The Moment

Lost in a sea of human flesh, I looked on the criminals were put to death. I cheered and jeered and shouted at the top of my voice. Except that it wasn't really my voice at all. It had been hours since any part of me had actually been mine. Now, as the criminals were tortured and executed, I belonged to the crowd, to the mob of law-abiding Jews that had given themselves over to the savagery of beasts.

I watched as the heretic screamed, thinking to myself that his lies were finally exposed to the undeniable truth of the Law. I alone knew the moment that he died, the moment that he went to meet the final judge...because it was at that moment that everything changed. At that moment, time stopped, the blood ceased to flow, and I felt all of reality slipping away.

It was a strange place to be. It was not so much another world as it was a lack of a world. My surroundings remained yet they did not seem to be entirely substantial. Neither were they all that were there. I saw strange creatures flying through the sky and crawling across the earth. They seemed as distant as the world I had come from and yet they were also unique in their own blurred distortions.

There seemed to be two realities in addition to the one I had left behind. The creatures of one of these realities were distorted in such a way that they seemed beautiful and strong with an aura of power radiating from them. They were terrifying...and yet they were also comforting. It was like looking into the eyes of a beast fully capable of ripping me to shreds and at the same time knowing that it was my ally.

The other creatures were not so reassuring. Where the distorted view of the first creatures exaggerated every trace of beauty and emphasized the wholeness of their bodies even as it twisted their images, the warped visions of the other creatures presented every detail as a horrid scar, while every detail that related to the wholeness of their bodies seemed horribly disfigured. The creatures bore a darkness that seemed to be a presence in its own right and their insubstantiality seemed to be based less on a lack of a physical existence as it was on a material presence that was more dense than the world I now inhabited.

It was then, as I stared at the clash of universes, that I realized I was not alone. There, next to the now-intangible crosses, were three completely corporeal figures.

My attention was immediately drawn to a man completely covered in a thick black cloak. The dark fabric rose and fell, writhing on his skin like a thousand hungry serpents possessed of a single malevolence. Where the dark folds parted , a tangle of bloody chains lay revealed, clinking restlessly with every twitch, breath, and heartbeat. I stared, horrified, at the hellish vision. I felt small, weak, and utterly mortal in the face of what I was sure could be nothing short of absolute evil.

As I desperately tore my eyes away from the nightmarish being, I turned my attention to the second of the three entities. Drifting a few feet above the ground was a magnificent angel. He supported himself effortlessly with a pair of golden wings, each one easily as wide as he was tall. His body was impossibly huge yet at the same time it seemed somehow delicate. His clothes were finer than the attire of the emperor himself and everything about him seemed to speak of wealth and power. As I took all of this in, I realized that at some point he had begun to sing. I listened as he strung together notes that no human mouth had ever uttered. My muscles tensed as the rhythmic force flowed through me. I felt hungry, powerful, even...aroused?

The moment passed. I turned to behold the thunderous power that had shaken me from the grip of the song. I was shocked at the apparent modesty of the source. I had been roused from the angel's song by the movement of the cloaked figure toward the third being.

The creature was a colossus of stone and ice. The thing neared ten feet in height and was formed in the semblance of an angel. A cold, soulless, death-dealing angel.

My gaze was locked as the cloaked man came to a stop directly in front of the cold giant. Carved skin lifted to reveal lightless eyes as the living statue surveyed the man. Stone lips parted to utter a single emotionless, icy sentence. "You are marked." Them, with surprising speed, it reached down and grabbed the hooded figure. A single cold hand curled its fingers around the man's throat and pulled him up into the air so that each one met the eyes of the other.

Hoisted into the air, the man's cloak opened up to reveal the entity to which it was bound. I gasped. There before me, in this mad netherworld, was the heretic.

The statue's mouth widened as its eyes bore relentlessly in its victim. A dull rasping breath cut the silence as tiny drops of blood poured from the heretic's mouth, nose, ears, and pores to drift mist-like into the gaping mouth of the statue.

Ever since I had first laid eyes on the man in this strange place, he had not betrayed even the slightest hint of emotion. He had not trembled, flinched, ran or even spoken. Now, however, that calm, controlled attitude was at an end. The heretic convulsed madly as he screamed in agony. Spasms took hold of his limbs as they visibly withered under the influence of the cold giant.

I cannot say how long this lasted, time neither acted nor felt the same in that nothing-world. The stone sentinel could have held the heretic for seconds, hours, or even days. It felt like forever.

As I helplessly watched the two entities, a cold, lifeless breeze began to tug at my soul. I fell to the ground as the endless void extended its reach in search of a soul that would give in to its irresistible hunger. I gasped for breath. My friends. My family. The God that I had tried to serve for my entire life. All were now utterly removed, infinitely distant. I felt my soul crying out for...for what? For love! The void was not satisfied. The void was never satisfied. "Let me go!" I cried. "Don't let it take me!" I was desperate now. "Save me!!"

I was ashamed almost before I completed the sentence. How could I cry out for help? It was he who was in the belly of the beast! His flesh was scarred, his body was skeletal, and his enemy was without mercy. If anyone ought to have been screaming for help, it was he!

...Which is why I was caught completely by surprise when the man raised his head, looked directly at me, and said, "That...is exactly...what I...am doing!"

As if on cue, a small, web-like crack appeared on the creature's face. With a cacophonous noise that seized my focus, it spread across the giant's body, widening as it did. The ice melted. The stone split. The giant trembled. Still clutching the heretic, the creature fell to its knees. As the cracks widened, bits of stone fell like dust. Finally, still on the heretic's blood, the giant turned its gaze skyward, eyes wide and mouth agape, as if to scream. Instead, the void that filled its eyes in the place of a soul was destroyed by an uncontainable force that poured out a cascade of emerald light. For a moment, the giant simply kneeled there, light radiating from its eyes and mouth.

Then with power such as I had never seen, the thing exploded in a red inferno. The flames burst forth in every direction like an inescapable flood, destined to cover all of Creation. They rolled over the ground, desperate to consume all that was. In moments, it swept over me.

The fire was like nothing I had ever experienced. Where the void had stolen, the flames had given. Where fleshly comforts had been hollow, the flames were complete. Where sin had destroyed, the flames renewed.

A shriek broke weakly out, barely audible through the blazing inferno. The golden-winged angel hurled itself from the fire in a mad, desperate leap. His body, once so perfectly formed, was now a twisted abomination. Much of his flesh had been burned away and what remained was a ragged, sooty-grey mass that resembled living tissue about as much as a pile of rubble resembled a building. His inhuman size which had once struck me as artful was now a grotesque deformity. His feathers were gone and his shriveled wings now more closely resembled those of a bat than of a bird. Yet the gold remained. Clutched in his right hand was a dagger of pure gold. With one last shriek, the thing faded away into the darkest of the three realities. I was now alone with the heretic who could not possibly be a heretic.

As I turned from the place where the "angel's" distorted image now hovered, blurred by the walls of reality, I saw the man raise a set of scales above his head. The cloak and chains where gone, burned away by the emerald flames, leaving his body exposed. His flesh was whole and unmarked by its past ordeals. Though his body possessed the same image that it must have had before the crucifixion, it somehow seemed to be more whole, more complete, more perfect than any human body could possibly be. In a single fluid motion, he swung the scales down into the ground, where they shattered.

The flames rose skyward. The inferno fell into the earth. The blaze penetrated the depths of my soul...

...And then I was back. I was back in a crowd of people who thought this man was a criminal. People who thought this was an execution. People who had no idea that the world in which we lived had been completely, irrevocably changed in a single moment.