by Glen Johnson
As I was thinking that her even fatter sister was making her way out of the bungalow to meet her. News travels fast in small villages. The fact her sister already seemed to know what had happened before I even arrived there didn’t surprise me at all. Small towns and villages have communication networks that even the CIA would envy.
The two fat ladies disappeared into the bungalow; arms wrapped tightly around each other’s wide frames. The door shut, accompanied by the welcoming barking of many dogs.
On the way home I turned on the radio, flicking through the local stations until I hit upon what I was looking for. Palm 105.5 FM was running the story.
“– The scene of the carnage was fallen upon by Constable Peter Aaron Perkins, who is now being treated for shock.
“The officer in change of the scene, Officer Kemp, said it looked like some sort of large animal attack. But it’s being looked into. Anyone who was in the area around Hay-Tors two car parks, between one and seven P.M. has been asked to step forwards as possible witnesses –”
I turned the radio off. Animal attack indeed! I didn’t know of any animal large enough to attack two people inside their car and then shut the doors before it wandered off.
I had seen the car earlier, after talking with the old deaf ice-cream man. I was parked about thirty meters way. I hadn’t heard a thing.
I didn’t want to even think about any other possibilities.
“So much blood,” Ms. Cuddy had kept repeating over and over. I woke up with no blood on me. I was still holding onto the cold cup of coffee.
I pushed the thought from my mind, as I pulled into my long overgrown driveway. My outside light was already shining brightly. And there, standing at my door, was another visitor waiting for me.
14
The Tower of Babel
I pulled up under the cover of my garage. I walked off; hitting the alarm on my trucks key-fob causing the front indicators to flash twice, while emitting a loud double beep.
Some how I knew he would be waiting for me. How long? I didn’t know or care.
As I headed towards him all I could see in the dull light was smoke trailing off from around his face. But what I first thought was a young man was in fact a young woman, possibly around twenty-five or so. The hazy light having distorted her outline.
She stood about my height; thin, but not sickly looking. Long lank black hair that fell flat against her back, it looked greasy or possibly wet from having recently been washed. She was wearing nothing but a light blue dirty nightgown, just like the old lady from four nights ago. Her feet were naked and dirty, also being covered in hundreds of small thin cuts.
The main disturbing thing about her was the large blossoming red mark that was originating from somewhere around her stomach area, with dribbles of blood running down the inside of both her naked thighs. But luckily the robe was pulled tight together.
She didn’t say a thing as I approached, simply continued to smoke, long plumes streaming from each nostril. She stood aside as I opened the door and walked in.
All the lights were on. I couldn’t remember if I had left them on or not. The fire still burned steadily. The house was warm and welcoming. It had done me some good to get out, even with what had happened.
She took her normal seat without a single word. Her bare feet slapped against the wooden floor, until she reached the rug.
I went to put my keys in the small bowl, but remembered it had broken a few nights ago. I simply dropped them to the table surface with a loud clatter, which seemed to echo throughout the silent farmhouse.
She was watching me intently; staring so hard it looked like she was trying to read my genetic code.
I removed my jacket, tossing it onto the back of the couch, and took the seat opposite her.
We both sat in silence for a few minutes. The only sound coming from her puffing on the cigarette. She cleared her throat to speak. A small dribble of blood issued from the corner of her mouth.
“You decided to answer tonight then?” Her voice was all strained as if being all stressed, cracking, rising and falling quickly like a drug addict, who was going through Cold Turkey.
I didn’t bother answering the obvious. This didn’t affect her in anyway.
“Got some colour back in your cheeks I see. Have you been eating properly at last?”
I didn’t know what she meant by that. But then I realized I hadn’t eaten all day, but I wasn’t in the least bit hungry. Bloated even.
The wicked Cheshire cat smile spread across her unnaturally white face, twisting the corners of her mouth upward. Another dribble of blood issued from the other side of her mouth, running down her neck, smudging on the top of her robe. Bubbles of blood rose and popped on her lips.
“Nimrod, I believe we were up to? Nimrod – meaning Let Us Rebel.” She pulled hard on her cigarette, covering the end in bright red blood. She went back to her story, not bothering to mention anything else that had happened with my nephew.
“He was the first great leader of mankind, now there was none of our powerful sons left upon the surface of the earth. He rallied the people together. He –” she looked upwards “– wanted the people to spread out, fill the earth, as was His original plan for mankind.
“But Nimrod wanted all the people in one place, so he could rule over them.” She removed the cigarette, coughing once, spraying droplets of blood all over the carpet, just landing short of hitting me.
“They knew what had happened to their ancestors, what with the flood and all. So Nimrod decided to build a great tower, so if He decided to end mankind again, then they could all simply climb to its pinnacle and be out of the reach of the waters. Naive I know. I said he was a great leader of men, but I didn’t say he was intelligent.
“We could no longer appear in the flesh, but we had different, more subtle means to steer humanity towards our wicked ways.
“Millions started to build the tower in opposition to Him. They were supposed to be spreading across the land, not gathering together and opposing Him.” She uncrossed her legs and crossed them back the other way.
I had a glimpse of redness, all wet and sticky. I blocked it from my mind.
“Many descendents of Noah and his family now filled vast tracks of land, stretching far and wide. Nimrod created armies, capturing whole families and villages, turning them into slaves to build his monument. Which he said would benefit them all. They weren’t given a choice.
“He –” referring to God, never by name or stature “– decided the best way to break them all up was to confuse them. See, up until that time the whole world was the same language, a form of the Syriac dialect. He went amongst them and confused their tongues. Different words, mutually incomprehensible languages came into being. Ah… the story of The Origin of Language, or known in linguistics as glottogony.
“Now they didn’t understand each other. None able to follow each other’s orders. They split up into their new tongues and went their separate ways. The different nations were born.
“That is why it was later referred to as Babel – meaning confusion. Its later name, which you’ll probably recognizes was Babylon in ancient Mesopotamia. On today’s map it’s near Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq.” She blew a plume of blue smoke towards the rafters.
“Of course the tower also has had many names. The Sumerians called it Etemenanki, which meant Temple of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth. Nebuchadnezzar wrote about the magnificent tower, which he called the Temple of the Seven Lights of the Earth. The Greek historian Herodotus called it the Temple of Zeus Belus. He described in detail its vast dimensions. In fact, Alexander the Great discovered what was left of the decaying Great Ziggurat of Babylon – as he called it – and attempted to rebuild it. Alexander’s massive army dismantled the remains of the structure but his death stopped the reconstruction.
“You can even see the base of it today on Google Earth. Just tap in 32.5362583N and 44.4208252E, it’s about fifty-five miles south of Baghdad. Modern te
chnology huh.” She shrugged her shoulders, in a kind of, what can you do, manner.
My head started to ache, the same way it did just before I had the strange sensation that I was reliving the past, envisioning it. Then, suddenly I was looking down at a massive structure as if I was floating far above. Somehow I knew I was seeing what he once beheld, as if he needed to show me, because his words could never convey how magnificent it was.
The battering, frigid wind pummelled my body, pulling the breath from my lungs. I panicked. I was high up. At first I thought I was falling, but soon realized I was stationary, just floating.
But the site captivated my attention. It was a phenomenal structure which must have risen almost four hundred feet. It was vast at its square base, and as it started its heavenly ascent it got smaller and smaller, like a cosmic wedding cake, reminding me of the famous painting The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
Hundreds of thousands of people swarmed all over it like insects. Far into the distance there were quarries and brick making assembly lines, and everything a worksite of this magnitude would need. Huge tracks of dilapidated housing and buildings to support all the slave workers. Fields being harvested for food. Vast herds of cattle in the distance. Huge channels dug to bring water from nearby rivers. Smoke from countless fires and forges hung over the whole site in an enormous murky cloud. It was a site on the scale never before seen, and wouldn’t be repeated until the great pyramid of Giza.
I was up high; the wind battered me from all sides. But even from way up the hubbub of sound was constant. The ringing of hammers on stone. The sounds of tens of thousands of shuffling, labouring feet. Vast clouds of kicked up dust. The smell of pungent smoke. The pain and suffering of the masses was blatant.
It suddenly accrued to me I was almost a mile up. How? Then the sensation came to me, as if just waking from a dream. A pulsating originating from my around my shoulders… Wings! I was seeing everything unfold from his angelic perspective.
I looked at myself for the first time; I was humanoid in shape, completely naked. I craned my neck to see my wings. I expected feathers, like giant beautiful white swan appendages, instead I was looking at what could only be described as dull flesh coloured bat wings; contorted bones, like giant stretched fingers, with skin stretch between them. Almost like a plucked bird wing. Maybe when they were thrown out of heaven they lost their attractive ones?
As I craned my neck to examine my wings I noticed other entities close by. Hundreds of them, all engrossed in the pain and suffering far below. They had the same wings as I, and I presumed I had the same body as them. They were lanky, almost ill looking, naked beings. They were androgynous, having a combination of masculine and feminine attributes. With thin but muscular bodies, with feminine facial features. There were no sexual organs, no penis or vagina, just a smooth area, like a Ken or Barbie doll. Not even nipples or a belly button. All had blondish white straight, shoulder length hair which whipped about their face from the strong wind.
They reminded me of the catwalk sensation, Andrej Pejic, the Serbian Australian model, who could wear male or female clothes, and depending on how he dressed determined what sex he looked.
None of the other fallen angel’s acknowledged my presence, they just hovered, wings beating, staring fixated at the misery below. Eyes unblinking – engrossed, almost like a predatory animal waiting for its prey to show itself.
“Great days, great days,” she muttered which seemed to float on the wind.
The words snapped me back into the here and now.
She stared at me hard, as if trying to come to a decision. She obviously did.
“We didn’t always look like that. We were once magnificent to behold. Sublime, sensual bodies. Graceful, glorious wings of pure white feathers. Beautiful curly, lushes colourful hair. But… we no longer stood close by His glorious personage. We were disconnected you could say, from His Might. Once we were thrown down to earth we started to shrivel up physically and spiritually.
“It never occurred to us that we would be tossed out of heaven. We wanted more, craved sex and countless depravities. We turned against everything He taught us – everything we supposedly stood for. We were wayward children. We thought we would get a smack on the wrist. But complete removal from everything celestial?
“Of course I knew deep down this would happen. I had started it after all. But the other angels that joined me thought it would soon go back to normal. They would soon be stood back before His glorious throne. Have their fun, get it out of their system and that would be it.
“What eventually made it even worse for us was you lot. His perfect new creation. You can do anything, from killing, raping, paedophilia and blaspheming, and then simply repent.” She spat on the carpet, a big glob of phlegm and blood.
“Yet when some of my wayward brothers went to return, throwing themselves prostrate before Him to beg for His forgiveness, crying out that they had been weak, led astray by me, they were simply thrown back out.
“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace, Ephesians one verse seven states.” She snorted.
“In first Corinthians chapter thirteen and verse five it says that, real love keeps no record of wrongs.” She was getting worked up.
“Does it not say in the First Letter of John chapter one verses six to nine, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness? And yet his very own children, his angelic family, he doesn’t offer forgiveness.
“The Catholic Church offers the sinner absolution after they have confessed; giving them what is called an indulgence, which is the full or partial remission of temporal punishment due for sins which have already been forgiven.
“There is an inscription on the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome, which in Latin reads: Indulgentia plenaria perpetua quotidiana toties quoties pro vivis et defunctis. Translated it states: Perpetual everyday plenary indulgence on every occasion for the living and the dead. In other words, do what the hell you like, just repent after.
“The Catholic Church has even given their blessing to a new iPhone application that allows a Christian to confess their sins via their mobile phone. The program is even named Confession. Not only does it help them confess, but it also allows them to keep track of all their sins!
“Fucking humans.”
She shook her head slowly, as if trying to shake out the memories. She gave a long deep sigh, before continuing, as if never straying from the story.
“All the powerful nations now started to be formed, creating niches of different languages. None bothering to try and understand the other.
“Hundreds of years passed. Nothing noteworthy happened. A few skirmishes and even a few trivial wars, but nothing on the scale of when our children – the nephilim – filled the world.
“I continued to walk among mankind. But now not being able to take form I simply went among them invisibly, but still being able to affect them in many ways.” The smile played across her face. She uncrossed her legs, leaving them open.
I diverted my eyes, not wanting to look. Even though some part of me wanted to know what she had died of, or how she had died.
I realized my shoulders ached, as if I had actually been there, my wings beating.
“Babylon was a great city of false gods. They knew who God was. You got to remember it wasn’t long after the Great Flood. Even so they were so easily misled.
“Mankind had always been worshiping in the monotheistic style – one God, one belief system. But I now brought another idea into affect, polytheism – the worship of many gods.
“At the height of Babylon’s glory she was a boiling pot of temples and priests, none to the true God. It was so bad and filled with false religions that the Book actually refers to Babylon as the Harlot, where all false doctrines and religions started. Egypt, Persia and Greece felt the influence of Babylonian religion. Becoming c
entral points to Greek mythology and Grecian Cults, all stemming from the rotten fruit of Babylon.” She started to tick of on her fingers.
“Fifty-five temples of the Chief Gods. Fifty-five temples of Marduk. Three hundred chapels for the earthly deities. A whopping six hundred to the heavenly ones. One hundred and eighty for the goddess Ishtar alone. The same amount for the gods Nergal and Adad. And last but not least, another twelve for a small collection of other trifling gods.
“All ruled over by the Lugal, or Great Man, the representative of the gods.
“Simply because as the Book says, I can transform myself into an angel of light. Making them believe all these gods did actually exist.
“I even created a wife for Him – Asherah. The word appears over forty times in the bible. You got to remember, even though the bible was inspired by Him, humans still had to write it. Humans can be influenced. And it has been translated dozens of times over the last thousand years; giving me ample opportunities to throw a spanner in the works.