"That sounds very extreme," I managed. I felt numbed by Turner’s casualness in conveying this possibility.
"Well, we’re talking Demons here. And we’re talking two Angels who were mistreated by Demons. Demons are replaceable, but the honor of an Angel is another matter."
"Of course," I muttered.
Turner wandered to my window, where I had propped Lyre so that his cyclops eye would be directed upon the street below. The glass vibrated with the muffled sounds given off by the looming machine building which eclipsed the skyline. When the investigator picked up and handled the book it felt as though he had plucked the heart right out of my chest and was turning it in his hands. He cracked the book open to its start, read a few lines from my imposed self-debasement.
"You kept your exercise book from school?" He looked up at me.
"Yeah. I like to reread what I wrote in there. To remind me of how wrong I was in not following the word of the Son. To remind myself how lowly I am because of it."
"Huh. You see, friend, that’s what’s so tragic about folks like you. You have some really good qualities. You were almost there; you almost made it."
"I wish there was a chance for us to repent."
"Well, that’s the thing. You have to repent in life. Not when it’s too late." Without reversing the book, and opening it to its last pages where I write this journal, Turner propped it back in the window as he had found it. "What is this…your look-out?" he joked.
"Not without a mouth," I joked back. "I, ah, I just want to give it something to look at."
"You have a liberal heart, don’t you? A lot of compassion for Demons. People like this, who have been severely reprimanded…"
"Maybe it’s a failing."
"Not so much a failing, as simply goodness misdirected. I respect you for it—I do." Turner sighed. "Ah, well, it was a long shot coming to see you again…I don’t imagine that this Chara would have much to gain from seeing you. But if she should be so foolish, please tell her about what we’re contemplating. About having the entire Demon population of Oblivion replaced. She might just consider turning herself in, if she has as much loyalty to her own kind as they apparently have for her."
"If I were ever to see her, sir, you can rest assured I would pass that along."
"Good man." He patted my arm on his way past me. The Celestial drifted before him to open my door for him. Turner had just stepped through the threshold when he turned to address me again. "You need to get handy with a needle and thread; it isn’t that hard. Not a skill a man needs to be ashamed of."
"Sir?"
Turner pointed to the tear in my shirt. The tearing that had occurred when Chara tore it off my body.
"Oh…well…yeah, it isn’t something I’ve tried before. I should."
"You should. My mama taught me. Came in handy more than once in my lifetime."
"I know I’m on the shabby side, and not to complain about my well-deserved lot, sir, but I am a poor man."
"Yes, but you still have your pride, don’t you? Pride isn’t a sin, I say." He confessed this in a whisper, as if to keep the Celestial from hearing. "Just excessive pride."
"Yes, sir."
"The friend you were visiting when I came before…is she a woman?"
"Sir?"
"If your friend’s a woman, maybe she’d be willing to do a little sewing for you."
"Oh. Well, no, it was a male coworker. But maybe he knows how to sew," I joked.
"Don’t be afraid to learn new things," he mock chided me, and then he turned away at last, and the Celestial floated eerily after him.
In a half-choked panic, I wanted to fling the door shut; it was agonizing to close it slowly and gently. Even then, I found it hard to believe that Inspector Turner wasn’t still lingering just outside my locked door.
Day 69.
"Did you hear what happened?" Larry gushed as soon as he’d burst into the break room. I’d packed myself a small lunch and was sitting alone at a metal table bolted to the floor. The man at the table next to me had lowered his head onto his folded arms and was sobbing quietly.
A loud rush of liquid, perhaps sewerage or chemicals, flowed through the huge conduit that crossed the ceiling (the pipe trembled visibly with its force), and I waited for the sound to pass before I asked, "No, what happened?"
"I guess you couldn’t hear the gunfire from your station."
"What gunfire?"
"We heard it in my area, but of course we couldn’t go outside to look. But Jarrod’s girlfriend just came to meet him for lunch and told him what happened…"
"Which is?"
"A group of Damned stormed the torture tower where those five devil-rapists are on public display. Remember the ones we saw?"
"Yeah…so these people stormed that torture plant? For what?"
"To rescue those five guys! Can you believe the balls? They were actually able to break three of these guys free before the Demons moved in…it was a really well-planned attack…"
"Man. So…how many of these raiders were there?"
"Ten, maybe a dozen. Anyway, so the Demons were able to capture three of them, and they recaptured one of the rapists they rescued, but the other seven to nine guys got away with two of the devil-rapists. Can you believe it? And to top that off—they killed four Demons in the process."
"Oh…wow…"
"They had a couple guns. That’s how they were able to do this. I don’t know where they got those from. Probably from Angels they’ve ambushed, though once in a while I’ve seen a Demon carrying a gun."
I hardly knew how to absorb this turn of events. Even in my short time in Hell it seemed utterly unthinkable. But at the same time, I recalled what Chara had told me, about rebel movements in Hades…and she’d said those men who’d attacked her had been part of such a movement which she had been flushing out.
"The Demons will really be cracking down on us now," Larry predicted.
"It could be worse than that," I muttered, thinking of Inspector Turner, and what he’d told me only yesterday about the possibility that every Demon in Oblivion might be executed and replaced in order to make an example. Might the Angels, the Celestials, the Creator Himself view these most recent acts as more of an indication that Oblivion was out of control? What terrible measures might they take to resume that control?
"Wouldn’t you hate to be one of the raiders they caught?" Larry went on. "And that one prisoner they recaptured? These guys are gonna get tortured like nobody’s ever been tortured before."
"I wouldn’t doubt it."
"Poor bastards…I feel sorry for them. If I was as brave as they are, I’d organize my own little army to go in and rescue all of them."
"I think the ones on public display, if they remain on public display, will be guarded from now on."
"They’ll probably want to put on some new kind of public show, even more scary, as a deterrent. If they gave up on doing a public display, it would look like they can’t control the situation…and they won’t wanna lose face like that."
Larry tried to get me to go to the immense torture center with him after work, to see if the two unrescued rapists were still on display, and if the three rebels and single recaptured rapist had been added to their ranks already, but I told him we probably wouldn’t be able to get near the place right now. The Demons, leery of another attack, would no doubt cordon off the area. But mainly I just wanted to get home to see if Chara would come see me, or try to contact me in some way.
I didn’t tell Larry what Chara had told me about these men being part of a burgeoning rebel movement. I didn’t tell Larry about Chara at all. What Demon-hating human would accept my intimacy with her? Though I’m certain that many a human has lusted after these beautiful warrior Demons, I’m equally certain that very few if any of them would understand my feelings for one of them.
As I walked home alone, I half-hoped that Chara wouldn’t come to my flat tonight. What if Turner were watching me? Or other Demons, no longer loyal
to Chara, afraid of Turner’s threats? But at the same time I longed to see her again, as if we’d been apart for weeks.
Did I dare go to her, instead? I was afraid to lead lurking enemies to her hideaway. I wanted to tell her that Turner had found out where I lived, come to my flat, and threatened to kill all of her fellow Demons. Didn’t he suspect that I was in contact with Chara? And didn’t he, thus, intend for me to tell Chara about his threats…hoping that she would surrender herself to protect her comrades?
I couldn’t risk leading Angel or Demon to her. I must be patient. She had told me she’d contact me somehow, some way.
I just hoped that she’d live long enough to do so.
Day 70.
On my walk to work this morning, I was the victim of a drive by shooting…riddled with bullets by one of two Angels who roared past me on their motorcycles. They obviously haven’t left town yet.
As I resumed consciousness, lying on the black brick sidewalk with my blood running along the curb into a grate, I saw my gouged chest through my tattered and saturated shirt. Damn it. I’d have to go home, throw it out, and change into another. I’d be late to work and catch hell, pardon the expression, from my group leader Bruce. But my main concern at present was the pain that made tears flow down my cheeks, and had me curled sobbing in a fetal position, each jolting sob making the pain worse. I was too absorbed in my own suffering to do much more than note that a girl of about nine had had the top of her skull shot off in the same attack, and lay in the arms of the Damned woman who had taken her in as her own child. This surrogate mother wasn’t weeping, but the haggard look of impotent rage and beaten fatalism in her face was just as tragic. I saw the girl’s skinny legs twitch and then convulse as she began her agonizing reconstitution.
Finally, still losing blood from the larger exit wounds in my back (at least I wouldn’t heal with annoying bullets trapped inside of me), I dragged myself into my flat. There, I sat down until I mended some more and the edge of the pain grew duller. The entry wounds were just bloodless puckered craters which I counted (six) with my fingers through my clean shirt as I returned to the street and half-trotted to work, hoping no more Angels would ride past me. When I got to the factory at last, Bruce was waiting for me, furious, hefting in his hand a fearsome-looking toothed wrench sort of thing the like of which I’d never seen before in life or death.
"Where the fuck were you?" he fumed, red-faced. "I’ve got Yolanda covering your belt for you. You think maybe I should give her your job permanently and fire your ass? Why are you late this time…was it raining again?"
"Chill out," I muttered. I’d never seen him this bad before, and to make it worse some other workers were looking over at me.
"Don’t tell me to chill out! I ought to crack your skull open!" He half raised that greasy, weighty tool. "We have to keep things running here, do you understand?"
"No," I snapped, lifting my eyes to his, "I don’t understand. What exactly are we keeping running in this place? And why are you threatening to brain me, Bruce? Did you wake up as a Demon today? Maybe you ought to look in the mirror…you’re still a man. A man like me. Aren’t we on the same side, here?"
"What side? We have a job to do, and it isn’t for us to understand the whats and whys. You want to argue with Mr. Gold about it, instead of me? He won’t just threaten to brain you, he’ll see that you end up in the sub-basement of a torture plant. Now go man your belt!"
"I was wrong about you, Bruce," I said as I started away. "You aren’t human, after all. You’re just a Demon wannabe."
"One more word, and I take it to Mr. Gold. Go on." He smirked furiously.
I just gave him a little smile and trudged off toward my work station. This was why the Damned could never hope to truly unite against the Demons, or the Angels. The majority were too afraid. And sometimes that fear made them align themselves with their oppressors. Forget about the legends of devil worshipers kissing the behind of Satan. In Hell, people like Bruce had their whole head up the collective demonic ass.
But I gave up on the argument, didn’t I? I was afraid to push it further, afraid of what Bruce and Mr. Gold, who apparently does exist after all (unless Bruce is being misled himself), might do to me. In their allegiance to the Demons, they are indeed like Demons themselves. And I was too cowardly, or at least too beaten down (like that surrogate mother with her adopted child in her arms) to act upon my pride. This demoralization hurt me more, in a way, than my bullet wounds did. Because those would go away.
As I write this, I’m home, and it’s what passes for my night (even though others are heading off to work in the street below me as if it’s the start of their day). And I still haven’t heard from Chara. What I hear is the chatter of automatic fire from far away…the Angels have been very loud tonight. At first I thought it might be more attacks by those rebels, but I’ve been hearing the distant roar of motorcycles as well.
Maybe they’re painting the town red one last time before they head back upstairs, or wherever it is that Heaven resides. Their paradise of Disneylands abutting every city. I picture rows of solid gold motor homes inside which hang neon-framed portraits of the Son, who bears a suspicious resemblance to Elvis, His eyes radiating intoxicating beams stronger than the fountains of bourbon in every Astroturfed park.
Or maybe the Angels are agitated, all fired up. Because two of them were savagely humiliated by an uppity Demon. And now the Damned are killing their captors and freeing prisoners from torture centers. The whole town is going to Hell in a hand basket.
And Chara is at the center of it all. My frightening Eve who is not falling from grace…but discovering it.
Day 71.
Today, the Black Cathedral came to my neighborhood. There was an ear-splitting grinding screech that approached steadily from the distance and mounted to such an extent that at first I ran to the window to look out at the machine building, then actually went down into the street to look at it again. With all the horrible sounds that thing made in the course of its unknowable functions, I thought this was some new and extra-loud emanation. Or, perhaps, a terrible malfunction that might cause the thing to explode.
But the mechanical skyscraper wasn’t the source of the metallic shrieking. The opposite side of the machine building faced onto one of those wider avenues with the twin rail tracks laid into the cobblestones. In this broad street, rising above the roofs of the intervening smallish tenements, I saw the black spires and steeples of the Black Cathedral for the first time. I knew instantly what they were, because they were moving along from left to right, like the masts and sails of a ship seen above the roofs of some old seaport town. Even from here, it was apparent that they were made entirely of black metal. The cathedral soon disappeared behind the machine building, however, and the screeching stopped altogether. The migrating, nomadic cathedral Larry had described to me had found a new location to temporarily set up camp in.
I hadn’t seen or even heard from Chara since the 68th and now I was really beginning to worry. Maybe she was being more patient than I was…or then again, maybe she was already captured, tortured and executed. It tortured me not to know.
She might be furious for it…but I decided today to go to her room under the bridge, and see if she were still there.
The trick was in finding the place again, and I took many a wrong turn, but because I had found my way home from there on my own once before, I was able to locate it eventually. All along the way, I would look back over my shoulder to see if I were being followed. I saw no one suspicious, no one tailing me. There was one odd occurrence, however. At one point I passed a troop of maybe a dozen Demons, on their way to some bit of no doubt unpleasant business. Their apparent leader was carrying a black iron spear and sported an insignia on his belt that must indicate the rank of a sergeant or such. As we walked past each other, I met the eyes of the sergeant, and he held my gaze a long moment, even turning his head slightly to keep our eyes locked, before we had fully passed one another. Maybe it
was simply because he wanted to stare me down. Maybe because I am involved intimately with a Demon, I was making the mistake of fearing the other Demons less; up until recently, I would have avoided a devil’s gaze. But still, I had the strange notion that he recognized me, somehow, as if he knew who I was. The lover of Chara, their comrade they were being forced to hunt.
Glancing over my shoulder once more, I rapped on the metal door set into one arched leg of the stone bridge. After about ten seconds, which my heartbeat heavily counted off, I pounded a bit harder. This time, the door squealed open, and a familiar figure stood before me.
"Oh…well, I suppose I should have been expecting you," said Inspector Turner, his smile more forced than usual. He was wearing his outer white robe but not his peaked cap, and his gray hair was mussed as if he’d been napping. "Come in," he invited.
I saw no further need of playing games. I remained where I was. "Where is Chara?" I half choked, trying to sound tough.
"Well, obviously you could have told me that, before. I had to find out about this cozy little nook through my own channels. Really, please come inside. I insist."
Letters From Hades Page 14
