by A.J. Aaron
“Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.”
Marcus Aurelius
29
Aysel slugged her wine down and put the cup in the garbage. “Let’s head to the cathedral.” We started to walk back toward the cathedral. Michael appeared alongside her in full battle regalia—all seven feet tall, red blond hair, gold armor, massive pearlescent wings, and drawn sword.
Aysel touched his arm. “Thank you, Michael. Seth is here somewhere. I was just going to tell Sevi and Leyna about the cathedral.” She headed off in a trot and spoke as she ran.
“The cathedral is a safe zone for us. Even though evil started the mess here long ago with the Hussite war and evil created the Crusades, the good gods have seen that the churches and places of worship are spaces where evil isn’t allowed. Much as I did with our mansion and property.”
As we followed her and Michael, I saw the boy from my dream.
Aysel said, “There he is. Thank God you’re here, Michael.”
The boy was sitting on the back of a man who had been tying his shoe before he was frozen in time. The boy was about ten years old, with red, curly hair, a freckled face, ripped jeans, torn sneakers, and a tee shirt with, “Try it and see!” written on it. He was smoking a black cigar.
As we approached, Aysel described who he was. “This is Seth, an evil demon god. He’s thousands of years old and has taken a liking to representing himself as a young boy, which he thinks masks his evilness. The cigar helps mask the evil stench he carries from the side of the energy he taps into. Remember, evil has to exist for us to exist. He is one of many.
Aysel addressed the disgusting demon. “Hello, Seth, you old fart. What brings you to pay us this visit?”
Seth puffed on his cigar, tapping the ash into the hair of the man he was sitting on. He gave a little boy’s laugh as he did.
“I love stopping time and doing this shit to these unawakened simpletons. Should have seen when I moved them around, arranging husbands to hold hands with hookers, and their wives to kneel in front of guys I set up like that boy statue with their pants unzipped. They had a fit when they came to. But, I’m getting off the subject. I just love my job, I guess. The reason for the visit is to greet your new protégés.”
“How nice of you. That doesn’t seem appropriate behavior for your type, though.” Aysel knocked the ashes off the head of the man and pulled Seth up to get him off the man’s back.
“Hey, watch it, bitch! Don’t go touching me!” Seth’s young voice rang out as he jumped back and forth from foot to foot, while he waved and swung tiny fists at Aysel as if to hit her.
He straightened his tee shirt and sucked a puff off the cigar. He blew smoke into Aysel’s face. “I came to see this Leyna bitch was really on your side. All that work I did with her dad to get him to do those things to her in so many lives. I thought for sure I would get her on my side, until Sevilen here healed her. The way her body is now, she’d be a perfect fit for my side.” He winked at Leyna and licked the tobacco juice off his lips with a brown tongue as he grinned.
He turned his head and looked at me with piercing blue eyes from under angled red eyebrows, as if to burn me with them. “You ruined her for me.”
“For a while there, I’d have thought she might be a better fit for evil than good, too. Guess I did good, eh?”
“Yeah, good, that’s the problem! Do you know there is now a profundity of excess on the good side?”
“A profundity of excess? Big words for such a little boy. What extent might that profundity be?”
“There are now seven more of you guys than us! That’s got to be fixed!”
Aysel came back at him. “Maybe you should clone yourself. Of course, I can’t imagine seeing eight evil little boys running around in that ridiculous body. Why don’t you go play with that statue of the boy around the corner?”
“The one all the girls play with? I put that there.” Seth stood tall and pulled his shoulders back showing his pride. “It gets their minds going and gets them comfortable touching those parts. Nice, eh?”
“Real nice. So what do you plan to do about this profundity of imbalance?”
His voice turned deep, raspy, and took on a supernatural power. “I plan to get it corrected, one way or another!” He sneered at Michael and added, “If you hadn’t brought the big goon and his sword here I’d have corrected it already. I hope I ruined your day!” He smirked and left in a swarm of flies and stench.
Michael sheathed his sword, waved, and disappeared. Everyone started moving. The man tying his shoe held his back as he stood with a wince on his face, then brushed his hair from his face, and gave a strange look to his wife.
Aysel shook her head as we stared all stared at one another. We were lost as to what to do and what danger this put us in.
Leyna moved closer to Aysel and asked, “Can he harm us?”
“He could kill us, or just plain make a mess. Because they can put themselves in harm’s way, it’s not often the opposite sides of the gods interfere with each other. We all have rules to obey. Seth may not care if he breaks the rules and loses his life, since he’s such a fanatic. He can be like those crazy religious zealots the world has. Not everyone on his side is like him, though, so he may get resistance from them.
“Let’s go home where we’re shielded and he can’t get in. We need to figure this out. This is the first real god problem for you two to work on; if we’re to have any freedom now that Seth is after us.”
Aysel took each of our hands. Leyna kissed me on the lips and said, “I love you.” Then, I felt my skin crawl.
