Intervention

by Rob Mclean

  John snorted through a mouthful of food.

  “And if you think about someone else, then you’re being unfaithful…”

  “You’d be unfaithful if you swapped hands.”

  Jarred ignored his taunt. “So either way, only cold showers for you.” He gave John another big, cheesy smile, clearly enjoying his brother’s discomfort.

  “Thanks for sharing that.” He shovelled in another mouthful of curry. “It doesn’t make my life any easier.”

  “So why bother?”

  “What do you mean?” John stopped shovelling his food.

  “Well, she is amazingly easy to look at,” Jarred stated as if working out a maths problem, “and she has a great-”

  “Eyes,” John interrupted.

  “Yeah, those too.” Jarred grinned.

  “So what’s your point?” John didn’t return his brother’s smile.

  “Well, these are all great assets, but if you can’t access them, then what’s the point?” When he saw his brother’s features darken, he hurriedly continued. “I mean, you’re not as ugly as I always make you out to be. It’s not as though you couldn’t get yourself another hottie, is it?”

  “I don’t want anyone else.” The words fell out of his mouth automatically, before he had thought about them. John felt the truth of them, and by admitting it to his brother, he confirmed to himself that he could settle for no one else. To him it was as significant as publicly wearing the purity ring.

  “Uh oh, sounds like the bathroom’s about to get a whole lot smaller.”

  “You could always move out.” John shot his brother a malicious grin. “Or move back home.”

  “Nah, I’ll just not use the bathroom.”

  “Anyway, I don’t think she’ll be moving in anytime soon. She says she still has feelings for her loser ex-boyfriend.”

  “The jerk who drugged her? Why would someone do that to their own girlfriend? Did they have a celibacy vow too?”

  “No, but they were as good as married though, at least in her mind.” John shook his head ruefully at the thought of Angela and Zeke together. “She says that Zeke said it was Blake who drugged her.”

  “Blake? That chubby biochemist dude?” Jarred thought for a moment. “Yeah, I could see him doing that. He’s a real desperado.”

  John nodded in agreement. He didn’t think much of the fat geek himself. “Anyway, I told her to sort herself out, but she hasn’t called.”

  “Man, that’s harsh.”

  “Yeah, well, she needs to cut herself loose from that jerk.”

  “Sure, but she’s in a bad place. Her long time lover has done the dirty on her, and now the new guy is putting heaps of pressure on her.”

  “What? I’m the one being harsh?”

  “Sure. Maybe she just needs some time and space to sort herself out.”

  John stared at his brother and blinked a few times. He hadn’t thought of things from her point of view. He realized that his desire for her had made him a bit selfish. He looked at things differently for a moment then remembered all the other obstacles that kept him from the woman he wanted.

  “Then there’s the religion thing,” John said, shrugging his shoulders. “Knowing her mother, there’ll be no getting any further with her precious daughter unless I become a Christian.”

  “And that’s not going to happen anytime soon, is it?” Jarred asked. John heard the implied warning beneath his brother’s words.

  “No.” He went back to pushing his curry around his plate. “I had thought of just saying that I’d become a believer, just to keep them happy and get in with Angela, but somehow I don’t think they’d be content to leave it at that.”

  “From what I hear, it takes over your whole life.”

  “And I couldn’t lie like that for the rest of my life.” He pushed his plate away and leaned back in his chair.

  “I can’t understand how anyone can actually believe any of it.” Jarred pulled the same expression that he wore when was marking one of his undergraduate student’s papers and couldn’t follow their flawed reasoning to get a wrong answer.

  “I mean, I can see that religion provides a civilizing influence, and the morality puts civic and family duty before individual pleasures, and that’s all good, but really?”

  John thought back to the enraptured faces of the congregation he saw at Angela’s church last Sunday. Clearly many would disagree. “I think there are a lot of people who do genuinely believe.”

  “What? That an invisible, undetectable God, creator of the whole universe–and do you know how immensely big the universe is? –sent his only son over two thousand years ago to this particular little blue planet, out of all the trillions out there-presumably the only one with ‘made in His image’ creatures on it, to save these same flawed creations?”

  “Sure, I can’t get my head around it either, but you didn’t see the people at Angela’s church. They were totally going with it.”

  “Lucky for them that they weren’t born a thousand years ago as an Apache or an Iroquois, or a Mayan or an Australian Aborigine for that matter. They would never have had the chance to hear of this Jesus guy. No way they would have ever gotten to Heaven then, is there?”

  “I don’t know, maybe you should ask those sort of questions to a pastor or someone. Besides who says it has to be fair?”

  “It has to be fair. If there is a Creator, it has to be fair. All men should have been created equal. I don’t want to believe in a God that isn’t fair.”

  “Maybe you don’t get a choice. Maybe it’s not about you. Perhaps it’s all about what God wants.”

  “That’s a lot of maybes. It must have something to do with me, or else why would he have created me?”

  “And wouldn’t the universe miss you if you didn’t exist?” John scraped his leftovers into the bin. Jarred didn’t answer, instead delving back into his laptop.

  Chapter 40

  A group of Christians had escaped from the detention camp. They had drugged the guard dogs and cut though the fence wire. It was John’s task, with the help of his squad, to recapture them.

  With the help of tracker dogs, they had followed them to a wooded gully. Most likely they were hidden in some caves, higher up on the mountainside, shivering in the dark, afraid to light a fire for fear of detection.

  With unnatural dream ability, he bounded up the vertiginous slopes effortlessly in search of his quarry. He was aware that his squad was falling further behind the higher he climbed through the sparse pine trees, but he cared not, so intent he was on recapturing the escapees.

  He could now see the caves, partially hidden amid snow covered rocky outcrops, beckoning on the near horizon. Without waiting for the rest of his squad, John bounded up the intervening distance with his gun at the ready. He covered the ground with giant strides, vaulting from rock to rock effortlessly in huge jumps.

  Landing near the mouth of the cave, he could see that there had been people here recently. Grasses and bushes nearby had been trampled flat. A cold, blackened campfire in the shelter of a rocky overhang was ringed with sooty rocks and numerous shoe prints. Piles of freshly cut firewood were stacked deep under the overhang, up against the sheltered rock-face, and it told him that the escapees weren’t far away.

  Ahead, the dark, gaping vertical crack in the mountain beckoned. He could picture the fugitives huddling somewhere in the dark recesses of the cave, clutching at their children and trying to be as quiet as possible. He strained to hear their breathing, but instead, he could only hear his squad labouring up the slopes far below, their voices echoing across the valley, arrogantly loud and confident.

  He knew he should wait for them, but any chance he had of surprise rapidly diminished as they approached nearer.

  Without further thought, he found himself turning towards the cave. He switched on the flashlight atop his M16 and cautiously moved onwards.

  The rocks of the walls came together at the base in a V, but a trail of smaller stones and sa
ndy pebbles had deposited on the floor over time and made it easier to walk. The walls were smooth with a cool dampness. Moss grew near the entrance, but faded away as he ventured deeper.

  The floor sloped upwards as he explored deeper. Towards the back of the entrance chamber, steps had been cut into the rock that led up to an arch. A warm golden glow shone through the opening suggesting a campfire within. With his M16 at the ready, he climbed the steps and peered through the archway.

  At the top of the steps he saw a cavernous vista spread before him. A massive cathedral of rock housed a citadel of light. The glow of thousands of campfires blurred into the far distance, making it impossible for him to see the furthest walls. He couldn’t believe that such a huge encampment existed under the mountains. The logistics of supplying such a city challenged what he saw. His rational mind rebelled at the sight, but as he looked again, he saw that they weren’t campfires, but people. Glowing creatures that were busily moving about in mindful, harmonious motions. Together, they made up the golden glow that he had seen before.

  ‘An air-strike,’ he thought and grabbed his radio. ‘Bunker buster bombs with nuclear warheads is what we need.’ He doubted the company had access to such weaponry. He started to worry how they would eliminate all those glowing creatures without those armaments, but his worry multiplied when he found that his radio didn’t work this deep inside the cave.

  ‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ the wrathful voice of the woman in yellow filled his head. He spun around, but couldn’t see her. ‘You promised.’

  “Promised?” It didn’t make any sense to John, but before he could wonder about that, he found himself outside the cave, flat on his back by the camp-fire. His gun was gone, and when he looked around for it, he saw that the rocks that had formed the cave entrance had sealed together seamlessly. Where before there had been a cavernous crack in the rocks, there was now only solid stone.

  Down below he could still hear his squad exchanging curses as they slogged up the mountainside. He wanted to warn them away, but as his hands felt around for his radio, he found that his entire uniform had disappeared. He lifted his head to see that he now was lying on his back, fully naked.

  Feeling vulnerable and exposed, he tried to get up and run away, but his limbs refused to move. Anger and frustration welled up inside him, but that was replaced by fear when he heard the familiar soft laughter. Her melodic, cackling notes drifted through the air towards him, then one by one, froze and fell on him like icy daggers, sending sharp stabs of pain and alarm racing around his brain.

  ‘Don’t be ashamed of your nakedness.’ John heard her voice mocking him from high above. He looked up to see the woman in yellow drifting down towards him, her gossamer gown billowing about her, revealing her own bronzed nudity. ‘It’s how God made us, how we are meant to be.’ Her tone was mocking and sarcastic, but the expression on her face showed her seductive intent.

  John tried again to move, to roll away, desperate to escape, but he knew it was futile. He could not even move his eyes away from her as she landed, with the lightest of pressure, on his abdomen.

  Her garments shrouded them like a tent, shielding them from the outside world, but were open at the front, revealing the sheen of her perfect body.

  “You especially should not be ashamed of your body,” she whispered in his ear, running her hands over his chest as she leaned in and sat back up again afterwards. The touch of her hands left burning trails in their wake, and he was all too aware of the furnace where their bodies met, threatening to melt into his abdomen.

  “Let me go,” John said. His voice sounded small and far away. His pleas were answered by an icy tinkling rain of laughter.

  Tracing fiery inward spirals around his chest, she gave him a lecherous, wicked grin. “You don’t want me?”

  John only managed to shut his eyes and groan in reply.

  “What about me?” A familiar voice asked. He opened his eyes to see his old girlfriend, Natalie, sitting where the woman in yellow had been. She was alive and vibrant, as beautiful and smiling as he remembered her before the accident. Before he had to identify her in the morgue. Before he watched them bury her in the earth.

  “You’re dead,” was all he managed to say. A sad look crossed her face at the rejection. Her head drooped and her body collapsed onto his. He turned to see her face lying still and waxen next to his. Her mouth was open and her blue, bloated tongue protruded from between her yellowed teeth. He watched in horror, as her skin wrinkled and blackened before peeling off and falling away.

  “No,” he cried, “It’s not real.” Tears ran down the side of his face into his hair. “It’s a dream. It’s only a dream,” he said, turning away from the rotting cadaver. He repeated the words over again, trying to push the image out of his mind, trying to reassure himself that it really was all only a dream.

  When the terror had subsided, he turned back to see that Natalie’s corpse was gone, and the woman in yellow had reappeared with a satisfied grin on her face. Anger flared up and he struggled anew. He was able to move his head, but he felt incredibly weary for the effort.

  “I’m not afraid,” he said without conviction. “This is just a dream. You cannot hurt me.” His rational mind tried to reinforce his words, but his inability to move his arms spoke louder.

  “Don’t you believe it,” she replied. Malevolence flashed behind her eyes. “I can keep you here forever. Back in your ‘real’ world, you’ll never wake up. You’ll stay in a coma until your mortal body dies of old age.” A malicious smile curled her lips. “And that would be such a waste.”

  John fought down the urge to scream. He didn’t have the energy to fight. He only hoped that his squad would arrive soon.

  “Just a dream,” he repeated weakly.

  “To live is to dream,” she chanted as she lifted her hands to the sky as if to pray. The clouds began to swirl and tear apart above her, revealing a golden light. “And to die is to awaken.”

  “Who are you?” he asked, partly out of awe and fear, but also to stall whatever plans she had for him until his squad arrived.

  “I am the keeper of the portal, the guardian to her soul.” As she spoke, a magnificent set of feathered wings spread out behind her. From beyond the clouds, the golden light fell upon her, setting her aglow with a fiery radiance.

  “You’re an angel?” John asked, both fearful and amazed.

  “A guardian angel.” Her voice hardened and she glowed fiercely. John had to avert his head. He heard the rumble of thunder and felt the mountainside shake.

  “What do you guard?” he asked. “The cave?”

  She threw her head back and her laughter rang out like church bells. “No,” she grabbed his head, turning it so she could impale him with her stare. “I am the guardian to the soul of the one you call Angela.” She let his face go and returned to her celestial prayer.

  “Angela?” John blinked as he tried to understand.

  “None shall be with her unless through me,” she said without looking away from the sky. As if to emphasize her words, John felt the mountainside tremble again, and from the corner of his eye he saw boulders tumbling down from the higher slopes. He heard the startled shouts from his squad as the rocks slammed into them with diabolical accuracy.

  “My squad,” he stared at her unbelievingly as a vicious smile widened across her face. “You killed my squad.”

  “Just a dream, remember?” She sniggered at him as she spat back the mocking words.

  John studied her shifting expressions. Her fierceness morphed into satisfaction as he saw her lips curl upwards, and then when she lifted her chin, he saw defiance.

  “Am I being tested?” John asked as the idea occurred to him.

  She answered him with a smile and a slight nod.

  “Did I pass?”

  Her wings retracted and disappeared from view while her glow dimmed and she brought her arms down from the heavens. She tilted her head slightly to the side and gave him a small, tight
smile.

  She put her hands on his chest and pushed herself lower.

  “The testing has only just begun.” Her voice had changed and when John looked, so had the rest of her. She was now Eloise, in an open business blouse revealing an expensive bra and pearl necklace, sitting astride him. Her split skirt was hitched up about her waist, and her matching stockings chaffed against his waist as she gyrated on top. Her tight pony-tail had begun to unravel and her upper lip had beads of sweat as she worked hard, rocking back and forth. Her pearl drop ear-rings swung back and forth like miniature punching bags, in unison.

  “No!” he screamed when he understood what she was doing to him. With a roar, and a massive effort, he threw himself to his side.

  He woke up on the floor, gasping, his heart hammering.

  The dream had been so vivid that he had to look about the room to check that he was alone. It was only then that he saw that he needed to change his sheets.

  Chapter 41

  Angela arrived home exhausted after another day of frosty silence from Chelsea.

  She dumped her bag and keys onto the kitchen bench. The smells of rosemary and lamb stew coming from the slow cooker filled her nostrils. She lifted the lid and saw carrots and potatoes as well. It had been cooking all day, and the mouth-watering scents reminded her how good it was to be home.

  She too had been simmering all day over the way Chelsea had been treating her and found the muted hostility very draining. She didn’t know how much longer she could take the silent treatment.

  She had tried asking after Zeke, but Chelsea had been in full Goth mode. Heavy black eyeliner, dark magenta lipstick and with all her piercings in, she looked intimidating. She had abruptly cut Angela’s enquiries off.

  “What do you care about Zeke?” Chelsea had spat at her. “If you cared, you wouldn’t have dumped him for that heathen.”

  “I haven’t dumped him,” Angela had protested. “We’re just on a break.”