that this is what Satan would possibly look like had he decided to walk the earth in a man’s skin. All dressed in black with mean sharp features from the shadow of the top hat.
“Mr Cutlass,” his father said all of a sudden in a soft tone.
“Go away; I’m busy,” Cutlass replied. His voice sounded like a razor blade wetting a throat. The woman came to the door, shouting. She was not well to do but had money. Her red dress and blouse looked like lace and her dark hair was well kept in a tight bun. But her make-up was running and covered in soot. Her voice was a faux accent of what she considered proper English. “You, sir, owe me a new chimney.”
Cutlass waved at her in a dismissive stroke of air. The boy’s father blocked his path.
“Mr Cutlass.”
“What?? What??” he shouted.
“I’ve brought my boy here; he wants to be a sweep.”
“He does? I doubt it. None of those bastards crawl up that fireplace and into the dust willingly,” Cutlass noted as he eyed the boy. “It just so happens I have an opening now; we’ve had to dig a dead one out.”
From the doorway the woman was screaming about her destroyed chimney, while a large thug carried a young boy in his arms. They were both black as coal, but the boy flopped lifelessly in the big man’s arms.
Despite his size, his father appeared deflated as the dead urchin was brought from the house. “Let’s go home, son,” he said. From that day on he never asked anything from the boy or his mother again. The boy did not lose the memory for a time. He slept and would open his eyes and find himself in the black-dust stone of a chimney stack. He couldn’t move no matter how he shook; his arms were pinned by his side and numb. The only feeling in him was fear, squeezing his nerves in its skeletal grip. When he tried to scream his mouth filled with the dust, drying his saliva so he couldn’t spit before it filled his throat.
“Don’t worry,” a sweet voice said. “You are not alone. You will never be alone here.”
And the boy looked up the stack to see the dead boy hanging there, neck broken and eyes white as milk. Naturally he would wake at this point, never wanting to sleep again.
At the edge of the river, on the stone cobble bank, the mother managed, slowly and with great effort, to crouch in front and level with her son.
As she smiled her thin smile, the river lapped behind her.
“My angel,” she said. “You are the most wonderful thing I have ever done in my life. My angel, there are no words for how much I love you. You are so strong and brave. You need to be strong and brave.” Tears ran from her bloodshot eyes and turned to dust on her cheeks. Such was the strength of The Consumption.
“Now close your eyes,” she said as she stroked his hair and without hesitation he did. Her hand trembled over his cheek and the boy breathed the happiest sigh in the world, as he inhaled her never-ending scent and beauty.
When he opened them again his mother was gone and somewhere there was screaming and crowding and shouting and he was knocked to the stone as people ran to the edge of the water…
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