Hello all, just an update. I have been working on a new novel called ‘The Ark’. It is still rough, and I have a lot of work to do with it, but here is a brief snippet to give a general sense of what it is and where it is going for any interested. Many thanks!

The Ark

The dove upon returning to the ark a second time did so with an olive leaf, signalling that land had dried. Finally, the dove, like the raven before it, did not return. Land was now habitable, not just dry, one year of submersion had ended. There was never a flood again, but a drought. Armageddon is endless, no judgement day was on the horizon. We had mistook the prophecies and Hell came to Earth through the actions of a wild mankind. After years of spiritual stagnation, existential dread of a purgatory lived in, it dawned on me, perhaps, this is not the end. I see two figures in a wide field, open and vulnerable. Yet, they seem to care not. There is a man in the dirt wrestling with his death, another stands over him.

“Soul. Must be nice to escape such a grubby body.” He remarks.

I approach.

“I had a dream of a burning bush, the smoke that came from it began the form of every begotten.”

He turns to me. Wriggling his fingers to mimic the smoke.

“Genealogies, Adam to Noah, Table of Nations, the… the Abrahamic covenant, and, the Messiah, from David, Jesus. Not just that, it kept going, it was everyone. So many forms until we reached the resurrection, I saw how it all came back. The return!”

The dying man, now covered in mud, bellows “Rejoice!”

The other continues.

“Jesus comes back, but it was different this time. He wanted us to find him, that was our omen.”

He turns to me, ignoring the man by his feet who clutches at his legs.

“How?”

The man tugs at his ankles and cries “How would he know!”

The other brushes his hand away.

“I saw you in the smoke too. I saw him, in the smoke, my friend. Oh, he is dead now.”

I kneel, placing my three fingers on the nape of his neck. I feel his soul leave through the gaps.

“I am building an ark.” I tell him.

“You think he is in the ocean? There isn’t anything left, puddles, maybe a river somewhere if you are lucky.”

“It is not physical.”

He looks down at the corpse, eyebrows furrowed.

“What if I die before you make it? Will I go to heaven?”

I stand back up and walk towards the distant noise of war, drawn to it like exhaustion to sleep. My skin pricks, taught, veins sink to thin blue silhouettes from superficiality and the bones of my feet and knuckles ache. Shots ring out. We poor disregarded work. I am naked, my body starved and grainy, high on its own catabolism. An elderly woman, hunched over in the alley way, wrapped-up and stained, watches me. The soles of my feet crunch, inanimate violence. She does not move, stiller still. I kneel and push her head down; she whimpers from a hoarse, weathered throat. The back of her neck is exposed. The nape, through there I bite. The nerves in my teeth scream with pain, the cold drying whatever moisture my mouth can cling to. The flesh is tough, resistant, but I persist until at last there is warmth. I draw out and consume the soul. The body goes limp. The shell falls to the ground. I feel her settle within me, within my budding ark.