The Awakening of the Gods (Forgotten Ones)

by M. H. Hawkins

  “Something like that,” Anna huffed then displayed another bashful grin. Mea’s old friend moved on to staring down at the ground and kicking at some pebbles, too ashamed to look Mea in the eye. She betrayed her, setting her up to get kidnapped by Azazel—so he could kill her. That was before Azazel then betrayed her, and killed her. Anna folded her plain brown hair behind her ears and looked up at Mea like a sad, broken puppy. There was so much to apologize for. She opened her mouth to speak, to apologize, but no words came out. Then everything did. “Mea… Mea, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was jealous of you and…”

  “I forgive you,” Mea said, cutting her off. Reaching out to Anna, she didn’t find the comforting shoulder of her old friend that she was reaching for. Instead Mea’s hand went right through her, like Anna was a ghost, and she was left swatting the air and half-tumbling forward.

  “Careful.” Anna gave another apologetic smile. “Like I said, ‘something like that.’”

  “You’re a ghost?”

  “No, not exactly.” Anna looked over her shoulder at the rising sun. “I was… A long time ago, I was human. Then I ascended and became…”

  “An angel?”

  Anna nodded. “Part angel, a Nephilim. I never made the full transition. It was a long time ago. And then…” She sighed. “When Azazel rebelled (in heaven)… He made it sound so romantic. Freedom, power, the spoils of war. So I joined him. Then you know what happened next… Death, reincarnation, and now… this.” Anna gestured at her overly plain body and shrugged.

  “Little did I know that my past sins would come back and haunt me and… If I knew that it was going to be like this—this painful—to be mortal, to be human, I would never have done it. Of course you only figure that out when it’s too late. Reincarnation isn’t an exact science, and I only started to remember it all when you… starting becoming a god.”

  “Surprise.” Mea said apologetically. It still sounds funny, she thought, I’m a god. Both girls chuckled.

  “Yeah,” Anna said and continued. “Even as a mortal, I was still an outcast, in one way or another. Mea, if I knew… If I knew what I know now, I never would have done it. Reincarnation was supposed to be something good, something better. But instead my soul got tossed into this frumpy, unshapely thing.” She kicked hard at some pebbles on the ground, but the pebbles themselves only wobbled in place. Shaking her head along with her lifeless hair, Anna huffed at her failed attempt at pebble-kicking and sulked in her shame. “And I… I just… hated it. I hated myself… I hated you. I just… hated being average, being plain, being nothing.”

  Mea blinked away some tears then wiped the other ones off her cheeks. Then she snorted away the snot that came with the tears. “No, no, no, Anna. Not to me, you were never those things, not to me. To me, you were always just… Anna, my best friend. The kindest, most understanding person I ever knew.”

  “I know, Mea. Now, I know... A day late and a dollar short, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” Mea wiped away some more tears and sniffed again, hard and loud—snorting back the loose snot that was dripping out of her nose. The sound was loud, obnoxious, and unladylike. After looking at each other awkwardly, both girls laughed, and for a second, it almost felt like old times.

  But time was ticking, and the sun was still rising. And Anna was fading away with the incoming light, becoming more translucent by the second. Looking at her hand, she could see through it, and it was almost completely invisible.

  Anna shook her head as she stared at her invisible hand—punishment for her betrayal. “Mea, now I… the guilt I feel, from what I did, the regret that just… it hurts, like its burning inside of me and… I betrayed you. I almost got you killed. I almost got your family killed… Your mom, Ryan. Mea, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “I know, I know.” Mea smiled and nodded and snorted away some more snot. “I know, and I forgave you a long time ago.” Anna was still fading away, and through her fading image and sad facial features, Mea could see a mountain range covered in thick green shrubbery. “Anna, what’s happening? What’s happening to you?”

  “Me?” answered Anna, almost a whisper and as calm as can be. “I’m becoming what I always was, a monster. I was so ugly on the inside… when I died the transformation didn’t take long.”

  Anna sighed. “When I died… well, I didn’t go to heaven. And that warm light at the end of the tunnel… It was real but it sure as hell didn’t last very long. And it’s not really that warm, but at least it was warmer than being stuck inside a cold, dead corpse.”

  “Yeah.” Mea let out a nervous, sad chuckle. “Yeah, I’d imagine so.”

  Anna snorted and continued. “As a Nephilim, a half-breed, I was sent to the stone tower when I died. And your friend—he said he was your friend, the well-spoken guy in the expensive-looking suit, he… he was nice enough. He told me that something was coming, that someone was coming and… he released me—set me free before who-or-what-ever was coming came.”

  Anna twisted her lips over to the left of her mouth and then to the right side of it—like she did when she was deep in thought, when she was still alive. “But when I was locked up… at first, I don’t think he even recognized me, but I can’t even blame him for that. The first few days, the first few weeks, it’s like being reborn—like a baby being born. No memories, no real sense-of-self. Then… it gradually starts coming back; the memories, the pain and… the things you did to get there. And you have to force yourself to remember, to remember what you did, your mistakes, your… sins. If not, you just change. You become nothing more than just… raw emotion, a monster. And that ignored pain and suffering, that’s what truly turns monsters into monsters.”

  Anna glanced over her shoulder again, at the rising sun. It was creeping over the mountain range, and the sun looked like the insides of a sliced grapefruit—pink on the inside but edged by its golden-orange rind, and she knew she was running out of time. “Mea, I know—I know that I owe you. I owe a lot of people. So I forced myself to remember what I did, to remember my sins, the pain… that I betrayed you—out of jealousy. And it—the remembering, it hurt. It hurt so bad—mentally and physically. And being locked up, and remembering everything, the pain is worse—worse than it is up here, different. And when you tried to remember the details—to remember your mistakes, that’s when it gets unbearable, and you want to give up. You want to forget; your body tells you to forget—through the pain. The whole thing—the screaming, the thrashing around, when you’re acting like an animal, when you feel like an animal… it’s almost an involuntary reaction, to act like a beast. But, if you can endure the pain, you get to hold onto yourself—at least part of it, a part of your soul and…” Anna looked down at her translucent hand again. It looked no different than an oddly shaped jellyfish.

  While Anna’s was rambling on, Mea sensed that she was trying to tell her something important. “Anna, what are you trying to say?”

  Anna snorted away some of her own tears, and she tried to twist her whimpering, pain-filled voice into something intelligible. “I want you to know that it’s me. It’s still me in there. And I still remember. I still remember you, and I remember everything that I did. Through everything, I still got to remember. At the very least, I got to do that. At least I got to do that—to hold on to my memories—all of them, the good and the bad.”

  Mea forced a smile and said, “Mostly the good ones, I hope.”

  “They are, always.” Anna sighed and pulled herself together. “That day, when the man in the suit released me—he looked sad, but he just unlocked the door and slid the iron bars aside. And… All he said was, ‘Go.’”

  Mea was beginning to put the pieces together. “Last night, the shadow that saved me, that was…”

  “Me,” Anna answered, smiling apologetically. “Anna Berstack, former fallen angel, outcast, half-breed, betrayer—two-time betrayer, and now… a monster.”

  Mea’s cloudy memories were still coming back to her, piecemeal, and
she was still struggling to grasp onto the whole picture. Rows of ivory fangs. Black scales the size of end-tables. The golden streaks of electricity. It hit her. “Anna, the shadow—the one that save me, it was…”

  “Me. A storm dragon, a monster of the night. Built of darkness and lightning, only seen during storms and when the shadows swallow the stars and blot out the moonlight, when the night is filled with the tears of heaven.” Feeling herself fade away with the morning sun, Anna shook away her self-loathing and forced a smile again and forced herself to enjoy the sunrise and the tall waterfall beside her. It sure was beautiful. “Mea, I just wanted you to know—that it was still me in there. If I get to see you again, I just wanted you to know.” Anna huffed again and let out another nervous laugh. “Oh boy. How about enough of this talk about death and betrayal and just… I’d just… I’d like to watch the sunrise with my friend… like we used to do.”

  “Yeah.” Mea nodded and wiped away more tears and snorted away some more loose snot. “Yeah, I’d like that.” Following Anna’s lead, the two girls sat on the edge of the cliff—right next to the tall waterfall, and they took in the majestic view. “Anna, where are we?”

  Anna chuckled. “Venezuela. Angel Falls, Venezuela. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? It’s where we fell, the angels. After the rebellion in heaven, it was… Azazel said that it was like a meteor shower; thousands of us rebellious, wingless angels shooting out of the sky, blasting down from the heavens, smashing into the earth.”

  Mea gave her a look of disbelief, but Anna nodded her head. Yeah, in all seriousness. “Yeah, this was where we landed—right here. Some of us did, at least. Azazel mentioned some stories about a prior rebellion. I don’t remember all the details, but I remember him saying that there had been at least one prior rebellion, in heaven—before his. And he said that most of those rebels struck down in Africa, that a cluster of them exploded into the earth and created what is now-known as… Victoria Falls.” Smiling she added, “It’s funny, isn’t it? How something as heinous as a rebellion in heaven could create something as beautiful as this, or that. Of course it took thousands of years. And when we crashed, it wasn’t so beautiful. The air caught on fire, and black smoke and dust puffed up and coated most of the world in darkness. It got cold. The impact shook the whole planet. Well, that’s what they say—that it broke the world, that that was what caused the continents to break apart.” Anna chuckled to herself. “I guess time really does heal all… heals most things.” Anna paused, wishing she could nudge Mea with her shoulder, like she used to. She couldn’t.

  Anna went back to the story. “This time, when I was born, reborn—when I woke up as a storm dragon. It was…” Anna pointed to somewhere off in the distance—just left of the rising pink grapefruit sun that was now more golden than pink. “Over there—right over there. That way, about six-hundred miles northwest of here. It was in a place called Lake Maracaibo—where the river runs into the lake. That was where I came back, this time at least. They say that the lightning hits the water 250-to-260 days a year—it’s way more than that, but they call it Catatumbo lightning, and that’s the only place on earth where it happens.”

  Anna noticed Mea’s look of confusion then said, “Yeah, no, I’m serious… I know, it sounds crazy, right?”

  “Yeah,” Mea said, “but no crazier than anything else that happened.”

  Anna smiled. “Yeah, after the guy in the suit released me, I stepped out of my prison cell, and after a few flashes of light, I felt… It was like waking up suddenly—like waking up in a hot tub, a hot tub with a toaster in it, but you know, in a good way. I felt the river wash over me. I was cold—my soul was, but the water felt warm, you know? It was like a warm shower that was washing away the dirt from my skin and shampoo from my hair. And that night, the lightning came, and the storm was bad, really bad, and the lightning kept coming down, stabbing the water like a maniac. And it was stabbing me too, but it didn’t hurt, not really. And each bolt of lightning just… energized me, brought me back to life but… when the sun came out again—like it is now, I just seemed to fade away, like I was falling back asleep. The first time it happened, I thought I was dying again; I thought that this was what hell really was—finding hope, losing it, then suffering and dying again, for an eternity. But the next night, I woke up again… scales, fangs, wings, and all.” Anna forced a bittersweet smile.

  And Mea smiled back. While bittersweet as well, she forced herself to hold up the heavy smile and tried to conceal her anguish. Anna was nearly gone. And Mea was trying to mask her sad look of pity—the kind often reserved for the dead and dying, and she kept smiling at her nearly invisible, fading best friend. “Anna Berstack, my best friend in the world… a redeemed fallen angel, and now… a fearless storm dragon.”

  “Yeah,” Anna agreed emptily.

  The sun had almost completely risen, and Anna was almost gone. “Mea,” she said. “There’s something else you should know. The man in the suit—the one that said that he was your friend… He told me to tell you something. He said that he’s sorry, and he said… He said that… if you don’t see him again, that you should forget about him… forever.”

  Mea didn’t know what Anna meant, but she really didn’t want to think about Vincent Blackwell, not right now. Right now she just wanted to watch the sunrise with her old friend. So she just nodded and pretended to understand. “Okay, Anna.”

  Anna smiled back at her, and she faded away with each second of the rising sun. And the sun kept rising and was now almost completely above the mountain range and had almost completely erased Anna Berstack. And almost gone, Anna’s voice became little more than a whisper. “Mea, I love you. I want you to know that. And… I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything. I’m just… so sorry.” And now, the rising sun was bearing down on them like a spotlight, and Anna faded away with the rest of the morning shadows.

  With the beautiful sun rising over the majestic waterfalls of Victoria Falls, Venezuela, Mea lost her best friend again. And finding herself overwhelmed again, Mea stood up and stepped closer to the edge of the giant waterfall. Looking down, she watched as the sheets of water broke against the rocky ledges below her and fell and shrank and into the crisp, blue, mist-covered, pin-sized pool at the bottom of it.

  The sky was clear and the sun was bright. Each ray of sunshine made the falling droplets of water sparkle like diamonds. And the sparkling mist traced the falling water like an aura of silver glitter and golden sparks.

  It was truly magnificent, and it made Mea sad. She started to think about everything; Anna, her family, Vincent, Raven, the end of the world. It was too much. All of it, it was all too much. And she knew what she had to do. She had to go home, to her true home, heaven.

  In a flash of light, she was suddenly bathed in her silvery armor and her white cloak flowed behind her. The morning sun beamed down on her and made her glisten and gleam brighter than the sparkling waterfall itself. Go home, she told herself, find a solution.

  Mea stepped off the edge, and her cloak turned back into her snow-white angel wings. Leaving them limp, she fell beneath the falling, glimmering water as it splashed, splattered, and exploded off her wings like liquid crystals, and she was soon indistinguishable from the sparkling water rushing over her. Then like the glinting, glittering mists of the waterfall, Mea dissipated into the air, water, and then into nothing at all.

  Mea suddenly found herself in Heaven, but it proved itself to be less spectacular than she expected. Too small, too few people. Apparently there were not enough righteous people to fill it out, not enough to fill a large city. Apparently the testing for righteousness is quite rigorous, and the admission process is just as selective. It was much smaller than she expected, smaller than her fragmented memories told her it’d be. And aside from the Silver Citadel, heaven looked more like an upper middle-class suburb than a paradise in the clouds.

  It was too accommodating as well, at least for her. Upon her arrival, a host of angels greeted her like a queen, bu
t they still left much to be desired. Unlike the outcasts she encountered on earth, the same ones who tried killing her, these angels were all too pleasant. While the outcasts were confused, brooding, and angry; heaven’s angels were unwavering, absolute, and subservient. They only spoke of plans to harvest the righteous souls, the prophecy, and the orders that they were waiting for that never came. But when Mea asked: “what’s the criteria for righteousness?” They only said, “Righteousness is what you deem it to be.” If it was all so easy, she thought, rolling her eyes at their unsatisfying answer.

  Concerning the judgement of souls, she never got a straight answer and never found out where the buck stopped. Were souls judged by some self-regulating mechanism within the soul itself? Or was the criteria for righteousness set by the Doctrines of Elysium and administered through some sort of automated computer program—or something like that. Either way, at the very least, she knew it wasn’t her doing. She didn’t make any of these rules. It was probably my predecessor, she thought, whoever he was—him or one of the ones that came before him. It all reminded her of the civics class that she had taken in high school—thousands of laws made up by a motley and ever-changing group of officials, all over hundreds of years. But in heaven’s case, it was millions of laws established by an unknown number of gods over an infinite number of years.

  The final judgement, that was easier to decipher. The First Seven, seven gods, seven judges. And anyone not holding one of their god-given coins—seven for each of the gods, forty-nine in all—was doomed. And Mea knew that regardless of how stringent the rules in heaven were, the ones used during the final judgement would be significantly stricter, and the punishments would be crueler.

  Mea continued her tour in heaven and tried to find answers, to find a way to stop the Cleansing, and the angels continued following her around. Like lost puppies, they followed her through the Silver Citadel of Heaven, all seven floors, and all the while, they remained five steps behind her. Silently following her around, they managed to stay out of her way well enough, but she always knew they were there—lurking, watching her every move. When they weren’t lurking, their passing glances told her that they were eagerly longing for something—answers, orders, something.