Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

( links to the previous installments )

[So sorry for the unconscionably long delay, but I've decided to post this problematic chapter and the two final chapters that come after it just as they are, with all their un-beta'd flaws, lest another four years pass before I finish what I started.]

APOCALYPSE, NOW AND THEN

Chapter Five: “Apokalypsis, or Dropping the Veils”

Servant of God, well done; well hast thou fought
The better fight.
John Milton, Paradise Lost. Book vi. Line 29.

Meanwhile, back in Angel's corner of reality . . .

Angel felt as though he was teetering on the brink of an abyss of hopelessness, now that most of his Ares memories had been restored.( Read more... )

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On to Chapter Six: Working Out Your Own Salvation

[Second 'mea culpa' note: I cannot apologize sufficiently to readers of this story -- if you're still out there -- for letting this sit unfinished for the past four years. I found and revised my draft of chapter five this afternoon, after work, and even though it lost none of the 'preachiness' that my beta readers had been concerned about back in the Spring of 2007, I decided to go ahead and post it . . . IF, that is, I also finished the final two chapters that were meant to follow it. Which I've done tonight, amazingly enough.

The next two chapters are completely un-beta'd, but at least they're a little bit more fun than this chapter, which was so very heavy on the psychological and theological exposition, in spite of my having four years to try to come up with a better way to finish this part of the story.]

( links to the previous installments )

APOCALYPSE, NOW AND THEN

Chapter Six: “Working Out Your Own Salvation”

I was all ear,
And took in strains that might create a soul
Under the ribs of death.
John Milton, Comus. Line 560.

Still in Angel's corner of reality, but a few minutes earlier . . .

When he finally managed to track down Angel’s scent in the midst of the many competing and even less appealing odors of recently dead demons and burning dumpsters, Spike found his annoying grand-sire deep in conversation with the very same winged interloper that he’d half-intended to warn Angel against( Read more... )

( links to the previous installments )

APOCALYPSE, NOW AND THEN

Epilogue: “A Little Apocalypse, Now and Then” (or “Story Teller, Revisited”)

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.
John Milton, Paradise Lost. Book iv. Line 677.

Somewhere nearby, a little later . . .

Andrew Wells, self-styled Watcher Extraordinaire and Trusted Confidante of the ‘Slayers of Vampyres’, crept out of his hiding place behind some flattened cardboard boxes in the fenced-off dead end of an alley.( Read more... )