Jude and Messiah walk into a suburban funeral home. it's full of mourners, each of whom has a dry eye on the will and a wet eye on the casket.

gentlemen, ladies of the jury! you see before you a great man dead, the single greatest money lender and creator of credit in Hamilton County, the Very Old Count himself,

he has there his will, his last will and testament, by which his eldest surviving son is expected now to take up as guarantee and exerciser. all of his sons are dead, the last and youngest in the ground these last twenty years. his grandsons are in their sixties and seventies, and none of them trusts the others. the dowager, his wife these last 110 years, Judith, is 160 years old, having been thrice widowed and married to the rich man's three older brothers.

he was a mean old man, wed to a fifty year old woman at 17, too puritanical to take any lovers, but too unselfinvolved to suspect how his rigid enforcement of resistance to temptation moonlighted as obsessive unseeings, judgements, conspiracy-oriented thought, etc.

in his last 17 years alive, beginning the day he turned 100, at the birthday party you all came to, hoping to make a good impression, he saw an angel. he also thought he saw an angel, but these were too discreet events. he met July Lovelace, a music teacher, whom his mind took for a celestial creature in part because his great great grandson slipped a tab of acid into his blueberry pie (raspberries being his favorite, he had given them up for lent, which unfortunately stradled his birthday.

Mz Lovelace was a former nun who considered herself married to Jesus, and through him, to all things. she was present at his party because her class had been invited to perform for the Very Old Count in hopes of his endowing a music scholarship, something he'd often suggested he might do someday "when the time was right" ever since he'd been asked when he was 26 to consider it. Mz Lovelace more than the recital made a profound impact on the count, and he asked her to brunch to discuss the scholarship, though for the first 179 of their bi-weekly brunches it was only ever brought up as something "they really must get around to talking about next time," and even that only sporadically after the first fortnight. instead, the very old man plied his

when he was 107 his own father, the extremely old man, died and the family fortune fell to him. the extremely old man, and his father the extraordinarily old man, and his father the impossibly old man, had each become old quite young, and perhaps in insurance paid for laundered youth, survived extreme, extraordinary, and impossible lengths of time, respectively. yet the very old man was the first to outlive any of his sons. on midwinter prior to that lent, the impossibly old man sucumbed to a fever he'd been nursing for the better part of two years when he was gone there seemed nothing left of him but his sweat and pajamas. it seemed that way because it was true. at the moment if his death the impossibly old man was teleported to the town square Christmas tree, where he had al taken up residence as the angel. the whole population saw how his head had been shoved up under the traffic light, so that the ghoulish red yellow and green faces he made at them made many people fall down and weep, or curse, or go into labor, or burst out with uncontrollable mania, laughing and dancing until the succumbed to exhaustion a day two later.

the extraordinarily old man was hurrying home through the towncenter at just that moment, and all his doctors agreed it was the shock which had killed him, even though most of the people didn't realize until days later that the angel was actually a perfectly preserved body, incoruptible in the cold, the final indication they needed at the impossibly old man was a saint. he was laid in state at the cathedral and was reported to conduct miracles with great regularity.

12 days later, the extraordinarily man died, having overseen the transfer of his father's body to the cathedral with understanding eyes, never looking away from the cane he long clutched with both hands even in the car, at dinner, in bed, in the shower, while writing, while shaking hands, and while undergoing surgery at the hospital he funded. it was expected that he would be buried with his cane, but his hands at death had straighted out, and the cane couldn't be put in his hands.

the extremely old man had tended to the logistics of both his grandfather and father over the course of that month, and took every opportunity to berate his son the very old man that he was being saved the hassle, since the extremely old man was too old for these things after all, yet it was he who had managed all the family's dealings for so long, back as far as arranging for his teenage son to marry the widow of his three older brothers. what's more, he declared his very old son would not even need to organize the extremely old father's funeral, since the extremely old man was "too old for dying" and intended to surpass his ancient ancestors and never did, but instead "see seven generations of descendants born and live and be put to ground, not seven generations but seven times seventy," after which he would get on a silver spaceship and fly to the edge of the universe to see if God liked his women curvy or thin."

as it happened, 490 hours (days?) after his father's death, the extremely old man died, his head taken clean off by a road sign while he leaves out of his car to wolfwhistle at a teacher while going 70 miles an hour in a school zone. an open casket was judged inappropriate, as were most of the other off hand requests the extremely old man had voiced in the unlikely event of his death. the very old man had been waiting at a cafe to meet with his father to discuss business at the time, dozed off at his booth, woke up after dreaming he'd already met with his father, went home, and wasn't alerted until the next day. his wife the thrice widowed Judith handled the logistics, she'd always been close to the extremely old man.

the very old man had his birthday celebrated at the senior citizen home despite living in the family mansion with round the clock aides and nurses, because he liked showing off how old he was and making bets with various residents that he would outlive them. he was turning 100 , the oldest resident was 109 and failing fast and his most enjoyable part of his birthday was bullying the man's friends and relatives about how he would soon be dead. the very old man had been in good spirits since the death of his father, and though he rather missed his kindly cane clutching grandfather and like everyone else reveared his impossibly old great grandfather, not to mention the death of his last and youngest surviving son 3 years prior, he was enjoying his seniority in the family greatly, outpaced only by his three older sisters, two aunts, a young for her generation great aunt, a very young for her generation great-great aunt, and oldest of all, his wife.

the acid in the blueberry cake transfixedhim with Mz Lovelace, and they met every Tuesday and Griday, with occasional variations to Sundays and Thursdays and Mondays and Wednesdays and Saturdays, provided they saw each other twice a week. he never set up a scholarship but spent tens of thousands of dollars in very thinly veiled donations of equipment and travel vouchers and licenses and venues for her class, which he always proclaimed was exactly the kind of thing the arts needed, but not scholarships, since then the musicians might grow up and leave the town and take their skills with them and leave the town without music at all, all out of the love for music of witless patrons.

Mz Lovelace was not an angel. she was a teacher who let the old man fuss over her program and buy her pastries and coffee and tea and cigarettes and was constantly gifting her with watches and jewelry and flowers and cars and other odds and ends, most of which she returned to the store, packages unopened, for store credit or if at all possible and at any rate cash, almost all of which she put into--what, an ill relative, a bespoke drug habit, the tuition of a particularly gifted former student, her own student loans, no one was quite sure, there was circumstancial evidence for each of these ends and others besides, and the very old man had no illusions that something of that sort was probably going on, except when he enjoyed fantasizing about her pleasure at reciving and making use of a specific gift, which was very often, and this targeted vicarious pleasure and his sense of puritan disaste for cash gifts kept such gifts coming, and everyone at the cafe assumed she was his mistress, except they never saw each other outside of the cafe other than at recitals such as that first one while he tripped massive balls blueberry acid cake on his 100th birthday.

his wife knew he was spending fortunes on this woman, but every time she considered confronting him she had to admit to herself that even if her husband had been robbing her own accounts (and he always used his own private discretionary funds) it would still be less costly compared to the emotional displeasure at having to be around him that much more absent the distraction of Mz Lovelace, mistress or no. all three of her sons were dead, while she had one surviving daughter from each marriage, the eldest older than her husband.

the actual angel that the very old man saw, though he did not recognize it as such, he glimpse half an hour after the recital when he saw what to everyone else seemed a large white dog, but which appeared to him as a many eyed, bloody-winged, fearsome fanged monstrosity frolicking among his great great grandchildren in the park, at times pricking one with it's pubascus which was accompanied by a shriek of fear or triymph or amusement at the latest turn in the course of their game. he thought of it as "the monster" or "that thing", a persistent hallucination which he confessed to his friend and anesthesiologist that week. blood tests revealed traces of the acid, an epidemic of prank tripping elderly relatives was then going viral among the youth, though in his own case the very old man was convinced it must have been an attempted poisoning by one of his financial-political enimies. he was bankrolling a very far right candidate for Senate in the next state over, had friends and clients invested in several corporations now undergoing audits and class actions, was known to be perhaps the single most important donner in that whole impoverished region of the country, with a wife and grandsons and step daughters and great aunts quite sympathetic to more moderate, image conscious factions, which the very old man considered immature.

the monster stalked him through his mansion, the office of his therapist, at the sacraments, at boardrooms, in hotel bedrooms where it overguised prostitutes sent to him gratis by potential business partners, in alleyways he'd glance at as he rode through national capitals and in the woods and savanah when he went on safarri, and overwrote the appearance of the minister of war when he met with advisors to the presiding Consul to discuss trade deals and foreign wars and the repeal of civil rights and for profit prisons. he considered it quite possibly a demon, but exorcisms performed by 7 different priests seemed only extremely agreeable to the monster, though twice it took part in them and ferrited out demons, one among homeless attendants at a church festival hiding in the brown paper bagged booze, the other time in the person of a Butler at his old estate where he lived prior to the death of his father, in the form of a business card carried in his pocket.

he never quite knew how to bring up the monster to mz Lovelace. she told him she was an atheist on their very first coffee date, something he feigned shock at but for which he found himself shyly admiring. the thought of abandoning the priests and their superstitions appealed to him in a jump off a very high ledge sort of way, and damn the sudden stop and demons and curses and hellfire at the bottom. Mz Lovelace never objected to performing religious music at the recitals he sponsored and for which he painstakingly drew up the itineraries, and could wax theological from her days studying both doctrinaire and radical theologians as a monk with her gender concealed. she considered herself married to Jesus and through him the whole universe during and after her ordination, which ended when she revealed her sex during a trial in order to Shame the order into ordaining women since they'd done so already. all this the very old man found terribly exciting and immature, and if he indulged in fantasies of mz Lovelace's pleasure in the sweep of silk or the purr of an engine or the sheen of a gem, it was perhaps as a substitute, to blot out or stand in for the spiritual pleasures which the music teacher had enjoyed "during her former life," which whenever threatened to reemerge drove the monstrous angel which stocked the very old man into a frenzy for the last 17 years of his life.

"you can bury the very old man if you wish, and read out his last will and testament, but if you like I can provide perhaps some comfort, or catharsis, or closure, and resurrect the old man--just for the duration of the ceremony--to read his last will himself, and to explain his actions, both of his deed as his life, to us and to himself, and to persuade him, now that all the business of living is said and done, to make such amendments, or else apology, for the manner in which he leaves his estate, and with it the whole economy of surrounding countriside for a radius of 250 miles."

this is what Messiah offered the people gathered there, what Jude would fulfill for them, if they so wished. a vote was called. initially it was unclear who should get to vote, but this issue was rendered moot when it became clear that no one close to the family was willing to associate themselves with the notion that they should not with all their heart wish for even one one minute of the very old man's company, not when such rudeness had the possibility of getting back to him beyond, or rather before, the grave. the general acclamation of the motion being registered by Messiah, he set himself at the preacher's podium and brought forth a silver Bell which he rang to signal that the seance was now in progress. Jude muttered to himself and made certain obsessive, repeating gestures intermitted by clenched fists held at his side or to his mouth, from which they emerged with little streeks of blood. unbidden, the organist began to play When the Saints go n marching in. the electric lights flicker, failed, flaired, modulated back and forth around the room. women fainted, men screamed, a baby spoke with a deep gutteral voice, pointing at guests with unpracticed fingers and reciting their secrets and social security numbers. the electric fans rusted faster and faster, until one and then another flew off it's fixture, grazing two different necks coming inches from decapitating them and lodging their blades into the pews. the altar burst into flame, but the flames did not consume the white cloth which covered it nor the Host upon it. and the very old man lurched, then shook, then sat up in his coffin, turned to look at the audience, his wife and grandchildren and step daughters and great aunts and clients and business partners and local politicians and the far right senator he'd successfully elected in the next state over 17 years prior and other far right candidates who in the months before his death had been courting him and now courted his associates and relatives, and he stared at the fainting women and the screaming men and at the prophesying baby, and at Messiah leaning back with his legs up on the podium a rose held between grinning teeth, and he stared at Jude who was bent over a pew one fist still clenched his body shaking at the exact frequency at which the reanimated corpse continued to shake at, his eyes locked on the very old man's reainimated but not quite lifely eyes, words playing at the corner of Jude's mouth, the fingernails of one hand audibly cutting across the surface of the pew very slowly like nails on a blackboard, and at the crashed fans and roaving light and at the monster which sat on it's haunches by the baptismal faunt lapping up holy water, and at the absence of Gloria Lovelace anywhere in the building, and with the unpracticed expediencies of a throat and lungs dead and rotting, the very old man began to scream.