Purity of Heart, or The Contemptible King of Mirrors
I.
"I've been wading through this puddle of human excrement for so long that asphyxiation would be too cheap a mercy for the good fuckin' Lord to bestow upon me"
Were he the progeny of lesser creatures, the excess of hair and prospect of fangs might have justified Evan's foaming mouth. As it was his venomous declaration did little to break the silence of his daily return from school. Always by his side, like a faithful trappist, was Jude. The adolescence of their companionship did not discount Jude's preternatural ability to serve as Evan's pack animal; more a yoke-laden ox than a loyal friend.
"They fuck-ing expect me to pay them to do absolutely nothing while I am forced to suffer for their ineptitude. While Darwin may have correctly speculated on our ascension into creatures with rational faculties and the irreplaceable opposable thumbs those troglodytes seem to have missed the memo."
Venom was Evan's modus operandi and rightfully so. Few sad literary men, boys really, demonstrated such affinity for the most sanctimonious uses of vulgarities. No one in Evan's world could deliver the indignities propelled from his mouth with such poise and creativity. "It is an underappreciated art-form", he is rumored to have once said, "which demands that one be well practiced."
These two journeymen traversed the partially shoveled sidewalks as if set adrift in inescapably separate worlds. Evan plodded along unevenly. His steps matched the divisions within his own thought patterns. At times both crunching the ice beneath him and traipsing atop the compacted plow-drifts, Evan's gait--like most men his age--told far more of him than his own percolating malices set afire by his tongue. He crushed the ice with such enmity that no words, not even his own righteous indignities, could match its undiluted meaning. Yet his oscillation to lightly treading upon the snow-drifts lining either side of the walk led one to believe that he was little more than a child playing a game he did not quite understand. The simple joys of a toddler at their most ornery stage--all innocence and uncompromising evil--leaked out through these light steps and almost made his indignities forgivable.
The steady eye of Jude, a student of Evan's erratic steps, was one of the few who could see all of this in those steps. Jude chose to carefully place his feet in the chasms already well worn by larger boots than his. He pictured himself a pilgrim, retracing what appeared to be ancient steps substantially dirtied by many others who chose the same path as he. Snow does not stay porcelain for long, he thought to himself. "At least the sight of my breath remains unyielding to the particles of dirt which unquestionably surround it. Well, to my own eyes anyway."
"I mean, god-damn. God Damn Jude. These fuckers think they can cover up their own ineptitude with extra paperwork to be processed and then stick me with the fault. I didn't see that the fucking class was not fucking dropped until it was too late. And then, AFTER I explain it to them in the Queen's fucking English--every last fucking detail--they still don't understand why I'm upset that they are sitting there playing fucking minesweeper on those machines of theirs. I bet they're so slowed by porn they can't even update the fucking class list but a week at a time..."
Jude was no longer listening. Evan did not appear to care either way. They walked along one evenly stepping through the cold, the other fighting off the freeze with his own unique expulsion of noxious fumes, not unlike the kind he had yet to receive as the Lord's providence.
