Death Sucks
Page 47
“You broke it,” Gordon agreed.
“We must make a new one then,” Sin lowered his voice, forgoing anger for shameful resign.
“You must be banished and Hell must be destroyed,” Gordon revealed his brother’s only option.
No fucking way! You have got to be kidding me!
“Lord,” Maria spoke both their minds. “You cannot trust him again.”
“He is my brother,” Gordon replied without looking at her.
Sin smiled, “Will you forgive me brother?”
Gordon’s brow creased. He wanted so badly to do just that, to give to his brother what he gave to all others so freely. Sin didn’t want it, he had no remorse for all he had done, no guilt for the atrocities and no empathy for his victims. Forgiveness was nothing to him but a free pass to do it all again. Forgiveness could not expel the evil that lived inside him. “I cannot,” Gordon replied sadly.
“Hypocrite! Liar! Fraud! Deceiver!” Sin roared.
Jones whined like a dog in need of a walk. Scythe high, he readied for the violence he thrived on.
“You do not want it. You will not change. You mean to poison my world as you did all the others. You mean only to corrupt every heart and to pollute every existence with the sickness of hate that burns inside you,” Gordon confessed his truth. “I’m sorry Sin but you are not worthy of forgiveness and I fear you never will be.”
“Then die!” Sin cried as his lust for blood broke free of its bonds.
The beast sprung, slashing wildly, his deadly claws ripped through the storm in search of flesh. Jones followed, his battle cry as fiendish as his intentions. Gordon didn’t even flinch. Bobby and Maria readied themselves for the onslaught but it never came. Sin bounced awkwardly off an unseen barrier and crashed into a wind sculpted mound of snow. The same invisible wall halted Jones’s attack as his hate twisted face collided with nothing and sent him stumbling backwards, his resolve as splintered as his nose.
“It is useless brother,” Gordon explained as Sin rose to his feet. “Surrender, there is no need for this.”
“I will not be defeated! I will not surrender!” Sin attacked again.
Charging with his scythe high, the weapon morphed as he closed. Its long handle shrunk and thickened, the blade grew and spread into the head of an axe as big as a banquet table. The beast screamed as he drove it down toward the sorrowful old man and his trembling Angels. The massive blade shattered like glass with the force of Sin’s strength and Gordon’s shield. Sin howled in frustration as his every muscle bunched, his eyes bulged, his nostrils flared and drool leaked from his hateful, desperate sneer.
“I can send you home,” Gordon offered. “Yoba can be yours, you can find peace there.”
“Never!” Sin cried but it held something it had not held before, doubt.
Sin was beginning to realize that his brother was indeed more powerful than he was, that no matter the weapon or the hand that wielded it, he was never going to drive it through the heart he hated so completely. “I hate you,” he growled.
“I love you,” Gordon answered, his words overburdened with such compassion and such remorse he could barely voice them.
Bobby was amazed at the old man’s determination to love something that offered him nothing worthy of it. Maria thought her god was more magnificent than she had ever imagined.
“You must take what I offer you Sin. Please, I do not want to end you,” Gordon continued, his reluctance to fulfill the threat was etched plainly on his face.
Sin chuckled, he knew his brother was a slave to his heart, “So kill me.”
Gordon’s eyes locked on those of the monster who goaded him to deny his every instinct, to go against all that he was. He couldn’t.
“Fool!” Sin cried in victory. “You weak, miserable fool!”
Gordon lowered his head. Sin was right.
*
“Love is a sickness and you are riddled with it. It has you fevered with its venom, as helpless as a babe, as timid as a mouse.” Sin cackled as he circled the unseen shelter and its tenants. “Love, I have done all I can to destroy it. I have thwarted your perfect worlds! I steal your souls! I torture your innocents and still you stand here impudent! You are so weak! You sicken me! You are no god! You are unworthy of all who worship you so blindly! A spineless, gutless, cowardly piece of shit, that is what you are brother. I will not stop until I have destroyed all you’ve created, all you love and all you dream of. I will destroy you and all who follow the idiotic notion you call love.”
Gordon said nothing. Sin was evil and there was nothing he could do to cleanse him of it, nothing he could say to save him.
“So brother, we are at a stalemate once again,” Sin goaded. “You must either kill me or fuck off and leave me alone.”
“Yes,” Gordon agreed causing Bobby to turn on him so fast that the Reaper’s head nearly spun from its perch.
“You can’t be serious?” Bobby growled.
Gordon smiled timidly and turned back to his brother. “You will be banished.”
“No thanks,” Sin rejected the sentence. “We have a pact.”
“We do not,” Gordon explained. “You broke it.”
“You broke it,” Sin accused with a malicious smile.
“I did no such thing,” Gordon rebuked angrily, he was not used to having to defend himself.
“Then explain why a Reaper stands beside you and why a dead priest lies at our feet?” Sin folded his arms across his chest and waited like a school teacher who knew the student incapable of answering the question asked. “A dead priest whose death you knew about well before it happened.”
Gordon didn’t keep him waiting and he didn’t take the zero, “The Reaper is one of yours, if he broke our pact it is on you.”
What the blue blazing fuck is going on here Gordo? You just threw me under a whole fucking parade of buses! Big ones!
“And the fat priest?” Sin asked and kicked the corpse, a miniature avalanche cascaded from Father John’s beer and bacon belly.
“I know when and where all will die. I have always known but I do not share it as you have done,” Gordon revealed. “My Angels obey the rules of our agreement as I have even as you scheme and connive to break them.”
“You knew? You knew all along!” Bobby cried out in shock. “You knew all the crazy fucked up shit was going on and you just let it happen.”
“Bobby,” Maria put her hand on the Reaper’s shoulder to calm him but he shrugged it off infuriated by what he’d just realized.
“You lied to me! You lie!” Bobby shouted in the fisherman’s stupefied face. “You’re a fucking liar just like that thing!”
“I did not lie to you Robert,” Gordon shed his surprise and regarded Bobby with his usual loving smile. “I only listened to what you had to say.”
“What?” Bobby tried to recall their conversations but his mind was too clouded by rage. “You…you fucking played me! You used me!”
“I listened and I heard you, I saw you. I had to be sure you were not on his side, I had to keep some of what I know from you to protect all those who depend on me to do so.” Gordon explained gently.
Bobby wasn’t buying it. “You played me dude! You fucking played me!”
Sin burst into laughter and Jones echoed the cry. “You’re just a pawn you silly prat!” the Englishman cried in rank delight.
“Fuck you!” Bobby reacted, his rage had reached its boiling point.
“Robert?” Gordon tried to soothe him with words, words the Reaper didn’t want to hear.
“Fuck you too!” Bobby barked.
“Bobby!” Maria reacted.
“Fuck you too bitch! Fuck you all!” Bobby turned to face the Angel. “Did you know? Were you in on it, in on the big con to fuck with my head until he had me eating out of his hand, until I did exactly what he wanted?”
Maria’s eyes answered before her mouth could find the words.
“Really?” Bobby cried as he teetered on the edge of s
anity. “What the fuck Maria? Why didn’t you tell me? It was supposed to be you and me! It was supposed to…you were…fuck! It was all just a game to you, a fucking mission! Fuck!”
Jones fell onto his ass in a seizure of pure delight while bellowing callous laughter as he rolled in the snow as if being tickled by it. Sin smiled was so wide it almost split his head in two. Bobby looked from one face to the next until he’d seen what he had been blind to before. Satan and his bastard, God and his bitch, all of them had been pulling his stings, steering him, pushing him, luring him, teasing him, and just plain old fucking with him from the very start.
I’m so fucking stupid! I’m such a stupid fucking asshole!
He had tried to do the right thing. Yeah, it was in his own best interest but it was also for the good of all mankind and every other kind. What it all boiled down to was that he was an expendable player in a game he knew nothing about. He should’ve kept his head down, taken his punishment, whether he deserved it or not, and let the two selfish ass-wipes figure out all their godly family shit all by themselves.
No good deed goes unpunished! Now I get it! Now I fucking get it!
“You know what? You two assholes deserve each other! One twisted, power crazed psycho and one holier-than-thou, egotistical mind-fucker! Perfect match! Fucking perfect!”
“Bobby!” Maria cried in anguish.
“You too! You act all innocent and nice and sweet but you’re not, you’re not even one of those things. Was I just a mark? Did you even tell this prick what I went through? How hard I worked, how much I risked for you, for him? Did you even try to explain my situation? What about Roger and Lenny? Are they just pawns too? Did you toss them aside as soon as I left? Jordan and Jackie? Just a little collateral damage I guess, no biggie right? They meant nothing to you guys! Right? Nothing! Just pieces in your sick fucking game! Fuck you, you lying heartless bitch! Fuck you! Fuck him! Fuck this!”
Bobby stormed away from the Angel and from god toward Satan.
“Bobby no!” Maria screamed but did not follow him knowing that to leave the safety of her Lord’s protection would be a death sentence.
Seeing Bobby abandon the shield Jones immediately charged. Bobby expected it and turned to watch him come, dropping his scythe soundlessly into the snow and closing his eyes to await the inevitable.
Get me the fuck out of here Jones! Do it you useless piece of shit!
“Wait!” Sin commanded and Jones froze but not by his own will, he lacked the power to control such hate.
Bobby opened his eyes so see the Reaper petrified midstride, the blade of his scythe a mere six inches from his face. “Come here boy,” Sin beckoned.
Bobby picked up his scythe and obeyed.
The maroon-scaled monster had grown with his rage. At least fifteen feet tall he looked down at five foot, eight inch Bobby with the curiosity of a cat trying to decide the best way to toy with his mouse. “Do you see him now?” he asked intimately. “Do you see what he truly is?”
Bobby turned, studied the old fisherman for a brief moment before answering without a shred of doubt, “I see a liar. I see a cheat. I see a selfish asshole with an ego the size of New fucking Jersey.”
Sin smiled wicked and wide.
“That motherfucker needs to go,” Bobby added.
“Robert!” Gordon called. “Don’t let hate have you. You are good Robert, you have a good heart!”
Bobby reeled, scythe trembling under the pressure of his white knuckled grip, “And look where that got me! You see this fucking robe bro? Do you even know what it feels like to have every inch of your skin poked and prodded by this fucking thing twenty-four seven? Look at me, look at this thing!” -He shook his weapon as he said it- “Look at what they made me! Where were you when that prick had a good old time torturing me? Where were you when they hung me upside down, cut my throat and drained every drop of my blood? Where were you when I was fighting a Russian mob queen, a toothless gaucho with a taste for human flesh and an Aboriginal warrior with a major chip on his shoulder to protect your precious innocents? Where were you? Where the fuck were you then?”
Gordon watched helplessly as Bobby worked himself into a frenzy as he recalled all he had done, all he had suffered only to discover it was for nothing.
“Nothing? Nada? No speech? No explanation? No quaint little story?” Bobby’s patience had left the building. “No? Well fuck you then!”
Gordon closed his eyes in shame. Maria cried.
“Do you not see it girl?” Sin asked the weeping Angel. “Can’t you see him for what he is? He is a lie. Everything he says, everything, it is all lies.”
Loathing narrowed the Angel’s eyes pushing more tears from their corners.
“He has fooled you all,” Sin continued. “You all think he is this infallible being, a virtuous spirit, love with legs but he is no such thing, not even close. He is a beast just like me. The only difference is that he hides his true self behind this veil of lies. He pretends that all he cares about are his creations but that’s bullshit as Mr. Grant likes to say. He demands their love, their allegiance and their servitude. Deny him and he will cast you out. Withhold him the adoration he so desperately desires, the glory and the devotion for which he craves and you will see the true monster lurking inside him.”
Maria looked at Gordon, her unconditional love tainted by doubt. Gordon smiled his same gentle smile and shook his head in denial of his brother’s claim.
“He’s full of shit!” Bobby added with the venom of scorn. “He played you too, he played all of us. Seriously, look at him, the Gordon’s fucking fisherman! All he’s done is take, think about it. He dragged us all the way out to Orient Point, why? So he could do a little fishing while we froze our asses off? Who does that? He didn’t care about how we felt, how scared we were, nothing! How about when he told you to kill me. Did he ask you how it made you feel? He didn’t. He’s a taker Maria, all he does is take. Greedy Gordo over there is no better than this guy but at least with this guy you know where you stand. With Sin, what you see is what you get. With that prick it’s like boxing with the invisible man.”
Maria never took her eyes off the old fisherman while Bobby had his say. With the storm raging around him, Gordon looked small and frail, battered by his enemy’s animosity and their claims. “Is any of it true my Lord?” she asked nervously.
“No,” Gordon replied, his words and his eyes unwavering.
Maria turned to Bobby, “You heard him Bobby and he can’t lie remember.”
“Says who?” Bobby roared.
Maria stared at the Reaper for a long few moments. She could not find it in her heart to hate him but anger was a different story. She was pissed, super pissed in fact. Bobby had flipped, he’d joined Sin and seemed pretty comfortable at his side. It was like it was no big deal, like throwing away everything they’d worked for, everything they shared was like tossing yesterday newspaper in the trash. “I’m with Gordon,” she snapped angrily.
“Stupid bitch!” Bobby shouted.
*
“Since you and I seem incapable of settling this ourselves why not let these two do it for us?” Sin squeezed Bobby's shoulder as he offered his proposal.
“What?” Maria reacted as if stung.
“Your bitch against my Reaper, to the death,” Sin continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “The winner takes the living worlds and your precious Heaven, the loser is banished to Hell and never allowed to set foot anywhere else ever again.”
“No! No way!” Maria demanded Gordon to refuse but he never took his eyes off Sin.
“I don’t think I can,” Bobby whispered over his shoulder.
Sin squeezed harder, digging the tips of his claws into the Reaper’s flesh to quiet his doubt. Sin was sure the Angel’s heart would betray her, that her love for his young Reaper would cripple her when the time to kill arrived.
“What about that one?” Maria, desperately scrambling for an alternative, pointed at the still frozen Jones.
“Yes my Master,” Bobby replied without hesitation.
He trudged through the thick carpet of snow, sliding his hands up the handle of his scythe until he held the blade as he did. “Payback’s a fucking bitch asshole,” Bobby sneered and slowly pushed the wicked point into the Englishman’s guts.
Sin released the impaled Reaper’s head to better enjoy his misery and Jones did not disappoint. He howled in agony but Bobby only heard the sweet sound of long awaited revenge. Iron scraped spine. Bobby stopped pushing and began sawing across Jones’s belly to liberate his innards as requested. Black guts sloshed from the gaping wound and onto the snow. There was no steam or no sizzle, the entrails were as cold as they were useless. Jones kept screaming, begging his Master for mercy. None was given. Bobby stepped back as the unraveling intestines cascaded, nudging them when they slowed to insure he’d gotten them all. Satisfied, he stepped back, hoisted his weapon, blew the whimpering Reaper a kiss and lopped off his head with one swift stroke. “Master,” he said and bowed deeply before Sin.
Sin beamed with pride. “Now we have one champion each brother, shall we finish this?” he asked as he turned to Gordon again.
“No!” Maria cried and stepped between the gods to face hers and force him to acknowledge her.
He didn’t, “I accept.”
Maria gasped as if gut punched. Bobby closed his eyes to hide his fear.
“Maybe there’s a set of nuts dangling between those legs after all,” Sin sneered in victory.
Gordon stared in silence for a few moments before adding to the inconceivable, “I want more.”
Sin’s expansive brow creased but his devious smile remained.