God, Angels and Aliens

By Noeline J. Slowgrove

God, Angels and Aliens is a continuation of my previous book, Aliens and Angels. These short stories are for those who believe….and those who want to believe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Apr 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669887652

Noeline J. Slowgrove

The writer of a novel titled TWO WORLDS and and two short story collections… ALIENS AND ANGELS and X’LENT TALES, during the last two years of the Covid 19 pandemic which swept across the world, Noeline, like millions of others was in lock-down. As part of an on-line creative writing group, sharing stories with other writers, Noeline has written many more short short stories. Many of them are included in her latest collection of short stories, GOD, ANGELS and ALIENS, which she sees as a companion book for Aliens and Angels.

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Copyright © 2022 by Noeline J. Slowgrove.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 04/20/2022

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CONTENTS

God

A Glow In The Snow

The Athiest

Something Lost, Something Found

If God Can’t Save The World….Who Can ?

Small Miracles

Expectations

Angels

Guardians Of Earth

Born With A Difference

Ben Nevis

A Found Soul

A Strange Young Woman

Aliens

The Kremels

The Far Side Of The Moon

A New Beginning

A Doomed Holiday

The Camera Man

Beacons Of Hope

Escape From The Cupboard

Percival And Myrtle

Encounters Of The Best Kind

The Event

Space Tomatoes

GOD

A GLOW IN THE SNOW

Five hours earlier at the Snowy Peaks ski resort high in the Canadian Alps, Andrew Bjorn had hired Sandy Reed a young ski instructor to take him skiing around the safe and well known tourist trail. They are now huddled together in a cave half filled with snow waiting for either a ski patrol or death to find them.

Sandy Reed’s eyes begin to close. The pain from two broken ribs is draining her strength. The last long sleep of her life is about to claim her forever. Barely audible, she prays…. Now I lay me down to sleep…I pray thee Lord, my soul to keep…. Andrew feels his heart sink. He has a fractured shoulder. Blood is seeping through his jacket. Soon, it will not be long before he too succumbs to the last sleep of his life. He knows once they go to sleep they will never wake up. As he listens to the young woman’s prayer, a brief, sad smile crosses his grim face. Andrew is an atheist and does not believe in God…. But the athletic young man with Nordic features does have a passion for adventure …often reckless adventure. Sandy, the young woman is petite and cute, laughter and girlish giggles adding to her charm. From the moment they met there was a mutual attraction. There is now no laughter. Andrew stares at the ancient Christian emblem, the sign of the fish, embroidered on the sleeve of the young woman’s jacket. Lifting his head, his eyes focus on the crucifix around her neck. Shivering with cold and desperation, briefly, for the first time in his life he wishes there were a God.

Hours earlier, and a happy time spent skiing on the tourist trail, Andrew became bored. Against Sandy’s warnings he left the path and climbed half way up a hill heavily laden with snow. Sandy shouted for him to return. Instead he started poking away at the snow with his ski stock trying to find a more challenging trail. Annoyed, Sandy followed Andrew up the steep hill yelling at him to return to the tourist trail. Not listening Andrew kept prodding away with his ski stock. Suddenly without warning the snow broke away bringing down an avalanche. Within seconds they were buried in snow. It took precious minutes before they dug themselves out. Sandy had two broken ribs making it difficult to breathe. Andrew had a fractured shoulder. Their skis were lost and both their mobiles had broken away from their waist bands. Night would soon be falling. Gasping for breath, Sandy prayed, Oh God help us… And then her trained eyes saw a cave where the snow had given way. Both hurt and in need of medical attention they made it to the cave… safe for the moment.

Night falls. Sandy and Andrew are growing colder by the hour. Suddenly Andrew is alerted to a familiar sound. Far below in the snow he hears the ring tone of his mobile. Grimacing with pain, crawling, sliding and slipping, following the sound of his phone he tumbles down the hill. The pain is excruciating. He can see a blue light from his phone half a meter deep in the snow. Frantically Andrew starts digging. The ring tone stops. He reaches for his phone. The battery is almost dead. Frantically Andrew’s frozen fingers try to make a call…. The phone beeps and goes silent. Heart sinking and in pain, feet going deeper into the snow Andrew heaves himself up the hill and back to the cave. The young ski instructor is huddled in the corner of the cave, her head bent in prayer. In expectation she lifts her head. Andrew holds out the silent mobile and shakes his head. Sorry. In anger he throws the mobile at the cave wall. He is even more angry with himself. He wishes he should never have left the tourist trail. But it is too late to wish. Looking at Sandy, he does for a brief moment wish that he could have her faith. There is a book in her gloved hand…maybe a bible. Sandy lowers her head again in prayer. Just loud enough for him to hear she quotes from the bible, Seek and ye shall find, knock and the door will be opened unto you, ask and ye shall receive. Her voice breaks and she repeats, Ask and ye shall receive…please God….don’t let me die out here.

Andrew goes to Sandy, wraps one arm around her and says quietly, I’m sorry. Sometime later Sandy stops shivering. She enters into a frozen state where mercifully all feeling begins to drain from her. With his one good arm Andrew lifts the young woman in a tight embrace, thinking the last warmth of his body will be of comfort in the last moments of her life. He has lost hope of a ski patrol finding them in time.

Their eyes close. They are asleep. They are now two dying skiers lost in a cave in the Canadian Alps.

Time passes. It is still night …. A golden glow enters the cave. Sandy opens her eyes. She is bewildered by the brightness of the light. It can’t be the sun. It is still hours before the dawn will break. . Sandy turns to Andrew. He has stopped breathing. His eternal sleep has begun. Warmth enters Sandy’s frozen body. She knows her prayers have been answered. She crosses herself and gives thanks. As she struggles to sit up she sees Andrew’s soul leave his body. As he fades away, for just the briefest of moments she hears him whisper…. "You’re alive….? Why did I die…..?

A voice from the golden glow answers, Because Andrew, you did not ask me.

THE ATHIEST

A young man named Simon Benson was born to mixed religious parents. His mother Mary, was Catholic and his dad, Sam Benson, an Anglican, and a soldier who had fought in World War II, where he had seen the worst of mankind on both sides of the conflict and returned an embittered veteran with a firm, unshakeable belief that he could no longer believe in God. He declared himself an atheist. Turning the other cheek when his wife went off to Mass each Sunday morning he never interfered with her faith. On the day his baby son was baptised a Catholic, he went fishing.

Young Simon Benson, Sam’s son grew up going to Church every Sunday. He loved his mum’s devotion to church but there were times he longed to go fishing with his dad.… Priests in long robes, swinging bowls of smoking incense scared him. Hell and damnation scared him even more. Over the years he learned to please his mother by sitting beside her on the hard wooden pews. And over the years he grew used to hearing him mum say, whenever anything went wrong, God help me…. Other times when watching television and world conflicts were being screened, she would call out to the television set, God help us all…. Sam Benson would always smile knowing God was not going to help…as he believed there was no God.

When Sam’s son Simon became a teenager he rebelled against mother, church and God and went fishing with his Dad on Sunday mornings. Often on these fishing mornings Simon asked his father about his war time experiences. Sam Benson shrugged and played with his fishing line. His only comment, "Son, leave the past where it should be." Only once, at the end of an Anzac day reunion, when Simon was going to University, did his dad talk of the horrors of war…the death, the cruelty and the futility of man fighting his fellow man. It was, after hearing of his dad’s recollections of being with the dead and dying on a field of war, that Simon, himself became an atheist and declared he could no longer believe in God.

The years went by and suddenly Simon’s life was shattered. Both his parents were killed in a motor accident. Simon Benson was twenty five, unmarried and lost without his parents. It became his habit to take his father’s small dinghy out fishing most Sunday mornings. He liked to reflect on his parents, what a loving couple they remained despite their differences,

This particular morning he should not have gone fishing. There had been a forecast of bad weather and it was unsafe to go out on the water. Simon brushed off this warning…the skies were blue and the ocean looked calm. Only having just dropped his fishing line, a stiff breeze came up and the water began to churn. It happened quickly. Dark clouds gathered in the sky. The small dinghy bounced around in white capped waves. Reeling in his fishing line, Simon struggled to row ashore. The wind turned against him and he was swept out to sea. Suddenly a huge wave rose up. The boat overturned ditching Simon into