The ALL - God of Nothing

I finally get it...Show, Don't Tell.  Comments welcome...this is a complete rewrite of the book I am working on.

 

 

PART ONE

THE ALL

The only thing certain is it happened.

When it happened is less clear; sometime after yesterday or possibly before tomorrow. But it did happen.

 

Chapter 1

Aja Ashe Jensen

****

A cycle in Earth years is roughly 10 raised to the 85th power. That is a 10 followed by 85 zeros. It is based on the half life of Theddium, the rarest element in the ALL.

This can be compared to an incorrect belief of Earth scientists. They estimate in the entire universe the sum total of elementary particles is about 10 raised to the 83rd power.

It doesn’t matter where a person is in God’s ALL. A cycle lasts a long time.

Miranda, God of Knowledge

****

January 2^nd, 2002. Planet Earth. Naples, Maine.

Blizzard winds carried wails and moans of ghosts trying to get inside. Windows rattled and the roof heaved in a torrent of snow.

Inside the vacation home, or the cabin, as Aja and her Dad called it, lights flickered and died. Burning logs in the fireplace stood sentinel against the cold.

Seventeen-year-old Aja Ashe Jensen, rested sideways on a couch against Bobby Kane, crowding him. Her feet hung over the armrest and her long chestnut hair tumbled in soft waves between them. Bangs she dyed light blue hung in her face.

People called Aja beautiful, but that confused her. Wasn’t everyone beautiful?

Outside the cabin, an emergency generator rumbled to life, joining the chorus of the raging white storm. Light returned and drove away the darkness.

“Great, I lost an hour of game time.” Bobby Kane complained tossing the PlayStation controller on the sofa.

Bobby kissed the top of Aja’s head. “Sorry I’m in a rotten mood. I want to call Tony.”

”So, call him.” Aja answered.

 “I tried a while ago. Normal phone on the kitchen wall died before the power and Dad’s new Blackberry won’t get reception.” Bobby sighed.

Aja tilted her head back, meeting Bobby’s eyes. “I thought you and Tony broke up.”

“We did. So? I still want to call him.”

Aja grinned. “I can’t help you, Bobby. You have more experience with guys than I do and should give me advice.”

Best friends since age four, Aja and Bobby were inseparable.

Aja’s father, Matthew, stopped strumming a guitar. “Bobby, you can’t force these things.”

Bobby groaned.

Aja and her Dad spent weekends in Naples, Maine all summer. Matthew bought the cabin on Long Lake after Aja turned three. A little girl needed a safe place, far from the city to play. In winter, if snow fell, they came with Dr. Kane and his son Bobby for a week at a time.

Aja twitched and took a deep breath, putting a hand between her breasts. She jumped to her feet and scurried to a large picture window. That thing in her heart slithered again.

Gazing outside, taking deep breaths, she watched the snow falling in the illumination of the floodlights. Tossed by the wind in chaotic motion, the white flakes blew sideways and up.

Going to the entryway, Aja pulled on heavy black and yellow boots and donned a thick black and yellow winter jacket. She bent forward and shook her hair in front of her and twisted a scrunchie around it, putting it in a ponytail. Aja added a black and yellow wool hat and pulled on durable matching gloves. All her winter wear was black and yellow, branded Ski-Doo. She looked like a walking billboard.

 “Aja, no one will sneak up in the blizzard and steal your new snowmobile.” Bobby laughed.

Aja joined Bobby laughing. “I want to make sure.”

Matthew frowned. “Are you OK, honey?”

Aja clomped over to her father and wrapped her arms around him. “I’m fine, Daddy. I want to check on my sled, plus Weather Channel said we might get thunder snow. I want to look for it.”

Aja spoke the truth, but not the entire truth. She needed a few minutes alone. In her heart, a slumbering monster attempted to wake. A great serpent inside, moving, trying to uncoil after a long sleep.

“OK, sweetheart. I love you.” Matthew returned the hug.

 A large, rugged man, two inches over six feet, Matthew wasn’t prone to talk but quick to tell Aja he loved her. He owned a successful, commercial landscaping business. In New England, that meant he and Aja worked outside for half the year, operating backhoes and frontend loaders. They plowed snow during other half.

While Aja clomped back to the door, Dr. Theodore Kane glanced up from a stack of patient folders he’d been reviewing, oblivious to the last few hours. “Aja, are you going outside?”

“Yes.” Aja pointed to the paperwork strewn in front of Dr. Kane. “After tonight that mess gets put away. You know the deal.”

Dr. Kane’s ebony face broke into a smile and his bald head nodded. “I know. Don’t get lost. The storm is here, full force.”

Aja opened the door and tendrils of snow swirled around her feet, trying to invade the cabin.

Aja Ashe Jensen walked into the storm.

Venturing first to the covered trailer, holding four snowmobiles, she opened the side door and grabbed a handle, pulling herself inside. In the dark trailer, Aja admired her sled, a shiny Ski-Doo MXZ Blizzard.

A small laugh escaped from Aja recalling her father covering her eyes and guiding her to the garage on Christmas. He removed his hands saying, “Merry Christmas, Aja”. Her new snowmobile waited, wrapped in black paper with a huge yellow bow on top.

In the trailer, Aja whispered, “You always overdo the wrapping, Dad.”

She stroked the cowl of the Ski-Doo with a gloved hand. “Tomorrow, we fly together.”

Aja exited the trailer and slogged through snow and wind, going to the beach side of the cabin. Alone in the blizzard, Aja said to herself, “A real dumping”, the correct New England term for heavy snowfall.

Five inches of new white powder covered the ground since arriving from outside Boston. The storm wouldn’t ease until morning, accumulating over an inch of new snow each hour. Before they went riding, she’d need to clear the access road and driveway.

Aja tugged one of her gloves off and studied her hand, turning it back and forth.

She reached toward the broken sky. Instantly, blue and gold lightning, silent without thunder answered. Bolt after bolt kissed her fingers. The electricity shimmered and sparked circling her arm, creating an electric blue and gold aura. With every lightning strike that monster in her heart stirred. Each time it moved, pure love washed through Aja.

Several months earlier, when that serpent started twisting and turning, Aja’s heart raced and adrenaline flooded her veins. Fear didn’t overtake her though. Except for twice, she felt wonder. On two different occasions as that wyrm moved she experienced not love, but a quick flash of utter hatred. Hate so vile she couldn’t fathom the emotion. That terrified Aja, as it should have.

I need to talk with Dad. He’ll listen and believe me, not think I’m crazy.

****

Hours later, after getting ready for bed, Aja sat against the headboard in flannel blue pajamas with a raggedy stuffed dragon in her lap. She twirled a strip of long hair around a finger, eyes tight and a small frown on her lips.

Aja would make a terrible poker player.

A knock on her bedroom door.

“Come in.”

Matthew opened the door halfway and leaned his head in. “I love you. Sleep tight.”

Voicing her thoughts Aja asked, “Daddy, will you tell me about Mum?”

Pain flickered across Matthew’s face and he opened the door fully. Aja expected the same answer her Dad always gave, “I loved your mother very much.”

Instead, Matthew said, “I should have told you about your mother long ago. How much she loved you. When I watched her die, I thought nothing could make me want to live. Then I looked at you.”

“Do you ever blame me?” Aja whispered.

Pain again crossed Matthew’s face, this time for Aja. He shook his head, meeting his daughter’s eyes. “No, Aja. Your mother died during childbirth but it was some...something else that caused it.”

Something else? Aja thought her father was about to say “someone else” when he paused.

“But you’ll tell me? Yes?”

“Yes, honey. Tomorrow evening, when we get back from riding we will go for a walk, just you and me. I will tell you everything I can about your mother.”

Aja smiled and stopped playing with her hair. She hugged her stuffed dragon tight. If her Dad said something she could count on it.

Tomorrow night, he would tell her about her mother named Ashe, Aja’s own middle name. Aja Ashe Jensen also desperately needed to talk with her father, and tell him about the serpent and lightning.

****

Aja woke early the next morning certain it would be a fantastic day. Hours spent riding her new snowmobile with friends and family, then after, talking with her Dad. She thought it might turn into one of the best days ever.

She stumbled out of bed and pulled on thermal long Johns, jeans, and a long sleeve shirt. Aja plodded to the living room, finding her Dad talking with Theo and Bobby.

“Do you want me to cook breakfast?” Aja mumbled while yawning.

Bobby, Dr. Kane and her father stopped talking and glanced at each other.

Bobby blurted, “No, that’s OK, Aja. I’ll cook.”

Dr. Kane drawled, “We don’t want any cases of food poisoning today.”

All four started laughing.

“It wasn’t that bad last time I cooked!” Aja crossed her arms and lifted her chin. “Besides, I never claimed to be a domestic goddess.”

Aja went to the entryway and bundled up against the cold, listening to the guys talk about how it was that bad last time she cooked.

Aja laughing, shouted, “Fine, I’ll do the girl work! I expect my breakfast ready when I get home!”

After Aja left Dr. Kane shook his head, “I don’t remember it like that growing up.”

“Nothing remains the same, Theo. Everything changes.” Matthew answered.

****

The storm passed yet darkness lingered. Winter nights are long in Maine and the morning was eerily black and white. Snow muffles sound and trudging knee deep through it, Aja felt someone had pressed the mute for the entire world.

Aja couldn’t help grinning as she thought about riding her new sled all day, then talking with her Dad about her mother. She opened her arms wide and shouted, “Best day ever coming up!”

She cleaned the snow off the big Dodge RAM 2500 and climbed into it and turned the key, and starting the Hemi engine. Aja grabbed a wired controller from the dash and the ten foot Fisher V-Plow, on the front of the truck, raised. After engaging 4-wheel low, she set to work plowing the access road and driveway.

Finishing her girl work thirty minutes later, Aja parked the truck, lowered the plow and hopped out. Heading back to the cabin, the snow crunching under her boots, she gazed at her sled and the three others Theodore and her father had unloaded from the trailer. Two black and yellow Ski-Doos waited in the white snow with two black and green Arctic Cats.

Back inside the cabin, the aroma of coffee and bacon filled the air. Aja joined the others in the kitchen, eating a huge breakfast. No one worried about calories when riding snowmobiles in fifteen degree weather. The only problem was not getting enough.

****

An hour later, outside, Bobby held up a rope. “This is to tow you home, Aja.”

“Yeah, I’ll wait all day, ‘cause I doubt either of those heaps will start.” Aja closed the visor on her full face yellow helmet.

Everyone laughed. There was a grain of truth to what Aja and Bobby said. Occasionally, Ski-Doos broke down in the middle of nowhere and Arctic Cats sometimes refused to start.

The silence of the snow ended with four engines roaring to life.

All morning the four carved a path through snow covered trails. Avoiding tree branches bent down with the weight of snow, they traveled slow, single file. Aja rode behind the others. Bombardier built her sled for speed, like the LearJets they also made.

Smaller than the other machines, Aja’s Ski-Doo had room for only one. On the frozen, snow blanketed lakes, she would race ahead over eighty miles an hour. The speed caused powdered snow to billow over her. Paradise.

Miles from the cabin, the four snowmobiles glided to a stop at a roadside diner, with a dozen others in the parking lot. Aja tugged her helmet off, unable to stop grinning.

All four went inside, laughing and talking. After chowing down a big lunch they headed home, retracing the morning path.

They arrived back on Long Lake in the early afternoon as the weak winter sun began retreating for the extended night.

Bundled tight against the cold with electric hand warmers on the Ski-Doo valiantly trying to keep Aja’s gloved fingers from freezing, her thumb pushed the throttle lever all the way.

The engine’s low growl rose to a jaguar’s scream and Aja blasted ahead, her heart racing as fast as her sled

 Far in front of the others, burning across the frozen lake, Aja heard a crack, like a gunshot, and the Ski-Doo lurched. She released the throttle and leaned sideways looking at the front skis.

Another crack, louder than cannon fire sounded. Aja squeezed tight the brake handle, stopping the snowmobile track underneath, as the ice sundered and split leaving open water in front of her.

Aja held her breath.

Sliding out of control, speed carried the sled to the water. The snowmobile flipped and tumbled, throwing Aja off.

Ten thousand knives of cold stabbed Aja’s body, stealing her breath. She tried to swim, kicking her boot covered feet, as her clothes filled with ice water. Her helmet flooded and then her lungs. Her body froze.

Aja’s last sight was fading sunlight coming through a hole in the ice, far above her. She thought it beautiful. Then her tears turned to ice, knowing she wouldn’t talk with her father, about her mother, Ashe.

****

January 3^rd, 2002. Sol System. Beyond Jupiter’s Orbit.

Silver, God of Death tittered and crowed after murdering Memnoth’s slut daughter, Aja Ashe.

The Titan often told herself, Memnoth must have shoved his whore child in some far off universe, jammed in a convent. Finding Aja was pure accident.

Astonished at discovering Aja, right there on Earth, one of Silver’s favorite hidey holes, the Titan god cackled and cackled. She never considered that Memnoth would hide his spawn right under her nose. She hadn’t even looked on Earth for Aja.

Instantly, Silver stopped gloating and whimpered. The Immortal Titan eyes watched Matthew summon a vast amount of dark energy, attempting to save his daughter. Silver didn’t know Memnoth, God of Love could hide as a mortal.

Silver, God of Death fled in terror before SATAN, God of Hate found her. Suffering his wrath once was more than enough.