Conquest of Chimera

                                                            Conquest of Chimera

                                                                             By

                                                                Curtis Ray Jones

Genesis 11: 6

And the Lord said, Behold the people is one, and they have all one language: and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do…

     Chapter One

    It was 1:A.M..., the last 12 hour day of Kian West’s seven day shift. He only had one more mile to drive before he could go home and fall into bed. But home seemed a million miles away.

   His eyelids sagged like concrete curtains. The fingers tips of his right hand were sliding off the bottom of his stirring wheel. His is left arm already lay limp and useless in his lap.

   The cool breeze flowing into his open truck window was supposed to be chilling and invigorating combed through his long brown hair like soothing fingers numbing his senses massaging his mind away from this world as if preparing it for another.

  His head wobbled as his truck slowed drifting closer and closer to the shoulder. Finally his foot slipped off the accelerator. His body slumped. His eyes closed as his truck veered off the pavement.

    If only he had managed to drive another twenty feet his truck would have rolled off the road and into a thick wall of springy saplings and come to harmless stop. Instead the truck jerked and shimmied on the loose gravel jolting him awake. He slammed his foot against the accelerator thinking it was the brake sending the truck roaring down a steep 80 foot ravine where it plowed into a stump tumbled onto to its’ side, up ended, slammed into the ground and rolled again. The impact slung the driver’s door open and flung him from the cab.

  Mercifully his head bounced off the door frame, knocking him out cold just before he cart wheeled over the truck slammed head first into a massive oak at the bottom of the ravine. He never felt a thing. A split second later the truck slid around punched though the darkness and crushed his helpless body against the trees’ rough unyielding trunk.

  Kian’s time in this world was suddenly over. Two days would pass before anyone would find his body. But Kian West was not just anybody…

   When he was only a one month old he did something impossible. Bound up like a tiny mummy in his blue baby blanket he experienced his first emotion –boredom. His eyes had just begun to focus clearly; unfortunately the white featureless ceiling was all he could see.

  He tried to turn his head but his mother’s loving hands had wound the blanket so tight that rolling his eyes and breathing was the only motion he could manage. Paralyzed by love but determined to see anything new, he closed his eyes and reached out with his mind.

  Suddenly he found himself looking down on snuggly swaddled baby lying in a crib; saw a blue oval shaped rug beneath the crib and saw a changing table by a window. Bright morning sunlight streaked through the window painting a golden square on the floor-his bedroom floor!

  It was then he knew he did not need words in his head to know that he was floating above his body clinging to the ceiling like a balloon-that he didn’t need wings to fly or even a body!

    He would be teenager before he heard the words astral projection. But the day he heard them and learned what they meant he would look back on this morning and think, “oh yeah, I did that when I was a baby, but do I really want do it again? Do I really want to go there? What sort of baby does that? What sort of person am I?” 

   Though he had spent most of his adult life trying to be just another guy struggling to make a dollar, passing himself off as normal, he always knew that he was not. However he also knew that whatever the future held for him that dwelling on his ‘specialness’ would only hinder him from making the most of the world he was born into. It was not like he could float out of his body at will nor do other supernatural stuff.

  Now here he was in the last day of his life looking down on his bloody mangled corpse, seeing through the darkness as though it was broad daylight, floating on the air like a wisp of smoke and wishing he had least tried to explore his talent rather running from it, rather than fearing it was a curse.

   “Is that really me,” he wondered aloud unable to find a face on the poor shattered head he used to live in. “Yeah that’s Thelma West’s little boy, the only family she’s got-no, had! Oh Mom I’m sorry, should have spent last weekend with you, like you asked, huh! Should have seen this coming, maybe if I had reached out and grabbed it, learned how to use it, maybe I’d be alive right now. Still it doesn’t take a psychic to know too many hours and too little sleep is bound to end badly-moron! Was I trying to kill myself, well there lies your answer, crushed and broken on the ground.” He said as he eased down toward the bloody mess that used to be his body. “I guess I was. Running from reality is never a good thing, even if your reality simply can’t be real. Now what, I just float around these woods and scare the crap out of people. I don’t want to do that. I want to go Heaven. Okay God here I am, I messed up but I’m ready to take whatever you have for me, I guess…”    

   Silence, night was closing in, his light was fading. A new deeper darkness settled down, until he could no longer see his remains or anything else. Cloaked in blackness he drew back drifting up away from the horror, away from wreck away from the earth. It was time to go, but where? Nothingness suddenly claimed him sucked out of this world then spat him out…

  Smooth coolness pressed against his face. Sweet floral fragrance tantalized his nostrils. Softness kissed his cheek. A moan escaped from the deepest part of his being. Pink light filtered through his eyelids. The darkness had lifted, or had he escaped it, had someone saved him from it? Was he alive-again!

  The softness he felt pressing against his face, was now pressing against his chest, his arms his legs! He was alive, he was alive! He was lying face down beneath a sheet in a bed. Drawing his hands together, he pushed up, opened his eyes and saw white everywhere. 

  Rolling over as he surveyed his surroundings he saw that he was in a huge crescent shaped white room. Then he looked past the end of his bed and noticed that the room bowed out toward a huge curved window affording him an unobstructed view of a clear blue sky.

   “This is not like any hospital I’ve ever seen,” he said as he slid out of bed and discovered he was wearing white pajama bottoms and nothing else. “But this has to be a hospital, what else could it be?”

   He started to call out but changed his mind. He’d look around first. Someone had placed him here, who or why he did not know. All he did know was that he was back in his body and was uninjured and able to walk; he’d explore a bit, try and get a better feel for the place. They would come to him when they were ready to reveal themselves. No need to press the issue or his luck. Besides he wanted to stretch his legs, they felt funny-different somewhat. 

   The soles of his bare feet flattened against a cool smooth ceramic floor that curved up into slick dull white wall that rose about ten feet then curved up and over his head until it curved back down to become the huge picture window bowing out ten feet from the foot of his bed.  

   He looked for a door but saw none. Apparently he was trapped in curved capsule roughly three times the size of a school bus. He had never been in anything like this. Something strange had happened, even stranger than floating out of his dead body. But at least he wasn’t dead now, was he?

   He looked down at his hands and did not recognize them. Holding them up to his face he searched in vain for some familiar detail, a scare, a callous or a hang nail. The hands were flawless sturdy and masculine but not his. Suddenly he wanted out. He walked to the window hoping to find some way to open it.

  Seeing not the slightest crack or crevice in the glass he peered out and saw a scallop shaped balcony jutting out eight feet from the window like a pouting lower lip. It had no corners but curved gently up from the floor to form a chest high rounded railing resembling the front of a sled. Now he really wanted to get out. He reached out to touch the glass and to his utter amazement the moment his fingertips made contact they pushed right through. The transparent material was not glass but some sort of invisible film-something similar to the surface of a soap bubble. But this bubble did not burst when he touched it simply parted and slid over his fingers like elastic.

    “Okay,” he said, “the window is the door,” He stepped forward feeling the membrane slide over his skin allowing a warm breeze to sweep over his half -dressed body, “and this place cannot be Earth”. He said stepping unto the balcony, having no idea what might happen next, but relieved to be outside.

 Easing up to the railing he reached out and grasped its’ smooth curved surface then bent over looked down and saw nothing but a field of fluffy white cloud stretching to the horizon. How high up was he?

  “Maybe this is heaven.” He said pressing his right hand to his face, and feeling nothing familiar beneath his fingertips.  “Of course, new hands new face,” he jerked is arms up “new arms”, he said his voice quivering with disbelief, as the enormity of his situation began to settle in. He looked down and saw a body he had never seen before. 

   “How can this be?” The question was still hanging in his mind when he noticed an odd little cloud undulating against the distant blue. A weak smile lifted the corners of his lips as he assumed he was looking at a dove.

   The bird was a welcome distraction until he realized it was growing larger that it was flying straight at him. Was it going to attack him? Doves, attack, he thought not. Its’ very presence, spoke of peace and tranquility.  The way it moved was soothing, appealing even narcotic so much so he found he could not look away.

   There was also something sweet and familiar about the creature. Warm memories began to flood his mind as it grew larger. But it began to look less and less like a bird, if not a bird then what?

   Suddenly his body went slack. His eyes widened. His mouth dropped open. His mind struggled to accept the impossible image hovering before him; a winged women dressed in a flowing white gown was gracefully flapping toward him.

  “How can you fly, what are you?” he asked as she glided closer and closer until she slid up close enough to the balcony to reach out and touch him. “Are you an angel?”

  A gentle smile lifted her perfect delicate features as she glided over him and looked down. Her smile spread into a grin as he realized she was inspecting him.

 “Hey lady what are you doing?” he asked feeling a bit embarrassed, “just because I don’t have a shirt doesn’t mean you have to gawk. He said as his face turned red.

  She giggled, fluttered down behind him. He jerked around just as the fingers of her right hand gently racked across his shoulder blades.

  “Fly.” She whispered into his left ear. Her breath smelled of jasmine, warm and soft as a summer breeze.

   “You can speak!” He said as he spun around and found himself face to face with her as she fluttered just above to floor.

  She tilted her head, letting her long golden hair spill across her right shoulder. “Fly.” Her voice was sweet and musical but also commanding. 

   “I don’t have wings. I cannot fly, wow you’re pretty.” He blushed as the last three words came out of him as easily as an exhalation.

  “Pretty. Wow. Fly.” She said lifting her chin as her pale blue eyes rolled skyward.

  He tried to step back but could not force himself to draw away from her. She drew closer, lowering her body but lifting her arms as she neared.

   “What are you doing? He asked as he felt her hands glide around his bare torso around his ribs and up his back.

   “Wings,” She said flatly as she slid her fingertips into his flesh, then quickly jerked them away just before his back slits opened and his wings instantly unfurled.

  He stumbled back. She grasped his hands and pressed them to her bosom as she peered up at him with such tenderness, he could not help but relax, a little. “Fly,” she pleaded. “Wow?” She asked with disarming timidity, as her reacted to the shock on his face.

  “What was that? What did you do?” Kian asked searching her delicate face and seeing a perfect blend of familiar details on a face that he had never seen before. “Who are you?  What are you?”

   He glanced over his right shoulder; saw his new wings jerked his face back towards hers, just as he wings collapsed back into their skin slits. “Can’t be, Am I dead? Yeah, that’s right I died.”

  She just smiled at him, her soft eyes inexplicably penetrating yet comforting as a mother’s embrace.

   “I know you, don’t I?”

  She shook her head. A small delicate smile gently lifted features.

  “I do. You are…who?”

   Blinking her eyes she eased away from him. Her smile flattened as emotions clouded her face.

  “You’re learning, aren’t you? Did you just get here too? Did you die too? All this is new to you isn’t it?” He reached back and forced himself to touch his right wing. “Well not all, you did know about my wings.” He said the word wings as if he were saying horns.

 “New,” she asked. Sadness watered eyes.

   The pitifulness in her voice squeezed his heart. “I know you, but I don’t.” He said again as he cupped her right cheek and wiped away a tear drop before it could roll down to her chin.     

  She laid her head against his hand as if it were a pillow. There was no doubt. She was drawn to him, so much so that he had watched her fly to him from who knows where, but why?

  “You need me?” He asked her. “But you don’t know me.”

  She drew closer to him as he spoke, until her head lay against his bare chest. Her warmth and the softness of her body against his drew his arms up and around her.

  He started to speak but knew that was not what he really wanted to do. Apparently they both wanted the same thing. She lifted her face toward his as he bowed down and pulled her up. He pressed his lips against hers. Suddenly his lungs swelled with her breath. She was inside him. Then she inhaled drawing his breath deep into her body as they melted into each other.

    After a few moments they parted but only by inches. “Kian,”whispered, “I am here.”

 And in that moment he knew she came from him. He did not know how, much less why. He only knew this must be how Adam felt when God first presented Eve to him.

  But he was not Adam. This place was not Eden and whoever whatever brought them here was not God! Still he knew she somehow came from him and was…he could hardly fathom the implications…was somehow, for some unknown reason she had been made for him.