Shooting Eros - The Emuna Chronicles: Book 1: Hell-bent (Shooting Eros Series)

by Benjamin Laskin

  To illustrate this for Virgil, I skimmed through the young woman’s life to a time when she was seventeen. We saw her at a yard party with high school friends. Music banged loudly, and everyone was drunk or stoned, or both, except for our subject. She was standing next to the swimming pool and looked bored, as if ready to go home.

  Just then her girlfriend, Amy, came swaying over to her with her new boyfriend, Mitch, in tow. The boyfriend was even more sloshed than she was, but trying to mask it with swagger and cool. Clinging to Mitch, Amy informed her friend that the two of them were leaving together, and so not to wait for her. The girl frowned, then, with decisive suddenness, she yanked Amy away from the teen.

  “You’re not going anywhere with him tonight,” the girl declared. “He’s drunk off his ass, and you’re not getting into his car.”

  Mitch protested and Amy yelled at her friend, “You’re not my mother, Malkah!”

  “I am tonight,” the girl replied stubbornly.

  A scene ensued. Insulted and furious, the boy shoved the young protectress into the pool, but thinking quickly, she grabbed Amy by the arm and pulled her into the water with her. Humiliated, and having lost interest in his soggy pick up, Mitch stormed away.

  I scrolled ahead a few days, and we saw our young champion sitting outside by herself at a table near the school’s snack bar, absorbed in a copy of Emerson’s Essays, ostracized by her former friends, but seemingly unconcerned. Amy had apparently patched things up with Mitch, for she was sitting on his lap a few tables away.

  “What became of those two?” Virgil asked. “Can we find out?”

  “Sure.” I tapped Mitch’s hologram on the forehead and instantly a crystal appeared. I accessed it and began scrolling. I couldn’t scroll very far, however. Just a few months.

  It was night. The young man was behind the wheel of his car, drunk again. Coming at him were a pair of headlights. I switched away, not wanting to see the horrible and sad ending.

  “And his girlfriend?” Virgil said, fully understanding.

  I accessed her file. Amy was at the youth’s burial. She was crying, her hand on her stomach. She looked around for a consoling face, but felt horribly alone. No one there knew that she was two-months pregnant.

  When the ceremony was over, she wandered off by herself. Someone ran over to her. It was her friend from the party, Malkah. She had been observing the ceremony from a distance. She put her arm around Amy and hugged her. Amy’s tears soaked the shoulder of Malkah’s blouse.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she told Amy.

  “No, no it isn’t,” Amy whimpered. “You don’t understand!”

  “I do,” Malkah said. “Don’t do what you’re thinking of doing.”

  “You…?”

  Malkah nodded.

  “But how?”

  “I just do. You mustn’t do what you’re contemplating.”

  “But I can’t possibly… I’m only eighteen!”

  “You can, Amy. You are much stronger than you think.”

  “No, no I’m not!” she cried.

  “Fine,” Malkah said. “Then there are others who would gladly raise the child.”

  Amy shook her head vehemently. “I can’t go through with it. I can’t bear the looks at school. I can’t tell my parents!”

  “You can. It’s hard, but in time everyone will understand.”

  “No!”

  “Fast forward, fast forward,” Virgil said excitedly.

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why? I want to see what she decides. I never get to see how things end. We make matches, and then it’s on to the next. All we ever learn about in the Academy is the stats. How many we make. How many succeed. It’s like keeping track of a batting average. I had no idea that…”

  “That what?”

  “That, well, the humans are so real.”

  “They are real, all right.”

  “So fast forward, Kohai. I want to see.”

  I scrolled ahead two weeks. The young woman was lying down in a birth-control clinic. I couldn’t bear to watch, so I scrolled ahead three months later.

  We saw a svelte Amy sitting in an English 101 class, a freshman at university. As the class waited for the professor to arrive, she was flirting with a tousled-haired young man wearing a black and white keffiyeh and a Che Guevara T-shirt.

  “So she did it,” Virgil said sadly.

  “Yes.”

  “The humans really have no idea what they are messing with, do they? She didn’t just do away with one life, she did away with generations of life.”

  “Some get it,” I said. “Her friend did.”

  “I like that friend of hers,” Virgil said. “There is something different about her.”

  “Perhaps, but she’ll succumb to societal pressures like most everyone else.”

  “How do you know that? Can you see what lies ahead? Do the crystals record the future?”

  “No. The future isn’t written yet.”

  “Okay, then, so you don’t know, do you?” Virgil insisted, coming to the young woman’s defense. “Maybe she’ll be different. Maybe she’s stronger than the rest. She certainly seems so to me.”

  “Maybe,” I said, touched by Virgil’s support for the human.

  “What is she up against?”

  “You mean, what yetzers is she battling?”

  “Yeah. Can you see them in these records? Can we tell that?”

  “Unfortunately, no. At least not us. Only in hindsight. We can examine how a person reacts to circumstances and other persons and make an educated guess, but the yetzers themselves are not visible.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not us’?”

  “We don’t have the clearance level,” I said. “There are many things contained within the Midrashic Records that even angels like us can’t access.”

  “Angels? You mean cupids.”

  “No, Virgil. I mean angels. You are an angel of the Most High God.” I smiled. “Learn it. Love it. Live it, buddy.”

  “Me, an angel?”

  “Cool, huh?”

  “And there are other angels…besides us?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “But sorry, Virge, we are pretty low on the angelic ladder.”

  “How low?”

  “We can’t even brush their feathers.”

  “Man,” Virgil said, unable to hide his disappointment. “So, like, we suck.”

  “No, good buddy. We don’t suck. No one and nothing fashioned by the Almighty could suck. We have our place, and it is very, very important.”

  Virgil didn’t reply. He had passed out. I had kept him elevated far too long. I guided his astral body back to the cave, and gently laid him on the floor to rest and recharge. I left him there, and flew back into the Midrasha, back to the same file.

  Virgil’s words had triggered a fleeting image in my mind: “I like that friend of hers. There is something different about her.”

  I didn’t catch it the first time, because I wasn’t looking for it. The Almighty had winked at me, and there is no such thing as coincidence. What I was going back to investigate was tucked away within the six degrees of separation.

  41

  Lady of the Lake

  “If anyone sees us here it could be quite scandalous,” Grace teased.

  “The only way anyone will know is if you tell them,” Volk said, pulling at the oars of their rowboat.

  The celestial observed Volk’s flexing muscles as he propelled the boat over the glassy water. Although impressive, she noted that his musculature was not the sculptured, stone-like muscles that most cupid warriors boasted. The brawny captain with his seemingly doughy paunch would never win a Mr. Olympia contest, Grace thought. Still, she doubted that anyone could beat the captain in an arm wrestling match, the incredibly powerful Commando Ajax aside, of course.

  Grace, dressed in black satin leisurewear, relaxed and took in the lake’s beauty.

  “I thought that the little lake near the Academy was the
only lake we have. How could I not know of such a beautiful place as this, and so nearby?”

  “No one knows of this lake,” Volk said. “They don’t have the eyes to see it.”

  Grace smirked. “And are there other such places we spiritual pygmies can’t see?”

  “Many.”

  “Why couldn’t you tell me what you have to say in my office? It was very rude of you to leave as you did. Had you been anyone else, I’d have—”

  “Why always the threats, Grace? You’re losing credibility.” He grinned. “You ought to carry one out sometime to teach me a lesson.”

  Grace knew why she didn’t. She was telling the truth about having it been anyone else she’d have stomped on him with her spiked heel.

  “My threats seem to work just fine,” she said. “That was good work you and your protégé did on the Veetal match. I’m glad you came to your senses and followed orders, unlike your reckless friend.”

  “I had no choice. She was doomed whether I interfered or not.”

  “Don’t be so cranky. Would it kill you to play the optimist just once for a change?”

  “A bad match is a bad match, Grace.”

  “They’ll be fine,” Grace assured. “Eros does not make mistakes. Why can’t you get that through your thick skull? Has he ever been wrong before?”

  “Grace, if Eros is behind all these failed marriages then he is one incompetent ass.”

  Grace reached overboard and splashed the captain. “How dare you speak like that in front of me! I didn’t submit to being blindfolded and brought to such an out-of-the-way place so that you could spew blasphemy. What’s the matter with you!”

  Volk grinned. “An incompetent boob, and a loser. The fraud ought to be impeached, stripped of his robes, and thrown in the clink. He and the rest of his cronies.”

  Grace gasped, picked up a spare oar, and swung it at Volk’s head. Laughing, he caught it with one hand and disarmed her.

  “Take me back right now!” she commanded.

  “Why? I brought a nice picnic basket.”

  “You, you…!” Grace sputtered. “Who do you think you are!”

  Volk gave the canoe two final powerful strokes and allowed it to glide into the center of the lake. He put down the oars, opened the picnic basket, and tossed Grace a big, red apple.

  She fired it back at him.

  Volk caught it without flinching, and took a bite. “Want to try that again?” he said, tossing her another apple.

  This time she held on to it. “Why did you bring me here?” she demanded.

  “I thought you said you wished to get out more.” Volk spread his arms, offering up the beauty around them. “Take a deep breath and embrace the taste of freedom.”

  “This is not what I had in mind,” Grace retorted. “No wonder you have not had a girlfriend in, like, forever.”

  “Cupids aren’t supposed to have girlfriends, Grace. We’re not humans, no matter how the Academy has twisted things over the centuries.”

  “Why should the humans have all the fun?”

  Volk took another bite of his apple. “And you think idol worship is okay too, huh?”

  “We don’t worship them,” Grace huffed. “They are simply reminders of who is running the show. Even the humans gave up on that superstition a long time ago.”

  “Maybe idols of wood and stone. But they have replaced those with the worship of celebrity, money, fame, sex, science, technology, about any one and anything that promises them an excuse for not seeking to know the Maker of all Heaven and Earth. The yetzers are very clever, they—”

  “The what?”

  “Yetzers, the evil inclinations. Fear demons, as you call them. They saw that they had lost the long, hard-fought battle over idols—that the humans had grown too sophisticated for such nonsense. As a result, the yetzers changed their strategy. They decided to use the humans’ own newfound sophistication against them. The yetzers turned the humans’ glorification of reason and rationality into the new idols.

  “Having a penchant for rationalizing just about anything,” Volk continued, “the humans preferred self-deception over having to live up to any standards that got in the way of their desires for immediate gratification. The yetzers observed this and exploited the humans’ new gullibility. And so now right is wrong and wrong is right. True is false and false is true, and good or bad is whatever is deemed politically correct at the moment.

  “Humankind became so adept at rationalizing, that it arrived at the point where it could even ‘reason’ that feelings and emotions trump reason itself! How’s that for pretzel logic? How’s that for yetzer genius?”

  “Good grief, Captain. How do you come up with such ridiculous notions? It’s so much simpler than that. Demons sabotage love, and we try to stop them.”

  Volk smirked. “And we are doing such a bang-up job, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, well, we just need more potent potions and better weapons.”

  “I’d like to agree with you, Grace, but then we’d both be wrong. No, we need something much stronger than potions and weapons. We need the truth.”

  “We are cupids,” Grace retorted. “We have the truth.”

  “No, we are angels of the Most High who have lost our way. The other angels don’t want anything to do with us. They carry out their divine business joyously serving the Master of the Universe, whereas we spiritual mutants serve a fictional character called Eros, and fecklessly go about our sacred duty with neither love nor devotion.”

  “I’m warning you, Captain, for the last time. If you blasphemy again you will leave me no choice but to report you to Judge Minos.”

  “Why Judge Minos? Why not report me straight to Eros himself? Why the need for the self-appointed fraud and middle man?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Grace said. “We can’t communicate with Eros.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because our petty lives are beneath him. Our concerns are not his concerns. To someone of his magnificence, our prayers and supplications are childish and pathetic.”

  “Or,” Volk rejoined, “there is simply no Eros to hear them, no Eros to care. But you know who does care? Who does listen? The one true God that all angels but us know and acknowledge. We are the blasphemers, Grace. We are the heretics. We are the idolaters. The humans have infected us with their ideology. It inhabits us like a virus.

  “The yetzers, as I said, are very devious. They know they can’t survive a trip to these spiritual heights and defeat us in physical battle. So, instead, they plotted to infiltrate us with their ideas. For generations now, the virus has been spreading through our celestial abode; infecting and tainting all that we are; eating away at the foundations of our existence. We are spiritual amnesiacs. We have forgotten who we really are, and Who we work for and what our mission is.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Grace scoffed. “We are stronger, smarter, and more efficient than ever before.”

  “Just like the humans,” Volk said. “Yet none the wiser for any of it. The yetzers have matched them and us measure for measure. The stronger and smarter the humans think they are, the greater their hubris, and the less they think they need God. The Academy took their cue, and we are no different.”

  “Really, Captain, I never knew you had such a wild imagination. If any of what you say were true, we’d have learned about this in our history books. Our professors at the Academy—the wisest cupids in all of Heaven—would have spoken of it. Yet, none of our philosophers or poets, historians or psychologists have mentioned a word about what you speak. One must therefore conclude, Captain, that you are out of your gourd and need help.”

  “Grace, you weren’t here during the war when the Anteros cult nearly succeeded in wresting from us our portion of Heaven. That is when Minos took over and nothing was the same since. Instead of seeing the rebellion as a warning of how far we had already drifted, Minos initiated his so-called ‘progressive reforms,’ which were really no different than those that Anteros ha
d demanded. Instead of going back to our roots, we got Anteros-lite. The only difference between the Eros cult and the Anteros cult was time. Anteros wanted quick, radical transformation and the Eros establishment preferred a gradual approach. And so now, here we are.”

  “But you and Captain Cyrus fought on the side of Eros,” Grace charged.

  “At the time, it was a choice between the lesser of two evils. After the rebellion, Cyrus and I retreated to the mountains and spent years in study and contemplation. By the grace of God, we rescued a portion of the ancient archives. With its sacred knowledge we were able to continue our training according to the teachings of the blessed tzaddikim.”

  “The what?”

  “The holy sages.”

  “Archives? That’s a legend, a fairy tale.”

  “As real as this lake we are sitting on, Grace. A library of ancient relics and writings. Although much was lost in the war, we saved enough to keep the teachings alive.”

  “And no doubt this archive is invisible to the likes of me,” Grace sniffed.

  “Like this lake, without my introduction to it, neither you nor anyone else at the Academy could ever locate it. If the Academy were to learn of the archive’s whereabouts, they would confiscate the holy manuscripts and relics it contains, or worse.”

  “You really don’t think much of us, do you, Captain?”

  “I don’t blame you, Grace, or most of the cupids. You and they don’t know anything but the lies and propaganda that the Academy has pumped into your heads since the day you were conceived.”

  “Captain, I have demonstrated a great amount of patience with you, but you have yet to show me anything that could persuade me that what you say is true.”

  “I showed you this lake.”

  “That’s little more than Captain Cyrus having pulled flowers out of thin air. A magic trick or illusion. You are insisting that there is no Eros; that the Academy is controlled by a cabal of imposters, and that we are scorned by so-called angels in the heavens who are greater than we. Do you realize how ludicrous you sound?”

  “I do.”