By then, I should have been getting used to it. I wasn’t sure if I ever would.
“I’m sorry,” Barbara said behind me, whimpering a little as she spoke. “I didn’t ever want to hurt… I just wanted to get away. I couldn’t go back … not again.” She started sobbing. “She said she was gonna…”
I crawled back to her, dragging her wet habit with me.
Barbara was curled into a ball on her knees on the ground now, doubled over in pain and… I looked at her bare back and buttocks. Anger welling up inside me, I prepared to be horrified and rain hate down on the dirty devils that dared hurt her.
“Have mercy on me,” she prayed down at the ground.
I stared in disbelief. How could…? Even my Shandian mind struggled to catch up to the truth of it. You idiot! My inner voice shouted at me. It just couldn’t—
“Forgive me, Benito.”
“Forgive you?” I said, still not able to come to grips with it. “For wha—”
A spike of hot searing pain shot through the right side of my chest and blinding white light filled my head … and then it was gone and I stared into Barbara’s eyes.
Her beautiful blue eyes filled with tears. “She said it was the only way,” her voice quivered as she spoke.
I coughed deep dark blood onto Barbara’s face and it mixed with her salty tears and ran down her cheek. And my head slumped down to my chest. Then I stared at her hands gripping the top of “our” angel’s little double-bladed axe, and my blood pumped out and ran down its spike handle onto her fingers.
“Please,” she said, “Benito, you have to understand—”
“I forgive you,” I said, coughing the dark liquid of my life down onto Barbara’s hands and arms. It was the only thing I could say … then I slumped over and fell to the ground. I looked up at her and tried to smile but I coughed blood again.
Barbara closed her eyes and turned her head away. “I’m sorry.” She held the blades of the archangel demon, Shax’s, little pet pig axe. And deep dark blood dripped from its handle-spike, down onto the cold courtyard at Saint Samuels Seminary Academy for lost souls.
I closed my eyes.
— CXCVII —
THE BIG PROTECTION beast roars out in agony as I twist the wood stake I just stabbed into its calf. And he swings his axe wildly down through the dark and damp air of the Mike and smashes the blade into the wood steps next to my head in a loud CRACK!
I scream out. Not from his axe, but at the searing fire that just spiked into my chest. And then my Shandian mind remembers, and I grab at the pain where my right heart used to be … before the only love I’ve known since my mother disappeared… Since Barbara—though that name never suited her—stabbed the handle-spike of an angel axe through it and forever changed me from being the immortal offspring of the archangel, Raum, and the human woman, Monica, into a mortal being of Man. A man who’s body could now die, so his soul could go to Heaven … and kill God.
The beast bellows and falls to the side, grabbing at its leg. Its axe is embedded in the steps. And I roll to my knees and reach for the big blade.
A huge hand rams into my side and then the beast throws me through the air. I smash through a shop window along the side of the Mike’s bloodbathed street, and then I crash into a tall wooden cabinet, its shelves full of stolen Protection boots.
Heavy boots rain down on me and thump my head and hands and I roll and moan, and then I yell out as the big cabinet tips and falls over at me. I barely escape being crushed.
And now my Shandian memory is telling me that the very next time I get killed will most likely be my last.
Idiot! That’s my other voice and though I wish it didn’t, the word reminds me of her and how much I—Get up!
“Yes, get up!” a woman’s voice from inside the shop yells at me. I recognize her from the street. “Satan’s snakes! Were it not for Word,” Lucinda says, “I should surely lop blind brain from body and eat your eyes in front of you.” But now she’s lost her cockney accent … and she’s speaking the language of Hell and hate. I … I think I understand it. She looks beat up pretty badly from the marks on her face.
“Lucifia?” I say. That’s what he called her … in the tunnel.
Her condition doesn’t seem to affect her strength, because she grabs me by the back of my collar and jerks me to my feet like a mother would grab the back of her misbehaving child’s neck. “At least you awaken from bat blind delusion,” she says.
A huge roar and then screaming from outside on the street reminds … both of us probably, that this is more nightmare than delusion.
She looks out the window. “Now cease sinful squawking and squandering of seconds,” she says, “and smite duplicitous demon before plot’s purpose plunges to Purgatory!”
My confusion from being beaten and bashed around all day long is now turning to frustration that I’m failing … even in my hallucinations. Yet none of it is changing the fact that time’s ticking down, I still don’t have the molasses I came here for, and I’m a half-hour’s walk from the dead angel on the floor of my church!
But archangels running me around with riddles are getting me nowhere. And the demon swinging the axe at me outside isn’t waiting for me to figure out how to kill it. “Who do you think I am?” I shout at her.
She squints her eyes in disapproval at me—I’ve seen the look on my mother—and then Lucinda or Lucifia… Whoever she is, the woman morphs to a dingy and dirty-looking … more angel than demon even when she spreads out her dusty gray wings. Her hair is messy and her face is blotted with soot. And when she speaks at me, dust puffs from her mouth. Yet, despite all that, she’s attractive and has a familiar … charm. “You are the gilded god guardian, Faith,” she says, “and have yet to fulfill fateful purpose. So, pull ass from eyes and fight!”
“If you’re here to help me,” I say, “then how do I kill it?”
But this “Barbara” is full of sarcasm and hate, too. “It is Uzza … strong arm of Satan, godling. And you, precious priest,” she says, “exist to lend assistance to angel!” Then she grabs me by the arm and leg and lifts me over her head. “And there is no eternal beast nor being,” her voice has turned to more screech than speech, “who lives with head separated from heart.” Her fingers have turned to long talons that squeeze into my arm and leg, and I look at the ones pressing into my arm. There are only three fingers on it. “And no tree in Eden’s garden grows green after birthing stump from axe!”
“Wait!”
“Life and Lived be damned to the dungeons,” she caws like a crow, and then the dingy little angel spins and shoots several hundred fire-streaking feathers back out the window I just crashed through. She releases me on the very next turn and I go flying out the window after them.
“Miserable Man-monkey misfit!” I hear her shout out the window after me.
— CXCVIII —
THE DUNGEONS OF the Damned were built under the Arena of Reckoning—a Purgatory prison, buried beneath the Hallowed Hall of the Word. They were constructed as a special holding area to safely store angels and demons and devils while they waited to participate in the Judgment battles in the arena.
A main tunnel—too tight for any angel to fly down—was carved out of the stone foundation and it ran in a circle around and underneath the edge of the arena. Other, “spoke” tunnels, crisscrossed its diameter.
The dungeons were dark and damp and spoke misery and hate to any who entered. It was far too hot for the light souls damned from Heaven, and not hot enough for the dark ones cast out of Hell. They were a literal perdition—a place of eternal punishment and damnation into which an unrepentent or sinful soul passed after being damned by Life or put to death by Lucifer.
Rock-walled cells with iron bars for doors lined both sides of every tunnel. And dark molasses—sweet nectar from Eden’s Garden—and the crimson red blood of Life bathed the walls. It dripped heavier on Judgment nights. And on those nights, the dungeons became a gallery of gladiators, trained to
slit throats and loose feathers for the entertainment and enmity of their captors.
They were held back until called by Life’s own seal: the bright orange sun, seared into the iron on each cell’s gate. Prisoners languished between Judgments … for as long as she saw fit to punish them.
Life stared through the bars on Lucifer’s cell. “Even now your desired deception and sinful saint slip from your grasp,” she said to him. “And yesterday’s blaspheming bull, Uzza, is now my benevolent brute.”
Lucifer did not speak. He simply gazed back through the bars at her and grinned. Some of them would turn—he knew this.
“You chase coveted chamber and throne,” Life said, “while your minions slip from grasp as sand slips through time.” She looked up and down the dark tunnel and then back into Lucifer’s cell. “And your miserable mutiny is poised to join treasured tail as cropped cock, aborted and eaten by the very same betrayers who birthed it. While plot’s parent stands stranded in dungeon cell for this sin—designing deceiver … a devil in name only.”
Lucifer’s smile wavered but a little. Then he looked behind him and then at the floor and then back through the iron bars at Life. “Yet,” he said, “I remain master of sinful cell. Ruler of ruinous result … delivered from the dreadful duty of servant, suckling at the vastness of a villain’s vanity. I’m sure you would agree”—he tilted his head to the side slightly—“a far finer fate.”
Life frowned and closed her eyes. She shook her head slowly—side to side, calming herself. He was always like this. When she opened her orbs back up, the black glowed deeper. “Very well,” she said, “wallow in black blood, guts and gore as glorious god’s victory.” Then she turned to leave.
Lucifer watched her walk away. She was still a delectable deity, and he remembered. “Do not scoff at my sinful sanctuary,” he shouted, pressing his face between the bars, “lest you share salvation of the same.”
Life did not turn around. “Even in defeat … your snakes slither, whispering words of threatened throne,” she said as she approached the portal back to the arena. “Vanity? My darling Lucifer, you are a villain of the same name.”
— CXCIX —
THE FLAMES AND fire and red hot hate cuts into the dark gray night above the Mike. The main street has died down to an orange flicker of burning citizens and blown apart Protection agents. Shannon is nowhere to be found and I have no idea where his little pig-angel is. I look around, trying to find the beast before it splits me open with its axe.
“Benito Benedetti!” the beast’s voice booms from a side alley, “Blasphemer, betrayer … bilious bane of your benevolent ruler in Heaven. Show yourself, morning star monkey!” Then he limps out onto the main street. He’s managed to pull out the stake I punched through his calf, but its effects linger.
The beast’s horns are on fire and its nostrils billow steam up into the fog. As it limps toward me, its hooves shake the ground. And it’s closing fast, carrying its axe like an angry carpenter faced with yet another annoying nail it has to hammer in the head.
I have no idea how I’m going to get the axe out of its hand, much less cut off its head to kill it. And it’s almost on top of me and the axe comes up—
The beast’s head rears back and a huge bellowing roar of fire blows up into the fog.
A shadow flashes by the calf that I stabbed with the stake, and then another flash and growling by the beast’s hoof. And Shannon’s—only his pet potbellied pig has turned to a squawking, screeching… He looks like a little mudball of feathers, running around nipping and biting the beast’s ankle, making it bellow in agony. The dirty little angel’s eyes glow red and I watch them streak back and forth around the beast’s leg.
The beast swings its axe down and barely misses cutting Shannon’s little “pig” in two. Then it drops down to one knee, steadying itself with the fist holding its axe. It tries to grab at the dark little angel, but the terrorizing terrier races under the beast’s knee and then latches onto the beast’s fist.
The beast roars in pain, and it drops its big blade to the ground. Then the beast whips its injured arm wildly, roaring in agony as Shannon’s little pit bull angel dangles and swings through the air with it—its jaws latched onto the beast’s wrist. Then the beast grabs the little cherub and rips its jaws off its arm, and then it roars and screams and screeches in pain. And it throws the little angel through the air. But the angel recovers and flies back, and its red eyes streak through the gray fog as it harasses around the beast’s head.
I rush at the axe, as fiery hot lava—the beast’s blood—gushes down around me.
The beast grabs its wound and fiery goo sprays from it like a thumb over a garden hose, down onto my arm and shoulder, and I scream out and fall to the ground. Fire! my inner voice shouts at me. It’s as afraid of being burned as I am. And I roll, trying to put out the flames.
I’m up in a flash and I rip off my burning jacket and run toward the axe. I try to scoop up the weapon without stopping so the beast can’t rain more of its molten rock blood down on me. But the big blade’s too heavy and I jerk sideways and fall.
And the beast snatches up the axe, hot liquid rock spraying in front of him as he cocks his arm. And he swings the blade back across his chest, back-swinging sideways at me.
I lean backward—controlled fall—and the blade barely misses my legs and chest and chin. One of my arms isn’t so lucky, and the axe grazes across it, slicing through my black shirt and cutting a long gash in my bicep. Warm, sticky blood flows into my armpit as I hit the ground and cry out. Get back up! my mind yells at me.
He’s gonna kill you! my inner voice—never missing an opportunity—shouts after it.
And the beast has his axe back up and he swings it straight down at me again. I roll sideways at the last instant and a horrendous clang rings out and sparks fly. When I look, the axe is embedded in a manhole cover—one of the blades has cut down into the big steel plate, hacking it in two, and the rest of that side of the axe is sliced into the street. The opposite blade is sticking straight up toward Heaven.
I’m up and I grab my arm, and blood flows onto my hand and I glance at it. In the dark gray of night… In the flaming fire and fog-light at the Mike, my blood looks…
A huge roar snaps my mind back to the fight. The beast is struggling with its axe. It’s hunched over onto one knee, its foot on the big round manhole cover, trying to pull and heave and rip the blade out of the street. He groans and leans down over the axe, readying for one final pull.
Now! It may be my only chance before he cuts me to pieces—I’m running out of energy. I race at the beast, step on its injured calf and jump onto its back.
The beast groans and stumbles forward a little. It reaches back for its leg and then tries to grab at me, and it falls farther forward.
I jump to his head and grab both of his horns. Then I flip forward over the top of his head and pull the horns with me. I feel him come forward and I pull down hard with both hands and then there’s resistance, but I pull as hard as I can and I can feel the horns giving way.
The beast bellows and roars out—one final protest—before his neck slices down over the blade sticking out of the street and I pull his head down over the exposed edge, severing his head at the neck!
And fire and raging steam escape from the beast’s neck and then lava flows from the stump, melting its way down the street.
I drop the head and horns and slump over onto the side of the Mike, spent and bleeding.
Then the Seattle drone-raid sirens go off. That’ll be the backup.
— CC —
I WOKE UP back in my cell in the student dormitory wing of Saint Samuels Seminary. I felt the right side of my chest. There was no hole where Barbara had stabbed me … and I wasn’t dead. Had it not been for the first three times I died, I might have been a little more surprised. As it was, the thing that surprised me the most stood just outside my cell door, staring in at me, tears running down her face.
As soo
n as she realized that I was awake, Barbara said, “I’m … so sorry, Benito. I … I had to … she made me.”
I rubbed my chest and moaned a little. Then I closed my eyes and let my Shandian mind feel its surroundings. I took a long five-count breath in through my nostrils and I smelled … everything. Barbara still smelled like sweet blackberries to me, the bucket at the edge of my cell still reeked of urine and feces, but the blood in my mouth was…? I swirled it around a little and it tasted like … syrup?
I actually wasn’t that surprised. Saint Samuels had a thousand hungry boys to feed and one of the staples of our after-beating breakfasts were pancakes and syrup. “Breakfast all ready?”
“What?”
“Pancakes for breakfast again?” I asked. There was no sense in asking why Barbara had stabbed me in the chest. By then I knew she would probably lie anyway. “What time—why am I still in my…?” I looked out the small window. It was still black outside … and cold. Not breakfast…
“You ain’t dead,” Barbara muttered. “They said—I didn’t believe them. I watched you in there for a half hour. I was sure you was dead.”
“Thirty-three,” I muttered.
“Thirty-three what?”
“I was dead,” I told her, “for thirty-three minutes.”
“That just”—Barbara frowned, put her hand over her eyes, and coughed out a little cry—“don’t make no sense.”
Four years was a long time. If it was all you were doing every night, reading and understanding the Bible wasn’t all that hard. “I’m guessing they don’t let you actually read the Bible.” I knew the answer.
“Well…”
“Father D likes…” I said, wondering which of the events I remembered in the courtyard were the truth and which were just a dream. “He liked to tell it. I had to smuggle one back here.” I crawled over to my stinking privy bucket and reached down through my own urine and feces—I never completely emptied my bucket after I smuggled the book back. And no one was going to dig through the excrement of a thousand boys’ five-gallon privy buckets each week, weekly cell inspections or not.
TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3) Page 78
