Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 18:26:01 +0000
From: Timothy Stillman <menovember@hotmail.com>
Subject: Advent of the Angels

			   Advent of the Angels

				    By

			       Tim Stillman

He had come here, in order to hide himself away. This evil boy who did not
BELIEVE. Who would never BELIEVE. He had tried, honestly. And now was the
final moment of the world. Come the Armageddon. And he knew he was the
lowest of them all as he hid with his eyes closed, drawing himself into
himself as neatly and precisely as he could, having never been a neat and
precise boy. Inside his closed lids, he saw the sky raining fife and the
great gouging of blood. He heard in his closed ears the screams of the
multitudes and he felt the angels of wrath descending on him, as he hid
behind a tree and hillock on the high hill outside the little town. The hill
that had been his secret place, for when he was always wrong, and he always
was.

He shivered, though the summer day was terrifically hot. And he had his
knees drawn up and his arms around the kneecaps. He had his head down and
bowed. He had always been a trembler. And he had been sent to Sunday school
and church all his life. They talked about the End of Days. They talked
endless of Hell. And filled his soul, did he have one?, with horror and
nightmares. And now he was to begin his descent. How could a 16-year-old boy
have done something so horribly wrong, or an accumulation of somethings so
horribly wrong, that he would be sentenced to the Lake of Fire forevermore?

There was a shuddering in the sky and he felt it in the heart of him, the
fast beating rabbit heart of himself who would be so very little more. A
fever not to pass. Angels with huge broadswords and armor and breastplates
of steel, riding white chargers, wings of fire attached to them and their
steeds, white and pure, to cleave his body in twain, like the Good Book
said. He not seeing the goodness and love in hatred and war and murder-how
could a loving God be behind all of that? He suspected perfidious man behind
that and thought man a very small, sometimes very evil being indeed. And
even then he tried to pray. Forgive that previous thought. To nothing. To
everything. He was scared. This meant he believed. And this must count for
something. Though he knew it did not.

He was hearing flutters in the sky and a ratcheting opening of the lid of
it, like a huge curtain being pulled back, when he knew there really was no
sky to begin with, but there seemed a moving of it, a pulling back of its
robes of summer and winter and Fall and spring all the same, and all at
once. He could hear no horses neighing, no fine and hot baited breath on
him, but he heard the wings, mighty wings and unforgiving wings and wings of
heat and desolation and volcanoes and soon he would be tossed and he had not
had a chance to even really live yet and he wanted it not to be and he felt
a scream rise up from deeply inside him. He was a boy of shy and timid. But
he too could be pushed to the breaking point. He had had too much derision,
too much failure in life, disappointed his parents and his teachers, and was
always running off to hide deeply somewhere. And he had HAD ENOUGH DAMMIT.
He was tired of running through life scared and hiding in darkened doorways.
He had not had a friend. Not ever. And he felt tears screaming down his face
and they matched visually the voice that came out of his mouth of a sudden,
as he screamed and SCREAMED his RAGE at the things above him, there to cast
him down, there to play Halloween for all Eternity on him, and for what?,
for what?, look at all the monsters and let them pretend holy, but this boy,
who had done nothing, who had been polite and kind and not a taker and not a
liar and not arrogant and not greedy and not insane^ืand he screamed THIS IS
INSANE to the angels and opened his eyes wide, and spewed forth into the
volcano red and roiling skies and found them---

There. A sky of sweetest summer. A sky of blue and gold. A sky where you
could sit on your porch on a Sunday afternoon, with a glass of sweet tea
beside you as you sat on the glider, and listen to the excited voices
describing a baseball game far away and right there at your ear at the same
time too. And in the sky, there were angels, and they said we have sent our
bloodier brothers after those who deserve all the punishment they have
blathered about and foisted on others, forget them, we have come for you and
the others like you in their own way and the angels were legion. And the
angels were naked. And their wings were bright scarlet and deep night purple
and there were wings with designs on them, yellow and with like dark eyes
painted on them, and there was a patina on the wings and on the golden
bodies and in the diamond eyes of theirs. And they were flying so
beautifully. The boy felt what the word "awe" and the word "reverence"
really meant. The angels had long hair that wafted in the summer winds and
their hair was golden and blonde and their hair was dark as raven wings and
their hair was red as sunset on distant seas he had seen in picture books
and their arms and legs were long and thin and tapered and their bodies were
like his and they were unlocked from the vaults of heaven, and they
whispered again to him, as had they before, that he was forever unlocked
from Earth which had bloomed him for this moment.

And they had penises and they were erect and he thought it such an
extraordinarily good joke that THIS was Armageddon. This was what everybody
was always going on about and scaring themselves and each other with. This
was not pain. This was the boy standing, as they said to him, near and far
away, brocaded on a sky or repose and relax and feel happy and be brave and
we will help you and we will never leave, they said to him, take off your
own clothes. And he felt his clothes slip away as cold butter just put on
warm toast, and it was right he had an erection too and it was right his
body was as theirs, and wings^ืhe had WINGS. And that too was accepted so
easily by him, for though he was becoming something more than human, he
still had that human quality to accept so quickly, to adapt to certain
amazing things with equally amazing ease. His wings he saw without seeing
them. He felt them as though with a new set of eyes were billowy and glowy
and cottony and they were huge for his body as the wings for the angels were
also huge for theirs, and he walked away from the tree that had sheltered
him for so many years now, and he lifted his hands to the nearest angel who
was as near as his own heart beat, and nearer, and fingers touched fingers
and then hands touched hands, and he lifted off and he was in the sky, and
he was an angel.

This particular angel held him closely, and the warmth of their bodies was
invigorating and the warmth of summer remembered instead of its reality of
too hot too unbearable humid, but what the mind makes of it in the chilled
snow winter months, and he felt the angel's heart beat beside his own cheek
he lay on the angel's breast. And their penises, both erect, against each
other's, tingly and sexual and easy and beautifully felt through their own
bodies, as the angel's delicate finely boned hands reached to the boy's
nipples and hardened them and lowered his perfectly shaped beautifully boned
face to them and began to suckle them.

And the angels around them flew and covered them and held their wings as the
newest angel and his true love finally found made love and they listened as
the sighs happened and the sky was blessed with the blue hurt that was made
and the silver sigh that came a moment after, and the hearts of the angels
were not offended, no massive insane God came to take rage on this outrage,
for it was not outrage at all. And the angels in the skies of July with
white fleecy clouds floating along lazy and easy also, the angels turned to
each other, and caressed each other's bodies, thighs, and hips, and chests
and abdomens and penises, and they kissed each other's mouths and the boy
heard through all of this that it would be forgiveness, that it would be
this mountain scene of cold distances away, where the angels looked and
smiled and kept promises and did not go away and did not die and they
cartwheels they turned and the way they flew, fast and slow, and the turns
and upright shots and the downward daring drives, for angels too are fragile
and they too can be hurt and killed, to the ground, but pulling up from the
ground the very second they would have collided with it, just in the nick of
time.

And the boy and his angel slept in each other's arms and the angels flew
beside them and painted streams in their dreams, blue and soft and
meandering streams, and country roads of a sunset Autumn afternoon when
things are calm and happy and the sky is like the sky of a cathedral and
love is coming soon...and love is coming soon...and a farmhouse welcomes with
smoke from the chimney rising and you're safe there, there is someone there
who is waiting specifically for you, and you cuddle in arms of an angel and
you dream and you are this boy, you, reading this, you who may be sad and
lonely, you, who may feel you're the most evil creature on Earth, named so
by truly evil people who now and forever, no longer exist, and the boy wakes
from his dream, and expects to be thrown into a nightmare, like so many
times before, and he sees his true love with wings of striped tiger painted
wings and he reaches out to touch them with trembling hand and the angel
smiles shyly and somewhat slyly, knowing of the fun ahead, and that it was
all right to actually have fun, to smile to laugh and to feel oh god thank
you oh god thank you for my life way up here so high in the sky and the
skies we will fly after this one too and time is fine and being no longer an
Earth boy is the greatest thing of all, and the boy whispered something into
the wing of his love, as he touched his lips to it, then leaned backward and
watched, without blinking, so brave he all of a sudden, why had no one told
him this?, they were wrong, for him, his fate, and the angel nodded and
said, "yes, that's exactly my name.

I've been waiting for so long." And they held each other tightly and the
angels around them swooped and darted and sang and softly and low and
happily and flying in all formations and flying in stooped forgiveness and
in proud initiation and the attainment of not regress, of not one more
lonely night for the wayward boys of this could be so beautiful planet for
they were safe and free, as was he, as are you, if you believe, as this boy
of Angel holding trustingly to his love's neck, never for one single minute
since he lifted off the ground, feeling afraid of falling, as they swooped
and flew like Superman and like Batman on Invisible Bat Ropes, all over the
sky, invisible trapezes for them to do amazing baffling angel aerobatics the
country side below, the hill, as the boy flew higher and higher till he
could not even see the tree, and then so high, not even the hill...and said
goodbye to it in Angel talk, and thanked it for its friendship and for
understanding everything every private moment he talked to it of in all
those years of secrets. And the earth was beautiful. Man had left. The Earth
was a lovely picture post card of pristine and ethereal perfection that
said, welcome back, please, come home to us sometime, and the angels letting
it know they will not forget, they will return...and they and all the very
newest angels are looking at the sun and it does not burn their diamond
eyes. And the earth tasted the shadows of the angels till giving the shadows
up to them again. Faith to be rewarded. Promises to be kept.

Especially not the diamond eyes of a boy who had finally come to BELIEVE.