Later, during her next set, she finished a song with a flourish and a wide smile. As the applause died away, she plucked a note. “This next song is dedicated to the brave men and women who help keep us safe from each other — the Deputies of FORCE.” Taking a capo from her guitar case, she retuned into a minor key. “The song is called, ‘Mutant Burning’.” She smiled at Carl, then closing her eyes, she let her fingers pluck a haunting melody from the guitar.
“They say I’m just a mutant, and I’m only fit to burn,
Ne’er asking what I want from life, nor towards what goals I yearn.
I never ask’d to be this way, but now I have to die,
Because one day, some aliens came and battled in our sky.
“Oh, I was just a nobody, until the aliens came,
And hunted thru our peaceful skies and played their deadly game
Of cat-and-mouse until our skies erupted with their Hell,
And raining down upon all men, the radiation fell.
It crept into the genes of men, and there it left its stain,
Its incubus of shame and dread, its all-consuming pain.
Insane, deformed, or different, we changed under its stress,
And men began to hate and kill, the mutant to suppress.
She opened her eyes and smiled at the silent audience, then closed her eyes again.
“I didn’t know that I’d been changed until one fateful day
A mutant-hunt went down my street; a man was left to lay.
Not knowing what was wrong with him, I brought him back from death;
I healed his knife-wounds and his bones, and gave him back his breath.
My healing powers grew and grew, I could but it obey,
A healing nimbus ’round my form, I could not say it nay.
And then my wings began to grow, no longer could I bide
Within the town I knew so well; I had to run and hide.
“Although some call me Angel, now, and praise my healing skill;
Still others called me Satan’s Own, and wanted me to kill.
At last, one day, it happened, and a traitor bade me stay;
A mob of people took me then, I could not get away.
And no-one came to help me now, to save me from their glee,
They whipped me and they hurt me and they took my clothes from me,
And naked to the burning-post, they bound me, wrist and thigh,
And they threw wood upon the heap as people shouted, “Die!
She paused for a few seconds, then resumed in a louder voice, smiling at her audience.
“A sudden rush, a booming voice, and lasers stabbing down,
The torch that meant to take my life lies gut’ring on the ground.
‘This is FORCE, surrender now!’, the voice above me said.
A burst of shots, the laser’s hiss, and then five men lay dead.
Then frightened and outnumbered, the others break and run,
Not wanting to face punishment for evil they had done.
A man lands close beside me now, a lone FORCE Dep-u-ty;
And when I ask, he laughs and says, “There’s no-one else, just me.”
“They say I’m just a mutant, and I’m only fit to burn,
Ne’er asking what I want from life, or towards what goals I yearn.
I never ask’d to be this way, but now I have to die,
Because one day, some aliens came, and battled in our sky.”
The last notes died away to roaring applause. She smiled. As the room quieted again, she thought, I wonder what the world would be like now, if those two groups of aliens, whoever they were, had not fought and killed themselves in our sky so long ago? The hatreds and the killings would not have happened. All the people in the cities destroyed by the aliens, all the killings of the mutants and the people thought to be mutants, all the people that died in the famines when society broke down and people stopped trusting each other. She thought of all the empty miles of abandoned farmlands that the trains had passed through on her journeys. So many lives lost, so much joy gone. She sighed, removed the capo and retuned back into G major.
After her twelve-o’clock set, she turned to Carl. “I want to help Flora clean up after we close. Afterwards, if you still want, I will go out with you. We close at two, but if you came back about three …?”
”What if I stay and help clean up?”
”That would be fine, if M’sieur Pete does not mind.”
