One Minute to Midnight (7 page)

"OK, you're freaking me out. Let's go
get a drink, and forget about all this war talk. If you're all at
war that can't mean anything good for us lowly humans."
The ground outside began to rumble and shake, as if the entire city
was about to fall. Glass shattered from apartments all over Jim's
complex as building supports twisted and rattled in the quake.
Yalesh suddenly looked concerned. This frightened Jim.
"It has already begun. The demons are on their way. My angels
should be here shortly."
"You saying there's going to be a war between Heaven and Hell in my
backyard?" Jim asked.
"Not between, we are allies against a greater foe in this conflict.
I've been a fool." She shook her head.
"What's coming, Yalesh?"

"The Dark." Yalesh vanished in an
instant.
"Yaleeeeesh! Don't you bail out now! Get back here! This is my
Sunday!" Jim screamed.

Large cracks opened up in the asphalt
parking lot. Cars slid into the new holes against the screech of
their parked wheels. People screamed, running in every direction,
fleeing for their lives as the odor of sulfur permeated once fresh
morning air. Jim stood in his third floor apartment, looking down
with a mixture of fear and amazement as a massive winged beast
erupted from one of the holes. The demon had horns on each side of
his face. His skin was a shade of burnt sienna, and on his enormous
back were massive black wings that, when spread wide, covered half
a football field. Jim involuntarily wet himself as he shook with
fear. More appeared, some smaller, some larger, but all of them
terrifying.
"Angels! You’d better get down here, or The Dark won't be our only
foe today!" One demon screamed.
"You and I both know how that would end. Just like all the other
times, and these humans would all die in the aftermath." A man with
dark skin floating through the air on white wings said.

The angel's wings were almost
translucent. He was as large as the demon and carried a sword of
fire. The demon looked around at the people running and
screaming.
"Small loss." The demon growled.

"Magmoth, please assemble your army.
Mine should be through the inter-dimensional rift right about..."
The sky filled with angelic figures from one horizon to another.
"Now!"

"Impressive Gabriel. Now, what did I
have for breakfast?" Magmoth asked with a morbid smirk.
He did not wait for an answer to the rhetorical question, but
turned to face an ever-growing cacophony of winged monsters from
the bowels of Hell. Terror and winged splendor filled the world of
man for the first time in its existence. Religious extremists,
thinking this was their judgment day, began committing suicide en
masse. Jim could think of nothing more constructive to do, so he
sat courtside and watched the horror show go on.
"You maggots listen to me! Lucifer is on his way, and when The Dark
shows itself we are going to close the abyss with this one, here!"
Magmoth held Yalesh in his hand, dangling her before the
hordes.
There was a deafening cry as the demons all screamed and grunted
approval. The angels, led by Gabriel, rallied around
Magmoth.

"Yalesh, you know the penalty for
interaction with humanity. I am very sorry, but you will be thrown
into the abyss as punishment, and the resulting explosion should
undo this damage."

"Isn't there any other way?" Yalesh
pleaded.
"Your physical form and ninth dimensional light will be rejected by
The Dark, which should cause a chain reaction and close the hole."
Magmoth said.
Jim was watching all of this, feeling helpless and hopeless. He
couldn’t bear to see his lovely angel tossed into a terrifying
abyss. Down the street, an enormous, dark black hole began to
materialize.
"The Dark comes!" Magmoth screamed.

In a moment, black figures began
marching through the black hole, resembling human forms, except
that they were blank and featureless. Jim ran downstairs toward the
melee in a desperate attempt to save his friend Yalesh from her
fate. The war had begun, and all over his city the sky was filled
with fire as angels swooped down swiftly, cleaving agents of The
Dark in two. Demons and angels alike swarmed the portals, some
being sucked into oblivion by the nothingness within. Gabriel
strode toward the nearest portal with Yalesh, still in her smaller
human form, in his right hand. With the left hand he cleaved dark
soldiers in two, never stopping as they formed pools of darkness on
the ground. These monsters absorbed sunlight with their presence
and the sky grew dim overhead.
"Stop, don't throw her in! Take me instead!" Jim screamed.
He dodged one brutal fight after another as the chaos of the battle
ensued. Yalesh was limp with despair, dismayed by the trouble her
good intentions had wrought, and with no hope remaining in her
heart, she was prepared to suffer till the end. The very end. If
any of them were pulled into the abyss, there was no escape. The
Dark was death for the soul.
"Don't do it!" Jim yelled.

Gabriel raised Yalesh into the air.
Suddenly, Jim made one leap toward her. He grabbed her hands and
both of them went reeling toward one of the dark gashes. He managed
to get his arms around her as they hurled toward oblivion. The two
smashed into the black hole and an explosion rang out that threw
them into some nearby bushes. A scream pierced the air, so loud and
deafening that it set off car alarms. The Dark had not expected
this turn of events. Angels and demon's had been the creators of
man, and now creator and created had attempted to pass through the
void, creating a paradox for The Dark. Yalesh looked at Jim for the
first time in her life, finally feeling the love he had for her. It
was different now. She had been changed. The dark agents dissipated
like smoke on a strong wind, as angels and demons stood by,
dumbfounded by this universal transcendence of love.

"Jim's actions nullified the existence
of The Dark in this realm and it was forced to retreat. It could
not cope with this interdimensional love." Gabriel said.
"Are you OK, Yalesh?" Jim asked.

"I'm fine, but I feel strange. I don't
understand." She had a bruise on her cheek from the fall.
"You're human now and will remain this way as you grow old."
Gabriel said.

Yalesh felt her face and winced at the
pain. She understood what had happened now. Jim put his arms around
her as she embraced him. Yalesh's golden blonde hair smelled like
roses in full bloom.
"We're leaving!" Magmoth growled at Gabriel.
Gabriel nodded toward Magmoth, who snarled and glided on onyx wings
toward the gigantic hole he had emerged from.

"I can never return home, isn’t that
right Gabriel?" Yalesh asked.

"No, your present form would not
survive. You will remain in the realm of humanity, grow old, and
expire as humans do when your time here is ended."
Yalesh nodded acceptance to Gabriel who flapped his wings once and
vanished along with his chorus of heavenly warriors. Yalesh took
Jim by the hand, and smiled warmly.

"What's that smile? You're not sad
being stuck here?" Jim asked.

"What happened—that explosion—when we
slammed into the abyss, our vibrational energies actually fused
together, allowing us to transcend darkness through love. And I
fell in love with you simultaneously. I guess I always knew I felt
this way, but our worlds kept us apart. I think I needed to know
you felt the same. I needed to know our energies could
intertwine."

"I'm in love with an angel." Jim
said.

"I'm hungry for the first time in my
life. Would you like to get something to eat?" She
asked.

"Starving!" He replied.

The two walked hand in hand through a
field of destruction, grateful to be alive, and in search of an
open restaurant for dinner.

moonlight serenade

Death rained from the sky, blanketed
in thick, black clouds of smoke while buildings burned to charred
wrecks in the city. As each bomb delivered its payload, deafening
noise split the night, while a tapestry of fire spread through
shelled out hulks of structures where people used to live. Now,
this was the devil's house, where no hope of escape from misery and
pain existed. Fallen walls lay in crumbled piles, covering the
corpses of those unable to escape the raid, and their stench added
to the horror of the atmosphere. Allied troops, weary and
relentless, pressed on through a night of smoldering fires,
charcoaled corpses, and intense heat, threatening to drive them all
mad. Exhausted beyond imagination from days without sleep, and numb
from a nightmare none had expected when enlisting, these men fought
a highly trained and vicious enemy: Adolf Hitler's Third
Reich.

Corporal Dan Stoltz stood brave and
alone as his platoon took offensive positions around the remains of
a building, waiting for an approaching Panzer. His mission was to
deploy a sticky bomb onto the side of the Nazi tank and disable its
tracks. He heard the whining, grinding, crunching sound of tank
wheels getting close, and readied himself. It would turn left
around the corner to his right, and then he would pull the pin. He
saw the front tracks, and it began to turn as he activated the
sticky bomb. Just as he was slapping the bomb onto the tank an SS
soldier shot him in the abdomen. Now wounded, and stuck to the
device and tank, the young man closed his eyes before the bomb went
off, launching his lifeless body and plastering his dog tags into
the wall behind him. The war was over for Dan.

JT Parker bolted upright in bed as
sweat soaked the pillow he had been resting his head on. That dream
had been recurring for a week, and each time it ended with the same
result. The soldier would die, and then JT would wake up terrified
and sweating. JT's wife Serena lay resting next to him, her eyelids
fluttering in REM sleep as JT calmed his breathing. She was
smiling, and then her brow furrowed as the corners of her mouth
turned downward. A single tear rolled away from her right eye, and
she woke up.
"Good morning. My god, you're drenched." Serena said.

"I had that dream again about the war
in Germany. Every time, it's the same thing. This soldier gets
blown up and I wake up in our bed. It's the fifth time this week
and it's making me crazy."

"I hear you there; my dreams this week
have been about a woman dancing with a soldier to Moonlight
Serenade at a ball. He's in a brown uniform, and she's wearing the
most beautiful pearls around her neck and they're in love. Then he
disappears and she doesn't know where he's gone and I feel so much
sorrow. I wake up upset and my pillow is wet from
crying."

"Do you believe in reincarnation?" JT
asked.
"I'm not sure. I suppose anything's possible, but these are just
very vivid dreams."

"They feel so real though, and why are
they happening now? I've never had dreams about war before." JT
said.

He put his head in his hands, ran them
up over his sweat soaked bangs and pushed them back.
"Do you remember when we first met?" JT asked.
"Yeah, you tried to steal the last rum ball at Jim's Christmas
party." Serena answered.

"All's fair in love and rum balls.
Anyway, I thought I knew you the minute we looked in each other's
eyes. I felt like we'd been friends before. If that makes any
sense."

"I kind of felt something like that.
It was a kind of déjà vu." Serena said.

A few days passed and JT's dreams
changed. The soldier was at a dance, instead of a battle, suffering
the war’s devastation. The stranger in his dress uniform held a
beautiful woman, as he spun her around the dance floor with grace.
She wore a string of pearls, and glowed with love for the soldier
as their orchestra played Moonlight Serenade. For the first time in
a week, JT woke up feeling fully rested, with Serena's head lying
against his shoulder. She opened her eyes, smiling.

"Good morning. You look like you
finally had good dreams," she said.

"I was at a dance," he
smiled.

"Were you? I was too, the same one as
before. I guess I'm rubbing off."

Later that day a knock came at the
door. JT went to see who was there while Serena pushed play on
their MP3 player.

JT opened the door, and nobody was
there. He looked down to see a small box wrapped in brown paper.
There was no writing on it anywhere, and as he walked back inside,
Moonlight Serenade began to play.

"Did you pick that song?" JT
asked.

"No, I've got it on
shuffle."

JT unwrapped the box and opened the
top. His mouth dropped open with surprise. Serena walked over to
see.

"Oh my," she whispered.

JT brought out a pearl
necklace and a set of dog tags with the name
Dan Stoltz
engraved in the metal. He
was breathless. It had taken them seventy years to find each other
again.

"I remember you got called to war
before our song ended." Serena said. Her eyes were wide as saucers.
JT clasped the pearls around her neck as she rested the dog tags
around his.

"I believe we have a dance to finish."
JT replied.
He took her left hand in his, cupped his right hand behind her
shoulder blade and began to sway with Serena as Moonlight Serenade
played on in the dim light of their living room.