Stephen Beam: Balaam, the Gray Prophet

How long had he walked? When had he last eaten or drank water? As his feet moved across the sand someone slapped him in the face. That someone welcomed him to Midian, then slapped him once again. A day had past. And another. And another. Life around him decayed. The people mere phantoms; they lived on the borders of existence, just as he did. He walked up and down hills, passed through rushing streams, trudged long miles through hot deserts. When the Sons of Israel came, he barely knew it. The thunder of motorcycle engines shook the earth. Blood rained down all around him. And when a hot steel blade cut across his torso and his guts spilled to the ground, there was no pain.

The darkness was complete. No light, photonic or spiritual, illuminated his mind. This was death. This was his last day, the grand finale of a life lost in a battle with itself. The remaining trickle of his life-force drained from his body and evaporated into the void. Nothing remained. His conflicts resolved into one spiraling crescendo, a single note, a pitiful skyrocket shot into an airless void, bursting into nothingness. Nothingness. Was there any mercy for him?

Just after the final pulse of blood fed his brain for the final time, a heavy, endless silence fell upon him. An awful stillness. A lonesome singularity within an endless, starless vacuum.

Now the veil rent in half. A hand reached out and caught him.

The right of Stephen Beam to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

Balaam, the Gray Prophet

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © Stephen Beam 2014

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers consent in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent publisher.