Challengor

You had to be careful what you wished for. He knew that now. Had been provided an insight into the vagaries of the machinery that clunked and whirred at the very edges of the universe. The outer reaches where the magic used to happen until people’s belief in such things was replaced by a belligerent arrogance in their own capacity to make things happen. Ignorant hubris killed gods, but in this golden graveyard a spark had ignited and his fanciful wish was granted.

A world away from such things Sandra constructed her poison pen text and with a satisfied smile pressed send. Her satisfaction was born of a resentment that stemmed from a childhood that was better than most. But Sandra felt that she deserved more. This entitlement had fermented within her until it became malicious.

There was bad biology in people. Short circuits and unfortunate ingredients. Thankfully people were mostly good. But every batch had a bad seed and from the bad seed grew a poisonous vine the fruit of which was bitter.

Still there was always a choice. He knew that better than most. His Big Choice had forever changed the course of his history. Mostly the Big Choices seemed trifling at the time. A little old lady shuffling along in the background of a drama ladened scene. Rear wheel of her tartan shopping trolley squeaking an annoying song. And yet no one noticed her. Something about reaching a certain age made people invisible. Which also made them even more dangerous, because they thought they could get away with murder. And often they did. But that was a story for another time. In fact, that was a whole bookshelf of stories for another library.

He observed Sandra’s callous act and watched the future she had chosen unfold. The cruel rumour she had fabricated out of a sense of fictitious injustice blossomed like blood in a toilet bowl. It grew and it grew until eventually it blotted out several lives. Sandra would see a fraction of the damage she’d caused and rejoice in it. The rest she would sense and in sensing it she would wish that she could view every morsel of pain she had inflicted with her originating lie. He hoped her wish would not be granted. But then, in a way it would.

The three victims of the rumour would not be physically dead. This lack of a funeral to attend disappointed people like Sandra, but their silver lining was the empty excuse; I Did Nothing Wrong. Because although she was fully aware of the pain she’d inflicted upon her victims she did not care about the consequences of that pain. For her it was all about the thrill of the pain itself. People were there for her vengeful avatar to kick. This was a game to her. Games were fun!

Taking a deep breath he decided it was time for him to make his entrance. He’d seen enough. Really he’d seen too much. Vaguely recollected people on something called Healing Trips chunnering on about patterns and cycles. He had a mental image of hippies on giant hamster wheels. Emaciated. Long beards and longer hair. Crying in frustration. Too knackered to shout that they wanted to get off. Now he saw all the patterns so many of them. But they were all the same. And they were simple. And they were simply ridiculous. Anyone and everyone could choose to stop the bus and get off. But they were too afraid to do so. And fear made people dumb. He’d entered an epidemic of stupid and he was beginning to think he was out of his depth. Because no one in the history of the universe had ever won against stupid.

Still, it was a job of sorts and it kept him busy.

Taking fistfuls of the fabric of Sandra’s reality he tore it open and stepped inside.

“What the hell!” she gasped.

“I wish,” he muttered.

“What was that?” she asked.

“I’m not from hell,” he enunciated the words as though she were hard of thinking. Which she obviously was, because he had cause to visit her.

“There’s no need to shout!” she shouted at him.

“I didn’t,” he said painstakingly.

“Yes you did!” she shouted.

He raised his right hand and closed the fingers and thumb together. A naked hand puppet closing its mouth. Sandra’s mouth closed and the skin on her lips melted together in a satisfying visual that he would never tire of, “if you’re not going to speak respectfully and kindly then you will not speak at all.”

He was rewarded with a wide eyed and silent response. Then Sandra’s eyes narrowed.

Unfortunately for Sandra, he could speak eye, “there’s no need to swear,” he told her.

Sandra’s eyes went wide again.

“Right,” he said, “I need you to calm down. And then we can have a chat.”

Several hours of needless drama later Sandra had calmed sufficiently for them to have a chat. Her levels of calm were only just below the redline, but it would have to do. Besides, this was standard. The people he encountered were all permanently angry. That was why these problems occurred in the first place.

“Right,” he said again, “let’s have this chat.

Sandra was still seething. Barely containing her anger. This though was her natural state. She was staring at his chest. The shield and the single word emblazoned below, “what kind of a name is Challengor?”

Challengor grit his teeth, “it’s pronounced jaw, not gore. Cha - len - jaw.”

“Whatever,” said Sandra.

There was a time when Challengor would have put Sandra on the naughty step again. But he’d learnt through considerable experience that this was as good as it gets. There was also a time when he had wanted to be called What-Were-You-Thinking Man. But he’d come to realise that was too much of a mouthful, besides which he was not a fan of double-barrelled names so to have a double-double-barrelled name was a wee bit over the top.

“Anyway,” said Challengor, “I’ve come to challenge you about your behaviour and in particular the spurious rumour you were about to send out into the world.”

“Why?” asked Sandra.

Challengor gave her a look. The look was supposed to be a paternal look that engendered a rapport that would predispose Sandra to listen and accept the error of her ways. The problem was he was tired, and also that he knew she wasn’t going to listen come what may, “consequences,” he told her.

And just like the vast majority of his interventions, Sandra looked upon him with a disdain that made him schedule a long hot bath for that very evening. She said nothing because she thought nothing of consequences.

There then followed a silence that really didn’t want to be there. It sat there between the two of them and became increasingly awkward. Sandra shared none of that awkwardness. Sandra wasn’t one for sharing much of anything. She’d attended the class that covered taking and decided her education was then complete and any further learning was a waste of her valuable time.

“Let me show you the consequences of the rumour you decided to make up about your neighbour,” Challengor said this with little enthusiasm. He wasn’t exactly going through the motions, but part of his gift was to see probable futures. This enabled him to show people the error of their ways. It also showed him the outcome of them being made aware of the consequences of their actions and so he made himself and his actions redundant with his own foresight.

There was always hope though. That was the whole point to him and his existence. Hope. Hope was the optimistic sign post to a better future.

“Like the Ghost of Christmas Future?” Sandra asked him.

“Exactly like that,” conceded Challengor. The same thing had struck him from day one. Soon enough he’d resented Dickens and his happily ever after ending. Scrooge was an irredeemable scrote. A lost cause of epic proportions. And what about poor Marley. Surely he deserved an intervention too?

“But I’m not Scrooge,” said Sandra.

“And it’s not Christmas,” retorted Challengor.

Sandra moved her lips like a fish out of water whilst Challengor stared her down. He was no fan of control by paradigm. Certain people were adept at imposing irrelevance upon people and having them answer questions that caused all manner of idiocy. On the face of it, the result was noise and hot air. Challengor knew that it was far worse than that were you to peel that face away.

Now it was time to move forward in time. Challengor gave no warning prior to the journey. He’d given up on doing so. The effort made bore scant reward.

Sandra was sick on her shoes, “you could have warned me.”

He looked at her. Considered telling her it would have made no difference. But that felt like tempting providence.

“Look what you have done,” he said sweeping his arm towards the pain and despair of her three innocent victims.

Sandra looked upon her works. Then she leaned forward and peered at them, “is that it?” she asked him following her examination.

“You have needlessly wounded three innocent people,” he found that stating the obvious saved a lot of time.

“You’ve disturbed my day and wasted my time,” she now mocked and mimicked his expansive gesture, “for this!?”

“Yes,” he confirmed.

Her eyes now blazed with anger, “you’re taking the piss!”

Challengor barely supressed a sigh. This was his lot. The dream had been far better than the reality. He’d wanted to make a difference. To shock and awe those he chose into living better, far more responsible lives. There was no respect these days. Only bloated entitlement. Instead of fearful deference to a god, he was subjected to blind eyes. Those blind eyes fell into two camps. The tent Sandra resided in was brim full of anger. In the opposite corner were sheep eyes blinking with ignorance.

“You are gazing upon the wounds you inflicted upon people for nothing more than your own entertainment. You hurt people for fun,” Challengor told Sandra.

“No I don’t!” she barked at him.

“You do,” he told her firmly, “I would not have appeared to you if that was not the case. Your evil deed summoned me.”

“Can’t have done,” protested Sandra.

“Well it did,” Challengor told her, “for I am here.”

“I ain’t done nothing,” said Sandra.

“Exactly,” agreed Challengor.

“Good,” said Sandra, “then take me home.”

“I will not,” said Challengor.

“Whyever not?!” asked Sandra.

“Because you have admitted that you did something,” Challengor smiled at the woman before him. This was a rare win and he would take it with gusto.

“No I didn’t,” she snarled.

“You just told me that you hadn’t done nothing,” Challengor told her.

Sandra did the fish lips thing again before gathering her wits, “hang on… I didn’t mean that!”

Challengor now chuckled, “that sort of thing doesn’t work with me.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Saying one thing and meaning another,” stated Challengor, “in other words, lies and manipulation.”

Sandra stared at him as she tried to stave off a storm of comprehension that was changing the landscape of her life.

Challengor waved a finger in the air as he said, “I also have the text that you sent to begin the rumour that brings ruination upon this household. You’re bang to rights.” The ghosts of the words she’d typed hung in the air between them.

“That’s not fair!” Sandra wailed, “that’s an invasion of privacy! A contravention of my human rights!”

“What of theirs?” Challengor pointed towards the three unfortunates who were weeping and gnashing their teeth in despair.

Sandra gave him a supercilious and grumpy look that telegraphed her total disregard for the three people she had intended to brutalise. To her, they did not count. She cared about nothing and no one except herself. Even then, her brand of care broke a number of trade description rules.

Now Challengor sighed a very obvious sigh, “ignoring consequences, especially significant consequences such as these, means that you have a distinct lack of conscience.”

“What?” snapped Sandra, “are you my therapist now?!”

There was a sadness in this. Sandra was not an exception. She was the Broken Rule. And there were seldom consequences for the rules the Sandra’s of this life broke. Well, there were, but they were consequences that could be hidden away and denied. Sandras ignored the consequences and they paid a secret vengeance forward because they felt they were worth more than the world was giving them. They evened the score in a vain attempt to make themselves feel better, but each hit was lacklustre and disappointing. So they hit harder and harder. Meanwhile, the trouble they caused led to the making of yet more Sandra’s. It was the devil’s own virus. A fight between good and evil. Only evil was being really sneaky and fighting behind good’s back.

“Last chance…” Challengor looked upon his latest Sandra with pity and disappointment. He knew this wasn’t fair. Nor was it sporting.

And as he had anticipated, Sandra lost her shit at him. He allowed her a good five minutes of her sweary diatribe and was rewarded with two new phrases that he’d add to the Book of Swearing he had decided to compile. Harvesting amusing and innovative insults was both a bonus and a labour of love that afforded Challengor some semblance of job satisfaction.

Then he clicked his fingers and Sandra froze in place. Hung in a suspension that would last at least as long as Challengor lasted. Less, if he deigned to revisit her. She blinked her eyes. The only movement she had left to her. False tears of self-pity dribbled down her cheeks. She would see and hear in this state. She was aware. If only it made a difference. Maybe in time it could.

“Consequences,” Challengor said before grabbing hands full of the fabric of time and space and stepping elsewhere.

Challengor’s next stop was somewhat of a novelty. Just as he’d thought he’d seen it all, there was a Malcolm who managed to surprise him. Noisy bins to annoy neighbours was old hat. But it was the way Malcolm was making the noise…

“What are you doing!?” gasped Challengor.

Malcolm froze. But in this case, this was not as a result of Challengor’s considerable but sadly impotent powers. The tableau presented was of a man holding a wheelie bin lid aloft. A lid that he had been bringing down repeatedly on his man sausage.

“You’re having violent sexual relations with a wheelie bin?” Challengor was shaking his head despondently as he asked himself why he even bothered.

“Only a bit,” replied Malcolm, “anyway,” he added, “what kind of name is Challengor!?”

Challengor grit his teeth, “it’s pronounced jaw, not gore. Cha - len - jaw.”

And so Challengor’s next assignment began. The ending of which would mirror the previous ending and all the previous endings. Outcomes of limbo. Works in progress that were unlikely to ever be completed. In his continuing fight against evil, Challengor had lost sight of the number of people he had paused in acts of utter evil. And he’d been kept too busy to fully consider all those he had saved from needless pain.

Somewhere along the way, he’d also lost sight of time. Which was no surprise because in his transformation from idealistic mortal man to timeless being he had never thought to keep time. There was no need. He had all the time in the world as he suspended miscreants in a place that was outside time, space and meaning. But all those in limbo had meaning. They remained mean and they broiled in the anger that they would not let go of even when it brought them continued misery.

Were someone to ask him to estimate the number of partial interventions he’d made that had led to the suspension of a life, he would come up with a number betwixt three and five hundred. Somehow, he’d fail to add the six zeroes to the number to bring it closer to the actual number. Even then, he’d fall short.

Hundreds of millions of demons in human form. Hung out to dry. Challengor was oblivious to his successes and victories in the eternal fight between good and evil. But the devil knew. The devil was keeping score and he was very angry indeed!