by Poppet
Dropping the tongs, stumbling back in a toddler scramble, I look around.
Where the fuck is that screaming coming from?
It's everywhere, like it's inside my head! Slamming my hands over my ears, I notice the blisters of plague on his lips, the wail of purgatory coming from him!
The disciple of the lord comes to hold me, cradling my head in his palm, and I lean in, crying, my heart breaking for reasons I cannot fathom.
There's an almighty boom next to my ear, and through my tears I see the prophet's skull explode.
My prophet is dead. That's okay, he was a false prophet anyhow. They're all false prophets!
Rolling down the incline, I need to take a piss. So tired. The world is too heavy to hold.
A man says to me, from far far away, “Fuck John, you're higher than Orion.”
That's me, flying through the universe on my black wings.
“You're all going to die!” I laugh at the angel of chaos.
Lifting me, hoisting me over his shoulder, he makes the world invert and ooze an endless river of sulfuric puss.
It's spewing down his back. It burns my throat.
“He just threw up on you!” laughs satan.
But then the swine lick it up, lick me up, sucking on the key that opens every womb.
I was born for this.
The power and the glory is mine!
~ Chapter 28 ~
The Lord will breathe out a stream of flame to set it on fire.
~ Isaiah 30:33
66: Evan:
Holy fuck the night went on forever. Scripture after scripture, taking turns to rest. The waiting is the hardest part.
As we read, we contemplated the blood, the death, the rage that John tore from the pages of what he calls scripture and inflicted on us all; it’s time for some fucking payback, we're primed with righteous indignation and rage.
Andrew is ready for it. Jerry is pumped.
John wants to reap us? Fuck his reaping. It is time to do some reaping of our own. I flex my muscles; crack my knuckles, and wait, my patience thin.
There’s nothing in the room to use as a weapon, except for one thing: the book that calls itself the sword of the spirit. I heft mine in my left hand. My right can sure as hell hold its own.
The moments pass, and I strain to hear anything. It's so very faint, but far away I hear a man hacking up a lung, sucking mucous up his throat and spitting in a loud curdling sneer.
Looking at my boys, I whisper, “Use your sickle and reap the harvest, because the time has come. Revelations 14:15.”
Game on!
The only sound is an audible click, and then the door swings wide.
“Greetings. How–”
Jerry is the first through the door, taking me by surprise. He hits John low in a football tackle. He seemed already unsteady on his feet and the air rushes from his lungs. As he bends, I am there. Swinging the heavy book with both hands, I strike him square in the face. He rocks back, and Andrew follows suit, coming from his right side and also smashing his head with the 'good' book. John's head snaps, drops of blood flying from a shattered nose. Then the element of surprise is gone.
The Preacher looks straight at me, his eyes wide, but no longer in shock, moving like a boxer in the ring with eyes in the back of his head, “My wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness. You are not a prophet. You are a sinner, the satan of pride dwells in you if you thought you could best a disciple of the most high. As Seth and Peter died at my hand, so you will die.”
He reaches out so fast I don't have time to parry, grabbing my neck, and the world slows. We are alone, just he and I; my vision narrows.
Fuck he’s strong.
Jerry is on his feet. Racing in from his left this time, hard. John oofs loud, but doesn't release my throat. My vision is down to a pinpoint, a tiny light at the end of a loooong tunnel.
His hand releases, and I fall, dropping my bible, collapsing to my knees, struggling for breath.
Andrew hammers his body. One blow to the gut, the other to his kidneys. Fast and hard rabbit punches, lightning quick but incapacitating. The preacher turns to face the threat. Jerry jumps him from behind, wrapping his forearms around his throat. I can tell he's not much of a trained fighter, but he has scrap.
John roars, swinging a fist and connecting with Andrew’s jaw. His face slams sideways, his cheek already swelling, but he doesn’t stop. In his eyes burn a fierce rage. From my crouched position I see John raise his fist in preparation of a hammer strike to Andrew’s collarbone.
The dude is like a slippery kung-fu eel. He writhes, ducks, snapping out blurring punches, foot sweeps, elbow strikes, uppercuts, foot jambs aimed at knees, hooking fingers and trying to dislocate them while swinging us into each other, head butting, spitting, the display and violence so unfiltered we're a muscular mass of grunts and limbs. We're sweating, a scrum of berserkers in full attack mode.
Time to put a stop to this. I rest my left hand on the ground, and bring my right foot around in a fierce kick to the front of his knee. Our struggled pants are punctuated by an unholy crack, and a cry of agony escapes his lips as he falls backward, arms wheeling, landing on top of Jerry who still has his arms grasped about his neck.
I stand, the pain gone, replaced with sadistic rage.
“Get up, man of god. Get up! Show me how great your god is now.”
Andrew stands beside me, ready. The preacher frees his neck impatiently, almost breaking the fingers in Jerry’s grasp, and stands unsteadily on his one good leg.
“For your sins, you will pay.” He aims bloodied spittle at me, hatred burning his eyes into two black pits of malice. The madness roils, splitting his vision when his eyeballs slide wide, staring out, doing a reverse squint, staring at my accomplices, gobbing blood at Jerry. “You will be delivered into the eternal flames of hell. The day of mercy has passed, 66, 19, and 67. Your sisters too will perish with you in the fire.”
Snapping, I'm launching faster than Apollo, the smoke and steam and hate and anger and rage whipping out, forcing cathartic purging into the madman who thinks he's a fucking angel. “Shut.
The
Fuck
Up!”
I punctuate every word with a blow to his body. He sways back and forth, but does not fall. Supernatural fucking strength, I gasp for air, rage still festering, and he smiles at us, licking blood from the corner of his mouth.
“Evan, Andrew. The wages of sin is death.”
The forgotten Jerry sinks his teeth into his calf, attacking his last pillar of steadiness, and the Preacher folds to the floor screaming. In an instant the three of us are on top of him, pounding his face, his chest, giving no quarter, giving him no chance to assault any of us. I straddle his chest, pinning his arms with my weight. Jerry and Andrew are on my right and left, hammering blows.
Ballistic turns into insanity, time suspends in a stench of blood and testosterone, until reason invades my wildfire brutality.
“Stop!” I hold up my hand, looking down at the bleeding form of Preacher John.
Suddenly he doesn’t seem so powerful. Now he looks like a druggie with delusions of grandeur, aped out on steroids and crazier than bath salts.
“I think someone needs to be baptized. The satan of God is strong in him,” I say to my henchmen, my chest heaving from the exertion, heat enveloping me, filling my nostrils with the unique scent of urine.
He's pissed himself.
•
Jeremiah:
I’ve never fought a day in my life, not one. Never even threw a punch. Until today, I took pride in that. I don’t even know how to fake it. I avoid those action violent movies. Like Asimov said, “Violence is the last resort of the incompetent.”
I abhor violence and fighting. Peace, love, and all of that. I never wanted to hurt anyone before, ever. I’ve never been this angry before either.
I tackled the fucker. Bit him when I needed to, and I pummeled his face with the other two. My knuck
les are sore, I’m sure at least one hand is broken. It’s twice the size of the other, but I don’t fucking care. I’m a new man, reborn from the womb of revenge and wrath.
Now we’re dragging the injured preacher, the source of our imprisonment and pain, toward his own Holy Water. I don’t know what Evan has planned, but I plan to help however I can.
I want this fucker dead, oh yes. But I want him to suffer first.
•
Andrew:
Evan is one tough slab of rough. He's badass. So is John, but we have him where we want him now. I don’t know how Evan knows where to go, some kind of impeccable sense of direction, but we help him. I’m all in favor of a little baptism, tittering with hysterical glee.
Holy fuck, this shit just got fucking real.
“Now you’re going to see a cleansing motherfucker. There’s none righteous, that’s what your precious bible says. I’m afraid you’ve fallen short of god’s glory my man. Time for you to find salvation,” I hiss at the bleeding bastard, itching to destroy him in ways that would make Caligula blush.
Evan throws his head back and laughs. “That’s good my man. Rich.”
A long vat of what appears to be water sits right inside the door of a room I know I’ve been in before, but somehow lost the memory of. Without pause, Evan shoves the Preacher’s head under the water. His legs kick and flail, but Jerry and I hold them. As I grab the back of his belt I see the holster and that fucking tazer. Memory floods back to me, and I grab it, wrestling it free.
•
Preacher John:
God it stings!
Save me Anoki. Eloi!
Send your angels to save me, so that I will not be dashed against the stones.
Where have I betrayed you?
Can’t breathe. Get these heathen from me. Send serpents to bite them, let the plagues of Egypt fall upon them.
Let lice and flies infest them.
Let boils raise on their skin.
Let hail smash upon their heads.
Let darkness fill their vision and hide me from them.
Send your curse upon their firstborn.
Eloi deliver me, as you did your people from the clutches of the Pharaoh. Deliver me.
Deliver me. Please, oh Alpha of Victor, Peter, and Seth, deliver your servant into your hands. They do not know what they do! My vision turns red. The blood plague of passive is upon me.
I cannot scream, my mouth fills with burning, my lungs ache with acid.
•
Evan:
I pull him out of the vat, and liquid streams from his mouth, his nose. Blood fills the corners of his eyes, and he stares. He coughs, and spits, and I let him.
I don’t want the fucker to die, not yet. I want him to suffer, as we suffered. As soon as he inhales without coughing, I shove his head back under the water.
“Baptize this, preacher!”
Andrew slips up on the other side of him, and I see what’s in his hand. “Jerry, help me hold his head. Careful not to touch the water.”
He puts his interlocked hands on top of his stubbled skull, and I nod. Andrew activates the tazer, and touches it to the surface of the water.
He almost manages to get free, simply because I cannot touch the water. He thrashes, his legs kicking out, his arms flexing and then spasming. Then he kicks once, twice, and is still.
I reach and pull his head out of the water, tossing him on the floor.
For a moment I think I’m going to have to resuscitate him. His eyes are rolled back, the whites showing through the blood, and it takes him a few moments to start breathing again.
When he does, they are the shallow and rasping breaths that precede death. Good.
The fire of revenge burns deep in my gut. Whoever said it was a dish best served cold never ate any at all.
•
19: Andrew:
Almost fucking killed him with that tazer. Glad I didn’t. The seed of a plan I had long ago? Yeah, time for that.
I grab him, and pull him to his feet, finding that I, too, am exhausted. But I have energy left for this.
Then Jerry is there, supporting his other side. He looks exhausted too, but his mouth is set in grim determination. I don’t know that either of the others know what I have in mind, but I’m sure they’ll catch on soon enough.
This time I lead the way. I know where the fucking boiler room is, and I remember every moment I spent there.
Brand me! Brand me in the name of the Lord? Well, it's time for you to be branded motherfucker, with all of our numbers. All 72, not just ours but the ones you killed. The ones you reaped in the name of your sick god and your idea of redemption.
Oh, if branding redeems your soul, your soul will be redeemed today fucker. You’ll have more than enough redemption to meet Peter at the fucking pearly gates.
I tug along, and Jerry stumbles with me. I hear Evan’s heavy breathing behind.
When he sees where we’re going, I hear him chuckle.
“Preacher John,” he says. “Your hour has come. For gold must be purified by fire, right motherfucker?”
I laugh, and I hear a low chuckle from even the stoic Evan. We’re high on revenge. Fuck the manna he gives us.
This is the shit right here.
•
66: Evan:
My muscles are burning, every pump of my heart makes my veins stick out like licorice laced around my arms, the siege of fury is so immediate that I'm panting, trembling, but the calm of my mind chills my sweat. I've not been more lucid and calculated in all my life.
Gripping John's short hair, I haul him with me to the furnace, picking up the first iron within reach, a long rod with the number 25 on its tip. Lifting it high, I swing it down with all my might, slamming into his chest.
He cramps into himself, wailing, unable to defend himself with all the blood bathing his eyes from his diabolical holy water.
Glancing at Andrew, adrenaline surging through my body like delirious fever, I order, “If he moves, zap him again. I don't care if the bastard ends up with brain damage. Zap him until he's fucking catatonic! I'm heating up pokered revenge.”
Snatching up the poles of crude iron, I shove every number into the fire, when Andrew laughs, “That's exactly what I was planning. Brilliant minds–”
“Not brilliant minds, we're simply teaching him the fucking lesson of do unto others as you'd have them do unto you.” Clanging the rods against the metal lip of the boiler door which I now have open, it's so hot it's making me pour sweat, and I shove the numbered ends into the incinerating forge.
Leaning over John, I shout, “You are an abomination! You are a heathen, a megalomaniac, a fucking paranoid schizophrenic who ignores the words of love and forgiveness. You took a fucking scalpel to my manhood you stupid piece of psycho shit!”
Kneeling down, with my knee in his throat, making him choke and convulse, I do something I never thought I'd ever do. I unzip the fucker, shoving his pants down.
Jerry gets the idea and yanks off his boots, stripping John faster than a whore sheds panties for cash. In seconds I'm staring at naked legs and groin, leaning harder into Preacher's neck when Andrew cuts open his t-shirt with a struggling tear.
Glancing back at the forge, I touch the end of a rod, scalding my palm. It's violently hot!
Looking about, I spy the welding gloves hanging over the ladder at the rear.
“Keep him in lockdown, I'll be right back.” Pouncing off John, energy surging through me, I stride to the gloves, yanking them off, returning in a flash, picking a rod out of the fire with a glove, and handing it to Jerry. Using the other I grab a rod and hand it to Andrew. Then using John's jeans I ball them up, snatching an iron out of the fire, and nod to my co-conspirators, “Three, two, one–”
I aim for his penis. Payback is worse than a woman scorned.
The obliterating scream from our victim is so intense it could split atoms; it's pure anguish. It's the kind of primordial shriek that frays your mind, stripping h
umanity down to malleable ectoplasm. It's so savage and brutal I almost drop my poker. It slides right into my marrow, burrowing into my DNA, branding me a savage evil in a place where once I was holy, and now there's an empty void sucking out my soul in bone chilling frost.
Andrew and Jerry are just getting started, snatching irons out of the fire and riddling him with every number until he's nothing but a mishmash of welts, blistered and livid, his body radiating ruddy abuse. Swollen, bleeding, a puce scorch, the air is ripe with burned hair and sizzled skin. Milky drool coats his lips, black bruises mar his eyes, his swollen eyelids shut. The struggle is over.
My chest is too tight, my ears dull, a numb spreading through me. Dropping, suddenly exhausted, horrified at how far we went, how badly we traumatized his flesh, I plant two fingers in his neck. I double check my putting my ear to his chest.
He's gone.
We killed Preacher John.
Pulling my knees up where I sag broken against the wall, I cry for the first time since I was abducted.
Freedom should feel liberating and jubilant, but the shame and disgust inside my soul makes me sob like a teen with a broken heart.
I'm free....
A wail breaks out of my throat when I look up and spot Andrew and Jerry are hugging.
Grown men, weeping with relief that the ordeal is over. Me too. The shame is buried behind the screen of courage, and my heart is engorged, pumping hurt, because I've craved this day with all my heart and soul for... god knows how long.
Wiping my eyes, my hands are violently shaking, my knuckles swollen and bruised, cut open and bleeding.
I don't care.
Don't fuck with mankind. We're as savage as your god when pushed to it.
And god knows, we were pushed.
Snatching the tazer, I push weakly into a stand, holding to the wall for strength, walking away from the scene of the crime.
“Where are you going?” asks Andrew, also wiping his tears away, we're all pretending we didn't just have an epic meltdown.