One Minute to Midnight Read online

  From the ninth dimension forces of dark and light now had a new game to distract them from their petty violence and cosmological ownership. The only rule imposed upon them was that there could be no physical interaction with humanity, or any other sentient creatures. The angels guided mankind and all other humanoid, reptilian, and insectoid life forms by positive suggestion, while agents of darkness sought to undermine their counterparts using psychic manipulation to achieve domination. For millions of years they each played their side of the game, never physically interfering with the actions of men. Empires of great technology rose and fell on Earth, repeatedly, and mankind was like an infant learning to walk. The stumble and fall for humanity meant the collapse of entire societies, cultures devastated beyond repair, and the memory wipe of each species as they began again. Erasing knowledge of past civilizations was the only physical interaction permitted by The Creator, and so that there would never be a question of blame for one side or the other, angels and demons worked together in this task.

  Jim Taggert knew this, because he had been in contact with an entity from the ninth dimension since childhood, and she had communicated with him almost daily. Yalesh, the entity, came to Jim because she saw that humanity was in trouble once more, and although she was breaking the rules, she gambled that her interference with the natural order would not cause any damage. However, her contact with the human world was not wholly unnoticed. When Yalesh contacted Jim as a child, she opened a tiny hole in the fabric of space-time, and as this hole grew larger, an unnamable horror from a dimension of chaotic madness slowly began to approach. Each time she physically interacted with Jim the hole grew larger, and the celestial vibration of life on earth began to decrease.

  Today was Sunday, Jim's favorite day of the week, when he refused to feel guilty for reading a good book for fun, or to be ashamed for vegetating on his apartment balcony. A knock came at the door as he was sipping his first cup of coffee of the day, and when he opened it, Yalesh was standing before him. Yalesh was a blonde beauty, standing five foot three, with long eyelashes and soft alabaster skin. She reminded him of a beautiful porcelain doll.

  "You know, you don't have to knock. I know you see everything I do anyway. Just let yourself in." Jim said.

  "Your human custom is to knock and receive acceptance before entry. I simply choose to honor your customs." Yalesh replied.

  "You want to talk about the limits of the cosmos again, or something? To what do I owe this honor, madam?" Jim said.

  "I have to go away." Came the answer.

  "What do you mean, you have to go away? Where?"

  "Back to my dimension. My interaction with your species has opened a hole in the eternal abyss. This is more complex than you can understand, but you need to know that your planet is in danger. My kind will have to fix it, and I was a fool to believe that interacting with only one human would not cause a problem. I regret the pain my actions will have caused before this is over." Yalesh said, sighing with sadness.

  Jim stood dumbfounded by this new information. Yalesh was a very beautiful woman and Jim had fallen in love a long time ago. Her leaving was the last thing he wanted to hear. She was by all intents and purposes an Angel of Heaven and Jim never wanted her to leave his side. Humans and angels vibrated on different frequencies, but the truth was that Yalesh was the love of his life.

  "I love you. You can't go, and it doesn't matter what you've done because it's done. Stay here and help." Jim pleaded.

  "What is coming will be war on a scale I have not seen in a very long time." Yalesh said.

  She seemed upset, which was only perceptible to Jim because he had known her his whole life. Angels tended to be stoic in expression, and Jim always thought Yalesh reminded him of Spock from Star Trek. He—like she—showed no emotion, but Jim knew her emotional side was deep inside of her, lurking behind a mask of calm, waiting for the right spark.

  "I'm to be punished for my part in this affair. We do not have long, Jim."

  "OK, you're freaking me out. Let's go get a drink, and forget about all this war talk. If you're all at war that can't mean anything good for us lowly humans."

  The ground outside began to rumble and shake, as if the entire city was about to fall. Glass shattered from apartments all over Jim's complex as building supports twisted and rattled in the quake. Yalesh suddenly looked concerned. This frightened Jim.

  "It has already begun. The demons are on their way. My angels should be here shortly."

  "You saying there's going to be a war between Heaven and Hell in my backyard?" Jim asked.

  "Not between, we are allies against a greater foe in this conflict. I've been a fool." She shook her head.

  "What's coming, Yalesh?"

  "The Dark." Yalesh vanished in an instant.

  "Yaleeeeesh! Don't you bail out now! Get back here! This is my Sunday!" Jim screamed.

  Large cracks opened up in the asphalt parking lot. Cars slid into the new holes against the screech of their parked wheels. People screamed, running in every direction, fleeing for their lives as the odor of sulfur permeated once fresh morning air. Jim stood in his third floor apartment, looking down with a mixture of fear and amazement as a massive winged beast erupted from one of the holes. The demon had horns on each side of his face. His skin was a shade of burnt sienna, and on his enormous back were massive black wings that, when spread wide, covered half a football field. Jim involuntarily wet himself as he shook with fear. More appeared, some smaller, some larger, but all of them terrifying.

  "Angels! You’d better get down here, or The Dark won't be our only foe today!" One demon screamed.

  "You and I both know how that would end. Just like all the other times, and these humans would all die in the aftermath." A man with dark skin floating through the air on white wings said.

  The angel's wings were almost translucent. He was as large as the demon and carried a sword of fire. The demon looked around at the people running and screaming.

  "Small loss." The demon growled.

  "Magmoth, please assemble your army. Mine should be through the inter-dimensional rift right about..." The sky filled with angelic figures from one horizon to another. "Now!"

  "Impressive Gabriel. Now, what did I have for breakfast?" Magmoth asked with a morbid smirk.

  He did not wait for an answer to the rhetorical question, but turned to face an ever-growing cacophony of winged monsters from the bowels of Hell. Terror and winged splendor filled the world of man for the first time in its existence. Religious extremists, thinking this was their judgment day, began committing suicide en masse. Jim could think of nothing more constructive to do, so he sat courtside and watched the horror show go on.

  "You maggots listen to me! Lucifer is on his way, and when The Dark shows itself we are going to close the abyss with this one, here!" Magmoth held Yalesh in his hand, dangling her before the hordes.

  There was a deafening cry as the demons all screamed and grunted approval. The angels, led by Gabriel, rallied around Magmoth.

  "Yalesh, you know the penalty for interaction with humanity. I am very sorry, but you will be thrown into the abyss as punishment, and the resulting explosion should undo this damage."

  "Isn't there any other way?" Yalesh pleaded.

  "Your physical form and ninth dimensional light will be rejected by The Dark, which should cause a chain reaction and close the hole." Magmoth said.

  Jim was watching all of this, feeling helpless and hopeless. He couldn’t bear to see his lovely angel tossed into a terrifying abyss. Down the street, an enormous, dark black hole began to materialize.

  "The Dark comes!" Magmoth screamed.

  In a moment, black figures began marching through the black hole, resembling human forms, except that they were blank and featureless. Jim ran downstairs toward the melee in a desperate attempt to save his friend Yalesh from her fate. The war had begun, and all over his city the sky was filled with fire as angels swooped down swiftly, cleaving agents of The Dark in
two. Demons and angels alike swarmed the portals, some being sucked into oblivion by the nothingness within. Gabriel strode toward the nearest portal with Yalesh, still in her smaller human form, in his right hand. With the left hand he cleaved dark soldiers in two, never stopping as they formed pools of darkness on the ground. These monsters absorbed sunlight with their presence and the sky grew dim overhead.

  "Stop, don't throw her in! Take me instead!" Jim screamed.

  He dodged one brutal fight after another as the chaos of the battle ensued. Yalesh was limp with despair, dismayed by the trouble her good intentions had wrought, and with no hope remaining in her heart, she was prepared to suffer till the end. The very end. If any of them were pulled into the abyss, there was no escape. The Dark was death for the soul.

  "Don't do it!" Jim yelled.

  Gabriel raised Yalesh into the air. Suddenly, Jim made one leap toward her. He grabbed her hands and both of them went reeling toward one of the dark gashes. He managed to get his arms around her as they hurled toward oblivion. The two smashed into the black hole and an explosion rang out that threw them into some nearby bushes. A scream pierced the air, so loud and deafening that it set off car alarms. The Dark had not expected this turn of events. Angels and demon's had been the creators of man, and now creator and created had attempted to pass through the void, creating a paradox for The Dark. Yalesh looked at Jim for the first time in her life, finally feeling the love he had for her. It was different now. She had been changed. The dark agents dissipated like smoke on a strong wind, as angels and demons stood by, dumbfounded by this universal transcendence of love.

  "Jim's actions nullified the existence of The Dark in this realm and it was forced to retreat. It could not cope with this interdimensional love." Gabriel said.

  "Are you OK, Yalesh?" Jim asked.

  "I'm fine, but I feel strange. I don't understand." She had a bruise on her cheek from the fall.

  "You're human now and will remain this way as you grow old." Gabriel said.

  Yalesh felt her face and winced at the pain. She understood what had happened now. Jim put his arms around her as she embraced him. Yalesh's golden blonde hair smelled like roses in full bloom.

  "We're leaving!" Magmoth growled at Gabriel.

  Gabriel nodded toward Magmoth, who snarled and glided on onyx wings toward the gigantic hole he had emerged from.

  "I can never return home, isn’t that right Gabriel?" Yalesh asked.

  "No, your present form would not survive. You will remain in the realm of humanity, grow old, and expire as humans do when your time here is ended."

  Yalesh nodded acceptance to Gabriel who flapped his wings once and vanished along with his chorus of heavenly warriors. Yalesh took Jim by the hand, and smiled warmly.

  "What's that smile? You're not sad being stuck here?" Jim asked.

  "What happened—that explosion—when we slammed into the abyss, our vibrational energies actually fused together, allowing us to transcend darkness through love. And I fell in love with you simultaneously. I guess I always knew I felt this way, but our worlds kept us apart. I think I needed to know you felt the same. I needed to know our energies could intertwine."

  "I'm in love with an angel." Jim said.

  "I'm hungry for the first time in my life. Would you like to get something to eat?" She asked.

  "Starving!" He replied.

  The two walked hand in hand through a field of destruction, grateful to be alive, and in search of an open restaurant for dinner.

  moonlight serenade

  Death rained from the sky, blanketed in thick, black clouds of smoke while buildings burned to charred wrecks in the city. As each bomb delivered its payload, deafening noise split the night, while a tapestry of fire spread through shelled out hulks of structures where people used to live. Now, this was the devil's house, where no hope of escape from misery and pain existed. Fallen walls lay in crumbled piles, covering the corpses of those unable to escape the raid, and their stench added to the horror of the atmosphere. Allied troops, weary and relentless, pressed on through a night of smoldering fires, charcoaled corpses, and intense heat, threatening to drive them all mad. Exhausted beyond imagination from days without sleep, and numb from a nightmare none had expected when enlisting, these men fought a highly trained and vicious enemy: Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.

  Corporal Dan Stoltz stood brave and alone as his platoon took offensive positions around the remains of a building, waiting for an approaching Panzer. His mission was to deploy a sticky bomb onto the side of the Nazi tank and disable its tracks. He heard the whining, grinding, crunching sound of tank wheels getting close, and readied himself. It would turn left around the corner to his right, and then he would pull the pin. He saw the front tracks, and it began to turn as he activated the sticky bomb. Just as he was slapping the bomb onto the tank an SS soldier shot him in the abdomen. Now wounded, and stuck to the device and tank, the young man closed his eyes before the bomb went off, launching his lifeless body and plastering his dog tags into the wall behind him. The war was over for Dan.

  JT Parker bolted upright in bed as sweat soaked the pillow he had been resting his head on. That dream had been recurring for a week, and each time it ended with the same result. The soldier would die, and then JT would wake up terrified and sweating. JT's wife Serena lay resting next to him, her eyelids fluttering in REM sleep as JT calmed his breathing. She was smiling, and then her brow furrowed as the corners of her mouth turned downward. A single tear rolled away from her right eye, and she woke up.

  "Good morning. My god, you're drenched." Serena said.

  "I had that dream again about the war in Germany. Every time, it's the same thing. This soldier gets blown up and I wake up in our bed. It's the fifth time this week and it's making me crazy."

  "I hear you there; my dreams this week have been about a woman dancing with a soldier to Moonlight Serenade at a ball. He's in a brown uniform, and she's wearing the most beautiful pearls around her neck and they're in love. Then he disappears and she doesn't know where he's gone and I feel so much sorrow. I wake up upset and my pillow is wet from crying."

  "Do you believe in reincarnation?" JT asked.

  "I'm not sure. I suppose anything's possible, but these are just very vivid dreams."

  "They feel so real though, and why are they happening now? I've never had dreams about war before." JT said.

  He put his head in his hands, ran them up over his sweat soaked bangs and pushed them back.

  "Do you remember when we first met?" JT asked.

  "Yeah, you tried to steal the last rum ball at Jim's Christmas party." Serena answered.

  "All's fair in love and rum balls. Anyway, I thought I knew you the minute we looked in each other's eyes. I felt like we'd been friends before. If that makes any sense."

  "I kind of felt something like that. It was a kind of déjà vu." Serena said.

  A few days passed and JT's dreams changed. The soldier was at a dance, instead of a battle, suffering the war’s devastation. The stranger in his dress uniform held a beautiful woman, as he spun her around the dance floor with grace. She wore a string of pearls, and glowed with love for the soldier as their orchestra played Moonlight Serenade. For the first time in a week, JT woke up feeling fully rested, with Serena's head lying against his shoulder. She opened her eyes, smiling.

  "Good morning. You look like you finally had good dreams," she said.

  "I was at a dance," he smiled.

  "Were you? I was too, the same one as before. I guess I'm rubbing off."

  Later that day a knock came at the door. JT went to see who was there while Serena pushed play on their MP3 player.

  JT opened the door, and nobody was there. He looked down to see a small box wrapped in brown paper. There was no writing on it anywhere, and as he walked back inside, Moonlight Serenade began to play.

  "Did you pick that song?" JT asked.

  "No, I've got it on shuffle."

  JT unwrapped the box
and opened the top. His mouth dropped open with surprise. Serena walked over to see.

  "Oh my," she whispered.

  JT brought out a pearl necklace and a set of dog tags with the name Dan Stoltz engraved in the metal. He was breathless. It had taken them seventy years to find each other again.

  "I remember you got called to war before our song ended." Serena said. Her eyes were wide as saucers. JT clasped the pearls around her neck as she rested the dog tags around his.

  "I believe we have a dance to finish." JT replied.

  He took her left hand in his, cupped his right hand behind her shoulder blade and began to sway with Serena as Moonlight Serenade played on in the dim light of their living room.

  sharp tooth

  When hunters slaughter her mate, Sharp Tooth will exact revenge by assembling the greatest army the forest has ever seen.

  A female Kodiak called Sharp Tooth walked through the north woods one afternoon, taking in the fresh air with her cubs, when she caught the scent of humans several miles away. Man was back in the area, and hunting season had begun, and that meant there would be casualties, increased risk of forest fires, and danger everywhere for her and her little ones, but she could smell only three of them from this distance. She knew they were not to be tangled with because of their desire for killing, with but these were her lands and the temptation to track them was strong. She decided that she would simply keep an eye on them and that was all. With fall approaching, both tall and small creatures would be preparing for a harsh winter ahead, and soon she would fatten herself to sustain long months without food once the snow began to fall.