’s been alone two years now, having finally found the courage to send her cheating husband packing. She has taken a lot in life, but unfaithfulness, no way. Her husband wanted his fantasy, so when she finally shut the door on him she thought …I’m free… but never truly came to terms with the distance of loneliness. Now her future is looming. Years, like a straight highway to nowhere stretching out as she lay on the settee, nearly dead for a moment, or as close to death as one can be; knowing nothing, thinking nothing, feeling nothing, eyes closed, heart unheard, with no special temperature to the body, to wait and hope that life will come and find her.

Rosie lets her hair fall down her back to her hip and steps into the shower. She starts laughing at herself; Frank had been the most fun she’d had in so long.

Part Two: Galilee

Frank comes calling, Rosie is caught up in trembling excitement. Should she trust him?

Fantasy
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About the Creator

harry hogg

My life began beneath a shrub on a roundabout in Gants Hill, Essex, U.K. (No, I’m not Moses!) I was found by a young couple leaving the Odeon cinema having spent their evening watching a Spencer Tracy movie.

The rest, as they say, is history

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