Marc Zicree - Angelfire

Hate to admit it, but I think I screamed.

DOC

Ilook down upon a valley from a high place. Where I stand, exactly, I cannot see. Below me the land is beautiful and serene; towns are scattered across it like gems on velvet, bright against the moist, lush green.

The biggest of the gems is a city that stands afar off, at a river’s edge-a cluster of crystals thrust into the sky, aloof. I do not recognize it, but feel I should. It is not a real city, but an archetype, I know these things even in dreams. The analytical mind. I decide the city is Kiev, my home.

I dismiss analysis and attempt to absorb the serenity-to breathe it in with the perfume of wet earth. I give myself a moment of this-a gift to myself-but a moment is all I am allowed. For the moment is drowned in the wail of sirens.

As I look down from my eagle’s nest, the gleaming, crystal city belches smoke.

A war?

When my eyes penetrate the smoke, I find that the city is a city no longer; it is an ugly, sprawling industrial complex. Gone are the buildings of my imagined Kiev, in their place, the ungraceful pilings of a nuclear reactor. The single fluted tower that has always reminded me, with much irony, of a minaret, tells me all I need to know.

I have been here, and know that the smoke is not smoke, but something far more sinister. I am instantly afraid. I don’t want to be here. I cannot be here.

In the villages and farms there is an awakening. A froth of humanity boils from the buildings. Somehow, they are at once antlike and individual; I see the masses and I see faces among them, and I am plunged with them into terror.

I must find a way down from this cliff, but my frenzy accomplishes not a thing. There is no way down. I can only run back and forth along the edge of my aerie, a flightless, dithering bird, trapped by its incapacity.

Fevered, I look again to the pylons of Chernobyl, but again they have changed. Where they squatted like broken gargoyles, there is now a tower. It is black like the candles I have seen in the windows of dark, cluttered shops-a votive to a demon. It glistens as if in a sheath of oil or water or glass. It terrifies me for reasons I cannot name. It terrifies me more than the leaking reactor.

The cloud now reaching to embrace the countryside is neither smoke nor radiation. It is a swarm of insects small as gnats. I tell myself this is a good thing, that these mites cannot possibly be as fearful as the horrors brought by the cloud of radiation.

But the comfort is false; the swarm overtakes the fleeing people and swallows them. They produce their own horrors, for their bite not only draws blood, it destroys and distorts so that what emerges from the swarm is less than human.

Yes, yes, a fine conceit. The Change-I understand. I protest this heavy-handed dictator of a dream. You may stop now , I tell it.

But it doesn’t stop. And though I dream knowingly, I cannot stop myself from wishing I could fly from this cliff. Damn dreaming. Let me help!

As swift as thought, I am in the valley. The insects have flown, leaving a countryside that is twisted and torn, and people who are also twisted, dead or dying.

“Dr. Lysenko! Here!” I recognize the voice of a colleague- a Dr. Kutshinski. But his is not the only voice.

“Dr. Lysenko! I have no more dressings. What do I do?” “Doctor-my daughter-please, won’t you look at my daughter?”

“I can’t find my wife. Help me find my wife!”

“Viktor, what’s happening?”

This is Yelena’s voice, and it stops me in my fevered tracks, for she cannot be here. She is at home in Kiev. Safe. Still, I jerk my head up from the man whose wounds I cannot heal, a man whose flesh boils as if liquid and falls away from his muscle and bone.

“ Gdyeh? Where?” I ask. “Where?” I rise.

Someone thrusts a syringe at me. Yes, at least I can stem the flood of pain. But when I reach for the syringe, my hands are manacled.

I cannot suppress a cry of futile rage. Impotent. Shackled. Yes, that’s how it was- is .

In the face of futility, I struggle against Shiva ( for behold, I have become the destroyer of worlds ), struggle to become a preserver of lives.

The dream becomes confused, muddy, horrific. I am awash in death and blood, while creatures that are mere parodies of humanity press around me. Always, I am conscious of the Tower, looming over the valley, casting its shadow, drawing my eyes. Though my hands are locked together, I toil.

“Viktor, will you come home? Your time there is done.”

“No, Yelena,” I tell her, patching flesh that will soon explode with malignancy of one kind or another. “Can’t you see

how much there is to be done? Can you not see the need?” “Papa, when will you come home?”

That is Nurya, whose voice is like the sweet song of a flute.

“Papa? Papa! ”

I weep. Can they not understand? These people need me . “Wait,” I tell my wife and daughter. “I’ll be home when I can.”

They fall silent. Too silent. I turn to see where they have gone and the field hospital dissolves away.

Around me, rain falls. The lights of police cars slither across the slick road and rainbows squirm in shallow, oily pools. The tow truck comes back onto the road now, our little car dangling at the end of a thick chain not unlike the ones I wear. Water streams from it. In all other ways, it seems as normal as the last time I saw it parked in the narrow lane behind our flat.

I look up and the Black Tower is there, like a funeral candle, upthrust from the trees. Its sides, slick and greasy as this patch of road, reflect no light. Somehow it is to blame for this. Or perhaps I am to blame and it merely witnesses my guilt.

Fury, blind and useless, builds up beneath my heart and pushes upward. I raise my hands to rage or supplicate, I am unsure which, and find they are no longer chained.

I wake, or at least I am moved to a different reality. Here, there is light. Sunlight, golden and warm, shrouds all. Then out of the haze comes a being of such beauty, I am stunned to the soul.

It is a girl. She floats a little above me in a halo of blue-white light. My heart leaps. And I dare to hope…“Oh, he’s awake,” the girl said, and flitted away.

So, I wasn’t dead after all, and this was not heaven and that was neither Nurya nor an angel. I was alive. Absurdly, I was disappointed.

My vision cleared enough for me to see that I was in a mere room. A sunny and pleasant room, to be sure, but a place built by human hands. I gingerly moved arms and legs. My left knee throbbed, convincing me to lie still.

Reflection overtook me. Heaven was not a place to which I hoped to go, but a place I had once lived and from which I had been expelled. I gazed down at my unchained hands and wondered at the language of dreams.

“Welcome back.”

Colleen stood to one side of the door, which was now open, and through which came Cal, Goldie, and a flare-a woman, not a little girl. This must be Enid’s flare, Magritte, whom I had taken for an angel named Nurya. Last into the room was a tiny woman with dark, graying hair and piercing eyes.