by Shad N Freud
Necessarily Evil: Prophecy
By Shad N. Freud
Book One of the Divine Sitcom
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
NECESSARILY EVIL: PROPHECY
Second edition. September 23, 2019.
Copyright © 2019 Shad N. Freud.
ISBN: 9781695280724
Written by Shad N. Freud.
When You're Evil
Written by Aurelio Voltaire
(C) 1993 Aurelio Voltaire
(P) 1993 Mars Needs Music
Appears on the album The Devil's Bris
Released on Projekt records
Www.voltaire.net
When You're Evil lyrics used with permission.
Dedication:
To Mike, Zach, Pete, Nicco, and Alex: you bastards helped me make it happen.
To Mom, keep kicking me in the ass.
To Joe, I wish you could have read this. I miss you, old man.
To Charlie, thanks for helping make this sows ear into silk purse.
To Ben, I can’t thank you enough. People judge a book by it’s cover, and this one is badass.
To Shadow, I hope you’re enjoying Meowhalla. I miss you, little man.
And last, but not least, to the greatest musician on Earth? Thank you so much for letting me use your lyrics.
Foreword
There comes a time in every life when a person finds themselves at a crossroads. At twenty, after being turned down for the third fast food job I’d applied for in a row, I answered a fateful phone call that led to me serving six years in a federal institution. I refer, of course, to the Navy, and my enlistment. When that long seventy-two-month sentence drew to a close, at the age of twenty-six, I looked down the barrel of an unemployment line, or the choice to take a job at the Intel Fabrication Site in Chandler, AZ.
While I ended up later leaving the company, and due to a glut on the market when it came to technical experience, I found myself unemployed until I was forced to move back home to Sacramento, CA, to the tiny three-bedroom house I grew up in. At thirty-two, I embarked on a literary journey, eschewing many of my hobbies I could no longer afford like drinking or smoking to focus on writing a silly little tale about an alcoholic, chain-smoking, lazy malcontent with connections to the Satanic Church, a story based on a pen and paper game I ran as the game master, the main characters of which formed a tighter knit unit in this story I wrote than in the actual game.
At thirty-three, I stand at yet another crossroads. I seek to make my ridiculous ramblings into a published work, and hopefully the beginning of a long career as a fantasy author. Of course, Murphy’s Law being omnipresent, I was ready to have a box of books in my garage when I’m sixty, a book on Amazon that sold exactly twelve copies, and an over-developed bitterness for the literary world. However, hope springs eternal, and I decided that if fate wanted to bend me over a table, who was I to argue? So, in your hands is the first novel I ever wrote, a book I put over a year of my life into.
Through it all, there was a rather short list of people egging me on. The one I appreciate the most, as she never gave up on me, never stopped kicking me in the ass when I needed it, never neglected to give me encouragement, never failed to advise me when she thought I was making a horse’s ass of myself was the main guiding force to my writing this dreck you’re about to read; Katy Wright is that woman. While many of my friends encouraged me, she pushed me to write, to create, to bring a world to life via ink and paper, ones and zeroes.
That woman is my mother, and I could think of none other than her to immortalize in print. After all, a large part of my dark sense of humor, my verbose writing style, my disdain for deliberate ignorance…I grew up watching Monty Python, Britcoms, and Looney Toons. I watched a lot of black and white classics from the thirties, Ninja Turtles, and Disney shorts from yesteryear. I learned the stories of the writers that came before me, through Tolkien, Asimov, London, and Shakespeare. I was likewise influenced by my father in all but blood, Joseph Lawson, a man who helped to shape my mind into the crazed madhouse it is today. A man who convinced me to join the service, taught me right from wrong, and wounded me deeply when he left this world on Tax Day. I’m not sure what he’d have thought of this book, but it’s my sincere hope he’d have chuckled a bit as he read it.
Some of you may think my use of the Satanic Church in my world makes me a dark, edgy, devil worshipping bastard with a charcoal briquette where a beating heart should be. It’s not true, of course, but should you go to social media to say as much, do remember that it’s Shad Nemo Freud. I do so hate it when people get my name wrong. I’ll love, however, if you decide to make me infamous. So, please, pretty please with sugar on top, make me a spectacle. Make me interesting. Make people want to give my yarn about Prophecies, lizard men, and angry little gnomes with a penchant for fireballs a shot. Make me have a cult following, with nerdy fans that want to give me their scripts for the slash fics they want me to bless as canon while they spend their five minutes they paid fifty dollars for at the convention asking me about the most insignificant minutiae about my story, just so they can win their arguments on internet message boards. Please do.
And Mom? Keep kicking me in the ass when I need it.
Prologue
Pope Impious VI of the Satanic Church sighed contentedly as he sank into his personal bathtub. That bathtub rested in one of the most opulent bathrooms in the world, a bathtub made of glossy red marble in a sea of heated black marble floor tiles, with walls of alabaster climbing to a ceiling enchanted to mimic the sky. He leaned against the warm marble as perfumed water circulated in the bath, contemplating the salient points of the day.
After managing to shave a few more strokes off his scorecard during his game with the Grand Hierophant of One World Faith, he’d reviewed the plans for the next Avarice Day Pageant the Vatican was hosting and enjoyed a lazy lunch with the Dalai Lama. All in all, not a bad day. Now, all he needed was something to relax. He smirked lecherously as he reached for the bell to his left and, as such, missed the angry red runes that began crawling up the jamb of the linen closet on the other side of the room until the door itself burned away, unleashing a massive gout of green flames. The Pope startled and slid further into his bath, his head under water. He thrashed as he tried to resume a sitting position, sputtering as he turned to glare at the portal from Hell that had previously been the door to his linen closet.
The walls around the closet cracked as the portal widened to accommodate the dark shapes squeezing their way past the membrane-like barrier separating Hell from the mortal realm. Out of the portal emerged eight tall, monstrous devils covered in matte black scales, tactical armor, and bandoliers of ammunition as they hefted oversized machineguns chambered in 20mm armor-piercing rounds. They formed a semi-circular wall of flesh and bones bristling with guns as they cleared the room, one of them staring curiously at the Pope as he slowly became apoplectic with rage. He struggled to keep his balance as he stepped out of the tub and frantically reached for his robe as the last two shapes slid through the barrier.
“What is the meaning of this intrusion?” Impious glared at the assembled Pitlords as they sneered in return. “Do you overgrown horny-toads know who I am? I’m the- “
“’Fucking Pope.’ Yes, we know.” A much smaller devil grunted as he struggled to hold up a black iron chest wrapped in chains. “The Dread Lord Lucifer sends his regards. Also, it is my dubious pleasure to introduce the Archduke of Purgatory, the…esteemed Baal.”
The last to slide through the barrier was so tall he had to stoop as he stepped into the Pope’s bathroom. He stood up to his full height and the ragged black hood he wo
re nearly touched the roof of the Pope’s bath. He was whipcord thin and green lights glowed menacingly from under his hood, his face shrouded in darkness. He towered over his “guards,” an impressive fifteen feet in height compared to the ten-foot-tall nightmarish Pitlords who weighed enough to cause stress fractures on the marble floors beneath their feet. He looked down at the struggling devil and hissed in Infernal.
The devil rolled his eyes as he shoved his way past the wall of armored scales and dropped the iron box on the floor, bending over as he tried to catch his breath. “Archduke…Baal wishes me to…inform you that he and his retinue will require accommodations planeside until our work is completed.”
Impious stared angrily at the iron chest partially imbedded in his floor. He glared up into the archduke’s cowl. “My apologies for not being properly dressed to greet an Archduke, but you did drop in rather uninvited,” Impious said as he wrapped his robe around his corpulent body more securely. “And, of course, you shall have your needs met while you stay here, your grace. Now then. To what do I owe the pleasure of this little visit?”
Baal hissed in Infernal and the small devil rolled his eyes. “We both know damn well you can speak plain English, so would you stop using me as a walky-talky? For fuck’s sake.” The smaller devil growled as he pulled off his glasses to clean them. “Lucifer wishes you to know that we’ve come to ensure that the Prophecy is fulfilled.”
“What prophecy are you talking about?”
“No, no…Prophecy. Capital P. And it’s a bit of a long story as to how we received it. Suffice to say- “
“I want to hear it.”
“Of course. I just need to open the box.”
“No. The story. How we got the Prophecy. Huh, it feels weird to say it that way. Regardless, I need the full details.”
“Really?” The little devil looked up at Baal, who nodded. He returned his glasses to his face and scowled. “Damn it, I hate story time. Well, it’s like this…”
∞∞∞
-A year prior, Mars-
Winds kicked up ochre colored dust as lightning arced around a growing pit of darkness. The darkness evaporated, and a nineteenth century tavern faded into view. Within the tavern, a…well, “man” would be a bad way to describe one of the elder gods, but he certainly was man shaped. His skin the color of crude oil, his face a shifting mass of gnashing mouths and bursting pustules to those with the ability to see beyond his illusions. He shook his head as a bright flash of light heralded the arrival of the Abrahamic God Jehovah surrounded by his retinue of seven Seraphim, luminous angels with six wings. He looked around and saw the eighth Elder God polishing the counter of the bar at the back of the tavern. The eighth sighed as he checked the time and pointed to a table at the back of the room. Jehovah gestured and his angels dispersed among the patrons drinking at the bar.
He strode over to the table and took a seat. Fifteen minutes later, the fireplace next to the table ignited, spewing forth green flames as a beautiful, angelic man strode forth from the fireplace, resplendent in a red silk suit with a black silk shirt and a red cravat. The man was followed, reluctantly, by seven towering archdevils, the Archdukes of Hell, all dressed in garish, ill-fitting polyester suits more suitable for a night out in the lower reaches of the Sin City underworld than an interfaith mixer.
“Flashy as always, Lucy dear? Just how did you manage to escape your mirror long enough to be here only 15 minutes late? Also, who dresses your minions? Those trashy threads look like they were dyed by a five-year-old with a pixie fetish.”
“Well, first of all, I don’t need a mirror, I can just summon myself if I want to stare at my perfect ass. Second, I’m fashionably late, which is more than I can ever say about those Jesus Joggers on your feet. Third, never try to talk about fashion with me until you drag yourself into the present and stop borrowing your son’s clothes. And finally, learn how to trash talk before I have to break a nail slapping some shade into your ZZ-top looking ass. Don’t try to throw shade on the Prince of Darkness; you’re nowhere near good enough to try. And as for my minions, they lost a bet, and had to wear those shitty clothes as a forfeit.”
The Archdukes hung their heads as Lucifer snapped his fingers and pointed towards the smirking onlookers between them and the bar. They made their way to the bar where the tender was bolting handles onto beer kegs. He turned to an ogre barback and motioned for him to take over, grabbing a tray with a gold accented wine glass full of a nice merlot and an iron chalice filled with pink champagne.
As he made his way to the table, there was a bright flash of light and seven biomechanical constructs stepped forward, one of them carrying an aethergraphic projector. He set it down on the table and pressed a button on top to activate it. A translucent hard-light projection flashed into being, one of a kindly Asian man wearing monastic robes with large prayer beads around his neck.
Lucifer rolled his eyes as the bartender sat his chalice in front of him. “And Buddha makes three. You know, I’d have thought that a God Computer would be able to program himself a subroutine to show up on time every now and then.”
“Pot, it’s kettle. You’re looking a bit dark today.”
“Oh, go put on a hair shirt, you old queen. Well, what kept you?”
“Apologies. Simulations more distracting than expected. Now then, Prophecy. Who shall receive?”
Lucifer pointed at the table where they were sitting. Four chairs, a green felt covering on the table, and five parallel red rectangles with rounded corners each roughly the size of a playing card. “Call me crazy, but that looks a bit like a Texas Hold ‘Em table.”
“And? What’s your point, Lucy?”
Lucifer rolled his eyes as he gestured at the table. “I get the feeling we’re going to play a round of poker to see who gets the Prophecy, Jovey-poo.”
“Right on the nose.” The three deities looked up to see Ghallorican strolling over, holding up a translucent halfling. “So, gentlemen, I think you all know why you’re here. Well, except for Bob. He hasn’t got a clue. Bob here,” Ghallorican said as he sat the poker set on the table, “died as an atheist after getting nudged off a curb by a tired factory worker, then hit by the very bus he was waiting for. So, he’s a completely neutral third party. Now, as soon as I sit him down, the spell I cast on the table activates. Like so.” He dropped the ectoplasmic halfling into the empty seat and he lost his translucence. “Now then, here’s the rules. No cheating, no coercion, and Bob here will be the sole dealer.”
“My name is Robert,” the halfling said as he adjusted his glasses, then took the cards and began to shuffle.
“Also, Bob,” Ghallorican smirked as the halfling glared at him, “you and everyone at this table are mortal for the course of the game. If you get up for any reason, you forfeit your right to the Prophecy. The game is Dis Hold ‘Em, and the winner is the one who gets all the chips. Side bets are permitted, and you’re bound to fulfill your pledge, regardless of whether anyone else antes up or not. The game is not officially over until everyone stands up.”
“Huh. You don’t say. Well…” Lucifer rested one perfectly manicured finger at the corner of his mouth. “It sure would be a shame if I should lose then. One favor for whoever wins. The favor, by the by, could be for just. About. Anything. Except for ceding my throne or giving up Van Gogh; he’s about to open his twelfth art gallery in Pandemonia and I’ll be damned if I’m going to miss him unveiling his new work.” Lucifer smirked as he tossed a sealed black vellum envelope onto the bank pile. Jehovah stared at Lucifer incredulously.
“You can’t be serious. An open favor from the Queen of the Damned? What do you want in return?”
“A half-acre of the Heaven side of the in-between. One of mine was an especially good boy some years ago, and I plan to reward him.”
Jehovah’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Lucifer’s cheeky smile. Buddha’s eyes opened slightly as he stared at the two other deities seated at the poker table. Buddha then reached into his robes, and
pulled out a scroll, tossing it into the pile. “One favor. Matching stakes.”
Jehovah stared at Buddha, then scratched his beard as he weighed the risks. Lucifer mouthed the word “pansy” at the white bearded deity, eliciting a snarl from Jehovah. He shook his head as he pulled out an angel feather quill and wrote out a quick I.O.U. on a piece of white vellum in gold ink. He reluctantly tossed the piece of vellum onto the pile, eliciting a grim smile from Lucifer. Bob adjusted his collar as he nervously began shuffling the cards, each player’s chips appearing in a flash as Ghallorican strolled back over to the bar, still whistling cheerfully.
After nearly an hour of play, Jehovah was out to Lucifer’s four of a kind and Buddha was out due to being caught counting cards. That left just Bob and Lucifer sitting at the table, both staring at their pocket cards. Lucifer had pocket aces and smiled saucily as he pushed forward his slightly shorter pile of chips. “All in, handsome.”
Bob gulped as he stared at his pocket twos. Lucifer would be the winner if the hand went down poorly. He looked up to see Ghallorican staring at him. The eagle face staring at him winked, then went back to cleaning the bar. Bob readjusted his collar to relieve the tightness, then mopped the sweat from his brow. Pocket twos. He looked back up at Lucifer’s smoldering gaze and was transfixed with a terrifying sense of awe. Lucifer’s eyes flowed with an inner green fire, his smile one of sweet innocence, his silky black hair framing a very pretty and androgynous heart shaped face. In short, he was unequivocally gorgeous.
And utterly terrifying.
Bob hesitantly pushed his own chips forward to match Lucifer’s. “C-call.”