[sblock=1]
Gorge became aware of the silence around him first. He had been staring into his coffee, a black pit swirling and steaming. He wasn't sure how long he'd been sitting there, like that. He couldn't remember what he had been thinking about. He couldn't fathom what had ensnared his mind so thoroughly that he completely lost track of where he was, and of time's passage.
Gorge looked up. He was alone inside the ramshackle church he and the villagers had constructed from whatever was handy. Salvaged tin for the roof, plywood and chipboard and greenhouse fiberglass sheets for the walls. Studs were also salvaged, or roughly hewn from local trees. None of those blessed villagers were in here now.
The silence outside bothered Gorge in a deep and terrifying way.
His hands shaking, breathe in shallow rasps and feet wobbling he moves to the strangely alluring door.... [/sblock]
[sblock=2]
Gorge feels the dirt and straw of the rough floor between his toes with each shuffling step. His movements felt restricted. His robes were damp and clingy, wrapped around his limbs. The handle of the door beckoned.
His throat was already dry, but it suddenly became parched, as if cotton had ben stuffed down his mouth. he tried to swallow, but sand would have been easier.
It seemed that all the water in his body suddenly went to his hand as it suddenly started sweating heavily as he lifted it to reach for the door handle, shaking, suddenly becoming weak.
He coughed nervously as a sudden funny thought struck him: perhaps he should have seen dust come out with that cough. His hand touched the knob and he turns it .. . .[/sblock]
[sblock=3]
The door opens, and Jorge is momentarily blinded by the bright sunlight. A moment later the sun is blotted out and Jorge realizes the sun is being obscured by a billowing black cloud of smoke. His uncomprehending eyes trace downwards to the source- no, several sources of the oily black clouds. The ramshackle huts of the villagers are burning! The plastics and other artificial materials belching thick, black smoke and the wooden ones making blue, all of it coming off of tall orange flames. Jorge sees things on the ground. Rounded shapes that Jorge is suddenly afraid to look at too closely. His heart pounds so hard that it is all he can hear.
'is this a dream?' thinks Jorge to himself? he summons the will to focus on the round objects on the ground, though afraid of what they may be . . .[/sblock]
[sblock=4]
Red stained cloth. Still limbs. Shining wet pools. Slack faces and postures. These are bodies- Jorge already knew this. The cruelty of it though... They didn't only use guns and fire. Much of the killer's work was done with machetes. Jorge felt his legs seem to liquefy beneath him and his face had a sudden heat and pressure, right around the eyes...
Jorge turns away, then leans into moving Away. He moved blindly. Tears flowing. Angry. scared. Are the assailants still here the thinks. somehow he is running. Not quite sure where except away. . .[/sblock]
[sblock=5]
Jorge:
Jorge stumbles along, unsure of where he is going or what to do. Why is he still alive? Why did this happen? Something cold and dry caught around Jorge's foot and he twisted to free himself. Looking down, he saw a grey, dirty hand clutching his ankle. The small hand was connected to an arm and a child's face. The face was ravaged by mud and a large boot print showing in the bruises and torn skin. The child's mangled mouth opened and Jorge recoiled reflexively, trying to pull away.
All that he was taught in seminary fell by the way side in a flash. "How can a benevolent GOD allow such a monstrous thing to happen!' he thinks to himself. He wrenches himself free of the hand and runs pell-mell down the trail. Then the GUILT: he left a suffering child . . .[/sblock]
[sblock=6]
Jorge ran blindly through the jungle and at some point, he lost track of the trail. The change was beneath his notice. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew what he was doing was dangerous. The jungle dosn't forgive easily. As if in answer to that thought, a great drop off appeared ahead and Jorge skidded and stumbled to a stop, finally hugging a sapling to steady himself. He looked out onto the world revealed by the drop off. His eyes were drawn downward. Smoke and hellish flames licked up from below. Jorge could see the familiar shapes of his village amid the inferno. Then between the huts, he saw movement! Despite the distance and smoke, he recognized them, the people of his parish! Jorge's gaze moved skyward, looking toward the God who would allow such an atrocity. Somehow, the sky was unsullied by the smoke from below. Beautiful yellow light, too bright to look at directly, limned the clouds. Jorge could barely make out silhouettes past the intense glow. One of them came forward, impossibly, out of the clouds above Jorge. Through his eyes watered badly, Jorge still knew who He was. It was instinctual. The glimpses of His face were of a terrifying beauty, and Jorge was sure that to gaze openly at the face of God would do something to him which would be irrevocable. His lips did not move, but Jorge knew it was He who spoke. "YOU NEED THIS." was the message, and the Voice filled him.
Through the rage he felt toward the creator that he knew the voice to be from, he cries out words with all of his might, "what! I need to see the people YOU gave me to protect to be slain before my very eyes?" he squeaks out timidly. Then a thought comes to him in a very peculiar clarity, 'I wonder if this is how job felt when he stood before HIM?'[/sblock]
[sblock=7]
Jorge could not here his own words. The rushing, pounding sound in his ears drowned out everything else. The watery brilliance that reached his retinas threatened to blind him. Jorge felt a pressure on his shoulder, as of someone gripping him. Spinning around, Jorge came face to face with the grizzly remains of one of the villagers. A deep slash from a machete had shaved off the side of his face and continued down to where the blade stopped after shattering the collarbone. Blood soaked his clothes, and Jorge saw more cadaverous villagers behind the man. Jorge put his hands out in that moment and did not know whether it was to help or to fend off the walking dead before him. He saw his own robes were soaked through with blood, and that they clung and weighed him down. The rest of the dead villagers came forward then and embraced him, and as a single mass, they fell off the precipice towards the flames below.
"Jorge! Jorge!", came a voice. The blood soaked robes became sweat-damp sheets, and the hand of the dead man became the hand of his mentor. Jorge opened his eyes to daylight. The old priest stood over him, a concerned expression on his face. "One devil of a nightmare you must have been having!" he said. "I tried to wake you, but you'd have none of it!"
'what is wrong? Has the fever reached me here? Which is real, the village or my mentor?
He pulls the covers up to his chin, shaking violently. He looks around trying to see what really is or is not. Finally he looks to the kind old priest and says in a quivering voice, "I hope I did not see what is to come, but it was un rostro horrible, a horrifying visage."
Then in a still, quiet, fearful voice, "como si fuera el día de los muertos."[/sblock]
A look of genuine concern crosses the older man's wrinkled face. He spoke in heavily accented English. "Only a nightmare, surely, Jorge. What did you see?" he asked in his gentle, gravelly voice. "And more important, what does it mean to you?" He pulled up a nearby chair, sat, and placed his hands between his knees, body language indicating that Jorge had no need to rise from his bed just yet.
*Gulp* the vision runs through the young priest's mind, the images just as horrifying as before. When the gory sight is finished he closes his eyes and shivers as he forces his mind to relax.
*SIGH* he lets out his breath as he mentally disciplines himself to relax and meditate for a second. He is still quivering a bit, but he relaxes beneath the sweat soaked sheets.
"Fear" he pauses then continues, ”I dreamt being alone and afraid. El terror de mi corazón. “ another pause with his breath coming out a little more shallow and faster, “The door where I sleep, it call to me, si’ habla a me, beg me to see outside. I fear so bad my mouth is like . . . piso del infierno, dry waterless place . . .” he gazes into the kind eyes of his mentor to gather strength. Leaving out his quark of a thought, he continues, “I open the door and light, painful like eyes on fire. Then the light is stolen from me as oscuridad mal from thick smoke I see."
I see, . . . ” he pauses then shakes his head as his mind tries to make out the rounded shapes, as bodiless heads? Tears well up as he shuts his eyes to try and shut it out of his mind, though it does not work at all. He continues of what his nightmare showed him, “I want it to be a dream, but I feel the flames of the village burning. I hear only my heart pounding. I see people on the ground,“ Sudden sadness falls on the young man, showing just how young he is in that he moment of sobbing and weeping. Several minutes pass before he is able to speak again, but those softly beckoning eyes of kindness compel him on.
“The villagers, they were
hacked to death, like beasts at a slaughter. No mercy. Arms, legs, heads, scattered about like disregarded trash.” "I think, why they all die, but let me live? Why would GOD allow this? Why would people be allowed to do these things to other people? In my vision, I ran. Like a coward. I ran from the people. I ran from looking for people to help. I ran from a child reaching for help. I failed in what I was to do, Padre." His voice softens incrementally to a whisper. “I ran.”
A few moments of silence and he continues, “ I ran until I almost fall off a cliff where I see the village from above. I see people trying to escape like ants in a ring of fire. I raise my eyes and fists to the heavens in anger and ask why!! And I see a light, clean of any smoke from the clouds. I finally hear something that is not my heart pounding. It was a voice, like job in Old Testament. The voice it tells me I need this. What does that mean, I need this? Then los persones de muertos come for me and grab me with bloody hands. And as they try to take me, you wake me from terror.”
He looks in his mentors eyes with his conclusion, “What does this mean to me? I see trouble and run like little coward. I needed to see that in me.”
