So I gotta to fuck his manuscript up. Piece o’ piss, mate.
* * *
“They can torture you, kill you – but they can’t destroy the truth. Only rewrite it. But that only works if there are writers like you. Scribes who blind themselves to what they know to be true, who willingly rewrite history.” He sighed; a bloody exhalation. “There was a book. Written two centuries ago, with a year as its title. A title and a warning. It contains the words: ‘who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.’ Ask yourself that question, because it’s never been more relevant than now, in the world we live in. A world where the ability to read and write is forbidden except for the chosen few, to prevent the corruption of God’s word…imagine if the populace could hear stories. If you recorded the truth, and played it back to them.
“Now, let me tell you a story…about bombs and death from the sky. How the world ended with the press of a button…”
* * *
Fuckin’ dynamite. And the scribe’s believing it! Only a matter o’ time before that torturer steps in…no, he’s still staring at his feet. Looks like he believes as well…
(Continued discussion from the two men)
Yeah. Big trouble here, if the monk carries this out…
* * *
The parchment page was blank. The quill hovered over the creamy vellum, but Brother Jacob could not bring himself to press the nib on the page.
“’Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.’” His words sounded distant, alien, in the cell. A book, a work of fiction…how ridiculous was that? That scribes would write tales that were patently untrue – that their readers knew to be lies – rather than the interpretations of God’s will, the histories of His servants and their holy works?
It was a world you wouldn’t recognise, monk, the heretic had said. Can you imagine a time when there was no belief in God, no need for Him? That mankind lived and died by its own laws and customs, harnessed the power of the atom and rode chariots to the heavens? The seeds of destruction were sown in the soil of man’s potential for greatness. That’s the eternal story of humanity, the dichotomy between self-destruction and near godhood. We became our own gods, and created our own devils.
Truth will set you free. It is a personal one, but even if you are in the minority of one, the truth is still the truth.
“Your truth, heretic,” Brother Jacob whispered, and continued his task. “Without proof, you have nothing.”
There is proof. I recorded the location of the fallout shelter in the voicebox. If you could find it, follow the coordinates…you’d see what I’ve seen. Besides, you’ll need fresh batteries at some point…
He closed his eyes, refreshed the full memory of what he had seen and heard in the crypt, and repositioned his quill. The pain was stronger, a test of his commitment to his sacred task.
I will not falter, he told himself, as tears blurred his vision. I must not fail…
The parchment was an opaque blob, the characters blurred. He blinked away his tears, wiped his nose on the sleeve of his habit. The candle flickered, the wick dangerously low, but sunrise was not far away. The shadows encroaching upon him would soon be banished.
Except for one. A scuttling, rat-like shadow that moved faster than the others, despite the sack-like burden it carried. The same shadow he had seen in the crypt. As before, it was in the periphery of his vision, and a sideways glance would make it vanish, blur back into the massed shadows.
But this time, Brother Jacob knew it was no mere shadow, animated by his tired eyes and weary mind. He could hear its claws skittering on the walls it climbed, heard the soft thump the sack it carried on its back made. A chittering sound – a rodent’s chuckle – and then the smell of brimstone and sulphur pervaded the cell.
“Welcome, Titivillus.” Brother Jacob smiled. “Will I too succumb to the errors my brethren, past and present, made when they were engaged upon scribal duties? If the demons of Hell do not wish the heretic’s tale to be told, surely my task is a holy one. That is proof the man in the crypt is wrong.”
The scratching ceased. The shadow in the corner of his eye froze, and Brother Jacob pulled the guttering candle from the rusted holder. Ignoring the pain of his fingers he turned and threw the spiked candle holder at the shadow.
“Begone, demon!”
The iron slammed into the wall. A squeak answered, and the shadow sharpened into focus, became a patch of mildew on the wall that danced in the dying flame of the candle. The perfume of Hell faded, replaced with nothing but the smell of old straw and ink. But there was something else.
Tiny tracks led from the mildew patch to the lancet window. He stood and walked over to the mantle, the pain in his knees forgotten.
The tracks were footprints. The feet of a rodent, trailed through blood.
Brother Jacob put a trembling ink-stained finger upon the nearest mark and wiped. He examined his fingertip in the faint, yellow light from the corrupted sun.
The blood was warm, relatively fresh, and could only have come from one place. He frowned, wiped the blood on his habit. Then he noticed the sack.
Hessian, the size of a large rat; small and ancient. Surely too small to be the sack that Titivillus would carry scribal errors in, with the names of the guilty monks, to be given to his demonic lord and master upon Judgement Day.
Closer inspection informed him that the leather strap had been weakened. The two sections were frayed, and it was the sharp movement of its bearer that had caused the weight within to shift, to pull on the strap and snap it. The sack was closed by a lazily knotted piece of cord that gave away easily to Brother Jacob’s gnarled fingers. He wrinkled his nose at the scent of mouldy parchment, and then frowned at the solitary object within.
A silver ingot that fit easily in the palm of his hand. The metallic surface caught the flame of the candle and the rays of diseased sunlight, turned them into dancing rainbows of light that were…beautiful.
Unfamiliar words on the side. A name of oriental origin with a corresponding character. Then the words PocketScribe T-679.
And next to the words, a row of plastic tiles engraved with the words REC, PLAY, FWD, REV...
Brother Jacob remembered the heretic’s words. How the world ended with…
“The press of a button.” Brother Jacob’s finger, still stained with blood and ink, hovered over the PLAY button, trembling and hesitant. An entire history, a work of the gospel, destroyed with a plastic tile…
He pressed the button. Jumped at the voice that spoke to him.
The silver ingot fell to the straw mattress of his cot, and the words were muffled. A hideous, scratchy voice that sounded simultaneously ancient and childishly young.
“Testing…testing…one, two, three. Yep, that’s working. Okay, how to begin?
“Hail, Belphegor, Lord and Master of the Seventh Level! Glorious Archmage of Hell, and Grand Demon of Scribes and Artists.”
Brother Jacob crossed himself.
“You fucking twat. Cocksucker.”
The monk’s mouth opened in astonishment.
“…to the fucker I’m gonna visit, this’d seem like witchcraft. He wouldn’t believe me if I told him it’s over one hundred years old and…ah, never mind. It’s not as though I’m gonna leave it here for him.”
Brother Jacob’s hands froze in the process of crossing himself a second time. He glanced over his shoulder, then remembered it was some time yet before Matins. The monks would not stir for a while yet.
He crept onto his cot, held the ingot close to his ear, and listened. He listened to the demon gleefully boast of the fate of Brother Paul. He listened to the words spoken between himself and the heretic. Listened to the demon speak of the other files on the machine, and what they told.
“Take a leaf outa my book, Jacob, ol’ son! It’s all right to take pride in yer work…”
“Pride,” he muttered. He held the box closer to his ear
and he looked out the window. The leprous yellow sunlight of dawn began to ooze over the Cloister Garden, and then illuminated the crushed rat-like thing that lay below his window.
The squashed corpse smouldered, its fur and flesh reeking of fire and sulphur, scorched by the fiery foot that had crushed it into the diseased grass. No, not a foot, he realised.
A claw.
A three-taloned claw the length of a man, its imprint marked by fire that faded before his eyes. The mud churned, and the body slowly disappeared, sucked down into the earth.
“…the rewards are great, but so are the punishments for failure. No mistakes, above or below…”
Within seconds, it was as though the fiery clawprint and the broken body of the demon had never existed. But they remained, forever burned into his mind. He smiled grimly.
So this is my Vision. My Revelation, rather; for even Satan will not tolerate pride in his minions when it leads to a fall.
“Too proud, Titivillus,” he said. “This time, the error is yours, not that of the scribe you were sent to torment.”
When the recording finished, and the location of the fallout shelter was burned into his memory, Brother Jacob examined the silver box further, impressed by its elegance and beauty. Even the object’s name – PocketScribe - spoke to him.
Hope you’re proud of yourself, the heretic had said.
Brother Jacob smiled. No, my friend. But hopefully, I will make you proud of me. This is your testament.
There will be no errors, and no further Fall.
He closed the door of his cell and waited for the sounds of monks chanting Matins to begin.
His finger hovered over REC.
He pressed the button.
U Is For Uphir
The Gatekeeper
Sean Sweeney
Lacy veils of smoke lingered around Uphir’s vestigial horns, unmoving even as the demon pounded the thick rubber stamp down on the next worthless request for health care coverage. His muscles rippled even under his blackened Seer Sucker suit as he shifted the form from one pile to the next, freeing up the next form for similar treatment. The skin near what served as his nose quivered, letting his incisors peek out from his pointy maw. His bloodshot eyes, redder than a crimson geyser, shone with fury as he worked, rejecting each claim one by fiery one.
He rolled those eyes and groaned as a fat pygmy demon, overloaded with unprocessed claims between his pudgy orange arms, staggered into the office. The pygmy dumped the forms on Uphir’s desk before he toddled off without another word to the HMO underlord.
Probably off for his coffee break, the lucky whelp, he thought.
“Lucifer help me,” he snarled, sending his gaze to the ceiling, shuffling between the glittering obsidian and pumice stalactites. They trembled under the stress of his terrible voice, but knew better than to break off and plunge to the floor near him. “I am going to roast my assistant and flail her flesh from her bones with hot barbed wire when she shows up tomorrow. How dare she suffer from a dribbly-nosed warm when I need her to do all of this?”
Uphir reached for the lit cigarette to his right. The unfiltered tube felt tiny between his fingers, the wisps of tobacco churning upward and away as he brought it to his dry, chapped lips. The long inhale filled his lungs with delicious poison before he let it out in a clumsy spray of gray. He snarled again, this time feeling the nicotine spread throughout his body.
In all ten thousand years—give or take a century or two in either direction—as the head of Hell’s HMO, the nine-foot-tall demon had administered his department with an iron fist and an even heavier rejection stamp. His job was to punt away the frivolous medical claims that crossed his desk, approving only the ones that had some merit. He could count on one pus-filled, necrotic claw how many times he had actually approved a claim—and that was after a visit by the Big Guy himself.
He grinned. Good old Lucifer, he thought, making sure I patch up his little playthings accordingly, bra straps and all.
Uphir stretched his legs, feeling the tendons and ligaments popping under the strain of sitting at this desk day after day for millennia. He reached for the stamp again, feeling his skin rip as he stretched. He stifled a wince before pounding the stamp on the ink, lathering it up in blue-tinged flame.
If only there was a way out of this hellhole, going-nowhere job, his thoughts continued as he denied another claim, and another, and another, I’d do so quickly. I’d shred my shirt-and-tie image, if only to save myself and my sanity.
He wondered what he could get away with in such little time. He wanted to get out from under the weight of Lucifer’s unforgiving heel. Despite his size and his need for an assistant, he wasn’t a full underlord of the underworld. He was a so-called little person, a grunt worker forced to do the menial tasks handed down from above—like stamping out and rejecting insurance claims. Even as he worked, the tremors of higher-ups’ voices called to him in a high-pitched squeal, making his ears smoke.
If only, he thought. If only.
Thump. Thump.
A shrill horn caused Uphir to look up from his tedious paperwork, which had threatened to drown him in potential paper cuts. 5 p.m., quitting time, had come instead, and the demon grinned. Thick saliva ran down his fangs, dripping onto his shirt with heavy plops. He dragged his wrist across his lips, then stood up, causing a crack that came from the vicinity of his knees to jar him with a grimace. A cold beer and a horny slave wench, preferably one whose breasts were still firm to the touch, called his name with tender whispers of sensual pleasure, while the living chair that bared his weight for eight hours immediately scurried away at speed, yearning for needed rest in a nearby rocky cubby-hole. Uphir’s clawed feet thudded away as he walked out of his workspace, ready for whatever came his way that night.
He walked down the fully-queued hallway, distracted by the tumult of thought that had cursed him for the past hour. He wondered if the number of claims waiting for him tomorrow would have grown in the overnight. He grumbled as the thought teased him, the dull roar coming from his gullet sending anyone walking toward him to shrink into the wall. Uphir wanted to silence the voices that catcalled and jeered him, but that would have involved bloodletting and pounding his skull against something hard. He didn’t want to break a horn. That would have been disgraceful, and more importantly, unsettling to the opposite sex.
His lip curled as he thought of potentially not getting any female demon poon due to a harrowing disfigurement.
Uphir walked on.
Voices in another cavern up ahead rose to the stalactites, the echoes carrying down the corridor. Uphir, as soon as he looked up, knew that something was happening—something that had immediate consequences on the underworld.
His sneer turned into a grin.
It is starting, he thought. The upheaval of Hell is starting!
Uphir used his mass and brute strength to swim through the crowd, shoving lesser demons aside with every swipe of his arms. He didn’t look back as they collided with the rock and crumpled to the smooth stone floor. They didn’t move again.
Uphir, though, did.
Within seconds he found himself at an observatory platform, looking down into the bowels of the large cavern below. Tendrils of steam from the vicious, wild-flowing river of lava gave the cavern the look of heavy morning fog, yet it was only a backdrop to what was really happening. Uphir heard the clashing of steel against steel, of blood-curdling screams, and the devilish roars from the gargantuan three-headed dog that stood chained in front of another passageway, one that no one had dared try to enter.
It was the passageway to Lucifer himself.
His heart thundered away as he grit his teeth and flung himself over the thick pythons that served as a railing. He dropped several stories, the wind buffering his body as it fell. Uphir landed on his two feet, the claws leaving indentations. He stalked off.
Nearby, a small demon wielding a large sword fell to another, dying with a whiny squeal.
The sword dro
pped with a clatter, the vibrations not ceasing. Seeing an opportunity, Uphir licked his lips and rushed forward as screams met his ears from all sides. He picked up the blood-covered blade.
He sneered.
He rushed off to fight.
With wide swings and vicious parries, Uphir held his own against Lucifer’s chosen protectors. Smoke poured from their wounds, and Uphir silenced screams with solitary swipes. Fiery ichor covered his torso. He bit down his reaction to its scalding touch, biting his own forked tongue and tasting copper instead of bellowing in pain. The demon thundered ahead, punishing the ground with his strides. The stony bed quivered as he moved, and relaxed with a gentle sigh as he left.
His sword sang out in terror as the blade did his bidding, easily tearing into the forbidden flesh. His victims, all on their knees, cried out for his mercies, but Uphir heeded none of their pleas. Instead, he slashed and swiped his blade across their throats, the blood and sinewy tissue near the larynx not yielding an inch. Their screams and pitiful entreaties fueled his desire to dominate and overthrow the underlords that had condemned them to their fates—until their heads rolled backward, their bodies tumbling forward, collapsing in on themselves.
Others dared to take on the demon, meeting him in battle with snarling mouths and readied weapons. A skinny waif of a demon tried to sneak up on Uphir from behind, its morningstars swinging aimlessly. Its tongue rolled out, presumably wanting to taste his victim’s fear.
One backward swing and a grunt from Uphir, and the wretched demon’s spiked weapons sank to the floor only moments before the demon followed.
Chaos reigned as a conflagration soon began near Uphir’s position. The demon pummeled another, this one closer to his mass, near an outcropping that hung precariously over the lava river. Uphir forced him backward, forcing the vile creature to overcorrect his own swing and chops. They crossed swords three additional times before Uphir’s opponent swung wildly overhead. Uphir ducked, feeling the breeze tickling against his back. Uphir rose and, as a riposte, leveled a clawed foot right into the demon’s solar plexus.
The Demonologia Biblica Page 30
