1
Beginnings are crucial in establishing relationships. Often, a first impression leaves a lasting imprint on how two or more persons relate to one another. A good first day is as golden as thirty or more subsequent days.
*click*
The room was a cement shack. The ancient mortar blocks cracked and screamed silently from the weight of years of neglect and pinion. The earth beyond quietly bore its weight on the other side. Looking at the surrounding walls, one might have thought they might crumble at any moment and give way to a torrent of dirt and crawlies that are born life under the soiling muck from the city above. The colors blotched according to the seepage of water-staining and bore little resemblance to what may or may not have been a vibrant green or cheery blue in the years prior to neglect. The room’s inadequate lighting reflected the drab of crusting beige and dismal brown forefronting the walls’ character of years ago. A single light hung low directly over a rickety table and swung slightly, creating a lulling cessation of illumination like the gentle sway of creaking pines in the slightest of breezes. The air was saturated with the musk of mold and hooker candy. The room was windowless because it was just underground. No sound emanated from the outside hallway. All that stirred in this little prison was one of the two occupants in the room.
Against the wall at one end of the room, a man sat perfectly still in what looked to be a comfortable, but weathered, recliner. The wizened cushions lazily gave way to envelop its inhabitant. The figure had every proportion of a slender man in his late twenties or early thirties. He was perfectly shaven and nothing marred the surface of perfectly smooth and ethereally lucent skin. He was the perfect specimen of a man. Too perfect. He was too beautiful and out of place for the dismality of his surroundings. His hair was dark, slick, and long. The bangs draped carelessly over half of his face. Behind the silken tendrils of his hair, two orbs glinted in time with the sway of the light. The eyes were stoic and watchful…. taking in every detail of the other terribly animate occupant.
The man opposite the watcher was the antithesis of beautiful and still. He looked as if he hadn’t shaved for days. A lit cigarette with a mile of ash dangled from the corner of his mouth. He jittered away at his work with a small camcorder on a tripod and 9″ monitor sitting atop the rickety table in the middle of the room. His hair was unkempt and looked as if a butch-wax bomb had been detonated over his head. With the occasional finger combing, his hair became more unruly and more closely resembled a crown of thorns. The only break in his scampering was the occasional pause to take a swig of scotch from a hazy glass.
“Okay, we’re rolling,” the rasp of Mr. Jitters was indicative of his impending death due to emphysema.
“Rolling?” the watcher’s voice filled the room with a resonating timbre.
“The camera is filming. We are now recording your story,” Mr. Jitters exaggerated his gestures of a rolling motion and spoke stintedly as if he were talking to a near-deaf elder.
“Don’t you need a writing device of some kind? You people do not communicate through thought, do you?” All that moved was the pretty one’s mouth.
“Uh… no. It’s a machine that doesn’t require writing. It records what you look like and what you do and say,” agitation came easily to Mr. Ugly.
“This little thing?” The glamorous one eyed the monitor, “I find that hard to believe. I have only seen still paintings of myself, and that does not even look like me.”
“No…. this is what is called a television,” said the jittery-one touching the monitor, “This is what does the recording. Here… look. Move your hand or somethin’.”
He waved his hand and looked at the monitor, “Remarkable! You humans are simply too clever. I continually see more of why He loves you people so much.”
“Well… sir, last I checked there wasn’t anything but humans (and cockroaches) in this little shithole hell-dump of a room. And who is ‘he’?”
“This is not the way to begin…” A perfect hand is raised to support a perfect head by the chin and temple in apparent concern.
“Fine then, mister,” said ugly as he raised a hand to interrupt, “Just tell us a little about yourself, okay? We are wasting time, here. Jeez, it’s already been half and hour!”
“An… hour? What is an hour?”
“It’s part of how we measure time?” The unkempt one eyed the talking statue, “You know, 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour… Are you on something? Should I be calling a nearby institution which you call home?”
“On something?” The brow wrinkled before the head swiveled downward and then back up, “I am on this chair…”
“Christ!”
*click: fade to black*
*click*
“Okay, now that we have established what measuring time is and a couple of other language and/or cultural barriers, we are ready to begin… again. It is now…” Ugly regarded his watch.
“10 hours, 32 minutes, 11 seconds p.m. on the 5th day of June.”
“Apparently, it doesn’t take you long to become an expert on shit.”
“I have to try and understand you humans if I am to adequately relate to you the story that you must know.”
“Again with the ‘human’ thing! Are you going to start spouting shit like you are from the planet Zenthar and that your world is short of tapioca pudding and large-breasted nurses named Helga?! I swear to God if Jim sent me on another mental case round-up, I’ll kill him!”
The watcher became relatively animate with the closing of his eyes and bowing of his head as he sighed, “This is not what I expected. This will be much harder than I previously thought.”
The jittery one, seeing the completely sane look of resignation and slight frustration on the watcher, changed his demeanor to a apologetic stance, “Forget it, pal,” he said with renewed patience, “When you subsist on nicotine and ramen noodle soup shit, you tend to get a little jumpy. Let’s start over. How about a name?”
“A name? How do you mean?”
He paused to refrain from getting angry again. He continued after a second, “Okay…. A name helps people, like myself, identify with someone like you. In a sense, your name becomes a defining moment or entity in those persons’ memories and mental make-up. When someone gets a name, they link it with who a person is, what they have done, what they look like, what they do, and generally a story of some sort. It is sort of like capturing the essence of someone and wrapping it into a little word form.” He made a squishy gesture with his thumb and index fingers. He then glanced upwards a bit as if he were trying to spot some escaping and distant memory, “Sometimes a name can become bigger than the person it is meant for.”
After pausing for a moment seemingly to let the concept sink in, the pretty one softly said, “I see. That was a bit more of an explanation than I expected for a simple translation. Though it is an elegant or poetic description.” He resumed speaking again so as not to seem rude or sarcastic, “So what is your name?”
Twitchy blinked a couple of times, “Um, I’m Nathan… short for Nathaniel.”
A slight grin teased the face of the watcher, “Strange. Tell me, Nathaniel, have you ever read The Bible?”
Nathan braced himself for a zealot’s onslaught of Jehovah’s witness-like ranting, “Never got around to it. Mom used to take me to church and that stuff, but I later found it to be full of hypocrites and shit. I never resolved the conflict, so I adopted a more personal philosophy. I guess I held onto the basics like ‘Be kind to your fellow man’ and the rest of it.”
The smile widened a touch and immediately receded, “I just read The Bible recently, myself.” Raising his eyes from the camera’s lens, Nathan did not expect such a reply. “It is full of important stories that you should probably know. You would do well to read them. You might even find the significance of your name, there. One such story in particular might interest you.” He paused to let his words take effect, “So, Nathaniel, you will be bringing my message to the world?”
“I don’t know about that. I suppose that depends on your story and my boss. And if your story is good enough, not even my boss can keep me from telling the world. Not that the bastard would pass up on an opportunity to take credit for a good story, though.”
“Perfect. Strange, mysterious, and wondrous ways….” The watcher seemed to be drifting into a state of mental odyssey.
“So what is your name, sir?” Nathan asked in an attempt to keep his interviewee from straying too far.
“Of course,” as pretty reacquainted himself to the world about him. “I am called Delevar,” his expression returned to its stoic form, “I do have a story, and it is vital that you tell everyone. You will take it and warn all of humankind that there is second war in hell, and that it is no longer bound to hell. It is making its way to Earth, and mankind needs to prepare itself for the coming trials. Look at your monitor.”
“Shit!” Nathan nearly overturned the table with his reaction to stand defensively. He shifted his guard between the man and the monitor. He immediately reached for his scotch and examined it. “How the fuck did you do that?!?! Did you slip me something when I wasn’t lookin’?!?” He quickly shook the remaining contents of the glass into the nearby sink. His hands trembled noticeably, trying to steady himself against a world that was fast becoming surreal.
“Listen carefully, Nathaniel. You wanted a story, and this is it. You have apparently been chosen by God to take this story to the world. I am what is called an ‘ascending demon’. What you saw before you just now is my banished form. This is much to take in, I know, but you must listen and try to comprehend the sheer importance of what I am telling you.”
“How? What did…? Oh my God! OhmyGod, ohmyGod, ohmyGod!”
“Shhhhhh!” Delevar’s stoicism turned grim as he held up his hands, “If you knew the weight your words carried, you would not say them so casually… Nathaniel! Listen to me! Look!” He rose from his chair, approached, and knelt before the table where Nathan sat, and directly addressed him. Nathaniel was busily shaking new splashes of scotch into his glass. The rattle of the clinking bottle-against-glass was rabid. Delevar reached across the table and gently took hold of Nathan’s wrist easing the clinking a bit, “Can you do this, Nathan? I need you. I need to know if you can see this through.”
“Okay… okay,” Nathan was breathing so heavily that his head was starting to spin with hyperventilation more than the booze, “I’m okay.” He closed his eyes tightly and quickly opened them wide again as if he were desperately trying to loose the remnants of a bad dream. With a deep breath and a sigh, he grasped the neck of the bottle and resolutely slid it and the glass aside. The contours of the wood rumbled in opposition to the disturbance to its peaceful rest.
“Should we begin, again?” The demon suddenly became gentle and the timbre in his voice resonated with calming reassurance. The image on the screen was normal again, and the ground began to reclaim its stability.
“No!” Nathan blurted, shedding the last of his panic, “I mean… It needs to be this way. People need to see what I see if they are to hear this. Otherwise, no one will believe us.”
“Good. This is as it should be. This is precisely why you need to bring this message, because you know how humans will react. War is coming and I need you to guide me in how people need to hear this story. Do you understand?”
“Yes. I understand,” Nathan briefly wondered if he truly did, but he carried on, nonetheless.
“Alright. Then it is time to begin.”