Angels

(re-written and pruned several hundred words – hopefully for the better)

Angels

Her mother always told her she was a lucky child. ‘Listen to your instincts, Sara, and you’ll be just fine. Trust in yourself.’ Sixty-three years later and, if she listened hard enough, that inner-voice was still there.

Sara sat alone, just inside one of many small coffee houses that lined a busy side street in Jerusalem. Putting down her pen on the blank postcard to her grandchildren, her thoughts drifted back to that day her mother saved her life but lost her own. The bustle and noise of the Middle East, its heat and aroma dragged inside with each new customer, washed over her. But Sara was shivering, immersed in the numbing cold of the Irish Sea, her mother holding her head above the waves, telling her again and again, that everything would be fine.

With a quick shake of her head, Sara pushed the memory away, drained her coffee and picked up her pen. As she thought what to write, a young man dressed like any other in traditional Jewish attire entered the shop. But there was something about him. It was his eyes. Large and dark, they should have been beautiful and serene; instead they seemed dull and tense, as if time had run out.

In two steps he was beside her table and almost without thought, Sara stood and wrapped herself around him. Her mouth at his ear, she whispered rapidly the few words and phrases of Arabic she had learned, ‘Salam alaikum , La!’ The boy tried to twist away, but she held tight and desperately repeated the Arabic phrase again and again, ‘Peace be with you, No! No!’

As they spun in a grotesque dance, chairs and tables crashed to the floor as the stampede for safety began. The boy’s hand began forcing its way between them, searching for the detonator. The ugly mass of explosives beneath his clothes pressed painfully into Sara’s body as she clung even tighter to deny him his goal.

Her instincts had been right again. She was lucky; the café was now almost empty. She whispered into his ear again, ‘La!’ Then he spoke for the first time -
‘ALLAHU AKBAR!’ God is Great!

A timeless moment after her death, Sara watched a newborn child cry against his exhausted mothers breast. Sara fell in love with the child immediately. She knew that there could be no other person for her, that she would remain devoted to him for his whole life.

‘When will you be back home?’

‘Later’

‘WHEN later? Tonight, tomorrow … ’ Mike’s mother drew her hand through her hair in exasperation. ‘Your dad and I need to know, Mike.’

He snarled over his shoulder in frustration, refusing to meet her eyes, ‘I DUNNO when! I’ll call ya. Gota go now, ok? See ya.’

“Mike!”

He slammed the front door behind him. The bike was waiting and he wasn’t listening.

‘Mike!’

Mike viciously twisted the throttle of the bike, the scream of the engine drowning his mother’s plea. He dropped the clutch, pulled on the bars, letting the front wheel lift as the bike reared. Mike lent into the acceleration, holding the attitude. Front wheel high in the air, as he powered away.

Sara watched Mike’s mother shake her head and move back inside the house and close the door. She rode alongside him, whispering into his mind. Perhaps he listened, because he slowed, reaching that first intersection a fraction later than otherwise. The car appeared from nowhere. Quick reflexes saved his life: a touch of front brake, a push on the left bar and the bike answered. The next few miles of road to his girlfriend’s house, his heart thumping, Mike rode a little more carefully.

Janie was waiting. He could see those intense dark-brown eyes of hers fixed upon him as he pulled up alongside her. He’d barely removed his helmet before her lips found his own. The engine pinged and popped next to them, its engine cooling in the heat of their embrace. Mike’s heart was still racing; from the near miss or from meeting Janie, he wasn’t sure.

He let her brush a stray matted hair from his forehead. ‘Mike, you’re sweating like a pig!’

‘Yeah, was pushing it a bit, nearly lost it back there …’

Janie’s dark eyes narrowed.

‘What do you mean?’

Mike twisted his head away, ‘Jesus, don’t start …’

‘Why the shit shouldn’t I start! You know how you scare me sometimes.’

‘For Christ’s sake Janie, you’re beginning to sound like me Mum …’

‘If you don’t take it easy on that thing, I just know you’re going to get killed …’

Mike gently pulled her to him and she rested her forehead against his chest.

‘No I won’t,’ he reassured her, ‘you know I always know when to ease up – it’s my “sixth sense.” ’

‘You’re trembling,’ she said, looking up into his face.

Mike checked his hand. ‘Yeah. I am. Shit.’

Janie stood on tiptoe and kissed him again.

‘I want you fully functioning Mike, not injured or worse. In fact, I want you right now.”

‘I thought you wanted to go for a ride?” Mike laughed.

‘Oh, I do,’ Janie giggled. ‘But the bike ride can wait – this one can’t. You know my parents aren’t in, don’t you?’

Her smile seemed to radiate more warmth than the summer’s evening.

‘That’s interesting,’ he said smiling. ‘I guess the bike can wait …’

That evening, with the setting sunlight burnishing her hair, they walked to a nearby pub. Mike felt as content as he’d ever been in his life. But just as he thought the question wouldn’t be asked, it was.

‘So, any news about the job then?’

Mike rolled his eyes as his heart sank.

‘Janie, you know this job is my ticket out of here …’

‘Yeah, and away from me.’

Traffic rumbled past them unheard, unnoticed.

‘That’s not true,’ sighed Mike. ‘It’s only a couple of hundred miles away, we can still see each other.’

‘You’ll find someone else, I know you will …’

‘Look, we’ll see each other at weekends or you could move down with me, why not?’

‘You know why not – I’m not eighteen, my folks would never let me go – and I’ve got Uni and … oh, why can’t you just stay?’

‘Because … Well, because …’ Why couldn’t he find the words that she would understand? ‘It’s the opportunity of a lifetime …’ he said lamely.

‘It’s the opportunity of a lifetime …’ she mimicked.

Folding her arms and pouting, Janie stared into the darkening sky.

‘Fine, it doesn’t matter, I don’t care, you just go, don’t think about me, just do what you want …’

‘Janie, look, you’re being silly …’ Mike said, biting his tongue as he spoke the fatal words.

‘Silly?’ Janie growled. ‘Oh, I’m being ‘silly,’ am I? Well screw you, Mike!’

Mike stood and watched as she marched away. About to turn his back, something made him pause. Puzzled, he almost didn’t see the truck. Janie, her head down, halfway across the road, certainly didn’t. It was going way too fast to stop. The driver hit his horn and brakes at the same instant Mike screamed her name. Janie stopped in her tracks and might even have made it to safety had she kept moving. Now it was too late. The sight of the massive truck bearing down held her transfixed.

Mike’s reacted instantly. Sprinting across the road, he cannoned into her, knocking her sprawling out of harms way. Mike fell heavily onto the tarmac, heard the bone of his forearm snap and felt a blowtorch of pain surged up his arm. Winded from the fall, unable to breath or scream, he twisted away from the onrushing truck. A fraction of a second, a lifetime later, the trucks massive front wheel smashed into him. Before it did, he managed a last look into the depths of Janie’s dark eyes and knew she was safe. He never felt the impact.

Sara had, as always, had been watching. It was the hardest thing she had ever done. She knew that whispered insistence for him to wait – her nagging into his minds ear not to turn away – would lead to his death.

A timeless moment after her death, Mike watched a newborn child cry against his exhausted mothers breast. Mike fell in love with the child immediately. He knew that there could be no other person for him, that he would remain devoted to her for his whole life.

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Tags:

love, romance, spirit and supernatural