Catastrophe Destroys The World

Ogle is contemplating the list of rampaging murder cases, he is at home, resting with a beer at his side, the door bell rings. He wasn’t expecting anyone, he pauses to imagine whom it might be, he concludes that in this world no one surprises anyone, there are calendars, there are schedules, he neglects further analyses and answers the door. Much to his happiness it is Lauren, he knows they have been warring factions at work but she has come to his house and that lifts his spirits. He hugs her, longer than usual, he is feeling her warmth, he doesn’t get to close to humanity, he tries to get close to Lauren, but their relationship has always been of professional warmth, both the Captain and the Detective like it that way best.

Without a vocal greeting, the empress enters her bosses house, to a greeting of “how about a beer?”

“After all these years you would think that you would keep a bottle of wine for me, but instead you are still offering “me” beer, you don’t know me!”

“Hey, hey calm down I can order a bottle of wine from the supermarket,” he picks up the phone to place an order, “what year would you like.”

“Look I wont be staying long, a glass of orange juice would be just fine.” Lauren must have known that anything to do with vegetables and fruits would not make a home at Ogle’s.

“I don’t have any orange juice. How about water?”

She is bothered, her eyes looking at the brown rug, “its an ugly rug.”

“What’s wrong Lauren?”

“I just can’t do it any more.”

The captain’s mind immediately goes where it needs to go. “What do you mean?”

“I think I am tired of being a cop, I need a change.”

“Lauren!” The captain walking frantically towards the window, where a balcony amply offers escape through a futile horizon of smog and rows of graying buildings. “Listen to yourself, your not talking right, you are not thinking right, you are tired, we are all tired, you are on the verge of solving some of the most interesting crimes, you can write a book about this afterwards, but right now I need you here, the people of this city need you here, you are not going anywhere.”

Lauren too looked at the drab view of city buildings smothering into the barely visible arid mountains, and a crushed sunset by the nimbleness of rising car exhaust. Her lack of energy was evident from her non argumentative, arms crossed stance. “I am tired Captain, very tired, I came to resign, I don’t think I can solve crimes any more, I am just not enjoying it, I have to enjoy what I do.”

“You have to listen to me, the situation seems hopeless from in here, but the world is more hopeless than what we do Lauren.” He came right up putting his heavy hand on her shoulder. “You and I make a positive difference, we help people, where else can you feel more needed than in this job, here everyone counts on your ability to detect malice, you have the best record in the entire state for crimes solved, that type of talent doesn’t transfer well Lauren, you were born to be a cop, you are not going to go be some big shot executive for one of those software companies, like Antoinette, that are always promising to liberate the world of its chores and increase its leisure while pedophiles, rapist, murderers and CEOs are running amok with their greedy fantasies. You are a cop, you need a vacation take a vacation, you need more money I will get you a raise, but don’t
make a decision you are going to regret later.”

“It is not a decision that I have made, I never thought about it, I am telling my self that I have to stop this because I don’t love what I do anymore, I don’t feel it, I haven’t solved any recent cases, and in the last one the killer did me a favor and turned himself in; he must have known I would never figure it out.” She pauses then proceeds, “criminals want to be caught, the challenge of the false game is over for me, I don’t have to think about this, a vacation is not going to do it for me, I don’t want to write a book about the top ten crimes of the century, I don’t want to be on television, I want to be home with Antoinette, and I don’t care about the money.”

The captain realizing that his situation was worse than he had suspected, “Have you discussed this with her?”

“No, I told you I didn’t think it, I just found my self walking here with the decision manufacturing itself in the process.”

“How do you think she will react to your throwing away your career?”

“She doesn’t care about my career, she will probably try to help me figure out how we are going to survive on the little money we have in the bank, carefully watched it might last six months, we will be broke, but Antoinette and I don’t care about that, we will figure something out, gotta feed the cats.”

Her tone was cold, perhaps inside she knew that she needed to close all doors for Ogle, that she had to ice him, to give him only one option, which he dully accepted as he was a realist, “I guess I have to hire myself a detective.”

“Yeap, it won’t be so bad Capt, new energy is always good, you will see, new blood is good.”

The captain had tears in his eyes. “You will always have a job here waiting for you.”

“I’ve grown a lot with you and I loved my job because you made it interesting and challenging, and you always let me have my way, which really helped me to understand all the shit that comes with this, we can now be friends without the protocol of work, things will only get better for us, thanks a lot captain.” She came up to him and kissed him on the cheek. And made her way to the door.

The captain’s shoulders fell from him, he languished on the arm of the couch, watching his beer, Lauren watched him but knew that she had to move on, specially because her shoulders were feeling relief, her stress had disappeared, she walked outside, she felt the greenness of the grass, she saw flowers she had never noticed before, she squinted a little to try to refocus this new way of life forward, she felt the smog in her nostrils and felt its industrial taste, and sort of liked it, she felt gutsy, she felt free.

Inside, the captain was languishing, he didn’t want to find any other detective, he didn’t want to do this anymore, but he was the mold of the business, he couldn’t be anything else, he was watching Lauren escape the entrapment his profession offered, spend your life time with us carry a badge, honor and nothing really changes, and he thought of Lauren and he thought, “there aren’t any Sherlock Holmes in our business, just like there isn’t a Moby Dick for whalers, Lauren has escaped the ideal that keeps us fighting crime in reality.” He sipped his beer, “good for her that she escaped.” threw himself on the couch, placed a pillow over his head, and tried to convince himself that a terrible catastrophe would end the world, King Kong, Dracula, an Asteroid, anything, to save him from having to face his next day at the office.

In a room, not far from Captain Ogle’s tragedy, another man stood before his bed doing strange arm exercises. Habakkuk, raising his arms slowly around an arc, joining them at the very apex of his head, then separating them again and rejoining them in a forward arc, his frontal lobe centering the palms energy; this added and multiplied repetition, joined by deep breathing cycles and gently pounded by a long drowned ooohm, the sound of the humming universe, Habakkuk’s vocals were repeating the sound produced by everything rubbing against everything in the universe, the sound-wave crest canceling Habakkuk’s wave adding unity in the paraded conversion; the room reigned with darkness, Habakkuk and light had never gotten on well, the darkness shouldered some of the weight of the immensity which was being hosted by Habakkuk, he kept straight, poised, ergio balancing metric tensors, echoing distant star communication, rattling intransient perditions, his palms reeling in concentrations of the curvature of the universe, nurturing and feeling an awareness; slowly he was feeling silver spheres cycling and growing on his palms.

Now he just needed to nurture and grow the same spheres of ergio concentrations underneath his soles, he was sure that what he was feeling in his palms was manageable cosmic energy that would quickly add the surface tension that he needed to float, but he wasn’t sure how to transfer what was being managed through his mind’s eye and palms, to the sole of his feet. He was aware that the entire energy spectrum rested on the entrance to the stomach, where resided the sentient brain, unknown to science, this other brain was the one that together with the amygdales managed ergio flows, and constructed the corporeal structure around the metaphysical being. He was then fully aware that his body was just his soul’s earth-space suit, and he knew that what kept the anatomical structure functioning was the inflow and outflow of ergio-energies which were harbored by his surroundings and what others he could extravagantly sponge in from the exotic universe. Still he was having problems feeling the soles of his feet. He deduced that this might have been from his days as a snake catcher, his feet immersed in water constantly, and walking shoeless as he was always mostly too poor to own a decent pair of shoes, you could see the world underneath his feet forming a callous so huge that energy flows could not be felt and so could not be harnessed into little silvery spheres of ergios that would allow for walking on water.

He stopped his contemplative meditations, “Damn it I am not sensing the soles of my feet, I cant get at them, what can I do, I can’t just walk on my hands.” He laughs at himself, he imagines walking on water on his hands, “not exactly what they are expecting, still it ought to be a splendor of a sight.” But he wants his feet to float, he doesn’t think he can balance himself, he is not an athlete by nature, he is a prophet by nature, he doesn’t perform miracles, he doesn’t know if he can reverse the insensitivity that catching thousands of snakes induces, he doesn’t know how to get his stomach brain to talk to his soles.

Then there is a nock at the door. Before opening he smiles, he senses he knows the person at the other end. It is a little girl from his past, that always seems to appear when he needs insight. She gives him a big smile and hugs his legs to welcome herself into his abode. While uttering, “Can I have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”

As if time had not expired their unity. “You know I don’t keep any of that, that stuff is disgusting why would you be wanting that! Yuk.” He makes an unmistakably gross expressions. “Oh Habakkuk you don’t want to be a kid and enjoy some peanut butter and jelly with me?”

Habakkuk can not resist the precious gem of a young girl spirit, “We could go to the market, and get the stuff and come home and make them, I suppose you want milk too.”

“Only way to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

They walk to the store and on their way back she says, “Well are you going to tell me what is troubling you?”

He pauses and realizing that she always arrives in his time of need, “Why do you always come when I need help, who are you?”

“I am your version of the archangel Gabriel, I come when you need help and you don’t have any peanut butter jelly waiting for me.”

Habakkuk, surprised but not, “you are my guardian archangel, not just an angel, but the archangel Gabriel, how did I get so lucky?”

“Not so lucky, I am obliged to care for all the prophets, the great one’s and the minor prophets, and you’re my favorite though you really haven’t done much prophesying.”

“No, I haven’t done much prophesying that is true, but it is not easy, you feel bad when you get it right because it is usually the downfall or the catastrophe and you feel bad when you get it wrong because everyone is watching you, it is not a very encouraging profession and prophets cant have sex, it has all kinds of down sides.”

“I don’t know, I am just an archangel, I don’t remember when I wasn’t, my job is kind of cool I get to help lots of people, and I like you most because your always so lost, you come a long way to be still confused, you haven’t much figured out how to prophesy but I think you’re going to prophesy something big, soon. Anyway you’re fun, all the other prophets take themselves so seriously, I never enjoyed rescuing Nostrodomus, and Rasputin who was an inefficient, wished I let him die one of those hundreds of times he was poisoned, come to think of it that last time they killed him, I was a little slow in reacting.”

They got home and made the sandwiches and drinking milk and Habakkuk enjoying the peanut butter, “If you are right and very soon I will prophesy something big then I need people to believe me, at least I need apostles so they can spread the word, thinking about it that is probably why I haven’t been an effective prophet, lack of proselytizing, so I have decided to walk on water to convince the locals here that I am for real, only I can’t feel the soles of my feet so I don’t think I can walk on water.”

“Well why don’t you just float on your belly, you could do that, is your feeling of your gut brain intact?”

“Yes, its fine.”

“Then you could body surf on the water, that should impress upon them that you have divine powers.”

“I don’t think so, if you hold your breath you can float on water, it doesn’t take much to float, that isn’t going to walk.”

“Well then why don’t you walk on your hands?”

They both smile as they mutually acknowledge that Habakkuk doesn’t have the agility to manage it.

“Habakkuk you have a problem.” Pointing her finger at him and allowing a full view of peanut butter and jelly smears on her white dress. “If I remember you were a snake catcher right?”

“Yes.”

“You lost the feeling on the soles of your feet then.”

“Yes.”

“Snake energies can cause people to lose feelings, they negate, that can happen, it is usually not something that can be recovered, specially because people normally don’t notice and really don’t want to feel the soles of their feet, it is a pain to feel them, people are generally happy not to feel their feet, they even hate to cut their toenails, much to the dread of their lovers.”

Habakkuk expecting an answer, “Yes. But are you going to give me a solution.”

A serious little girl, “can’t do that, I don’t have one.”

“Then what am I suppose to do!”

“Well the Buddhist monks believe that walking on pink rose petals restores touch and sentiment to the soles of their feet, I don’t know if that is true, I don’t even recommend praying it wont do any good. But if you don’t try walking on rose petals you will never know if it works or if it doesn’t.”

She got up motioning to leave, “thanks for the peanut butter I wont need to crush that craving for another 400 years.”

they hugged goodbye though now that Habakkuk knew it was the archangel Gabriel he didn’t feel that comfortable hugging her.

He sat down, “Rose petals, pink rose petals, walk on pink rose petals.” He didn’t think that would work, he would try it, but his hopes were disparaged even as something told him, the archangel didn’t just come here for peanut butter sandwiches.