“Yes, He became something else.”
“So did He, like, make you?” Bobby asked, his curiosity pushing him haphazardly forward.
“No one made me!” Sin boomed, his new body still housed the same power and the same hate.
Shit! Stupid question.
“Of course Master!” Bobby groveled. “I just…like…I’m totally blown away by all this.”
Sin simmered.
Bobby waited anxiously, wishing he’d had that third beer as he studied Sin 3.0. The tripod of oddly jointed legs, covered in a thin coat of fine, mustard-yellow hair, supported a torso as bald as a baby’s ass and just as pink. Two long arms dangled from narrow shoulders, the pincer-like digits on the end of each one plucked at the frayed hem of the toga apprehensively. Perched awkwardly on its thin neck, the creature’s dis-proportioned head was as smooth as glass. The oversized eye that dominated its face stared at everything and nothing at once.
No way is this guy going to battle as a Disney reject. It has to be a test or something.
“Master?”
“Speak.”
“I don’t think you should go up there like that.”
Sin didn’t budge, his sole eye studied the Reaper.
Sooooooo creepy.
“Why?” Sin asked.
“You look vulnerable Master. If they were to attack us, then…well…I’m sure this form is capable but…” Bobby tried to steer clear of forecasting the demon’s demise. “I…I think it …you might be better off…”
The tiny mouth tucked beneath Sin’s huge eyes curled into a smile and the oddity immediately began to morph. Bulging and growing, in the space of seconds, Sin returned to the snazzy suited, buff, surfer model Bobby had first encountered. His handsome face brightened into a dazzling smile. “Good Mr. Grant, very good. I was right to believe that you are loyal to me.”
Bobby returned the smile, it was one of pure relief at having passed yet another of the devil’s tests.
“My scythe!” Sin roared, the force of the cry forced Bobby to step back.
Fujibashya scurried into the dining room carrying his new master’s huge weapon across his shoulders. The ninja wore the robes of a Reaper and looked even smaller wrapped in the nefarious cloth. Twelve more Reapers, all of similar size, filed in after Fujibashya and lined up behind him. Sin plucked the scythe from the warrior’s shoulders and it immediately shrunk to fit his hand. Fujibashya bowed and backpedaled until in line with his clan of killers.
“Be ready. Do nothing until I give the order,” Sin advised his new entourage. “Victory shall set you free but the last three hundred years will seem pleasurable compared to what awaits you if you fail me.”
The thirteen ninja Reapers bowed as one in response to the little pep talk.
Shit! Not good! Not good at all.
“Good idea Master,” Bobby cheered as enthusiastically as his fear would allow.
Sin grinned and winked, a big fan of ass kissing. “Just in case, can’t be too careful with so much at stake. Come on son, let us go and claim what is mine.”
“Yes Master.”
Fuck.
9.
Gordon sat cross-legged on an orange stone, talking casually to Maria, who knelt facing him in the short teal grass of the rolling meadow that surrounded them. Bobby scanned the horizon for the Lenny and Roger’s honeymoon cabin. It was nowhere to be seen.
“Are we interrupting?” Sin called out.
Gordon unfolded his legs, stood and slowly stretched the old fisherman’s body he favored. “We have been waiting for you.”
He held out his hand, the Angel took it and He pulled her to her feet. At arm’s length, they stared at each other for a few seconds before embracing fiercely.
“Ain’t that just special?” Sin groaned, dabbing a non-existent tear. “You sure you don’t want to give her a quick farewell fuck. I have a minute to spare. It would be a shame to let that tasty bitch go to waste.”
Gordon didn’t bite. He didn’t even acknowledge the comment that irked Sin more than a rebuttal ever would. “Can I have a go then?” Sin pushed. “Just a quickie. I’ll take her ass if you’re picky about who uses the front door.”
Bobby’s rage burned but he buried it deep, hoping Sin couldn’t find it.
Gordon and Maria turned to face Sin and his Reaper. Holding hands, strengthening each other with their love, they looked both fearless and beautiful. “Where is your army?” Gordon asked.
Bobby’s eyes went wide.
“I have none,” Sin snarled as if insulted by the question. “I bring only my Reaper.”
“You were always a bad liar brother,” Gordon replied.
“Stop wasting time Esha. I did not come here to talk.”
“But we must,” Gordon insisted.
“Oh? And what is it you need to get off your chest? Are you going to beg for mercy? Are you going to try to weasel out of this? Are you going to concede?”
“I have something to tell you, something I should have told you a long time ago,” Gordon replied, let go of the Angel’s hand and walked toward Sin.
“No tricks brother,” Sin warned as he spun his scythe like a cheerleader to punctuate his point.
“No tricks,” Gordon agreed.
“So tell me this little secret of yours.”
Gordon stopped a few paces from Sin, looked the demon in the eyes and whispered, “We are not brothers.”
“What are you playing at?” Sin frowned. “You have called me brother since before time. Another lie! You have lied to me all along! You lie! You always lie!”
“You are right, I have called you brother as I call my Angels my children. They are titles born of love not of blood,” Gordon explained gently. “You and I are not brothers. We are blood.”
“What? This is bullshit! What are you playing at Esha?” Sin wasn’t catching on, or he refused to.
Oh shit! Holy moly! I feel a serious Star Wars moment coming on!
“Sin, I created you,” Gordon smiled lovingly as he revealed his truth. “You are my first. You are of me and by me.”
“Bullshit! Lies! More lies! I am a god! We are equal!”
“You are my son,” Gordon said exactly what Sin didn’t want to hear.
“No! No! No I am not! I am not! No! No! No!” Sin was having a full blown playground tantrum, stomping his feet as he marched in a tight circle and pounded on his thighs with his fists.
He raised his scythe suddenly and turned toward Gordon who stood a mere three steps from the frothing lunatic. “You lie! You’re trying to fool me. You want me to lash out and break our deal. I know you brother, I know your true heart, the one you hide, the one you fear. I would love to cut you down, to gut you like a pig and wear your guts as my prize. I could, it would be nothing.”
Gordon frowned and opened his arms to offer Sin the opportunity.
“More tricks!” Sin screamed, unravelling.
Gordon shook his head.
“I won’t fall for this, you can’t fool me brother. I will honor our pact and once that bitch is meat I will savor your death. I will draw it out over eons! I will make a masterpiece of your suffering!”
“As you wish my son,” Gordon replied and bowed before turning his back to rejoin his tensely waiting Angel.
“I am not your son!” Sin erupted. “I cannot be! I am not!”
Gordon reached Maria and smiled at her lovingly.
“Do not ignore me!” Sin cried out, his rage and his frustration were overwhelming him.
Dude’s going to blow his stack!
Sin glared at Gordon through eyes blackened by hate yet despite his anger and loathing he craved answers more. Gordon read him like any father would his only son, turned to him and answered the unasked query, “You were my first creation. I used Yoba to make you, this place is your mother. I gave you my strength and my power but I failed to give you what you needed most of all. I failed you my son. I tried to make you as I was but I could not. Before you I had nothing to lov
e and so love did not exist. There was an emptiness in me, in everything, an emptiness that I could not understand. I knew there had to be more. I knew there had to be something wonderful that had yet to reveal itself. I tried and failed to create it. I had nearly lost the will and the want to keep trying but then I made you.
“You, my son, were the answer. You, Sin, changed everything. I discovered love only after creating you. You and I, we created love. Our love was the first. Our love was the beginning.”
“No! I never loved you! I hated you from the first moment I saw you!” Sin roared and shook his head like a dog with a rat in his jaws. “Liar! You liar!”
“You are the reason love came to be but I created you without it. How could I give you what I had yet to conceive?” tears streamed down the old man’s wrinkled cheeks and into his dense beard as he confessed his greatest failure. “I tried to teach you but I could not. You are not capable of it, there is something missing in you that prevents it from taking root inside you. It is all my fault. This…this is all my fault. I was lonely and bored and selfish but I was also ignorant. Ignorant of consequence, ignorant of life’s consequences, ignorant of the reality of creation and ignorant of my responsibility to that which I created.”
In agony for what he had done, for what His one act of selfishness had cost. Maria stood at His side, her face wrought with pity. She wrapped one arm around the old fisherman’s shoulder to comfort him.
“I don’t believe any of it,” Sin grunted but he did, he couldn’t hide it.
“You do,” Gordon called his bluff. “I think you always knew.”
“You are so weak! So pathetic! I am none of it! I am fear! I am hate! I am Sin!”
“You are but it is only because of me.”
“What? That doesn’t even make any sense you fool.”
“I was never able to point out the flaws that surfaced as you grew. I loved you so deeply, so unconditionally and I wanted the same from you. I didn’t want to control you but I should have. I should have steered you away from the darkness you so eagerly sought. I should have guided you toward the good, toward peace and happiness but I could not. I thought at first, since you were of me, the good in you would rise up and would you. I was wrong. The hate grew instead, the darkness. I am sorry my son. I gave you life but failed to instill in you what you needed to live it.”
“I have conquered life and death,” Sin boasted. “I have done more than you could ever do.”
“All you do is fueled by hate. There is nothing in you but hate. All you have created, all you have done is mine to bear because I gave you the power to do it. I let you build your Hell and I let you take the lost to fill it. I thought if you had creatures in your care that you would eventually learn to love them but I failed to see then that it was outside of your power to do so.
“I sacrificed the souls of uncountable innocents to sow the seeds of love in soil incapable of growing it. I gave when I should have taken. I only wanted to make you happy my son, I only wanted you to find love, to find some way to love me as I love you. Sin, my son, please forgive me for I have failed you.”
“Forgive you? There is no need. It pleases me to know that you suffer. I’m hard imagining you, the Almighty God the Father, sitting around worrying about me when all I do is fantasize about killing you. You are pathetic Esha. I’ll tell you a little secret since that seems to be the game you want to play. I never want to be anyone but me. I do love brother, even though you think I cannot. I love me! I love to hate! I love to kill! I love to make things suffer! I love the screaming and the moaning, the begging and the pleading, the wailing and the crying. I love watching them break. I love watching them die. I love it all! All of it! All of me! If I could change one thing about myself, it would not be to love as you do, it would be to hate even more.”
Gordon looked away from the ranting maniac, unable to watch his son rejoice at his greatest failure.
“What’s the matter dad? Not the son you always dreamed of? Not a chip off the old block? Thanks but no thanks. One giant, sniveling weakling is more than enough. Here’s another little secret, just like I was your biggest mistake, you are mine. I should have killed you as soon as I realized how weak you.” Sin was on a roll and kept on rolling, “The best thing that ever happened to me was when you banished me. Having a place to hone my craft, to feed my power, to grow in every way, to know fear in every form, it made me what I am. It opened my eyes to the truth.”
“Truth?” Gordon bit. “What truth?”
“My truth,” Sin replied, his grin widening. “Would you like to hear it?”
Gordon nodded.
This should be good.
“Fear is more powerful than love,” Sin whispered as if his words were too great to say out loud. “Fear is the most powerful thing of all. He who evokes fear is far greater than he who begs for love.”
Gordon looked at him with immeasurable pity, shaking his head slowly.
“You cannot deny it!” Sin roared. “Fear is power! Hate is power! Look at what hate has done to me! Witness how fear has empowered me! Look at me Esha! Look at what my hate for you has done!”
Gordon wept openly then, knowing no matter what He said or did, He could never fix His son. Sin wasn’t broken, his flaws rooted instead in faulty design. He was incapable of love. There was a void in him where love should live. A vacuum filled now with absolute odium. Consumed by it, content to thrive on the terror and misery it brought, it was as much a part of him as his flesh and as vital as his heart. “I am so very sorry my son,” Gordon whispered.
“Yes you are. You are a sorry old man, and you will die begging for forgiveness you will never receive.”
The two gods stared at each other for a long time. The gaze of one carried sympathy and love, the other hatred and fury.
“Enough of this nonsense!” Sin broke the silence. “Let’s do what we came here to do.”
“As you wish,” Gordon agreed, wiping away tears with both hands.
“Did you bring your sword?” Sin’s excitement shook his words.
“Yes,” Gordon nodded at Maria who held the blade at her side.
“Ready boy?” Sin asked, handing Bobby the triple-tipped sword.
“Yes, my Master,” Bobby lied, hefting the wicked blade in both hands.
*
“I have a proposition,” Gordon announced.
You gotta be fucking kidding me.
“More lies?” Sin eyed him suspiciously.
“An offer.”
“A last ditch effort to save your ass you fucking coward? Why am I not surprised? You were always so spineless brother!”
“We fight. You and I. No champions,” Gordon tossed a massive, juicy chunk of fresh bait into the barrel. “The winner will have it all, there will be no one left to stand in their way.”
Big bait, big fish.
“To the death?” Sin almost swallowed it whole.
“Yes.”
Sin tossed his head back and roared at the swirling silver clouds high in the popsicle orange sky, filling the colorful countryside with madness. Gordon waited. Maria fidgeted. Bobby watched, hoping the demon hadn’t felt the hook.
“Look at you Esha, look at what you’ve become. So desperate, so weak and so utterly tragic,” Sin cried, tantalized but skeptical. “Why brother? Why so brave, and so eager to fight? Why now?”
“There has been too much suffering. I have caused too much suffering. The suffering of all those you have claimed consumes me. Those poor unfortunates I abandoned to feed your addiction were not mine to give. I cannot carry it anymore. I cannot let the innocents pay for my weakness any longer. I cannot let them suffer because of my mistakes. It has to end. You have to end.”
“Oh my, big talk,” Sin teased. “So you need me to save you? How ironic don’t you think?”
“No Sin, you need me,” Gordon needed to set the hook. “You can never be me as long as I am. If fear is the source of your power, as you say it is, then defeating me will besto
w upon you the greatest motive for fear ever imagined.”
Sin heard the truth in Gordon’s words and was powerless to reject it. The idea of becoming more than he was, of becoming greater than all and everything, was all and everything he ever wanted. “I accept!” he roared, morphing once again into the scale clad, black horned devil of nightmares, growing until he towered over Bobby who quietly retreated from his side.
I really hope you know what you’re doing Gordo.
“Come on then brother, let’s see what time has done to you!” Sin roared, pounding his chest with the flat of his scythe’s blade.
“My Lord?” Maria whispered, terrified by what stood before them.
“Don’t worry child, I created him and I can destroy him,” Gordon assured her, smiled and held out his hand for the sword she held. “Now stand aside but stand ready, he will cheat.”
Maria obeyed reluctantly, drawing her own sword as she backpedaled, her eyes fixed on the bloodthirsty beast.
“Don’t go too far bitch,” Sin hissed. “I love a good victory fuck.”
Maria said nothing, her jaw clenched with revulsion and fear.
“Grant!” Sin shouted, holding out one massive hand.
Bobby sprinted back to the monster’s side and exchanged the sword for his scythe. The massive weapon was too heavy for the Reaper, slipped from his grip and fell with a thud into the strange grass. Sin took no notice, he had bigger fish to fry.
*
“You look ridiculous,” Gordon said.
“I am fear!” Sin growled.
“I do not fear this thing. Maybe children might but I do not. Why don’t you face me on equal ground? Are you afraid? We agreed our champions would, should the same rules not apply to us? Am I so frightening that you need to hide inside that thing?”
“You reek of fear Esha! Fear of me.”
“No Sin, I do not. We have already been through this. I can match it, we can change forms, topping each other until time is lost but we will be no closer to an end. If you are too afraid to meet me as an equal then…”
“I do not fear you! I fear nothing!”
“Human then, since this all started in one of their worlds.”
Death Sucks Page 50
