Where And When

Earth and Heaven would shake and burn. The indescribable fear would be pungent in the air and it’d happen far before anyone else would know about it. So reeking of that fear we walked forward in hopes of proving our fear unjust. The char and blood stained walls of the mausoleum proved a trusty sanctuary from the horror beyond the horizon. The screams of Geo rang in our ears and flooded our hearts with guilt and fear. At this time with hell about to erupt from the earth I couldn’t help but think of the way it began those 2 months past.

“SOLDIER!” yelled my father. I knew for a fact that he and myself were never enlisted in any armed forces, but he liked to pretend he was and I humored him. “Sir, yes, Sir, sir!” I barked making an over gestured salute. “State your full name, soldier.” This crap again I thought. “ Sir, Benjamin Soer JR Sir, sir.” He grinned and nodded “Good now remember that. I really don’t care what you become up there in Boston, just remember that soldier.” It gets a bit awkward when he gets to be sentimental. “Sir, Soldiers don’t cry, Sir, sir.”

“Of course, Soldiers don’t cry.” I thought I should try to get out of here before more feel goods came out his ass.

A few hours (6 and a half hours to be exact.) I was on my plane and waiting to take off. I was in coach and somehow ended up in the centerest of center seats between a fat guy and a fatter guy with digestion problems. I practiced Zen meditation and just with all my being wanted to find my core center. Remember your breathing, through your mouth, through your mouth I told myself. Breathe in through your mouth, breathe out through your mouth, and don’t think about being so god damn uncomfortable that you might kill someone. I repeated these words over and over again until I noticed the whispers. “Oh god, what is he doing.” I hear from one end of the plane. “Oh god, you think he’s going to try and hijack the plane?” A stuadess tapped me on the shoulder and whispered “ I really think any signs of religion would be a bad idea right now.” “ I was meditating?” I looked at her with all the fear and confusion I could muster. “ Still, It would be best to do that sort of thing in the lavatory.” I daftly nodded my head and climbed over fat guy A and made my way to the bathroom.

Sitting in that bathroom smaller than a coffin and that smelled just as bad, I realized that I could hear the wind rushing by outside. It wasn’t a very heartening feeling. I just wanted off now and than it happened. The entire plane shook and everything not nailed down flew everywhere. “Oh god, He set off a bomb!” I heard from the cockpit. I thought that I’d yell that I had nothing to do with that but I also thought I was about to die and didn’t see much point in it. The plane seemed to be in complete free fall and everyone (including myself) is screaming ourselves hoarse and suddenly it all stops. I grabbed the doorknob and tried to leave the coffin-sized bathroom but something was blocking the door. I tried forcing it and I heard a low hoarse groan and a guy shout "Stop!"

“Can you get up?” I asked, my face pressed against the door. “Can you get up at all?” I heard some shifting and groaning “No” I never thought myself clositaphobic, but I could actually feel the walls closing in. “ How badly are you hurt?” “I’m.. I’m not hurt, I just can’t get up.” “Why” Then that familiar smell crept into my nostrils. “Fat Guy?”

“Are we still in the air?” I regretted asking that question the millisecond it exited my mouth. “ I don’t think we are.” But that would have made no sense. We were I don’t even know how high in the air and we would all be dead if we were on the ground. “Are you sure?” Also a ridiculous question. “People are getting off the plane.” He said trying to get up again. “Why isn’t anyone helping you up?” I asked with my shirt over my nose. “Is anyone else there?” I shouted trying to get someone to free me. I was starting to freak out in there, desperate for clean air and a space wider than 2 by 3 feet.

I spent an hour just patiently waiting for someone to get him out of the way and when I got out I found he wasn’t as big an idiot as I thought. The entire plane was completely landed in a field somewhere in Ohio. On that day, for what ever reason no man made aircraft (not even paper planes) would fly.

But that was only the beginning, things took more clarity just before my friend Jonah’s death. He had described a dream he had. It involved the apocalypse and the horrors that would precede it. He spoke of a giant being with awesome and terrible powers. Its existence in this world would herald the death of millions and hell on earth. Jonah desperately wanted someone to believe him. He kept repeating that he knew exactly where it was going to start and that He, I … anyone needed to stop it from happening. Later that month, he was placed in an insane asylum and on the 31st of November, he committed suicide.

I spent time just thinking of the unfortunate way he had died. He spent his last days alone and considered insane. I wanted to see how much of what he said was madness and how much was fact. He had described a night in which there was no moon, but the sky stayed bright enough to see. The night would be cold and foggy. The creature of which he spoke would emerge from a mausoleum in New Jersey. He spoke of fanatics who would come to the beast’s aid and he spoke of the need for help. I found the mausoleum of which he spoke. It was nothing to be impressed by, but I did get the feeling of danger and doom from that place. I knew that something had or will have happened there. It’s Grey stones were completely engulfed in vines and dirt. It smelt of ash or soot and I feared approaching it.

Well, you can imagine what happened from there. I got that desire to find things out and got a couple friends together and we pried that thing open.

Oh, Geo. I mentioned him. Let me tell that story. This was the night everything was supposed to happen. We, Geo Joe Bobby, and myself had gone down into the mausoleum several times prier to this night and knew its ins and outs. But this night we weren’t alone. Outside sitting patiently and wantonly were thousands of cats. Just a ridiculous amount of them. So at this point, the score card read one for Jonah’s sanity and one for Jonah being completely insane.

“I thought you said Fanatics” Geo said slightly disheartened. “ I thought they were fanatics” I explained. Geo ran over haphazardly to the site hoping to scare the cats off. Poor Geo.

In moments, thousands of cats were pouncing on him scratching his face, eyes, ears, everything. Thousands jockeying for prize position on him. He screamed in horror for relief that could not come. Joe wanted to assist Geo and had to be restrained. Anyone near that horrible mass of fur and claws would suffer the same fate.

But something like that makes for a great distraction. We slipped into the crypt and closed the door behind us. But we could still hear him screaming for help. “ Christ, we need to help him.” Joe protested. “ Then go out there.” Kenny said “Hell no.” Joe retorted. I admit that I was ashamed to leave him there, but those cats weren’t messing around.

I closed my eyes and prayed for some kind of solution. Then the ground began to quake and crack and groan with the sudden ferocity of a car crash. The ground split open and black ash spewed from the ground and fire embers floated into the air. It stung at the eyes and we had to evacuate. We stepped around the ferocity of thousands of cats when the Geo problem solved itself. The cats poured into the mausoleum and away from Geo. Joe and I approached Geo after the bulk of the cats left him. Thousands of tiny cuts ran across his face, neck, arms and chest.

“It doesn’t look that bad.” Kenny said, half distractedly. His and our eyes and mind stayed square on the door to the crypt. The black ash died down and the earth steadied. The cats rushed out of the crypt as if in blind fear. The four of us watched as the cats raged past us and down the streets to where even they came from.

The next sound had nothing in common with the shifting of the earth or the spewing of ash but seemed to compliment them. As if destruction and chaos was it’s native tongue. Fire, that was all that could be seen, but it was understood that there was more underneath the flame, more than just mindless burning. Then the flame extinguished and standing there was a man, nude and chard. “Name thyself.” He uttered in his chaotic voice. “ Ben Soer” I said nervously. “Name thyself” He said again. We looked at each other and each of us in turn gave our name. But still he asked us to name ourselves. He stood there in the archway, smoldering.

“What are you?” I finally asked. “Name thyself”. I was perplexed to say the least. This man continued to say these three words without fail. Then I understood. “ I an Benjamin Soer JR, son of Benjamin Soer SR of the United States of America sir?” I had hoped he just wanted me to give my name and affiliation. “ I am the Dark traveler, the lone rider, The keeper of villainous men, The reader of dark knowledge, the mouth, mind and heart of the Apocalypse, I am Zelmone Tutimki” The man announced proudly.
I wondered if he knew that him being naked weaken his position of power. It seemed that he was going to stand there waiting for something. In honesty, he didn’t look all too formidable, more like bony. I thought back to the cats. “Jonah might’ve just been crazy.’ I approach the steps of the crypt and he began to back away until he was completely inside the mausoleum. I grabbed the door handle and closed the door. “ I guess Jonah was just crazy. We can go home guys.” I announced and we did.

We marched into the sunset fulfilled with our new knowledge.