The Lover's Parable Through A Seven World Journey (54 page)

John’s eyes opened, and his countenance changed. The feet of the men in his formation were standing among the dead. The moaning of the wounded followed the last crack of a weapon in the distance. Setting Sofia down softly upon the warm sand, John pulled the rifle out from under the back of her arm.

“That’s right, boy,” his father said as he watched his son rising to his feet.

John’s face was like flint, hard and set. His mind was burning, enflamed by the desire to destroy. With everything worth living for consumed in the pages of time, he walked into his formation, pushing his way to the front lines, followed closely behind by the grimacing face of the Monster.

Pulling Sofia’s sword from the mound on which she dropped it, John dragged the tip of its blade through the crimson soil, leaving its trail as a wake upon which the Monster was being led. His feet crunched through the dried layers of blood with each progressing step. Like exiting the trees of the forest and entering into the open plains, John and his father stepped out of the formation of war-hungry masses and into the front of the battle line, staring across the corpse-filled field of death. The few remaining wounded were limping and crawling, ankle deep in the coagulated pool that filled the land. They could do nothing but await the commencement of the waves of their own demise.

The Monster was at John’s side, but he was no longer accounted as one of the enemy. To his left stood millions of men and women, mostly hungering for the fight. To his right were millions more, anxious to get it on. Across the desert, their reflected image waited in the same preparatory anticipation. Were it not for the agonizing shrill of the dying, silence would be the law.

Sofia was gone. She would never return to John again. There would be no more thoughts of happiness sneaking by, no more feelings of his past to guide him, with the one exception: Sofia’s death. The worlds were going to burn today. Men were going to die. And the burning wall of anger reached the apex of its purpose.

The descending airships fell by the thousands to the surface of the planet, touching down behind the awaiting forces of both sides. Delivering the next wave to the warzone, the arriving transporters were the final piece of the machinery needed to bring about the commencement of the call to battle.

In the final moment of silence, the wind fluttered through John’s hair, flapping the loose layers of his clothing.

“Vengeance is mine,” John shouted.

The roar of the masses resounded upon the surface of the planet as the essence of humanities treacherous ways rushed upon one another, sprinting through the open expanse between ruins and valley, between brother and brother, between flesh and blood. Within his left hand John held Sofia’s sword confidently gleaming behind him. With his right hand he raised her rifle at arms length, preparing to pull the trigger with purposeful rage. Soldiers dropped under foot around him, falling to the oncoming clouds of vapor-trailing lead. Squeezing his trigger, heads broke apart, limbs fell, bodies crumbled.

With clouds of dust on their tails, the two armies collided. John thrust his blade into the side of a head, tearing it back out with a crimson bow decorating the air. A burning jolt grabbed his side, sending him into an agonizing spin. Pulling the trigger, he sprayed wildly around him. Thrusting, killing, shouting, killing, tearing, killing, it was the day of violence. It was the end of the era of men without a moral compass.

The land was flooded, but not by water. The broken sword supported John as he, like the thousands of other wandering survivors, limped and struggled in the battle’s aftermath. His clothes were tattered, appearing as shreds of flesh dangling from his blood-soaked body.

The suction of the warm congelation sifting though the toes of his one bare foot was nauseatingly morose, and he began to vomit as it slid through the loose bones of the dead hidden beneath the collecting thickness. Exasperated and drained of all hydrated substance, he fell splashing to his knees, leaning upon the hilt of his weapon. The suffering screams of the air were too much to bear, and John placed a sticky hand upon his ear attempting to drown out the moans and cries of the dying.

In the glassy red sea flooding about his thighs, the Monster’s face stared up from its surface, peering into John’s soul. Thrusting his arm towards the man’s face, he wanted nothing more, whether the old man was dead or alive, than to tear his eyes out of his skull. As his fist made contact with the ghastly figure, the splattering ripples that grew about his buried hand destroyed the image entirely. And he realized it was not his father he was seeing, but his own reflection.

As he drew his dripping palm back out of the muck, he dropped his head to his chest. Covering his face, he began to cry, “Savior, my Savior. What have I become?”

The roar of the oncoming wave of humanity was rolling in like a storm from before and behind. The bullets were, once again, beginning to fly. The bodies were already starting to fall.

A beam of light from the heavens dropped upon a kneeling soldier, wounded in the battle from which John had also emerged. His hands were lifting to the sky, as if he were pleading for help from an unseen being. Beyond him, towards the ruins, another ray fell upon a distant fighter, then another, then another.

Each stream of light from the Savior was destined for someone. Like roots from the heavens, the branching bars of illumination fell upon the battlefield’s crimson lake causing a disturbance in the calm liquid, but no
living
man or woman appeared to be present to receive them. As the two masses of warriors began to converge upon the center of the warzone, the clouds above John parted, and the glowing particles began to settle around him.

The light of the Savior entering into his heart was warm and healing. As if it had taken hold of his soul, rending it from his body, it lifted him up, suspending him between heaven and red
soil.

The liberation with which he was feeling was nothing short of absolute serenity. His state of mind was pure. The burning madness of his corporeal time seemed to have been left behind in the transformation. Although he was able to continue to visualize the material world, oddly enough, there was nothing visible in his own person. He had not the hands to rub his eyes, or the feet below to dangle. He was nothing more than
mind
.

The body that once draped over him, corrupted and evil, continued in its prostrate position below until the masses met in the violent collision, and it was trampled under foot in the war of the flesh.

Rising higher into the air, the ruins stood erect to his one side in a concentrated gathering of concrete towers engulfed in flames and smoke. The Valley of Death, shimmering against the reflection of the parting skies, stood to the other side, complete in all its wretchedness. The rows of airships on the outskirts of the warzone had ceased with their transportational activities, as the greatest battle the planet had ever seen was about to come to its end. The lives of the fighters destroying one another, destroying themselves, destroying the worlds, were a lamentable display of the power of greed, and the love of authority.

Reaching a height from which the entire warzone was visible with one glance, John shouted with jubilation as the Land of Blood began to collapse from within. The planet was swallowing itself up, as if to destroy its own murderous face.

From the highest levels of its atmosphere, John was witness to the engulfing of the entire Red Sea and the mountainous regions around it. Floating further away from him, Planet Red became deformed and mutilated, twisting and contorting, like dough in a baker’s hands, until it fragmented, drifting within the emptiness of space towards the Savior, its fiery end.

The light of the Great Star was intensifying, but it was not so bright that John could not look into it. The worlds that encircled it fell from their orbits, dropping as leaves drop to the dead grass in the autumn air. Planet Raw rolled by, seemingly an arms length away, allowing John to pass above the surface of its fracturing flatlands, to lay his eyes upon the shattered remnants of its military installation, to glimpse the end of the misery of Basket Town. Its trajectory was on course with Red: a place in the burning pyre at the center of life.

The velocity at which the other planets were traveling towards him was too wonderful for words, yet terrifying in the glory of the power of the Savior. Planet Blue exploded into an immeasurable display of dust and glittering particles before being lit up with the brightness of its destruction in the Savior’s awaiting
arms.

The screams of the selfish men and women of Golden could be heard for a final, brief moment of time, before being suddenly cut off as it fell into the ocean of fire.

Like the splitting shell of an egg, a circumferential fracture line sent Black Island’s shroud of mystery to its death, leaving Black Heart exposed for the first time. Gliding ever so slowly to its scorching finality, it melted like a candle and evaporated into fine mist.

Having consumed the seven worlds, the Savior had become the sole body of the heavens, a mass of purity at the heart of the universe. No more would mankind be allowed to destroy itself. Those days were gone forever.

A new planet, fashioned after His essence, clean and bright, emerged from the blaze of glory, stretching out from the Savior’s surface, full of the lands of green and plenty, filled with abundance. It is a world fit for His dominion.

As if the invisible chords holding John in place had suddenly been cut, releasing him from his stationary point floating in space, he began to freefall towards the newly created sphere. The rushing sensation of falling was exhilarating, liberating and eternally satisfying to his being.

As if all his sensations of the material world were being granted a return, like dipping into a warm bath, John entered the atmosphere of planet Rest. Falling gently towards the surface several kilometers below, his heart was lost to his terrible past, and created anew.

A wonder of sights and sounds came into his mind as he was renewed in spirit. The land began to take on a sudden energy of life as the trees of the forests individualized, and the beauty of the City of Light came into view. Living among its marvelous structure of golden glass, the masses of those granted with life became more distinct with each passing moment. The beasts of the fields were living harmoniously with the peace of the age. The wars were nonexistent, the hatred gone and the love of man prevailed under the veil of the Light of the World.

A grassy knoll, hidden within a valley of lush green, surrounded by towering mountains of inviting soul, was the setting in which a mother and her child had been guided, brought here to await John’s arrival.

Sofia was alive, youthful and innocent, as in the days of their Savior gazing. The brightness of life was falling upon her as she cast her blue eyes to the skies above. Behind her, among a grove of trees, the child, so full and energetic, climbed and played.

Calling to him, Sofia pointed towards John, directing her child to look upon the formations of cottony clouds above. He immediately ran to her side, gazing into the vastness of the heavens. His smile was like hers: joyful and content. John wondered if they were able, somehow, to see him, as he had no material substance of which to speak.

As he neared the surface of the planet, Sofia and the child drew near, and the grass began to part, exposing the deep, rich soil
beneath.

At a distance from which his toes should have been able to reach it, the dirt arose in twisting spirals, like a rising plume of smoke, forming the bones and the cartilage, the muscles and the skin, of his legs. His spinal column began to take shape, wrapping about his organs with his ribs, his arms and his chest plate. Covering over by the guidance of the light, the flesh was renewed, unscarred, regenerated in purity.

As his skull took form and his eyes welled up in his sockets, his external features were newly refashioned. He was as he had been so long ago: innocent.

John’s eyes opened and he drew in his first breath. Sofia was there, waiting for him as she had always said she would be. She and the child ran to him, wrapping her arms around his neck, holding him tightly. Embracing his son for the first time, John finally looked into his little boy’s eyes. They were like looking into tiny windows, and seeing the sky beyond.

The New World was eternal, its marvels and wonders so vast and expansive. Citizens of a new age, John and Sofia were now free to wander where death and darkness were no longer permitted. They were strangers and foreigners no more. Mr. Sanders was there with his wife. John would one day meet her, but not today. As with Stephen and Maryanne, he and Sofia had an eternity to converse with them. But, this day was meant for each other… and their
child.

A streak of light, like that of a wishing star, fell from the heavens, disappearing beyond the cordillera in the distance, a glancing blow at the side of Sofia’s eye. She turned to John with an inquisitive expression, a twinkling of curiosity.

“Did you see something?” she said, with a hint of adventure.

Placing his hand gently upon her cheek, John turned her face away from the mountains and back to him.

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “I didn’t see anything.”

Taking her by the hand, they turned their backs to the path of the mysterious light, content with the love that their life’s adventure had finally brought them.

They were home. Home forever.

The End