The Celestial Rose BoxSet

by Annalee Adams

  To hope for a grave was a peaceful hand held high, give up and surrender moment. Not the strength the radiant Eve should have had. But then, I wasn't totally Eve, was I? I wore the shell of my former self, blissfully cocooned in the body of my mortal host, me, Taylor Lane. I was just the twenty-year-old that was giving birth beside her soon to be husband and mother passed out in the corner. It sounded like something out of a dark comedy sketch. Except it wasn’t a sketch, it wasn’t remotely funny, if this was the nature of my life and the shit-fate I’d been dealt with.

  I’d say if there was a God, he’d be having a laugh, and he probably was. We all now knew that God was real and happened to be my daddy dearest, the lord of everything dark and devastating. Well, I think he took the piss when he created me. It was either that or life was just a chasm of misshaped events all rolled into one chaotic finish.

  Where was I? Was I dead or did I survive? My head pounded, the darkness enveloped me as my eyes remained tightly shut. If I opened them... what would I see? Was I safe? Did the cavalry come in time or was it some sadistic torture and when I opened my eyes, the nightmares that plagued me would be reality once and for all. My body ached. I felt like I’d been fighting against a vice all my life and only recently the damn thing had closed on me. Jeez, what happened?

  Opening my eyes ever so slowly, I blinked. Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore. What was this place? I lay looking up at the gaping darkness above me. The sound of fluid dripping reminded me of the moss filled cave my brother had once died in. To say it was a cave, though, it appeared quite similar, but looking up, it was more of a gorge, a valley of sorts, and I was smack bang in the middle of it.

  My head hurt too much to move. Was I restrained, or could I move? Nothing worked. I couldn’t sit up, my body felt limp and alone to the touch. Where was I? Dread filled my core as I struggled to blink, watering my eyes with the salty tears it needed. They were so dry. How long had I been out for?

  “Lucian?” I called out in more of a shallow whisper than the full on scream I’d tried to say it as. My throat was dry, my tongue like sandpaper. How long had I laid like this? The place was silent, or was it? Could I hear? It was too quiet for reality. Everything made a noise, even my own breath usually reflected a slight blow. But there was nothing except the lull of spacious realism. My hearing had gone. What happened? I couldn’t be awake, it had to be a dream, a nightmarish escapism from the torture of what was taking place to my living body. Where were my babies?

  Bit by bit, my muscles began to ache. Aching was a good sign, wasn’t it? It meant they worked. It meant I was alive and able to move, not paralysed from the waist down. Except I wasn’t moving, or was I? My toes wriggled, at least I think they did, but I couldn’t exactly see, lying there. The dripping sound returned. I could hear, something was there all along, the dripping of liquid down from a height. Where was it? What was it?

  My vision was blurry. Outstretching my neck, I cranked it to the side. Piece by piece I put together a jigsaw picture in front of me. What was that shape? A dark blurring of surrealism as it walked across the valley before me. I must have been raised up high, for the shadowed movement that blurred my vision was below and above me. What was it? “Lucian?” I cried, only whispers played out. Was that him? Did he save us?

  Behind the mirage of blackness was an orange flame that lit the whole of the canyon. A fire blazed across the mirage, lighting up the darkness around me as the shadows ran and wept from sight. That was exactly right, there were no shadows, no other worldly darkness, only the figure that walked around behind me, doing something. But what?

  Blinking rapidly, I focussed on bringing water back to my eyes, healing their disturbed sense of vision and augmenting that reality back to the real reality. Stretching my limbs, I managed to twitch my fingers. Looking down on the left, I could see a slight movement where my hand should be, a merging of skin colour as the pale turned to pink, turned to olive and snow white. Colours leapt at each other, danced through a thousand tones and back again. Blinking, the sharpness slowly drifted back, wandering off for a while, but never too far away as the mirage of colour before me creased back into its usual shape. My hand was whole, and my fingers twitched. This was a good sign. Wasn’t it?

  With the merging of my fictional reality with the actual one, sound resonated back in my ear drums. The sound of insane laughter, high-pitched squealing and catastrophic cackles. It couldn’t be? Could it? If it was who or what I thought it was, then we’d never been saved, we’d been delivered into the hands of pure evil itself; the hands of my cruel, odious sister, the one and only, Lilith. The giggling became more apparent as a figure danced around the room, her white dress swaying and curving, curtailing the firelight.

  Blinking more, I reached down and managed to watch my own will of strength as my hand trembled across my chest, up my body, and to my eye-sockets. Wiping them, my vision increased. I’d been covered with something, some kind of substance that had made it difficult to see. Lifting my hand to view it, the substance was crimson red, crackled, and old, but definitely of the blood variety. My eyes had merged with my blood. It must have been from the bang to the head I took as I crawled over to Lucian.

  Lucian... where was he? “LUCIAN!” I yelled, and that time, I actually did. My courage was back, strength bleeding through my roots as both hands shot up, elbows down, and I raised my upper torso up and off the ground. At least I thought it was the ground. I couldn’t be sure. Still looking left, I looked down. No, it wasn’t the ground. It was a table, a surface of sorts, and down the sides was the dripping sound, the rambling flow of fresh blood as it fled from my body and pooled on the floor beneath me.

  “LUCIAN!” I screamed, fearing for my life. That’s when I heard it; the igniting sound of a child’s call, the bond of a mother as she hears her first baby cry out, begging for her love and familiarity. My child, my babies, where were they? The sound came from the darkness that wore the shape of a man as he drifted across the valley, booming with laughter.

  Behind him stood an overarching cross, a crucifix turned upside down, the sign of the Devil. Was this him? Had Lucifer found me? It was clear mother and son would work together, after all. Perhaps God never killed him as the tall tales said he did.

  But what was on the crucifix? That was the question. It was something unmoveable, someone I knew, an intimate closeness that I felt kindling within my soul. That wasn’t my Lucian, though, it was the body of an upside-down mother. My mother. Eve’s mother. Unconscious and hung by the nails in her arms and feet, bleeding dry into a bucket below.

  Insane laughter rippled the cavern around me. My cocoon of familiarity shook, and my body trembled as I stared across at my mother’s life as it literally hung in the balance. Beside her stood the darkness, the swirling serpent, as it kindled the soul of someone I once knew, and he wasn’t alone. He was carrying something, a screaming someone, a tragically lost someone. It couldn’t be? Could it? Was that my father, my actual, real father? The man that donated his swimmers, so I could be born? Was it really him? Who was he now? I had never been able to remember the pain he’d caused. Adam had kept that part from me, hidden those memories to keep me safe and I could see why. The figure of my father turned. The long-grizzled beard stood with greying hair, an almighty tall body and the muscular features of an athlete on steroids. In his hand lay a baby, one of my babies. I could feel my child as it cried, feel the heartache and sorrow as it wept. What was he doing to my baby? The darkness enveloped both of them, swirling around them just as it always did with the shadelings. The serpent appeared to live within my father’s soulless body, as any hope of humanity left him. Was he siphoning my baby’s soul?

  The fear of loss, grief, pain... it resided in all of us. That last goodbye, the few final moments, the tragic tear as it trickled form an iris down to salty lips. That was the fear as it overwhelmed you, the loss of knowing oneself as whole never again. Not only was my father beside my mother, he had his grandchild cast into darkn
ess before my eyes. I had to get up, had to help save my child and free my mother.

  Drifting songs of a bloodthirsty sister cradled my tears as she danced her way over to me. “Little Evie! Daddy dearest is here to play!” She shrieked in her high-pitched deafening lull of a voice. “Come play with us!” She yelled as she swayed and swirled before my eyes. Her white robe was covered in the blood of another as she held in her arms a still child, a motionless baby, a bloodied, tiny human who lay blue to the eye. Its unnatural body defied all nature when it wept. It was still alive, my baby... although bloody, made a slight cry, a monotone murmur of a cry, but a cry all the same.

  “Oh this...?” she asked, swaying her supple frame over to me. Her mouth was cast over with dried blood. My baby that she held had teeth marks in its tiny stomach. She had done that, she had tried to bite my child, finish my baby off. But knowing me, knowing my Lucian, my babies were strong, they had to be, she hadn’t been able to bite down on her, why? And why the heck couldn’t I get up? Damn it! She kept my baby girl far enough out of reach, too far for me to move unless I stood up and fought back. I had to, needed to. But why couldn’t I move? “Don’t worry, Little Evie. I’ll protect her like my own.” She cackled as she licked the dried blood off of my motionless baby’s stomach, swaying away to the other side of the canyon.

  My baby was passed over to EJ, who continued to dance and sway my child around. “She likes it see...” Lilith said as she picked up a lump of a Dark One from the floor. Lucian was slumped in her arms as she raised him high and danced his comatose body around the floor like a puppeteer with its puppet, pulling the strings to make him dance alongside her, falling into her arms as the silent tunes met their crescendo.

  “LUCIAN!” I screamed as I pushed up, needing to reach him, wake him up so he could help me save my babies. I had to get to my mother and save my children from my father’s wrath. But my Lucian was gone, out like a light, dancing the dreams of a monstrous bride in her bloodied wedding dress on All Hallows Eve. Leaping my body forward with all my might, a wrenching pain ripped through me as I looked down only to hear a plopping sound from the floor. Beneath me, in a pool of blood, the continuous fall of pinkish gooey hose-like organ slid down, landing on top of itself. My insides tugged. My stomach began to feel like someone had washed the dishes inside of me. My fear of the ultimate betrayal came true. The notion that my babies had been born naturally was only that, a notion, for as I looked down it was clear that they had been sliced out of me, pulled out of the safety net of their cocoon and introduced to the world of Hell. They had been cut from the cord and transferred to the ravings of two darkened souls. My gut lay open, blood dripped from the table, and intestines plopped on the floor. I shouldn’t have been alive. I’d lost every ounce of survival within me. How was I still breathing?

  Callous giggles roared next to me. Lilith dropped Lucian on the floor, ran over, and skipped in my blood like dancing in the rain. “Weeeeee!” she screeched, slipping and sliding in my mortality. Bending down, she gripped my intestines, gathered them up into a sloshy pile, and stood up giggling. “Are these yours?” She howled, unable to contain the laughter as she squished them back inside of me. “Ooo no, no, no, I forgot to sew, sew, sew!” She wailed with laughter. “Doctor, hand me the needle and thread!” She ushered behind her. EJ dropped my motionless baby on top of Lucian's slumbering body. He stomped off and came back minutes later with a large needle and thread. How did they even have that?

  “See, EJ, I knew we forgot something!” she screeched, stabbing me with the needle.

  “Where’s my baby?” I asked, trying not to piss her off.

  “EJ, where’s the blue thing?” Lilith asked, stabbing me again, drawing the thread through my bloodied body. EJ held up his hands in the motion of ‘I dunno’. “Go find her, EJ.” Lilith yelled. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

  EJ stomped off, almost tripping over Lucian and my baby girl. Grunting, it picked the baby up by its arm and flung it over to me. My heart stopped as she flew through the air. Fright scorched my eyes as I reached out. “Stay still!” Lilith demanded, turning to see my baby in flight. She caught her in time. “EJ, no! Bad EJ.” She grimaced, pushing the baby girl onto me. My child breathed, slowly and desperately, but she breathed. She needed to cough; her cries sounded like there was something stuck in her throat. Lying on her front, across my chest, her tiny little fingers twitched. She tried to grip me, to wriggle about, heading over to my breast, smelling the milk. My hand raised slowly, reached to hold her, to soothe her and tell her everything would be alright. But as my hand reached her back, Lilith pushed it down, trying to push me away from my baby. Without knowing it, she’d helped my child, hitting her on the back was the best thing she could do. The baby coughed, vomited on me, and screamed. Lilith shrieked, dropping the needle and thread, and jumped backwards. My child’s cries had scared her. A motion from a motionless baby girl was a miracle in the making. But before I could be overjoyed, before I could relish in the victory, the bigger picture came walking over. My father, the greyed man shrouded in darkness, came forth, and with him, my beautiful baby boy fast asleep in his arms.

  “EVE!” my father boomed. “Meet your son.” He thundered. He held out my boy, pale-skinned, moving, and alive. He cried the sound of a motherless child. He’d been ripped from my womb, taken by my father, and lived in the abyss of darkness for the first few moments of his life. A shroud of black encased him, a moving shadow of unconscious thought, a broken limped creature that crushed his soul. Something was happening to him, as my poor boy screamed for his mummy. Before my eyes, my baby boy’s tiny heart gave way to the black. His light was cast aside as his soul was broken in two, ripped from his body and destroyed through the unnatural death of my father’s serpent of darkness. My baby transformed into that of death itself. The boy before me opened his eyes and only black remained.

  Black that bled, black that cried, and black that cursed the land he was born on.

  TO BE CONTINUED...

  ETERNAL ENDING

  ANNALEE ADAMS

  CHAPTER 91: Adam

  It is surely impossible to sit on a throne all day and all night. It could bore even the brightest of men, and I did not see why I should stay put when there was so much more happening down on Earth. Why had I let them go? That sister of mine was too persuasive. They should have reached out by now, called up for an escort home. But no, nothing. I promised I wouldn’t spy, I had said I’d let them discover the ruins for themselves. It wasn’t something the pool could show; the reflection was merely a snippet of the reality around us. It did not bring about the emotion encased in the fleeting moment. It had never felt real, not like being there. The battle with Lilith was spectacular. Being there, treading on the soil of humanity’s throne was exquisite. It was something I’d yearned for centuries. But with the danger out there, it was a risk I could never take. Though, now that Eve was back, I could let lose a little and train her to take the reins. Elysium could one day be in her hands, she was more powerful than I ever had been, she just didn’t realise it yet.

  My fingers tapped on the side of the golden throne. Time seemed to pass slower than usual and there was nothing I wanted to do. My body was tense, neck stiff, as I tapped away. Anxiety built as curiosity took over. Bit by bit I leant forward, edging from my seat, urging for any excuse to check the pool, to stand up and battle once again. Anything to get me out of the cycle of boredom I’d found myself trapped within. Where was Charmeine? Was she alright? It was unlike her to not keep in touch. Time passed differently down there. We should have heard something by now. No, it’s too long. Something must be wrong. I knew I said I wouldn’t look, but it wasn’t spying, it couldn’t be... not if I was worried for their safety. Standing tall, I reached forward to leave the throne and enter the atrium where the pool was. But then a spectacular event took place. The day’s sky dripped away from the ceiling above us, replaced by the shadows of an overcast warning of an impending darkness. Threatening the light o
f our land, the waning light of the celestial rose brought darkness to the realm. Elysium was under attack. "Guards man the gates!"

  A stumpy half breed flew over.

  "Sire, there's no one there."

  "There must be, the rose is diminishing."

  Standing before the crystal rose, the petals began to whither and wane.

  "If it isn't Elysium, then it must be Eve...she's in trouble. They’re connected."

  Running towards the pool of reflection, I held out hope. She was powerful, she was brilliant, she could beat anything that held her down.

  The emerald waters swirled into a mirage of colours. A tapestry of intertwining hues of green swept across my field of vision. Shimmering sage blended in a twirling montage of pine, olive, and mossy willow. The scent of roses filled the air. The sky decimated into darkness as the picture before me held fire and fury, misery and malady. We’d seen a hoard of the failed mutations before, but nothing like the vast bellowing army before us. The humans had turned, changed and revitalised. They were no longer mortals, but carnivorous cavemen with their inner fight or flight hormonal response switched on. Their sympathetic nervous systems screeched out with adrenaline. Cortisol pumped through their ravished bodies as norepinephrine blasted their blood vessels, narrowing them beyond recognition, building up the pressure inside. They were ready to lash out, scream and take down every living being in their paths. The problem was, the survivors that stood before their momentous army were led by a young girl with a ghastly complexion. They’d grown, progressed and transformed into intelligent beings, laying a trap for the souls of those that walked the Earth. And into that trap ambled a small selection of the finest souls alive. My mother, my sister Eve, her partner Lucian, Gabriel, Michael, and my beloved Charmeine.