Catastrophe Jones

I can’t put it any clearer than this:

I could’ve sworn that my life was going to flash before my eyes. It was only a moment or two, but looking up the barrel of a gun can make any distance, whether seconds or inches, seem like something impossibly longer.

I could almost taste gunpowder from the recent shot. I could smell the blood of those who’d fallen around me. I could see his face, the voids of his eyes. I could hear my own heartbeat.

In a moment I realized, utterly, the word ‘finite’. It defined my life. There were only so many breaths left. Only so many moments. Hours. Days.

Whether in seconds or years, I was going to die.

Watching him smile, it occurred to me that I didn’t mind.

Not one bit.

The first time I saw the angel, I’d been sitting on a fire escape for the past three hours, cursing the skies. It was late June, and there seemed to be no end in sight to the thunderstorms that had a choke hold on the city. As always, there was a purple-grey pall laying just above the tops of the skyscrapers, turning all light dim, weeping dulled tears that only glittered when they were streaking through the strange haze of the arc sodium lights, from just past dusk until just before dawn.

It seemed as though it was somewhere in the middle of the fabled forty days and forty nights. Had God rescinded His rainbow? Already, in surrounding, low-lying areas, there were places that had flood warnings, the unseasonable wetness plaguing people with worry about travel, about safety, about health.

Soaking wet as I was, I was starting to worry about mine, as well. It didn’t take much to get a cold, these days, and I really didn’t want to find myself with a case of walking pneumonia.

But I digress. That day, I saw him for the first time, but I had no wonder at his existence, only in his presence. What was he doing here?

Thick clouds hung low over the city, purple-black giants whose roiling shapes attempted to swim past the clawed fingers of the up-reaching skyscrapers, but instead found themselves caught on those same spires, and were torn open. They bled down a cold, splattering rain that left nothing sheltered from the deluge, making the world a glistening, gray mass, wet and seething with the huddled masses of people in the midst of their hurried lives.

The public drove through black lakes on the macadam, hustled beneath sodden umbrellas, and crossed crowded lanes of soggy traffic. Hookers peddled their bodies like the vendors selling hotdogs and pretzels, everyone trying to shield their wares from the downpour.

Only an hour ago, people were seeking relief from the oppressive heat of the scorching summer afternoon, but the rain was no longer refreshing; Mother Nature had gone from soothing to striking, and the world lay drowning beneath her outrage.

I lay in my bed, listening to it battering the roof. The occasional drip would splash against my forehead, and I swear I heard The Four Horsemen riding down from the heavens.

Personally, I wanted to curse the heavens, but I suppose now, looking back, that it was their turn to curse me.

We didn’t know what to do, at first, when we landed. The atmosphere was clean, breathable, and the light levels were warm and inviting. The gouge we’d carved through the landscape looked like a bloody wound in the moons’ light, a slash across the face of the mountains, jaggedly tumbling down to the plain. The dust in the air hung in strange curtains, and the sound of our impact was still rolling in the distance, a thunder that kept shaking the ground in irregular pulses, echoes of our craft skipping, a flat stone across still water, until it finally tore into the hillside.

My adventurous colleagues set out to explore, but I refused.

They arrived in droves, surging forth out of the darkness on strange beasts made of metal and light; a liquid emotion dwelt below their surface, and they howled like demons until they crested the closest hill, then their howls became song, and their machine-beasts became sleek and swift and elegant creatures, and as they approached us, in the last moment, only I saw them for what they were: a mirage within an endless waste, a barren horror.

“How beautiful!” my comrades cried. “How angelic!” I tried to explain, to warn, but they heard divinity from the strangers, and only senseless fear from me.

Do not mistake — they existed, in and of themselves, but they were not singing, nor were their beasts the majestic hallowfeld of old, with their shining hooves and feathered wings. Instead, they were still the horrors that had poured forth from the horizon, howling despair, not offering rapture. They existed in singular hunger for us, and as they came, my comrades opened their arms and were slain to the last man, while I remained within the ship, and thus was left safe. They left, taking the bodies of the slain, and I was left alone.

That was many, many years ago.

Tomorrow, I will leave the ship, to hear their song, and see their beauty, even if it is only a mirage.

In my age, I find that I prefer even their song to silence.

We didn’t know what to do, at first, when we landed. The atmosphere was clean, breathable, and the light levels were warm and inviting. The gouge we’d carved through the landscape looked like a bloody wound in the moons’ light, a slash across the face of the mountains, jaggedly tumbling down to the plain. The dust in the air hung in strange curtains, and the sound of our impact was still rolling in the distance, a thunder that kept shaking the ground in irregular pulses, echoes of our craft skipping, a flat stone across still water, until it finally tore into the hillside.

My adventurous colleagues set out to explore, but I refused.

They arrived in droves, surging forth out of the darkness on strange beasts made of metal and light; a liquid emotion dwelt below their surface, and they howled like demons until they crested the closest hill, then their howls became song, and their machine-beasts became sleek and swift and elegant creatures, and as they approached us, in the last moment, only I saw them for what they were: a mirage within an endless waste, a barren horror.

“How beautiful!” my comrades cried. “How angelic!” I tried to explain, to warn, but they heard divinity from the strangers, and only senseless fear from me.

Do not mistake — they existed, in and of themselves, but they were not singing, nor were their beasts the majestic hallowfeld of old, with their shining hooves and feathered wings. Instead, they were still the horrors that had poured forth from the horizon, howling despair, not offering rapture. They existed in singular hunger for us, and as they came, my comrades opened their arms and were slain to the last man, while I remained within the ship, and thus was left safe. They left, taking the bodies of the slain, and I was left alone.

That was many, many years ago.

Tomorrow, I will leave the ship, to hear their song, and see their beauty, even if it is only a mirage.

In my age, I find that I prefer even their song to silence.