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.