Companionship - beyond flesh

Gefresh

        A thick sheet of shredded dry, white skin peeled off Churchman’s deep brown back as Max helped him into a comfortable sitting position on the medical cot. It was not a painful shedding, but one of renewal; much like how the fresh shiny skin of a snake appears from beneath the discarded layer of old. 

        As the hygiene modules buzzed over to consume the old skin as it fell to the spotless floor of the infirmary, Max addressed his ward in his normal conversational tone, “You’re looking good. Must feel good too, being thirty-two again that is. So how old were you before the gefresh? In physical terms? I have to admit you looked positively ancient. My guess is around seventy?” 

        Striking blue eyes flashed brightly against the fresh dark and bald skin of Churchman’s face, so bright that, for a moment they seemed a light source all their own. After the mime of mental calculations, a strong deep voice answered with a wide charismatic grin, the brightness of which matched his eyes, “You are close, my count is sixty-seven.”

        “That’s old. I can’t remember seeing anyone naturally that old -- besides an Aged anyway.” Max referred to the class of citizen that had used up their quota of allocated gefresh tokens and were expected, by law, to grow old and die a natural death. 

        Churchman’s carefree expression disappeared and, for a moment, was replaced with the worried and tortured expression that Max knew from the weeks before the rescue. Max figured that it must have been something he said and stuttered an apology, “I’m sorry if I’ve said something to offend you--”

        Churchman replied no longer maddened, “No. You are very fine Max. I am the one who is sorry. It is just that your observation has brought back a number of memories from the past. Distant memories.”

        “You’ve been through a lot. I’m not surprised you have deep worries,” with an uncharacteristic interpersonal courage Max continued without thinking, “I’m no fancy counsellor or anything, but if you need to talk about what happened to you in that room, then you can talk to me.” 

        At the last word, Max realised that he had mentioned the ‘room of horrors’ to Churchman for the first time since his rescue, not a subject Max intended to breach at all, ever. 

        Churchman saw the consternation on Max’s face and reassured his new friend and nurse, “Don’t worry, you do not harm me by mention of that room or my place there. It was; I see now, a penance and--" he paused and motioned that Max sit. Max sat and Churchman, with a painful grimace, placed a disfigured hand on Max’s shoulder and continued. “...a rebirth. No, this gefresh, it is my twelfth which means that I am now an Illegal and must be retired forcefully in order to retain the balance of life. That does not bother me, I feel my time will come soon.” Churchman smiled with a kind of inward realisation. “It is divine justice since I too was once charged with hunting down Illegals. Life turns.”

        Not the conversation that Max was expecting to hold this morning, he was mentally clutching at straws for a response. He craved to change the subject, to talk about the yellow evening primrose that had started flowering in the Hortus or something similarly benign, but instead blurted, “You were on the Death Squad!?”

        The patient grunted, “Indeed. For almost one hundred years my clerical duties involved the preservation of mortality as prescribed by the Longitudine Dierum. But the weight of the many lives I took finally became an unbearable burden and so, I retired to become Churchman here at this place. 

        “I had intended to live out my years carrying out mundane blessings on new born babies and chanting the last rites of dying old men and women.”

        Max had reached the limit of his counselling skills and so sat there mesmerised by the storytelling power of Churchman as he described his dark past. 

        Churchman continued, “It’s ironic that the count of deaths caused by the orr beast is minute compared to the number of marks on my belt while in the squad.”

        Max saw red and jumped up to defend his Emma, “You must not call her that!”

        Churchman seemed taken back by Max’s reaction, “Max, my friend! You must take a realistic view as to what has happened here. Satan walks upon the earth injecting her form here so that she may scheme while feeding on the sins of man. Just as she has fed already on my sins!”

        “No.” Max angered, “You must not talk about her like that! Her name is Emma, and she is good at heart. Before I arrived, she was lost and confused. Everyone was trying to kill her! Everything that happened here was because she was acting in self-defense -- probably using your past work as a guide!!”

        The bright eyes of the other disappeared into a frown, and a visage of darkness entered and then passed from his face, finally responding to the defensive Max peacefully and in earnest, “Rest easy Max. I mean no offense. You are correct. After all, who am I to judge? Really? It's clear that I’m no Raphael sent to speak to you with God’s word.” 

        Churchman smiled deeply.

        Max relaxed and added before moving on to the physiotherapy duties he had taken upon himself, “It’s OK. But you are wrong about her. She is no more evil that I am. One day you will see.”