Tara turned her attention from the road ahead and looked at me. “She didn’t do it, did she? Brent, this story is very intriguing, but… Please? Will you tell me now if somehow the abortion was prevented?”
I understood Tara’s growing concern, but I couldn’t answer her question. Not yet.
“Hon, I’m going to let this play out the way that Joshua gave it to me. Okay?”
She closed her eyes, swallowed, and gave me a little nod of her head.
“Thank you,” I said. “Still like me?”
“I’m trying to,” she said, eyes now open and a sad smile playing at the corners of her lips.
“I’ll take it,” I said smiling back. “Love you.”
“I know. Love you, too.”
“So, anyway… Elizabeth had a full day of school ahead of her, and she couldn’t have predicted what was going to happen there. Unfortunately, neither could I.”
BRENT STOOD IN one of the hallways of Lakeview High School. He watched as student traffic passed by and through him. It was an otherworldly experience and for several minutes he couldn’t get enough of it. If anyone could have heard him laughing and seen him making the rather childish movements to step directly in front of people, he’d surely have been thought insane.
Brent did reign himself in, though. Eventually. He knew that while he could certainly have some fun in his “god” role, his primary responsibility was the saving of a life; a tiny little girl who was gestating within a girl only fifteen years older.
In response to his call to responsibility, he mentally flipped on the tags of all three of the teenage girls who were, so far, the main actors in this life drama.
He heard Colleen’s, Tina’s, and Elizabeth’s thoughts clearly. They were a bit of a jumble at first, but Brent found that he could partition them in his mind somehow to make each of them a focus of his attention without missing anything that any of them were saying.
Amazing!
All three girls were in classes independent of one another. While Colleen and Tina were trying to focus on the subjects that were being taught, Elizabeth’s mind was elsewhere.
“…in study hall? What if one of them blurts something out loud when I tell them? Oh, God…I’m scared. I don’t want this. Why? Why did this happen to me?” A moment of thoughtful consideration. “Because I’m stupid. I should have known Jason didn’t love me like he said. The liar! He just wanted to get into my pants! I hate him!”
Brent released Colleen’s and Tina’s tags, deciding not to listen to their individual educations. He then willed himself to stand next to Elizabeth’s desk. Her dark hair now pulled into a ponytail, Elizabeth was staring blankly at her desk, fear obvious in her eyes. He wasn’t the only one to notice.
“Elizabeth?”
Her English composition teacher, Miss Harrell, approached her desk. Everyone else in the class was focused on writing in their notebooks. Apparently a desk devoid of paper and a writing utensil draws a little bit of scrutiny from a teacher.
Elizabeth startled. A panicked look crossed her face and eyes as she looked up at her teacher. She didn’t say a word.
Miss Harrell crouched down beside her desk and spoke quietly. “Is everything all right?”
Elizabeth looked away for a moment, her eyes darting quickly side-to-side while she developed a response.
That’s when Brent first noticed some…some thing…an intruder. He didn’t see where it came from, but it had quickly crawled up Elizabeth’s left side making sure that its mouth was close to her ear. It was small and hideous, with gray leathery skin on a very small frame of no more than eighteen inches in height. Its arms and legs were skinny, and its back had a series of lumps down its spine. It had an oversized head with two large, completely black eyes with top-and-bottom-moving eyelids that created an evil squint. But it was the thing’s mouth that was its most prominent feature. It seemed as though the whole body had been designed for the purpose of getting that mouth to where it needed to be. The mouth wasn’t wide and narrow like that of a human; when open, it was almost circular with one thick lip all the way around. Before it spoke, Brent could see how it was able to purse—draw in—its lips from every direction.
The vile, impish being shook Brent’s resolve. It may have only been eighteen inches tall, but its appearance put a fear in him that he had not experienced since his mid-teens and the coming of “the voices.”
“What is it?” he found himself whispering.
The creature turned its head in response and glared at him. Brent shivered. There was a hate in its gaze that he had never before experienced.
Elizabeth opened her mouth to respond to Miss Harrell, and that’s when Brent came to understand the thing’s purpose and the reason for which it had such a disproportionately large mouth.
The creature, with a raspy voice, spoke into Elizabeth’s ear exactly what she wanted to hear: an escape. As it fed her its lines, she repeated them with almost perfect synchronization.
“I have a family member that is sick. She’s near death. It’s all that I can think about today.”
Why is this thing lying for her? Brent wanted to know. What stake does it have in all of this?
Brent listened as Miss Harrell responded. “Elizabeth, I am very sorry to hear that. Do you need to talk? Should you maybe have stayed home today? For the rest of the week?”
Again the creature lied, and Elizabeth followed its lead. “No, I’ll…I’ll be all right. It’s the hurting and the waiting. My parents told me to come to school as there was nothing to be accomplished by sitting at home.”
“I understand. I won’t pry, but you can always talk with me or a school counselor. I’m going to grant you some leeway. You can catch up on this assignment later.”
Elizabeth looked up at her with a tear traveling down her cheek. “Thank you.”
Miss Harrell stood back up and momentarily rested a reassuring hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder. As she walked toward the front of the classroom, the creature looked at Brent with a smirk. At least it appeared to be a smirk. Then it suddenly disappeared from Elizabeth’s shoulder.
“Why did I say that?” wondered Elizabeth. “I could have just said I wasn’t feeling well.” She looked up at the clock above the door. “Twenty more minutes. What do I do next, lie to Colleen? Then what about Tina? Her, too?”
Brent realized that he was going to have to start figuring out how to operate in the midst of all of this. Lies, pregnancy, dysfunctional families, disbelief, desperation… The day had hardly begun and it was already getting too information-heavy and complex to handle. What else was going to get heaped onto him?
Elizabeth sighed. “I want this over with. I need this over with!”
Brent’s heart was moved for this girl. He knew little about her, but he understood her desperation. He felt a compulsion to pray for her, but as he was the only one listening to prayers right now, he didn’t bother. He was going to have to find a way to answer his own prayers for her…and for himself.
“WHAT’S WRONG?”
“Nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“So, there is something wrong?”
Elizabeth was feeling cornered by her friend. She knew that Colleen was familiar enough with internal strife to see the telltale signs. Elizabeth, though, didn’t feel the need to admit to anything.
Brent had walked with her to the study-hall room where Colleen was already sitting at a table, waiting. Group study was permitted, so that meant that soft conversations were not frowned upon by the teacher sitting at the head of the room, who was tasked with keeping the peace.
“Tina’s going to know something’s wrong, too.”
Elizabeth sighed. “I know.”
“May as well fess up.”
“At least I only have the one class with Tina.” “I’m not ‘fessing up’ anything. I’m just…I’m just not…I don’t want to talk about it.” “I could always tell Colleen and Tina what I told Miss Harrell.”
Brent wonder
ed if she would do just that. He knew that the resolve that she had shown before school, to confess everything to her friends, was waning.
At least, for the moment, there was no sign of a demon.
It was a demon, wasn’t it? Joshua said there would be angels and demons. But so small? In Brent’s mind, demons should have been at least human size. Not eighteen-inch midgets.
Was that all that I had been fearing back when I was sixteen? An impish demon with a loud voice? Is it that they are more intimidating because they aren’t seen, only heard?
Suddenly, another of Brent’s tags began thinking about Elizabeth. Tina was sitting in class half-listening to her teacher when she was struck with a thought. “Wish I were in Study Hall with Elizabeth and Colleen. I wonder if they’re talking about me. I’d hate it if I ever found out that they teamed up to talk about me behind my back. I don’t think they’re like that, though. I don’t think. Of course, Colleen could be talking with Elizabeth about Elizabeth. She did look pretty horrible this morning before classes. Is she okay? Maybe I’m just seeing things. Just a bad night’s sleep…”
Brent wasn’t sure that he wanted to listen any further to her insecure rambling. But just as quickly as he thought about temporarily muting her tag, he was struck with an idea. A question.
Instantly, Brent stood next to Tina in her classroom. It was time for an experiment.
What if he were to get Tina to pray? What would happen? Maybe nothing, as Brent was the answering ‘god’ in this whole situation. Then again, Tina wouldn’t be praying to Brent, now would she? She would be praying to God the Father in the name of Jesus. Wouldn’t that, regardless of Brent’s temporary god status, require the Father’s hands to move in some way? He promises to answer his own, doesn’t he?
Brent un-muted his tag on Tina and leaned down to her left ear. He whispered, “Pray for Elizabeth.”
Nothing. Just the same continuous jumbled thoughts.
He remembered, then, that Joshua had said that those not listening intently may need something loud from Brent in order to create a still, small voice in the mind of the hearer.
Brent didn’t hold back. He cupped his hands around his mouth, his pinky fingers almost touching Tina’s ears, and he shouted, “Tina! Pray for Elizabeth! Pray for Elizabeth right now!”
“…pair of shoes.” Tina’s thoughts came to a halt for a moment, as if something had caught her attention. She even sat up straight at her desk. “Elizabeth? Is something wrong?”
Brent yelled again, “Elizabeth needs your help! Pray for her right now!”
“Holy Spirit? Is that you? Elizabeth?”
Brent watched as she clasped her hands below the surface of her desk. She tilted her head, and Brent saw her lips begin to silently move.
“Father, I pray for Elizabeth right now…”
Brent didn’t wait around to listen to her pray. He could hear her just as well back in the study hall. He transported back to Elizabeth and Colleen.
“…in the name of Jesus. Something is wrong, isn’t it, Lord? I knew it! God, please help her. She needs answers to something that is troubling her. I don’t know if she’s in some sort of actual trouble, but if she is, I pray for her protection. Send a protector for her.”
I’m already right here, Brent thought. His rather haughty moment of self-importance didn’t allow him to anticipate what happened next.
Through the ceiling of the study hall came a brilliant flash of light, like a falling shaft that ended right behind Elizabeth’s chair. Almost as quickly as it appeared, the movement of the light ended in the appearance of an intimidatingly large creature crouching on the floor.
The being slowly stood…and stood some more…and stood even higher! It was huge! Easily over seven feet tall. And its body was scaled proportionately.
Unlike very tall humans that have to learn how to deal with their height, Brent could tell right away that this creature was constructed with the stability and balance to match its massive dimensions.
Brent backed up a couple of steps. His heart rate spiked and adrenaline flooded his veins. Fight or flight instincts were taking over, with flight proving itself to be very dominant at that moment.
The creature was an angel. There was no mistaking it to be anything else. But this was…this was beyond the scope of anything he had ever imagined.
In his mind, angels had always mirrored the image of men—maybe a little taller than average human beings, but still human-looking with large white wings. And, sure, an angel would probably be pretty muscular, but not to the point of it being alarming.
But this? This was very much alarming!
Brent’s attention was immediately drawn toward its grim expression. It did look nearly human. Its facial features were more angular than those of humans—some might even call it a chiseled-from-stone look—but the creature was definitely covered with skin, or something very like skin.
Its straight, jet-black hair fell just below its shoulders, while its eyes were an intense blue, with an I-dare-you-to-try-something-stupid statement written within. It backed up that non-verbal cue with a giant of a right hand already positioned on the hilt of a massive sword secured at its left side.
It had the appearance of one that spent every waking moment in a gym using massive amounts of weight to rip muscle into sculpted shoulders, legs, arms, and a zero-body-fat mid-section.
And the wings!
Two huge, powerful-looking wings were folded behind its back. Brent couldn’t see them fully, but the bends of the wings extended a good two feet above the creature’s head. Feathers, of a sort, were built into the wings—definitely not bird feathers, but something stronger. They looked as though they could stop an arrow from penetrating.
The being looked around the room, searching for anything adversarial. When it saw that there was no apparent or immediate threat, it appeared to relax a little, then trained its blue eyes on Brent.
Right away Brent could tell that the thing was sizing him up, but after a moment it gave him a nod of acknowledgment.
The fear wasn’t exactly subsiding, but he was beginning to think that he might actually survive the encounter. With that newly-birthed perspective, Brent continued to take inventory of the unexpected visitor.
The being—the angel—was certainly all white like it was “supposed” to be, but not the glowing, translucent white he had always contrived in his mind. Brent wanted to call the color ‘gray-white,’ but that was doing it an injustice. Its clothing was all white, but something about the color said ‘Danger.’ A gray-white with no signs of gray. A menacing white!
Its tunic-like clothing was cinched at the waist by a white belt that almost looked like leather, but which Brent instinctively knew wasn’t. He was sure no animal had shed its blood to clothe this creature. The clothing started just above the creature’s knees; not human-skin-colored knees, but rather a skin-tone white. Or was it whitish skin tone? The color palette on this creature was not making sense. Whatever the reality of the color, the skin-tone looked normal for such a being.
As Brent continued to look at the angel—with a thread of terror still coursing through him—the angel spoke.
“I am Garian, Seventh Contingent, Fifth Phalanx of the Guardian Corps. I am here to serve you and to protect Elizabeth Franklin.”
Are you…?” Tara stopped and stared at me with an open mouth. “Are…you…kidding…me?!”
All of the sleep that had been in Tara’s eyes at the restaurant was now nowhere to be seen.
“An angel! An honest-to-goodness angel?” she asked a bit too loudly. We had been standing just inside the front door of our house as I finished up this portion of my story.
“Shut up!” She gave me an excited shove with both of her hands to my chest. “No way!”
So, there you have it, my bride can be just a bit unstable at times.
“Umm…Tara, you do realize that you’re more excited about an angel than you were about Jesus. I mean, ‘Joshua’.”
&
nbsp; I could see that my assertion registered quickly and she worked to curb her enthusiasm. That’s not to say that she succeeded.
“Yeah, all right. I see your point,” she said. Then in a forced, hushed voice, with another burst of excitement she said, “But an angel!”
I laughed out loud, already knowing that there was no chance that our kids could have slept through our noise.
“So…?” she asked.
“So…? I asked.
“What happened?” Again, she playfully—I think it was playfully—slapped an open hand against my chest.
“I thought you were sleepy.”
“I was. Now I’m not.”
I chuckled again.
“You really want to know what happened?”
I got hit…again.
“You’re not going to stop doing that, are you?” I asked with mock annoyance.
“Once you tell me what happened next, I’ll consider it.”
“Good. What happened next…was that I woke up. Another night had passed. It was the day of my mamaw’s funeral.”
Tara’s eyes went from excited to disappointed to sympathetic in about four seconds. She walked up to me, lifted herself up on her toes, and kissed me on the cheek. Then she took my right hand in both of hers and led me to our couch in the living room.
“So,” she began, both softly and matter-of-factly, “this would end up being the day of your final goodbye.”
Nodding my head slowly, I felt the sorrow of that day once again weigh down on my chest.
“I remember that it was a morning in which lack of sleep was very apparent on, and in, everyone. It just added to the feeling of loss that we were all experiencing. Half smiles appeared at times, but only as sympathetic courtesies to others who were feeling the same pain. There wasn’t to be any joy for anyone on this long day.
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