Paradise Lost Boxed Set

by R. E. Vance

  And before I could say anything, there was a loud rumble as the words, “Thank you for believing in us, but it’s not enough. We’re leaving. Good luck,” rang out like a klaxon warning of an imminent nuclear strike.

  Then there was an explosion as the apartment around us blew apart into a million little pieces of nothing.

  Again and Again and Again, Ad Infinitum

  On my first day of boot camp, my drill sergeant yelled, “How does one survive an explosion?”

  Me being an idiot and not really getting how things worked there, asked, “How?”

  The drill sergeant gave me the biggest shit-eating grin I’ve ever seen (not an easy feat—I’m friends with the demi-god of refuse, a creature literally made from crap) and sent me on the longest run of my life.

  When I got back, exhausted and defeated, my drill sergeant asked me if I still wanted to know how one survives an explosion.

  I nodded. “Absolutely.”

  This time his eyes widened as veins bulged from his forehead, like he was trying to make me explode with his mind (which, if I survived it, would have given me my answer). I was sent on another run and by the time I got back, I discovered that everyone in my platoon knew the answer and were told, under threat of death, not to share it with me.

  Over the next few weeks, that drill sergeant asked me every day if I wanted to know the answer, and every day I said “Yes,” thus condemning myself to more running, push-ups and other torturous exercise.

  Was I a glutton for punishment? Yes. Was I being a defiant asshole? Yes. But I also really wanted to know the answer.

  Despite my obvious aversion to authority, I graduated top of my class and was enlisted straight out of boot camp into Special Forces (which resulted in more training hell).

  On my last day, I asked the old drill sergeant, “How does one survive an explosion?”

  He gave me that same shit-eating grin he always did. “You pray you don’t, son, because being put back together hurts more than the blue flames of Tartarus.” Then he lifted his pant leg, revealing a wooden stump and a catheter filled with yellow piss.

  I’d always thought the old drill sergeant was a bit of wimp. After all, he survived an explosion and came back somewhat whole, and was able to fulfill what I was sure was his lifelong ambition of torturing young cadets.

  But when the apartment exploded and my body was torn into a thousand little pieces, I felt nothing. Well, that’s not exactly true … I felt a mild discomfort that was over in a flash as soon as my brain was splattered like a paint-filled balloon.

  Then I started to come together, the thousand pieces that made me up slowly crawling back to each other, stitching back together. My brain was the first part of me to become whole, and once it was whole, it became my personal Rosetta Stone of agony, translating the meaning of pain in all sorts of soul-destroying ways.

  I have never hurt like I did that day when Penemue’s inferno put me back together. And as soon as I was whole, I did something I’ve never done in my all my days … I got on my knees and prayed to the GoneGods that I’d never feel that pain again.

  ↔

  As soon as I could focus again, I realized that I wasn’t the only thing that was whole again. So was Bella (thank the GoneGods), and so was everything else.

  The apartment was whole, as was EightBall’s family. But unlike the obvious torment that painted Bella’s face and mine, they looked perfectly normal.

  Well, normal isn’t exactly the word I’d use. They looked whole and human, except for the strange fact that they were moving in reverse. And I don’t mean walking in reverse, or gesturing in that way mimes do when pretending to go back in time.

  They were moving in reverse, and it looked like I was watching a film being slowly rewound.

  At the point I gained consciousness was the moment when EightBall’s mother closed the door behind young Newton. Except she was opening it and he was running in backward before going to the kitchen, then coming out with his dirty dishes and sitting back down at the dinner table.

  Penemue—well, dinner-guest Penemue—took back his bottle of Drambuie, walked backward and out the door. The piano playing, conversations—everything that had just happened reversed like some drawn-out scene from Twin Peaks before everyone got up and left the room. They left the apartment empty again, just like when we first arrived.

  I turned to see Penemue. The angel was whole again, and from his own pained expression, I saw that he had experienced it all as well. The explosion, the agonizing re-stitching. The whole ordeal.

  But he didn’t only experience it as an observer—dinner-guest Penemue must have felt it, too. The angel was literally doubling up on his punishment.

  Once the family was outside again, everything stopped and for a blissful second, nothing moved as the world went silent. No, silent isn’t the right word, because silence implies that there was sound still lurking somewhere.

  This was more like the permanent absence of sound. Like we were standing in a place where sound could not be.

  Then there was a jerk as everything started again, and time flowed as it was meant to, with seconds ticking forward toward whatever was to come next.

  And what came next was EightBall and his family entering the modest apartment, just as they had the first time. As they sat for dinner, I realized what was happening.

  We were going to relive this whole damn thing again.

  And again.

  And again …

  This was the heart of Penemue’s inferno, his personal Hell.

  Reliving the moment he most regretted again and again in all its pain-filled glory.

  ↔

  “No,” Bella said. “I can’t go through that again.”

  I looked over at my wife as her eyes welled up with tears of fear at the coming pain.

  Bella was afraid, and seeing that expression was so foreign to me. I’d seen her at her worst. Hell, I’d watched her die, being stabbed to death by blades she knew were coming. She was afraid then and I saw the same look in her eyes now.

  She was my Amazonian warrior, my Valkyrie, and seeing her so afraid was so surprising and foreign to me that it pierced the very fabric of my being. The sight of her like that was the most painful thing I’d ever experienced and I’d take a thousand explosions and re-stitchings over seeing her like that for another second.

  I rushed over to her and held her tight. “You won’t … you won’t. I promise.” Then, turning to the only person who could stop this pain from happening again, I yelled at the angel, “Stop this. Now.”

  His answer was light-filled tears that rolled down his cheeks and a subtle shake of his head.

  “Please,” I said, walking over to him. “I’m begging you. Please.”

  The angel ignored me, pointing at young Newton. “So much joy stolen by me. He has suffered because of what I did. And so must I.”

  “By accident,” I screamed as I watched in horror as the family made their way through dinner. I knew that with every bite, every joke shared, every quip exchanged, we were one second closer to the coming agony. “It was an accident. Not something you did intentially. That has to count for something.”

  Penemue just shook his head. “Pain intentially inflicted or not, is still pain.”

  “So what? Do you think that reliving this over and over again is penance?”

  Penemue just nodded like he was answering a very simply, straightforward question. “It is all I deserve.”

  EightBall stood from the table. In a moment he would go outside. In a moment it would happen again.

  “Jean-Luc,” Bella said, her voice shaking.

  “Bella,” I said, running to her side, “when he goes outside, you follow him. Do you hear me?”

  Bella gave me an uncertain nod. “What about you?”

  “I’m going to figure this out. But in case I can’t, I want you to be outside by the oak tree. You’ll be safe there. Come back in as soon as it’s over.”

  Another uncerta
in nod.

  Good enough, I thought. Turning back to the angel, I considered what to say next.

  But as I mulled over my next words, Bella shouted, “I can’t get out.”

  Looking over my shoulder, I saw that Bella was trapped inside, some invisible force field keeping her in the house.

  “This place is designed to punish,” Penemue said. “Only the constructs can leave. The living”—he gestured at Bella—“and those who were once alive are trapped here. I am so sorry, Human Jean-Luc, but I warned you. You should have left when I asked.”

  I heard a low rumbling as the thunder of the coming explosion built momentum. “No, you can stop this.”

  “I have already told you, this is my prison. This is my forever.”

  A voice echoed in the room—“Thank you for believing in us, but it’s not enough. We’re leaving. Good luck”—as the rumbling grew in intensity.

  “No,” I said. “Stop this. Now!”

  “I cannot.”

  Desperate not to suffer like that again, I grasped for the only straw I saw before me: an unfulfilled promise.

  “You owe me,” I said. “You owe me an explanation of my past. Tell me about my father.”

  Keeping Secrets Secret

  I used to be afraid of Penemue. Well, that wasn’t exactly true … I used to be afraid of his thing.

  And no, not that thing.

  As is true of all angels, Penemue has a thing, and his is knowing everything that has ever been written … on paper, in stone and on the human soul. That means he knew just about everything there was to know about you—before the gods left, that is.

  And given that I was essentially an orphan whose mother died at birth, taking the identity of my father with her, the one person living on this Earth who could tell me about my past was Penemue.

  He knew everything there was to know about my mom, including who she was after she met my father—whoever he was—and everything else about her. I wasn’t really a let’s-rehash-the-past kind of guy and I never wanted to know about my dad. I really didn’t. It would open wounds that scarred over long ago, and why complicate my already over-complicated life?

  But Penemue was a drunk. Which meant that, at any moment during one of his drunken stupors (and he was inebriated more often than he wasn’t), he could blurt something about my father. So I did what one always does when facing a problem with an Other … I made him promise.

  That was the thing about Others: their word was their bond, and that bond was made not of oak, but a substance more powerful than Wolverine’s adamantium. So, one evening as I watched Penemue prepare for yet another bender, I grabbed the bottle out of his hand and said, “You know who my father is, do you not?”

  The angel nodded.

  “And you could tell me just about everything I’ve ever want to know about him, right?”

  Another nod as he reached out for the bottle. “What do you wish to know?”

  I held the bottle out of reach. “Nothing.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. I wish to know nothing about him. Absolutely nothing.” Then, precariously holding his Drambuie between forefinger and thumb, said, “Promise me that you will never tell me anything about him. Promise me.”

  Penemue gave me a curious look before pursing his lips. “Ahh, I see,” he said. “You do not wish me to accidently divulge information about his whereabouts or something more. You wish to—how do you humans put it?—snooker me into silence.”

  “Snooker?”

  “Outplay, trap, force … snooker,” he said by way of explanation.

  “I haven’t heard any humans put it that way—”

  “It’s a British expression.”

  “Whatever. And yes, I want to ‘snooker’ you into silence. And if this dysfunctional friendship is to continue, then I need to ‘snooker’ you into silence.”

  “Even if there are things about your past—and, more specifically, your father—I believe you should know?”

  I gave the angel a curious look. Something he believed I should know? What the hell did that mean? Then again, Penemue was an angel, and who knew what angels thought was important? It could be something as simple as my father’s side of the family having a history of bowel cancer, all the way up to my dad being Satan himself. Or something in between.

  Wherever the little tidbit Penemue thought I should know about my father lay, I figured I didn’t want to know. Family medical histories and devilish dads were best left buried and gone.

  Then again, Penemue could just be drunk, and the thing he believed I should know was that I was part Cherokee or something.

  I shook my head. “I don’t care. Whatever it is, I don’t want to know it.”

  “Very well, but my honor will not allow me to take that oath.”

  I threw my hands up in exasperation.

  Penemue lifted a Patience, please finger. “I’m afraid your way is not the best way to go about things, my friend.” He pulled out another bottle from only the GoneGods knew where. “I will not promise never to speak of your father.”

  So much for being patient.

  Enraged, my mind went through all sorts of threats I could use to get that damn promise out of him, but before I could start down the long litany of “You owe me,” and “I’ll kick you out of the hotel,” Penemue cocked an arrogant smile. “I will, however, promise to never speak of your father lest you ask. That is my solemn oath to you.”

  “Unless I ask?”

  “Mum’s the word.” He mimed locking his lips with a key, then handed me the key. “And thus I entrust the key to such secrets to you.”

  And that was the day I stopped fearing Penemue.

  Home Is Where the Heart Is … Even When It’s Not Your Own Home

  Penemue lifted a finger and tapped empty air like he was pushing some invisible button. He might have done exactly that, because as soon as his finger moved for a third time, the rumbling stopped. I looked around to see what was happening.

  Bella was still there, her expression downgraded from terrified to just plain scared. And as for EightBall’s family, they were still there. His mother standing by the window watching him play, his father still at the table, gnawing on the T-bone of his steak as he vacuumed up the last scraps of flesh on the bone.

  Turning back to the twice-fallen angel, I gave him an expression he must have seen painted on my face a thousand times before: confusion.

  Through tear-soaked eyes, he said, “I shall fulfill my oath to you and tell you about your father. But know this: once that is done, we will return to this hell.”

  I nodded. “It’s not a hell either Bella or I deserve.”

  “Humph,” the angel mused. “So few who have wallowed in Hell’s fiery pits deserved their fate. Even I, when first cast down, knew I did not deserve to be here. This time around, however”—he pointed at the frozen family—“I absolutely deserve to suffer.”

  Penemue was right—in a sense. Angel hierarchy and morality were very different than anything humans understood. But I had been around the winged humanoid creatures enough that I knew this much: Penemue had defied God (as in, capital-G God). He had sinned by going directly against his creator—a creator he knew intimately, had met, spoken to, loved—and in doing so, he was condemned to Hell. Given the rules that angels play by, he deserved Hell.

  But it went beyond that, because even though Penemue accepted his lot in Hell, I don’t think he ever believed he deserved it. Accepting your fate and deserving it are two different things, and Penemue knew damn well what would happen to him if he got caught teaching humankind how to read and write.

  He did it anyway, because he believed what he did was right.

  He did it because he chose to love humans over his own kind. And I don’t think he ever regretted it. But love comes with a price. And Penemue’s ability to know everything written on a human’s soul meant that what he felt for us was beyond love. It was something else—something more.

  Somethin
g that had evolved beyond love.

  Keep evolving, I mused. Penemue was always on about how we needed to keep evolving if we had any chance of surviving. Perhaps that was what he had done. His love for us had evolved and now he stood on a branch of the Tree of Life that he had created, alone and praying that others would, in time, join him.

  And when that never happened and then the gods left, expelling him from Hell in such a way that he killed several humans he cared for with emotions beyond love … Well, his fault or not, that was something he could never forgive.

  As a human—no, that’s not right … As an unevolved human, I would never understand that. I couldn’t, because I hadn’t evolved. He was operating under another set of rules that, no matter how ridiculous I found them, were his own.

  Still, I needed to save my friend. Desperately searching for the right words, I stammered, “But you didn’t—”

  Penemue lifted a silencing finger, his face briefly flushing with anger before softening again. “My friend, I read your soul long ago. As marred as it is, you care—for me, for Others, for everyone. That is why she loves you”—he nodded at Bella—“and how I know you care for me. But your ability to help can only go so far. I am beyond redemption and thus must apologize to you, my dear Jean-Luc Matthias. Whatever words you wish to say, clever or not, will not change my fate. This moment is but a reprieve as I fulfill a promise to an old friend.”

  Penemue touched the gem at his neck before rubbing his hands together in that vigorous way sumo wrestlers do before a match. Opening his palms, I saw a pile of dust that was either the result of the most vigorous case of exfoliation ever … or magic.

  He blew the dust, which flowed over Bella and me like a sandstorm. We were transported out of EightBall’s childhood apartment and into a typical suburban street.

  So magic, then.

  I stared around the somewhat familiar place until it finally dawned on me where we were: the street my mother used to live on before she, well … died having me.