Journey From Heaven

by Joe Derkacht

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  How much longer?

  Not much. He has just a few more edges to come off.

  A few more edges? What was I, a stone to be polished for someone’s rock collection?

  The nauseating motion ceased, yet I felt myself rushing upward, as if propelled through water by giant rubber flippers. Must reach air!

  A harshly grating, different voice spoke: “I want full power, everything she’s got.”

  “You’ll—kill—him—he’s just a little boy!”

  “Everything, curse you! Now!”

  Someone—perhaps some force—shoved me back under.

  I heard dials clicking. My back stiffened. I felt the old familiar surge through my body, like iced iron spikes driven down my spine. My head exploded, and everything went black again.

  “Thank God, he’s still alive!”

  “Of course he’s still alive. Why would you doubt me? I’m the doctor.”

  I was strapped to a cold metal table. I opened my eyes to blindingly bright lights. The light moved away, a wake of shadow following it.

  A black, round and kindly face bent over me from a great height, came near. It was Ralph, Dr. Laberly’s assistant.

  “Are you all right, Johnny?”

  My lips felt dry and cracked. My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth.

  “He’s crazy, you know,” he whispered into my ear.

  “Of course he’s crazy!”

  Ralph’s kindly face was pushed aside. Replacing it was the face of the man with black horn-rimmed glasses, Dr. Laberly, his milky blue eyes twin icebergs on the horizon of my consciousness. They loomed dangerously closer.

  “You shouldn’t have come back, you know that, don’t you?”

  “Water. Please,” I said, my voice a whispered croak.

  “Right away, Johnny.”

  It wasn’t Laberly who’d spoken; his head swiveled, eyes shooting malice toward Ralph.

  Moments later, a small paper cup was put to my lips, and I drank. The water was gone all too quickly. Ralph let my head back down to the table. The room felt icy cold. A split second later I realized I was naked, with leather restraints for clothing.

  Something burned at both temples. The doctor loomed over me again.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I managed to answer, speaking as if I’d never stuttered or stammered in my life, or lost my tongue to cancer. “He is all in all.”

  “Who?”

  “El Elyon,” I whispered. “Your old enemy.”

  “Little boy, you are insane, you are completely insane,” he whispered in return, backing away, unable to conceal the self-doubt in his eyes, the sudden recoil of fear.

  “Get out of my way,” he ordered Ralph. “I’ll handle the machine.”

  For a second I heard the sound of a scuffle, and then the doctor shouted hoarsely—

  “Everything! Full power! The works!”

  An icy spear shot down my spine, with branching spears piercing my limbs. My body arched, every joint crackling with the surge of electricity. Suns exploded around me, my head going nova. Yet one thing held me to the earth, one thought, one silken strand. I would never hold my daughter in my arms, hug her, kiss her, tell her I loved her. Judith would never look into my eyes and tell me, “I love you, Daddy.”

  Then even that strand broke. My daughter? I was a little boy! What did I know about daughters? More flames surrounded me. From somewhere outside the conflagration, I heard a commanding voice.

  Come up here!

  The flames were instantly snuffed. The ensuing darkness, at first everywhere and all-inclusive, began yielding to pinpoints of light. A beautiful, gorgeously executed door, rotating on a single axis, flew toward me through starry space, with a succession of other doors following, each one opening before I reached its threshold, allowing me passage through what seemed an infinitely long hallway. Gleaming exotic woods flashed with panes of diamond-like glass and inlays of mother of pearl, sunsets and sailing vessels, stars and the moon over water…

  I remembered them now. From my clocks I’d gone to carving noble native-Americans, and from them I’d graduated to custom-made doors, doors to grace mansions and boardrooms and churches. But could these doors really have belonged in some earthbound building? What building, unless made of diamond or gold, could possibly support the radiance emanating from each of these?

  Ahead, as door after door opened, more and more light was revealed. Gradually, the doors became a tunnel of light, and finally, light itself. I had come to the end of my journey. Within the light was a Man of pure light. I stared into the eyes of Jesus.

  God was all in all. Again!