This preacher pleads with the Lord.
He is sweating, this thin man of God. He’s forty six. His wife and children are dead. He was excommunicated six months ago when his sermons got progressively darker and he began showing up drunk. He has been drinking ever since. He spent his savings. He is hot with fever. He looks older than he should. He sold the house. His bones poke through his suit. He is kneeling with his eyes closed between the single beds of the cheap motel he’s staying in. There’s no money left after tonight. There’s a bible on one bed and a cheap tape-handled gun on the other. He’s facing the wall and the cheap bedside table. There’s a picture of Jesus on the wall. There are lit candles on the table. He’s coated with a sheen of alcoholic sweat. There’s a broken lamp in the corner. He’s murmuring to himself and begging between sobs. It’s a winter blizzard outside but he’s so very, very hot. A rosary is tangled in his steepled hands and twitching through his fingers. He murmurs. He begs. He shudders. He’s been tested and he wants the tests to stop but there’s no bringing them back. He hears their laughter. There’s not enough whiskey in the world to shut out the memories, the fun they had together.
He’s wearing his suicide suit.
He’s asking for a sign.
He’s asking questions.
He needs redemption.
He misses his family.
He will go to hell for killing himself but he can no longer bear this life here without them.
There is a pause and his shaking subsides. He sighs and slumps forward, dropping the rosary to the ground. His right hand reaches out like a separate entity for the gun, picks it up, and thumbs back the hammer. He straightens his posture and brings the gun up under his chin, opens his eyes wide, and says his wife’s name.
The door of his room explodes inward. It isn’t just kicked open. It disintegrates into splinters and takes out the frame around it as well. What looks like an engine block mixed with a bank safe door and a jet engine turbine shatters his dresser, television and fridge before crashing through the door to the bathroom. The windows shatter and a rush of snow and air comes in. Whatever just smashed into his room must have been going incredibly fast. The carpet is shredded and smoking. Grooves in the floor and the cement outside lead greasily to the bathroom.
Snow settles in the room. Little flames lick the edges of the object’s tracks. The preacher cocks his head and looks towards the bathroom where the ticking of cooling metal is mixing with the sound of escaping steam and running water. He hasn’t even twitched.
Like a man in a trance, he stands slowly and lowers the gun. He steps out from the between the beds and steps towards the ruined door of the bathroom. Gun at his side, he calmly assesses what he sees lying in the shards of the ruined motel room bathtub.
The first thing he notices is the flaming sword burning a sword-shaped hole in the linoleum. The black smoke from the burning plastic floor is rising up the ceiling. The smoke is swirling in the cold winter wind that’s gusting through the room. Water from the busted shower head is pouring down onto the figure slumped against the wall and turning into steam against the hot metal.
There’s a massive giant-sized being sprawled unconscious against the wall in the wreckage of the priest’s bathroom. Even sitting down, its head nearly touches the ceiling. The power that radiates off of this being is daunting. It’s dressed in blue metal, scratched chrome, and scarred white porcelain. Its head is nearly lost in the massive machinery that distends its body. It’s like one of those bodybuilders that can barely move for all the muscle plus it’s wearing what looks like four cars worth of armour and metal. Weaponry is welded, tied and lashed onto this thing. It’s a warrior. A turbine big enough for a passenger jet rides its back.
Heat washes off of it.
Its bleeding ash-white bald head is the size of a microwave oven. It's uncovered and looks human except for its size. There is a blue circle tattooed around its closed right eye. The number 14 is burned into its forehead. Its face is battle-scarred and impassive.
Its metal thumbs are the size of shoeboxes.
There’s a click and a whine like the flash for a camera charging up and it opens its eyes. They’re the size of baseballs and they shine blue like searchlights.
It yawns and leans forward in a scream of metal and unoiled joints, reaching for the sword.
The spell breaks and the priest leaps back as the being stands, leaning on its sword for support.
The turbine on the back of this thing is starting to warm up. Its head crashes through the ceiling of the single storey motel in an explosion of plaster, white roof gravel and snow. The noise is deafening.
It takes a step forward. The roof of this room collapses. The priest holds his arms up to protect himself from falling debris. It’s a flimsy motel so he’ll only need a few hundred stitches and a cast on his right arm.
When the dust has settled, he’s pointing the gun at the monster. He doesn’t remember doing it but this is what’s happening. The giant stops mid stride and suddenly its arm has moved back with impossible blurred speed. It’s like some Supreme Editor just cut ten frames out of reality. The priest is still wondering how it’s possible for something that large to move that fast when he realizes that his hand is no longer on the end of his wrist. It has flown away into the night with the gun. The burning sword has cauterized the wound as well. This being looks down at him with the creak of ancient metal grinding against itself.
He is frozen in the searchlights of its eyes.
They fall on the gold cross that the priest is wearing around his neck.
The monster screams and lunges down towards the priest.
The priest closes his eyes and waits for the end.
There’s an earth-shuddering impact in the world as everything around the priest leaps three feet into the air and comes back down. He wets himself.
A few seconds later, he’s still frozen there, waiting. He opens his eyes and the top of the monster’s massive head is a foot from his face. The monster is kneeling with its face pointing down and the burning sword laid on the ground, immobile. It may as well be a statue. The only sound is the massive power flowing through its armour humming like a fridge.
The enormous pale soft-skinned skull of this creature is steaming in the cold. The priest can smell the smell of cookie dough.
With his first clear view of the monster’s back, the priest can see the massive white strong wings folded back on either side of the jet engine. They are missing some feathers in places and in between the feathers they're coated with what looks like hundreds of razors but they are unmistakably wings.
They are wings.
This monster is an angel.
This is an Angel.
This is a seraphim. This is a warrior of Heaven summoned to fight at the end times.
The Angel’s head looks up at the priest with weary tears in its eyes. The holy water brims up and over its eyelids. Tears trace clear paths through the dust and grime on the angel’s terrible beautiful pale face. It's left eye is a dark blue-black marble. It's right eye, the one with the tattooed circle around it, is a bright glowing blue.
The priest understands.
The angel speaks in the strong soft voice of a young girl. The volume makes the priest wince. She asks for forgiveness. She’s been fighting so long that she can no longer hesitate when faced with a threat. She is horrified and nearly broken that she has harmed not only one of God’s children, but also a priest. She is asking for forgiveness. Hot tears drip off of the tip of her nose.
The priest makes the sign of the cross to her and tells her to go in peace. He wishes her luck.
She wipes her nose with a metal gauntlet the size of an office desk and stands with the sound of a five car collision.
She closes her eyes for a moment and breathes out.
Her head whips back and she screams. The sword flares. The jet engine deafens with a roar and her armament targeting computers light up like Christmas lights. A lighthouse beam stabs out from her right eye, piercing the clouds. With a concussive blast, she is gone, rocketing up towards the sky. The priest hears two sonic booms slap each other before he can no longer see her.
Shaken, he looks at the sky. There are thunderclaps and lighting strikes in the deep purple clouds all around him. Distant fires rage. It looks like he was the only person left in the motel.
It’s the apocalypse.
The priest smiles.
Not that I want to colour your mental image of what the angel looks like but here's a sketch I did a while ago that in part inspired this piece. Don't click if you want to keep the image you have.
Right here.
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