Zarek and the Fallen Angels

Chapter One - 4/4 4/2 1/1

Behold, I have created the blacksmith who blows the coals in the fire, who brings forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the spoiler to destroy. Isaiah 54:16

                                                     CHAPTER ONE

                                                          4/4  4/2  1/1

Where am I? I looked around to get my bearings. How did I get here? A sense of panic washed over me as I raked through my mind, struggling to remember where and how. Nothing but the word godforsaken came forth; a simple word that my mind in its nothingness had handpicked for my attention. Godforsaken. The word described without compromise this middle of nowhere. I was a walking disaster by any measure, an error magnet but I was certain that this godforsaken place was far, miles away from the metropolis I now call home, London.

I was standing on top of a hill, my gaze drawn to the landscape below. It was flat, dry and vast. No green, no sign of life just dry cracked land. Overhead, dark clouds covered the sky like a blanket, giving the impression that a downpour was likely. As I looked around again, willing my mind to place the events that led to here, something caught my attention in the far distance where the earth and sky met. Fire. I watched in bewilderment as wild smokeless fire consumed the entire skyline, roaring towards the heavens ferociously. No one in their right or wrong mind can possibly live here.

‘Where the hell am I?’ The words came out in a scream and as if in answer, a dark figure on a black horse came right out of the fire riding towards my direction. Unharmed.

Goosebumps erupted all over my skin as I stood there rooted to the ground, watching. The hairs on my body stood on end, my heart pounded hard and fast filling my ears with lub-dub sounds. I opened my mouth to scream but my voice did not cooperate, it lay still in my larynx. He was coming for me and I could feel it deep inside but for some reason, I couldn’t move a muscle. I was nerveless. Fear had seeped through my pores, entered my bloodstream and immobilized me.

As the rider advanced, I drew in deep, laboured breaths as if the air around me was slowly vanishing. His dark presence was sucking life right out of me and there was nothing I could do to help myself. I continued breathing convulsively, willing myself to stay alive. With each struggled breath, my chest cinched sending ripples of sharp stabbing pain through me, pain that defied life.

Is this it? Rivulets of tears flowed from my eyes as cold unbidden thoughts of death whirled in my mind.  

Dying felt awfully strange, stranger than I had imagined it to be. We all at one point or another wonder what dying feels like... I did too but I never imagined it to be this ugly and merciless. My whole life flashed before me like a movie. I saw it from the humble beginning right up to the moment I was standing there, dying. I was a nobody with zilch to my name, just a troubled young man with hopes and aspirations. I needed a second chance at life to prove myself, to be somebody and as I stood there reflecting on my life, pain rippling through me, wishing for that chance, I noticed that something was inscribed in flames on the landscape behind the rider as he rode towards me. The inscriptions grew bigger until they were life-size and bold and they read: 

                                                 4/4  4/2  1/1

I couldn’t believe my eyes… the spectacle of giant-sized four over four; four over two and one over one in flames was something I had never seen, not even in the make-believe world of movies. These have got to be fractions, I thought, slightly unsure of my guess. Like most people, I hated Maths… never had the brain for it. I remember back in elementary school, when I first learned fractions and my teacher Mr Abdullah – so bald we called him Old Baldy behind his back – would get me confused, sometimes to the point of tears with all these different types of fractions. I was never able to tell one from the other. Staring at the fractions, I tried to work them out. Funny how the mind works, isn’t it? In extremis, it comes up with the dumbest solutions. My worry should have been what they signified not solving a mathematical problem. Stupid, I know. But then, it felt like my life depended on working them out. Failing miserably to catalogue the fractions, I concluded that it was a code. For what? Why me? It did not make any sense at all. Nothing did.