The Nemophile (4)
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Continued from: HERE.
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Blasphemy Fitzworth was, as many already knew, a cat's meat man who sold his wares throughout the winding catacombs of streets in Victorian London. The children that followed in the wake of his steaming, bubble-sounding meatcart (as he pushed - or more often pulled - its tiny sprung wheels) were often cock-a-hoop with life, despite the mouching, slouching way of the still slowly unfolding past that threaded their young bones with rancid marrowfat and fed further redless pigments into their bloodcourses. They joyfully shouted 'Feemy!' (a foreshortening of his name) when they heard his costermonger's cry in an indeterminate distance, slowly drawing nearer and nearer from (to them) impossible angles of approach:
"Gout cat! Spout cat! Watch their whiskers sprout, cat!"
The legend - not among the kids as they were too young to know - indicated that Feemy Fitzworth was a spy from other times, from other worlds alternating with ours, ever on the search for evidence of greater and (then again) greater Gods than those in which the indigenous peoples already believed. A step-ladder toward the noumenon. Ecumenical, if not economical, with the truth.
The choice of cat's meat vending as a disguise was first described by another visitor to our times, but facts got so crosswired (not only the times whence this scribe came but even his identity and whereabouts themselves) they have become ludicrously confused with where he was going or whence he'd just been and why. Some even believed that the scribe was Feemy himself. But that confusion was one confusion too far. A first straw that broke the linear dromedary's back. But none knew. None probably cared.
Chelly Mildeyes was one such kid, maybe a kid in disguise, who followed Feemy by becoming a spy upon a spy or, more likely, a reminder of the ghost she replaced. But that is only hearsay. Other texts may tell fresher truths, but today we can only be sufficed with this one, given any timely exegesis by external sources or not. She certainly mixed in with the other scrawny, tornly dressed kids with a will and a believability that makes any doubt quite parsimonious and self-demeaning.
She plumped a fist into the meatcart's back pan, evidently not eager to clutch at the valves of still heart-beating brisket melts (hence the fist rather than a clawing open palm), but to see if she could do it without Feemy noticing. A devilment for its own sake. Either to enhance her disguise in face of Feemy's own disguise or, more likely, because she actually enjoyed devilment for its own sake. She was soon interfered from her childish dipping by the sight of Feemy saluting the sun as a sort of shading of the eyes against its glare. She thought he said he could see Great Old Ones gliding in with huge cattle faces from a direction he'd not expected. Their lowing filled the sky with a monotonous low-key thunderstorm.
It was then he heard his mobile ring - out-trilling the squeaking meat of the middle pan where he'd stowed it.
CONTINUED: HERE.
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