by Adam Moon
She remembered the details from a year ago like they had just happened yesterday:
All of their planning had come to a focal point and it was time for Luke to finally release Lucifer.
He'd opened the portal to hell with a red death ball that came from Jessie's dreams (that also killed on contact). The ball had become two dimensional as it floated above the ground.
Time ceased for Melanie at that point so she didn't see what happened next, but Luke told her it became a hole between realms and Lucifer was on the other side of it, looking back at him.
He spoke to Lucifer for a long time but in the end he rejected his advances and locked him back up in hell for eternity. It was a turn of events no one had foreseen. Lucifer was denied entry. A decade of planning was thwarted by Luke's inability to pull the trigger.
Melanie was secretly overjoyed by the outcome though. She'd fallen in love with the man and the thought of an angels soul residing within his body kind of freaked her out.
That's when things went sideways. Everything got really boring in a hurry.
They'd adopted aliases, although hers and Jessie's didn't stick the same way Luke's had (his real name was Jack). They drove from hotel to motel a lot those first few months.
Then out of the blue, Luke got religious and started his own weird little cult. After that, money was no object. One of his followers even gave them the house they now lived in.
The church Luke presided over was once an old school house, converted to an antique store, and then eagerly bequeathed to him by the owners.
Luke spent a ton of time and money tricking the building out until it was more church-like. His following was rabid and growing by the day.
So Luke's life seemed to have a purpose, but what of hers?
She was a bright ex-soldier with ambitions of her own, but it seemed like that all took a back seat to Luke's wants.
He probably wouldn't even give her children of her own since they hadn't been intimate in a very long time, for reasons she just couldn't put her finger on.
And what of poor Jessie? She'd mentioned enrolling him in school but Luke rightly pointed out that if he dozed off in class and one of the dream-creature abominations materialized, they'd all be found out and the government would have them executed (because of what they'd done last year to those poor military guards at the facility).
So she home schooled Jessie the best she could and just hoped every day for a change of fortunes.
For his part, Jessie seemed to have adjusted well enough, although he had taken a distinct disliking to his father. She didn't understand that because Luke was a good man despite his quirky flaws, and he seemed to genuinely care for his son.
Maybe Jessie was acting out because he felt like Luke had abandoned him at birth, but that was unfair. Luke didn't even know he existed until a little over a year ago. Jessie's mom was the one at fault. She'd performed the ritual that made Jessie special, failed to inform the father of the child, and then when things got scary with the boy, she simply abandoned him; she didn't have the moxy to finish what she'd started. (Child services then picked him up and it soon became apparent that he was unique. That's when the government stepped in and that's when she and Luke got involved.)
Jessie's mom caused all of his pain, not Luke. She deserved his ire.
Emotions are a funny thing, she thought, especially at such a young age.
She wandered through the silent house, pausing at the kitchen window to watch one of Luke's devout followers walk past. He was patrolling the house as a lookout for approaching government agents. It sure seemed to her like they'd left one prison (the underground government facility) for a new, self imposed prison.
She turned the TV on, watched a game show. She wept as quietly as she could, careful not to let Jessie hear her.
Jack remembers...a little
Jack's memories started to come back to him, but each one seared his brain, and he fought to cast them off before they did too much damage or caused him too much pain.
He had been tricked by Lucifer. Lucifer had used him to escape his hellish prison, then he threw Jack inside so that God wouldn't get suspicious. Apparently God checks in on hell from time to time to see that all souls are present.
But according to the plan as explained to Jack, it wasn't supposed to go that way. Lucifer was supposed to just come along for the ride, inside Jack's body. They were supposed to be two drivers of the same car (with neither of them stuck in hell). For various reasons related to his hatred of God, Jack was fine with sharing his body with the soul of God's nemesis. But that's not what happened. He'd been played for a fool and tossed into the pits of hell like a piece of garbage.
Lucifer had stolen his identity and he guessed that he'd also assumed his life since then. Did that mean he was with Jessie and Melanie? Had he killed them already? That thought brought a wave of fury with it and Jack snarled. He felt his horn nubs tingle.
The spider scurried off into another room for safety.
The spider had found them an abandoned home to hole up in as Jack got used to the earth again. The earth seemed foreign to him like how old childhood memories always come crashing down when you revisit a place where you grew up. Didn't that house used to be bigger. Didn't the park used to be more colorful and have more vibrant scents? Wasn't my second grade teacher twice as tall, with the scowl of a demon?
Apparently all memories were lies. That was how Jack felt right then.
The earth was drab, lacking any of the luster he remembered. Maybe it was because he'd spent the past year untouched by all things mortal? Or maybe he'd put it on a pedestal where it didn't belong in the first place.
Maybe he didn't respect earth anymore because he'd called hell his home for the past year.
He just couldn't remember any details. That was probably a good thing because those memories were almost certainly poisonous, maybe even deadly.
Jack tilted his head up and sniffed the air. He looked all around; God was still in command, he knew. So why hadn't Lucifer destroyed him like he said he would?
Maybe that was another one of Lucifer's lies? Maybe his assertion that he would kill God upon release was a ruse to trick someone into freeing him?
It didn't matter now. Jack, was here to set things straight.
He would kill Lucifer for his deceitfulness, make sure his son was safe and reunite with the love of his life, Melanie. At least that was what he remembered as his original plan.
The spider still seemed to know more than he did, so he let the little guy take the lead. He trusted it, as one would a loyal pet. It was like a guide dog, only uglier and far more terrifying.
He'd recently named the spider Dick-eyes because it had a human dick and eyes, but he reserved the right to rename it as soon as he thought of something better.
Dick-eyes came back into the room with a baseball cap for him to wear. Jack put it on, struggling to pull it past the sawn off nubs where his horns once were. The spider left once more, only to return a few minutes later with a bottle clutched between two of its legs. Jack picked up the bottle and the spider took off again.
It was a bottle of fake tan cream. Apparently the spider thought he should go incognito while he was up here.
That made Jack wonder if he was a marked man. If God found out that he had escaped hell, would he come after him?
Worse still: If God checked in on hell and noticed that the presence of evil had diminished, he'd go looking around the earth for Lucifer. And if he found him first then Jack wouldn't get the satisfaction of killing him.
Cult Leader
Lucifer looked over his rapt followers. He was preaching about the apocalypse again to all that would hear him. It was their favorite subject, but only because he'd convinced them that it was coming very soon and he could save them from the tortures of hell.
He remembered an old saying that went something like, the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing man he doesn't exist. But Lucifer knew better.<
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Technically, the Devil did not exist. Not yet anyway.
Becoming the ruler of hell was tempting to him, as it always had been, but he worried that it might be a death sentence. The ruler of hell had better be an equal to God or God would quickly make things right with the universe. Whoever took that throne should be very fucking prepared to defend it. The throne was his birthright, but he had to be careful about when he accepted it or it would be a death sentence too. That was his belief. That's why he was doing all of this. He needed to be ready when the war broke out.
He said in his clear, booming voice, "The apocalypse is cresting the horizon as I speak these words to you and it is more terrible than anything you can possibly imagine. Hell's army is eager to rip and rape."
The crowd was quiet, like kindergarteners hearing Green Eggs and Ham for the first time.
"The Devil knows you all by name. He wants to shake each of your hands and kiss you on the forehead right before he lets his demons have their fun with your meat and your souls. He cums all over himself as he imagines what he'll do to you; all of you."
Lucifer knew that you had to be crude to get through to some people. With TV and the internet and books readily available, people had heard and seen just about everything, so he decided he had to kick it up a notch to get noticed.
"You might be wondering, what will the demons do exactly?
"They will sodomize you until you get used to it, and then they'll get creative. Your flesh is their play thing and they've had millennia to come up with various ways of rending and manipulating it to cause you the most severe pains and them the most serene pleasures possible. Then, when they're done, the fires of hell will cleanse your memory. You'll forget what being ass raped felt like and how long it takes to pass out from being skinned alive. You'll forget all the tortures because that means they all become new and fresh, over and over and over again, throughout eternity."
An old lady left through the back doors but that was alright, Lucifer always lost a few as he gained dozens more. Plus, if he'd disgusted her enough, she'd go and complain to others and some people would show up simply out of a morbid curiosity.
In the end, Lucifer would get all the followers he needed. His message needed to be spread for the lies to reach the right ears.
He needed an angel to hear him and believe him and he couldn't get that unless one actually showed up for one of his sermons.
Jessie the Dream weaver
Melanie made a grilled cheese for Jessie. He wouldn't eat it but she still had to try.
The boy was skin and bones and yet he possessed such amazing power within that frail body; power granted to him from hell through the sacred rite that took place when he was conceived.
She wondered why he still had the power.
After Lucifer was denied entrance to the earth realm, she'd assumed Jessie's strange powers would go away. Lucifer was trapped forever on the other side so what use were the dream powers to Lucifer anymore? With the doorway bricked up, what use was there for a key?
Then again, Jessie's dream creatures and objects materialized less and less nowadays so maybe it would just take time to go away. She hoped that was it.
Jessie was playing video games in his room as was usual, when she came in with his sandwich. He glanced at her quickly, then back to the screen, then at her again. He was intense when he played. It seemed like the only time he was ever really in the moment was when he was playing.
When she put the plate on the dresser beside his bed he turned off the game and said, "Thanks Melanie. Thank you for everything. I know this must be hard for you."
She was proud of him the way a mother should be. He was smart as hell and calm in a Zen-like way, which was especially impressive since he was an eleven year old boy, cooped up at home all day, every day with no friends and a father who spent more and more time away from home.
She smiled and said, "Read a book while you eat."
He nodded but she knew he wouldn't. He was a boy after all.
Then she closed the door and went to take a nap on the sofa.
Jack's ugly as Sin
Jack looked himself over in the bathroom mirror. He looked hideous but at least he looked like a hideously disfigured human being and not a freshly escaped damned soul.
People probably wouldn't scream and run away from him anymore. Something about that made him sad.
He'd tried the tanning lotion but it wasn't enough to hide his deep red skin tone. The spider got him some make-up putty that people use on Halloween to add scars and such and Jack applied it liberally to his face. He smoothed over the deep musculature with it, like spackling a wall. His face looked fatter but also much less demonic.
He then cut his talons down with a pair of garden sheers (when the scissors broke from too much resistance) and the spider found him a pair of gloves large enough to fit even his oversized hands.
He wore a tan overcoat now and he'd traded his baseball cap out for a ten gallon cowboy hat that better covered his nubs.
He looked ridiculous but that was intentional, to draw the eye away from his Satanic features.
He wasn't entirely satisfied, but it would have to do. He felt like he had little time before God discovered his prisoners missing and came looking.
Jack wanted to deal with Lucifer himself and if God wanted a piece of him afterwards, then so be it.
He'd take on God too, no problem. The idea thrilled him. He didn't expect to beat God or kill him, just to inflict a little damage on the bastard. After all, God had allowed all of this to happen to him. God made the rules, Lucifer had only manipulated them.
A memory came to him like a bolt of lightning: During his time in hell he'd realized one thing; he deserved to be there.
He'd accidentally caused the death of his only friend. He had killed a bunch of military personnel to free his son from the facility they kept him in. Then he killed two angels, although the word kill might be a stretch. Maybe he'd just vanquished them or something. But his intention was to kill them and God judged intentions equal to acts.
Then he'd went against God's will and freed Lucifer from hell.
If anyone deserved to go to hell, it was him.
He pulled the red metallic ball from his coat pocket. It was eager to kill. When he used it to help his son escape from the facility, it had been a mystery to him, but now that he'd spent some time in hell, he understood its purpose more than ever; it was a soul collector. It was a glutton though because even though it was bursting with souls, it was greedy for more.
But there was more to the death ball that he couldn't put his finger on just yet. He didn't let the absence of information bother him though. He knew the answers would come to him in time. His memories grew by the hour, so it wouldn't be much longer before the mysteries of the ball were remembered.
He willed it to float before him and it did so obediently. He moved it around the room with the power of his mind. It brought back old feelings, feelings of wonderment and joy; feelings he'd long ago given up on as silly and baseless.
With a full year in hell under his belt, he now knew there was no hope. Lucifer would know that soon enough too.
Angel Rape
Shelly Collins ran her skinny ass off. Some angels had found her and they were trying to rape her.
She didn't know why God had chosen her to bring forth the new messiah, but she didn't agree with his decision one little bit.
Her life had gone to shit a month ago.
That was when the voice came to her. She'd heard that clear voice within her head, plain as day as it recited some sort of prophecy.
It was God speaking.
It said she would give birth to a holy being, part human and part angel.
Shelly had been drinking that night so it was easy enough to shrug it off as a trick of the imagination, that is, until a fucking angel burst through her window the following morning and tried to grab at her.
It was fast but she got lucky. It was so worked up
that it ran right into the edge of the door frame as she made her escape. Several more attempts were made on her virginity, and so far she'd evaded them all. None of it seemed real, even though she was given almost daily reminders that her virginity was some kind of beacon to sex starved angels.
But could she keep this up forever?
She even considered letting a random dude deflower her just to taint the goods, but she didn't know for sure if being a virgin was even important. She couldn't bring herself to do it anyway, so it was a moot point.
She did not want to be the twenty first century version of the Virgin Mary and it wasn't right that no one had even bothered to ask her for permission.
God really did work in mysterious ways. Mysterious and disgusting ways. He was a sociopath.
The angels were mauling one another as they chased her. Apparently she was a hot ticket and they weren't comfortable with gang rape so they were trying to take out the competition. It worked in Shelly's favor because their in-fighting slowed them down and she was able to lose them in the dark.
God, she hated the fucking angels.
The First Lead
Jack's horns were growing back at an alarming rate. He could already see them peeking over the top of his forehead, curling down in front of his eyes. Rather than use a wood saw again for a temporary fix, he opted for permanence. He reached up with both hands and pulled at them with all of his might. It didn't hurt, he just felt a strong pressure on his forehead. His arm muscles bulged from the exertion.
There were crackling noises followed by two wet pops, and the horns came loose in his hands, one after the other. His vision turned red as blood streamed into his eyes.
It still didn't hurt.
Maybe nothing would hurt him anymore, ever since he'd endured the tortures of hell.
But when he felt a mild headache coming on, he knew that wasn't quite true. He could be hurt, it would just take a lot to do any damage.
