Balaam, the Gray Prophet

by Stephen Beam

  A sea of lights ahead signaled their rapid approach to Moab. The road turned from dirt and pebbles to white brick. Eeayore the Torpedo slowed down to a safe cruising speed as they passed through the open steel gates that towered over them. They approached the crystal palace, the metal webbed dome lit from within, casting rainbows of light all around, illuminating the flight of steps to the main entrance. Eeayore floated effortlessly up the steps to the palace entrance and came to a halt.

  Balaam shivered from cold and stress. He released his grip on the hand-holds. Cautious, not certain what to expect next, he dismounted. Eeayore’s headlight beam dimmed and morphed back into a single tiny eye. Balaam noted that her eye looked dead, not the lively eyes of the Eeayore of old - the one he knew and loved.

  Guards dressed in black jumpsuits appeared without warning. They held small pencil sized glass tubes they aimed at Balaam. Balaam didn’t know what to say or do. Eventually he nodded his head and said softly, “Good evening.” He seemed without his normal spiritual connection to YHWH at that moment. Always had YHWH been so close, a presence on the verge of cracking open his consciousness, his thoughts never private. The Lord knew Balaam better than Balaam knew himself. So where was the Lord now?

  Eeayore’s mechanical mechanisms were silent. Her torpedo body rested on the opalescent walkway that rimmed the palace dome, her power drained. This made Balaam feel lost. Now both Eeayore and his Lord had abandoned him. The guards formed a circle around Balaam, never losing their aim on him, glass tubes pointed directly at his chest. The only clear thought in the prophet’s head now was his need for a bottle of whiskey, his last earthly comfort.

  Balak walked out of the building to meet with Balaam. The guards opened up a gap in the circle they’d formed around the prophet, allowing their chief inside. Balak was depressed. And when he saw Balaam this time, he became even more downcast. What could this useless prophet want? Balaam’s god would never allow a curse to be cast upon the Sons of Israel, so why was he here? What good was he?

  Balaam felt a new sensation invade his head. It wasn’t YHWH. He turned to Eeayore the Torpedo and saw a thin glowing filament run from the tip of her nose cone, across the walkway, and into his sandal shod foot. The filament was so thin no one noticed it but him. Balaam was now connected to whatever thing Eeayore had become. His own self awareness waned, replaced by a presence that finally dominated his mind completely.

  “Why are you here?” Balak asked the prophet, studying the dark face beneath the woolen hood. “You look like shit. Even worse than me. Whatever you’ve got to say, say it, and be on your way. You’re no friend to Moab.”

  The prophet was not himself. What remained of his mind was barely able to carry on basic bodily functions. His heart beat and he breathed, but that was all. On its own accord, his mouth moved and words were spoken, none of which he willed to happen.

  Balaam, or whatever thing stood in his place, said:

  “I now give you the secret to the Sons of Israel’s destruction. Put a stumbling block before them. Tempt them with harlots. Tempt them with food sacrificed to idols. Tempt them until they become the authors of their own destruction and curse themselves into oblivion.”

  Balak stood stunned, open mouthed with surprise. Such an elegant and simple solution. He watched as Balaam fell to the ground after speaking, a marionette whose strings were suddenly severed. “Take Balaam and his weird machine and dump them outside the city gates. I’m finished with that ass. We’ve got a plan now. Let’s get moving.”

  Chapter 9: Gray to Black

  Balaam awoke when the morning sun hit him in the face. He was lying in the dirt outside the walls of Moab. When consciousness returned and his throbbing headache eased, he sat up and looked around for Eeayore, still too wobbly to walk. Where was his donkey? What form had she taken now? He felt something wet and slick on the back of his neck where his hood had fallen away. He turned to look, and Eeayore’s dripping wet tongue caught him in the eye. She had come back to him! Back to the lovable beast that lived forever inside his heart.

  “Enough licking, Eeayore! I’m happy to see you too,” Balaam said, as he stiffly rose to his feet. His equilibrium was only half working. He stumbled and nearly fell to the ground, managing to grab Eeayore’s neck just in time. He stared into her eyes, expecting her to speak again. She didn’t. Poor Eeayore. She, too, had been unwittingly used by supernatural forces to accomplish some mysterious end. When he looked into her eyes now, they held no more self awareness than any other donkey had, which wasn’t much.

  It occurred to Balaam to check his hoodie pouch. He felt around inside. There was his oxeep, along with something new. He pulled the new item out. A single gold coin. This, he supposed, was payment for whatever he’d done last night, which he had no memory of at all.

  Standing beside Eeayore, a loneliness fell over him, a loneliness as vast as the space between the stars. Even Eeayore’s mammalian warmth lacked the comfort he usually derived whenever he stroked her neck. A deep chasm opened in his soul, and he fought not to fall inside. It was futile. He was lost. Whatever his life had been before this moment, was gone. Only a dark and cold abyss awaited him.

  Balaam closed his eyes and tried to remember last night. He found nothing but darkness. It was more than a drunken whiskey blackout; he knew what those were like. This was more. This was bloody. This was his own dying soul that had fallen into a bottomless pit. He was alone with nothing to hold onto. Cold darkness. Lonely darkness. The eyes of his eyes could no longer see. Before, there had always been a rope, a tether that ran from earth to hell. Before last night he could pull himself up from the abyss, but not any more.

  Searching for light, he waved his arms about in madness. Invisible forces sliced his soul with diamond blades: sharp, cold, empty, a pain eternal. Balaam’s breath grew shallow. He released Eeayore’s neck and fell into the dust. What had he become? What choices had he made that brought him here? Ever since childhood he had believed himself destined for a divine purpose. Now, he had no purpose. Somehow, he’d chosen chaos. He’d chosen death. His time on earth had passed. Was it greed that brought on his downfall? How? All his life he’d done nothing but obey the Lord, and yet, he’d missed the ultimate blessing. He was a sheep lost to the Lord. He had slipped through God’s fingers, numbered amongst the countless faces of the damned.

  His heart slowed. He pissed himself. Pain ran across his chest and numbed his hands. He tasted dirt on his tongue. It turned to mud in his mouth, sucking out what moisture remained in him. Was there nothing about him worth saving? Had all his years moving to and fro on the earth been a life squandered?

  He found himself on his feet once again. A somnambulism fell over him, and he walked into the desert a dead man, leaving Eeayore behind. Whatever force moved him, it did nothing to energize his awareness. He was a sleeping soul, a half animated corpse. Life was a memory quickly fading. A dry parchment crumbling to dust. The thin strand of thought holding his mind together frayed, not strong enough to even let him see his surroundings.

  How long had he walked? When had he last eaten or drank water? As his feet moved across the sand someone slapped him in the face. That someone welcomed him to Midian, then slapped him once again. A day had past. And another. And another. Life around him decayed. The people mere phantoms; they lived on the borders of existence, just as he did. He walked up and down hills, passed through rushing streams, trudged long miles through hot deserts. When the Sons of Israel came, he barely knew it. The thunder of motorcycle engines shook the earth. Blood rained down all around him. And when a hot steel blade cut across his torso and his guts spilled to the ground, there was no pain.

  The darkness was complete. No light, photonic or spiritual, illuminated his mind. This was death. This was his last day, the grand finale of a life lost in a battle with itself. The remaining trickle of his life-force drained from his body and evaporated into the void. Nothing remained. His conflicts resolved into one spiraling crescendo, a single note, a pitiful s
kyrocket shot into an airless void, bursting into nothingness. Nothingness. Was there any mercy for him?

  Just after the final pulse of blood fed his brain for the final time, a heavy, endless silence fell upon him. An awful stillness. A lonesome singularity within an endless, starless vacuum.

  Now the veil rent in half. A hand reached out and caught him.

  The End