by R. E. Vance
Penemue fell.
And as he did, he felt an odd sensation of familiarity wash over him.
This wasn’t the first time he’d fallen, and he suspected it wouldn’t be the last.
Still this time was different. This time he did not fall to another divine place made only for gods and their denizens—this time he fell to the mortal plane of Earth. A plane of existence not meant for celestial beings.
So, this is how the world ends … not with a bang or a whimper, but with a fall, he mused to himself.
Penemue fell with his back to the ground, unable to see where he was going. Knowing that the impact would hurt but not kill him, he sought to stop his fall, or at the very least, slow it down. Spreading his wings, Penemue tried to adjust his fall. But he was going too fast and his wings folded up on him, transforming his body from a falling rock to a shooting arrow.
Down, down, down he fell. An angel in freefall—how undignified.
The angel tried to turn himself around. At the very least, he could get into a skydiver’s pose and slow his descent, but he was going too fast to do even that.
Perhaps if he could retract his wings, then—
But all his efforts were in vain, for the distance between the portal from where he resided in Hell and where he’d end up on Earth was shorter than he thought possible.
This was confirmed when his body crashed into an apartment building.
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“Oh God,” Penemue muttered to himself as he assessed what had happened.
The building. He hadn’t just crashed through it—he had totaled it, reducing the once tall structure to rubble. His body contained just enough mass to act as an unexploded missile.
His first thought was of his own body. How hurt was he? He touched his side; several broken ribs—oh, and then there was the steel rebar piercing his abdomen. With a grunt that sounded more like a roar, he pulled himself up, and burning a bit a time—seven hours, to be exact—he healed himself just enough to turn his wounds from critical to severe.
The rest would have to heal naturally. He didn’t dare to lose more time; he had already lost so much protecting his library.
Standing—if you could call the agony required to be upright “standing”—he assessed his surroundings. There were no human bodies (or pieces of them) to be seen. That was good. It meant that few humans had been hurt in his fall.
And if he was really lucky, perhaps he had hurt no humans in his fall.
But then Penemue heard a whimper, and knew that he had not been lucky.
Not lucky at all.
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Staggering around the corner, the twice-fallen angel saw something that would haunt him to his last days.
A little boy whimpered as he clung to the hand of his dead mother. Penemue searched his mind for this child’s Book of Souls. He was cut off from the writing, but remembered what had been written on the boy’s soul in his first six years.
His name was Newton.
He was damn near a child prodigy, able to play the piano better than most angels.
He had a wonderful, loving mother who, seeing the hand that he clutched onto, was no longer able to take care of him.
“No,” Penemue said as he removed the slab covering her body. In doing so, he saw that he had not just killed Newton’s mother, but his father, too. This good man lay next his wife, his skull cracked open by the falling rubble.
Penemue tried to revive them, to burn some time to bring either of them back. But his fall had ended their lives, and all the time in the world would not bring them back.
He did not have that kind of power.
No one short of a god did.
After he’d carried the young boy from the ruins, he placed them both under an oak tree that stood in front of their once home. Then he cradled the child as Newton lamented the loss of his mother, his father … his home.
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It will be years before Penemue sees the boy again. His childhood name may have been Newton, but after years of living on the streets without the guidance of his parents, the boy has renamed himself EightBall.
This boy, this EightBall, is a thug, a gang leader and an Other-hating human.
He is, by all accounts, a monster …
A monster that Penemue created.
And of all the things this twice-fallen angel has done, robbing this boy of his parents and future is what he regrets most.
Tearful Serpents
Medusa’s arrow pointed at Bella, and I could sense hesitation in her as she considered unlatching her fingers from the bow’s string. Even though I had no doubt that the being who stood in the rock-face grotto was Medusa, she wasn’t the same cutesy, bubble gum-chewing gorgon from Paradise Lot.
This being was far more feral—more tortured. As though the few months of death she had endured had turned her into the fearsome beast before us.
Then again, we were in Penemue’s inferno, so she might have been a construct just like the child-gods we’d faced off against.
But real or not, her arrows would kill Bella just as dead.
“No, don’t!” I put myself between Bella and the gorgon’s dart.
Medusa gave me a confused look, like she didn’t quite understand what or why I had placed myself between her and Bella. But despite her confusion, her bow quivered slightly before she bellowed a mighty scream.
I’d heard that scream once before, when she faced off against Tiamat. It was her war cry and what she had yelled before mummifying a platoon of advancing FrogMen. Her eyes lit up just as they had done on the beach that day. She was getting ready to turn us to stone.
“Look away!” I said. “Whatever you do, whatever happens, don’t look at her.” And not taking my own advice, I continued to hold the gorgon’s gaze with my own.
I truly didn’t know who I was looking at. Was she the Medusa I knew from before? The Paradise Lot beat cop? The caring, loving Medusa? It didn’t look like her. The woman—well, gorgon—standing in the rock-face grotto was more worn, angrier.
But then again, dying and spending some time in Hell just might do that to you.
The person I was staring at was anything but carefree. She wore clothes that she must have scavenged from only the GoneGods knew where, and her normally olive-colored skin was pale, as if her face hadn’t seen the sun in an eternity. She was skinnier, too; her cheekbones were more pronounced, her collarbones protruding out from the rags otherwise covering her shoulders.
And her snakes … they were there. There was even a viper that looked suspiciously like Marty sitting on the crown of her head. But the serpents I knew from Paradise Lot, the ones that both liked and hated me, were alive and filled with personality. They had a will of their own. The way the snakes writhed and wiggled on her head was unnatural, as if they had been programmed to look alive, but weren’t. They reminded me of those autotropic mannequins you saw at Epcot.
Not that I had much time to really look at them. Medusa’s hum continued to grow in its aggressiveness as her eyes lit up with a fiery energy that could have frightened the sun. She was getting ready to turn us all to stone.
Taking a step forward, I did the only thing I could think of when faced when meeting an old friend I’d never expected to see again. I smiled. She might be trying to kill us, but it was still good to see her.
Damn good.
And since I had already consigned myself to dying at the hands of adolescent gods, being turned to stone by someone I actually cared for was a step up in the demise category.
Besides, I didn’t think she actually wanted to kill us. If she did, she would have hit us with a poisonous arrow when we weren’t looking.
“Hi,” I said.
Medusa tilted her head in confusion. Like she wasn’t used to having someone look at her without utter fear on their face. I supposed that was true … before the gods left. Before the GoneGod World and Paradise Lot.
Before me.
In the rush of seeing Medusa and her threatening
to petrify us, I forgot about Marty. But of everyone who had never expected to see Medusa again, it was him … And of everyone who would be floored by seeing her, it was the viper.
Marty slithered up my leg and torso until he sat on my shoulder, and staring up at his former host, he hissed—a viper’s way of saying hello. And then I saw something that answered a question I never knew to ask: can snakes cry?
Marty’s eyes welled up as he looked at his former host, his friend ... the one person he loved more than life itself.
And soon as Medusa saw her former main snake, the gorgon closed her own eyes, and the energy that had been building began to dissipate as she slowly released it into the air around her.
Lifting my hand, I gave her a gentle wave. “Hi,” I said. “It’s good to see you again. Really good.”
Medusa let her bow drop and the stringed construct fell to the earth below. A wail of pain found its way out of her, and she lifted a hand to her mouth as if she was trying to catch her pain and swallow it once more.
But the thing about pain … once you acknowledge it, let it show, there isn’t a force on Earth, Hell or Heaven that can bottle it back up. Medusa let out a cry that broke my heart in a way far more literal than should have been possible.
She cried, and as she did, those strange snakes fell away from her skull, dropping to the ground like the lifeless creations that they were. And Medusa didn’t move, just touched her now bald head and cried harder for yet another thing she had lost. Sure, those snakes might have been a lie, but they were her lie, and after so much suffering, sometimes we need to take comfort in whatever we can … even a lie.
She stood twenty feet above us, so there was nothing I could do but watch. And mourn.
There she was, another person who died because I wasn’t fast enough, strong enough, smart enough to stop the danger before it hit them. Another one of my failures brought back from death, and I was beginning to wonder if Penemue’s Hell wasn’t just for him.
Whether Medusa was real or just another construct of Hell, it didn’t matter ... the creature before us was in pain. Real, uncompromising, unforgiving pain.
Helpless, I approached the cliff face and said the only words I could find. “I’m sorry …” But my words were drowned out by her lamentations.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated over and over again. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Why Would Anyone Ever Fight Over Me?
We stood like that for a long time, me touching the rock face and repeating words that I had said a thousand times before to the memory of her, while she stood several feet above me, wailing in pain.
And in that time, I never turned to see what Bella or Judith were doing. I was too consumed by the desire to make up for yet another one of my failures. Too consumed by the self-pity I felt in knowing that I never could.
But as is true of all pain, eventually it ebbs enough that we can move on, and as Medusa’s tears died down, my apologies were finally able to float up to her perch.
Whether it was what I said, or the fact that it was me who spoke … or that after all this time in Hell, someone finally recognized her pain, Medusa stopped crying. Wiping away tears, she looked at down at me as I stood with my own tear-filled eyes repeating words that I meant from the core of my soul.
Medusa shook her head and pursed her lips. She dropped to the ground, falling the twenty feet as if she had hopped down the last couple steps of a stairwell.
As soon as she was on the ground, Marty leapt from my should and onto her, his forked tongue licking her cheeks as the once immortal snake hissed in a manner that could only be described as extreme joy.
Medusa cradled her former main viper like she might a child, stroking the serpent with a gentle caress that simultaneously expressed great affection and sadness. And as she did, she just stared at us, her eyes strafing over to Bella, then Judith and finally to me.
When her eyes were on me, her lips curled almost imperceptibly, a slight smile meeting her cheeks. No that’s not right—it wasn’t a smile. It was relief. Like she finally saw something that brought her comfort and that comfort was … well, me.
And I knew in that moment, without a doubt, that this was the real Medusa.
Her relief disappeared when her eyes fell once more on Judith, her face returning to a cold, expressionless state. And as for Bella … I believe the expression was “throwing shade.” Her lips would purse before her eyes narrowed, like she was assessing her enemy.
Yes, her emotions were subtle, but they were definitely there. And it kind of made sense, too. Medusa had a major crush on me. Not that I understood why; a catch I am not, but for whatever reason, she was into me. I know because Astarte told me (spicing up her words with all sorts of serpentine references about how Medusa’s snakes augmented the pleasure of, well … I’m blushing just thinking about it).
But I always rejected her advances because I wasn’t ready to date. No, that’s not exactly true. It was because I really liked her, too, and could see it going somewhere with her, but then I’d think of Bella and that just froze me. I had promised to love Bella in this life and next, and even though she was gone, I didn’t know how to move on.
So I’d always make up an excuse not to date Medusa.
Until one day I ran out of those excuses and acquiesced. I agreed to go on a date. One single date. A date on which she died. Casanova hasn’t got anything on me.
But now here she stood. Alive … as was my wife. And we were in Hell.
Together.
With my mother-in-law.
Seriously, Hell really sucks.
But Medusa wasn’t whole. Not like Bella. There was something seriously off about her. She was suffering from some form of PTSD, and given that she was preternatural huntress with incredible magical abilities, that made her dangerous.
My only hope was that my military training, combined with my history and knowledge of Medusa, would allowed me to perceive what was going on in her head before she went all stab-stab, turn-you-to-stone crazy on us.
I also prayed that Bella and Judith didn’t notice the ire in her gaze. And if they did, they wouldn’t have any idea what it was about.
Not that Bella was the jealous type. She knew that I was like a dog chasing a car … if I ever caught one, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. But we had just been reunited, and the last thing I wanted to do was diminish that reunion in any way.
The intricacies of this situation were like a spider’s webbing—every tiny movement would send vibrations through the whole thing.
Holding onto the hope that my relationship with Medusa would miraculously fly under the radar, I left Medusa by the cliff face with Marty. As I walked over to my wife and mother-in-law, I thought about how Judith knew about my one disastrous date with Medusa. But I figured that even she knew better than to bring it up.
Judith hated me, but she wasn’t evil. At least, I didn’t think so.
I walked over slowly, considering what to say. Something about how we needed to keep moving. How Medusa should come with us, and how she saved us, when Bella said, “So, you and the gorgon, huh?”
So much for flying under the radar.
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I shot Judith a look, but my mother-in-law threw up her hands like someone surrendering. “I didn’t say a word.”
“She didn’t need to,” Bella said, her face oddly unreadable. I had no idea if she was mad or understanding or …
“Um,” I started—the opening gambit of anyone who’s just realized that their hope of getting away with something is just self-delusion.
Before I could say another word, Judith glided away. Given she had legs again, it was more a shuffle, but it still had that creepy, ghostly quality to it.
“So you were saying ‘Um’ …” Bella said, folding her arms across her chest.
“Yeah, um … well, you know. You were gone and we went on a date.”
“I see,” Bella said, her arms still firmly folded over her chest. “And …”
“And …?” Her voice trailed off as she gave me verbal cues to continue talking. Which wasn’t a good idea. Bad things happened when I spoke. Very bad things.
Still, the gaze that met me clearly said there was no escaping this one. “And it ended with the world almost ending … again.”
Bella lifted an eyebrow.
“Tiamat. You know, the angry rampaging monster kind of thing. Seems that the gods may be gone, but their apocalypses aren’t.”
“I see,” Bella said, her arms still locked together. “And …”
“And the date ended with … well … with her getting killed.” As the words left my lips, I felt a pang of grief that I had previously locked away, hidden in a cupboard of my mind that I never opened. Saying it out loud, and to Bella, made it real again. “She died saving Paradise Lot,” I said. “She died a hero.”
I can’t tell you the number of times I came home from some mission where a friend died, or someone I cared about had been horribly hurt. And no matter the circumstances, no matter how much Bella didn’t approve of what we’d been doing, she would always give me a hug and gentle kiss on my forehead. She’d give me that look of incomprehensible compassion that always helped me heal.
But this time, Bella just gave Medusa a look that could fell a flock of doves, making it perfectly clear that peace wasn’t on the menu. She said in a cold voice that I had never known Bella to use before, “Good.”
Then as if catching herself, her eyes widened in shock. “I didn’t mean to say that. I didn’t mean to think it. This place. This place is messing with me.” There was genuine fear in her voice.
I reached out for her, but Bella shook her head and walked past me and over to her mother. She gave the once poltergeist a hug.
Empty Hell …
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