I wanted him to stop. But I couldn’t say anything, even with his strange behavior. The view around us was far too captivating, and it pulled me into its hypnotizing calm with ease as the angel before me whimpered. The universe all around me, a vast network of diverse stars, planets and phenomenon orbiting the negligible, small, floating island in which I resided. A peninsula hovering in the midst of space. With nothing else on it besides grass and a few other angels, star gazing was becoming an increasingly popular pastime - one that I had long ago mastered. You would think I would be tired of the monotony, but I had come to find out that beauty had the strange ability to renew itself, no matter how many times it was seen. And with a dazzling view at our express disposal, I was often engrossed in its splendor…
Okay…maybe an angel mauling your foot like you were a cat’s scratching post was a little more distracting…
“I don’t recognize you,” I said to him abruptly, trying to break him from his clawing frenzy. The angel ceased his assault and hung his head low, shaking it fiercely - the wings on his back coiling and shooting out like they were on springs. It looked strange, but I interpreted his body language perfectly, for I too had been in a similar predicament. Not the scratching, that was new. But I understood the rest of his dilemma and figured he would adapt to the loss he had just experienced soon enough.
“I’m new here,” he said shyly, before being consumed by the aquarium-like view walling us in. His voice trailed off and I kept silent, letting him indulge, chuckling to myself over his sudden fascination. It was hard not to be engaged with such a presentation, and within seconds, I was enchanted anew.
I didn’t even hear someone sneak up behind me. And I wish I had, because it was his favorite form of greeting someone and unquestionably the opposite of mine. Before my senses could kick in, I was already in a headlock.
“So this is why you left us?” a familiar voice laughed as its source freed me from his personal prison. I shuffled around to get a good view of the first angel I had ever met, Cadence, towering over me.
A tall and slender angel with wings as lanky as his frame, he often stood out due to his bulky armor, which looked like it was two sizes too big. A dull silver and gold plated his shoulder pads and gauntlets, and he held a bronze-colored, trashcan-looking shield in his hand like it was his security blanket. No one knew where it had come from, but there had to be some explanation as to why he was born with it. Perhaps it was identification. That was assuredly my guess because when I had first met him, his face was so plain, it had struck me as immediately forgettable.
“I told you I was going off to stargaze,” I said innocently. “Besides, the group was just prattling along…brainstorming the perfect adjective to describe the grass…I was getting tired of that conversation.”
“Lysander, every spot on this island transmits the same view. There isn’t a place you can’t stargaze. There is literally nothing else,” he said, walking in front of me, but out of the way of my new guest - now infatuated with the grass beneath him. “How is going off to look around by yourself any better than staying with us and doing it? At least we’d be together.”
“I was hoping to see something new. We never move from our meeting spot on the island, and we hang out there so often it’s like our home…so much so that I’ve got cabin fever. Some travelling could do me some good.”
“What difference does it make where you’re looking out from? There are zero new events out there. It’s the same animated painting plastered on the universal wall. Look, there’s the blue steam planet, the red and purple cosmic dust, and the yellowish-green-blue nebula. Oh, and that protostar. Nothing’s out of place.”
“The protostar is new,” I said matter-of-factly, pointing toward it.
“What are you trying to say?”
“That there are new developments from time to time.”
“Like what?” he said casually. “A rock flies by? That steam planet rotates?”
“No…but that protostar wasn’t there before.”
“I’m sure it was,” he said flatly, refusing to take a closer look. I rubbed my eyes vigorously.
“New events do occur, Cadence. They’re just rare or relatively small. If you gazed out as much as I do, you would have noticed them yourself, emerging at various times and locations.”
I was surprised I had been able to keep the conversation going for so long, especially with Cadence along for the ride. Usually if he was fed up with a topic, he would end the discussion on the spot.
”Looks the same to me,” he said stubbornly.
“You’re so complacent,” I sighed.
“How long did it take you to come up with that word?”
“Complacent AND dismissive,” I yelled at him, feeling more confident by the second. “You didn’t even bother looking back at the star because you’re so stuck in your ways. No wonder you think nothing changes around here. You refuse to accept it, even when it taps you on the shoulder.”
“Change? Really? Change? Out here?!” he exclaimed, waving his hands out like he was balancing two plates.
“About as much change as there is in a fishbowl,” another angel remarked, gliding down beside Cadence. Her name was Alessa, a moderately-sized angel with the royal color of purple gracing her from head to toe. Streaks of it were lined into her silver hair. Splashes of it were spread across her slender but durable gray armor. Strands of it were even found mingling amongst the fibers of her unimposing, average-sized wings. She made it known to us on a consistent basis that she was important, but thankfully Cadence reminded her often that she was stuck here just like the rest of us, so how special could she possibly be? Seeing her ego deflate was a rare and satisfying form of entertainment.
“There was no point in leaving, Lysander,” she scolded. “And Cadence, you took too long to get him. Now Farah’s going to tell her story from the beginning, and you know how I can’t stand it when she does that. One interruption and it’s the end of the world.”
“I like her stories, even when they’re reruns,” I admitted. “They’re…epic in scale.”
“You mean exaggerated,” Alessa retorted. “Like the one where she broke through the barrier, grabbed a star and pulled it out of orbit. C’mon, that didn’t happen. Trust me, we would have noticed.”
“It could have happened. We weren’t there to say otherwise, and I did notice that star number thirty-three had veered off to the right a bit.”
“You numbered them all?” She gave me a face like I had just eaten a cockroach.
“Is there something wrong with that?” Didn’t everyone count the stars?
“It doesn’t matter,” she exhaled heavily. “The point is that Farah is making all this up. Did you notice how she can’t break through a second time? I asked her what was the point of coming back if she had made it out. Do you know what she said? She said that she wanted to tell us what had happened, like she couldn’t get our attention from outside the barrier! All she would have to do is fly in circles until we noticed! This island is not that big!” Her talking was building momentum and her hands were flailing all around her like she was trying to rap in sign language. I struggled to keep up but before her ranting got too intense, she stopped abruptly and waited for a response.
“I believe you,” I winced, cupping my left ear. “What you just said…about getting our attention.”
“If she did it before, why is it so hard all of a sudden?” she yelled, unaware of my discomfort. “I’m telling you, her story is false.”
“It might not be impossible…”
“You’re so gullible,” she huffed, and looked away from me to Cadence. He was staring at the brand new angel, still in awe at the so-called “animated painting” in the distance.
“He’s new, isn’t he?” Cadence asked, very serious, and I smiled back at him.
“First one since we arrived.”
“You mean since you arrived,” Alessa corrected.
“Right, right,” I said, stretching
my wings and trying to compose myself. “I see what you’re implying - that you have some kind of seniority. But you may not be much older than I am. For all we know, we could have been created at the same time, just released sparingly. Think about the number of angels on our island. There’s no more than thirty, but something tells me there’s a multitude of them, probably in Heaven right now.”
“Do you honestly think so?” Alessa asked hopefully. Her change in attitude perplexed me, but I soon realized that Alessa may never have come to this conclusion herself. The very idea was thrilling to consider – that there were more of us on the other side and Heaven was more than an empty city we may see someday.
“Even though we can only think about what is given to us, whether it be what we see or what’s in our minds…” I said, staring off into space, “I have no doubts that there’s more out there, and not just other angels. The landscape hasn’t been altered much, but occasionally I will see the birth of a new moon in the distance, or a comet streaking across our ceiling. And in that moment, I know this can’t be it. Eventually, God will take us away from here.”
“I wonder why we can’t go yet,” Cadence muttered under his breath, but Alessa already had an answer in the queue.
“God has His reasons -” she said.
“- I was talking to myself.”
“Maybe He’s preparing a place for us there, or maybe the entire construction of Heaven isn’t done yet–“
“- it was rhetorical. It was a comment that didn’t need answering.”
“Either way; we know this for a fact: Heaven exists,” Alessa enunciated happily, ignoring Cadence completely. “Our mental database tells us so.”
“It’s true. We’re bombarded with the images whenever we look it up,” I said in agreement but Cadence started sighing loudly and obnoxiously.
“Are we really going to have this debate again?” he groaned.
“Did I say we were?” Alessa, of course.
“I only ask because every time you or Marcus bring it up, we start arguing forever about whether it’s real or not - whether the concept was just planted in our minds to make us think it’s real. I’m over the subject.”
“So what do you think then?” I asked him. “Does Heaven exist?”
“Didn’t I tell you already?”
“No,” Alessa said. “Whenever we want your opinion, you get all defensive and act like you’re deaf.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve said this already, but in case you weren’t listening, I’ll tell you one more time. I don’t know. Yes, the database says Heaven exists, but that doesn’t mean we’ll get to experience it…I just want to wait and see what happens for myself. What’s the point in talking about it over and over?”
“What else can we do? It’s not like we have a lot of options,” Alessa replied as Cadence’s face sagged and his shoulders dropped wearily. It was true that we would go crazy if we kept our curiosity to ourselves, but Cadence’s mindset was also appropriate for the situation we were in. We had to be patient, especially since there was no timetable on when we would be able to leave our beautiful penitentiary. We all had tried, especially Marcus, to fly off into space - to touch one of the numerous anomalies that littered our sky - but there was an invisible barrier of some kind preventing us from going too far. Marcus tried breaking it with his fists once every few hours, and the whole island watched in anticipation when he did, but in the end, his excessive failures only confirmed that we were stuck until God decided to release us. If He had put us here, only He could get us out.
“Honestly, I would rather talk about God,” I said, picking myself up off the grass, and standing right between them. “There is no debate about His existence.”
“No, I guess not,” Alessa agreed and Cadence nodded.
“At least we would be doing more than speculating,” Cadence said. “To be honest, God takes up more of my thoughts than anything else.”
The new angel suddenly produced a surprised yelp, noticeably coming out of his daze and eagerly jumping into the conversation, hopping up and down like he was going to explode.
“You know God? Where is He? I want to see Him again!” he chirped, his teeth greeting us for the first time. We all looked at him with a mix of envy and pity, for the situation wasn’t yet known to him. But neither of us could deny the faint embers of excitement glimmering within us at the mention of God - for we too, had experienced the joy that came from being in the presence of our Father. No child could forget.
And slowly, my mind could not help but wander, from the present to the past - to when we had met for the first and last time…
This may come as a surprise, but when I was born, it was nothing like that of a human’s, for in that instant, I was fundamentally whole. I possessed all of my limbs, my wings, and dexterity. Even my stature was one of an adult and not one of an infant. I did not see these appendages and extensions of my body outright, for like any newborn, I had yet to fathom my sight. But I noticed the way my limbs moved – swimming freely from my torso like they were in the midst of their own interpretive dance.
Of course, I was unaware of what “life” had entailed before my birth, but after I had dusted off the cobwebs of my consciousness, it was like coming out of a deep sleep. As if I were an ancient computer being booted up after centuries of dormancy. My body came alive, and it swelled and compressed, my imagination soaring with thoughts of staggering awareness.
I was not a blank slate. There was no tabula rasa.
I knew everything I was supposed to know. Nothing more. All that was required of me - programmed into the core of my soul, unfiltered and disorganized. I’m sure you can only imagine how disconcerting that was – to be born and have instant knowledge of nearly everything – even concepts that had yet to have significance: like how to extract sap from a maple tree, how pepperoni pizza burned the roof of one’s mouth when neglected to be blown upon, or why wind is invisible to the naked eye. A people called Israelites, a city called Babylon, a place called the Garden of Eden. Baseball, spaghetti, sleds, planets, Jerusalem, solar flares, Jazz, toilet paper, automobiles, Heaven, money, bracelets, electricity, toaster ovens and hair extensions…all these foreign objects, places and things tumbling around my head like they were in a washing machine.
I was completely stimulated, and it felt like my mind was going to collapse with the influx of information bombarding me. In that sense, I guess I was like a baby – barely moving, taking my time to open my eyes and encompass my surroundings. It was far too overwhelming to go from none to all, and if I must confess, I wanted to cry.
Crying - my mind computed, startling me with its alarming responsiveness: to weep, to utter sounds associated with grief or suffering…I listened to the definition attentively. Yes, that sounded about right. Suffering, I was. But where was the solution in making it stop? Could these definitions alleviate my distress, or were they there just to tell me what I was feeling?
Thankfully, this pain, this suffering, would not become my first memory – for the discomfort lasted for less than a millisecond, though it felt significantly longer. I suppose the agony I felt must be just like what a child experiences psychologically, coming forth from his mother’s womb and given no time to process his birth. Like a whisper heard from a mile away, I wasn’t even sure of what I had just experienced, and with new sensations flaring up around me – the pressure was already forgotten, like I was working on an assembly line, already moving on to the next product. With the vexation gone, I felt something come near, something I could not feel when my database had been downloaded into my spirit.
This something embraced me, wrapping me up in what felt like strips of soft white linen, swaddling me, soothing me.
It was not the frostbiting cold that every human baby feels when they are taken from their mother’s warmth. That abrupt disconnect from the womb in which he must suddenly face the harsh truth: that from this point on, he is an individual – that he is utterly alone in the unforgiving world.
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It was not a machine to pump the fluid from my lungs, the weeping of a relative upon my advent or the cheering of a fellow angel welcoming a companion into Heaven.
No one and nothing greeted me – but Him.
My Father.
God Himself.
It is very hard to explain what it’s like to be in His uninhibited, unadulterated presence. If I had not been made of a spiritual composition, I imagine I would have been obliterated into dust and my ashes cast throughout the cosmos, like ripples spreading across a pond. But I survived, and I was able to assess Him, if only superficially.
His love is what surprised me most. It was suffocating, but in a good way – filling my thoughts, my emotions, my every desire with great respect and admiration. It swept through me like I was transparent; pouring into me once it arrived, transferring its unconditional architecture – filling an empty shell longing for sustenance. Yet even this is not what held my attention.
I could not see Him in His entirety, though we were both of a spiritual nature…but He did allow one aspect of Himself to be visually accessible.
It was the light – that is what grabbed me. A radiant, all-encompassing brilliance that stretched my vision to its breaking point - just right on the edge of strain. Its warm, cozy illumination wrapped itself around my being like a hug, causing little fires to erupt simultaneously all over my spiritual skin. It was like the sun itself had sent an armada of ultraviolet rays to pierce through me, but they were unable to harm - only to kiss my skin in wisps to the border of pleasure and pang.
The Works of Julius St. Clair - 2017 Edition (Includes 3 full novels and more) Page 62
