The Church of Plenty by Alex Jenson

The Church of Plenty

A word by the author

This is the opening extract from my new book, which is still under construction. It is called The Church of Plenty. It is a comedy/drama set in northern England, about a poet/preacher/drug dealer at a ‘New Age’ church who gets into a tussle with a young aspiring actor who wants to get away from his home town and forge his own career. The young man saves the life of the preacher’s drunken friend, but the man somehow believes that he was assaulted and robbed, rather than saved.

1. Flocking unbelievable

Tony Vickers sized up his flock with big bright eyes that suggested love or violence. The fact that no one was prepared to take a chance to find out which, was evidence enough of Tony’s capacity for rage. His eyes were whirling lava pits, molten white and angry, callous, brooding, savage, attractive and ripe to change the world. When he spoke, it was as if some beautiful antidote had seeped from his moist red mouth to counteract the brutal poison spitting from his eyes. For a joyous moment, the flock was transfixed to every smallest swishy movement of the eyelashes of their God, Tony, on the stage at The Church of Plenty. Seventy three percent of them believed he was a God in Jeans -modern, fresh and down here among us, doing his thing directly, cutting out the Middle man, so to speak. Tony raised his hands, one to each side of his head, slightly above and in front of him. He curled his finger-ends inwards and grinned a wide white smile, as if he was poised to draw down every ounce of gravity into the ends of his fingers. He imagined they were fleshy lightning conductors, designed to pull the energies of the universe into that room, there and then, for the good use of humanity and for his own aching need to feel relevant and alive. He jerked the hands downwards and formed them into fists. He grinned aggressively and jolted the fists lower. He nodded. The flock was spellbound. He was ready to begin. “Life is hard, but not as hard as it could be. Life is soft, but not so soft that you can roll it onto its belly and tickle it to Holy Hell. Life is keen, but it is not overly enthusiastic. Life will get you, but don’t let that stop you from chasing it down the road with a big red carving knife you bought especially for the occasion of creating your own living space, free from the interference of airwaves barking with dog-tired messages of fuck you very much. Life is flatulent and alarming, but the stink of fresh air and oblivion is more intoxicating than a million hundred fake invitations to the party you can never gatecrash. Life is live and sweaty, but it will lick itself clean. Life is sane but testing, and you may stagger through a deep green forest thick with echoing chortles of animals in the distance, whose winter songs are better than all the compilation albums they created to keep you amused from now until the end of whenever you want to call it quits. Life is verse and self-importance, because if you don’t matter, why would anything? Life is guilty survival in flawed and golden mornings. There is no other life but this. Observe and be killed; participate and be damned. Life is desperate for you to make it count; it hates you for inactivity and it may choose to reward you for absolutely zero. If you could choose another life, where would it be and what would you do with it? Would you make it better than this life here? I am sure you would, and you are sure you won’t. Do not sit on the fence that is never mended. Perfection is broken. Machines must fail. Escalators need rest too. And nothing matters and everything counts. You hate me for saying it and I don’t know why I’m saying it. Dare. Do. Die. Totality is all that counts. Individual words have no meaning outside the sentence where they live. They can kill me as many times as they want. I will laugh and die, but always rise again. We must surf right through these kingdoms we can never own. Hang ten in the face of Lord high waves. Cut back through the pretentious rolling water. If you really ought to, be the author of your own destruction. Go down swinging, go down singing. Life is minging, but it is not a sentence to be served, just a sentence to be written. It is a binded book full of white blank pages. Dip into your inkwell – make your life a big bestseller, before you fade to yellow.”

2. Candy Floss

The family man’s face was contorted with agony and hatred. He had never hated anyone in his life, and he gave the impression that he was appalled by his own weakness in succumbing to the emotion. No matter how fleeting it might be, it was real and he had felt it. He hated that vicar. He hated him more than all the worst regimes in history who have hated the world and its weary, happy people. The family man’s wife stroked his thick grey locks and shared his pain. “How could he? I mean, how does this happen, in this day and age?” he quietly screamed. His wife rubbed the back of his neck and shook her head. “It happened because it is this day and age. Remember what Lynn said the other week?” “About what?” “She said that people always talk about the modern world, about progress, about how new and special everything is, but they don’t realize that the world is getting older at the same time. Isn’t that a paradox or something? What’s so modern about ageing?” “What’s that got to do with the Vicar calling my mum Ethel Parkinson instead of Emma Parkinson? How the Hell does a recently deceased woman end up being sent to eternity by some guy who can’t even get her name right?” “He made a mistake,” she said, soothingly. “A bad one, I’ll admit. I suppose there’s no excuse. But he’s old too.” The family man backed away from his wife. “He’s a fucking professional isn’t he? If he’s too old for the job then he shouldn’t be doing it. And who do you complain to about this sort of thing? Do I write a letter to God or something?…. Excuse me Big Chief, but your middle men are bloody useless. Maybe you ought to be working a bit harder on the nuts and bolts of your organization down here, but I guess you’re up there, so it doesn’t matter does it?” His wife realized he was inconsolable. She sighed and rubbed her face awkwardly. Some moments afford no bridge link of emotion between the closest of people; there are moments of utter loneliness that no special relationship can soothe. The realization of this made her feel sad for both of them – as individuals, unable to connect across the wide gulf streams of life, even if it was only temporary. She gazed at the new funeral party, jostling with the leftover mourners from their party, who had refused to be rushed on and out, just because there was no breathing space in the schedule. She could feel the tension from thirty metres away. The vicar stood aloof. He wrung his hands, smiling awkwardly. He could no more control the rhythm and tempo of society than a drunken shepherd can guide a flock of chickens home to roost. He was a middle man without a firm middle, all sagged and weak in the face of Time’s hard progress – as the mourners collided with each other like candy floss punters maneuvering near a seaside Rollercoaster ride. There was a larger process at work guided by Death’s uncomfortable hand. Deep down, everyone wanted to slip away back to their cosy castles, far from the dreaded headstones. In death there is no organization, only chaos masquerading as utter calm. Nobody could summon the strength to complain. And when the day was dark again and new babies screamed under the rising sun, nobody would think about complaining – they would only shrug, smile and do their best to keep on living.

3. Timing of the Lord

Tim Jordan looked good for a mourner. In the midst of death, he was life. He was five resurrections back-to-back, with a scorching guitar solo behind every one. All the girls noticed it; that gift of cool. And in the midst of collective grief, the chemicals of living attraction blazed around that small chapel, like uncontrollable molecules from a manic science experiment; anarchic blobs of love passion, invisible but tangible. Two sisters whispered to each other and smiled at Tim. He was blessed. But his head was bowed. His face was sadder than a street portrait of a failed life that came and went anonymously through the happy throng of humanity. He did not have a clue how ‘to do’ grief. All he could do was feel the loss. The vicar stepped up to the plate to swing his Biblical bat. He could sense another home run for his Lord and master – every new death was a fantastic recruitment opportunity. God did not need to advertise, he only had to relieve the customers of one of their own and they would soon come flocking. This was a honey day for the Lord, and the vicar knew it. Just a shame he never knew… “Derek Jordan. Our dearly departed friend.” “I think you mean Dennis Jordan,” an angry voice shouted. “Excuse me, yes, Dennis, please forgive me.” A double lightning strike. A forked light pattern flashed through his mind’s eye, intensely bright yellow, blinding migraine streaks of gold oblivion; a hurricane brewed in the shadows of his eyes and sucked a blow storm through the back of his eyeballs; he could see the wind carrying off people, houses, animals, into the distance – cows and sheep upended, rotating through a black cloud funnel. He sighed and sagged and puffed for breath. He stepped back from the plate and wiped his brow. The entire congregation swirled about him; their faces twisted and blurred, like funhouse freaks in convex mirrors spinning through a hypnotic wheel corridor. The lightning streaked again as the tornado tore up the grey fabric from the corridors of his brain – exploding squares of carpet ghosting down his neural highways, past the high pylons that had powered his life thus far. Now they cascaded in a deafening metallic pile-up. The neurons fizzed and popped. The vicar clutched his head. His heart skipped and slowed, sped up again and halted. He gave a whimsical look and sagged to the floor. Here was Death’s ringmaster, reduced to a circus clown. As the crowd rushed forward to help the nearly departed vicar, Tim Jordan sat and prayed for something. Only he did not know what it was. He was praying for a prayer. The poor vicar had not deserved his fate. Two faux pas was not tantamount to an eternal red card from the field of play; that was the last thought that struck him, just before his last breath entered his head.