Cherubim Dreams

There are only two possibilities when a human being confronts Jesus: the human being  must either die or kill Jesus. 

-- Bonhoeffer (the Martyr)

Imagine you are wandering through a junkyard. You have no memory of how you got there. The air is thick with the icy chill of cold steel. You see a few small flames and make your way to where you find a group of other confused folks cooking rats and cockroaches over a small fire. Not only does this horrify you but the looks in their eyes make your stomach churn. They scan bottom to top to assess if you have anything of ‘value’ for them. They laugh and bare their rotting teeth at you as they shoo you away.

You stagger on over the rubble. There is a decent looking person crouched in a corner. They have found a small flame of gas coming mysteriously from the polluted earth. It stinks but you want to get to warmth. By this stage you are so hungry. When you are offered half a pigeon carcass you grip it in your teeth and crunch. After some time you feel in a strange way familiar with your companion. You sign and smile and laugh together like Neanderthals.

Then the ground shakes violently with a tremor. As the gas flame goes out, your companion gets startled and runs away into the blackened atmosphere. You are left alone and in a completely blind situation; the chill re-penetrating your bones.  In the darkness you stumble your way over trash that gnaws at you like hounds—bruising, grazing, gashing your body. You feel the aches, lick the stings. At some point you knock your head and it starts to throb. The sensation of blood running from open wounds leaves you feeling drained.

Then a current of air blows past. It is warm. You note the direction of the wind. You start to follow the warmth. Something takes you out from your left. It knocks you down and presses hard upon you, crushing you. Now pain is felt in parts of your body you never even knew had nerves.

The burn deep within your innards drives you to push and push until you lift the weight of this beast off your near-flattened flesh.  With the stringy muscle that remains you awkwardly unfurl to stand. Your feet re-grounded, you lean on whatever you can to pull yourself out of this ditch and return to your mission. But you’ve been disoriented. For the first time, as you remember the warm air, you start to shed tears. In the middle of sobbing up comes a gust of wind. But it isn’t the same. In fact it is even colder than the ice that bites your nose and fingers. You curse the situation. You start to get so angry that you have forgotten your wounds except the ones on your hands. You suck some blood that is dripping from your palm. This gives you some satisfaction as you resolve to make whoever put you in this situation pay a heavy price. You strain your eyes, looking for light.

Then you spot it: a pastel glow in the distance. By this stage, you are completely delirious and paranoid. You start to imagine that the source of the faint light is the one who threw you out into this hellish nightmare. You are envious of why they should have light and warmth and why you should be so destitute. You say to yourself, “Who the fuck are they?” And mutter things like, “Who gave them the privilege to be comfortable and happy? If I don’t deserve that, then neither should they!”

Despite being heavily drained of blood and moving like a slug as you crawl over the frozen wasteland, you continue to suck the blood from your palms and carry on. You also begin a habit of chewing plastic to fill your gut and stop the hunger pains. Every now and then, a breeze blows. To keep the colder winds from chaffing your raw skin, you begin to wrap larger pieces of plastic and textile scraps in layers over your body. Sometimes the wind carries the warm air that comes from the direction of the glow.

Eventually, after an arduous journey filled with imagined histories of your nemesis, you get close enough to see something in the shadows. Someone is standing there but you can’t make it out clearly. Still a few meters away, you begin to scream at them.

“Why the hell did you cast me out here!”

They appear to be yelling back but you can’t hear them. You storm up closer towards a small fire burning from some carcass, perhaps of a feral cat but you can’t be sure. Again, out the corner of your eye you see a movement you take to be your nemesis. You stiffen up and look towards a wall of grey. Nothing. You think to yourself, “Where did they go?”

Your eyes scan from your poised sockets until you see a metal bar. With your heart beating like a time machine, you calculate your attack. Then, when you have built up enough courage, you leap for the bar. Something moved but there is no sound and you are now staring at a wall of grimy dust.

You strike the wall with the metal and the caked on dirt slides off in places to reveal a beast staring at you from behind thick glass. You start your ranting again, and demand explanations. The beast moves slightly but says nothing. It is no use. In rage you try to smash through the glass. But you can’t hurt this thing. It’s impossible to break in to make your nemesis pay dearly for their cruelty.

You are frustrated but not giving up. You decide you need more energy and think that perhaps feline flesh would help. You move back around to the fire and pinch a bit of the roasted meat into your fingers. As you are chewing on a bite you sense something is wrong. Then you look down and see that what you are gorging on is a human child. In fright you drop the remainder and, as you do, a sliver of your plastic clothing catches fire! In a panic you strip off the layers, backing away from the flame right into the wall of glass. Debris falls on your head and shoulders. Then you remember your nemesis and sharply turn to look into the now fully visible glass.

What a sight! Standing before you is a hideous figure; naked, swollen, bruised and bleeding it is hard to tell if it’s a man or a woman but mindlessly, in shock and anger, you strike at their neck with your hands. Your fingers jar against the glass. It’s a bitter feeling that charges through your arteries to the end of every vein. Your nemesis recovers their stance. Then you notice that above their head is a plague with a riddle.

Salt will wash it all away
Cherub by night, seraph by day
By wild lion be thou consumed
Or gift supreme sun a little moon
Cast your skin onto the altar
Come as spirit, do not falter
In our home you will find peace
But first your fear and hate release

Your nemesis is staring at you as you look intently back and start to imagine how much pain they are in, which reminds you of how much pain you are in. You put your hand to the glass. They also reach out and it feels warm. They are crying. Tears are mixing with the clots of blood lumped on their puffed out cheeks. Scabs start to fall, as you too taste brine collecting on your lips and soaking past the corners of your mouth. Pink and orange merge and marble over the image before you as the swelling goes down and the figure shrinks, morphing in form to eventually reveal that your nemesis is just a child.

Then you hear a roar. A hot gust of air puffs across your flesh. You turn toward the fire and see a lion standing high above you. You are so scared that your knees shake and you piss yourself. You look down and see that you are a little child. You are astonished. Have you been a child all this time? No time to answer the question. The lion is hungry and you can’t escape!

On your knees you beg repeatedly, “Please don’t eat me… please don’t eat me…” until you are shaking like a leaf and whispering it as a mantra at the cliff of consciousness. Then you recall the riddle,

Salt will wash it all away
Cherub by night, seraph by day
By wild lion be thou consumed
Or gift supreme sun a little moon
Cast your skin onto the altar
Come as spirit, do not falter
In our home you will find peace
But first your fear and hate release

“Let go… let go of the fear,” you tell yourself.

You breathe deeply as you hear the panting and breath of the lion over you. Then, slowly, you open your eyes to behold the one more powerful than you. Yet, now it is not a lion but a lamb. At first, you are just confused and shake your head because this is surely just a bad dream. But then you sense that something has changed. You feel your hands are heavy, your tongue is sticking out and saliva drips through your split upper lip onto your mane. Your stomach growls and the land beneath you shakes. You are famished and cannot hold back. The lamb looks so delicious to you and your eyes already eat it ahead of you. Then you leap upon your prey and bite it at the neck.

Its woolen coat does not phase you as you lap the blood and gnaw the meat that begins to morph and crumble. The texture becomes chalky as you look down through your bright rays to see moondust pouring out to form a narrow river of white light toward the wall of glass. Your carcass is beneath you now, indistinguishable from a baby or a cub. You slither along the way of the moon and enter the wall as spirit to return to peace.