His confusion is only getting worse. Leave it to me to arrive in Hell on the day that the Devil gets Alzheimer’s.
He seems to ponder for a moment, slowly opening and closing his great red wings, head bobbing and jerking like a… He looks like a damn pigeon or something. He thinks for a couple seconds, and then he says, “According to my records, Kelly—pardon me, your wife—is safely secured in her judgment in Heaven. It has always been so. Her soul was beyond my collection. My apologies.”
I think I forgot my cockiness on the last trip. Looks like I packed it for this flight. “Damn straight,” I say. Hope that doesn’t get me into trouble. But I’m also more curious than afraid on this… I can’t remember if it’s my second or third time with him. If he was hot, I’d probably… And that thought is just nasty.
He cocks his head to the side a little and looks up out of the corner of his eye, then back at me.
“Okay, then I’m ready,” I tell him. “So what does the book say happens next? You both tempted me. Pretty shitty options if you ask me. She was rude about ending her attempt, too. What department do I see about that?”
“Tempted?” he asks.
Now it’s more than hesitation, he is downright confused. Then the Book of Blood—I recognize it immediately—appears in his hands and he whips it open, runs his finger over the text, and reads over the moaning sounds, “And on his last day of man, the Dark Angel of Light, Lived, and Life did each tempt the fallen with their own desires. And the fallen did spurn them in turn and choose of his own right heart.” Then the moaning stops and he looks up at me like I’m in charge and he’s just some poor fuck who pissed off management one too many times.
I’m barely listening to him—it’s just more Bible mumbo jumbo to me. “Shoulda told her to go to Hell,” I mutter. And whatever tiny inner filter I used to have in life, is way off in this death. And I know I should be afraid, but there isn’t even a twinge. Feels like I just watched my revenue rep tell the State to go fuck themselves.
And he ignores me and keeps reading, “And on his first day of judgment, the flesh of The Fallen did become pierced; and he did boil in the blood of his own tears. And the Salvation of The Fallen was raped and—”
“And let’s just stop right there, shall we,” I say.
He looks up from the book with a guilty face and I can see he is afraid. He thinks I might do something to him.
“The only one raped and murdered today was my wife,” I say, “and someone’s going to pay for that shit.” On another day, it would already be done. Today, I gotta find the right one.
He goes back to the book—his long finger moans its way across the parchment, “And The Fallen became absent forgiveness, absent compassion, absent faith; for The Fallen was the vengeance of life; and vengeance would harbor no mercy: and it was so.”
He stops speaking, but he doesn’t stop reading because his finger is still moving and moaning. And it looks like a man reading his own death warrant.
“What does it say?” I ask. Only I’m not really asking, because I have an urge to rip the book right out of his hands and read it for myself. If he doesn’t start squawking pretty soon—“Oh, fuck this. Gimme that thing.”
And before I can make myself weigh the consequences, I reach over and snatch the book from his hands. To my surprise, he doesn’t do shit. And when I look at the text, it’s no wonder.
The writing, if you can call it that, is all just a bunch of symbols—triangles with little dots and swirls and shit. I can’t make heads or tails out of it. And I expected the text to be confusing and there to be a lot of it, but as huge as the actual book is, the text seems too big. The symbols are giant. Looks like you couldn’t fit more than a couple of sentences on a page. No wonder the thing is so big—it’s like a blind man wrote it. And if it is written in blood, it took a helluva lot of it. I look up at him and frown.
He motions with his long finger. “Run your finger across the words,” he says. “It will speak to you in your own tongue.”
And I raise my eyebrows at him, because this is just too weird, right. Why is he even helping me? But it’s his book, so I run my finger along a line of symbols. And “my own tongue,” is full of what sounds like birds screeching and screaming, and they are saying things like “motherfuckers” and “cocksuckers” and “sons a bitches.” Because before and after the meaty parts—the beginnings and the ends of all the sentences—someone that sounds like a much angrier version of me, is yelling out curses like a tourettes patient. And he’s right—that is my language—punctuation for pissed-off people.
He smiles a little, but not that self-satisfied, shit-eating grin he had before.
And then I get to where he left off, “And on his second day of judgment, The Fallen did speak his name and the Dark Angel of Light—” And I stop and look at him. “Dark Angel of Light?”
And he tips his head down very slightly and then he says, “I am the Lion, the Liar, the Lawless One,” he says. “And I am The Fallen before you—the Dark Angel of Light.”
“Lucifer…” I mutter. And then I think about it. I forgot that he was an angel … of light, no less. How does that make any sense?
“That is your name for me,” he says. “Throughout this eternity, there have been many, many others. For your time, I prefer Dal.”
“Dal?” I ask. “What the…? Oh, I get it.”
“Your generation and acronyms,” he says. “It is … quaint.”
Whatever is going on, it seems it is written in this book, so I screech-curse my finger from where I left off. “The Dark Angel of Light was compelled to spare an angel in the second Heaven.” When I finish the sentence, I … feels like I want to vomit. “What the…? What second Heaven?” I ask him. “For the life of me, the way you fuckers write books…” And I look back at the book. Then I hand it back to him and he takes it without incident. My ripped-out soul avoided … for now. “So you have to say your own name and then what? And don’t lie to me. I think we’re getting past that.”
“Two thousand years…” he mutters. “I never thought we would arrive at this day.” Now he looks at me more urgently. “What did you say to her … exactly?”
And he’s got me really confused. “So you do know my name.”
“Yes,” he says. “What did you say to—?”
“I don’t fucking know,” I say. “She wasn’t helpful, I’ll tell you that shit. Said you were the only one who had the power to save Kelly, or release her or whatever. Then I got pissed off and told her that you seemed to be able to get more done than she could.”
“Did you say it that way, or did you—”
“I don’t—Jesus Christ,” I say. “Something like she created everything, but you had to save an angel in Hell.”
“Did you say my name?”
“I know, I know,” I say. “I’m sorry. I know you said that one’s vulgar. But that is your name. The one most people use, anyway.”
“In this case, it is particularly—”
“Anyway,” I say. “If our deal’s good, then we’re done here. So let’s get to it.”
“You are far from done,” he says. “Your work is just beginning.”
“What the…?” I say. He’s still maneuvering and that’s just—“Hey, I never agreed to be your minion follower”—that much I’m sure of. Whatever he’s talking about, that’s for him and her—“or hers.”
He slithers over to me the way a jealous dog would ease up and try to steal a bigger one’s bone. And he has the book in his hand and he has turned the page. He points with his long index finger. “Read this right here,” he says. “Out loud, if you don’t mind. Then our deal … is done.”
I look at him for a second. He puts his hand on my shoulder, like a drinking buddy who’s trying to persuade me to have just one more shot of swill. “Just this line. Trust me, you will like this part.”
Trust… That’s just not happening, but curiosity… I screech-curse my finger over the symbols. It’s unnerving, but I
understand the sounds, “And The Fallen before him shall choose his name and he shall become an angel of both Heavens.” I stop and look into his ice-blue eyes.
And his eyes glow a little and it looks like a tiny blue flame has ignited in his iris. Then he takes the book, walks away a few feet, and he turns back toward me and says, “Thank you … Jake.”
“What is…? … What’s that shit mean?”
“It means … that today is your lucky day,” he says. “Mine, too. Now, a name…”
“What name?” I ask.
“A name for you.”
“That’s what that said?” I ask. “I thought it meant you.”
“I was the beginning of that end,” he says. “There is much more to the Word in the Book of Blood, but that was the beginning … of this end.”
None of this shit’s real. How can it be? The Bible, God and the Devil? I’m in some fucked-up dream. I’m certainly no… What the hell would that make me?
He’s back to reading my mind again. “One powerful archangel,” he says. “A dark and light one—order of The Fallen, not to put too fine a point on it. There are not many of us. And I must name you.”
“That is just—name me? Thanks, I’ll stick with Jake.”
“Remember what I said about language,” he says. “You know why men are afraid to speak my name and women tremble at the mere thought of it? Because language has power—names are no different. In fact, do you know what my name spells backward?”
I never really thought about it before. Too much life to worry about. But… “Lived?” I say. “Oh, that is some cruel shit. Did she really do that?”
“In a word, yes,” he says. “That was what she spoke when she created me, but when she cast me out … turned me inside-out … reversed my fate… It was her lot—combine the light with the darkness and pave the path to a new beginning.”
I can feel his mind scurrying around for an answer—a name. She named him “Lived.” I can’t believe that. I scarcely have time to ponder my jump and—
“Yes,” he says, “that’s it!”
“What?”
And he is a cat with a canary. I’m having trouble believing that he is this excited to name me. Must be something else in the deal. Then he says it: “Jump.”
As soon as the word leaves his mouth, I bend over and start vomiting blood down onto the ground. And deep red syrup splatters, and a puddle starts to form at my feet.
The puddle gets bigger than I figure I have blood to fill it, but when I’m done I don’t fall over or die again, or anything like that. In fact, I feel … great. Like after great sex. And I don’t like cigarettes, but it feels like—I can’t believe I’m craving smoke. When I stand up, I stagger just a little and then I look at him. “What,” I say, and then I spit out some blood, “in the fuck?”
“Indeed,” he says. “I had a very similar reaction. Maybe not quite as colorful, but definitely astonishment.”
I spit again—the last copper-tasting remnants of my earthly life—and it splashes in the puddle and a crimson ripple moves away and then the puddle’s surface goes right back to calm red. And I can just make out my reflection in the mirror-like pool of blood. And I think I’m getting it, but this is just too fucked up.
“Jump?” I think about it. Doesn’t sound all that menacing. I don’t even know why I’m pondering my name and not worrying about all the other stuff. Hallucination dream… I’m probably too dehydrated and beat to shit on the floor of some interrogation cell.
The State has some good drugs. Damnation and salvation, wrapped in a little red, white and blue pill. It’s a syringe actually, but a little of that and you’ll be judging yourself.
“Do you understand it?” he asks. He’s a kid on Christday morning now.
That’s messed up, too. So many levels. More drugs, please. “Yeah, I get it,” I say. “I jumped. Real original shit ya got there … Lived.”
“No,” he says. His annoyed voice is back. “Jump is a word that is both dark and light, but in this case—J. U. M. P. —Judgment Under My Power.”
As soon as he says it, I go black.
The dream is weird, but it is just like the stories—floating above my body, an angel taking me to Heaven, bright light, God and the Devil, judgment.
Tell you the truth, it’s hard to remember the details—dream-inside-a-dream shit. But when I wake up, I’m squatting on top of the black van down on the street and I’m naked. Jesus, I have no idea what it is with these two and keeping me naked.
And I can … smell the fear. The air reeks of it. I know that’s what it is. No idea how, but I know that pungent piss smell is the essence of panic. And it’s as sweet as molasses in my mouth. And then I remember and I look down at my exploded, earthly body and I’m standing on top of my own guts.
And there are Protection agents and authority sirens and a new black Protection van is here to replace the one I just crushed. And there are orange flametrucks and a bright red evacuation vehicle, and parameds are flitting around, looking for someone to resurrect. I don’t think that’s gonna work out too well for them, because the only one I know of—except for me, of course—is a greasy shit-stain in the driver’s seat of this van I’m perched on.
And I stand up and it feels … weird. No, it’s not that I’m naked in the middle of downtown on top of a van, though I should be at least a little self-conscious about my dick, because it is still raining and there is a little breeze. That doesn’t bring out the—uh, never mind.
Anyway, it seems like I couldn’t care less about that. What’s really missing is all the creaks and moans and spikes of pain in my joints as I get up—my forty-eight-year-old body forgets to remind me that the bulletproof years are over.
No, now all I can feel when I stand all the way up … is power. It’s more than brute strength, though, and for a guy who’s afraid to get interrogated or thrown in a gang-bang cell with a bunch of prisoners, I feel pretty … impenetrable.
I know, I know, but that’s the word in my head when—
The wings tear through first. Spikes of steel feathers rip the flesh on my back as they slice their way out from both sides of my spine. And red chunks of my back meat fall away and I … sprout metal wings!
They spread to their full width and open in a dark gray span of scraping and sparking steel plumage. The raking sound of a thousand tiny razors on a chalkboard sends everyone on the street to their knees, clutching at their ears and screaming in agony.
I don’t mind telling you, however painful this shit is, it is just awesome! And I shake the metal spikes on my new span of steel … or they shake themselves, because I don’t have a clue how to work them. And blood and meat chunks shower the van. I can barely see the blood against the black paint—looks like it’s almost the same color. I squat down to touch it and sparks fly from the tips of my feathers as I clumsily drag them along the top of the van. And they tear the sheet metal in long, jagged gouges. And I fall to one knee and a thought spikes through my mind: Stand up.
Nothing happens and I squat there, looking stupid. “Jump,” I say. And immediately my wings flap violently, and the tips of my feathers tear open the top of the van like flimsy aluminum foil, and I’m—holy shit, I’m flying!
It doesn’t last long, though, and I hover in the air a few feet above the van, before my wings flail and I crash down hard on the hood. Then I fall to the pavement next to it, like a fledgling rookie that just got pushed out of the nest. And the pavement cracks and I put my fingers in it—touch the hardness of the blacktop to make sure it is real.
Somehow I manage to stand up without stumbling this time. The wings will take some getting used to. And I laugh, more at myself than anything else. It’s strange, because something embarrassing like…? In front of a street packed with strangers? That would have sent me into a self-loathing rage before. Before what? … I can hardly remember. That’s my dead body down there, but who am I? There’s only bits and pieces and flashes in my mind.
I look ar
ound at the total chaos and commotion that’s only growing now. No one seems to have a clue what to do, because I’ve never seen so many panicked faces in my life. Everyone looks like a politician who just got a news camera shoved in his face full of coke. Coke? That’s pretty old-school, but like I said… But I guess it’s not every day you see a man crash down from a building and then stand up and sprout wings, because the citizens are crapping themselves.
And I smile and look down at myself. Or one that’s buck-ass naked, I think. I try to get a good look at my new body, but controlling my wings and standing seem to go together about as well as blood and pancakes. Wish there was a mirror.
Then I remember something—the whole damn city is one big mirror. Scrapers—powerful pillars of the privileged—every five feet, all made of reflective glass. I look across the street and the first thing I see in the reflection is my wings. They are huge—ten feet wide? That’s a guess, because they’re probably more like fifteen. And the reflection is the first time I can see my whole body and I walk toward it.
As I cross the street, my wings open and close, slowly back and forth, and then I tuck them onto my back—fold the feathers together. And I hear them clank like a steel door shutting behind me. I think I’m figuring them out, or they’re figuring themselves out—feels like they have a mind of their own.
I can see in the reflection that the fold sticks up above my head a couple of feet, and I can hear the steel feathers on the tips, scraping the concrete behind me as I walk. I’m not made for pounding the pavement with my feet anymore.
The street is gathering Protection agents faster than it’s taking for me to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to be doing with my new wings. And the onlookers—hundreds of citizens… A mermaid would get less attention. But I’m oblivious.
It’s the wrong word, because I know they are there, I just don’t give a shit. Right now, I wanna see if they left me with my…?
When I look closer at the reflection, I can tell that this body is not mine. Not one I recognize from this morning, anyway. That forty-eight-year-old, sagging… How I made it up that many flights of stairs is beyond me. But this body in the reflection … twenty-seven at most, and rippling, long, sinewy muscles—hard meat. And maybe the best news of the day—I got to keep my dick. Looks a little weird, though. Lucky for them, I think. Someone would pay for that, for sure. Anyway, the thought of them doesn’t scare me as much now.
Jump: The Fallen: Testament 1 Page 11
