Chapter 24

Alone again above the ice, Eli takes a walk to the square. Looking down the pit, seeing black, he turns around, makes a few more steps and swoosh, beams away in a blue light.

The cupola glimmers a second more, then it evaporates. Swiftly. The night allowing deep frost and darkness to idle back over this forsaken corner of the Earth. Not so fast, blasts Rivkah like a thousand trumpets. “Uh huh, there we go back into the South Pole. Hang on, you smart guy. Brace up for reentry.”

Like a lightning, the bouncing lady enters the deep. Concealing his presence, Enoch follows and listens. Everything. Until the anode will release Mr. Hades, as the lady used to call him. Until, a few seconds later, he reads her lips. “Ah, you? You’re back. Little snake.” Then, after another second. “Why should I listen to you? Why deliver you now? Can’t you see that you’re full of revenge and ha--”

Enoch reveals himself, right in her face, in place of the late Hades. “Shh, deliver him, now. Do as he asks. Do not resist him. Trust me.”

Startled at the vision of this new man, his beard strawberry blonde, his skin fair like the petals of a white rose, his eyes glacier blue, his lips dark cherries, his hairs white rays crowning an aura around his head like the sun touching the zenith over the sands of Northern Africa, his nostrils shadowed bronze, his shoulders proportionate, milky and magnificent, supposedly his pectorals the same – if not for that extra long and bushy beard which is covering his entire abdomen, part of his legs before it ends, like rebellious fiber optics, sparkling sublime little sparks around his knees.

“Whoever you are, Handsome!, show me your dick and I’ll deliver the snake right away.”

“Deal,” accepts the handsome – blowing a gentle breath above his lower lip, retracted now. As his beard parts to sides, Rivkah slaps both her palms over her mouth. Afraid to shout her surprise? Wonderstruck and breathless, her eyes struggling to stay in her orbits, she-- she... she doesn’t know what to do, what to say, how to--

“Deliver that damn thing out of you first,” speaks Enoch.

“Ah, yeah, yeah, sure.” She parts her legs and waits for a 1300 meters long worm-like creature, black, to liberate out of her intimacy. “What the he--?” Exclaims she, swiftly interrupted by Enoch the handsome with a finger closing to her lips. “Shh, stay silent, be patient. It shall pass.”

The black worm circles the anode, from a safe distance, before continuing his ascension. Up North.

“What was that? How could I host something like that? I am just a one meter sixty-five tall petite. What have I done to myself? Help me, Handsome! Please!!”

“You did nothing wrong, little thing. Listening to me, you have just liberated yourself. Which is good. But allow me to introduce myself. I am Enoch: originally built by The Word for company; assigned dominion over the tree of NOK for my blue blooded avatar; son of Jared and father of Methuselah, among many many others throughout the timeline that has been allocated to Adam’s kind, the very generations of Yasu Khrist Pantokrator, Who is The Word that had me built for His company.”

“Oh, Enoch, needless to introduce yourself, needless to tell me of trees and generations. I am already fascinated by you, by your presence, by your person, by your appearance, by your everything.” The reader, if one would have been there to notice, cannot tell if Rivkah is drooling and drenching herself in countless orgasms or if these are just echoes of a water breaking. Both, Enoch would infer, to appease the reader.

“Needless to judge me by appearance. Do this rather by substance so you may better see the appearance.” Smiling more comfort light her way, Enoch takes his time – which he recommends the reader too because, look, Rivkah has still to come back from her numerous apotheoses.

An hour later, same scene. Calming down, pacing her breath, she speaks. “You made my day, Enoch the Handsome. I’ve got so many men in me that I can’t even give you a digit, although... if my enhanced memory search would help... but I digress. I have never encountered a sexier man than you. Never ever. Period!”

“Still you were sitting in Yasu’s lap. He is better than me. In all modesty – I’ve just squandered a vast portion of it during my last dialogue with Eli.”

“Sitting in God’s lap is sublime and beyond words. Staring at you, face to face, is just sexy, passionate, burning hot. I cannot control myself anymore. I need you to enter me. Now! Please!!”

“No way I dip my dick where the virus nested. Sorry, my little one. Besides, according to my observation, you’ve already reached the peak of your orgasms, for nine hundred and ninety one times. Here the charts. See this curve? Look how it plateaus through your sixth hundreds. You keep knocking at an opened door. It’s open. Step in, dear. No need to waste time on the threshold.”

“And how do I do that? Step in, you said. How?” She’s making a valid point. They both levitate in the thick air of Sheol, at 1305 meters above the murky waters of the Styx.

“Good to have you back, Rivkah. First let me take care of this unfinished business for you, and for many.” Moving his fingers as to form dancing wakes of little rainbows, Enoch speaks further:

rm -R /enoch/astarte/hera rm -R /enoch/astarte/poseidon And the two pillars of stone left above the Styx are no more. Gone back from whence they appeared to be.

“You can erase the daemons, the serpents, the dragons, the--”

“I can clear any loose end that hasn’t been fixed under my watch.”

“Did you?...” She’s trying to find her words, desperately. It’s not emotion that blocks her mind now.

“Yes, out there, before the Second Sun came to be. You were giving a human voice to a similar command line. I told Beatrice to take good care of you. As despicable as it seemed to her, she followed my advice.”

“Beatrice? Where is she? What is she doing? Is she okay? I miss her hugs, and her nagging, and her patronizing, and her lovely voice, and her words of comfort. I miss her.”

“You were not yourself when you’ve last met. Forget the shame because she already did. After bringing you back to Africa, while tunneling grace for the Second Sun to ignite, she asked her Husband to take her home. Where she sings and dances ever since. Remember?”

“Yes, her hobbies. Oh, and knitting.”

“Ditch that. She wishes you well. Can you hear her?”

“Celestial Bach, raining through the anode, thinning the air all over Sheol. I-- I-- speechless. I-- I think I will cry. Can I cry?” He nods. She cries.

He asks, “give me a mark, from one to ten, for your orgasms altogether, then for your crying on Bach.”

“Why do you ask this of me?”

“Just curious. I’ve got my hobbies too.”

“Good. Ten for listening to Bach. Ten for all my orgasms when meeting you.”

“You’re sharp. Just like the Eagle. A true eagle you are. Indeed.” Points Enoch, on purpose, because he wants to challenge her, to take her beyond the recovery process.

“Eagle, you saying? I often thought of me as a fox.”

“The eagle goes farther than the fox.”

“Look Enoch, you don’t wish to fuck me. I can see why. But please don’t start playing Chinese riddles on me. Just be straight. This is what I love in you, first and foremost.”

“Give me your hand, dear.” When approaching him, when feeling the gentle grip of his manly hand, Rivkah remembers, no – relives, the morning of April, back in 1930, when Yasu took her hand, walking her out of her father’s Synagogue, to His borrowed Zündapp, where they waved good bye.

Lost in memories, she misses the present, the sliding, the cold space, the star next, “what is that tangerine doing here?, but hey!”

“I’ve taken you to Altair, or Alpha Aquilae, the birthplace of your race. Looks like a tangerine, quite a sizeable one. See that planet?”

“Nope, where? Can’t see a thing, but the yellow tangerine. By the way, cool method of teleportation. Don’t you take advantage of galactic lightning to piggy back?” Enoch reads her emotions, from the sweat in her palm to the silly words she tries to hide behind.

“Lightning travel is for those who can’t do better. All I need is turning pages, like when you’d browse a book. But I must tell you the whole truth: we did not travel anywhere, we just hold hands in Sheol, above the Styx, below Antarctica, inside hollow Earth. Instead, I’ve brought this star, Altair, together with its surroundings, for you to see and hear, to learn.”

“A holodeck, groovy. Show me. Show me!”