The Symphony of Death

by Matthew Newson

  “Wait.”

  Death forcefully interjected himself in my conversation as Reviler, Chaos, and I were taken aback by his protest. Everyone knew not to interrupt me, but what interested me more was Death’s rapid change in demeanor. Death’s eyes were set on Reviler, and a scowl appeared to be etched on his face.

  “I beg your pardon, Death. What’s the matter?” I asked.

  Reviler scoffed. “Yeah, what’s your problem? Did you run out of puffy ties again? Wait, don’t tell me, Death got his little feelings hurt because the master asked me and not him to make your little adventure work.”

  I knew the moment Reviler uttered those words he had crossed a line with Death he couldn’t return from. I tried to warn Reviler on the way, and if Death did kill him there were plenty more where he came from. It would be interesting nonetheless, so I decided it best not to intervene in the matter. I wanted to see where it would go for my own enjoyment.

  “You’re my problem, but not for much longer,” stated Death.

  Reviler looked at me and then back at Death. “Oh yeah, why don’t you just calm down already? The only reason I’m here is because Lucifer asked me to come with him, and besides, you’re not going to do anything to me anyway. Wait, do you want to play me a song?”

  “Well, that’s not entirely true, Reviler,” I interjected. “I asked you to come with me because Death requested I bring you along.”

  Reviler rolled his eyes. “Is that so, well I’m here now. Just know you don’t scare me.”

  Death stepped forward, but there still was a considerable distance between the two.

  “That’s because you don’t know what I’m capable of doing. But you should be scared because I know what you were up to,” Death said.

  Reviler unsheathed his broad sword. “Careful now, Death. I heard just about enough from you. I may not have killed as many people as you, but I’m still lethal nonetheless.”

  “Did you think no one would find out?” Death asked.

  Even I didn’t know what Death was talking about, but I decided to play along.

  Death continued in his sober tone. “Did you really think you’d get away with it?”

  “Start making sense now, or I will show you who really is the master of ending life.”

  “I’m talking about your plan to use Rachel Willenski to not only take over the Williams Industries when you were specifically instructed not to. If that wasn’t bad enough, you also tried to use her to distract our lord in a futile attempt to dethrone him so you could rule Hell yourself.”

  “How dare you accuse me of such treasonous affairs against our master. Lucifer, please allow me to shut this lying creature’s mouth,” Reviler shouted.

  “No, Reviler, I’d like to hear what he has to say. Death, please continue if you will.” I stepped aside to give Death a clear path to Reviler.

  Reviler gritted his teeth and grunted like a cornered animal as he readied himself for the inevitable fight that was about to take place.

  Death took another step. “It’s all true. I’ve kept an eye on you for a while now. As I’ve watched your lust for power grow over the years, it has only added to my disdain for you. Lucifer is not the only one who can hide in plain sight, you know. I was there when Rachel came to you and asked you for help in killing her father and taking his place. “

  Death took another authoritative step toward Reviler.

  “I was there when you had her by the throat in her car and warned her not to be so careless.”

  Death stepped forward again. His right hand began to change in appearance. It looked to be made of some type of green mist.

  “Then I watched as you brooded over her and got her to go and try to kill Alec Williams in his hospital bed after she had been specifically warned not to lay a hand on him. On top of all that, you got her to try to take over the company in Alec’s absences, which she had been expressly forbidden to do—in front of you, no less.”

  “Lies! Everything you said is all a vicious lie! You’re just trying to gain favor with Lucifer, but it’s not going to work. Our lord knows who’s really on his side,” Reviler said.

  “Now, I know you lowly demons like to try and test yourselves against the master, and while many give up on their foolish endeavor because they know they never stood a chance, you have never ceased to relent in your efforts. For your grave crime of forgetting your place, I’m going to kill you now.”

  “Enough,” Reviler shouted as he charged forward, and Death didn’t even flinch as Reviler ran his sword into his stomach. Reviler was moving so fast that he passed straight through Death who dissolved into a green gaseous state and immediately reformed back into himself.

  Reviler looked confused and spun back around. “What’s the matter, too scared to face me?”

  Death turned and faced Reviler with a smile on his face. “No, I’ve just killed you. You just don’t know it yet.”

  “For someone who has been around a lot longer than I have, you are stupid. Demons can’t die, and I’m not challenging you in The Arena. At the most I get sent back down to Hell. Now stop stalling and come on!”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Say, Reviler, is your nose bleeding?” Death asked.

  Reviler put his hand to his nose and looked down to see the black viscous liquid that freely flowed.

  “What is this?” Then he began to cough, and as he did more blood formed in his hand. “What did you do to me?”

  “I already told you. I am the very spirit of death. Being that I am, I can kill man and spirit beings alike.”

  Blood streamed from both of Reviler’s nostrils and his eyes. “Lucifer, please save me,” Reviler said as he reached for me to help him.

  I quickly pulled away. “I won’t be saving you today, Reviler. You spoiled little child.”

  “Please, he’s lying to you!”

  “Then why did Rachel continue to defy me at every turn?”

  Reviler dropped to his knees and struggled to breathe as his once muscular body began to shrivel by the second. He looked up at me one last time as his eyes rolled into the back of his head. His body collapsed on the floor as he breathed his last. I’d always had known Death could kill the demons, but I never told any of them that. I wanted to see which one of my underlings I could trust.

  Death picked up one of the many small torches and stood over what was left of Reviler. “Please stand back.” He dropped the torch, and the remains of Reviler burst into flames as Chaos and I looked on. His body and armor were completely consumed by the fire.

  I was impressed at the power he possessed, and somewhat horrified by what he could do. His potential seemed limitless. “Death?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you infect Reviler with?”

  “An improved strand of The Black Death. I’ve been working on it for some time now. My plan was to use it when I’m finally released to destroy a third of all life on Earth. But, if what you say is true about the machine, I will use it now for you to have your revenge on The One.”

  “No. We... Together we will have our revenge on the One. Now let us go and find what we need to bring about the end of the world.”

  Chapter Four

  Paul Luca,

  The Man Wrapped in Darkness

  The Williams Estate

  Williams Point, New York

  IT WAS LATE, JUST PAST midnight.

  I patrolled the Williams Estate, hidden in the spirit realm, while Alec slept safely in his house. I never slept. I didn’t need to, in fact, I hadn’t slept since I was a man on Earth, so I spent my nights as a silent guardian and watched over my brother.

  I stayed wrapped in my darkness and used my spirit senses to continually scan the area for any demonic activity, but every night it was quiet, and nothing happened. Lucifer had to be up to something. It wasn’t like him to wait that long to respond to being repeatedly defeated. But not one demon tried to come anywhere near Alec or Tiffany. I had dispatched a group of angels to guard her, and
even they were puzzled by the devil’s non-response. He had to be biding his time.

  I prayed quietly. “Lord, what is the enemy up to, please tell me.”

  Suddenly, a whirlwind struck me out of nowhere. It pulled at my darkness as I fought against its herculean hold, but to no avail. The gale overpowered and twisted me around several times before it stopped, and my world spun like a top. When the spinning finally ended, I found myself on all fours on the ground. I concentrated all my power and commanded the world around me to come back into focus, and what I saw I almost couldn’t believe.

  The sun blazed brilliantly in the sky, and I couldn’t account for the loss of time. As I looked around, I discovered I was no longer wrapped in my darkness, but I still had on my black outfit that accompanied it. Before I tried to summon it, the scene grabbed my full attention. I realized I was in the middle of a busy city.

  “What in the world is going on? God, please help,” I said quietly to myself.

  There were people all around me, and I watched as they went about their day as if I wasn’t standing on a street corner of a busy intersection. People going to work, kids going to school, while others went about as they ran errands. It was so serene. I still marveled at the beauty of life, especially the simple one before me. A group of kids got on the bus for school, and I thought about my two sons when they were boys.

  I wished Faith and I had been able to watch them go to school and grow into fine upstanding men of God and get married and have children of their own. I thought at times about what it might have been for Faith and I to have been grandparents. I would have wanted to be called Pap, like I called my grandfather. That was gone now. Vestiges of a life that was never meant to be, and I had made peace with it along with what the Lord had made me into.

  All I had known for the last several decades was war, but there everything seemed to be so peaceful and nice. I didn’t care how I got there, I just wanted to stay and enjoy the picturesque scene of the people before me. It was what I had always wanted my life on Earth to be like.

  Then I heard a monstrous roar of sirens as the ground shuddered under my feet, and the people were just as startled as I was by the noise. I turned toward the direction of the noise as columns of a dark green smoke shot directly into the sky. Instantly, the sky around me changed from a pretty blue to a mix of reds, oranges, and browns, and a foul stench filled my nose. The air smoldered around me as if something appeared to be killing all the parts of it that sustained life. I quickly realized it was consuming the oxygen out of the atmosphere. Good thing I was eternal, but all the people around me were not as fortunate.

  A man started bleeding from his eyes, nose, mouth, and he went to his knees as he choked on his own bodily fluids in front of me. I reached out to grab him and my hands passed right through him.

  “What is this? What’s going on?”

  I tried to grab him again, but again my hands passed through him as he fell to his face on the pavement in a pool of his own blood.

  “This can’t be right!”

  I ran to a woman who was in the same shape as the man, and this time, I tried to use my darkness to wrap her in it and save her life. As I sent it toward the woman, my darkness passed through her just as my hands did the man. She fell dead before me.

  “God no! Jesus, please stop this! Why can’t I touch or save anybody?”

  I ran from person to person, but each and every one of them died before my eyes. Men, women, and children all dead, and there was nothing I could do as I stood there and watched the end of every living thing. In a matter of minutes, everything and everyone around me was dead, but the worst was yet to come.

  The ground quaked and shook until it finally split open in a violent eruption. A giant hole opened up in the middle of the road not far from me, and a myriad of demons poured forth from the hole.

  I quickly lunged out of the way of as a group of demons barreled by me as they rode chariots pulled by skeleton horses.

  As they passed by, one spoke. “I can’t believe they pulled it off before The One’s declared time.”

  Is this The End? This can’t be The End. What is going on? Oh no, Alec.

  I looked around desperately to see where I was, but I didn’t’ recognize anything around me.

  Where am I?

  The land was scarred, and the sky had turned from a fiery hue to pitch black in seconds, and I couldn’t even tell what nation I was in anymore. The ground split open in several more places as the armies of Hell burst forth and destroyed all the buildings and infrastructure around me. They devastated everything they touched, and I quickly realized they were remaking the world into the very image of Hell.

  Nothing made sense as I continued to try and get my bearings. The only thing I recognized were the blackened stick figures scattered all around. They were dead bodies of the people who were once alive just moments before. What caused it? I was sickened, and I resisted the urge to let fear get a hold of me.

  Oh, God, what happened? This is The End.

  Lucifer had found a way to make it happen before God’s intended time and forced it upon the world. I watched as another demon on a chariot rapidly approached me. I pulled my sword and charged forward to attack. Lucifer may have brought about the end of the world, but I would make him and all who served him pay for it.

  As I sprang forward and brought my sword through the demon’s throat it passed right through him as if I wasn’t there. I landed on my feet as the demon rode on, oblivious to how close he had come to being extinguished from existence.

  As he rode, he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Hail Lucifer, our dark lord, who has finally overcome The One.”

  This is madness! How did I not even grab him let alone my sword pass through him and not remove his head from his shoulders? I can’t save anyone, nor can I even attack the demons.

  Then I realized exactly where I was. I had found myself in a vision from on high. From the looks of it, Jesus had to be warning me of something that was coming.

  What are you saying, Lord?

  I heard no response.

  Lord, please tell me what you want me to know!

  I quietly waited for his still, small voice, but again heard nothing but the cackling of demons as they raced around praising Lucifer. Then I looked up toward the massive column of smoke in the distance. Whatever was in that column had to be responsible for the removal of oxygen in the atmosphere as well as life from the surrounding area. I planned on finding out whatever that thing was, but I decided to check for survivors or clues as to what was going on as I made my way.

  Each person I passed looked like all the life had been drained out of every pore on their body and formed a pool of their own dried blood around them. Each person’s skin was blackened and clung tight to the victim’s bones. Whatever was in the air had killed everything, because as I walked down what was left of a city street, the ground wasn’t just littered with human bodies, but also dead animals and plants. The farther I walked, the more death I saw. It wasn’t fair. Those people deserved better than that. They were simply going about their day, and in a moment, their lives were ripped from them—violently and suddenly.

  How could Lucifer cause this much death and destruction so quickly?

  “Hahahahahahahaha...”

  I knew the source of that laughter, and it came from the column of green smoke. I decided not to waste any more time as I raced toward the column. I didn’t worry about being spotted since I only seemed to be along for the ride in the encounter. When I arrived at the source of the smoke, I saw a large metal cylinder with what looked like four giant turbine engines that pumped the green smoke forcefully through the air. There was also a large device that looked like some kind of silo, but had the mark of the radiation triangle sign. It must have been what powered the chamber and turbines since the area I was in appeared to be the woods, based on all the dead and broken trees that surrounded the device.

  I heard the laughter again as Lucifer stepped out from th
e shadows and basked in the joys of his apparent victory over The Lord. His long blond hair flowed down to the shoulders of his black armor, coupled with a long red cape. He had his sword pointed up as he looked toward the sky, ready for a fight. He dared Jesus to come down and face him as he released a string of profanities and blasphemies toward the heavens.

  “Yes! Yes! Just a little more now! Keep going,” he shouted out.

  I watched in horror as Lucifer, filled with authority and pure delight, basked in the glory of the mayhem he created. Then a shudder passed through my very being, and I knew Lucifer had just accomplished the fullness of what he had set out to do from the beginning of his banishment.

  “It is finished! Do you hear me? It is finished, and you couldn’t stop me this time. There’s nothing you can do now because all your precious children belong to me. I have proven your word to be fallible, and you to be a false god. I am the only true god of this world. Death, come forward and look upon all you have wrought.”

  The machine’s large four turbines started winding down, and I heard the sound of pressure being released as the door to the cylinder opened with a hissing sound as the figure inside stepped out. At first, I couldn’t see who it was because the smoke hid their face, but I knew this being had just ended all life on Earth as I knew it.

  No, it couldn’t be. The Lord had limited his ability to work among men. This type of thing shouldn’t have been possible.

  As the smoke cleared, I knew exactly beyond the shadow of any doubt who stood before me. There was only one evil being that dressed like one of Earth’s classical composers because he viewed his work to be equal to a divinely written symphony.

  Death.

  At that moment, I knew exactly what the two of them had done. The Lord had limited Death’s power among his children so he couldn’t kill everyone all at one time, but the machine he was in somehow amplified his power and abilities. That machine had aided Death in bringing about the end of the world.

  Lucifer called out. “Well done, my good and faithful servant. With your help and the use of your precious gift, we have ended all life on this miserable rock. We have completely proven false The One’s favored book.”