Jeanie Writes Genre

...the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. --Genesis 6:2

God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to Tartarus and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment. --2 Peter 2:4

He couldn't remember a time before darkness. He once thought that there had been one, but now he thought it must have been a dream. Recollections came to him in disjointed flashes of memory lighting up behind his eyes. But when he opened his eyes, all he could see was nothing, and the memories were gone.

Nothing crushed him. It weighted him down, pinned his wings and blinded his eyes. He wore no chains. They weren't necessary. The darkness kept him still, silent, helpless.

Hopeless.

His brothers were there, somewhere. He had seen them cast down alongside him. He had spent the first eternity crying out to them, but none answered. Whether they were too far away, or could not answer, or hear, or his screams were simply swallowed up by the void, he did not know.

He spent the second eternity remembering. Remembering his Creator. Remembering a time before darkness. Remembering his sin.

There was no darkness in the presence of his Creator. The light of His glory was infinite, knowing no bounds, leaving no room for shadow. It was palpable, that light. Textured, multidimensional, alive. It was the opposite in every way of this deathly darkness which now imprisoned him.

The new creation knew that light, in the beginning, before they chose to forsake it for illumination of a different sort. After that they could not bear it. Even then, even after they had shown themselves so capable of sin, so willing... even then He had shown them mercy, shielding them from His own light, and then diluting it, hanging pieces of it in their sky. They were His favored children, still.

Is it any wonder, then, that he and his brothers had found them so beautiful? They were His masterpieces. How could He not have known how their loveliness would inflame his desires? To touch them, and lie with them... soft lips and tiny hairs tickling his incandescent skin, firm yet compliant flesh curving and swelling and folding in ways so foreign, ways that begged to be traced, tasted, penetrated....

This was his sin. Loving his Creator's children too much. For this he and his brothers were cut off and cast down into darkness to await their judgment.

He spent the third eternity hating.

Of course He had known. He who knows all, sees all, hears all, who knew and saw and heard it all before time began. He sent them to that lonely little blue ball knowing what they would do. He'd already seen it done, and still He sent them.

And still He punished them.

He spent the fourth eternity going mad.

The fifth eternity was for forgetting. Forgetting the Light, forgetting the Creation, forgetting all but the weight of his sin. Soon there would be nothing left but waiting.

Waiting for judgment. To be reconciled with the Creator and returned to the Light, or to be cut off forever, banished to a lasting, final darkness.

Sometimes he still tried to remember, but it hurt. Five eternities of drowning in darkness had atrophied his mind as much as his wings; but he still tried to stretch those sometimes, too. As he tried to remember this time, blasphemous thoughts as dark as the pit that held him flooded his mind. He tried to put them out of his head. He knew by instinct that they were wrong. His Creator was perfect, and perfectly just. With every fiber of his being he knew this to be true.

He also knew that to be judged for one sin was the same as to be judged for many. He knew perfect justice was not perfectly fair. He knew he would rather be destroyed than spend forever in this place.

He knew he had waited long enough.

For the first time in five eternities he became aware of the ground beneath him. The sensation of the darkness pressing in had left no room to take in such details. But he was finally growing accustomed to it. The ground was hard and cold. It was also pliable.

More times than he could count, he had tried to open his wings and fly out of this place. It couldn't be done.

And so, done with waiting, the angel began to dig.

©2007 by Jean Marie Bauhaus

Labels: angels

I've decided to challenge myself by doing a series of short shorts about or relating to angels. Here's the first. I didn't know where I was going with it when I started, but I'm pretty happy with where it ended up.

***

He's heard stories. All his life, he's heard stories.

His granny used to tell one every summer, when she'd come and stay and they'd all go to the tent meeting. At supper she and his parents would all get to talking about miracles. Ones they said they'd seen, and ones they hoped for.

It happened to a friend of her cousin, she swore. The friend and her husband were driving to town one day, and they pulled over for a hitchhiker. People did that in those days. It was a different country back then. The hitcher was a young man dressed in rags, humble, clearly down on his luck. So they did the kind thing and picked him up.

"Where you headed?" asked the husband, after the hitcher settled in the back seat.

"Home to my Father," said the man, "but I'll return soon." When they turned to ask him what he meant, he was no longer there. Praise Jesus.

That was how his granny always ended it. "Praise Jesus."

He hadn't been to a tent meeting since he'd gotten big enough that they couldn't make him go. He hadn't seen his granny in almost as long. He hadn't praised Jesus in all that time, either.

But he had heard other stories. Other mysterious hitchhikers. He knew they were urban legends, but that didn't stop him from wondering. This stuff was pretty ingrained. Every time he saw someone on the side of the road trying to thumb a ride, he thought of those stories. But he never stopped, because he'd heard other stories, too, and he'd seen that movie, the one with Rutger Hauer. He liked that movie better than the remake.

Still, he wondered. He didn't believe in angels. He was less sure about Jesus, but he was pretty sure that if he did exist he had better things to do than hitchhike around leaving cryptic messages with country folk.

This girl, though, she looked like an angel. A sad, lost little angel, hitchhiking in the rain. He pulled over for her. She got in next to him, pried wet hair off of her cheek and wiped at the mascara pooled underneath her eyes. "Thanks."

"Where you headed?"

"West."

"West. You mean Tulsa?"

She sniffed and took a napkin he offered her. "Further," she said, wiping off her face.

He chuckled. "Further. Let me guess. California?"

She shot him a look that told him to mind his own business. Then she seemed to think better of it. "You going that far?"

"Nope. But neither are you."

"What?"

He smiled. "You some kind of runaway?"

"No," she said. "I actually need to get home. You can let me out up here."

"Just relax, angel. I'll get you where you need to be." He turned to her and grinned. "Praise Jesus."

She gave him a nervous laugh, and fixed her gaze on the road ahead.

She was no angel. But she was still going to disappear.

She was going to disappear because, neither was he.

©2007 by Jean Marie Bauhaus

Labels: angels