Aeon of Wonder Read online

  Aeon of Wonder

  Stories of gods, angels and man

  Carey L. Henderson

  Copyright © 2015 Carey L. Henderson

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1517447577

  ISBN-13: 978-1517447571

  CONTENTS

  Forward

  1

  A Conversation of Angels

  2

  Rockets, Sex Magick and Blood

  3

  Newton’s Third Law of Conjuring

  4

  The Angel and the Dragon

  5

  The Old Woman of the Lake

  6

  The Red Planet Stops by

  Forward

  These are stories that seek to prove nothing. They seek to perhaps cause you, Dear Reader, to think, to wonder and to perhaps see beyond the surface-dwelling world we live in today. Several of them merely fictionalize the Biblical Mythos, while embellishing on this by drawing from other cultures and mythologies, to create spectacle and awe. Others draw on more traditional means to communicate the same sense of wonder.

  While this book draws its roots and moral structure from Judeo-Christian principles, it would be unwise to view any of its stories as more than fiction. It does not make commentary concerning Biblical ideas of salvational doctrines. The stories contained within do not promote acceptable or unacceptable behaviors for those of faith but rather represent life as it is found in our world today.

  I hope you thoroughly enjoy every word.

  A Conversation of Angels

  So small, so insignificant they had become. The Watcher felt his heart slip for a moment. He would need it all and could not afford to allow it to slip anymore, so he merely recalled days of old.

  He could see them all wrapped in iron bars and cages, sealed into stone, chained to walls, submerged indefinitely; tortured in the darkness and seething with rage and pain: Sons of God. Brothers some, abominations others, enmity's seed, all. The depths far below the firmament of mankind's world bore witness to their power; fading, withering and yet still power it was, rending stone and block over time, shaking the foundations of the deep. It stank of envy and corruption. Flesh gone bad.

  The Watcher took his customary seat and waited, far below, down in Tartarus, for one that would meet him there.

  "Your time is come, my friend."

  The ancient being sighed. The Watcher waited.

  "Typical," the ancient being whispered, "ever silent, never guilty." The Watcher said nothing. A sniff of nostrils broke the silence.

  "And so, my time has come, I suppose," the ancient being said. The two stared at one another. Far in the distance of the rotting prison something mocked them.

  "I cannot remember what it is like to not grow, to not age, to not... change. Brother, I miss it, I crave it, I lust for it. I envy thee, dear brother, that thou dost not change for thou cannot. Thy love is forever fixed upon Him."

  The Watcher could see the hatred in his older brother's eyes. It stung deeply, for he knew the hatred was borne of anguish. His brother was right: he did not change. He could not understand that peculiar aspect of space and time: everything got older, grew and changed over time. He did not understand this and yet he had witnessed it throughout mankind's existence. And yet the Watcher could not help but see that in so many ways, nothing about his brother had changed at all.

  "What will you do then, brother," the Watcher asked.

  His brother's eyebrows knitted, furrowed, then raised. He lifted his hands and brought them onto the table in a flop. The sound echoed the depths of Tartarus. "What I always do, brother, what I always do," he leaned forward, closed his fists tight and looked the Watcher in the eyes, "trifle with them, change them, corrupt them. That is what I will do."

  “Shemya…”

  "No." Shemyaza held his hand up. The Watcher understood. "Do you know what it's like to want something? To crave it, desire it, lust for it?" Shemyaza slammed his fists on the table. "No, you don't. You've never been flesh, have you? You always chose this... cheat you do where I can see you, you can even hit me. But you aren’t flesh. You cheated. You ducked out. You coward.”

  Uziel let the blows come, he’d expected to hear it all. There was no reason to argue with his older brother. That creature seemed to have been born out of nothing into pure, stubborn, immovable resistance.

  Shemyaza sighed and rolled his eyes. He slid back in his chair, his chains scraping on the black stone floor.

  In the silence that followed, the Watcher remembered.

  ****

  Shemyaza had brought God's Sons to Earth in order to show mankind Goodness. To teach them righteousness. Uziel himself had seen his former General petition the Throne of Grace to request permission to take form and show mankind the ways of Truth. It had moved Him greatly and thus they had taken form and moved among humanity.

  The Watcher could remember how much his former General had fought with his form once attained. Regret was not a concept he was aware of and yet he had always wondered whether he should have reported this to Him. In the night he'd howled and screamed, the sounds of the physical world seemed to drive Shemyaza very nearly mad in the beginning. Uziel had never taken on a fully flesh form. He’d opted for something in the middle, where he possessed mass and could interact with the physical world. But he had not tied all of his senses to the physical plane. He felt he did not possess the strength. As he’d watched his General come so close to madness as the anguish of sensory overload took him and flattened him time and again, he could not help but believe that he had made the right choice.

  The first thing his General had noticed upon coming out of his madness had been their size and strength in the physical world, compared to that of Man. Uziel had not been surprised that they were superior. It had, after all, been Him who had told them of this fact from day one. But for Shemyaza, it had seemed like a potent drug had taken hold of him at the moment he’d been able to see the truth in physical form. Shemyaza would tower above them, lifting stones and breaking things just to amuse himself. Uziel had felt pity when looking into the eyes of most Men, who were terrified.

  The first argument between Uziel and his General occurred on the 17th of the third month and it had been due to cruelty.

  “What is it, Uziel? I am told you are angered by something. Do tell, please, so that I might make it right between us.”

  “Your cruelty, Sir.”

  “Cruelty?”

  “To them; to Man, His Creation.”

  He remembered Shemyaza’s left eyebrow went upward before he spoke. “This truly troubles you, my brother? Why? Are they not immortal as we?”

  “They are not, as we, no, Sir. They are temporal with immortal souls. They have fears we cannot understand fully; fear can, quite literally, kill some of them. He does not take kindly to harming them and frightening them without rather compelling evidence that such action was required to fulfill His Law.”

  A softness that would never reveal itself again crossed over Shemyaza’s countenance. Uziel could remember that he would never again feel that relief that he’d felt in that moment, so long ago, before his General had turned.

  “Then let our counsel here be done, brother, and let us hold the matter in complete agreement, for I had forgotten Our Father’s love for them. No more shall I express myself to them in such ways.”

  Uziel could remember his General doing something he’d never done: he slapped him on the shoulder. He could not understand the gesture then but he’d seen that it was something that signified wholeness in the moment to Shemyaza, so he’d said nothing about it.

  But then, Shemyaza had seen them: the Daughters of Man.

  Three of them swam that night in the babbling stream, moonlight slivering and
glinting over their forms. Uziel had remembered being able to recognize them as beautiful, compelling, even. And yet they did not tempt him in his physical form, any more than a sunset tempted him. Beauty was a constant in the Kingdom. It simply was. And yet for his General, who had attained all senses and had given himself over fully into his physical form, there had been a temptation so great that it had overwhelmed him.

  “Would you have one of them, Uziel?”

  Uziel did not understand the question fully. He answered anyway, “no, I could not, Sir. It is forbidden.”

  Shemyaza had not turned to face Uziel while speaking until hearing those words, at which point he turned and met his brother in the eyes. “Forbidden? Where is such writ, brother? Did He foretell of this as well? I recall nothing such being written.”

  “Must I say the words, brother?”

  “Yes, yes, do not make me wait. If you know of these warnings and where they are writ, tell me of them now.”

  “They are in our hearts. He has written them in our hearts. Do you not recall?”

  His General had merely smiled widely at him.

  “Then leave me,” Shemyaza said. “But swear to me an oath this moment that you will tell no one.”

  Uziel remembered feeling something peculiar at the time: a reticence to trust his brother, a leader he had followed for so long without question. The General maintained eye contact and thus Uziel had answered, “I swear it, brother.”

  “On His Name?”

  Uziel had felt anger swell within him at that moment, an anger directed at his General, far more acute than brought on by his sometimes cruelty to Man. “If I shall not follow you into this misdeed, brother, then what convinces you that I will also do this, which is forbidden, merely because you ask? I have sworn and that is enough. I will leave you then.”

  For a moment, Shemyaza had a look on his face expressing confusion, and then he simply smiled again as Uziel returned to their encampment.

  ****

  “You don’t even understand your memories, brother. You don’t understand what they are for at all. It infuriates me at times. Here you have been captivated by your reverie and yet you have learned nothing yet again, for the hundredth time in our history together. You fool.”

  Shemyaza howled laughter that echoed through Tartarus.

  “Then you, O Learned One,” Uziel said, “tell me again of how your wisdom, power and lusts have sated your appetites. Tell me of your future. Tell me of all that you have abandoned and what you have lost. Tell a fool, for he wishes to learn.”

  “That’s just it, you fool: you are unable learn. Have we not done this time and again throughout millennia of this world’s time?”

  At this, Uziel was the one who smiled. “Not one of us left His side without warning. Your senses and form robbed you of your own memories, it seems. For we were not dropped upon this plane without the knowledge He had given to us. You say that I am unable to learn and it may be that you are correct, brother. And yet it is I who stands before you, recollecting His Word to us, to each and every one of us. It is I who have maintained my station for this time between us.”

  “I did not wish to learn, Uziel. Can you not hear my words, brother? I did not wish to know. I hate it, what Goodness becomes upon this plane. I cannot reason with Goodness in this form, I can no longer attain it, communicate with it. I see nothing but darkness, Uziel. It is all I have seen since first I opened my eyes on this Earth.”

  And again Uziel was moved by the heart of his brother. “I will speak with Our Father. He offers mercy and forg…”

  Shemyaza’s chains caught their slack as he rose up to his full height. “No. You will not offer me His mercies again. I will have it not, I will never have the forgiveness. You vile thing, you come here and tell me that my time is at hand only to taunt me with mercies that I abandoned eons ago, Grace that I cannot possess and for what? To make your pathetic half-form feel better, for pity’s sake. Loose me or leave me. Loose me or leave me at this moment, brother. Do what you were sent to do, loyal soldier of mine, and shut your mouth if you wish this to be less painful for us.”

  Uziel stood slowly and walked to his older brother.

  “Do you despise it,” Shemyaza asked. “Do you hate being forced to loose me, your failed and fallen brother, to do evil across His Creation? Are you seething, dear brother?”

  Uziel took the chains from his belt as his former General held his hands up in front of him. The clanking of the keys could be heard echoing through Tartarus, taunts and jeers rose, a cacophony of spiteful triumph catcalled out by fallen soldiers who had once ruled by Their Father’s side, now writhing in the spittle of sin for eternity.

  “What I am, Shemyaza, never changes. This, you know. So also you know that what I feel is, at this moment, pain. Does this gratify you?”

  The braces and chains fell from Shemyaza’s hands onto the black stone floor. A chorus rose up throughout Tartarus as the former General held his arms wide and aloft.

  “More than you will ever know, brother.”

  Rockets, Sex Magick and Blood

  Prologue

  Sumeria, eons ago:

  There was once a mighty king who, like the one who had come before him, sought to usurp the Throne of Heaven and subdue his Creator, and overthrow Him, and take for himself all of Creation.

  This mighty king devised a plan. His father had for him long ago stolen the garments of Adam, formed by the Hand of God Himself, and thus he had grown to be a man of incredible height and stature, feared everywhere he went. He figured to himself that, since his body was so far superior to mankind, he would call unto himself the Spirit of Desolation, make war with It and conquer It within himself, thus gaining the power of Hades and Death, along with his own might. Then, he reckoned, he could usurp all that he wished.

  To do this, he would teach all mankind of his might and power, and give to them the gifts that he had known many years. He would show them how to use their weak flesh to cause blood to flow and doors to open; doors to things they would subdue and use and learn dark wisdom from, and corrupt all things. The energy from their sins and mockery would call up Desolation, and the King would then swallow whole the might of Hell.

  To and fro, he traveled the world as it was in his day, crowning the Pharaoh, telling tales on Crete and showing those in the North the might of iron and metals. To his surprise, they hungered to rebel nearly as much as he craved it. Incantations and chants he gave them, permission to pursue all of their desires he gave to them in the form of ceremonies that used the energy of physical degradation to open paths to unseemly and dark places.

  And mankind drank from the cup willingly.

  This mighty king wandered to and fro across the earth, seeking whom he might devour, until the day of Desolation came, and he met his sought after Spirit.

  He fell to his knees before blackness such that he had never seen. All of his power slipped from his grasp as breath from the lungs; he was nothing. Seen by the Spirit of Desolation to his core, and found wanting, and yet he had been right about his own form: it could sustain the power it sought.

  Not the mind of Nimrod, however, no; the king died in the moment of transition, and Desolation found a form in which to corrupt the Creation in ways not yet imagined.

  The King of Desolation roared across the surface of the earth, spreading corruption in every direction. One family rebelled against his might, however, and yet with all of his power, he could not corrupt them.

  He watched from Hermon, the place of the Dark Pact, one night as the lightning flashed from far across the desert. His roar was reduced to a sigh and a rolling of his eyes.

  Would He never cease to find another loophole? The rain began to pelt the face of Desolation.

  ****

  Classified Location, Late 1940's

  When the General stepped into the room, the two men were engaged in a mild argument. The one on the right was Jack Parkins, on the left, Don Ramsey; two up and coming names in the scienti
fic, aeronautics and some other areas the General claimed he didn't understand. Parkins was tall, lanky and something of a smirking jerk. Ramsey the General liked; had a more level head. Understood authority. He could see Parkins detested authority. Just the way the young man stood, he could see it.

  "You know me and him used to argue this all the time. I always told him I didn't want to be part of it. No, it's just not something I'm interested in."

  "Yeah, Jack. I know that, ok? But you remember why he always wanted it?"

  "Of course. 'You can't close something you didn't open, Jack.'"

  "Exactly."

  "I don't care, Donny. I don't care."

  "Gentlemen," the General barked. Parkins, of course, kept talking. "One way or another, she's comin' through this time."

  The General cleared his throat and removed his hat. He allowed the silence to linger.

  "Would you two mind to tell me why there is an all-out orgy taking place in Hanger 17?"

  Parkins actually chuckled. Ramsey looked mortified. "Well?"

  "I'm trying to conjure up an old spirit, your honor," Parkins said.

  "Beg your pardon?"

  "Don't," Ramsey said. "Don't, General. But I assure you, this has been cleared. All the way to the top."

  The General could see the frustration on Parkins’ face at his partner’s obvious respect for military and authority.

  "Don't pretend you don't know, General. Time is too short, ok? This is just about to happen and I don't want any interference."