LIFE NARRATED BY ANOTHER'S THOUGHTS

 

For Misky and others who have enjoyed my last novel ...

I am working on the sequel:

ACROSS THE RIVER

and

THROUGH THE WORLDS

“Time is free, yet priceless. You cannot ownit, but you can use it. You cannot keep it, but you can spend it. The troublewith Man is that he thinks he has time when It has him.”

– Sentient        

 

As far back as I could remember my life had been narrated by a voiceother than my own.

It had nearly driven me crazy until I discovered the voice came from anorbiting sentient dimensional craft.

Now, all was silent inside my head except for my own bewildered thoughts.I had always wanted to be alone in my head, I had it now, and I was devastatedthinking I had lost my oldest friend.

Our desires are always fickle. Foolish is the man who trusts in them.

I sat by the inert body of Sister Ameal. I watched strange insects scurryaway from it as if she were aflame.

And maybe to their senses, she was. As far as I could tell my friends andI were in the Cretaceous time period, the last portion of the Age of theDinosaurs. I knew less than nothing about the insect life here.

I wagered it would be a safe bet to think any life form here would wantus for lunch, insect or otherwise. That they feared Sister Ameal’s body wasunsettling.

Of course, everything about her was unnerving … including the fact that shewas the living, now dead, avatar of Sentient.

Sentient? She was the living intra-dimensional craft, ensnared in Earth’sinitial gravitational field, who waited millennia to find a human mind with whomshe could communicate.

And as soon as she discovered me, I was drafted to be cannon fodder inthe madness spawned by Hitler’s insane ambitions.

Taking control of me to keep me safe, Sentient made me anything butsafe. Still, I was a Major … in two ways: 

in rank and a major pain to any superiorofficer, chief of whom was General Eisenhower … currently on psychiatric leave… and yes, I, or rather Sentient, was to blame.

I absently toyed with Sister Ameal’s brilliantly white habit. Sentient,through the nun or directly through mental words, had always been there for me.

Now, here in the Cretaceous Age, she was death silent. Why were we here?Only Elohim knew. 

He had cast us here from the cursed village of Oradour-sur-Glaneto keep me and my Spartan 300 safe from being crushed by the falling body of a dyingOld One.

As you might be suspecting, Omaha Beach was a picnic compared toout-of-control Gestapo science garnering the attention of the Dark Ones.

It seemed I only learned the truth long after it could do me any good. Toparaphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and so many others, "I wish I hadknown this some time ago.”

For the thousandth time, I had acted impulsively. I doubt I would everact otherwise. I've always been impulsive. 

My thinking is usually pretty good,but I always seem to do it after I do my acting and talking — like now. Bywhich time I've generally destroyed all basis for further conversation.

Rabbi Lt. Amos Stein sat gingerly by my right side. “Rick, snap out ofit. The Spartans need ….”

A crackling sword of living flame sliced between us, and the eerie voiceof the fledgling seraph with the all too human name, Helen Mayfair, murmured, 

“You will give Richard all the time he requires to gather his wits. This is nota request, Rabbi.”

From the sound of her ghost-bell voice, I could tell she was in herfighting form of fourteen feet. 

Needless to say, when I fell in love with herin the orphanage library, she was in her human-appearing body.