the mantel of jael

CHAPTER 1

A knock on the door. ‘If it’s not good news then I’m not interested and you will be declared extinct!’ she shouts. ‘I’m in no mood for trivialities today! Go away!’

Helga is in her mansion in her relaxation chamber, lying on a luxurious sofa with a cocktail in her hand. Although a very beautiful woman, there is something treacherous and hard on her face. She carries about her an air of evil, a scent of wickedness, a feeling of discontent and a notion of distrust and sedition.

Outside, her personal aide Regale, who is constantly fidgeting in his nervousness, is contemplating what to do with the news he has about the seer, Jael. He is unsure whether Queen Helga in her current mood will recognize it as good or bad news.

He moves away from the door, nervously scratches his cheek, purses his lips this way and that, reaches out with a trembling knocking fist towards the door, retracts it again and blinks his eyes a few times. He bows, rubs his hands together and hesitatingly moves towards the door once again. This time he carefully knocks.

‘Alright, come in and tempt your destiny.’

Slowly he opens the door and shuffles nervously inside, adjusting his coat as he skulks. He trudges up to where she is reclining on the sofa. With one swift move he falls to one knee, his head down and his left arm stretched out in a ‘hail’ position. He is a strange looking man, short in stature by human standards with rather large ears and a small flat nose. ‘Your divinity’, he says while keeping his head and eyes dropped. Nervously his nose twitches as he looks up at her from under his thin eyebrows, still kneeling and arm stretched out.

‘Well, be quick. You’re ruining my perfume.’

‘We have managed to find Jael, oh prophetess’, Regale says in a high pathetic voice.

With one swing of her legs she is sitting up straight on the sofa almost knocking him off his knee. He quickly jumps to one side and remains standing in front of her with his head down but peering up at her from under his brow. There is an evil elation on her face and a glaring gleam in her eye. Her drink is still in her hand.

‘This is first-class! This is splendid!’ She stops abruptly and gives him a murderous glare. ‘But what?’

‘Well we uh, found him and then we, … lost him,’ he says with an upward lilt in his voice while nervously dropping his outstretched arm and then starting to scratch his hip.

‘What? How in a pot of hot snot did you manage that? He’s just a man you know with a few impressive powers. He’s not even a Samurai or a Ninja and he doesn’t have a black belt.

He’s just a prophet who travels around under a hideous mantel! First you deceive me with good news and now you slap me with this! You don’t value your life at all, do you? And will you kindly stand still?!!’

‘Forgive me you splendor. But it gets better, oh queen. They say he’s dead.’

‘Really? They say he’s dead. They? Who they? They who? Who are they? And how can he be dead?! It can’t be? The gods said I would be the one to kill him. So one of my men got him? If so, I know nothing about it.’

‘No, majesty, it was an … act of God’, he says with the same upward lilt while clicking his knuckles and flashing her a submissive smile.

Helga explodes ‘Bpaa!! What nonsense! Act of God indeed! Who told you that? This news is killing you, you know. In fact it’s disastrous! You’re wasting my time and your measly little life.’

She swings her legs back up and reclines again on the sofa settling in the same position she was before he entered the room. She takes a sip of her drink. ‘Give me some information that might save your pitiful hide. Well, is he dead or not?’

Regale, who defensively raises his shoulders with elbows bent and with hands held up and left eye twitching, mutters, ‘They’re looking for him right now, your Desideratedness. There was a twister that took him, your Divinity, a whirlwind, a cyclone, a hurricane, a tornado … a …’

‘I got it. I got it. Enough with the synonyms and will you stop flickering like a strobe! Stand still! Well,’ she says with evil glee, ‘when they … if they find his mangled and bloody body all torn to shreds, have him brought to me so I can burn it on the altar before almighty Baal! Then I’ll have the last laugh!’ She lets out an evil laugh that causes Regale to take a step back. ‘Dogs eat my flesh, indeed! What a fake! The old maggot. Find out whether they’ve found him yet!’

Regale activates his earcell, mutters a few words and hangs up. ’Well, where’s the body?’ Helga says with disdain.

Regale’s eyes are open wide and he is clutching his hands so that the white of his knuckles can be seen. ‘They’re still looking for him your divinity but there’s no way he could have survived,’ he says quickly with his teeth clenched and his mouth barely open. ‘It’s just not humanly possible. He was taken hundreds of meters into the air.’ He lets out a short uneasy giggle.

There is a long pause as Helga takes an extensive sip and silently stares down into her drink. She casually looks up and out of the window and unhurriedly brings her head around so that she totally smothers him with her icy-cold stare. He has by this time become extremely jittery. Her eyes are hard and as dead as a semi-precious agate. She doesn’t blink and not for a moment does she take her encompassing stare off of him. With each fierce-looking second that passes, Regale’s jitters become more intense so that by now his whole body is shaking.

‘No body, no proof’, she says softly. ‘You idiotic little man. You have no clue as to what that caped wonder can do, do you? He may not be a Ninja. He may not even be a Samurai but he definitely has an uncannily, irritating way of staying alive.’ She keeps staring at him and with the most eerie voice softly starts to sing, ‘Aah, aah, aah, aah stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive, aah, aah, aah … you know the song?’

‘Your highness?’ Regale fearfully asks trying not to look into those hypnotic eyes.

‘Come here and sing with me … aah, aah, aah, aah …’ He unwillingly shuffles closer while she stares past him into the heavens. ‘Can’t hear you! Aah, aah, aah …’

Regale fearfully and carefully joins in singing the ‘aahs’ softly with her.

‘Come on, you can do better than that,’ Helga says and Regale raises his voice singing, ‘Aah, aah, aah, aah stayin’ …’. ‘Put your wretched little soul into it!’ He continues to raise his voice, this time becoming quite booming, ‘Aah, aah, aah, aah, …’. On the word ‘alive’, Helga’s arm moves swiftly as she clutches him way down low between his legs and holds him in a vice-like grip. His face leaves little to the imagination as he lets out a blood curdling ‘aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive’. Needless to say, his pain enters a whole new dimension.

She lets him go and he collapses on the floor like a heap of unwashed laundry. ‘I am depressed and my air has been fouled. Ruined. Another day spoiled by your incompetence.’ She sighs deeply and says, ‘You are solely responsible for this being one of the worse days of my life, second only to that freak, Jael, murdering my prophets and my husband!’ She raises her chin and with a loud shriek aims her mouth at the door, ‘Drones!’

Four well-built men wearing high-tech sports gear come marching into the relaxation chamber and surround Regale who is still lying on the floor. He is now beside himself shuddering with fear.

‘I need a new aide. Please recycle this one’, she says matter-of-factly. She then takes a sip of her drink and lazily turns her head to stare out the window again.

Regale raises his voice in panic, ‘Your majesty, mercy! I’m just doing my job! I thought you would be pleased!’ Helga casually waves him away with an indifferent hand, still looking out of the window. One man lifts him off the ground by grabbing him behind his neck like a mother cat with its kitten, and starts carrying him out of the room. ‘Your majesty, please! I’m your aide and I’m just the messenger!’

While still staring out of the window, she smirks cynically and says, ‘Good. Then in your case, no news is … dead news. Pop him!’

Regale is still screaming and protesting as the four men carry him out of the room. His muffled voice can still be heard behind the closed door. There’s an alarming pause, then a loud pop like that of a gigantic plastic bag bursting and the screaming abruptly stops. Helga smiles menacingly and says, ‘Toss them a bone and they’ll stab you in the butt with it!’