re.occurrence

 

 

“I share Eriv Kyth!” announces the Orator, and repeats, “I share Eriv Kyth!” He yells, “Share Eriv!” turning from the recent scene of a violent crime. Formal tape with repeated caution, printed ‘DO NOT CROSS’ and tied about scaffolding. Realigning braces of lapping iron and knots and cable and knots on a mass-brand pharmacy’s ugly grin, the teethy entrance to the unkept structure. Unrelated sirens race the other way, chicaning late-running public busses and arrogantly driven cabs.
   Another, not an orator, but one who’s not yet assigned to be an orator by partially apotheosised messengers, stands upright beside the Orator. He is a lesser. A lesser in less kept clothing, who tries to keep his sore hands held together and repeatedly fixes the scrappily silver bandaged cable connection between gold-decorated portable amplifier and wired dynamic microphone. He frequently inwardly folds his mouth to wet his white lips and pushes his fingers together into his forehead whenever he gets an unstoppable itch or envisions a sick feeling inside his intestines.
   “I share Eriv Kyth!” the Orator announces to scattered masses, “Transferer!” To reshaping white trainered and dad capped crowds where some depart and others gather. Pubescent boys in mum-washed or unwashed colourless tracksuits. Boys imitating controversial and cocky boxers-to-podcasters every five seconds when they get bored. Chewing gross sweets out of off-whiting wrappers tossed to dislodging tile and curb. Homeless scratch at scabbed skin with tar nails, bopping, lugged with two litre plastic bottles of cider. Grunting and swaying to the whispers and old tunes on short, temperamental loops inside their own tattered minds. Couples in coordinated attire are curious as they appear from fashion outlets and lunch stops, entirely unfamiliar with the here-all-week Orator. And visitors. City explorers, foreigners and nearby villagers and towners experiencing first experiences of the ever-busier municipal.
   It’s happening under the lop-siding clock tower. Occurring in front of the untargeted graffitied insults on ancient brick, under the circling rat-birds circling under bloated eyebrows of frowning weather.
   “Eriv Kyth,” speaks the Orator. “Eriv…” reiteration, mnemonic, inculcation. Linguistic techniques researched by original club members. “…is our Transferer!” 
   He reaches out a noticeably toned and tattooed forearm. Oblong blocks of brown ink definitively repressing and censoring drawn promises and commitments from a past life. “I am here to sh-”
   The microphone fails once more. It fails thanks to the faulty lead, and the amplifier re-emits no end to the declaration.
   A third is involved. Another lesser. A much lesser, who documents. Who is much less like the Orator and the first lesser. Less in age, and in knowledge of the religion’s education, in prophet-fuelled confidence, in drug induced experience and in devourment. This much lesser is sixteen. He did not bother to tell his mother about his involvement because she would be determined to not listen or understand or empathise. He did not bother to tell either of his sisters because they would laugh and dismiss. Instead, he said to his sisters he’s meeting Kai and is kicking a deflated ball about a muddied field. As influenced, he captures the provocative public address with a provided expired smart phone mounted to a portable two-hand rig. Excitement and fright lay under his uncarved expression. What could happen? He wonders, What could happen at any moment? It’s difficult for him not to dwell and be boxed in by the questions repeatedly posed, again and again asked in the communal, labyrinthian halls outside his year eleven classroom. His fellow media and sport-science learners, ‘Are you here illegally, Bod?’. ‘Did you come by boat, Bodhi?’.
   “Do you want to say that to the parents whose children were in school in Abbett last week?” asks a man, middle in ages, as he halts and the shoebox in his shopping bag swings with sudden momentum. His wife tries ushering him onwards, onto the next remodelled sports outlet.
   “What’s your name, sir?” addresses the Orator, orating a little too close to the microphone.
   Begrudgingly, the bold man answers, “My name’s not important.”
   “I invite you, sir, come- come share Eriv, come, sir, speak- speak with me,” barely out reaches the other hand of the Orator, “What is your name, sir?”
   “I said, my name doesn’t matter. You don’t need it to answer the question I just asked you.” The man measures the Orator, his shaved head and crooked nose and he notes the Orator’s at least seven years younger and any muscle is aesthetic underneath his tight fitted plain clothes. “Tell me what happened last week.” 
   The man’s wife cannot move her rock. He has the stubbornness and weight of a Site Forman.
   “Do you think it happens for a reason?” he dares ask.
   “We all must accept Kyth as our Transferer. Life on earth is our Overture…” Life before invite-only immortality. “Its lessons through prophets tell us non-believers are susceptible to Dugogg’s temptation and influence! and cannot be transferred to Eriv’s Immortal Presidium.”
   The man retorts, “You’re not answering my question,” stepping once closer to the Orator. He’s furious, but rather more so at broader circumstance. At the very expected and still aggravating busyness about him. And angry about his brother. About what specifically his brother said about his father, and his wife said about his own response to his brother talking about his father.
   More overturians gather. They linger by the warm-breathed dispute of loud voices without accompanying ears. A white bird shits. A passing whippet wags its funny hooked tail. It glances then sniffs the boys’ abandoned wrappers before it is yanked by collar and hurried onwards.
   The Orator dares not offer the source of his amplification. “Did I not answer your question?”
   “No.” The man asks a last time that the Orator, “Explain what reason sixteen children were injured or killed last week.”
  Broader circumstance fuels his fire. The man is not so fiercely impelled to expose Eriv Kyth’s nonexistence or the infectious deception of its followers as he is to desperately find any reason. A meaning catered to his scepticism and blatant non-religion. A truth to settle news-casted repeats of sadness and unnatural disaster. “You’re saying there’s purpose to stabbings. To all the evil shit that happens. And it’s us you’re going to condemn? Because we won’t be part of a cult you found online?!”
   Founded online before found online. Envisaged, teachings reinterpreted by anonymous site dwellers and ogres and eventually noticed. Sneezed, coughed, spewed, spread by trendsetting loud earners and false-faced, false prophet influencers.
   “Thank you.” Sudden light blinds the Orator. “I hear you.” Light not from caped sun. “Sir, I hear you and thank you for speaking out. Eriv invites you. Challenge is important. I had to challenge myself before I understood, be- before I could accept to be saved by Eriv Kyth, our Transferer. Can I tell you my story, sir?” He asks, squinting, sheltering his sight with shade of one palm from the bright light. Otherworldly light called ‘Reil’. Light which seeps through from Eriv’s Presidium he’s been told. “Let me share my story with you.”
   The wife stands put, but she too speaks toward the Orator, “This is disgusting.”
   The Orator raises his unsteady hand from his brow, exposing himself to the Reil and the intense headache it enacts. “Eriv’s messages are to grant immortality!”
  “For what? For sexual favours?” she predicts, reflecting on several documentaries she’s seen the past year, “All it asks is for underage girls to take care of its prophets?”
   “We choose to make ourselves vulnerable,” the Orator turns on his heel and strolls off from the wife’s bold assessment. “…vulnerable to the corruptions of Dugogg! and Eriv-Less and Without Kyth mortality!” He waves a wrist, looking down at the tile. Abuse, he imagines. Assault, he pictures. Beatings. Vomiting. Heart disease, cancer. A child with broken bones, and suicide. He cries to the crowds, “Share Eriv Kyth!”
   “Don’t film her!” yells the man whose question is still unmet. “Don’t point the fucking camera at her!” He points aggressively, steps in front and shoves her back. “You film my wife and I’ll choke you out.”
   The man swats knuckle at the much lesser, the boy Bodhi who, frightened, stumbles back over his own untied lace. Dugogg! he thinks. Dugogg! he retreats to believe. Falling into the opinion, no one else proving to catch him.

 

 

Before Eriv, the Orator’s overture was one of suffering.
   In the dark, his hours nearest to determining mortality and being consequently denied Presidium still haunt him. Scenes hidden behind pale walls. Walls of a property without permission to settle inside. Belonging-filled bin bags gathered beside a dated wardrobe keeping someone else’s few clothes. Meagre clumps of wet toilet paper sulked in the kitchen sink and across some of the laminate tile. A rotation of property management, enforcement officers and emergency responders knocking at the door. Their muttering amongst one another and calling in through the letterbox. The calm approach that rotted. Kicks and a charging shoulder eventually broke the rattling bolts he installed. The responders treaded the brown carpet scarred with burn marks, flattening shreds and splinters of unseen wood and unsealed eviction notices and other orders. An unpleasant scent guided them through to the one bathroom where, beside a clogged toilet, he, the Orator, rested.
   Head dropped, he was slumped against yellowing bath exterior. Swellings and sores scaled his thighs. Urine patched his underwear. His bright eyes were closed.
   Upon his return to another rehabilitation, the Orator met Sean.
  Sean, a thirty-six ex-salesperson, who was never in any one room, patio, or garden inside Seed’s encroaching fences for very long. So much so, his movements began a joke. Addicts, methamphetamites, cokers, the CSH’ers (chronic self-harmers) in their small gatherings counted under quiet and rasped breaths. They counted to the ten or to the forty or so seconds there was between Sean neatly closing one pitch, moving onto another huddle of patients, inserting himself and starting another. Most patients liked Sean indifferent to his ploys and to the ‘Presidium’ he spoke of. And fewer consciously acknowledged his intentioned behaviour. And even fewer called it out. Was it wrong? They weren’t sure and worried only long enough to think about their individual identities. He seemed so driven to cater to others, they saw. To at least listen to their stories before he was clever to make his preachings relevant as reply. What he preached was sold as a last chance comfort to every attending addict. A restoration of faith. Belief previously surrendered or uncovered, as he put it every so often. Some, who were persuaded, thought about it as biblically as reenvisioned scripture. Going as far as to replace key figures and events in dated teachings. They actively reflected and compared stories from the Bible with Sean’s professed non-Christian talk of a Transferer and Immortality. Say one example, was the Ark. They, addicts, were the animals, Sean was Noah, and cannabis, cocaine, ketamine, alcohol, ecstasy, were the flood. A substance-formed, drowning consequence for unworthy behaviour. And it was not only patients who supported and or pretended not to see what Sean was doing, but volunteers at Seed as well who would look the other way when they noticed conversion attempts.
   For a hired Sharer of Eriv, Sean’s activity remained suspiciously Dugogg! Unwavering faith in Kyth and the serving work did not cast out temptations. Sounds of his father still fell into his reborn thoughts and suffocated his inner infantile before the occasional frustrated fist kissed stone, splitting skin and drawing blood upon contact. Kyth cured not inhalation of cocaine or other less used substances. Instead, its prophets unsteadily regulated Sean’s usage. Supplied by an undisclosed source each instance Sean agreed to be assigned to appear or reappear at a rehabilitation house within an eighty-eight-mile radius and needed to evidence his abuse. Touring changing locations, he made sure not to be found out or caught as he relentlessly worked to share Eriv and save others. The Presidium-permitting mission generously granted to Sean was privy only to prophets, and sections to Sean. He became a liar as a Sharer, purposely withholding much of the truth, many contentious details, from the story he told to addicts across rehabs. And for too long, any patient or voluntary staff who realised something apocryphal cared too little to act or indeed, kept it to themselves in support of the mission.
   A mission Sean retread after the since-deceased apostle before him. A fellow methamphetamite converted to EKF when unfolded and vulnerable within a cage of cost-cut and unobservant rehabilitation. Once Catholic. Both once Catholic. But never did God, nor Jesus Christ speak to Sean. Never. Not after he prayed or looked up from over a back fence, or when his parents locked him in his bedroom, or his brother made him chew on the marijuana exchanged for cash thieved from his grandmother. Eriv, on the other hand, the Transferer Eriv Kyth appeared to Sean as soon as only days after the apostle before him spoke of opportunity and the EKF.
   Upon a return to rehabilitation, Sean met his predecessor.
   This apostle spoke of a world ending, Eriv-Less mortality and the lure and corruption of Eriv’s three-headed, anti-cerberus Dugogg. Dugogg! Dugogg! who causes human suffering. Who tempts with diversification, addiction and misdirection.
   ‘If you’re ready,’ the apostle offered Sean, ‘you must accept Eriv Kyth as Transferer, share its invitation with others and you will be granted access to Eriv’s Immortal Presidium.’
   ‘Do I see it?’ asked Sean, holding his frantically agitated right leg and thinking about a naked figure on a cross and then a pop-cultured drawing of a cyclops he once saw on the cover of a comic. ‘Is Eriv going to appear to me?’
   ‘I’m unsure,’ the apostle answered, itching his jaw. ‘I hear others have seen Kyth. Kyth appeared in different forms over dreams, prophets have said.’
   In Sean’s withdrawal-drenched unconscious, Kyth did appear. Sean sweated. He was paralysed, pinned for another night to the pale salmon sheets. Desperate to peel himself from the pooling snot and saliva and refill his pen-marked ‘Saen’ plastic cup with cooler water. Kyth appeared first as torturous dehydration, then severe head pain. A debilitating, crushing ache near his brow which obscured the surrounding harsh light as it hovered nearer. Its outline was revealed first by suspended pearlescent blotches and a cold temperature before it became a being of a hundred hairless legs, paled, scarred, and attached to nothing else. No face or expression or body. It waited above Sean as he laid, fetal, without-blankets on a single, pine-framed bed. The limbs disappeared and Sean felt the presence of his older brother. Someone who could not be there in the room.
   At Seed, Sean first introduced the Orator to EKF. Sean informed the Orator of Eriv-less existence and that it is mortal to hold and to stop the corruptions of the anti-cerberus Dugogg! from entering Kyth’s Immortal Presidium. Dugogg misinforms and corrupts sufferers and influences their worst behaviours, temptations and addictions. ‘If you’re ready,’ Sean said, strolling alongside the Orator, further from the half-watching volunteer in the garden, ‘accept Eriv, share its offer with as many others as you can, and you will have access to the Immortal Presidium after Overture.’
   ‘I’m good,’ answered the Orator. ‘I don’t accept right now,’ he replied, hands in his jogger’s pockets, before further explaining to Sean he wasn’t into ‘religious shit or there being a god’. That he felt life was too cruel, too unfair and selective for any of it to have a purpose or really mean anything.
  Afterwards, the Orator found himself no less interested in hearing more about EKF. He felt himself lured by Sean’s endurance. His, at least, communicated motivations and his counterarguments for the cynics among addicts. Sean seemed to avoid the Chronic Self-Harmers, but when methamphetamite after methamphetamite got agitated with his insistent preaching and asked why he ‘bothered those who don’t fucking care’ and ‘felt so compelled to change the minds of others who didn’t want to believe in a higher purpose’, he answered ‘if you saw people were going to suffer and you could stop the pain, would you not?’
‘Wouldn’t you want to? Wouldn’t you do everything you could, to save them?’

 

 

“I’m allowed to be here, sharing Eriv,” interrupts the Orator, replying to the quieter and placid encouragements of the two public safety officers whose hands are rotated between big pockets, vest cuffs and low-kept gestures. Adam and Eva coincidentally were their names.
   “Yes,” Eva again answers, “you can,” tiresome of repeating herself for the fourth Thursday, advising Sharers of Eriv not to engage in content. Having to stand amid the sinking point of a spiral of unsure witnesses and phones squeezed to one side of a busy road. Boringly dressed silent Christians, undecided Atheists and casual studiers of various mythologies. Parking up, pulled over lunch deliverers. Massing dogmatic, unpleasant and ungrown men, giggling, with worming fingers under their low-hanging elastic waistbands. These boys remind her of other matters. Other children who waste her time, skiving public school, chasing each other through stores with multiple exits, pulling clothes off fragile racks. “You can stand here and do that. The concern is the volume.”
   “I need to be heard. To share Eriv Kyth and save people from mortality.”
   “I hear you,” Eva assures, wishing she didn’t. Simultaneously still processing an unconnected revelation from a few hours earlier. Her daughter rests in a hospital bed, treated for a throat infection. Now she knows, her fourteener, fearing the calories of the dinner she cooks for her, frequently self-inducingly vomits. Purges into irregular cups she makes up out of different coloured card bought for drawing and homework that she then stuffs to the bottom of the bin in her bedroom. “Without the speaker, we can still hear you,” Eva pauses, “But we’re not asking you to switch it off-”
   “I can be here,” the Orator claims, avoiding eye contact with either officer. “I’m allowed to stand here to share Eriv, aren’t I?” he asks in front of his camera.
   “Again… we understand. As I was trying to say, we’re not asking that you stop or to not use the amplifier,” Eva gestures, “but to be just mindful of the disruption you’re continually causing… by maybe being so brazen.” Eva pauses to offer the Orator a fair space for his reply. Instead, he remains acutely leant with an ear turned to her as if she had more to say. So, she says a little more, “Can you understand what I am saying?”
   “I’m sharing the invitation of our Transferer Eriv Kyth. I’m not doing anything wrong trying to be heard so I can save others and show them transference to Immortal Presidium.”
   “Sure,” whatever, thinks Eva, “I appreciate what you want to do.” She purposely evades looking over her own shoulder at muttering lips. “But people might prefer that you don’t try to save them and rather would forget about life and death right now and just enjoy their day. The volume is drawing attention and-”
   “They need to hear me. They need to hear me-” the Orator lifts his stance and his voice again, “Everyone needs to hear what I’ve been missioned to share. To be able to deny covert infiltrations of Dugogg!”
   “They hear you. And if more want to hear you, they will come to you and speak with you, and you can talk about it at a reasonable volume.”
   A passer hastily ducks as he weaves through the scene and pulls the cable out of the amplifier, cutting most the volume and half the courage of the Orator’s words.
   “Sir! Sir, please share Eriv and don’t do that,” asks the Orator, too late for it to matter.
   The passer fixates his face forward, incidentally skipping once, looking to carry onwards without any exchange with either the sharers or the officers.
   A lesser desperately grabs at the cable’s end and quickly wiggles and plugs it back in.
   “Sir, please don’t interfere,” then says Adam when the passer’s already away.
   But “Shut him up before someone else hurts him!” the passer calls back.
   “We’re trying,” quietly says Adam. 
   Eva looks at Adam with a fed-up expression. “Unhelpful,” she whispers even quieter and then tries again to speak at a regular volume and be heard by the Orator, “Can you appreciate that we are not telling you to do anything?” Eva licks an aching molar. “I know that you have had this conversation before with my colleagues and other officers elsewhere. I am asking…, and I’m asking very kindly and being fair, can you be considerate of others’ feelings and conscious about the reaction you will get given what you’re doing. Will you do that? Please. And we will look after you, too.”
   The Orator is maybe lost for many words. The officer Eva is reasonable, he sees, but he was taught that he needed to raise his voice. Raising his voice lured and exposed those tempted by Dugogg. And though Dugogg’s influence could not be exorcised in the moment of confrontation, somehow, they knew the recording that catapulted online views and with it, monetary profit, would. “My sharing needs to be heard.”
   Two of the teenagers applaud. Another tries to whistle but can’t and instead, woos.
   Eva’s hands emphasise harder. “Okay. Understand if we cannot communicate then we cannot do as much to keep you out of harm’s way. That’s if you are choosing to not to listen to me.”
   “I’m choosing not to give up, to give to temptation!” he side-tips his chest about a half a foot toward the teenagers, “I appeal to these people and share Eriv Kyth to try and save them from mortality! Trying to save you, too, Eva.”
   Eva huffs. “I’m fine, thank you.”

 

 

Attend Immortal Presidium after Overture. Sharers of Eriv Kyth will be invited into an impossible place much different to Earth, where existence is fleshless, eternal and together in invincible peace, comfort and pleasure.
   Approaching his discharge and departure from Seed, the Orator saw no other choice. What awaited otherwise? Coat pillows, curtain blankets and frail cardboard architecture. His brother’s castigated and exiled ex-partner. Addiction. New addiction and old, along with depression and paranoia. Anxiety, overdose and unlove. Substance after discrimination after own brother after substance after own father attempted strenuously to destroy the Orator before. Near as they came, they’d not entirely succeeded all while inspired two near-death experiences. A criminal conviction for conspiracy to supply illegal drugs hurt him for longer, damning societal and cultural acceptance. In the eyes of employers, he was unemployable, unforgivable and therefore, unable to even attempt to prove his faith-without repentance and pleading motivation to ask for less and work hard in service of a system with minimum compassion.
   So, the Orator surrendered resistance, at last accepted the invitation Sean relentlessly deployed on behalf of faceless prophets and their Transferer Eriv. For as long as the Orator shared Eriv Kyth, rent on a studio flat was expensed.
   Sean, or Eriv, arranged for a friend in a silver sedan to collect the Orator before he set a foot free of Seed.
   The next eight weeks, the Orator was fed two paper-wrapped meals a day and given intriguing variations of chores. He slept on a single, second-hand mattress on a single frame a meter apart from another bed then another metre and another bed, both belonging to other infant sharers of Eriv. There were no restrictions to leaving the address.
   Thousands of odd-picked voice messages played through headphones in a dimmer room. A second bedroom. Evidence of Eriv’s actuality the dominant subject, the Orator realised. On the unwrapped-from-bubble-wrap laptop delivered in a retaped box, played video recordings, interviews, of EKF prophets and higher sharers arguing the Dugoggithian influence controlling capitalism, values and established societal hierarchy. ‘Call it what it is!’ snapped a podcaster in respondent frustration, defensive around his own beliefs, before then he lowered the volume of his reply, ‘What’s interesting… what’s somewhat positive is actually- is we might agree on some of it. Capitalism, class, social infrastructure, yes, is a farse. It’s controlled. And the concept of manmade apocalypse has merit. So, call it that. A farse, controlled, unfair. Call it evil if you like. This Eriff stuff that you’re proposing and pushing, you know, is another internet-sourced religious outfit and unfortunately, it’s the same problem again. I’m sorry to be anti-theistic or irreligious. But… you- you rather than plainly call corruption corruption, or evil or wrong, you call it ‘Dagoggoon’ and blame it on an unseeable higher power. Why? You fantasticalise eventuality, and instead of work with the rest of us who’re as motivated to change it, you spread your reworded version that is a system no different, where the highest agents… your highest prophets again fortune off susceptible followers. You don’t want to redistribute the power, but instead take it, for it to be firmly held at the top again by another catholic bored of the one printed text. You’re not upset by the system. You’re upset that it’s not you accredited for it.’
   Sat down speeches delivered by EKF prophets were well-produced and cosmically backdropped, celebrating the sharing of Eriv. One prophet, young, in plain shirt, repeatedly spoke of success in self-fulfilment, in subliminal patriarchy, existential confrontation, and in wealth through monetisation. ‘There will come an end,’ exhorted a different prophet, aged, unblinking, ‘orchestrated by world leaders, yes... I believe who couldn’t be so morally unwell to do so without being corrupted by the influence of something like Dugogg. And what is after the end? When the water dries, the air is poisoned, bombs land and radiation ruins the rest…? If you truly believe there isn’t anything else, well, then there is probably nothing. What can there be after? This is the mortal end. Unless you understand your existence not as mortal. Thought is powerful. If you believe in unend, an Immortal Place, a Presidium and a Transferer… Eriv, may revelation be unveiled, you will realise time in our bodies is an overture. One part of a greater experience. A prologue. A starter before the main, growth before the flower, you the flower, blooms.’ The prophet demonstrated with palms and smiled momentarily. ‘We’re not to fear our end in these bodies, we’re to find comfort in anticipation and to celebrate when it does come. Share Eriv before the time is too late. Spread invitation to all who’re frightened and losing hope. Share something meaningful. Share Eriv.’

 

 

One testosteronic teen, amongst a party of testosteronic teens, drops then toe-punts a crushed can, emptied of urine-scented energy drink, toward unassociated foot traffic and a littered lit cigarette. Drabs splatter the fixed pattern of light brick before the crackle of its battered, dented metal quietens and it decelerates to a slower slide, tiring just short of gull shit.
   “We don’t want to hear it!” wretches a slender, greying ponytailed administrator, inflating his flat chest beneath sweater, nearing the Orator’s throat with a finger.
   “I exist in Overture to share Eriv-!” the Orator dictates, backstepping.
   “I don’t care!” exerts the administrator, a tensile European accent, vocal cords spent after his day’s repetitive to-dos. “We don’t want to hear this bullshit!” No more bull-shit. Ongoing fallacy as illogical and absurd as the dismissive words of his supervisor who schemes to have him eventually dismissed for declaring empathy. “You believe in nothing!”
   “I believe in nothing? I believe in Eriv! I share our Transferer Kyth!”
   “No! No! No.” The administrator reactively shakes his head and realigns his glasses when he stops. “No, you believe in nothing. If you believed in a god, you wouldn’t need to stand with a…” his words suddenly quieten as the Orator retreats further, intentionally covetous with his microphone. “…microphone, forcing your beliefs onto others!”
   “I don’t believe in a god,” admits the Orator, “I share our Transferer!” he says, swaying stance to his newest drawing audience, “Accept its invitation. Cast out all Dugogg’s temptations and our Transferer Eriv can bring you to its Immortal Presidium!”  
   Cheers. Supportive approbation for the Orator’s message from non-sharers. Smirks, before giggles spill from the tall teens in variating white shades of t-shirts, bruised knuckles in tracksuit pockets, sporadically nudging and chatting to each other.
   “Why?!” quizzes the administrator, “I believe in a god! I trust in something after everything without compulsion to be aggressive like you and to shout at other people!”
   “Am I being aggressive? Am I being aggressive, sharing Eriv’s invitation when you choose to come up to me and get this close-?”
   “You’re shouting,” claims the administrator, his throat increasingly sore, “You’re shouting. You’re shouting and you’re purposely antagonising us!”
   A racial slur slips through the lips of an enormous teen behind him.
  Onlookers glance at the overgrown child. They watch. They wonder if they misheard, they feel fire in their conscience and decide independently, unspoken, to do nothing.
   The Orator pretends to not have heard the offense tossed at his competitor and thinks, as taught, to grab desperately at attention if it starts to dissipate, “Accept Eriv’s invitation! Please! Ha- Hail! Hail Eriv! It wants to save us! Save us from end!”
   His freshest, less invested lesser follows him with a phone’s camera.
   “Anyone who is hurting, listen to its invitation!”
   “You can’t have a conversation about it!” cries the administrator, following the Orator in his small laps and circles.
  “Eriv cares to transfer you,” the Orator speaks still, to the crowd, “Save you from influence and the temptations and evil of Dugogg! Dugogg! who works through the unready and without-Eriv to cause conflict!”
   “Hail!” barks the smuggest teen, between snaps of more discrimination from others.
   The administrator ignores the teenagers, and instead, shaking with fear, targets his worsening upset and retaliation at the unswayed Orator. “You’re a liar!” Could he stop him? He pleads, “You’re lying to these children!”
   “See Dugogg!” the Orator yells above, “See Dugogg’s infiltration as he wants to silence our sharing of a future of peace and love!”
   “You want me to silence you?!” threatens the administrator, scored by more racism, gritting his teeth, verging on unexpected tears. Between thrusting gestures, he grips the gifted gold hung from his neck, coddling thoughts of his younger sister before her sudden and unpleasant death and the adolescent she left. 
   “See Dugogg’s attempts!” the Orator evades. Louder, “Those without Eriv! Who try to stop us!” Louder, “Attempt to silence our invitation! Wanting us to die here! on earth!”
   “Yeah!” spurs another kid, rubbing his chest, “Fuck, yeah! Share Erif!”
   The administrator snatches at the Orator’s microphone and pinches by accident the silver rings and engravings near his tightly gripped knuckles. Hastily pivoting, the Orator feigns. He performs, manipulatively unreactive to the ceaseless attempts that poke and prod and confrontationally demand, again, he stop. No. He must go on! He wraps the tattered, black electrical lead around his fist, dragging its almost-knotting loops about his shins, and proceeds his preaching and back and forth marching. “He wants to silence us! but share Eriv! Share the opportunity to be granted immortality!” A vein bulged out from his collar, up to under his jaw. “Save you from addiction! Dugogg is inside this non-believer! Hol-di-ng h-im hostage! Dugogg, the anti-Cerberus who- is the causer of corruption! The causer of suffering! The abuser!”
   The boys cheer. Their calves tense and feet stamp as they cock about and chant and shove each other toward the altercation and the unmarked narrow path of passers. 
   “The killer of children, the rapist!”
   Hate, and fear, and upset, and horror all wildly rile inside the administrator. The temptation to tear away the words, grapple the microphone and expose experience and horror and reassure the depressing but honest meaningless of everything to the gathering pliant. The frighteningly malleable teenagers. Creeds indifferent, there is famine and there is cancer! We lose our parents, our children, our sisters, and we aren’t given a reason. He envisions against his own rotting compassion, surrendering to a temptation. Beating the Orator down to the brick, his nose bloodied, and pride conquered.
   Instead, the administrator restrains himself. He holds in breath, one arm nervously shaking, and stares with headlit, wide eyes at the Orator. He thinks again of his sister. The emotions and absent inhalation choke in his throat, wobbles his apple and he quickly refocuses his attention to the light enclosing clouds, the darkening sky, and the unagreed gods and heavens above. 
   As he prepares to step away, a rope drops like a collapsing halo to his collar.
  One of the young cheerers, brawn, fat lips, marked with a hurting auburn bruise in separated parts above and below his left eye, tightens the makeshift noose in silence. 
   “Stop!” pleads the administrator, unsure of what’s happening.
   The children pull and the rope is taught before either of his hands reach the knot. Boys take quick turns yanking the administrator like a dog as he flaps and tries to stay on his feet. The fewer girls cross their skinny legs in cheap tights, kind of pivot, and look elsewhere, chuckling awkward and unbothered, only half impressed with their short-lasting boyfriends’ efforts. Huffing, they try his spine, have him buckle and desperately pull at the line clamping his windpipe. He’s trying to speak, but he can’t. He can’t breathe. Four boys playing with the rope become seven, hating him, abusing him, yanking and whipping so his knees bash into each other and his ankles twist and tempt dislocation. 
   “Dirt fuck!” yells a scrawnier contributor.
   Onlookers react all over.
  More teenagers rush to the hate crime. They don’t hesitate to decide to join in, grabbing hold of the rope as well, or kicking the administrator’s hands and shins or stepping on his fingers when he keeps falling to a knee. When the group fear he’ll slip free, the boy with the healing blackeye approaches, comes close and tightens it again before taking unspoken charge once more. He leads the administrator to shadows beneath scaffolding. Without an order, plan or agreement, the rope is thread over and around metals bars, and the teenagers all pull, chanting. 
   Around the kids, the crowds are speechless. Some run. Run away, look for help, or for order as the administrator’s feet lift from the ground. The image of an ascending angel hatefully reimagined, think several onlookers, hands occupied with shopping, absorbed in the surrealism of the sudden sight.
   It’s unclear if the administrator is any longer conscious.
   The Orator remains. “Share Eriv!” he repeats, squinting, blinded by an abundance of Reil. “Hail! Hail Eriv! Yes!”
   Phones rise, point to the punishment.
   “End the violence!” he pleads with a casually rhythmic step. He circles still, fears to face the boys, confront their pretty willing eyes and subservience.
   I will save thousands, the Orator believes. This’ll be seen. And Eriv’s existence and invitation has been shared like never before. He wipes the single tear of blood from under his nose and orates devout, “I share Eriv Kyth!”