Divine Destruction (The Return of Divinity Book 1) (7 page)

Auntie Deepa shrank somewhat but still protested. “Aruni has a loyal suitor. He’s a nice young man.”

After a painfully long silence, Mala continued, "It is her father who raised her to be strong and a singular thinker. Itishree is his daughter.” She turned back to the sink and gazed out the window, the mechanical motion of her arms returning to wash anguish from the pot.

Itishree approached her aunt. "Mausii, my mind cannot be changed. I am going to America tomorrow morning. We are having my party today. There is a need inside of me I cannot deny. I must go.”

Her aunt's arms fell off her hips.

"I will miss my family and I love you all. Please support me here.” Itishree said.

Aunt Deepa blew out a defeated sigh and embraced Itishree.

"I will carry you in my heart where ever I go." Itishree continued, looking from her aunt to her mother.

Deepa pushed her out to arms length. "You had better call often or we're coming after you.” She said. “And Aruni!”

Mala smirked and shook her head.

During the next few hours, Itishree helped when she could, although her Aunt and mother had often pushed her aside declaring the party and day were in her honor. With little to do, Itishree found herself with her own thoughts. Looking around her house and watching her family that had been and would be her entire world until tomorrow, Itishree took stock of everything she felt she would miss: the smell of her mother's kitchen, pestering her siblings, the warmth of her room, the view from her room, and... father. "Oh father,” rang in her head.

Pushing past the sting of missing her father, Itishree thought of the exciting aspects of moving to America: Pittsburgh, “an old steel city with a proud history,” she'd read on the internet, hundreds of bridges, three rivers converging at the city’s heart, and culturally diverse foods. And there was the work! Thinking of working in a city in the United States made Itishree's spine straighten. Work. Accomplishment. Responsibility. My own money! My own life! Itishree could not help but allow her imagination to run screaming, clicking off one achievement after another as if they were already in her past.

A broad smile washed across her face which caught her mother's attention. Mala gave her a side-ways glance and a warning of, "What was it your father said about your pride?"

Mother knew how to beat down a moment with alarmingly accurate mentions of father.

Second Contact

Gabriel's super heated trail vaporized an asteroid 728 meters across in a brilliant white flash. He had reached the outer edge of the asteroid sphere of debris just within the edge of Earth's solar system. During the journey from Messier 87, Gabriel’s encrypted data was nearing ninety percent decrypted and filed. Soon his database would be complete. He struck another asteroid. This time a glancing blow shearing off some metal and pushing the remaining its original course.

It was time to make another contact with the vessel, Griffin DeLuca. To help prepare the vessel and allow time for them to accept angelic directive, each contact’s intensity was increased. In the first contact the vessel was asleep, allowing the communication to be easier and simpler to maintain. In past visits, the vessel would awaken and vividly recall the dream and take it as an omen. If the vessel had been awake, it would be called a “vision,” and taken as divine intervention.

This contact protocol called for Gabriel to slow to less than light speed in order to achieve more focused concentration and to confirm his exact location. Gabriel's robot like energy apparition had given him navigational instructions and had decrypted those instructions hours before. The Archangel was unaware his flight wake was detonating asteroids. Behind him, a trail of white flashes and molten debris. Below light speed his form entered a large asteroid as easy as a ghost entering heavy fog. The asteroid had only a moment to quake before vaporizing, chased apart by a white spherical flash of raw energy. The destruction didn’t happen from impact but from an internal catalytic event of Gabriel's endless energy. Nothing could contain the raw radiant heat and power. The crack and explosions had no atmosphere in which to sound. When Gabriel passed through these cold giants, muffled "whomps" were quickly suppressed from what little frozen water, oxygen, and hydrogen they possessed. Behind Gabriel was a clear cylindrical path through hundreds of thousands of kilometers of asteroid field. What wasn't destroyed was easily displaced from unencumbered shockwaves.

Slowing further, Gabriel's travel extruded a long white-blue tail, similar to an ice comet. The effect wasn't from Gabriel losing energy. The smear effect was created as his energy came into contact with small particular matter at slower speeds. Space wasn’t empty. Solar particles, dusts, and pebbles filled space from its original creation. Only the space of inner solar systems would be free of this debris.

Gabriel reached out with his thoughts. At fifty million kilometers, Gabriel's celestial form was relatively “close” to Earth. This would be the last contact before penetrating Earth's atmosphere. Because vessels had no experience, or facility, to engage in thought-speak, Gabriel had to instigate communication. This one-way method of opening communications would continue until possession was successful. “Griffin,” Gabriel sent out into the vacuum of space. “Griffin.”

The Dream of Children

Griffin looked at his D'Anjou pear, examining every square centimeter for irregularity. The pear had ripened on Griffin’s desk for almost a week. From what he had read on the internet, it was at its peak. Slowly Griffin carved away the pear's thin peel with a sharp kitchen knife he'd brought from home. The skin came away easily. Each peel bleed droplets of juice. The pear was delicious, slightly grainy in texture and flavorful. Griffin imagined that the pear tasted like a southern white pear mixed with red wine. Each slice erased the memory of the chicken salad sandwich he had gnawed on just a few minutes ago. Griffin noted a tinge of displeasure as he sliced down the thinning core of the pear which produced a sliver of the white fruit.

“Griffin.” Someone had called out his name. The voice was foreign but somehow familiar. Griffin turned to look left and right with an uneasy expectation he was about to converse with someone he hadn't seen in years. He stood and looked down the sidewalk, in each direction. But, everywhere he looked along Ninth Avenue, no one stopped to collect is reply. No one was looking at him, no one was speaking to him, no one was there. “Well,” Griffin reasoned, "This is what happens when you eat lunch on the street.” Griffin sat and began to assemble his trash back into the brown paper sack.

“Griffin,” the voice repeated. The voice deep now. Hearing his name closer, louder, startled Griffin and made him sit up straight. Griffin looked to his immediate right, where he thought someone had sat next to him and was speaking directly into his ear. No one was there. And then, neither was Griffin.

From under the cool shade of the edge of a forest, Griffin looked across a small river at four children playing on the opposite bank. At first, everything around him was familiar, expected, known, and cherished. Those feelings seemed borrowed and quickly faded. He looked at the children again and saw they were not humans. They had two arms, two legs, fingers and toes; however their limbs were more insect like in design. No, not with an exoskeleton, but longer limbs, more pronounced bones and joints. Muscles not in clumped adjacency like humans, but more sinuous, longer. On closer observation Griffin noted their skulls had twin slightly raised ridges under the skin. The ridges began several centimeters above each temple and crossed the circumference of the skull, ending before the neck. They were beautiful beings. Despite the sunlight that bathed the opposite river bank, the children's skin was pink, supple. They each had similar sandy brown hair and matching eyebrows. Their noses were flatter and wider than humans, but only by a small amount. And from where Griffin observed, their mouths were quite human and expressive.

And as they played with small white stones, Griffin understood why they seemed like children. The laughter, antics, and play — yes, they were playing a game, tossing the small stones in an order to each placed stone. Griffin couldn't make out the meaning, but he knew these were playing children.

Griffin became aware that he was spying on the children. He was ten meters deep under a deep green canopy, standing half-hidden behind the trunk of a tree. A tree?

“What variety of tree is this?” Griffin asked as he observed and felt the trunk. He had never seen it’s like before.

The ground cover didn’t complete with the trees. The ground was covered with dark leafy vegetation, made darker under the shade. Sprites of light danced on top, having escaped through the canopy. Looking around Griffin realized he couldn't recognize any of the vegetation. Even though Griffin was an urbanite, he held some knowledge of plant life from his youth and vacations.

"Nope, no poison ivy here,” Griffin determined. Somehow this made Griffin more relaxed, nearing comfortable. He had been highly allergic to poison ivy and was glad to discover he wasn't standing ass-deep in it now.

As Griffin took in more of his surroundings, when the big question clanged in his head: "Where am I?" Griffin felt the humidity keeping his sweat close to his body. He heard unfamiliar birds and insects within the canopy. He saw the shade keeping away bright sunlight, which was much like Earth's Sun but gave off a more yellow light. He could hear the river and the children. He could smell a slight damp vegetable decay, common to any forrest on a warm summer day. Finding no answers he focused again on their play. Leaning his weight against the tree with his chest, Griffin half embraced the trunk with his right arm. Finding perfect comfort in placing his head against the tree, Griffin simply watched. In so doing he found and embraced what felt like an eternal peace. It was if Griffin were taking a nap, in the same hammock, on the same warm afternoon, in his own backyard, as he had done so for years. His mind emptied. Griffin simply was a part of this moment, watching the children play, observing in peace. Here. Now.

Griffin realized another feeling, drawing upon it like it were from short term memory: he had come here to observe the children with another. The realization didn't surprise or startle Griffin; he embraced it as he was embracing the tree. Turning to his left he looked upon the other observer.

He said with the comfort of addressing a close family member, "They are beautiful. I feel I could watch them forever.”

“Yes,” the other responded in a whisper, "I feel I already have.”

Before Griffin stood a mature specimen of the humanoid children he had been watching. The skull ridges were less pronounced. He was tall and his arms were mantis-like in appearance. Griffin drew upon the insect qualities in his mind. The eyes were blue, glowing blue, ridiculously blue. The being wore a thickly woven shirt of heavy white linen embroidered with what looked like pure gold strands.

"Who are you?" Griffin asked.

"You already know,” the other said.

"You are Gabriel, the Herald of God, the Archangel of Doom,” Griffin said, trance-like.

"And you are the vessel of wisdom, Griffin,” Gabriel replied matter-of-factly. "Through you I seek the messenger of God.”

Griffin came back to Ninth Avenue in a thunder crack of sound and sensation.

He found himself seated, palms cooling on the granite bench. Griffin's mouth, like his mind, was dry and cottony. He stood and turned left and looked across Penn Avenue, right and looked south to Liberty Avenue.

“What?” bounced around in Griffin's head. So did, “I’m losing my mind.” “What?” “Why?” “Alone?” “What is happening?"

Turning back towards the bench, Griffin saw the pear core on the sidewalk in front of where he had been seated.

“I was here,” Griffin said to the bench. The bench didn't reply. However, Griffin thought if it did, bench conversation would not have frightened him now.

“I was here,” thought Griffin. "Was I there?"

Griffin sat back down upon the bench.

“I can't do this. I can't fall apart like this,” Griffin tried to reason. He put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands and did his very best to hold onto this reality. Gathering up the paper sack and pear core, torn between reality and somewhere else, Griffin carried his numbness to his office tower. After gathering his personal belongings from his desk, Griffin took the stairs down to the fifteenth floor, so he wouldn’t run into any of his peers. The request for PTO nearly broke Griffin. The short ten minutes made him feel less than worthless. He felt broken. Griffin imagined the strange looks he got were normal from the counselor in Human Resources. But for Griffin, the looks only darkened his spirit.

Two weeks alone to get his shit together.

As Griffin took the elevator down to the garage floors, he tried to hold himself together until he could get home. He held himself back from crying out for help. Did he have a chemical imbalance? Was he exposed to a harmful chemical? Griffin searched his limited memory of his family's mental history. He couldn’t recall any comments about or meetings with of relatives who were complete whackos. He walked up to his car and clicked the remote to unlock his driver’s door. Fear rushed over Griffin's scalp. Could he drive home? What if he hallucinated again? He leaned against his car and blew out a ragged breath.

“Hold it together for a little longer, buddy.” Griffin said.

Moments later Griffin turned left onto Penn Avenue.