Millennium E-Book

Marty Phillips

• Herausgeber: Antelope Hill Publishing LLC
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

A World Trade Center worker finds himself in a time loop grappling with mortality and fate as he relives the events of September 11th, 2001. 
 
The brain-damaged captive of a drug cartel mutely participates in an ancient struggle over life and death when his botched rescue lands him and a handful of military intelligence personnel and assets on a tropical island.
 
A ruralite wrestling with the decline of his childhood town observes an interloper when he finds the abandoned house he is renovating not so vacant as he thought.
 
The son of a wealthy American businessman is dragged from his frivolous life into the heights of corporate power and prestige. How he wields this newfound power rattles the foundations of the family business, and his own life.
 
In  Millennium, author Marty Phillips crafts each of these four stories as part of a whole anthological novel, a glimpse into the changing world experienced by the American millennial. Antelope Hill is proud to present this thought-provoking second work of fiction from Phillips.

Leseprobe

Millennium

MILLENNIUM

Marty Phillips

Author of Let Them Look West

J A C K A L O P E H I L L

Copyright © 2023 Marty Phillips

First edition, first printing 2023.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the prior written permission of the author,

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Written by Marty Phillips, 2023

[email protected]

Cover art by Swifty.

Edited by hospitaller.

Layout by Margaret Bauer.

Published by Jackalope Hill

The fiction imprint of Antelope Hill Publishing

antelopehillpublishing.com

Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-956887-75-4

EPUB ISBN-13: 978-1-956887-76-1

This book is dedicated to my family and friends for their patience and generosity in reading drafts and providing encouragement and support during the writing process. I am deeply grateful for all the hours of conversation and pages of correspondence we shared while completing this work. No man is an island, although he may feel marooned on one at times.

C O N T E N TS

Preface

Falwell

Holy Hunt

The Casper House

American Bastard

P R E F A C E

The millennial generation has lived a tragic existence thus far. Theirs has not been a time of turmoil and conflict on a global scale as with prior generations, but like a dreamer experiencing a nightmare, they have watched massive changes overtake them with little control over the world they inherit. They are the children of September 11th, coming of age under an oppressive wave of alarmist and hyperreal media events as reality shifted beneath their feet in less dramatic but more insidious ways. The results have been massive shifts in racial demographics, economic decline, and institutional decay. They had one brief and fleeting glimpse of a much more decent country with semi-functional civics, a stabilizing White majority proud of their history, affordable housing, and a broad middle class.

While constantly derided by older generations for their timidity and lack of work ethic, American millennials have experienced primarily deception, disappointment, and open derision from the nation’s elites and from their elders who earned wealth in more favorable economic times. The millennials’ existence is apocalyptic by the very nature of when they were born and what they were told about the future. Throughout childhood it was relentlessly pounded into them that they would have to be the ones to save the world from environmental and geopolitical disaster, yet all methods to do so were withheld from them by the very people who made these demands. They took on massive debt, led on by the lies of charismatic political charlatans and a corrupt, seemingly omnipotent financial order. They are the unwitting prisoners of what was once a nation of opportunity.

This book was written for that tragic generation. Although comprised of four stories with different characters and settings, each is part of a singular arc forming the millennial bildungsroman. This is an anthological novel. Some stories are more fantastical and absurd than others, but my intent was to capture facets of the millennial White male experience and explore the harsh realities of a world that has been so spiritually and psychologically hostile to them. Some themes and motifs are echoed across multiple stories. This is not merely an aesthetic choice but an establishment of cycles within cycles and the cementing of the work into a singular whole.

It is with some trepidation and a great sense of both relief and joy that I present my second work of fiction: Millennium.

Marty Phillips

F A L W E L L

Thomas had never seriously considered killing himself at any point in his life. Even when forced to spend the weekend with his in-laws, the idea only appeared as half-baked, whimsical fantasy—a Secret Life of Walter Mitty daydream episode complete with slapstick detachment from the visceral reality and maybe even a musical score as he dropped a toaster in the bathtub or lay on the ground beneath the garage door and pressed the button. He was simply not the type to consider manifesting the act, until now.

The smoke was overwhelming and suffocating. The screams and panic of all the people around him brought on waves of intensifying dread. The heat and anticipation only added to the hellish foreboding, but especially disturbing was the knowledge that, no matter what he did, he was going to die anyway. A deafening roar at about a quarter before nine in the morning threw the office into panic and alarm. After some confusion, they all moved to one side of the room and watched from the windows in horror as black smoke billowed from the adjacent tower. Soon one of their number suggested and everyone agreed that they should probably evacuate. Thomas and his coworkers, along with the other employees on the floor, poured out into the hallways to take the elevators down. They all stood in nervous anticipation. The air was thick, overbearing, and saturated with collective, animalistic fear.       

Then a second and much louder explosion rocked their tower and sent Thomas and all the people around him stumbling into each other and the walls. The lights went out. The fear turned to hopeless dread and the psychotic throes of looming confrontation with inevitable mortality. The elevators did not work. It did not take long for those who tried the stairs to return with dire news. They were cut off—stuck above an inferno. Hopes were raised and dashed as they all bargained internally with the inevitability of death. Rumors circulated that helicopters would land on the roof, and then the rumors were dashed. Some people headed up anyway. Once it was clear that nobody was coming to save them, the office manager, Charles, jumped from one of the broken windows. Chuck Andrews was also not the kind of man who would kill himself. Then Thomas hung out of one of the openings, staring down from the dizzying height through curtains of smoke. The acrid smell was nauseating, and the groans of the tower’s support beams and the doomed people around him were simply too much to bear. He told himself that it did not matter, hauled himself up fully into the opening, leaned forward, and let go. 

After a moment of confusion, he realized that his body had oriented head down. The wind tore at his clothing as he picked up speed. He was facing the tower, and the rows of windows flew by in a blur. He closed his eyes and waited. Thomas had never worked out how long it would take to hit the ground from the windows of their office floor. Such morbid preoccupations were not part of his moments of daydreaming in the slow afternoons at work. He thought of his wife and hoped that his body would be lost in the chaos or obliterated beyond identification. Would she think less of him for jumping? Suddenly he heard a whooshing sound and a deafening crack. The rush of air in his ears was gone. Had he hit the ground? Was he dead? If so, it had been entirely painless, which was not surprising.

He opened one eye very slowly. The ground was still very far down. Then he looked back toward the side of the tower. He was staring at a row of windows, but they did not whip by as they had before. His clothes were no longer disturbed by the wind of his descent. Thomas seemed to be suspended in the air. A blinding flash of brilliant golden light exploded a few yards off, and a figure emerged from the eruption. Since he was upside down, Thomas could only see two muscular legs approaching as the being hovered closer. Then it descended, and he found himself staring into eyes the color of a tropical sea. The rest of the face was like bronze and bore a look of confusion and amusement. The mouth moved, and strange sounds like music vibrated into the very core of Thomas’s body. At this point, he was so overwhelmed by the expectation of his own death, the impossibility of his still being alive, and the arrival of this mysterious being, that he began to faint. The musical voice fell off as if it had plunged into water. Just as he was about to lose all his senses entirely, a sensation of warmth and calm flooded into his body and drove out the nausea and panic.

The bright being was speaking to him again. “Hey, how about now? Can you understand me?”

“Y—yes,” Tom replied, shocked at the sound of his own voice, unsure of how he had the presence of mind to respond, given the circumstances. The warmth in his body sent a tingling sensation down to the tips of his fingers and toes and granted even more confidence. “What is going on? Who are you?” He paused and added even more incredulously. “What are you?” 

The eyebrows above the blue eyes arched, and the creature swept back about a dozen feet to be fully visible. It certainly looked human, with flowing locks of golden hair, a square jaw, white tunic draped over a muscular frame, and two feathered wings emerging from the shoulders.

“I’m an angel, of course.”

Thomas’s voice caught in his throat, but he finally managed to ask: “Are you here to save me?”

“No,” the angel replied bluntly. “In fact, it’s a complete accident that I’m even talking to you.” The brows lowered in suspicion. “What are you even doing up here anyway? Humans can’t fly.”

“I’m falling. There’s been a disaster.” 

“Tell me about it.” The angel hovered closer. “That’s why I’m here. I could see from very far off that an event of great cosmic significance is transpiring here.”

“I don’t know,” Thomas admitted sheepishly. “Some kind of terrorist attack, I think.” He paused and was reminded of the absurdity of his predicament. “Why am I floating? If you didn’t come to save me, then why am I not a dead heap on the sidewalk right now?”

The angel beat his wings and moved in closer to examine him. “You’re still falling, but very slowly. At this rate it will take you days to hit the ground. You must have been caught in my wake when I blew by you. There are certain time effects when traveling faster than light.” The angel paused and thought for a moment. “What’s your name by the way?”

“Tom Falwell.”  

“You’re joking.”

“No, I’m not. What’s your name?”

“I’m named for a star very far away from here. In your language it translates as something like ‘The eternal glory of God reflected endlessly to the adoration of His Holy Son.’ That’s too long, so you can just call me Glory.” 

“So, am I doomed to fall for days then?”

Glory jostled his head back and forth causing his blond curls to sway. “Sorry to tell you, Tom, but I can’t speed things up for you. I don’t control the future.”

“You can’t, you know, set me down on the ground?”

“Here’s the thing, Tom.” The angel’s voice was stern but not cruel. “I may seem like an easygoing guy, but I do possess divine intuition, and something tells me you jumped.”

“The fire was below me,” Thomas insisted. “There was no way out. I—I was going to—”

“Did you jump, Tom?” 

Thomas let out a long sigh. “Yes.”

Glory nodded solemnly. “You chose to die. To take your life when death seems inevitable indicates a disbelief in the miraculous.”

“Well, I’m seeing the miraculous right now, and it’s not really helping my situation.”

“Tom, don’t make me regret giving you divine light. That’s the only reason you’re so calm right now.”

“I would rather it be over with,” Thomas replied dismally. 

Glory looked at him for a long moment, considering. “OK, so I can’t save you, and I can’t control the future, but I can sort of make it up to you. This is a rather unfortunate accident. Would you like to go back?”

“What do you mean? Like in time?”

“Yes, but,” the angel held up a thick finger to indicate that there were important caveats, “I was serious when I said that I cannot control the future. Even if you go back, technically you’re still here, so you can’t save yourself. Additionally, keep in mind that the time passing while you’re away remains the same here, so you will get closer to the ground. Lastly, you must jump out the window at the same time today no matter what. Since you’re still here, you have to end up where you are, or bad things will happen. Obviously, that means you can’t try to stop these events from transpiring. Also, since I am here on a scouting mission, I could use any information you might uncover.”

Thomas could barely comprehend what had been said. He floated with a furrowed brow and his mouth agape for about a minute before responding. “What happens if I try to save everyone?”

“If you don’t jump out the window, you’ll end up in limbo, a place that you do not want to go. If you think this situation is bad, the anticipation of death and all, I guarantee you limbo is far, far worse, and it lasts forever.”

“So, I can go back but only to retrace my steps?”

Glory scratched his chin pensively. “There’s some leeway, just don’t change any world-altering outcomes. If anything, it will pass the time for you without so much, well, mortal dread. Besides, you can see friends and family if you want.”

“How far back can I go?”

“Not too far. You have until you hit the ground, so maybe start small.”

“OK.” Thomas was having difficulty making sense of it all. “Can you send me back to earlier this morning? On the way to work? Just as a test.”

“Sure thing. Are you ready to go?”

“Do I have to do anything?”

“No. Just look at my eyes. I’ll touch your skin and you’ll be gone.”

The angel moved closer, reached out a large hand, and grasped ahold of Tom’s arm.  

Thomas was sucked into a whirlwind and came to his senses floating in near darkness as a hurricane shrieked around him. The wreckage of every age hurtled along in the gargantuan eddies of wind: a battered Viking longship, a marble Roman statue, the remnants of a mid-century wood frame house, and unfamiliar things that he presumed had not yet come to pass in his time. Far off, he saw a light approaching, ghostly, pale, and electric. Blue and fluorescent like a young star in an icy nebula, it drifted toward him through the roaring wind and overtook his whole vision. 

Suddenly, a different warmth coursed through his fingers. Thomas looked down. He was holding his paper cup of coffee and sitting on the train. The angel had been right. This was his morning commute. He passed the rest of the ride in stunned silence, watching the endless slideshow carousel of urbanization that passed by outside. What could he do? He would have to be up in the office at the correct time. Deviating from that was impossible unless he wanted to be doomed for eternity. At least this was better than falling. A woman seated next to him intently pored over a romance novel. The train arrived at Cortlandt Street Station. Thomas departed the car and entered the throngs of foot traffic choking the underground. 

He floated like a purposeless ghost of Christmas past into the South Tower lobby and stood in silence, slowly spinning in the golden morning light that cascaded in from the high cathedral windows. Although the energy given to him by the angel still pulsed warmly within his belly, he was afraid to stray from the path that he had taken earlier in the morning, so he rode the elevator up to his floor. He exchanged pleasantries with the other office workers on his way to his desk. Taking up a pen and sheet of paper, he began making notes of times and movements around him.

Tom heard the first explosion at 8:46 a.m. and made a note before moving to the window with everyone else to watch. He made another note at 9:03 when he heard another deafening roar and the building swayed back and forth. He felt very odd observing the chaos unfold all around him, like a ship in a bottle floating on a stormy sea. What the angel had said about limbo was frightening of course, but Thomas figured that if he was doomed anyway, then how much worse could it really be? He was not a religious man, and surely hell was worse than limbo. Saving all these lives in exchange for his own was a noble pursuit. No matter what Glory had said, Thomas was determined to try.    

Through the heat and smoke, Thomas caught sight of a group clustered around a desk by the windows on the far side of the room. He had a little time remaining, so he approached to see what held their interest. They were all huddled around a radio listening to a news broadcast. Lauren Shelby, a middle-aged wife and mother who he knew somewhat, turned as he neared to show her despondent face smeared with tears and mascara. 

“They’re not going to get to us. We’re cut off. They’re trying, but it’s too late.” 

“What do they know?” Thomas asked. “I heard there were planes. Do they know what planes?”

She nodded with a look of despair. “Yes, not that it matters for us.”

He whirled around. His office manager Chuck was jumping. There was no time left. Thomas jogged to the window, and after taking a moment to fold his page of notes and slip it deep into his pocket, flung himself out into the air. He fell again, and the wind tore at his clothes. He went further this time before jolting to a sudden halt. 

Glory floated a little way off while surveying the damage to the buildings and the billowing smoke, which was nearly frozen in time. The angel took notice and flew over. 

“You’re back. How was it?”   

“I jumped again, so it worked.” Thomas considered his next words. “So how exactly does limbo fit into the whole divine afterlife roadmap situation?”

“Thomas, don’t make me regret doing this for you. Don’t be a retard.”

“Hey!”

“What? I’m relating to you. That’s how humans talk, right?”

“I guess.” 

“Do you want to go back again?”

“Can you send me back to the same time?”

Glory’s eyes narrowed. “You are up to something. I can tell. I’ll send you back to the same time, but whatever you’re planning on doing, for God’s sake don’t do it. Do something nice. Give a homeless man a dollar, OK? Don’t get all wrapped up in thinking you can affect the outcomes of epoch defining events. You ready?”

“Yes,” Thomas replied and reached out his hand. 

Glory took hold of it, and Thomas was thrown back into the whirlwind. This time he noticed distant crackles of lighting through the howling wind. They illuminated a jagged volcanic topography below, and he wondered if this in-between world was a far-off planet hostile to all life. Just as he was about to be crushed by the rusted hulk of a derelict World War II bomber hurtling toward him, the white light found him, and he emerged again on the other side. 

Thomas was back on the train in a blink. This time he asked the woman if the romance novel was any good, and she replied politely that it was alright. He passed through the station and then the lobby and on up to the office as he had before, but this time he stood by the windows to watch the first impact to the north tower. He could see the explosion but no plane striking the building, since it was on the wrong side for him to have a clear view. Immediately afterward, he went to Lauren’s desk and asked to listen to the radio. Confusion, alarm and then agony unfolded over the airwaves. He waited, listening for any useful details. Flight numbers were the most important, and airports where the planes had taken off. He found himself muttering at the radio as if the people on the other end could hear him. 

“No, that’s not right. It isn’t a bomb. It’s a plane. What planes?”

Lauren returned to her desk. “Thomas, we’re going to head down. It’s probably not safe to stay here.” 

“It won’t matter,” he replied without thinking. He was too distracted by the radio to realize what he had let slip. 

Like clockwork, their tower rocked with a deafening roar. Every time he heard the screams of terror and groans of mortal dread, they were just as unnerving and never lost their edge. He continued listening to the radio and taking notes. Finally, just as he began to nervously check his watch, some important information came through: flight numbers. He hastily scrawled down anything he could use. Chuck was near the window. His time was running out. 

Thomas rose and carefully placed the sheet of notes in his pocket before moving toward his portal back to the past. A hand grasped onto his shoulder, halting his advance. It was Lauren. She was understandably in a state of panic. 

“Tom, what did you mean before? When you said it didn’t matter? You knew something about our tower getting hit. How did you know?”

Thomas pulled away, trying to free himself, but her hands moved down to his forearm and grasped tightly. 

“You knew that we’re going to die! Why didn’t you do something? We have families! Answer me!”

He felt sick and wrenched his arm away, turning from her tearstained and harrowing expression. She called out after him, but Chuck was already gone. He had no time left. 

“I’m trying, OK?” he murmured to himself, emotion strangling at his throat. “For God’s sake, I’m trying.”

The corners of his vision began to darken, and he heard the roaring of the whirlwind in his ears as though it were breaking through some unseen barrier wall between the two worlds. He did not hesitate this time and dove through the window. 

Thomas plummeted down again, falling even further than before. Glory was floating nearby and waiting for him to slow back to a crawl. He felt the jolt, and the angel nodded at him knowingly. 

“You still have a fair amount of time. I trust you’ve been using it wisely. Did you learn anything new?”

“Airplanes. They believe they were hijacked and flown into the buildings. It’s hard to figure out much when I’m constrained to jumping out the window at the same time in each loop.”

“Well, we all live within limits,” Glory replied. “I can send you back further, but the same rules apply.” 

Thomas thought for a while. If he was going to try to stop this from happening, then he would have to go back to before the planes departed. He had the flight numbers, but not the originating airports. Going back further was inevitable, but he could not waste time. 

“How about earlier in the morning? Can you send me back to five a.m.? Before I leave home for work?”

“I’m curious what you expect to learn by doing this, Tom. Perhaps I’m not familiar with human logic, but I’d think that either you would take short jumps to watch the events unfold or jump as far back as possible to spend time with your family and friends. You know, before the end.”

“I want to see my wife before I leave for work,” Tom explained. “And I was wondering something else. That in-between place with the storms and the wreckage, is that limbo?” He rapidly changed the subject to avoid suspicion.

“I won’t talk about that place.” 

“Is it real? Does it exist in this physical universe?”

“I assure you, it is very real.”

“I’m ready to go back to five a.m.”

Glory looked hesitant for a moment before nodding and floating closer. 

“Alright, five a.m. it is.”

He reached forward and touched Thomas’s arm. 

In an instant he was floating in the dark world again, watching the lightning and debris in the air. Thomas looked down and could see that the terrain below him took on a smoother contour, as though shaped by purposeful hands. He wondered if he could get closer and flailed his arms against the buffeting wind. His body moved slightly, but he could see the white light far off and approaching rapidly. He fought against the air to push himself downward to get a closer look, but the electric glow quickly overtook him. 

Thomas woke in bed in his house in New Jersey. It was still dark outside. His wife was not home. He had misled the angel, which he imagined was a sin of some sort beyond simple deceit. She had left on a trip with some of her college girlfriends the morning prior. He rolled out of bed, fumbling in the dark for the light switch. Once he could see, he looked down in horror upon realizing that he was wearing only his underwear. The sheet of paper with all his notes had been in the pocket of his slacks. 

He staggered to the closet and threw open the door to begin pawing desperately through his clothes and checking the pockets of all his pants until finally, miraculously, he found the folded page in the slacks he had been wearing the last time through the window. It made little sense to him, but he did not question the mechanisms. One must avoid doing so in the face of good fortune. 

Thomas ran to the kitchen and pulled the wall phone’s receiver off its hook, uncoiling the cord so it could reach the table. He furiously flipped through the phonebook, searching for the numbers of possible airports. He tried JFK International and LaGuardia, but they had no flights with corresponding numbers. While on hold with Newark, he realized his stupidity and asked the representative if they had a way to look up the departure locations for the flight numbers.

The woman on the other end of the call asked him to wait and said that she would see if she could track down the information. Thomas’s foot jackhammered nervously on the linoleum floor of the kitchen. If he was able to get the departure airport and if both flights originated from the same place, then it might be possible to stop them from even taking off. He stared anxiously at the digital clock radio on the counter. After another agonizing five minutes of tinny hold music, the woman was back on the other line. 

“Hello, sir, are you still there?” 

“Yes.” 

“It looks like both of those flights are scheduled to depart from Logan International in Boston in just a few hours.” 

“Do you have their number?”

“I can get it for you. Wait just one moment.” 

Soon he had everything that he needed. His plan was to leave for work early and use the phone booth near the train station to call Logan Airport. If he could make a convincing enough case that there was some kind of terrorist attack imminent, then maybe they would ground all flights. Yesterday’s newspaper lay on the kitchen counter unread, so he began flipping through to see if there was anything useful in the headlines. There had been a terror attack in Istanbul, warnings about Taliban activity in Afghanistan, and some useless celebrity gossip. 

Thomas decided not to dress up for work. What would even be the point anyway? He did not need to play the part. He pulled on a simple gray sweatsuit, making sure the sheet of notes was folded securely in the pocket. His morning walk to the station was about two miles, but he opted to take the car to save time. The first hints of sunlight peered over the suburban landscape as he found a space to park near the phone. The birds were out and singing a greeting to the dawn. Thomas felt strangely at peace, despite the circumstances. He forcibly pushed the thoughts of limbo and his approaching death out of his mind. 

He was relieved that the phone was not in use, although it was unlikely to be at this early hour. With shaking hands and a stomach lurching like a dying animal, he fed in a quarter and dialed Logan Airport. He asked the main switchboard for whoever was the head of security, explaining that he had observed some suspicious activity at the airport. After a few minutes of waiting, a man with a thick Boston accent picked up. 

“Ay, this is Bob MacIntyre.”

 “Hello.” Thomas panicked and fumbled with his notes. He cleared his throat and started again, trying to mimic a Middle Eastern accent of some kind. “Yes, hello, I am calling to tell you that there is a terrorist attack being arranged at your airport.”

“OK, uh, what kind of terrorist attack? How do you know about this?” Bob did not sound convinced at all. 

“I am one of the terrorists. We are Taliban from Afghanistan. “We, um—” He smoothed out the sheet of paper and squinted at his poor penmanship. “We wish to free our people from the yoke of the western oppressors—their corrupting influence.” 

“Hey, buddy, if this is some kind of prank call, then it’s not very funny.” 

“No, no, no. I am serious. We have put bombs on planes. Thousands will die!”

“So why are you telling me this, huh? If your plan is to put bombs on planes, then why are you calling to tell the head of security?”

“I have had second thoughts. Unlike my brothers, I do not think Allah would approve of this kind of action. It will only harm our cause.”

The other end of the call went silent as Bob considered the words. “OK, stay on the line. I’m going to patch you through to my guy at Boston PD. This is above my paygrade. Let me get him on the horn, and I’ll connect you.”

While it certainly could be going better, at least the man had not hung up on him. Thomas leaned against the inside of the phone booth and traced the graffiti and scratches on the interior surfaces with his index finger. Just as he started to worry that they had decided he was indeed a prankster, Bob was back on the line. 

“Alright, it’s still pretty early, but I got someone for you. One sec.”

There was a click followed by the voice of another man who also had a Boston accent. “This is detective O’Malley, who is this?”

Thomas blanked on a name and said the first thing that came to mind. “My, uh, my name is Mohammed Al Bomba.” He nearly dropped the receiver once the name was out and let his head fall forward against the wall of the phone booth. Al Bomba? This was a disaster. 

O’Malley seemed unfazed. “Airport security tells me that you know about some kind of terror attack?” 

“Yes, I was involved in planning this attack. I am with the Taliban from Afghanistan.”

“OK, well, that sounds familiar, but I don’t know about any of that. All that terror stuff is way over my head. What are we talking? Hijacking? Bombs?”

“There are bombs on planes that will be departing Logan Airport soon. You have to shut down all runways and ground all planes!”

“Woah there. That is not a call I can make.” A slurping sound of the detective taking a gulp of coffee followed and then a hum of consideration. “I have a contact at the local FBI office. Let me page him real quick. He’ll have the authority to get things moving—er—stopped if needed. And hey, Mohammed?”

 “Yes?”

“If this is your idea of a joke, then you’re in for a world of hurt. Stay on the line.” 

This was taking forever. The orange glow of the rising sun shone much brighter. Thomas checked his watch. Time was running short. More precious minutes passed while he was on hold. People were walking by to the train station for their morning commute. His fingers slipped on the receiver as his palms sweated. 

“Hello? This is Don Patrick, FBI. Boston PD patched me through. They tell me you have information about a terror attack?”

“Yes!” The accent was breaking. “Please for the love of God stop the planes. My brothers from the Taliban have placed bombs on planes at Logan International!” 

“You say that you’re with the Taliban? What’s your name?”

“Mohammed Al Bomba.” 

“Can you spell that for me?” 

Thomas made up a spelling that did not involve the word ‘bomb’ but worked phonetically. 

“Hey, Mohammed? I’m getting an important call. It should only take a minute. I’ll be right back with you.”

“But we’re running out of time!” 

Thomas heard hold music again. He kicked the inside of the phone booth, which hurt his foot. This was insane. It was like pulling teeth trying to make these people understand the urgency. Suddenly the hold music stopped, and he heard strange tones coming over the phone. They sounded like the electrical notes of buttons being dialed but the sequence lasted longer than a phone number. It reminded him of the sound that Glory had made when he spoke the language of heaven, but it was dissonant and mournful. He felt a strange sensation as though his very being was sucked from his head into the tiny holes in the earpiece. Then, as soon as it started, the tones stopped, and he could hear a quiet but clear sound of breathing on the other end. 

“Hello?” Thomas spoke hesitantly after an uncomfortable silence. 

A deep and cutting voice sounded at last. It had an undiluted intensity, as though dripping with the purest hate. “Falcon. Amino. Hurricane.”

Tom had no idea what to say in reply, so he continued the act. “Hello, I am calling about a terror attack—” 

The voice was louder and firmer the second time. “Falcon. Amino. Hurricane.” 

“I have no idea what you’re saying. There is going to be an attack at Logan Airport—”

The voice interrupted him and seemed not only to paralyze his vocal cords but his entire body. Thomas felt an overwhelming paranoia, as though something were creeping down the phone line to squirm into his ear and coil secretly in a corner of his brain. 

“I don’t know who the fuck you are or how you know what you think you know, but you are fucking with things far beyond your understanding. I will find you, and I will discover how you know what you know. There are fates worse than death, and I can arrange them. Never call anyone about this again, or I will make it even worse for you. I will put insects under your skin. I will rape you in your dreams forever. I will Prometheus your ass and rip your guts out every day until the end of time—”

A hand slipped over Thomas’s shoulder, whisked the phone’s receiver out of his cold, sweaty grip and returned it to the hook. Thomas staggered out of the booth and fell to his knees on the sidewalk, throwing up at the feet of his rescuer. 

“I’m sorry,” he managed breathily after a full minute of heaving. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

His eyes followed shiny dress shoes up to perfectly pressed pleated gray slacks and then to an equally immaculate matching double-breasted suit jacket. At the top, above a blue, white, and gold necktie depicting a brilliant sun among billowing white clouds, he saw a familiar face. It was Glory. 

Thomas burst into tears. Apart from the terror attack, he could not remember the last time he had cried. 

“Thomas,” Glory addressed him in a sad but kind voice, “you tried to stop it.” 

Tom remained on the ground, seated on the sidewalk with his hands wrapped around his knees. “I did. I lied to you. It doesn’t seem right to have this opportunity and not try. The people who die today have families. They never hurt anyone.” He tried to swallow the lump in his throat. “They wouldn’t listen to me. That man on the phone. They won’t stop it.”

“Of course, they won’t. It can’t be stopped.”

“So then what’s the harm in me trying? Why punish me for trying?”

The angel squatted down to reduce their height disparity. “Is God wounded by blasphemy?”

“What do you mean?”

“When you curse God’s name, is he wounded? Does it ruin his day or throw off his game?”

“Well, no, he’s God, right?”

“Yet blasphemy is a sin.”

 Tom swiped at his running nose with the back of a hand. He changed the subject because he had no reply for the angel’s words. “Who was that man on the phone? Why can’t I stop it?”

Glory sighed and smoothed his golden locks back with a tawny hand. “The events of today are the consequence of a war in the heavens. This is why I was sent for reconnaissance. It cannot be stopped because it is the physical manifestation of a much more immense conflict. It would be like an ant trying to stop an automobile.” 

“And the man on the phone?”

“I won’t tell you about him.” 

“But he’s a real person?”

“Yes, among other things. But he has a name and an address and a social security number. You may have even seen him on television at some point.” 

“Are you going to send me to limbo?”

Glory straightened to his full height and hauled Tom up before patting his shoulders with a smile. 

“No, I won’t send you to limbo. I have no control over what happens to you after you die, but I won’t punish you in the ways that I could.”

“So, what now?” Tom asked. 

“Well, you better get to the window, because if you miss that, then you’re lost for certain.” 

Thomas looked down at his watch. “Oh shit! I’m going to miss the train!”

He sprinted as fast as he could to the station, just as the last car was pulling away from the platform with a fading and rattling roar. 

Glory skidded to a stop next to him. “Oh, well that’s not good.” 

“No, it’s not! I’m doomed!” Tom was fully panicking. “The car! I can try to drive in, but the traffic—can you help me?”

The angel raised his hands to ward off the request. “I have no power here. Technically, I’m not even standing next to you. I’m projecting myself into your mind.” 

“Then how did you hang up the phone?” 

“That was all you—well, with my moral support.” 

“I’m going to need a hell of a lot more than that to get to the city on time.”

They ran to the car, and Tom peeled out onto the road. He turned to Glory who looked rather bewildered in the passenger seat. “I’m going to be breaking every law in the traffic book, so I hope that won’t be a mark against me.” 

“I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m not very familiar with human transportation. How dire is this situation exactly?”

“Taking Highway Nine to the Holland Tunnel at this time of morning?”

“I have no idea what any of that means.” 

“We would have better luck running.” 

They hit traffic immediately on the highway, and it was stop-and-go constantly. By the time they reached Newport, there were only twenty minutes left until the first plane would hit the north tower. 

“I’ll never make it. We’ll be trapped in the tunnel.” 

“How much further is it?” the angel asked. 

“Miles. Once that second plane hits, I’m done for.” 

They neared the tunnel entry and were only a few blocks away from the toll gates. The towers were visible across the upper bay. Glory looked out the passenger window. 

“What about one of those?”

A man on a bicycle was stopped at the intersection next to them. 

“A bicycle?”

“Yeah, trade your car for his bicycle. Can you get around traffic on that?”

“Biking through the Holland Tunnel? Are you crazy?” 

“Well, if you’re just going to be stuck in traffic, then what better options are there?”

“If I can’t get to the window in time, then I guess it makes no difference if I break my neck getting pancaked by a car.”

Tom unbuckled and got out of the car, approaching the man who glanced over at him uncomfortably. All the other drivers began honking furiously. Tom raised his voice to be heard over the noise but kept his tone as calm as possible under the circumstances. 

“Hello, sir. I’m in an emergency situation. I need to use your bike. You can have my car. You can keep it if you want. I just need your bike.” 

The man stared at him in complete bewilderment. 

“I’m running out of time. Please.” He fished out his wallet and handed over all the cash that was in it. “The car and all my money are yours. I just need the bike. It’s a matter of life and death.” 

A rather large and aggressive looking man got out of the car behind Thomas’s. “Hey, moron, you’re blocking the road! We’ve got places to be, asshole!” 

The bicyclist finally took off his helmet, handed it over, and swung his leg to dismount. “Hey, man, I don’t know what your deal is, but it’s all yours.” He grabbed the car keys and cash from Tom’s hands and darted over to the driver’s seat. 

Glory was standing on the sidewalk nearby, watching Tom pull on the helmet and buckle the chin strap. Just as he put one foot on a pedal to take off, Tom turned to the angel. “I want to go back one last time to see my wife. But is it worth it? Getting to the window? I’m assuming that I’ll be going to hell anyway. I haven’t exactly been a godly man.”

The angel patted him on the back. “Your name is not yet written in the book of life, nor is it written elsewhere. Never give up hope, Tom. Now ride like the wind!” 

Glory swatted his back to send him on his way, and Thomas took off pedaling as hard as he could through the last few intersections before the toll gates. He dodged through just as an arm was raising for a car. He could hear the blaring of horns and shouts behind him. Traffic was at a near standstill down into the tunnel, but he found the space to maneuver to the right edge of the road. Hopefully, there was just enough room to squeeze through. Drivers honked and screamed out their windows at him as he whipped by into the tunnel’s open mouth. 

There was barely space for him to get by at the very edge of the curb. The side mirrors of the cars to the left of him were inches away. More than a few times he felt his shoulder impact the wall and prayed repeatedly that he would not hit anything with enough force to send him tumbling. He dared not check his watch or look away from the narrow space ahead. At one point failure seemed certain. A large van was too close to the right wall of the tunnel. He tilted away from it and felt his right shoulder hit the wall, then he rebounded, and his other arm hit the van. Miraculously he caught his balance on the far side.  

Moments after the almost-disaster, he caught sight of sunlight ahead and pedaled even harder to get the speed needed for the uphill battle. His lungs screamed for air and his heart pounded against his ribs. He swooped up into the morning light of Lower Manhattan. The towers loomed ahead of him like ancient gods. He ignored his body’s desperate pleas for rest. There were still about twenty blocks to go. He finally skidded to a stop at a busy intersection and checked the time while waiting for an opening. His lungs screamed for air. The first impact was only two minutes away. He pedaled on, his legs feeling like jelly and his feet like nothing at all, since they had gone entirely numb. He lost count of the number of times he was nearly run over. The hope of seeing his wife and the angel’s last exhortation were the only things keeping him going.      

Tom was only a few blocks away when a shadow passed over him. The first plane flew overhead like a great bird gliding carelessly on drafts of wind. The whole world seemed to go silent for a few seconds before the deafening roar of the impact. Debris fell down the side of the building. Cars stopped. People got out to look up in shock. Others were already running away blindly. Fallen glass and rubble littered the ground around the base of the towers. Tom ditched the bike and ran for the South Tower lobby. People poured out to see what had happened. 

He made directly for the elevators and hit the button to go up on each of them. Thomas was not aware of what would happen on the lower floors of the building. Hopefully in the confusion before the second impact he could make his way up, provided the whole building did not start evacuating in a total panic. One elevator door opened, and he darted in past the group of people exiting, hitting the button for his floor. He watched the floor numbers count upward steadily, clenching the material of his sweatshirt and wringing it with his sweaty hands. He did not know precisely which floors would receive the impact. His watch read nine a.m. The elevator stopped at floor seventy-five and the door opened. A chubby, balding man with a walkie-talkie gripped in one hand stood outside. 

“Hey, mister. The Port Authority has ordered both towers evacuated. Nobody should be going up anymore. We need all elevators available to get people out.”

Thomas panicked and began desperately punching the button for his floor repeatedly. The man pushed forward, placing himself between the doors so they would not close. 

“You need to go down. Nothing up there is more important than your life.” 

“No, no, no!” Thomas snapped. “My life is up there, at least what’s left of it! I have to get above the point of impact or it’s all over!” 

The man gave him a confused look for a brief instant before resuming his authoritative mode. “I know it’s overwhelming, but you have to pull yourself together. Come down with me and we’ll pick up other people on the way to the lobby.” 

Then the plane hit, and it must have been close because the sound was cataclysmic and they pitched over onto the floor. The man with the walkie-talkie fell backwards out of the elevator and Thomas nearly landed on top of him. The entire tower groaned like the call of some titanic being’s lonely song in the deep sea. The power went out and only the dim emergency lighting remained lit. 

Thomas struggled to his feet. The elevator had fallen down the shaft behind him, its cable severed. He struggled to breathe through the intense terror that gripped his chest. There might be stairs still open somewhere before the fire spread. He recalled that the second plane hit the south side of the South Tower, so, after taking a moment to reorient himself, he took off north at a sprint, stopping to duck and crawl at points where the ceiling had collapsed. Dazed people wandered out into the halls. The smell of smoke and intense heat mingled with the air. Thomas found stairwell A and slammed through the door, stumbling immediately on the steps. His legs were going out. He leaned heavily on the railing, forcing each foot onto each new step through pure force of will. He had over twenty floors to go to get to the window. He passed a group arguing whether to go up or down and wheezed that they should go down, that no rescue awaited them on the roof. Then he hit a few floors where the temperature was such that it seemed his blood would boil in his veins. Many more people passed him on the way up and almost none going down. He tried to call out to them, but his voice was an unintelligible gasp. 

Then he realized that he was going to make it, that he was past the point of impact. Despite this, a deep sadness filled him. He could have lived and never jumped at all if only he knew about stairwell A. The smoke followed him up with creeping tendril arms that grasped at his ankles as though it tried to stop him and pull him back. Once finally on his office floor, the acrid smog was everywhere, burning his already stinging lungs. 

He staggered through the door. The coworkers who had remained in the office looked over at him with expressions of surprise. Lauren jumped to her feet.

“Thomas? What are you doing here? We thought you didn’t come in today!”

Chuck was at the broken window and looking down. The room was very hot. It was nearly time. He dragged his battered and weary body toward the opening. 

Lauren was still talking. “My God, we were so grateful that you weren’t here, and now you show up out of nowhere!”

Chuck jumped. Thomas heaved himself up onto the windowsill, wormlike, nearly paralyzed from exhaustion, and fell. The wind against his skin was a relief. He dropped much farther than before, nearly halfway to the ground. Glory was back in his angel tunic and floating down to meet him. 

“You made it back, Thomas. Incredible!”

“And I found out that I could have lived,” he murmured dismally, once they were at a conversational distance. 

“I told you that you didn’t have to kill yourself.” 

The comment angered the falling man. “How is that supposed to make me feel? I couldn’t know. I’m just a human with imperfect knowledge. In fact, how do I know that you really are an angel, and not one of the other guys? Wasn’t the devil an angel at some point?”

Glory did not respond right away, and Thomas looked over to see that his face held a grim and stony expression. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

The angel sighed after an uncomfortable silence had passed. “Well, it’s just about the most insulting thing you could say to an angel, especially one who takes such care to have an immaculate record.”     

“No, I really am sorry. It was stupid.” 

Glory shrugged. “You are only human, so I won’t hold it against you.” He paused and looked down at the ground and then over at Tom. “I reckon you have a little over a day left. Did you want to go back again?”

“Yes, to the evening of the ninth.”

Glory let out a pensive hum. “That’s going to be cutting it very close. You’ll basically be hitting the pavement when you come back.” 

“That’s fine. I want to say goodbye to my wife.”

“For real this time?”

“Yes, for real. I’m sorry about the comment about you being a demon, really. What you said before by the Holland Tunnel really carried me through.”

“Forgiven and forgotten, Tom. Please don’t mention it again.” 

The angel moved in and grasped his arm one last time. Tom did not try to move in the whirlwind of the in-between world this time. He hovered silently and waited for what was coming. The light found him. 

Next he knew, he was standing in the living room of his house. The television was on and playing some kind of advertisement. He turned and walked through the kitchen, past the table where he had frantically called the airports. The bedroom door opened with a slight creak, sending a rectangle of light across the bed. He fell onto the comforter beside his wife Sheila’s sleeping form. He was weary to his bones, but not from his prior time through the window. He was tired from the chaos of his new circumstances of being. He let a hand rest on her wavy blonde hair, and she shifted under the blankets. 

“Tom, what is it? I need to sleep. I leave early tomorrow.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I just . . . I don’t know.” 

“We’re not having sex, Tom, I really do need to sleep.” 

“That’s not it. I’m just going to miss you.”

She moved her face up the pillow and looked at him through drooping eyelids. “I’m only going to be gone a few days. You’ll get pizza and beer and play golf and by the time I’m back you’ll wish I left more often.”

“No,” he said and was about to continue, but his voice caught in his throat. 

She noticed and her blue eyes became more alert. “My goodness, Tom, what’s wrong?”

“I’m afraid.”

She pulled his head against her chest, and he could feel her warm breath rustle his hair as she spoke. “What’s gotten into you? You’re never like this.” 

“I think God might be real,” he gasped finally, and he could feel her arms squeeze around him even tighter. 

“You’re starting to scare me with all this talk.”

“If I died tomorrow, would I have been a good person?”

“You are thirty-five and much too young for a midlife crisis.”

He pulled away so that he could see her face. “I love you. I will love you forever.”

They embraced one another and talked of better things and pleasant memories for a time before falling asleep. 

He awoke alone in the bedroom. It was mid-morning and she had left on her trip. Tom was surprised that he had been able to sleep so long under the circumstances. Part of him wished that he had stopped her, but this was for the best. Better that she be in New England and not in the city when it all unfolded. He wrote her a lengthy note to explain a little of what had happened to him and tried not to sound too crazy. Maybe she would believe it.

Tom decided to go to the South Tower, and maybe even stay in the city all night. He had a key to the office for when he sometimes worked late and needed to lock up. He wanted to be there and see it all unfold, maybe walk the floors of the future impact. Perhaps there was a way to save more people without stopping the attack itself. He took a train into the city and had an early dinner at his favorite restaurant. He gave a homeless man a dollar like Glory had suggested, but it did not make him feel any better. 

While heading to the office, he was struck by an idea. Thomas took an elevator up and rushed to his computer, where he typed up a word document in large lettering which read: “Do not come to work today. Turn around and go home immediately.” He began printing out hundreds of copies and raided the reception desk’s supply cabinet for rolls of tape to begin working his way down from the top floor, taping the notes to the doors of stairwells, offices and next to the elevators. It was getting on to early evening, so hopefully few other people would come around to take them down or catch him in the act. 

He was taping a sheet to the door of an office on floor eighty-one when he heard voices down the hallway. Thomas ducked behind the nearest corner and lowered himself down to the floor, so he could peek around the wall without being too obvious. A group of figures emerged at the other end of the hallway. They were wearing matching black suits and looked very serious. One man was holding some of the warning pages in his hand. They reached a door midway down the hall and pulled off the note Thomas had taped there. After a moment of intense discussion, they entered. Tom waited without moving for many minutes. They had not appeared to be building security, and the office they entered bore no name on the door. Thomas had only left one of his notices on the chance that the area was under construction. Finally, the men re-emerged and purposefully stalked back the way they had come. The door was still open and closing rather slowly. If he took off at a sprint, he might be able to get inside without them noticing. Curiosity won, and Tom rushed out into the hall at a full run. The men did not turn around. He reached the door and grabbed hold of the handle just as the strike was about to hit the plate and squirmed through as quickly and quietly as possible. 

He was on the south side of the tower, and based on his experience the day prior, this area was right in the center of the impact zone. The likelihood of the group of men not only coming to this place while taking down his warning flyers but also entering the door was too slim to be a coincidence. Once Thomas had a moment to look about at his surroundings, he could see that what he had entered was not an office at all, but a series of white painted walls that appeared to form a kind of labyrinth. Tom kept turning corners but could not keep track of where he was, nor did there seem to be any purpose for it. Finally, he reached an open area against the outside edge of the building. Someone had arranged candles on the floor in the middle of the room to form a symbol, and their flames swayed and flickered even in the still air of the building. A bright smear of red writing made a large circle around the outside. He could not make any sense of it, and it seemed to be a gibberish language. He saw the words “KOHO DYNSA AYB NAYALMAD” along one edge. More candles rested on the southern-facing windowsill, as though sending a signal to someone or something out in the dark of the night sky. Then he heard the door opening somewhere through the labyrinth and the dull impacts of footsteps.     

Terror surged through his veins. He whirled one way and then the other before finally picking a direction. After turning two corners, he came across one of the men in a black suit, who lunged at him with a snarl. Tom turned and fled back the other way only to run into another. They descended on him, pulling him to the ground and binding his hands and feet. A cloth bag was pulled over his head. He felt the sting of a needle entering his arm and everything went dark. 

Tom woke to the bag being pulled off his face. Once his eyes adjusted to the light of the morning, he understood that he was tied to a chair and sitting on a balcony high up in a building on the west side of the bay. The North Tower was already belching out black smoke. It was the morning of the 11th. He squirmed against the bonds. The second plane moved into his view on the right, headed for the South Tower. Tom groaned. He felt ill. He lost control of his body, which was heaving from sickness or sobbing—he could not tell which. The second plane collided with the tower, and the rumble of the impact echoed over the water. Then he heard a voice behind him, the same hateful voice he had heard over the phone. 

“Men are so quick to blame the gods. But they themselves, in their depravity, design griefs far greater than what fate assigns.”

He did not respond to the voice. He heard footsteps soon after as the speaker walked away. Tom begged Glory to save him in a strangled voice. The angel did not appear. Then he heard the shrieking of the whirlwind in his ears and his vision began to go black. His skin felt very cold. Suddenly his arms could move again, and he was floating in the world of in-between. 

Tom went limp. He did not fight the wind. He felt his body descending to the ground in a slow spiral like a stunned insect, until finally he lay in a heap on the chilly, damp rock of the chaotic planet’s surface. He lay unmoving for at least an hour before rising to his knees. He was near the smooth area of terrain that he had seen from above on a prior visit. Now, from his position on the ground, he observed clearly that it was a colossal human form, lying among the crags of volcanic rock, bound by chains from shackles on its wrists to two great pillars. The bald head, the size of a small house, rested a few hundred feet away with closed eyes.