mr wizzle
People see me, but they don’t really notice me.
You’d think I would be hard to ignore, wouldn’t you? Just look at me! I wear a yellow and black checked suit with a paper rose hanging from the lapel and have tufts of red hair sticking out from underneath my battered old derby. But nobody does. They just think I’m a fat old fool. Even when I’m up on my preaching crate giving the Lord’s word.
Some give me dirty looks, a few shout at me, one or two even throw things at me. Sometimes the Deputies chase me off. Nobody wants to hear what I have to say. It’s a sad and sorry state of affairs, but I think I understand. Folk just want to believe that this town, this plentiful, prosperous little town, really is a veritable Eden in a world that is falling apart.
They don’t want to hear about the strange things that happen here; the disappearances and the forgetting and all the souls who get washed up with no real idea of where they came from. They don’t want to hear about the shenanigans that go on. Godless shenanigans for the most part. They don’t want to hear about the evil in their midst.
Most of all they don’t want to hear about the Mayor.
Sometimes I ask myself why I stay here and spit in the wind. I could just walk away. No one would miss me. I could live out on the grass. It’s quiet out there, with nothing to hear but the birds and the wind hissing through the long grass and the insects buzzing about their business.
There are angels out there too.
I don’t talk much about the angels I see out on the grass. Folk think I’m just a mad old clown already, but I have seen them with my own eyes. Striding through the grass, radiating all the colours of creation about them. Their beauty and majesty are a miracle to behold. It fills me with such joy and wonder to see them.
Sometimes I wish they would take me with them, but, much like the townsfolk of Hawker’s Drift, I don’t think they really notice me at all, and before long they fade back to whence they came and leave only the grass dancing on the wind’s kiss behind them. So I just pick myself up and brush myself down and take myself back to the sin and wickedness that has curled itself about the heart of Hawker’s Drift. And if I don’t do it, then who will?
Nobody else even recognises the Devil when they see him…