Divine Destruction (The Return of Divinity Book 1) (6 page)

After parking his car, and grabbing his coat, gloves, and keys, Griffin exited the parking structure and made his way down to the automated pay machines. As he was thumbing with his debit card to insert into the machine, a fellow commuter walked over to the machine on Griffin's right and began the same pay process.

“I’m going to miss summer,” the stranger said.

Griffin glanced over. Many people this far north truly dreaded Fall, only because Fall was the harbinger of Winter.

“Winter wasn't so bad last year,” Griffin said. “And that quake last night, wow!"

Griffin made a hand gesture to match his raised eyebrows.

The stranger was reaching out to select a button but stopped at Griffin's remark.

"Quake?" he said in a soft bark. "What quake?"

The man’s face turned into a sour concern as if someone had just informed him his dog was on fire.

"You didn't feel the quake last night?" Griffin asked.

The stranger deepened his furrowed brow and shook his head ever so slightly. Griffin returned the furrowed expression and decided to ignore the guy.

Out in the street Griffin turned left and headed down Penn Avenue even more befuddled about what had happened last night. He forced thoughts of work and today's crowded schedule into his mind. These weren’t pleasant thoughts. Griffin wasn’t fond of his job. Worries about an early meeting — who was that with? — afternoon status reports, touch points with subordinates, lunch meeting, and more ran through his head like a kaleidoscope of ugly. Griffin never took medication for his A.D.D. Since his young teens, he felt this disorder gave him advantages in most situations and never wanted to feel out of control, never for a moment. But mornings like these, Griffin's A.D.D. only created anxiety on top of more anxiety. “Fuck,” Griffin murmured.

Whispers

Walking up to Liberty Avenue, Griffin noticed a confused elderly black woman looking in both directions. The woman’s expression held genuine fear of the length of Liberty Avenue. She was dressed in a long warm overcoat, fantastically colored and ornate, but faded from time. She carried a purse large enough to hide a goat. The head scarf tied tight around her silver hair gave the impression of squeezing out her face like toothpaste. Each time she attempted to step out, to cross the street, she would recoil and step back. The woman’s lips trembled. Her eyes darted in despair. Motorists took advantage of her disorientation and made the most of left and right turns around her corner. She wilted like a flower in the dark.

Griffin arrived at her side, the cross walk’s orange flashing palms had become solid. The woman continued to look left and right as if her personal driver was going to appear from nowhere and save her.

Griffin asked, "Ma'am, can I help you?"

She turned her attention away from the traffic and looked up at Griffin.

"Yes, please,” she said. "These drivers, all the cars, I'm afraid to step off the sidewalk.”

"You can come with me. I'll get you across,” Griffin said.

The signals changed and Griffin stepped out onto the street with the older woman on his arm. Her grip was steadfast and she was truly frightened to cross the main intersection at Liberty Avenue and 9th. At a moderate pace they crossed the street together and Griffin delivered her to the opposite corner.

Far off in space, the automaton Gabriel focused attention on Griffin. The Harold and Warrior of God narrowed its thoughts and it’s speed slowed instantly to sub-light.

"Within thee I shall be delivered and the word brought forth,” Gabriel spoke inside of Griffin's mind.

Gabriel had made the first connections inside of Griffin's mind, taking over a few neural connections for the briefest of moments. This was the way Archangels had prepared vessels while making the journey to any planet. Softening the blow before physical contact.

“Huh, what was that?” Griffin said in the direction of the elderly woman.

"Thank you,” she said as she turned toward Griffin and looked him the in eyes. "I was afraid there were no Angels left in the world.”

Her words puzzled Griffin. The paralyzed him. The woman turned and walked away into the crowds of commuters as Griffin made a stumbling effort to walk. Replaying the old woman's words in his mind, Griffin's thoughts became more clouded. Had there been two voices? Sound muffled. Griffin's head felt light, his entire body felt light, as if a strong wind would send him careening off the building walls like a discarded bit of trash. The overwhelming sensation of lifting off overtook all other senses. Griffin leaned against a facade of brick and pressed his face against the cool scratchy surface. He reached down and gripped the wall between bricks in an effort to glue him down.

Faintly Griffin could hear the sound of someone talking. It was like a voice coming down a long hall, or out of a cave, deep and distant.

He caught, "the word brought forth.” The next moment the sensation and voice were gone.

Griffin took in a long breath and opened his eyes. Letting go of the wall and standing up, Griffin took inventory of his personal effects, and questioned his mind. A few of Pittsburgh's working class had stopped to witness whatever freak show was about to take place, but Griffin just walked away with a stoic face as if he ate crazy for breakfast every day.

He arrived at work as he did thousands of days before, familiar and disinterested. The throngs of coworkers mashed into elevators silently. Griffin noted and graded the looks and availability of the women in the elevator with him. He allowed his mind a brief recess.

"What am I thinking?" Griffin scolded himself. "I'm not ready for a relationship ... or a tussle.”

Pushing out the wave of negative personal thoughts that followed. Griffin plopped down in his cube, logged onto to the corporate computer and opened Safari. Google produced nothing on earthquakes in, around, or near by Pittsburgh since the 5.8 in Virginia that happened in 2011. Griffin next checked the USGS website. No quakes of significance in the continental US within the last twenty-four hours. Not even in California. How did those people manage? Griffin asked himself.

"What the hell happened last night?"

He recalled the dream again. So vivid was the smell of sea salt, distant sound of gulls, and then the vacuum of sound. What had happened on the sidewalk this morning? Griffin reminded himself to have his blood sugar checked at the urgent care. Griffin wasn't the kind of person to constantly fret over his health. Maybe he should. Plus he would need to replace his bedroom door. He made a mental note to take a picture of one of his other interior doors to take with him to Home Depot. Measurements, too, Griffin added. Best not to have multiple trips.

Inner Strength

Itishree woke to sound of the front door banging closed. Muted excited voices chattering from below, a product of having her bedroom above the living room. Itishree could distinguish her Aunt Deepa and her mother in stern debate. It was going to be one of those days. Itishree flopped onto her back and let out a rushed exhale forming into a growl. Her last full day in India was going to be one of rapid fire concern over her status, her journey, and her future.

"Please Vishnu, shoot me now,” Itishree thought, covering her head with a pillow. She fought the urge to stay in bed.

The debate continued downstairs. Her aunt's voice gradually became louder as her mother remained unmoved by her sister's urgency. Itishree knew the discussion — nay argument — was about her and her adventure to America alone. And for that and the love of all her relatives, she needed to save her mother and defend herself. She was twenty-four, after all, and about to take a huge step into the control of her life and future.

"This would never happen if father were still here,” Itishree found herself saying. No, not at all.

Tossing back the pillow and sliding from the covers, Itishree found her slippers without opening her eyes. Itishree caught herself making a frown as she left the warmth of the bed and stood.

Sticking out her chin, Itishree thought, “I’m a woman, able to make my decisions, able to fight my own fights.”

She walked across her room to her dresser. Grabbing for her favorite brush, as she'd done for forever, she began the battle of stripping out the night's tangles without pulling out her head of hair.

Stroking the brush Itishree continued the conversation within her head, "I can do this. What am I doing? I can do this! Why America? I am doing this."

The clash of voices within her caught the tempo of voices from the living room.

"I deserve it and I want it. Father,” she thought with a measure of grief.

Itishree stopped brushing her hair and sat on her bed cupping the pearled brush in her hands. Itishree looked down at her hands and brush and ran her thumb over the bristles.

“Father,” she said, this time out loud. The deep cramp in her chest came rushing back just as she had experienced in the grief years before. How she missed her father. How she wished, how she needed his blessing now. Itishree openly sobbed once and cradled the brush to her chest. The brush her father had given her for her seventeenth birthday.

“No,” Itishree said, standing. She placed the brush upon her dresser. She looked into her small mirror, wiped away the tear and forced her shoulders back. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of movement down on the street from her bedroom window. She walked to the window and opened the sheers that ran the length of the window to the floor. Itishree's looked straight down the center of the street. Their house sat on the outside of a ninety-degree turn of their narrow street. Following an imaginary line down the street, Itishree could feel every object in the street. She knew every fence, every bush, tree, pet, block of sidewalk, and every neighbor. All her friends. Itishree took in light, frozen, eyes fixed upon nothing as she dwelled in her past and became afraid. Afraid for the first time.

“Father,” she called aloud to the past.

Minutes later Itishree bobbled downstairs and addressed her family. She was armed only with her wits, pajamas, and house coat. Her mother, Mala, slowly turned and faced down into the kitchen sink. Her hands made busy work, as if a wild animal needed to be subdued. Her aunt only stood there with her arms crossed, a defiant look dried upon her face. Her sister snickered and bolted from the room like it was on fire. Brother, that family conflict coward, was nowhere in sight.

"Good morning, Auntie Deepa, why are you here?" Itishree mused faking confrontation. She blitzed the refrigerator. "That wasn't a grown up opening,” Itishree thought. "Be adult and be in this moment."

"I am here..." Auntie Deepa said. She pointed at the floor. It was a stabbing motion with a long fingernail of doom. "...to talk some sense into you and your mother.”

Itishree slowly peered above the refrigerator door. She looked first at her aunt then to her mother, where she caught a glance of rolling eyes.

Aunt Deepa was fixed and menacing as a farm scarecrow. Itishree backed out of the appliance shutting the door with her right hand, mango juice in her left. The battle had begun. This was going to get real, she thought.

"Be in this moment. Seek common ground while moving beyond your own position,” she recalled her father's words.

Aunt Deepa put her bulldozer into gear. "Never before has one of our women left her parent's home unmarried,” she said. "Not to live across the street, across the city, beyond the river, or anywhere else in India.” She jabbed the fingernail of doom into the air, her voice growing louder.

Her words more pronounced, for effect. "And you,” Itishree could feel herself shrink, as the fingernail of doom sent invisible rays of guilt her way. “You are leaving for America, unwed, alone. It’s crazy! What will become of you?"

Itishree let her aunt go on and get the frustration out. She knew her auntie had no firm ground to continue this tirade. Itishree stole another glance at mother.

Aunt Deepa said, “Why can you not stay, find the right husband, and then go on with your need for independence?”

"Now!", Itishree said. "Auntie, this is not about my independence. This is about what I want to do.” She set the juice on the counter as if it were a weapon to display.

"I don't want a husband, at least not now. I want to work, make my own money, have a career! And I refuse to be owned by any man.” Itishree said.

Aunt Deepa put both wrists on her hips, unbelieving. "So, you're better than your maataa and your mausii? You think we lived our lives as unloved slaves?"

Itishree's eyes rolled back and hit the stops with a 'thud'.

"Your father must be standing up in his grave,” Deepa pressed with emotion.

Itishree’s mother, Mala, who had been washing the metal off the pot while Itishree and her aunt sparred, turned slightly to look into Deepa's eyes and said, “Don’t.” Deepa had been the recognized matriarch since naanii had passed, Mala had always been the wiser, more controlled woman; even through the death of her husband.

Itishree stood transfixed. Her eyes darted from Aunt Deepa to her mother.

“Your own daughter lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on this day. Unmarried” Mother picked a carrot up from the counter, using the carrot as a ‘weapon of truth’ towards her sister. “Aruni started this migration of unmarried women. Let’s be clear.” The carrot moved left to right as if mother erased lies from the air.