Darkroom Saga Omnibus 2

by Poppet

  He laughs again and Polina has hairs on end like big speaker blare music. Polina like his laugh so much. He sound just like the man I love, but he fell from heaven, he not in it.

  “So I don’t smell like me, don’t look like me, and don’t act like me. Got it.” Bed empty and he be gone like phantom in mirror.

  Polina nearly die all over again of alarm when he say in face, “Don’t get a fright, I’m just putting some eye drops in your eyes to see if it helps the sight issue.”

  “Is not issue pretend Victor, is god. God say no one can see him so he most likely be around corner. He no like the new arrivals to bother him. He like rock star and the new arrivals go nuts for him, so he hide like allergy until we calm down.”

  He don’t care, cold drops fall in eyes, both of them. Polina thought only one eye work, so why does he put drops in both? Maybe in heaven I can see with two eyes?

  “Do you think you’re in heaven, Polina?” he asks.

  Ice kiss Polina again with bumps. Polina not in heaven? This is so bad. I no can take more torture. Polina has pure heart, she no belong in underworld.

  With tight heart and worry, I nod, “Da.”

  Please say am in good place. Please say no more suffer.

  “I’m shining a light in your eye, I have to hold it open to gauge pupil dilation, so don’t freak out.”

  Polina see the light when he holds eyelid wide, is much brighter. Do they heal eye in heaven with little gadget? Maybe the days of laying on of hands is gone. Maybe people with syndromes would freak out and bite at god, so he no touch the person no more?

  Polina chuckle to self. I’d like to bite god real hard, until he bleeds all the evil in him out.

  “Can you see this?” asks fake Victor.

  Is miracle! Polina see pen move side to side like magic trick.

  Maybe in heaven we meet all the same people, they the same but different. Maybe all things be same, like pen, but they float, no longer have to lie down and wait for our touch.

  “Da.” I smile wide. Polina is so happy to see fake Victor. He’s as beautiful as the real one.

  He returns the smile and Polina almost have stroke with the bliss. No man is to look so good. “You beautiful. So too perfect.”

  “Thank you.” He sits next to Polina again, on bed, like he no have issue with the touch no more. Polina has decided man are all complicated.

  “I told you, Victor is gonna break your head if you touch or flirt. Is not permitted. If you pretend be him then do it right.”

  “I am him, Polina. My wife died.”

  Polina heart has knife in it, it shatters so hard. I hurt his heart. He no forgive me for being so rude. Polina gonna get more breaks in mouth for always speaking out of turn. Mikah get angry with Polina for blurting what think instead of being … um … word? Consolate.

  “I’m sorry, Polina not mean to be inconsolate.”

  “You’re not inconsiderate. You didn’t know. My situation has changed and now we can get to know each other a little better.”

  “Was it bad? She not suffer?” Polina want to slap his leg for no telling me before that his wife is sick at home. He must have had the chest full of worry and I make him come see me for no good reason but to smell him.

  “Yes, it was bad,” he says, his beautiful brown eyes looking away, down at my hand, and I see the long lashes on his eye. No man should be more pretty than Miss Russia, and yet he is.

  Polina ache to kiss Victor. It throbs where my chest pumps blood, like it cannot pump fast enough.

  “What did she die of?” I dare to pry. I like pry word. Polina put it in box of favourite things. Like enemy of my enemy is my friend.

  Polina keep treasures safe. Little gifts of words and sweet moments. Polina has box inside back of brain so full of treasures that no angry god can take away.

  “She died of a broken heart,” he says, finally looking at me again. “And I hate to burst your bubble but you’re not in heaven. You’re in my home. You were very brave, Polina. If I’ve watched the footage of what Alpha did to you once, I’ve watched it a hundred times. You protected me to the very end. He tried to kill you, at the very least to blind you for life. You had severe swelling on the brain and we induced a coma for surgery and kept you under to reduce brain activity so you could heal.”

  “We?” I ask. Polina does no like the word ‘we’.

  “I’m a surgeon, and my best friend is too. We operated on you for ten straight hours, and then we reconstructed Evan’s knee for him. The skin grafts for the whip ligatures wasn’t a walk in the park either.”

  “Did you break him? Did you kick his head in? Did you make him bow down at my feet?”

  He smiles, and it’s sad. Victor still carry the suffer in his eyes. “I cut off his hand for hitting you, we castrated him for screwing my wife, and I shot him in both feet, his knee, and his remaining hand. And I’m not done. He’ll pay. He will.”

  “He fuck your wife?” I gasp.

  “Yup. As the good book says, which justifies my father’s actions, he turned to her by the road and said, Come, let me have intercourse with you; – she was his daughter-in-law. Genesis 38:14 You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall lie with her.” Deuteronomy 28:23

  “Is that the why she die of broken heart?” ask Polina.

  “Yes.” He gives me a measured look. “Why do you always refer to yourself in the third person? Is it customary in your home language, or is that a Polina thing?”

  “I always do it, since young child.”

  Victor take Polina’s hand in both of his, like Polina is rare cloth. “We’ll heal that too.”

  “Why must we heal it? There’s no wrong in it.”

  Victor look sadder now, like Polina give him acid in his veins. “It’s a sign of severe psychological trauma as a child. People who refer to themselves as a separate entity have suffered too much when too young to process the damage. You distance yourself from what happened by referring to yourself as a separate entity. I promised to save you, and I will. I’ve saved your body and I’ll save your mind too.”

  “Victor always keeps promise. I knew you would come.”

  There is knock at door and man walk in. “Polina, Evan would like to come see you. Is that okay with you?”

  “False prophet?” Polina ask.

  “That’s me,” speaks from behind stranger.

  “Okay,” Polin– I say.

  Now am self-conscious that Polina say Polina when speak of Polina. Why is my world always a jumble of mismatching puzzle pieces? Like a painting where they used pink instead of blue, is right, but is also wrong.

  “Vic, I need a word,” say strange man.

  I try sit up, but Victor presses me back down. “Give it time, angel. Use the lever to sit up. Let the bed do the heavy lifting until you’ve had more physio. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  I grip his hand with all my might. “Don’t leave me again.”

  “I won’t.” This time his smile sparkles in his eyes and Polina suffers with the heart melt.

  “You no smell like Victor.”

  “That’s because you have plastic tubes in your nose. Give it one more day and I’ll get them removed.”

  I lean to Victor, a little sideways so not to sit up. “Who is the man?”

  “Jude. You can trust him.”

  “Polina no trust disciple.”

  “How do you know he’s a disciple?” asks Victor when Evan walks into the room, tired of waiting for man to get out of his way.

  “He has the mark of the beast on his arm.” I read the words, I know now that the symbol on us is mark of beast, not of god.

  Victor lifts the arm on his t-shirt sleeve. “So do I. Don’t judge us for it and we won’t judge you for yours. We’re not all evil, some of us are his victims as much as you are.”

  “Polina is shamed,” I say, tears prickling splinters against eyeballs.

  He leans in, kissing Polina forehead, and I smell him. I smell the forest, I smell the best da
ys ever.

  Then I really cry, and can’t stop.

  Polina make it to heaven.

  Heaven has new address. Victor’s house.

  ~ Chapter 23 ~

  The Awful Horror will be placed on the highest point of the Temple and will remain there until the one who put it there meets the end.

  ~ Daniel 9:27

  Victor:

  WHEN SHE STARTS to sob like her heart is ruptured an alien emotion wells up in me. Empathy.

  Sitting back down I cradle her tenderly, so acutely aware that she is still fragile and on the mend, easily bruised and so easily broken. This woman has known nothing but pain and persecution from the minute she was born, and I am bitter that the world that made it all possible was governed by men like my father. She was sold to pay a gambling debt, used as a child prostitute, the star in paedophile porn, then shipped off to work in a topless bar in America when she became mature enough to bleed and outlived her shelf life as a cum-bucket for fallacious men.

  My kind helped to make this world so defective. My father made me one of the guilty, hurting women like her. How many of the dirty angels were women in her position? She had no choice but to do as ordered, parading her female attributes for all to see, just to pay her rent while she lived in squalor, preying on her for the vulnerability she embodied; a simple deficit named ignorance.

  Feeling spiritually destitute I comfort her while she sobs, wiping gently at her eyes to capture her tears, baptising the sin on my hands with lacrimal fluid, spellbound by the clarity of blue her irises exhibit when anointed with grief.

  I hold her close, shielding her with my body from the onlookers, saving her dignity, whispering in her ear, “You are so beautiful, little Polina. I’ll never let a man touch you in anger again. Ever. I’m your avenging angel now.”

  She clings, like a newborn, as if this is the first time anyone has held her with support, safeguarding her, protecting her. My throat feels thick and rage builds its fortitude into every one of my muscles.

  I’m going to kill him. I have to. It’s my only duty for this world. If the temple is run by the evil one then it is my responsibility as the avenging angel to cut the head off that snake, and every one of his many arms. She’s so fractured that she can’t even say me, I, my. She refers to herself as Polina, a girl she watches the shit happen to. If it takes me the rest of my heartbeats on this planet I will mend this broken cygnet, I will nurture her until she becomes a swan.

  She quietens and I rest my lips to her forehead, sealing her with the warmth of my intention, my unspoken promise. Sometimes an eye has to be paid for an eye. Sometimes the one who creates harm, discord, misery, must be eliminated with swift and unmerciful retribution. If it infects the organism then rip it out at the root, cleave it out of the ecosystem in its entirety to restore wellbeing.

  I give her another gentle squeeze and help her to recline against her pillow supports, then stand again, giving her a wink and leaving, before I open my mouth and say something none of them need to hear. Jude follows me, comprehension in his eyes. He’s looking ominously somber. The second we have closed and sealed the door to the newly titled medical wing, he blurts, “Alpha is up and about.”

  “How do you know?” I challenge. I doubt very much that Jude has access to my father’s every move.

  “The tracking chip monitors vitals, his’ exhibits physical activity. He’s no longer dormant.”

  “So we’re running out of time?” I ask.

  Fuck my life. I’ve enjoyed this quietude, the remission period between spates of unprecedented violence. I’ve watched Polina heal, her operations all a resounding success. She doesn’t know it but she’s had a spleen transplant, reconstructive surgery on ruptured bowels which we had to stave off septicaemia with by giving her a complete blood transfusion, we’ve reconstructed bone, removed every scar and splice in her canvas, and restored her eyesight in its entirety. She’s even had her teeth straightened using surgery, which isn’t my area of expertise but it is Bradley’s. Most of us make our money in cosmetic surgery, it pays so well and exposes the vanity of the female gender to those of us on the hunt for a fallen angel.

  Jude gives me a grim glare. “We’ve also been hacked and I don’t know how. The system has locked me out. Whomever has done this is so proficient that they make me look like I don’t even understand ascii.”

  My stomach knots. I know the next words out of his mouth will be apocalyptic.

  “All every screen in our kingdom displays is Cerberus has you,” says Jude. “That’s what that Rizzo dude said to Stephen when they extracted Alpha.”

  “Secure the bank accounts, go offsite and change every password in every one of our security deposits. Mobilise the troops and get them to physically defend the safe houses. I don’t care what you have to do, change our identities if you have to. The shell corporations need to be emptied right now and the assets moved to a new location with entirely different stakeholders. Sell all our shares asap, and buy into toilet paper under some fake name. Reduce the impact of this as much as you can, and bring in your team. One of those young guns must be a match for Cerberus. I don’t care what it costs, minimise the damage, Jude.”

  He nods, rushing away to do as bid. “And Jude, move the gold, yeah? If Alpha finds the gold, mineral and munitions stores, we’re fucked.”

  My father’s been awake from his own healing coma for all of ten minutes and already the shit is hitting the fan. I run after Jude, something occurring to me. “Jude! What were you working on when Cerberus hit?”

  He halts, panic flitting across his expression. “DNA data banks.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “You asked how Alpha stays so young and strong? Parabiosis, dude. Plus I have a hunch that I was looking into.”

  Parabiosis? Jesus! He’s using the blood of babies and young children to stave off the natural ageing process. The science is there, if morally reprehensible.

  Jude’s mouth flattens. “You didn’t think your dad kept the broken brides for us, did you? They produce more babies a year than he’d ever need. Plus when he’s the impregnating sperm he has a blood type match for his needs. He had a new underground enterprise named Juvenyouth, where if you have enough money you can have all the blood transfusions from newborns, to toddlers up to age 2, that you need to remain ageless. The HgH, coupled with the reversal of everything from dementia and the shrinking of the hippocampus, neurological and incurable diseases, all reversed with infantile blood. Your dad is an instrumental kingpin in a human trafficking syndicate – with only one purpose. Grab young women, get them pregnant, and harvest the babies. The umbilical cord is the best source for the antigens and reversal of disease. Babies just became the new blood diamond.”

  HgH, human growth hormone. It keeps muscles young and strong, it keeps bodies agile, it renews and restores everything from brittle teeth to failing eyesight, parabiosis is well known for the protein TIMP2 – it reverses everything we associate with ageing. Everything. Even the failing ability to learn.

  My father is so fucked up that I feel physically ill.

  I also know exactly where he got the idea.

  Every firstborn child or animal that the Israelites present to me belongs to you. But you must accept payment to buy back every firstborn child, and must also accept payment for every firstborn animal that is ritually unclean. Children shall be bought back at the age of ONE MONTH for the fixed price of five pieces of silver, according to the official standard. Numbers 18:15.

  And Solomon awaked, and when he was come to Jerusalem, he stood before the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and offered holocausts, and sacrificed victims of peace offerings. 1 Kings 3:15

  Then I gave them laws that are not good and commands that do not bring life. I let them defile themselves with their own offerings and I let them sacrifice their first born sons. Ezekiel 20:25

  This is the true blood covenant. For he told them, he did, he told them, For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have
given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. Leviticus 17:11

  He needed the blood, and he owned, physically owned, every newborn son until he was a month old. For what purpose did God need newborns?

  This purpose. This very fucking purpose.

  I can’t even have a Jesus moment and say forgive them for they know not what they do, because he knows exactly what the fuck it is he’s doing.

  The evil one sits on the throne, and to this day baptism rituals dedicate newborns to him, once dedicated he owns them and can take them at any time, with the parents consent.

  Oh my fucking god.

  Jude grabs my arm, “Vic, are you okay? Sit down.”

  God is so fucked up, he ordered the animals fat be burned, because he found the smell of burning fat pleasing. Numbers 19:17

  Flesh and blood is just another currency for the depraved.

  “I have to go now. I need to do recon,” I stammer, feeling distanced from everything, my consciousness shrinking to a pinpoint of pain.

  “Where?” demands Jude. Urgency grips us both. The countdown to the rapture has begun.

  No not rapture, it was probably a typo. This is the countdown to the rupture. “His safe house,” I answer Jude. I need to go see what I’m up against, I need to prepare, I need to step into the red because armageddon is going to sound like a fairy-tale if Alpha lives another month in control of his evil empires.

  He just never seems to end, just when I think we’ve crushed him I discover he has new criminal ventures, a whole other life I didn’t even know about, a fortune that makes him untouchable.

  “You can’t go alone,” insists Jude. “Not like this. Fuck Victor, I don’t have time to help you through a meltdown. Now is not the hour. You hear me? No one knows the hour, but this isn’t it. Don’t you dare advance on the Algol until you have backup.” He shakes me. “Are you comprehending me?”