THE DRAWING OF THE SOUL.

A meandering sentinel drifts slowly through the trees, pulling the mild orange
incandescence of autumn behind it. Here in the forest the souls of the forgotten ones hide from
view lest they be remembered; lest they become forced back into existence by the wanton minds
of the living, to endure the tyrannies of life yet again. Murmuring low, they creep with the wind-
blown leaves across the final resting place of those that have been. Here is a place of rest, and a
place of magic. The rules of mans close-held physics no longer apply.
Alerted by an unusual presence, the spirit exudes its glow in an attempt to dissipate into
the ether, spitting sparks of colours unseen, colours outside our range of perception. Regardless,
the presence draws near. No stranger to these floating forms, Gerald makes his way into the
sanctum. Although he has never been here before, it is much like any other of the fields of resting
power that he has graced himself upon, and now he can almost see the invisibles. With certainty,
he can feel them, feel their presence, and their fears. He feels the warm glow against his cheeks
as he brushes past the demarcations of their energy.
He is no tourist in this realm: his mission is clear, and must be completed before he can
allow himself to return. Once his acute senses are overwhelmed by the powers, he switches to
less sensitive means: divining rods. These primitive wands of fresh hazel are more than sufficient
in his hands, allowing him to partially shut down his unusual perception in favour of this dulled but
safer method.
He draws to a halt by a massive deadwood oak, hazel wands crossing and uncrossing
with violent power in his hands, as if pulled by the magnetic breath of an unseen angel. "Summon
thee your guardian, and make rest for thyself", he commanded. Silence... "SUMMON THEE! I
WARN NO MORE". Silence, almost deafening so. Placing his hands upon the ancient oaks trunk,
reality is felt to shudder; here is no place for man, no place for even beasts. With fields of indigo
charge at his fingertips and the soles of his shoes, he feels the shunt of power run to earth,
drawing through his body, away from its former keeper. Electricity of some form as yet unknown
to science and scientific men, a power that drives both those that live and those that no more
shall. This power belonged to the oak, and had continued to build, maybe ten score years since it
shed its last dying leaf on grounds sucked too barren for its acorns to take hold. Gerald had, of
course, no interest in a dead tree. His task lay within, and within it held in tight symbiosis was
indeed the spirit of an angel, an angel rejected by god for crimes god gave it free will to commit,
consequently this angel held anger unimaginable.
Eventually, the powers of the old, twisted oak ebbed to that of a deadwood tree and its
tinder-dry boughs started to crumble to a fine dust. All at once the tree became ash that fell to
earth like smoke of lead, revealing the creature that had dwelt so long within, a creature so
contorted with fear and torment, a creature of solitude and hate. Now it could hide no longer from
the toy that god had cast it upon, this ball of clay that had upset the balance of power, creating in
itself the very conception of darkness and evil that the endless void preceding it could not sustain.
The angel wanted not to be free, it was freedom that had condemned it, freedom that had taunted
it, and freedom that it hid from within the heart of a once mighty oak that died and withered in
spite.
The angel spoke, its tone of darkest malice; "Why do you disturb my rest? Do you not think I will
destroy thee?”
"Indeed you might," spoke Gerald, "but then you would not know why I came here. Your powers
of perception have grown weak and you forget how to move through this world you are cast upon.
You have forgotten the power to see, and you are dulled. You wish to return.”
"Return I cannot!" declared the angel, “Here I am cast, and here I slept until you awoke me from
my peace." Gerald had little patience for Smalltalk, Here you are cast, but peace you had not.
You will serve me if return you seek. My task is so great that god cannot deny return to any that
help me, nor deny damnation greater than yours to those that refuse. What say thee, angel? Utter
thy name if you would aid me, but speak mine if you would now have me destroyed. I think you
are so weak now that you cannot even read my thoughts to know it.” The elemental pulled itself to
its great stature, now shaking with power. At once it made known the full span of its wings, and
with one mighty flap, it sent the thick film of ash from its snowy form, sending the detritus of the
forest floor howling into infinity. The trees bent and snapped far around but Gerald stood firm
against the torrent of winds, in fact, not even one hair on his head could be seen to move. The
angels eyes grew fierce with fire as it uttered in its fearsome voice "BELIAL!, it with NO master.
BELIAL, angel cursed with freedom. BELIAL, cast for amusement from servitude..." At this,
Gerald broke in: "OK Belial, nice name, don’t wear it out.”

As the angel and its unlikely master walked through the forest one could notice that the
silence of this place had risen to that of deafening proportions. Not even the most cast spirit
dared peek from its shelter in fear of the great Belial, and even more frightening seemed the
innocuous Gerald. What kind of mere mortal could command such a pure force as Belial? Not a
spirit here dared emerge to ask.
The deathly silence was broken by Gerald as he and his ward neared the edge of the
sacred wood “Belial, you must transmute your form. Neither man, nor beast can detect you, or
our task will be in vain and you must reside here for your eternal sentence.”
At once the beast-terrible shook away its shape, morphing into a form more settling to the eyes of
the uninitiated. Belial had chosen the shape of a humble dog, and this marginally pleased Gerald,
who was not at all partial to hounds in their numerous guises. “If you shit in public and make me
pick it up there will be a whole pile of trouble. And get used to your new name, Dingo.” As Gerald
uttered the name of its new guise, the great angel tucked its tail between its legs in dismay. Never
before had any being, not even god himself had attached such a derogatory tag to it. Lucky, it
thought, it had not chosen a cat or worse as its form. Dingo it must now bear, better this than
maybe Tinkerbelle or Fluffy. Dingo let go a low growl to demonstrate its feelings.
“I suppose I had better tell of this great task you are to assist in” said Gerald. “There is
being staged a great gathering of world powers; real powers behind the thrones of the great
leaders of the Earth. They plan to settle gods wager for the souls of men by creating a virus of
judgment. This virus will kill every living creature that exhibits guilt. Science has caught up with
theology and discovered the chemical that tags those who are not true of heart and mind. “might
you not care Dingo, but these men of power know not of their evils, they have no guilt but are far
from innocent. The planet will be left with almost no survivors, those that survive will be religious
men of no practical use in the world in which they dwell, or worse, there will remain those of
unsound psychotic minds that have no capability of right and wrong. These men have no faith
and the men of god will see that which has happened and lose theirs. Meanwhile, many other
fallen and downcast angels are being summoned by Asmodeus. He is anxious to keep balance in
his books of sin. When this Armageddon has destroyed the world, there will be another war in the
heavens, and what will become of those that fall a second time? You Dingo, are lucky. You were
a test to see how much freewill any sentient being could handle, and it clearly drove you insane.
Now is your shot at redemption. You are to help me recruit a new herald and choir before that
time, from the fallen good. You are to stop this madness before existence is called off as a bad
idea.”
The reply came directly into Gerald’s thought patterns as only an angel can. “Asmodeus
will perish for this; Peter must hear and redress this. And how do you know of this plan? How are
you so sure of Gods detachment from this? Be you but a man?”
Unexpected, and as yet unheard of, the response came straight back into the mind of the angel.
“I am but a man, but I have made the world preceding the physical into my second nature. I have
dwelt outside of my mind and outside of this dimension. I have used herbs and potions and all
manners of poisons to take my mind past the point of death and learned to reconstruct my reality
as I wish. I only dwell here to keep the use of my physical body. I have had communion with
beasts and angels as yet unknown to God itself, and yet I understand God. I have on occasion
stood in gods place and made my own worlds but always I have been called back. If God were
watching and listening, it would have taken this from me. Mammon is a jealous master and will
allow no other God. I have held omnipresence. God cares not for this creation, and has lost use
of its perception while all about are gaining theirs. But if God dies then we die for we are first
Gods imagination. This is how I know, and why I need communion once again with those that
understand how to manipulate the fabric this reality is woven from.” At this unprecedented return
of communications, the angel fell silent.

Gerald was indeed a man of some intellect. Fortunately he had been classed as a ne’er-
do-well and relegated among those of more uncomplicated minds, and expected to perform no
better than they. This gave Gerald a lot of time and space to play with during his bored years of
childhood. First it was the books that took his fancy, then, as new books ran short in his small-
town country library, he learnt new techniques of discovery. First the microfiche, then the internet,
then meditation. He had learnt to doubt the given facts of reality since, as a small child, he learnt
to comprehend speech and order his many thoughts and feelings. The final step in his education
was to poison his conscious mind to let the more powerful subconscious take root. These were
days of confusion and illness, sometimes leaving him not knowing who or what he was, nor that
he shared his world with other beings. But Gerald had perseverance more than any other quality,
and soon learnt to control his perception of reality, first by maybe changing the colour of a red
rose to a yellow, then changing his bedroom into outer space, then finally blinking himself out of
this dimension into the void, free to construct as he wished. It was in this void that he first became
aware of the others; strange and sometimes malevolent forces that also dwelt without time or
spatial confines. At this time, he began to practice being a god. He never found out if the others
were angels or demons, or other self-taught students of omnipotence. Eventually he found out
that he was stronger and could control their realities, and that made the question irrelevant.
Never did he assume that he was God. The worlds he created were smaller and more fragile,
slight and partial. There was clearly a larger force at work here, a force so immersed in its work
that it had no time for communication anymore and as such had lost, or given up the power to do
so.
God had become embedded within the reality it had created. Trapped. Lost.

Belial was there from the beginning of tangible reality. When God created Belial there
was only God and the Metatron, the primordial angel created before form itself. Belial was the first
creation of form and dimension, aeons before Michael and Lucifer. The angel was told his first
commandment, never to be revoked; God said: “Worship and serve only me”.
For aeons more Belial served God and obeyed his commandment, even after the
creation of great choirs of angels, even after, as the others, Belial was gifted the ability of free will.
Then came the day that God commanded the angels to worship a man, a mortal in Gods
image, but as Michael and Gabriel followed the command and the choirs did follow, Belial could
not forget the first commandment: Worship and serve only me.
Thus, the choirs found their excuse to cast the most senior of angels down to earth until
the Day of Judgment, when the fallen shall join the sinners in eternal hell.

One might wonder why god did not understand the predicament; it was because on that
day God gave up consciousness to donate it to Jesus Christ and ever since that day God had
neither the capability to observe nor communicate, leaving Earth in the hands of angels and fallen
ones.
Even before this, God knew of the flaws of this act; the Watchers bred the Nephilim;
Lucifer was tired of serving a flawed God and raised his throne above, before being cast down.
Now God was not there to see and since this the world fell by the flawed hands of men, created in
a flawed image. Religion on Earth turned from love to hate, from a reason for peace to an excuse
for war. And the angels did little. Gerald decided to fill in the gaps.

They walked for about two miles down the forest track when Gerald spotted a small plant
with a strange spiny fruit. He immediately plucked it from the ground and brushed the dirt from its
root. From his left pocket he produced a slightly flattened silver cup containing a pocket camp
stove. He set it down on the short grass and placed the fuel tablet in the burner with the cup on
top. With his trusty small penknife he sliced the plant, roots and all into the cup in tiny pieces. In
Gerald's other baggy pocket contained a small plastic bottle of water for just such an occasion,
and he poured into the cup just enough to cover the bits of chopped weed, lit the fuel cube and in
half a minute his tea was bubbling. He held the blade of his knife across the mouth of the cup to
stop the small foul chunks of herb from entering his mouth and as it quickly cooled he sipped off
the clear liquor.

Gerald sat for maybe fifteen minutes stroking his dog as it growled back at him. He meditated and
opened his eyes: They were on the wide grass verge of a small country lane outside Ipswich.
Gerald could see his beaten old Range Rover a couple of minutes walk down the straight
Suffolk track. He collected his possessions and headed for the car, Dingo still growling at him
indignantly.

In the car a few hours of unspoken conversation passed in the minutes to Gerald's bedsit in
Woodbridge. There was much work to do and the next part of his quest began.
Back at Gerald's temporary home Belial shape shifted uncomfortably in the centre of the room.
Gerald was in the kitchen eating a cheese sandwich and glugging from a bottle of local real ale.
After he was finished refueling, he stepped into the living room and started to pack a few things
into his small pack.
“Dingo, your going to have to do a search for me, I hear you have great powers to find
information.” Gerald spoke with a business-like manner, and Belial replied in an unnatural voice,
a mix of many calm voices in unison, an unnerving chorus of lost people. “I, Belial have the
command over 80 legions of demons. they are spread throughout the world living diguised as
humans, animals, and winds. I know everything they know, see everything they see, hear
everything they hear. The one you seek is in Palastine.” Gerald cracked a wide smile, he liked the
desert and had many revelations there. “Great, cheap flights this time of the year!” Belial laughed
in his normal deep tone, “What, you cannot transport? Mortals indeed! i suppose you would like
me to take the shape of an insect so you do not have to chip dingo and put him through
quarantine?.
It is not unusual for demons, and angels for that fact, to have a sense of humor, but Gerald just
continued his packing. “I just like the airline dinners, pity the Israel flights don't carry wine to go
with it, bloody Jews!”. “Yes I must admit, they did rather miss the point of it all” Belial replied
matter-of-factly. “I will meet you there”.

Gerald arrived at the airport at eight that night, the dinner was Kosher roast beef with
broccoli, and no cheese sauce. Gerald didn't like broccoli without cheese sauce and was
dismayed. It took him 2 hours to pass through immigration control, the usual inane questions by
the angry, paranoid defence force at Ovda airport. Ovda is a small military airfield in the middle
of nowhere that allows civilian airlines to land a few months of the year, and the airfield personnel
clearly detest that fact. Its only saving grace is the beautiful seventeen year-old girls doing their
national service, the uniform and machine gun doing their slim, tanned bodies justice fully.

Outside the airport gates, he made his way towards the nearest taxi and peered though
the window “Will you take me to Eilat for twenty English pounds?”. Gerald spoke now in the
seasoned queens English of a regular traveller. The driver agreed with little protest, he could
have waited for the next tourist and tried the usual rip-off fare, but twenty pounds is worth many
Shekels and there was no point trying to argue with someone who was clearly familiar with the
territory.
Gerald got in the cab just as a wild dog came snapping at his ankle. He shut the door quickly, and
looked through the window. Rabies is rife here, and Gerald hated illness.
The dog sat just outside the window panting in a friendly manner and licked the glass. “VERY
FUNNY!” shouted our protagonist.
The taxi driver ignored the exchange and drove off.

After a nights rest in his preferred backpacker hotel, Gerald took the bus to the small
town of Dimona. Belial had visited him in the night before and told him his next destination.
Dimona was not one of his favorite places, the people there were twitchy, on full alert unless
anything might threaten their secret reactor. It was not so secret: Gerald had noticed it by
accident on his first visit. Its in plain view of the road on a major bus route and almost identical to
the new reactor in Sizewell near his home, and a favorite fishing spot.
To the locals though, it was top secret, ever threatened by the many terrorist organisations active
in the area. As he dismounted the bus, his dog came to his side in the shape of one of he local
thin street dogs again. It led him to an apartment block near the school, and when the coast was
clear Belial passed under the front door to let his human companion in.
Belial repeated this act at the apartment he led to, and they waited for the tenant to return.

At six-thirty in the evening Jacob Goldstein arrived at his flat, put the key in the lock, and
stepped inside. At once, a large Palestinian, grabbed him from behind covering his mouth with a
hand. The intruder dragged him into the flat with great force, kicking the door shut behind.
Jacob was paralysed with fear and showed no resistance, for it would have been futile,
he was not a strong man and had seen better years. He watched terrified, as another man came
out from behind a curtain. This one was of white European stock and this increased his fear: not
just simple bandits, were they spies, oh please not the Russians again, he thought as he was
pushed down into a chair.
The second figure spoke in English, not a language he understood much of, but soon the Arab
started to translate quietly in his ear.

“You are committing a crime against the world and one way or another you will stop doing this”
Jacob had not a clue what he was meant to have done but was hardly surprised; he worked in the
lab beneath the reactor. This was the real secret of Dimona, and nobody that worked there in the
lab knew what they were doing. Each individual worker was given a tiny section of a task to
complete. Jacob was currently tasked with inserting DNA into an amoeba, he was not told
anything about why, or even what kind of results he was expected to produce. He just kept
repeating the procedure every day and at the end of each day the samples were collected to be
taken to another laboratory. He explained this in Hebrew while the man behind him again
translated. The Englishman listened patiently to his captives excuses, then he a took a cigarette
from the packet in his shirt pocket, and lit it. Gerald took three long drags on it, and stubbed it in
the ashtray. He pulled the bottom off the lighter he still held and tipped out a little capsule into his
hand. On the side of the capsule had been written the words 'this way up'.
Gerald walked up and placed it in the hand of the shaking scientist and said forcefully “EAT IT!”.
Jacob was sure that it was poison but hoped it was some truth drug. He reasoned that if
they meant to kill him and he refused to eat it he might be killed in an even more unpleasant way,
and he had no chance to fight against these younger men. The decision to obey and swallow the
capsule was also partly to do with his general state of mind: He didn't enjoy his work, was
constantly being scrutinised by his superiors, and was tired of life. After being declared a prodigy
during his education in communist East Germany, he was taken away to Moscow to a 'special'
university where many government research projects were being undertaken. On one of his few
allowed visits home, he had met with some men he had known from school and they had a plan
to escape to the west. That night the plan came to pass, but now he was too old for escaping.
Jacob sat and waited for the poison to take effect, he began to feel drowsy and knew the
end was near.

At once he realised he was wide awake, but as he looked around himself everything was
black.
He tried to feel out with his hands but could feel nothing; touched a hand to his brow; it was not
there. He was sure that he was dead. Jacob abhorred the thought of there being an afterlife and
hoped conciousness died instantaneously with the body. Besides, he thought; if the holy books
were right, there was a whole eternity of misery waiting for him.
A presence was felt around him as he floated in the void, and as he relaxed into his fate,
a mist of grey came and from its multicoloured particles it assembled Gerald.
Jacob decided this was some new kind of truth drug, but strangely he seemed to know everything
about Gerald; as if he and this apparition were one and the same.
Gerald spoke:
“God is not perfect. He imparted the seven sins and ten commandments to man as gods
own faults: Do as i say, not as i do.
He hoped to make man perfect unlike himself:
perfection is not power.
If perfection obtains power then god is deposed and replaced.
this is gods ultimate plan for inbuilt redundancy.
at this point, new god can create or modify to make the universe perfect.”

Jacob had noticed that he understood every word of Gerald's English as clear as if it were
German, Hebrew, or Russian. The words also seemed to make sense to him although he
despised theology as worthless nonsense.

Gerald continued: “The trinity is made of man, matter, and energy. each is interchangeable.
God sent his conscious mind into the body of Christ who was merely a savant.
When Jesus died so did gods conscious spirit, leaving only the nature of god.

Jesus was gods last flawed hope to save humanity and clearly failed.
Since Jesus died there is no way to attach numbers or facets to god. god is now solely a
omniplicity.
Metatron can still communicate with god, other angels could only commune via gods conscious
spirit.

Now angels have lost leadership and fight over right and wrong as do humans.
Metatron is far lost after being ignored by the angels.”
Jacob felt another presence; a mighty presence, malevolent. It spoke into his mind with new
memories. He saw his work from the viewpoints of forty-seven other independent workers on his
project.
He Knew.

Gerald spoke: “Do you know?”

“Yes” Jacob replied.

Jacob saw another grey cloud of particles fly over his left shoulder and they assembled his living
room around them.

Gerald spoke again, this time in Hebrew, or was it English? “Corrupt your work, let no one know.
How long do you have before you will be found out?”

Jacob replied “the incubation and testing takes ten days after it leaves my laboratory.”, “I have
until then.”

“That is long enough for me” Gerald said.

The next day was heralded by the dulcet sound of shahada rolling from the distorted
loudspeakers at the top of each minaret. Gerald has chosen to sleep rough that night, the cool,
soft sand moulding to the shape of his body better than the most expensive mattress. There was
still a big journey ahead that day and the bus was not for hours.
He knelt and paid an obligatory shahada, as he always would in such a place , and walked
towards the shimmer of polythene sheeting that covered the hothouses of the local moshaav;
there would be fresh water there, and as it was Saturday, he hoped nobody would be working
there.
As he neared the farm, he noticed some local Bedoin sitting with their goats near a large water
tank and decided to sit down. He watched the growing water-melons through the plastic sheeting
of one of the greenhouses and felt anger that to take one would be considered theft in this holy-
land of capitalism. Tempting though it was, he knew the tribesmen would get the blame and
repercussions could often result in poisoned drinking water. The farmer would get no blame, for
the water was not the Arabs to drink. So much anger and resentment in the land; he stopped and
cupped water from the running standpipe with his hands and one of the goatherds proffered him
some flatbread: Gerald thanked him humbly “barak ala otheak” in his minimal and broken Arabic.
As he ate, he considered the words he had spoken: God gave to me and now I give to you.
He was pleased again.
It certainly made things easier having a demon in tow, and he had been a good boy so
far. Gerald thought about the poor creatures lot and it certainly seemed a raw deal. He had even
wondered what other terrible injustices would befall the universe when his mission was complete
and god is restored to heaven. He wondered if a legacy awaited him for his efforts.
In the dry, still heat of the desert time moves slow, and our protagonist rested with the
tribesmen for a couple of hours before wending his way back to the bus stop.