11-08-2013, 05:32 PM
Jensen took the train to work straight from John's. He cut it close as it was, and thankfully the Moscow metro system was famously punctual. He'd spent the good part of the ride with his forehead pressed against the window, staring into the blur of tunnel lights streaking by, and the rest of it rounded over in his seat and wringing his hands. He had a lot to think about.
He was thankful for the monotony of the night's shift. Forklift driving didn't require a college degree, but it was dangerous work, but it gave his mind the chance to focus on something else for ten hours. He'd barely noticed the passage of time until the horn sent him to a break room for a sandwich.
Come morning, he was worn out again. It was part of the reason he sought a job over third shift at all. The solemnity of nights were hardest when left alone with only one's guilt for company. His solution had been to work himself to exhaustion and collapse every morning without the energy to do more than shower off the grime. It worked too well, sometimes.
The day's sleep was fitful and restless. He tossed and turned and not just due to the ridges of an uncomfortable Murphy's Bed. He'd always been an animated dreamer, but nightmares were only a regular occurrences in the last few years, and they did not make for pleasant bedmates.. so to speak.
He meandered around the small apartment he did not call home but lived in nonetheless and went mindlessly through his regular morning's routine. Mindless because his attention was firmly plagued by wondering when exactly he was going to make good on the promise to himself, John, and God to fast and pray. He had to work again tonight, and he had no intention of not fulfilling the agreement with his employer to actually show up. God probably wouldn't be too pleased with someone breaking one of the Ten Commandments, lying, in order to stay home and read their Bible.
Although it was tempting. In fact, shortly after the shower, he hastily wrapped a towel around his waist and sat at the small desk that served as a kitchen table and started flipping through the three-hundred year old Cambridge Bible John had presented to him. Before he knew it, an hour had passed, his coffee cup was long ago emptied, and he was still in a towel.
It was an extraordinary book. He couldn't imagine anyone in the world who wouldn't appreciate it, no matter their affinity for religion, history, or knowledge. If nothing else, it was in pristine shape. If John used this Bible for his daily devotions, he'd treated every single crisp page with the reverence it was due. Jensen was almost nervous to turn a page for fear of damaging it.
There was a book, however, he could pour himself into without fear. His own Bible.
The night he fled Dallas, he'd not had the specific book he used on a daily basis, nor the book from which he preached, which were two very different things, in his possession, but he did have the Bible he kept in his car on hand. The car was ditched in Mexico City, three days after the... incident, and God Bless the poor people of the city, but it was likely stripped to a thousand pieces within twenty-four hours. A gleaming white Mercedes attracted dangerous attention south of the Border. There were many long hours where he'd white-knuckled it. So no other trace of his passage remained. Any belongings he'd left inside were long gone. Everything but this Bible and ten million in cold cash.
So with the Cambridge Bible unfolded alongside, Jensen just started reading. He didn't know what he was seeking. Answers, he supposed. To questions posed by John and those echoed in his own mind. He reread passages about angels appearing on Earth with a critical eye. He sought out the chapters in Revelation about the reign of the Anti-Christ. He tried to place himself in all of it somewhere, but the harder he looked, the more forlorn he became.
Frustration gnawed discomfort in his chest, and he flipped the cover of his car-Bible shut with more force than he'd meant. The thing teetered dangerously, then tumbled right through his fingers to the floor, landing in a loud, flat thump. A tangible consequence of an impure heart.
"I'm sorry,"
he told the book as he bent to pluck it from the floor.
As he was inspecting it, there was a rustling sound behind him, like wind blown through those closed shutters. No chill of outdoor weather washed onto his bare back, yet chills shot down his spine.
Stomach sank with tension, he looked over one shoulder, and his jaw dropped.
Appeared half-way in the room was a very normal looking man. He had thin brown hair swept across his forehead, the stubble of a thin, groomed beard spotted gray, who was dressed in a plain button down shirt untucked from his slacks. He was watching Jensen with a kind, but concerned, expression. It was his eyes Jensen would always remember. Like they knew every thought in his head, but loved him anyway.
Jensen shot to his feet. His chair skid backward. There was a flash of fresh air across his waist like he'd dropped the towel, but when his hands went to grope for the cloth, they found the slick nylon of running shorts instead. Kind of weird, but he didn't take much time to investigate the rest of his attire, but apparently he was ready to go for a long run.
The front door was still bolted from the inside. The window was closed, although the curtains were thrown open--no, they were tied back. Jensen blinked, briefly unsettled.
The gentleman put up a hand. "Be at ease, Jensen. You are dreaming, my son. This is a dream, but it is also real."
Jensen gaped. He'd always been an active dreamer, but this was an incredibly real dream. "I don't feel like I'm dreaming. Who are you?"
The curtain was closed again, and the Bibles, the car and Cambridge books, were both gone from the table. As was that cup of cold coffee. That, he rather wished was still there. His hands itched to ground themselves on anything.
"Let's say I am an Angel of the Lord,"
he clasped his hands before him, and a great wave of calm washed over Jensen whose clothes suddenly dissolved into similar attire as the angel's: an untucked button-down and slacks. Jensen's forehead wrinkled with wide-eyed shock.
The angel went on. "I have met you in this place to give you a message."
Jensen approached, feeling as though he'd been wandering in the desert his whole life and had yet to find water, and although hesitant to believe this was real, he feared this pool of water would turn out to be filled with shards of broken glass.
Jensen felt he'd hardly taken a step, but the next moment, the angel was standing right before him. In fact, it seemed the whole room shifted around him rather than the other way around. He placed a warm hand on Jensen's shoulder.
"You have gifts, Jensen,"
the angel's eyes burned bright into Jensen's soul, "spiritual and physical. Do not fear them. Draw upon them, and do the work you are meant to do. You are living in a wrinkle in time, but it is not the end. There are no ends."
The blood drained from Jensen's face. In his heart, he trusted this messenger with his very life, but doubt spiked fear behind the wrinkle of his brow. He shook his head, imagining falling from the grace of heaven and landing in everlasting damnation. He grew dizzy merely meeting the angel's gaze. He looked away. "I am not worthy. Why me?"
The angel cupped Jensen's face in his hands, as a father would of a fearful son, and drew his attention once more. That sense of calm washed over once more. "We may never know why one soul can sense the Light and others do not."
Jensen's eyes fell sullen, "how am I to know what I am meant to do?"
"Look inside yourself. Look to the Light."
The angel looked away, as though seeing far beyond these four walls. He nodded to watching eyes unseen, then there was another quiet howl of wind, and Jensen was suddenly alone.
He looked to his clothes and found the towel once more. The Bibles were back on the table, and the curtains were open again.
He gasped himself awake. Actually awake, this time.
He sat up in bed, half panicked and half elated. An angel of the Lord had appeared to him in a dream. Not bothering to dress, he practically lept up to make a phone call before he could talk himself out of it.
"Hello?"
A woman's voice answered groggily. It was the middle of the night in Texas. Jensen remained quiet, and she spoke again with more earnestness this time. "Hello??"
Jensen's voice was calmer than he'd thought it would be. "Jess?"
"Speaking. Who is this?"
There was a hesitancy cutting across her groggy voice.
"It's Jensen."
Then--Silence.
A request for face to face came through almost immediately. Jensen suddenly regretted his hasty decision-making, at least he could have put on pants for pity's sake! He grabbed a shirt, a button-up ironically, and threw it on. He'd barely managed to step into shorts before Jessika's screen came through.
The light of a lone lamp shone in the background on her side of the call. Jensen didn't recognize the room she was in, but it had the standard decorations of a cookie-cutter hotel.
She was as disheveled as he, but only because Jensen knew what to interpret. He drank in the sight of her, and his heart wanted to sing, but he made himself sit still.
Likewise gazing into a screen of himself, Jessika threw a hand across her lips. She still wore her wedding ring. Jensen absently rubbed a bare finger. His was packed away in a box in the closet.
She'd always been a strong woman. He loved that about her. She could weep for joy as fiercely as she could grieve, but it appeared the last four years suddenly broke through the dam of her frayed emotions, and she squeezed her eyes shut.
"Please don't cry, Jess."
He urged, achingly. How badly he wanted to hold her.
Those big beautiful blue eyes opened once more. floating in a sea of bright red. "Jensen. It really is you? Oh, my God. Please! Where are you? What happened? Are you alright?"
Jensen cut her off, "I can't tell you where I am. But I am fine. I'm better than fine, actually. Jess-"
This time she gawked, "What! Why not? Are you in trouble? My God you are in trouble. The blackmail. Are you in jail? Does someone have you?! I swear I will--"
He lifted his hands, wishing he could imbue her with the calm as had that angel. "--Jess, I disappeared because... because I'm something more than a man. I thought I was possessed, and I ran half out of my mind with fear. But now I know the truth, and I don't fear it anymore. An Angel of the Lord came to me. I have something to do for the kingdom. I think... I think I am an angel, too."
It was still hard to believe, but it was also hard to argue with both John Smith and an angel coming to his dreams, like some prophet of the Old Testament. Those guys surely didn't believe it either.
Jess's face wrenched with pain. Her voice cracked one single, disbelieving sob: "Oh, Jensen. Please tell me where you are. I'll come to you, and we'll get you the help you need."
Jensen couldn't believe his ears. "I know it sounds crazy, Jess! If only I could prove it to you..."
he held out a hand and the familiar orb of light swirled into existence once more. Jessika barely glanced at it, and the confidence with which Jensen wielded the light into being wavered uncertainly. It winked away. "Jess-,"
he started, but she was now looking elsewhere, eyes darting fast across another simultaneously opened screen. She was searching for his coordinates. Then, in surprise, she mouthed a word that Jensen recognized: 'Moscow'.
His breath caught in his throat. Her gaze locked sternly onto his. Her mind was made up. "Jensen, stay where you are!"
Jensen shook his head, "Jess please don't come!"
Not into the belly of the beast itself! If John was right, the apocalypse was about to break, and Jensen was going to be in the middle of it.
"I'll be on the first flight."
Their connection was severed, and Jensen blinked horror at the after image of his wife. Angels. Demons. War. He felt like he was going to faint.
He powered down the Wallet and hastily threw belongings into bags. It looked like he would be taking John up on his offer to relocate. Jessika couldn't be with him. It wasn't safe!
And though Jensen did need help, he doubted it was the kind Jessika had in mind.
He was thankful for the monotony of the night's shift. Forklift driving didn't require a college degree, but it was dangerous work, but it gave his mind the chance to focus on something else for ten hours. He'd barely noticed the passage of time until the horn sent him to a break room for a sandwich.
Come morning, he was worn out again. It was part of the reason he sought a job over third shift at all. The solemnity of nights were hardest when left alone with only one's guilt for company. His solution had been to work himself to exhaustion and collapse every morning without the energy to do more than shower off the grime. It worked too well, sometimes.
The day's sleep was fitful and restless. He tossed and turned and not just due to the ridges of an uncomfortable Murphy's Bed. He'd always been an animated dreamer, but nightmares were only a regular occurrences in the last few years, and they did not make for pleasant bedmates.. so to speak.
He meandered around the small apartment he did not call home but lived in nonetheless and went mindlessly through his regular morning's routine. Mindless because his attention was firmly plagued by wondering when exactly he was going to make good on the promise to himself, John, and God to fast and pray. He had to work again tonight, and he had no intention of not fulfilling the agreement with his employer to actually show up. God probably wouldn't be too pleased with someone breaking one of the Ten Commandments, lying, in order to stay home and read their Bible.
Although it was tempting. In fact, shortly after the shower, he hastily wrapped a towel around his waist and sat at the small desk that served as a kitchen table and started flipping through the three-hundred year old Cambridge Bible John had presented to him. Before he knew it, an hour had passed, his coffee cup was long ago emptied, and he was still in a towel.
It was an extraordinary book. He couldn't imagine anyone in the world who wouldn't appreciate it, no matter their affinity for religion, history, or knowledge. If nothing else, it was in pristine shape. If John used this Bible for his daily devotions, he'd treated every single crisp page with the reverence it was due. Jensen was almost nervous to turn a page for fear of damaging it.
There was a book, however, he could pour himself into without fear. His own Bible.
The night he fled Dallas, he'd not had the specific book he used on a daily basis, nor the book from which he preached, which were two very different things, in his possession, but he did have the Bible he kept in his car on hand. The car was ditched in Mexico City, three days after the... incident, and God Bless the poor people of the city, but it was likely stripped to a thousand pieces within twenty-four hours. A gleaming white Mercedes attracted dangerous attention south of the Border. There were many long hours where he'd white-knuckled it. So no other trace of his passage remained. Any belongings he'd left inside were long gone. Everything but this Bible and ten million in cold cash.
So with the Cambridge Bible unfolded alongside, Jensen just started reading. He didn't know what he was seeking. Answers, he supposed. To questions posed by John and those echoed in his own mind. He reread passages about angels appearing on Earth with a critical eye. He sought out the chapters in Revelation about the reign of the Anti-Christ. He tried to place himself in all of it somewhere, but the harder he looked, the more forlorn he became.
Frustration gnawed discomfort in his chest, and he flipped the cover of his car-Bible shut with more force than he'd meant. The thing teetered dangerously, then tumbled right through his fingers to the floor, landing in a loud, flat thump. A tangible consequence of an impure heart.
"I'm sorry,"
he told the book as he bent to pluck it from the floor.
As he was inspecting it, there was a rustling sound behind him, like wind blown through those closed shutters. No chill of outdoor weather washed onto his bare back, yet chills shot down his spine.
Stomach sank with tension, he looked over one shoulder, and his jaw dropped.
Appeared half-way in the room was a very normal looking man. He had thin brown hair swept across his forehead, the stubble of a thin, groomed beard spotted gray, who was dressed in a plain button down shirt untucked from his slacks. He was watching Jensen with a kind, but concerned, expression. It was his eyes Jensen would always remember. Like they knew every thought in his head, but loved him anyway.
Jensen shot to his feet. His chair skid backward. There was a flash of fresh air across his waist like he'd dropped the towel, but when his hands went to grope for the cloth, they found the slick nylon of running shorts instead. Kind of weird, but he didn't take much time to investigate the rest of his attire, but apparently he was ready to go for a long run.
The front door was still bolted from the inside. The window was closed, although the curtains were thrown open--no, they were tied back. Jensen blinked, briefly unsettled.
The gentleman put up a hand. "Be at ease, Jensen. You are dreaming, my son. This is a dream, but it is also real."
Jensen gaped. He'd always been an active dreamer, but this was an incredibly real dream. "I don't feel like I'm dreaming. Who are you?"
The curtain was closed again, and the Bibles, the car and Cambridge books, were both gone from the table. As was that cup of cold coffee. That, he rather wished was still there. His hands itched to ground themselves on anything.
"Let's say I am an Angel of the Lord,"
he clasped his hands before him, and a great wave of calm washed over Jensen whose clothes suddenly dissolved into similar attire as the angel's: an untucked button-down and slacks. Jensen's forehead wrinkled with wide-eyed shock.
The angel went on. "I have met you in this place to give you a message."
Jensen approached, feeling as though he'd been wandering in the desert his whole life and had yet to find water, and although hesitant to believe this was real, he feared this pool of water would turn out to be filled with shards of broken glass.
Jensen felt he'd hardly taken a step, but the next moment, the angel was standing right before him. In fact, it seemed the whole room shifted around him rather than the other way around. He placed a warm hand on Jensen's shoulder.
"You have gifts, Jensen,"
the angel's eyes burned bright into Jensen's soul, "spiritual and physical. Do not fear them. Draw upon them, and do the work you are meant to do. You are living in a wrinkle in time, but it is not the end. There are no ends."
The blood drained from Jensen's face. In his heart, he trusted this messenger with his very life, but doubt spiked fear behind the wrinkle of his brow. He shook his head, imagining falling from the grace of heaven and landing in everlasting damnation. He grew dizzy merely meeting the angel's gaze. He looked away. "I am not worthy. Why me?"
The angel cupped Jensen's face in his hands, as a father would of a fearful son, and drew his attention once more. That sense of calm washed over once more. "We may never know why one soul can sense the Light and others do not."
Jensen's eyes fell sullen, "how am I to know what I am meant to do?"
"Look inside yourself. Look to the Light."
The angel looked away, as though seeing far beyond these four walls. He nodded to watching eyes unseen, then there was another quiet howl of wind, and Jensen was suddenly alone.
He looked to his clothes and found the towel once more. The Bibles were back on the table, and the curtains were open again.
He gasped himself awake. Actually awake, this time.
He sat up in bed, half panicked and half elated. An angel of the Lord had appeared to him in a dream. Not bothering to dress, he practically lept up to make a phone call before he could talk himself out of it.
"Hello?"
A woman's voice answered groggily. It was the middle of the night in Texas. Jensen remained quiet, and she spoke again with more earnestness this time. "Hello??"
Jensen's voice was calmer than he'd thought it would be. "Jess?"
"Speaking. Who is this?"
There was a hesitancy cutting across her groggy voice.
"It's Jensen."
Then--Silence.
A request for face to face came through almost immediately. Jensen suddenly regretted his hasty decision-making, at least he could have put on pants for pity's sake! He grabbed a shirt, a button-up ironically, and threw it on. He'd barely managed to step into shorts before Jessika's screen came through.
The light of a lone lamp shone in the background on her side of the call. Jensen didn't recognize the room she was in, but it had the standard decorations of a cookie-cutter hotel.
She was as disheveled as he, but only because Jensen knew what to interpret. He drank in the sight of her, and his heart wanted to sing, but he made himself sit still.
Likewise gazing into a screen of himself, Jessika threw a hand across her lips. She still wore her wedding ring. Jensen absently rubbed a bare finger. His was packed away in a box in the closet.
She'd always been a strong woman. He loved that about her. She could weep for joy as fiercely as she could grieve, but it appeared the last four years suddenly broke through the dam of her frayed emotions, and she squeezed her eyes shut.
"Please don't cry, Jess."
He urged, achingly. How badly he wanted to hold her.
Those big beautiful blue eyes opened once more. floating in a sea of bright red. "Jensen. It really is you? Oh, my God. Please! Where are you? What happened? Are you alright?"
Jensen cut her off, "I can't tell you where I am. But I am fine. I'm better than fine, actually. Jess-"
This time she gawked, "What! Why not? Are you in trouble? My God you are in trouble. The blackmail. Are you in jail? Does someone have you?! I swear I will--"
He lifted his hands, wishing he could imbue her with the calm as had that angel. "--Jess, I disappeared because... because I'm something more than a man. I thought I was possessed, and I ran half out of my mind with fear. But now I know the truth, and I don't fear it anymore. An Angel of the Lord came to me. I have something to do for the kingdom. I think... I think I am an angel, too."
It was still hard to believe, but it was also hard to argue with both John Smith and an angel coming to his dreams, like some prophet of the Old Testament. Those guys surely didn't believe it either.
Jess's face wrenched with pain. Her voice cracked one single, disbelieving sob: "Oh, Jensen. Please tell me where you are. I'll come to you, and we'll get you the help you need."
Jensen couldn't believe his ears. "I know it sounds crazy, Jess! If only I could prove it to you..."
he held out a hand and the familiar orb of light swirled into existence once more. Jessika barely glanced at it, and the confidence with which Jensen wielded the light into being wavered uncertainly. It winked away. "Jess-,"
he started, but she was now looking elsewhere, eyes darting fast across another simultaneously opened screen. She was searching for his coordinates. Then, in surprise, she mouthed a word that Jensen recognized: 'Moscow'.
His breath caught in his throat. Her gaze locked sternly onto his. Her mind was made up. "Jensen, stay where you are!"
Jensen shook his head, "Jess please don't come!"
Not into the belly of the beast itself! If John was right, the apocalypse was about to break, and Jensen was going to be in the middle of it.
"I'll be on the first flight."
Their connection was severed, and Jensen blinked horror at the after image of his wife. Angels. Demons. War. He felt like he was going to faint.
He powered down the Wallet and hastily threw belongings into bags. It looked like he would be taking John up on his offer to relocate. Jessika couldn't be with him. It wasn't safe!
And though Jensen did need help, he doubted it was the kind Jessika had in mind.