Into the Light

Chapter 14

Chapter: 14

"Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it."

Franz Kafka

Mr. Garew in his tower gets the news of Blake's flight and shakes his head and scratches his English nose. He reviews the day's notes and numbers and puts in a call for an appointment with Juli. She is busy with derivatives reports but Juli is not of great import to this senior executive, she but only a means to Blake and understanding his plans. He gets back to his computer and enters the password to access the Recallable Operation Master Exchanger. It boots in a nano-second. The special system where internal tabs can be kept on the workers flashes a magnifying glass icon. The word is given and Blake's files are reviewed.

The urban asphalt alleyway, a gully gilded with steel, hides Blake as a headache overcomes him. Blake's temporal lobe seizes with massive electrical activity. A storm of twitches and tremors brews. His eyes blink to see a being made of halo light step out of the shadows but can't remain open.

"Poor boy, must have had something terrible happen. Doesn't belong here. I'll sit and won't let anyone get his shoes. I need a rest too. How about some help?" asks Bill from Teaneck who lost his house in the Sub-Prime mortgage fiasco. Bill waves his hands in the air, looks up to the sky and says, "but since when have you listened to me anyway?"

Bill adjusting his army jacket, looks at Blake, scratches his bushy beard and sighs, "Not another one."

Inside his mind, Blake flies through silvery barriers of reality to a temple of shifting violet and red light. A bench rises from the temple's floor and Blake lands. On the altar, a faceless body sits with its legs over the side and above a massive scimitar hangs in midair. Blake lifts his hand the body spasms and the face of Julius Cesar appears. The scimitar swings and lops the head off. Another head buds off of the shoulders and the face of Friedrich Nietzsche forms. It is lopped off. Blake lifts his other hand and in a flash looks down at himself sitting on the bench. The blade cuts and the temple tumbles and spins in Blake sight.

Heavy eyes open to reveal an alley in the city of windows, and Blake lifts Bill's head off his shoulder and gently lowers the man to the ground. His only thought is to call Juli on her cell but he has no phone.

"There must still be payphones in the city," he says.

A payphone is found near City Hall and Blake wipes the receiver down with a leftover alcohol wipe in his pocket. There is problem. He can't remember her number. It was store din his contacts on his phone. He hits his forehead with the palm of his hand.

"Think, think, think! You put it in your phone. Just remember," he says and he calms down and straightens up as a beat cop strolls by. The number comes to him after imagining the day when she first gave him her number. He dials.

"Hello, Blake?" Juli answers.

"How'd you know? I'm all fucked up. Got nowhere to go and need to talk to your brother, the religion guy. Can I have his address?"

"What? Okay. I'll meet you there. Stay there and don't say anything until I get there. Okay?"

"Okay. Where is it?"

"Two blocks south from Pandemonium across from Falafel Hut. Has a bright purple S. O. S. sign."

"Okay. Be there in twenty, bye," Blake says and hangs up before Juli can finish.

SOS is open for business and Blake brushes a set of brass chimes hanging on a display case as he walks in. The smells of candles and leather bound books wafts in layers of dry air. Blake wanders the aisles of dark free standing wooden bookshelves with corkscrew legs and checks out the eclectic assortment of religious items from dream catchers to rosary beads. The cramped shelves warehouse the occult of Crawley and the teachings of Vimalakirti. Pictures of the Pope sit next to Santeria candles and enameled icons of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Mary and Kali, Vishnu and Ahura Mazda stand in line as Ganesha waits for the daily offerings next to clay sculptures of Hanuman carrying a mountain as the texts of the Avesta, barley touched, sit below a dense stack of texts on the Ramayana.