The bodies of the couple she had been taken from had been found by townspeople and the authorities quickly set to hunting the murderers. They arrived at the campsite not long after Leila’s gruesome murders were complete. They paid no heed to the story of the innocent abductee. They brought Leila back to the city to be jailed and eventually executed as it appeared she had killed both the old couple and her own family in the same manner.
Leila’s luck would’ve been better if the execution had been the next day, but instead she was delayed for a number of days because of the infatuations of the jailors. The highest ranking officer, and a number of his men, took it upon themselves to segregate her and force themselves upon her repeatedly. But, Leila now had the taste for killing and, though she knew how wrong it was, she had her plan for dealing with her captors.
During a rape session by three of the jailors, which Leila acquiesced to convincingly, she slipped one of their blades from a sheath without notice. After two of them were spent and taking a few moments to recover their composure, Leila had her chance while the third guard was in the middle of his act and her mouth was wrapped around him. From beneath her she produced the blade and sliced away the pride of the guard from just in front of her face. The guard’s blood spattered and spewed on her face mixing with the mess already left there by the other two guards. Quickly she stood just as a look of terror and shock swept over the face of the one she just castrated, and then she spit his quickly softening manhood in his own face; it was a perfect shot directly into his now gaping mouth. For a moment it looked as if it had sprouted from between his lips as Leila grinned with satisfaction. Finally the guard managed to make enough noise from his agony to get the attention of the other two, one of whom quickly stormed her.
Leila was able to jab the knife into the eye of one, which killed him almost instantly as it passed into his brain, but then it became lodged there when she gave it a twist. The final guard stutter-stepped and nearly tripped because his belt and scabbard were still down around his ankles, but he was able to leap and tackled Leila to the ground where they struggled. She got hold of his dangling bag of fleshy jewels and with all her strength she dug her nails in, and then her fingertips, into his most sensitive of places until she could feel blood spilling from within his sensitive flesh, and then she tore it all from his body. The pops, tearing, and sloppy sounds of his flesh leaving him were quickly drowned out by his screams.
The highest ranking of the jailors had heard the commotion and arrived with several more guards to overtake Leila. She was taken to an area within the jail where a blacksmith was set up just for the needs of the jail. He worked on the iron shackles fashioned for the prisoners among a number of other creations as requested.
The officer tore away Leila’s ragged clothes and pulled from the blacksmith’s coals an iron rod glowing nearly white from the heat. The other guards threw Leila to the ground where two guards dropped their full weight onto their knees and upon her arms breaking them instantly as two more guards held Leila’s legs as far apart as they would stretch, and then straddled them to keep them so.
“You’ll be happy to know that your execution has just been moved up!”
The officer growled those words to her just before thrusting the glowing iron rod into Leila’s own most womanly place. She refused to scream as the rod pierced through her insides and punctured her heart. Her death was swift though painful.
Now Leila is before Judas and her fire is clear to him. The Thorn did not impale her but instead only restrained her and held her off the fleshen ground. She is silent and still, but knowing full well where she is and why.
“I know your pain, o-beautiful one. I am going to hurt you, but if you promise me one thing I will promise to make the pain go away very quickly.”
Leila cocks her head in interest but still says nothing.
“Promise me your undying devotion and I will not only make the pain go away quickly, but I’ll also withhold you from the punishments of this place.”
Leila is still for a moment, and then she relaxes and nods her head once while staring Judas in the eye.
Judas quickly slices a rough rectangular shape into her perfect belly skin from side to side and from just under her breasts to just above the soft fur of her mound. She cringed from the slicing, but it was the swiftness of his peeling the skin from her belly which sent waves of pain through her body. Tears from all the pain and anguish of her mortal life, along with the pain of beginning her new life in Hell, streamed down her face, but still she refused to make a sound.
Judas keeps his promise starting with biting into his bottom lip, and then he leans in close to the fresh wound and kisses it just below Leila’s breasts. His blackened blood seeps from the bite in his lip onto her raw sinew and muscle, and in only seconds, like blood-red ice crystals forming over water; her new skin is being reborn unto her belly. The pain rapidly diminishes as her new flesh reforms as smooth and as flawless as Judas first found it. The Thorn general releases her to stand face to face with Judas, almost defiant, until she kneels before him and drops her head in submission.
“Do not kneel before me. I am not your God.” Judas’s tone mocks his own original creator. Leila does as he says and instead takes a position just behind Judas’s left as his General stands just behind his right.
For the next two years and some months Judas sits at his throne using the principal language of the angels as taught to him by Satan. Writing in his own blood every single aspect and use of the immortal human soul, the human mind, and all the parts of the mortal human body. He writes on pages of roughly-shaped remnants of skin cut and torn at random from the bodies of new arrivals to Hell. The edges of each sheet are not straight nor perfect; not as if a scribe had ordered the paper from a mill, but instead they are jagged, slightly curled, and cracked a bit due to drying around the edges. For the most part the pages aren’t even the same size depending on the size of the portion skinned for any given page, and Judas was fairly random with the body parts he skinned for this project.
Judas’s instrument for writing is a shard from a broken quill he picked up during the production of the Thorn Minion. He sharpened one end of the quill piece and handles it just as one would handle a feather quill when scribing. He keeps a wound open on his index finger so his own blood flows down to the point while writing, so ever character of every word and every line of every illustration is in his own blood. Judas is smart enough to realize writing on the skin will not make his works indelible enough, so the tip of his quill is sharp enough to slice the skin he’s writing upon and deposit his blood into the open incisions. With the blood of Judas the characters and heal as permanently stained scars. The souls whose skin has been stripped away are also not immune to the tortures incurred upon the flesh taken from them. They feel the searing nerves, the slices of the quill, and any of the other mutilations to these oddments of skin, despite the flesh having also healed back where it was sliced from, allows fresh nerves to form giving way to compounding tortures.
I feel my face being stretched, contorted and flattened just as Leila feels her belly skin being manipulated to suit Judas’s desires, yet both of us have healed from those wounds, though one of us obviously received far faster relief. Leila grins and lays her hands on her tummy because what Judas is doing is tickling her. Bitch.
My final juxtaposition position in the landscape of Hell is vastly different, geographically, from that of Judas’s new creation. I’m able to see not only what is before me in the landscape, but also what is before the skin of my face just as if my eyes were still behind their eyelids in both locations. Leila has a position at the base of the pillar which holds aloft the throne. She’s opposite the Thorne General and neither of them leaves their places unless Judas comes down, and that doesn’t happen until his scribing is complete.
The moment Judas finishes his scribing he stacks all the bloodstained-fleshed pages into a sequential pile and steps down from his throne. He wills a Thorne to stab a t
hin quill just inside one edge of the stack several times. Judas matches those holes up to the ribs on the portion of spine he had set aside with my face and Leila’s belly skin. My face was pierced along my right side with a hole-pattern needed to match the ribs, and Leila’s was pierced along her left edge; both of us feel the pain of the perforations being made. Judas split the pile of pages into two stacks; one to go onto the left set of ribs and one to the right set.
The ribcage itself was left so the curves of the ribs supported the spine, and pages, up off any surface the book was laid upon. This also provided the book with an innate way of lying open. Finally he assembled all the parts; one half of the pages onto the left set of ribs with my face as the front cover, and the other stack of pages onto the right set of ribs with Leila’s belly skin facing out as the back cover. I must say it was an interesting contrast having the wrinkled and weathered face of an old woman on the front and the supple and smooth belly skin with its perfect little belly button on the back.
Once it was all assembled Judas had but one more task to complete his project. He bites open his index finger and lets his blood trickle between each and every page; from the outside edges where they met the ribs, each other, and the spine. He’s careful to make sure he gets plenty on the backsides of each page, and the two covers. As the blood coats these areas of open wounds new veins form and snake their way across the raw backsides of the pages and all over the ribs and vertebrae. Then a thin membrane of skin forms over the ribs and all the edges and backsides of every page where the flesh was raw, and then finishes covering the spine as well. Once the membrane completed the veins began to pulse as Judas’s blood courses through every portion of the book. We can feel our skin as pages rub against one another as intimately as with a lover.
It's … alive. The book is alive, and we are its souls. A new entity is born.
With this new entity coming into being something unexpected happens; every single fleshen soul from whom a piece of itself had been used to make up this … this … Book of the Damned, now had what we’ve come to refer to as a Soul Strand. A single, invisible link extends from our places in Hell to the book. It can't be broken or severed no matter where the book goes. But most important to all of us now, aside from thinking and feeling more or less like hive, is that we could each migrate the mass majority of our souls and minds from our places in Hell to the book. Upon doing this we were able to almost completely escape the pain and torments of our damnation and become parts of the book itself instead. Ours were the only thorn bushes which contained only a small remnant of our souls within them. As such our thorn bushes shrank to accommodate less soul being present.
But this had yet another affect we don't believe Judas intended; as with all of us becoming part of the book, it now has consciousness which is comprised of all of our thoughts, memories, emotions, and experiences. All of our educations, or lack thereof, as well as our individual philosophies, our intimacies in every intimate detail, were all now known and shared. We all know every last detail about one another, save one to whom we no access — Leila. Since the birth of the book Judas has blocked himself from us to a degree, but he’s blocked us entirely from all further knowledge of his beautiful companion.
Our strands are never severed or separated; we are still prisoners of Hell, and our pain and suffering is still experienced, though greatly muted while we reside our consciousnesses within the book. We pay the cost of this reprieve happily, and accept one another as an eternal family in suffering.
“With the book you have created, Judas, you will now choose from the sinners those you would have as your own disciples. They will go back into mortal society to spread the word of an alternative to the servitude dictated by God. They will be given the opportunity to learn of a life which can be lived more inherent to their own proclivities, and one day, Hell will rise out from the shadow of God and rival Heaven!”
“As you command, Father.”
With those words from Satan Judas closes his eyes and all at once the Thorn Minion go completely still. Judas can see what the Thorn see, and then deeper yet he can see the levels of sin all the various coffers contain. Within each Thorn a command is heard to tear from the landscape the damned whose concentrations of sin are great, save but a few whose concentrations of sin are too excessive to be of use. Those chosen are all brought before Judas for inspection as the other Thorn refill the gaps in the landscape with new fleshen souls.
Once before the throne the massive group stands trembling in pain and pouring blood from the wounds of their previous confinement still healing. The thorn bushes which had grown from their genitals retracted into their bodies when they were torn from the landscape.
Judas sits upon his throne glorious in his grotesqueness. He surveys the standing damned; his shivering, disheveled, and quivering commoners crying a cacophony of whimpers and whaling.
“In life, what you considered to be sin, what you considered to be wrong because of what you were taught rather than trusting what you felt, that is what brought you here. Every man and woman is born with a way, and then they are promptly taught other ways. If you decide to become my disciples you will each be given a piece of knowledge from this book and an explanation of knowledge it contains in its entirety, and you will be placed back into mortal society to show the power of this book and spread the word of its existence. Your suffering here will be over and your mortal lives will become immortal through the texts I have written here. Once a new following is established we can build a new paradise. We can end ALL of this suffering. Who does not wish to pursue the task I have described?”
None of the men and women muttered a single word. Who would? Leila grins at Judas from the base of the throne’s pedestal and Judas returns a sly smile. He turns his attentions back to his new disciples and aggravates the stigmata wounds on his wrists with his claws until the wounds bleed profusely. His blood flows into his palms, drenches his fingers, and spills from between them. Repeatedly he thrusts his hands outward as if tossing money out to a crowd. The large swashes through the air cause a drizzling of blood onto those standing before him. This new legion of Judas clamors over one another in a frenzy trying to get just a single drop of the blood of Judas to splash onto them and end their suffering. Eventually they were all baptized in his blood, and had stopped feeling the pain of their sins, but the agony of their fleshen bodies reflecting their mortal sins quickly set in.
Just as Judas had become a reflection of his transgressions, so too do these men and women become reflections of theirs. Their new forms were just as grotesque as that of Judas, and in many cases, even more so. Judas’s first demons of Hell are now created, and both Judas and Satan are pleased.
“Prepare now for the knowledge of the Book of the Damned!” With these words Judas raises the book from its place on the arm of his throne and holds it aloft so all of his new disciples can see it for themselves.
Suddenly the voice of God bellows through Hell like thunder rolling through the skies. The great voice strikes Judas down to his knees in pain and he drops the book from the throne’s high perch. Leila quickly recovers the book; keeping it from other grasping hands, but fortunately the newly-formed demons are also suddenly reeling in pain and haven’t the wherewithal to think so clearly. Leila notices she isn’t feeling the effects of the God’s voice as everyone else appears to be, but she doesn't seem confused as to why.
“NO, Judas!” His voice is stern though calm in its tone as it crashes in from the Hellmouths at each end of Hell and it bellows through the cylindrical landscape violently.
“I will not be denied what I have created and worked for!” Judas’s words pass his lips with great difficulty and a quiver of fear. It is the words and presence of God Himself making Judas quake with pain. Judas and his demons are no longer subjects of God; they’re creations of their own sins. The voice of God would not cause such an effect on the beasts, man, woman or child of the mortal world. Even the beasts of Hell; the Thorn Minion, are stil
l going about their tasks unfettered by God’s voice.
“You have sealed your fate by creating that book, Judas!”
His words are causing grief and pain in Judas and his new legion, but for the first time since arriving in Hell, the damned, who make up every part of the landscape and structures of Hell, feel relief from their suffering as God’s voice permeates them. They are moments of peace in what is otherwise unrelenting, merciless suffering.
“What is this you say? That I am to suffer as the ruler of this place forever? I created Hell in the form you see here! I molded the Thorn Minion and brought up from the suffering these individuals to spread the word of a way, which is not better than your followers preach, only different. That's all! Are you telling me this is my fate; being the ruler of the damnation of mortals? IT’S ALREADY MINE!”
“No, Judas. Your fate — your legacy — is betrayal! Furthermore, NO demon of yours will ever interact directly with a mortal. This I command even unto my angels in Heaven.”
Judas peers into the darkness outside Hell, and with only strength enough to form a defiant expression, he curses God’s words from under his breath. Judas is unable to move or speak beyond this simple action as God lays out the rules of Judas’s very special and encompassing damnation.
Legacy of Judas - Book One Page 4
