Legacy of Judas - Book One

by Aragon, Christian

  Rhonda opened her eyes and stared deeply into Vic's for an abbreviated eternity. Vic stared back as such that any onlooker would think they'd known each other for years but separated till now. Rhonda was still finding strength to continue and she wasn't about to let this end with just her satisfaction.

  In sex Vic and Rhonda are both givers to their cores, and Rhonda means to reciprocate to the best of her abilities as she takes the dominant position and almost violently strips Vic of her panties and bra. She invests herself in Vic's pleasure as if her life depends on it. The irony in that thought was inescapable.

  Our own emotions kicked in at this point as we found ourselves conflicted over these proceedings. We disengaged from Rhonda's mind for some space. Vic has been true to Vincent ever since he left for school. Perhaps she's been too long without his touch and is in need of this release? Has the absence of Vincent has provided greater justification for doing anything necessary to collect souls? We can even see the logic behind allowing herself to be with a woman as opposed to another man, but something is off and we just can't put our finger on it.

  Though our back is turned we obviously hear the commotion of Rhonda's efforts and find ourselves watching again just as Vic subsides from her obviously wonderful glory. But this isn't supposed to be some sort of awakening for Vic. This is supposed to be the end of Rhonda's mortal life. According to Vic’s next action she obviously still understood this evening's goal.

  Rhonda was nearing the end of this journey which took her a lifetime to travel, but only these hours to finish. Vic again closed the space between her mouth and Rhonda's with an impassioned kiss.

  “I have one more experience for you. Just relax.” Vic's words were breathy, heated, with a not-so-subtle hint of playfully deviousness.

  In unison from so many hands, lips, and bodies unseen by the eyes but so well recognized by the flesh and soul. Rhonda was being caressed, kissed, and pleasured in so many ways she wasn’t able to concentrate on any one. Rhonda reveled in the sensations of this tactile concert as it made music of her sexual excitement and reactions as if she were every instrument in the orchestra. It was all so much more than just skin deep as Vic looked into Rhonda's eyes while holding her face in her hands so lovingly, and with a tear streaming down her cheek. Rhonda stared back into Vic's eyes while smiling sweetly between the gasps and involuntary moans of pleasure. No longer did Rhonda know the acts of defilement she so willingly sought out previously. Though those memories would always be retained by her soul, the suffering that came with them had been released. Now Rhonda knows pleasure as it is meant be. Peaceful while adventurous. Nurturing while exhausting. Fulfilling through sharing. Empowering while vulnerable, and so much more. But never ever harmful. Peacefully Rhonda closed her eyes. Past the sounds and commotion of pleasures amassed in gentle harmony, Rhonda’s heartbeat has become yet more irregular, and slowed.

  Vic carefully allowed her body to swing gently away from Rhonda's body so she could avoid being caught in the duties her souls were now carrying out, but she continued to hold Rhonda's face gently in her hands, and she kept her face close to Rhonda’s. Rhonda was fading in and out of consciousness, and each time she opened her eyes it was Vic's face immediately before her smiling back and gently kissing her lips.

  From the neck down the souls were permeating every last square inch of Rhonda's body. All at once her entire body became an erogenous zone as once again Rhonda was experiencing a torrential flow of glorious bliss to the point of drops of her liquid sex and sweat now floating about in the weightlessness. Rhonda's heart was now trying so hard to keep up with the demands of the evening, but it was falling short.

  The fire and electricity which suddenly flooded Rhonda’s body and soul actually caused a pulse to flow from her in all directions. It pushed against us and all the souls involved this evening, though we were all able to maintain ourselves, it was nonetheless a testament to the sexual power present in the mortal form and immortal soul. Rhonda was now writhing, screaming, shedding tears, shaking and quivering throughout every last fiber of her body and soul as a small bit of light now illuminated within in her coffer. Now only raw, pure pleasure owned her through and through as Vic and all the other souls worked to keep her suspended at that pinnacle. They kept this up for more than an hour, and Rhonda's heart was failing in beautiful surrender the entire time.

  I've heard it said by mortals that they're all born with only a limited number of heartbeats. It seemed Vic and the other souls had chased down the last thrums of Rhonda’s heart as slowly she became less pleasurably agitated and more relaxed and peaceful. Vic kissed Rhonda just one more time. Rhonda's eyes crept open just a bit and the two of them stared deeply into one another for just a moment.

  There was a calmness after the storm in this room as the two of them gently collided with the bed and they laid on their sides facing each other. Close. Legs entangled. Arms pillowed under their heads. The soft light of hotel room returned as Vic's souls dissipated into our surroundings.

  Rhonda softly broke the silence and whispered to Victoria just as her heart stopped beating …

  “Thank you, Evelyn.”

  EVELYN?! What the ass-packing fuck?!

  We snapped around so fast we almost kept spinning. Looking to the open bathroom door, there was Victoria leaning against the sink, fully dressed and with a sly grin on her face. She started explaining before I could mutter a word …

  “Evelyn and Rhonda were lovers once upon a time. Evelyn saw Rhonda come up when she was brought to us as a candidate for acquisition. She asked me if she could do this one personally and devised the entire plan for getting it done. Evelyn couldn’t stomach seeing Rhonda in such a bad way.”

  “What do you mean they were lovers? We practically just pulled Evelyn from Purgatory and there's no way Rhonda is a couple hundred years old!”

  “You're right, Azeeza. But the soul remembers, and emotions aren’t just tools to be used by demons or angels, nor are they just chemical responses to all of life’s interactions and circumstances. Emotions are how souls remember. And these two remembered.”

  “But Evelyn was in Purgatory. She was forgotten …”

  “Rhonda and Evelyn met one another in their late teens in nineteenth-century London. Love bloomed between them, and then it took its course with them, and blossomed fully. But it lasted only a little more than a couple of years because of Rhonda accidentally being cut with a dirty knife at a hospital she worked at. The blade was left by mistake in some sheets sent to the laundry where she labored, and when she grabbed the wadded up sheets the blade went all the way through her hand with tainted blood on it from a sick patient. The infection was slow and painful. Eighteen months later, after immense emotional torment, Rhonda passed on. Evelyn sank into a massive depression and despite numerous moments when she thought she could escape it, she failed. She actually died an old woman in that same hospital, but by the time her death came about no one there knew the slightest thing about her. Her chart simply read Jane because she didn't communicate with anyone. She worked, but she never lived after Rhonda was gone.”

  “That is sad …” I mumbled.

  “I know, Azeeza. I've kept some secrets from you. I apologize. There are things I need to know and ideas I need to explore I can't tell you about all of them. It's NOT that I don't trust you either! The most informational experiments happen when the conditions aren’t forced into being for the experiment to take place. Unfortunately we’re dealing with tremendous forces here, so I'm kinda making this up as I go with only what you've taught me thus far as a guide, and what I’ve observed on my own.”

  “I think I understand. But, Rhonda saw Evelyn as Evelyn, not you? And what of the contract?! I never saw one signed by Rhonda or you!”

  “Rhonda saw Evelyn as Evelyn from the first time they kissed. Evelyn and Rhonda were in love once, but Rhonda’s illness and untimely death destroyed that relationship. This was Evelyn showing Rhonda she still loves her and she has never stopp
ed being in love with her, even at the cost of her own soul. And I got the contract signed several days ago. I stepped out and left Evelyn in my place to see if you would notice.”

  “I suppose this is where we should say something like you've become as much the teacher as you are the student …?”

  “No, Azeeza. We’ll never know just how much we don't know.”

  “You said Evelyn saw Rhonda come up in the lists; the Seven Deadly Sin lists?”

  You're wondering how she saw them when all the candidates were being shown to me internally by the other souls?”

  “Yes …”

  Evelyn is the answer to strengthening my unification command. She resides within me now, and as such is not only able to make the Unity Command stronger, but she's also able to carry out a whole slew of other tasks adding to what I can do as a mortal. Your next question is obvious and reasonable. Yes, she's fully aware of you. While within me she sees and hears you just as I do. But like tonight, outside of me, she has no idea where you are or how to tell if you're there.”

  “Here I was thinking you were just ignoring me all night!” Vic giggled.

  “No, but I have been watching.”

  Once upon a time I referred to Victoria as possibly being a village idiot. Not only has she proven me wrong, but I probably should’ve been looking into a mirror when I was looking for potential village idiots.

  Journal entry XLIII

  Roughly another week has passed since our liaison with Rhonda. Since then Vic has been working doggedly originally acquiring other souls from her list. Some acquisitions needed some creative thinking to achieve, but for the most part the sins were simple ones like Greed or Sloth. It took almost no effort to acquire the Sloths, which was fitting.

  An added benefit has emerged from the acquisitions we hadn’t previously stopped to think about as many of these people came from opulent lives, enough so to support their individual sins without going poor to do so. The Sloths had acquired money through inheritances, the Greedy were, well, greedy, and the vain and lustful had acquired a great deal from what Victoria calls sugar daddies and wealthy women who handed over handsome amounts of money to their handsome boy toys. The Prideful spent a great deal of energy amassing wealth to buy stuff to impress people who really didn’t give a shit. Now Vic has ended up with their assets at her disposal since she also chose sinners without heirs. I peeked at the contracts for these people and found that Vic expanded the business verbiage to include an actual business transaction contingent upon the satisfaction of their sin’s fulfillment. There were some tricky trimming issues because a second signature had to be acquired prior the sinner’s death, but Vic typically worked this out during fulfillment.

  She’s not just collecting their souls, but their fortunes as well for the service of bringing their particular vices to their grandest possible conclusions.

  Smart girl. Brilliant really.

  But one detail in all this, inspired by questions not openly asked nor incidentally answered, was still unresolved. Why? Vic was forthcoming, but her answer was nonetheless cryptic.

  “I had a nightmare within a dream shortly before I lost contact with Vincent. There was darkness. A pure white feather seemingly self-illuminated was gently falling. It landed softly on a grassy field and began to bleed and kill all the life around it. It felt like failure and consequence. It was what I felt far more so than what I saw. I need to prepare before I act. I need to think before I react. When Vincent went silent it was like a catalyst activating me to prepare as best I can. I don’t believe he’s dead, but something is there, and I won’t get to know till I’m as ready as I can be.”

  Chapter Seven

  ~

  Dinners with Deities

  Journal entry XLIV

  After Rhonda was collected it kept sticking in our collective craw that I can't call Johnny and his friends The Sinful Seven anymore, which we enjoyed immensely when it was appropriate. Those seven souls have become invaluable to Vic and her efforts, while at the same time Vic has taken to becoming almost motherly to them. She's been reading them classic stories, poetry, historical accounts and more to help them expand their own horizons as they would be had they never been collected. The seven of them obviously don't know what their mortal lives would've been like had they never been collected, but they do sincerely enjoy being of service to Vic. So, not only do I need a fun new term for them, but perhaps for all of Vic’s collected souls. Since those seven were Victoria’s coronation into soul collecting, and obviously because there's so much more significance to them than we previously knew, and because of the Seven Deadly Sins, we've bestowed upon them the moniker of, Victoria’s Virtues, and henceforth the souls collected outside those seven will be referred to as, Victoria’s Valkyries. Yes, it's all cheesy as cheddar, and those who were males during their previous lives may balk a bit about being referred to as Valkyries, but souls don’t dictate physical gender, and language is so much more fun now than when I was just an uneducated desert wretch. So, Virtues and Valkyries it is.

  Seemingly still in relation to Rhonda …

  Today Victoria received a very interesting invitation to a private dinner. It arrived via courier and has no return address nor is the name of the sender anywhere to be seen — not even an initial. The invitation was odd because the restaurant the dinner will be served at is the same one Victoria took Rhonda to just before we acquired her soul later that evening. Vic and I agree this could be the beginning of what we’ve feared, possibly even a trap, and now Victoria has asked me to do something I wouldn’t want to ask of anyone. She’s asked me to go back to Hell.

  In short, every soul who makes up the consciousness of this book is still connected to its fleshen body in Hell by a single thread of its own essence. Because the Book of the Damned is only visible to the one possessing it due to the legacy, our soul strands cannot be traced from Hell to our current whereabouts, though we can travel back and forth using these threads. The primary reason we don't traverse back is because once we've re-entered our fleshen bodies were subject to the full effects of our tortures while in our bodies. Being there incurs far greater suffering than remaining within the book, so we just don't do it. Willingly allowing the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual suffering of our damnation back into the forefront of our consciousness is an idea we simply don't entertain. However, something Victoria brought up was the possibility of a soul traveling back to Hell on the strand of another to a freshen form not of one’s own, thereby possibly reducing the effects of the damnation once getting there.

  Vic is now figuring out how to break the rules of Hell! Next thing you know the Devil will be meeting with Vic at the crossroads to make a deal and sell his soul!

  Maybe not.

  Our aim is to figure out whose fleshen bodies are closest to the throne and try to find out what Malus may know of the whereabouts of the Book of the Damned; if he's had a hand in what's happened with Vincent, and if he suspects who the current master of the book is. If he suspects Victoria then she needs to redouble her efforts towards readiness. Whatever that may mean.

  According to God’s words, when the book was stripped from Judas’s possession, no one would know the possessor of the book until that possessor had grown strong enough to overtake the throne and do so with the knowledge of the book in use. Well, we all realize the rules have changed with a mortal coming into possession of this book and its scribings. I don’t know a great deal about Malus other than he’s a different kind of evil from the rest of Hell’s inhabitants. He won’t be satisfied with not knowing when his rule will be jeopardized. He’ll seek out the possessor of the book. We must know before he gets that information, so I must make the journey and return with answers.

  Journal entry XLV

  What have we gotten Victoria into? What is to become of her? Granted, time in Hell is not the same as in the mortal realm, but so many mortal years have passed and we've not yet seen hide nor hair of any demons attempting to hunt down the bo
ok … could this situation with Vin really be the first efforts of Hell to get this back? Could it just be an invitation? Both?

  Malus is most certainly not the same kind of evil as all the others in Hell. I made the trip back. It’s gotten worse, as difficult as that might be to imagine. The atrocities Malus is creating from the fleshen souls ... I dare not scribe their details here, but he clearly has animosity against God’s creations, most especially the pleasurable ones.

  We figured out whose fleshen body was nearest the throne. Actually we found several close enough to hear everything spoken, so several of us made the trip. We re-inhabited the fleshen bodies, though the suffering was still a bit intense it was greatly diminished as it was someone else's flesh we inhabited, just as Vic suspected.

  We listened for a time. The others heard the same things I heard, but just a couple of us were able to see what was transpiring as well. I wish I hadn’t seen what I did. I’m not sure Victoria can survive Malus, not that I was ever sure in the first place.

  Time in Hell is warped because of Hell’s shape, the undulations of the landscape, and the precariously positioned sun. Its open at both ends and more tightly assembled in some places compared to others depending on how the Thorn arranged the fleshen bodies. The entire structure of Hell rolls, which creates a centrifugal force, but the areas assembled more loosely will twist, push, swell and contract, and that changes what should be an even cylindrical gravity throughout Hell into a warped one instead.

  This contorted gravity also changes the flow of time within the great landscape. Some areas move quicker through time while others move at a more consistent pace, and still other areas move through time more slowly. Which areas are which is impossible to know since Hell isn't spherical. All this despite the great fleshen columns Judas knew well enough to construct throughout the entire structure for extra stability.