“And you? You harbor nothing but contempt and hatred for them.”
“True,” Dal said. “Your Man-monkey is a contemptible, weak creature. But one that you designed to be worthy of contempt. Yet … however I loath them, I understand them, and they long for a better word than what you offer.” Dal shook his head and frowned. “Eh, you have made this too trite. I grow weary of it. I can smell that you do as well.”
Each of the faithful ruffled their feathers and bobbed their heads back and forth, adjusting themselves on their favorite grandstand perch. It would be a lengthy judgment, they had witnessed it before. War would not happen today. The sting of Dal’s quills had become all too common.
Life smirked a little and brushed her bright locks back behind her ears. “Perhaps you should relent,” she said. “There is always a pathway to return, nestled way in the back … even for you.”
Dal smiled at her and his teeth glistened. “Said the lamb to the lion. It is a great memory. One which you must ponder often.”
“I ponder only in regret at your fall.”
Dal slowly nodded his head. “Your time shall come,” he said. “You will reap what you have sown. And yet today … I must politely decline. Bounding through fire at the crack of your whip is not my … color.” He grinned a little at her, remembering their time. “What do you believe you possess that is so compelling, anyway?”
Life smiled a devious grin at him. She spoke from her right heart, “Everlasting love.”
Dal’s face turned to a frown. “Oh, you—a rotting, silken pittance to starving peasants,” he said. “Sooner or later, they all require proof. And the only thing they know of love … is that it cannot last. A shooting star that burns out before you are able to catch it.”
“How far you have fallen, my Angel of Light,” Life said. “The sands of this eternity have done little to erode your cynicism.”
Dal turned his attention back to the fall. It was a good day for it, but the conversation grew boring. “I have not their blind eyes. I know your deceptions. Soon, he will as well. Submit or be cast out. You speak of cynicism? From a hypocrite!”
Life’s light blasted brighter and the arena lit up brilliantly. The grandstands prepared. To challenge The Word was blasphemy, but to berate its author openly… War might ensue, after all. They all leaned forward on their perches and waited, poised to tear the talons and slice the wings of their brothers and sisters. They listened for Life’s response.
“Do not tempt me,” she said.
“Lest I may incur your wrath?” said Dal. He spread his great, red wings and flapped them several times without flying. Then he tucked them behind his back and pushed his flight feathers together, forming his shield. If she came at him, he was prepared. “You prove my point.”
Life looked toward the dark side of the grandstands and then at her own followers. The shine of her truth returned the hall to its previous bright white. She would spare them … today. “And what do you offer him that is better than love? What could you possibly—”
“Redemption.”
Life clucked out a small laugh, but ended it quickly. “There is nothing redeeming about you.”
Dal gazed back to the fall. He watched the Man-monkey slip deep into his judgment. “Redemption, your majesty, requires power … and I am gifted with an abundance of that. Sufficient for his needs, to be certain.”
“If you do this,” Life warned, “there will be no way back … for any of them.”
Dal’s eyes glowed a shining blue flame. “Go back? What makes you believe that our rotting carcasses, impaled on the words of your love, are so succulent as to cause us all to long for another bite?”
— IX —
I CAN’T FIGURE out how many floors I’ve plummeted past, and I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t crap my pants, because something smells like shit. Anyway, lying isn’t me—white, black or gray—you want the truth … just ask.
I’ll tell you one truth I know for sure: falling is not a natural thing. It’s one thing to know that you are diving into a lake or even some kind of Protection parajumper, whose chute will save him before he smacks the earth, but waiting for the pavement to blow your guts out your ribcage … is a far different experience.
I imagine the end of this like a pond guppy. A little frog that my flock of childhood friends and I used to catch on one of our unsupervised romps around the flooded side streets. Some kid came up with the bright idea to throw one of the baby frogs back into the water as hard as he could. When its guts blew out its side and it turned belly-up, that became our new game.
I can feel the disgust on your face, but we were kids, we were boys, and “Lord of Lions” has its rules. One of them is, that power has to be exercised in order to grow. Governments know that.
— X —
I SLOW DOWN again. My perception of falling is speeding up and slowing down. Only this time, I don’t “ooze” to a stop. It’s more like someone slammed the brakes on a bus. And I lurch forward, and then it feels like the back of my head slams into something, and I see stars and a bright light. Then everything goes dark.
When I wake up, I try to figure out what the hell happened. I glance over at the windows on the side of the building and I’m … naked!
I know, I know—forty-eight, body gone to shit—grosses me out, too. But … it’s not that nasty, forty-something naked that I’m used to seeing in the mirror every morning. It’s more like a great, young version of myself before I realized that I would get old. Back when I was… And then I see it.
When I was fifteen, I was playing at a cousin’s ranch in the Rural Zone. It was kind of a city-rat, country-rat thing, because there was plenty of things to experience on both sides.
One night, it was getting dark and we were playing protector and citizen—chasing and then beating the shit out of each other with sticks—and I ran around the corner of the barn and fell into a pile of razor-wire that ripped nasty gashes across my chest.
We headed into the house—me holding my bleeding chest and stomach and both of us, silent as sinners, as we beelined for the bathroom to see if we could patch me up.
Four parents were smarter than totally quiet children, so it didn’t take long for them to figure out what happened. I spent the rest of the night begging not to be taken to the State’s Med-mart to get stitched up. Only thing worse than a gash in your chest is an incompetent State doctor with a God complex, learning to work a staple-stitcher on you like you’re some kind of Protection experiment.
And there, in the reflection of what I have to believe is about a quarter way down this scraper, are those gashes—fresh, still purple, and barely healed. And then I see her and she’s naked too and I can feel myself getting an erection.
I’m freaked out just like I was then, but this isn’t a forty-eight-year-old erection that I have to coax through the constant regret of failures with life, this thing is… There is a reason they used to call it a “woody.”
Hey, what did you think you would remember about life? I won’t go into details, but I think her name was Sandy or … Cindy or some other S-sounding shit. Yeah, yeah, submit me—I can’t remember her name. But she was the first one, I remember that. Not much else to tell, it didn’t last long. Something that good never does.
“What about love?”
Gimme a break. Until you’re about… I’m not sure men ever turn the corner, because “love” … is what my dick says it is.
And there’s another lesson for you little purgatories: the dicks are in charge. Get used to that.
— XI —
THE FAITHFUL ANGELS stirred on their perches above the arena, and they spread their wings and flapped and folded them back, weaving their armored feathers together—the shields were always first.
The sound of angels, preparing for battle was unmistakable. Back and forth, that’s how the tide of eternity swelled. The threat of war was no different, so they tried to watch the soul be judged while they remained vigilant for any sign
that Life or Dal would declare war.
Life fluttered, hovering in mid-air in the middle of the arena. She turned slowly, watching her children prepare to defend her word. It had all happened before and it would all happen again, to the end of this eternity and the beginning of the next. Armageddon and Genesis—the eternal yin and yang of the ages. There were days and even years when she pondered the point herself. “You know what I must do,” she said to Dal.
A small frown flashed across Dal’s face. “I, of all your children, know it best. But then you must realize that the path this time shall be … different. The tide recedes and the faithful falter. And why should they not? You have given them nothing to hold faith in.”
“You have never understood faith,” Life said. “I am faith. I am the dream. I am the end and the beginning—the alpha and the omega.”
After two thousand years, Dal knew the look she got just before war—he would push her just far enough. “No,” he said, “you are an impetuous child, enacting laws and rules that none have hope of following. That is the fate you have condemned them—” He turned toward the grandstands. Everything was an opportunity to sow discord among her ranks. He addressed the gallery again, “You have condemned all of us to your nightmarish version of The Word.” Then he turned and spoke directly to her side of the arena—a million pure white snowflakes, ready to defend their great protector. “Even the faithful awaken to the truth of it! Is it any mystery that the Man-monkey has taken your protector’s oppressive word as his own?”
Restraint was more difficult this time. Life said, “Let no woman weep for your fall.”
Dal turned back to her and smiled, showing her all of his shining teeth. “And none did.”
And with no more than that, Dal knew she would not fight. Continual quill-pricks of guilt—that was how the subtlest of faiths controlled their minions.
Life struggled to find the truth in it. “I did not…” She paused. It was so long ago, that she had buried the memories. “I could not endure it any longer.”
Dal looked down at his own hands. Stained a beautiful, crimson red from the blood of billions—the life of her creations and his own. He spoke at his hands, refusing to look at her, “He falls as I did, then. To the same fate, I imagine.”
Life hung her head, too. “I am sorry for this.”
When Dal looked up, he forced a smile at her. Then he said, “Do not concern yourself, your majesty. It does not have the finality you might imagine. Rather liberating, actually. However, having never experienced it yourself, I would not expect you to understand. No … no women will weep for me. That is a privilege you reserve for yourself.”
She looked at him, confused by his lingering. The memories were painful for them both. Why did he continue? “I am love,” she finally said, “to women, especially. And I am the mother and protector of all things.”
Dal shifted his weight a little and sent a shiver through his own wings. If he had to, he would simply leave—exit through the dungeons to the fiery lake below. Once he tightened his wings behind him again, he said, “And yet all women weep at your hand. Why should they not? Look what you have wrought on them. You slay their children and husbands without mercy, you imprison them in clothing so none may see their beauty, they are beaten, raped, and murdered by the very men you have commanded them to serve without question. And enduring all of this pain and misery, they still usher the faithless to the doorsteps of churches, forcing them mercilessly to sing your praise. Women are your last hope of existing and you squash them underneath an iron word.”
“I give them righteousness and … and something to strive for.”
Dal ignored her—the scent of fresh meat clouded his nostrils. But even intoxicated with the anticipation of the fallen he could still barb at her weaknesses. “I have never understood your ability to punish women so. Yet … it is a wonderful deception. One I wish I could match. You are like an alcoholic father, whose victims defend and deny the whip of their own misery. In all my mistruths, I have never been able to weave such a lie. How you accomplish it is beyond…” And then he turned and slowly flapped his wings, flying to the side of the arena. Then he left through a portal.
— XII —
THE WIND IS ferocious in my face, and it jerks me away from my memory of what’s-her-name’s naked body. And the pleasure fades and I’m falling again. So this is what that “life flashing before your eyes” shit is all about. Not bad. I could use a little more of the sex scenes.
I can’t tell if it’s the wind blasting them, the ever-worsening smell of stale smoke—like a campfire the next morning—or if it’s knowing that I will never see Kelly again, but tears are running down my cheeks. They sting and a couple go in my mouth. It tastes kinda like a burned penny, coppery … if that’s a word.
It’s hard to hear anything over the rushing wind, but it feels like someone … is watching me. Yeah, I know they are watching me from the roof, but this is something … someone else.
Whoever it is, I just want to see the glass again. Look in the mirror of my life on the way down.
As if I could will it to happen, my eyes clear up and I can see the building’s windows again. And there it is—my gas-red guzzler—my pickup. The one I had at State Conditioning Academy. Moved a whole lotta bodies in bins to get that truck.
Yeah, I went to SCA. Ratfuck load of good it did me. Back then, State “hotel-one-bravo’d” any job that required a degree—imported cheap labor instead of training the citizens they had—long before I graduated. But I did it and I got what every one of us did—a fat load of credit-compliance duty and nine months to find a job that had nothing to do with my training. If Protection hadn’t drafted me up…?
But that’s not what’s by my guzzler. What I can see in the glass, leaning in the window of my pickup is the only thing that got me through all of that shit—my sweet salvation, Kelly.
“Hello sunshine,” it was the first thing Kelly said to me. I was sitting in the SCA Quad, ignoring the afternoon drizzle, brooding over some failed farce of a Compliance 101 test. Her voice cut right through my scowl.
Her face was like the sun, popping through the Northwest Quarter’s gray—anyone who met her dropped what they were doing to bask in it. Her light was so beautiful that you couldn’t look directly at it. It blinded me for sure.
After that, I was like an idiot. “Yes, I would love to go, whatever you think, sweetie.” Total dumbass with a dick—Kelly’s bitch.
To tell you the truth, I liked it. I’m pretty sure she did too. I had someone who would listen to me rant about nothing, and she had an injured bird with a broken wing to fix. She let me spin out of control about the State and Protection until we were both exhausted from it. Then she would snuggle next to me and rub my chest while we pretended to watch the PIN. It was all I wanted—someone to listen. It didn’t last long.
After I ran, Kelly was the only place I could go to escape the feeling that Protection had simply been a vice, slowly tightening around its citizens. When I finally looked at it, they all strained and struggled and crammed against each other, until every once in a while one of them popped and went on a crazy rampage. Trouble was, none of them were crazy. I never realized that before.
Another “ism” my father used to deliver—you pile enough rats together in a cage, start starving them and stressing them harder each day… “Violence, rape, murder, cannibalism—as sure as the Devil,” he would say. I had no idea how he knew that. I found out later.
But PIN made the incidents sound like just another mentally-disturbed nutbag. They ran the footage over and over again until we all begged for anything that would make us safe.
Those of us that had a clue knew that today’s escaped “nutbag” was yesterday’s “guest” at the Fifty.
I’ll get to the Fifty later. Right now, the mere sight of Kelly makes me want to go off on an anti-State conspiracy rant. But as fast as she shows up, she’s gone, and I’m falling again. Shit!
The images on my desc
ent only fuel my rage.
— XIII —
AS DEJECTED AND broody as Dal ever got, he was an eternally arrogant and self-centered archangel. Leaving the crowd of angels in the arena—the light and the adoration of followers—to her? Alone? He flew back from the fiery lake, ran through the dungeons of the two heavens, and burst back into the center of the arena. One last round before the end of the soul’s fall.
And the Arena of Reckoning echoed with the anger of his words. The faithful remained perched. But as deep as his rage ever became, Life’s restraint as she plotted was deeper. Hers was a patient wrath. The weight of the blood on the broken wings of the past helped her endure his insolence. Even that would only carry her contempt so far.
Dal stared into the fall, remembering his own tumble from grace. “Time waits for no man … or angel.”
“We have a few moments,” Life said. “Time is—”
“The relativity of it always seems so eternal,” Dal said. “Only in the confusion and seeming endlessness of their fall do they realize the seconds they have wasted. That is one of the nuances you do not comprehend. He reminisces of fine wine and sweet women, yet burned his years in the rage of fire. While you cannot, I understand this sentiment perfectly.”
“And now you masquerade at philosophy,” Life said. “Many names have you labored under since our time, my Day Star, but philosopher?”
“And by any other name,” said Dal, “I am no longer your—”
“You are what you have always been,” Life said, her hair now waving and moving on its own. “Condemned to be ruler of the darkness at your own request.”
Dal ignored her. He looked at the fall. This one would be his. “Only in the fall do we recognize how wickedly you have condemned us.”
“The end of this life is not the end of life,” she said. “It is simply the next step in the journey toward faith. A journey you must set on willingly.”
“Then there is no purpose in your eternity,” said Dal. “Save for suffering at your hands, once again. I think I understand something more clearly now. You enjoy bringing suffering first. You masturbate to their lament before you will allow them to be saved.”
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