Legacy of Judas - Book One

by Aragon, Christian

  Though I've touched on the subject before, Purgatory is where the souls of the underachievers and the forgotten go after their mortal bodies die. These are the people who somehow manage to go through life without ever living up to any of the potential they were given at birth. These are the people who never make a mark in the world and somehow manage to slip through the social systems without ever being noticed in any significant way or more importantly, remembered. These are the people who never step out of line and always stay well within the bounds others impose on them. They work and toil blindly and obediently in their safe little lives, always for the benefit of someone else, and they never challenge the positions in life they have earned through being complacent and cowardly. These are people whose faces are forgotten, whose lives are not counted nor missed, whose grave markers depict a name but no sentiment summing up their lives. Many are those who society rejects, or who reject society, such as the terminally homeless or those who were abandoned when they were young and never became more than their ill beginnings suggested they would, etc. But all of those who go to Purgatory have one single thing in common: They all realize at the moment of death how it was their lives could have had some purpose, and how they could have been remembered instead of simply occupying space blindly.

  For these people there is no warm and comforting array of light pulling them into the comforts of Heaven’s awaiting angels, nor is there a gaping and grotesque chasm lined with the jagged shards of bone and the rancid entrails of those who have condemned their souls into the cold shadow of God. That shadow is where Hell lies. All the sufferings a person’s coffer can justify, and many more it doesn't, await. These who pass to Purgatory do so quietly with coffers which are devoid of achievements of good, evil, or anything in between. Their souls do not pleasantly depart from their mortal body, nor are they torn from it and thrown into their new surroundings, but rather they simply fall out onto the ground or floor like refuse discarded without any second thought due to the weight of their own wasted potential. Then they wander aimlessly. They can’t interact with each other after death because they didn’t know how to interact during life. They simply wander and stand over the shoulders of those who are still alive but wasting their lives away as the souls in Purgatory had done. They try to make something of themselves by trying to influence those who are still alive but who are also wasting their lives on blind servitude and a severe lack of risk. But they're not demons or angels, so their ramblings at the living give no results.

  We reminded Vic, as she had read some of this in my journal, that neither Heaven nor Hell would bother trying to collect these souls because of two very important facts: The first is because their coffers are empty and this means neither suffering nor heavenly reward can be properly justified. The second reason is because a soul in Purgatory cannot be made flesh again by demon or angel so the soul can once again mingle, interact, or do anything more than just exist. I don't mean fleshen, as with souls who pass on to Heaven and Hell, but actual flesh, blood and bone. Angels and demons alike have no use for the souls of Purgatory until these souls are reborn and somehow make the decision to be someone more than who they have been.

  It’s not at all like when a soul goes to Heaven, or Hell, and is made fleshen again based on that soul’s memories of life. That is an illusion; a memory of the soul the angels and the demons use for the purposes of bliss or punishment. God designed only two ways for a soul to get a true flesh and blood body: The first is creation through the act of intercourse between a man and woman. The second way is if the flesh is given to the soul literally, an act which has never been done by a mortal simply because mortals have never known how or that they could. Angels and demons are incapable of giving flesh and blood because theirs is not the same as those in the mortal realm. They also do not contain in their bodies all the elements which are in a mortal body from birth and a lifetime of consuming all the earthly resources needed for a mortal body to sustain. Mortal blood signatures carry just a little speck of the soul's essence with which the stain on the contract is bound. The signature of the contract bearer though fleshen, simply seals the claim on the souls.

  It just dawned on us, as we wrote that last paragraph, what it was Vic meant when she said she believed she knew a way to bolster the Unity Command by a hundred fold. We believe she may be considering an action which may taint her own soul with painful amounts of guilt and torment. After what she went through because of those children she could be facing something that will stain her very soul. Tomorrow we will speak with her to see if our suspicion is true and hopefully talk her out of it if it turns out we’re correct. I will scribe as soon as I know for sure.

  Journal entry XXXIV

  She did it. She did it and there was no way I could stop her. Though, she did not do what we feared so deeply she may have been contemplating. We were concerned she was going to commit an acquisition on a living person, and then use that person’s soul to further strengthen the resolve of her Unity Command. She went a very different direction, but she has yet to do anything to bolster her unification.

  Vic took the talk with us very much so to heart, and has done something not demon nor angel could ever do.

  We’ve always understood Vic’s been guilt over the souls of the young children she acquired some years ago. That incident alone could be enough to impede her best judgment, but her judgment in this matter was keen and clean. We believed with the … enlightenment … from the stories in the journal, and in concert with what she had discussed with us, she may be contemplating murder, and therefore attempting to take souls into her possession without utilizing the proper means of acquisition. Our last significant conversation was about this journal and the souls of Purgatory, and we didn’t realize how those two things would mingle together in her mind and heart. Has Vic finally realized the potential severity of circumstances in which her life is intertwined?

  I arrived by her side just as she was preparing to open a tear, which had us just a touch confused. Then Vic opened a tear between the mortal realm and Purgatory using her own blood and volition. She then stepped through as if she had done this a thousand times.

  Purgatory was something we in the book have never seen before simply because the demons we have served have known better than to attempt acquisitions from there. It is also clear Vic has done an excellent job of memorizing the real gate-creation commands within this book since she didn’t even request our presence for reference. Once she spoke the command, offered her own blood via a pin prick on her index finger, an opening formed unlike any we had previously seen, except that she wasn’t using rage as an ingredient as demons typically do. When entering or leaving Hell the passageways are formed by a small spiraling array of the blood and tears of anguishing damned and the flames of rage. Vic has been stowing her tears during those moments when being homesick or away from Vincent overcome her. So she’s replaced of the three elements needed to open a gateway. But what of the flames of rage? What is she using?

  This opening into Purgatory was strange. It was more like Vic had created a ring rather than a doorway leading to another plane of existence. Then she opened a second passage so I could pass through, and then she and I stepped through our gateways in unison. No change was apparent.

  The room we stood in continued through the tear. The opening did not spiral or contain any elements making it seem extraordinary in any way other than it being an opening to a realm other than ours. But then our sight adjusted from what our minds were used to seeing to what actually was. It was almost eerie how colors and contrasts seemed to fade and all the hues and textures of the world around us simply became less than what they were just back on the other side of our gates.

  Upon stepping outside we found Purgatory to be a realm exactly like the one we came from, but with two exceptions aside from bland visuals. The first was that everywhere we looked there were souls from the ages simply wandering, seemingly aimlessly, and crying to themselves garbled words about their failures at
life. Their tears streamed from their eyes, and then evaporated and disappeared completely before even making a little wet mark on the ground. As with the souls of Heaven and Hell they were all naked, but their flesh seemed very pale and lifeless, not altogether different from what some of the risen dead are described as in mortal mythologies. Even their hair and facial features seemed ragged and drab. Their bodies were fleshen, but incomplete. Whole portions of them, mostly from their limbs, trunks and especially their groins, were simply missing. These were people who were in life far less than ordinary. They didn’t even stop to care once about where their unlived lives might have lead them. As such, like with demons taking on the physical manifestations of their sins, those in Purgatory were missing portions of themselves almost arbitrarily, except the commonality of their genitalia missing from nearly every one we gazed upon. They didn’t propagate in life.

  The second difference was one which shocked Victoria immensely because she had previously only seen something somewhat similar from the landscape of Hell. The Earth itself seemed, for a lack of a better description, inside-out. All the lands, lakes, seas, and oceans were lining the inside of a massive sphere. With this strangeness came the fact that day and night are almost nonexistent inside the sphere as the light of the sun is illuminating this inside-out Earth from its exterior. Sunlight diffused through the waters as the land masses cast shadows across the interior and onto the side. These great shadows weren't the darkness of night one would expect in the mortal realm however. The land masses and the cities and structures upon them had a certain translucency allowing the light of the sun, the sun of the mortal realm, to pass through and illuminate everything and everyone on the sunny side from the ground up, thus keeping the shadows from darkening as one would expect. Because of this there was no real warmth or cold in Purgatory, just brightened darkness and shadowy sunshine, and wasted souls showing through their puzzle-pieced forms. This is truly a twilight land for those who lived twilight lives.

  Always from where we stand we see such a limited view of our world. Our minds become so complacent within our finite views of where we are. But, from where Vic and I were standing, being able to see all the planes in the air and the cars on the roads for as far as our eyesight could focus; the lights of the different countries, cities, small towns, and villages, for one moment we could not only see but also feel how we are each one small part of a greater whole. This is the torment of the Purgatory peoples. Here they can see and feel what they could not let themselves see and feel in life. But here they can’t do a damn thing about it.

  If only for a moment all other people could stand where we’ve stood …

  The drab souls of Purgatory follow the living around like lost puppies trying to offer advice or help as if the living could hear them or even just sense them. In life too few took notice of these people by their own designs, so why would they be noticed from within Purgatory is a mystery they just don't stop to fathom. In Purgatory the living are blurs seemingly moving so fast yet their cadences are no faster than in the mortal realm, and they’re passing by these souls without notice.

  These people forfeited their futures to their pasts and collided into this particular oblivion. Constantly they are enveloped within the very same world they made no effort to be remembered in. These people were born and they all but physically died at the same moment. For each of them this is a hell of their own design just like the suffering each soul experiences in the hell we’re already familiar with.

  I looked to Vic and reminded her that with the despair being so prevalent in this realm she needs to do her business as quickly as possible so as not to allow her coffer to become infected with it, lest she wishes to roam this indefinitely as well. Yes, it's infectious once here. It’s thickest at our level like a heavy fog but invisible to the eyes. We may have arrived by her side too late to talk her out of coming here, but at least we can help protect her while she’s here.

  Vic recomposed herself from her awe of the sights and drew from within her leather jacket a rolled contract and her quill. She looked about and chose basically at random a man who had obviously lived a great long time before passing on to this place. He was walking about aimlessly without a soul to follow and yearn to help. He was sobbing uncontrollably and covering his eyes with his fists in futile efforts to sweep the tears away. Vic grabbed his wrists forcefully, yanked them away from his face, and then stared intensely into his eyes. The old man was clearly shocked by being touched in such a manner, just as we were over Vic being able to touch him in this state, and he was suddenly attentive and listening intently to what Vic had to say to him. She then had but one question to ask...

  “Do you want another chance?”

  He was silent at first. Then he began to grunt and whimper a bit. Victoria reiterated the question but more firmly …

  “Do you want another chance, old man?”

  “Y-y-yes. Oh, please, yes.” His voice quivered as he was still in a state of disbelief over the encounter. Vic grabbed him by the wrist and pricked his index finger on his right hand and his blood seemed dark and slow to come up through the hole in his skin. Victoria then pricked her own right index finger and held the tiny wound a short distance over the tiny wound in the old man’s finger; just as a drop of blood left her finger and fell to his as she gave a simple command none of us within the book had ever heard. Again I dare not scribe her words here for fear of this journal ever coming into the hands of one who should not have this knowledge. Suffice it to say Victoria has not only learned so much from this book, but she’s now recognizing the patterns in the prime Angelic and Demonic which is allowing her to create commands which didn’t previously exist. But for the sake of clarity, Vic’s new command was roughly the equivalent of; Make this one as I am.

  The drop of blood from her body made contact with the darkened and sludge-like blood of the old man and barely a moment was able to pass by before change of an incredible magnitude began throughout his being. The gray complexion of the old man’s skin quickly began to change to warm flesh tones not unlike the beautiful but fair olive complexion Victoria possesses. But that was merely the beginning as the flesh surrounding the missing portions of his form spasmed and twitched as new bone, muscle, veins and tendrils quickly branched out from the separated flesh. Dare I say that more accurately it was reaching out to find itself and become complete? Vic respectfully kept her eyes averted as this man's missing groin filled in full and youthful. The wrinkles and age spots in this man’s skin smoothed over and faded away as the gray in his old tattered hair turned flaxen and became healthy and silken. His old eyes, the windows of his soul, became bright and vibrant again as he looked about the realm without cataracts for the first time since arriving here. Youth and strength coursed into his muscles, through his blood, and after mere seconds this old man stood tall instead of hunched over and broken. He soon remembered his nakedness and attempted to cover himself. Vic assured him his nudity was nothing to be ashamed of as everyone else in Purgatory was nude as well, and more youthful nudity like his was soon to be present.

  I, we, knew immediately that never in his life as a mortal was he ever this well blessed from either the breeding of his parents or by his own efforts. He was now more whole and with more reason to live than he ever earned or amounted to during his life. He admired his new form for several moments in the reflection he now cast in the windows of surrounding buildings. He hasn’t cast reflection or shadows since arriving here. He could feel his very soul unified with the new flesh and mind as he looked to Victoria and dropped to his knees weeping at her feet.

  “How can I possibly repay you? Please tell me.”

  Vic knelt down with him and again took him by his right wrist. She held his hand palm up and again pricked his right index finger since it had healed whilst his body remade itself. His new blood surfaced easily as Victoria let it draw up into her quill, and then she unrolled the contract.

  “Simply read and sign if you agree to my terms.” He
read the contract and looked into Vic’s eyes with a bit of bewilderment.

  “Are you the Devil?” He asked cautiously. Vic was taken aback for a moment before responding.

  “No. But I've got his bag of tricks.” With that he nodded slightly, and then signed the contract with his new blood. Then he simply stood aside as Victoria selected ten more souls one by one. In all there were five men and six women, and after she renewed their bodies and reinvigorated their souls they each happily signed the contract with their new blood and stood by her side. Victoria wanted to get as many as she could, but by the eleventh soul the despair of Purgatory was trying to seep into her coffer. I could see the pale gray swirls about her and she reluctantly agreed we needed to go. Vic had collected a small but diverse group. For the time being these souls would provide plenty of work for her, in getting them acclimated to the mortal realm, and brought up to speed on what they need to know. Presently I believe we’re on that need-to-know list as well.

  Quickly Vic instructed her eleven new acquisitions on how to create their own openings back into the mortal realm, just as we have seen done so many times before by the demons in Hell. She told the Purgatory people that for the time being they need not concern themselves with arriving in a particular place since for many of them the world has changed a great deal since they were alive.

  “Simply get into the mortal realm and when you hear my voice each of you will transmute and return to me. Don’t worry; all of you will be okay.” With that everyone simultaneously recited the command needed to open their own entrances into the mortal world while performing the required motions, and then stepped through their respective openings.