Spear

Peter drives with his family in their cream-colored car with chrome accents and whitewall tires. Martha thought it would be nice to take the children to the movies and he always said yes to his wife. Now they were stuck in traffic. The kids are getting rowdy in the back. Martha chats animatedly with one of her friends on the car phone. Peter lets his mind wander. Sound recedes. His gaze drifts. And that is when he sees it. The golden thread.

A flaxen line of plasma seems to be drawn on the side of a high-rise. It coils and pulses on the building like a living thing. Peter blinks and looks around to see if there is some explanation for the phenomenon. Maybe a reflection from the skyscraper with its mirrored windows. The sun could be right. He looks back at the mystery and his eyes grow wide.

The column of energy has stretched taller, reaching far above the building to which he initially thought it attached. He gasps. Fingers, gigantic ones, emerge from the spire of light. They curl around the glow and draw it back like a curtain. And out steps the most perfect creature Peter has ever seen.

It is humanoid, this thing, and towers above the city. Its complexion is like flawless marble. Long, dark locks of hair flow from its head and ripple in the wind. Its eyes shine like emeralds. Peter’s wife screams and his children shout questions, but their cries fall on deaf ears as he marvels at this miracle.

Then crow’s wings unfurl from the creature’s back and it draws a sable spear from the sky. It speaks, Not ten among you have been found virtuous. Receive your consequence. Then the being plunges the spear into the ground and —

Darkness.

Void.

And wails rise from the black.