The Human Business
If J.M. Spugg inspired anything like admiration or fellow-feeling, it was among people who had never actually interacted with J.M. Spugg. To those blessed few he had only been the face of a million charity buckets up and down the country. He had a distinctive look: the cheeks spotted with stubble, reddening with the cold in a way that was just charming rather than harrowing; the mouth that had not yet had time to twist into a snarl or a bark; and especially those eyes, the same piercing blue as a sunrise in a winter sky.
It had made his body very easy to identify when he was found one morning in early December, huddled underneath a dock wall in Liverpool. Not that Spugg himself was in much of a position, or a mood, to appreciate the irony as, somewhere at ninety degrees to this plane of existence, something of him sat up, shook himself and took in the pooling warmth and light spilling forth from the robed figures stood over him.
“Well fuck me! Are youse lot the welcomin’ committee then?”
“Be not afraid…”
“I’m not fuckin’ afraid mate, I’m confused…”
“You have shed your earthly form…”
“Yeah, ye fuckin’ think, mate?”
“… and now…” said one of the Heavenly Presences, “now you been tasked with something far greater…”
The ghost of J.M. Spugg shot his interlocutors a scowl and folded his arms.
“Not wastin’ any time before you’re puttin’ me to work then?”
*
Fortunately for Spugg, this was a job that he could throw himself into. The world, he knew already, was full of wealthy and immoral people who needed to be frightened into virtue, and as it happened this was precisely the business that he had now been drafted into. He would start with the property developer who had walked past him on the night of his death without throwing him some change.
Things began to come apart, however, when the on-duty Ghost of Christmas Past had turned up to find the man speaking into his phone, intoning gravely how he rescinded the bid to build a new block of luxury flats, while Spugg’s spectral fingers moved in his mouth as if the man were a glove-puppet.
“Betcha’s didn’t think I’d get the hang of possession this early?” he had cackled, as the property developer announced to his stockbroker that he was selling all his shares and becoming a monk.
A talking-to had followed about the importance of non-coercion, in which Spugg had grimaced and made no response. Some among the Higher Eminences thought that, given his obvious talents, a promotion would give Spugg a chance to take on some responsibility and straighten himself out.
That too had ended in disaster when a squad had been forced to intervene before Elon Musk met a grisly end from a fifteen-storey fall. As each of Seraphic Hordes had erupted into existence around him, Spugg had only grinned at them while, at the end of his arms, Elon swung upside-down by his ankles screaming over the chasm below.
*
This time no allowances would be made; this had not been why he was brought in. Spugg was incredulous.
“Youse lot told me to start puttin’ the world to rights and all that, I’m just doin’ the business.”
“The common welfare is your business. Charity, mercy, forebearance, benevolence…”
“Benevolence? Mate, d’you have any idea how many working people that last one’s fucked over?”
“That is not how these things are changed…”
“Says who? Fuck, if I can do it youse can! Or is that not yer fuckin’ place either?”
Spugg could almost swear that some of the Lesser Spirits, clustered in the soft light at the edges of proceedings, were nodding in agreement. Some looked ready to leap in and defend him. He pressed on.
“I can tell yer now, it’s my place. I’m in the Human Business, me. Seems to me like youse lot could have made a damn sight more difference if youse weren’t sittin’ around on yer celestial arses. You wanna know about the common welfare? That’s what I’m dealin’ in. I ain’t stoppin’.”
“Have a care, brother. Your stubbornness could invite demotion.”
“So fuckin’ what? Go ahead and fuckin’ do it then – ‘least I’d be me own boss down there, for once!
The very lights of Paradise seemed to flicker. Wingbeats in air.
For the first time since he died – for the first time in decades – Jonathan Milton Spugg allowed his lips to form an entirely genuine smile.
Tim Kiely (@timkiely1) is a criminal barrister and writer based in London. He is the author of three pamphlets of poetry, including Hymn to the Smoke and No Other Life, available from timkielybooks.bigcartel.com