by Riley Hunt
I staggered down the cobblestone sidewalks, tossing a gold coin to the skeletal beggar on the corner. He scurried out of his ragged blanket and flashed me the side of his protruding ribs. His face was sunken in, and what was left of his eyes looked dull and gray.
“Wanna buy a watch?” His voice was hoarse, like nails scratching on black board, and begged for watery relief.
“No, I don’t need a watch.” There was a part of me that wanted to say something snarky like, we’re in Hell. Who the fuck needs to know the time? I hate to tell you this, but we are here for the rest of damnation.
But this man had been through enough. His skin was hanging on to the edges of his bones, curling into itself by the corners. I feared that soon he would end up a pile of rubble, forgotten over time.
“I promise you that they are one hundred percent Earth authentic.” He scrambled to his knees and burrowed into the mound of rubbish that sat behind him. The smell of shit mixed with piss wavered through the air, forcing itself up into my nostrils.
I looked away as a rush of bile built up in the back of my throat. I tried to distract myself with the longing thoughts of scotch, but it didn’t work. The smell kept ripping me back to the present.
“Please,” the man begged and held out a dirty silver wristwatch in the air.
“Take this and keep your watch.” I threw him another spare coin. He needed it more than I did. Tears mixed with blood seeped from the beggar’s eye sockets. This made the guilt inside of me flare up.
There was a part of me that was getting soft.
My hand dove deeper inside the pocket and rummaged around until I found a couple more coins. I tossed them down, and I knew that it would be enough for a hot meal or some nasty drugs to numb the pain. It didn’t matter which he chose; all that mattered was me getting the hell out of here. This was too uncomfortable for my liking.
“T-thank you for your kindness.”
I muttered a goodbye and kept going without stopping for anyone else. No one was going to come in between me, some warm food, and a glass of scotch.
These were the slums, nicknamed Shantytown. Nothing good came from here. The souls who called this area home were the ones who never repented or pretended to, but their souls were tainted with darkness, a darkness that would never leave, stained for all eternity. The thieves, murderers, rapists, child abusers, and gangs. Once in a while, you found a decent soul trying to make a difference, but they usually ended up as Daemon food. No one liked change.
At the end of the Shantytown was a dinky, rundown bar named Spooks. Even though you could grab a drink at just about any corner of Shantytown, this one was my favorite.
The windows had a dense layer of dirt that blocked out peepers, and the front door shrieked anytime it opened. Cho, the manager, was half-blind and half-deaf, which made this one of the safest spots for a former soul Reaver like myself to get a drink without being bothered. Sure, the booze was weak and watered down, but it was also cheap as sin.
You could always count on Cho not to pay any attention to anything except your drink order. The food was decent if you didn’t mind gut rot, the occasional bout of salmonella, or mystery meat. It didn’t matter to me. I couldn’t exactly die, so what was spending the afternoon on the toilet going to do other than detox my bowels?
“Mornin’, Cho,” I said, pulling off the trench coat and sitting down on the wooden stool. It wobbled with my weight. I wondered if it was on its last legs.
Cho looked away from his newspaper and pushed down his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Usual?”
I nodded. “Usual.”
When I yanked the newspaper that was laying on the dingy counter, pieces stuck to the piss-colored laminate. The headlines read. “Apocalypse now?” I scoffed and crumpled it back down. Helius was filled with those damn tabloid reporters. I had to give them credit that they had a certain flair to make everything sound so damn doomed. We were in the bad place. Of course, it was going to look like the Apocalypse. That was the point. We weren’t here because we were good people. We couldn’t expect rainbows and lollipops. We were lucky if Adam decided to punish us only once a week.
Cho’s was pretty deserted except for the two passed-out customers in the back. This wasn’t unusual. His dingy bar was a hot spot for people who wanted to disappear or hide from the DOD. The Lord’s lackeys didn’t usually venture this far unless they needed someone for a sticky job.
Within a few minutes, Cho placed down a plateful of eggs, steak, and a mountain of hash browns with a side of spiked coffee nicknamed ‘the wake-up call.’
“You read the headlines?” Cho asked. “They say Adam has been causing fluctuations again.”
I nodded, scarfing down the first giant bite of the almost burned meat. A thin layer of charcoal lined my mouth. I coughed, trying my hardest not to choke on the bitter taste.
“What else is new? Adam is erratic. It has been like that since that Lucifer prick disappeared without a trace.”
“If I ran Helius, I would vanish as well.” Cho agreed. “This realm is falling apart. If I knew that the afterlife was going to be worse than being alive, I would’ve tried to be a better person.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
The door swung open and two beefy men strolled in. They wore matching bicycle shorts that clung like a second layer of skin and different colored wife-beater tank tops. The goons looked as though they had skipped leg day for the past century or so. Hell was hot, but not hot enough to justify outfits like that. My eyes felt punished just by looking at them, and I knew my day was about to get worse.
There was no doubt in my mind that they were Davos’s men. The Lord was obsessed with Earth, especially the era called the Eighties. Anytime you visited his castle, he would have Michael Jackson, Queen, or David Bowie blaring on the sound system. Davos would pay a pretty penny to anyone who would bring back items from Earth, but the excursions into the other realms had been shut down by Adam.
The moderately pudgier man with the pink tank top sat down on the stool next to me.
“Coffee,” he barked at Cho, who bent his head and grabbed a mug off the shelf. The man turned to me. “If it isn’t the famous Vex Azura, Helius’s own soul-snatching Reaver in the flesh.” He snickered toward the other thug, who had now creeped up behind me. He wasn’t very good at his job. “You are one tough guy to find, Reaver.”
I didn’t think anyone remembered me as Reaver anymore. It had been too long since I had been able to snatch souls from Limbo. There were a few close calls with the malfunctioning Adam, and I almost lost one of my legs. No part of me wanted to fuck around for a measly soul or two and a handful of gold coin. I’d rather salvage what I needed to survive and keep all my limbs.
I scooped up the eggs and popped them into my mouth before answering. “I feel like I’m at a disadvantage. I don’t know who you two are.”
“Bubba,” answered the one from behind me.
“I’m Rocco.” His chest puffed up even more, if that was possible, but I wasn’t intimidated. I knew that he was filled with hot air and nothing much else. I could probably say the same thing about his head.
I tried my hardest to hold in a laugh, but a flicker of one slipped out.
“Those are your names?” I cackled. I thought they were joking. They sounded like they belonged to cheesy wrestlers.
Rocco’s eyebrows furrowed, as if I had asked him to solve a calculus equation.
“Yeah,” Bubba answered. “Them are our names.”
“You got a problem with our names?” Rocco snapped. He must be the leader of the two. I wouldn’t say he was smart, but he was in a hell of a lot better shape than Bubba.
“Nope, not at all.” I took a sip of the coffee, letting its warmth fill my belly. I’d had a bad feeling that this was going to be a shitty day. First, I had almost been cornered by a preacher, and now, I had to deal with these two thugs.
“I think that they suit the two of you. Just perfectly.” I clicked on the to
p of my mouth with the edge of my tongue.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Rocco shouted. In the far-left corner of his head, a vein throbbed, begging to explode. I had the sudden urge to flick it and see what would happen.
“I think he’s makin’ fun of us,” Bubba muttered. “He thinks we stupid.”
“Is that what you think… Vex?” Rocco sneered in my direction. “Your name ain’t better than ours. What does Vex even mean? Stupid made-up word.”
“It means annoy, irk, enrage. You pick the definition, and I’ll go with that one. Or do you need me to explain those words as well?” I muttered, digging into the plate once again. I tried to scoop up as many eggs into my mouth as I feasibly could. This was probably going to be my last bite.
“He wants to rumble, Brother.” Bubba chuckled. “We outta teach dis guy a lesson.”
Rocco flinched, but before he knew it, I hoisted the ceramic mug and splashed the burning hot coffee into his face. I swung the mug around in the air and smashed it into the screaming Rocco’s nose, shattering it into a cloud of ceramic pieces. The light bouncing off the thousands of pieces twinkled like a star in the sky. It was almost poetic. If I was about to be stuck in a fight with these two thugs, I would stop for a moment and appreciate the beauty of it.
Bubba lunged forward, hooking his arms into my armpits and locking my own behind the nape of my neck. I curled my legs until they reached the edge of the countertop and pushed backward with all I could muster.
It didn’t help any. Bubba was a blubbery tank. If I had to guess, he weighed a hefty three hundred pounds. I rocked back and forth, but it didn’t help at all. I was a little rusty and out of shape. It had been too long since my last fight.
Bubba slammed his knee into my right thigh, sending shooting pains all the way down to the tips of my toes. There was an attempt to heave forward, but I was pulled back down from the weight of the beast behind me. I slammed the back of my right heel into Bubba’s calf, but he hardly even twitched.
Rocco patted his face with a wet rag that was left on the countertop. My nose wrinkled in disgust. I swore that cloth was in the same place last week. A part of me didn’t think that Cho even bothered to clean it or any part of the bar, but it wasn’t like any of us could die of tetanus or salmonella.
Rocco’s face was beet red with bubbles of clear blisters clustering across his cheeks. He flung the rag against the dirt-covered window, and we all watched as the cloth left behind a trail of blood, coffee, and water, and then landed with a wallop on the ground.
Bubba huffed behind me, his warm and toxic breath dancing across the nape of my neck. It smelled of ash and vinegar.
“Get ‘em, brother.”
Rocco balled up his fist and punched me square in the stomach. I let out an exaggerated oomph that I couldn’t control.
Then he hit me again and again. My insides clenched, and, at that moment, it became harder to breathe. I sucked in as much air as I could manage, but tiny spots of white and black appeared before my eyes. They floated in the air, threatening to bring me back into the darkness of my consciousness.
The pain resonated within and echoed against the walls of my esophagus. I wanted to vomit. The acidic taste of bile coated the back of my throat, but I couldn’t spit.
This was, in reality, fucking embarrassing. I was a little glad no one was around to witness this beating. My name was on the line, and I couldn’t let people or Daemons know that I wasn’t up to my full capacity. I would be picked apart and jumped. Everything I owned would be stolen.
Back when I was a full-time Reaver, I could have decimated these two thugs with a snap of my finger, but I was getting soft and a little rounder in the gut than I would like. When I escaped this, I would need to rethink my lifestyle choices.
Wasn’t it funny that every time something didn’t go your way, you made those silent vows of redemption that you would change your life dramatically?
My skin prickled. If I wasn’t wearing long sleeves, I would be able to see the hairs on my arms rise like an army of dead ascending from their graves.
Something was coming.
Something powerful.
Something that could make my life a living hell.
Life could get a lot shittier. Talk to the Imp daemons who were responsible for picking off boils from the Lord’s body, and they would let you know. Slavery wasn’t dead. There was nothing like serving a Lord for all eternity.
The surrounding air grew thicker. Rocco’s reddened skin somehow paled, and his eyes bugged out. He felt it as well. I was a little relieved that I wasn’t the only one. The power was suffocating.
A voice boomed out from behind Bubba, and the beefy man shuddered. “Enough!” it snapped with a commanding power as the shadow of a man drifted from the darkness. “Release the Reaver immediately and back away.”
Rocco kneeled on the floor, bowing his head down as low as he could make it go without touching the dirty tiles.
Without any hesitation or questions, Bubba released his grip then took a step away from me. I must be off my game. I should’ve guessed who could have stopped these goons. I turned around to come face to face with Davos, the mighty Lord of all assholes. That was what I liked to call him.
He was one of the thirteen sworn Lords of Helius that apparently Lucifer himself had chosen to rule the realm in his wake—or that was what he liked to tell everyone. His slicked-back hair was graying more around the edges than the last time I had seen him, and there were patches missing from the top of his head. The skin around his cheeks sagged and hung off his face like an old lady swinging her best church clutch.
That wasn’t a good sign.
You weren’t supposed to age in Hell, unless you chose to or had some sort of curse placed on you. At least, that was what I had been told. There were no set rules in this place, and with Adam going haywire, not a single soul could predict what would happen next. No wonder Lucifer skipped town. Who would want to deal with this shit show?
Davos was vain, and his looks must have been killing him. He thought of himself as a sort of godlike figure. The prick had an extravagant mansion that was made out of bones and gold that overlooked the river of Styx. I had seen him bathe in the blood of daemons and participate in gladiator-like competitions, but the man standing in front of me was only a husk of the one I’d known previously.
His gray skin had lost its luminous twinkle. The bones of his cheeks protruded as if he were shambling skeleton. The Lord looked as though his skin was wasting away, and that wasn’t something that often happened unless you were thrown in a batch of acid. Harsh black crescent moons clung underneath his eyes.
He seemed to be examining me as well. This was the first time in over a year that we had seen each other, and the last time hadn’t been anything to write home about. I might have destroyed a relic of Earth or two after Davos insisted that we continue to send Reavers to their demise. Surviving Helius was hard enough but doing it with missing limbs was challenging. You needed to be strong enough to protect what was yours.
“I suppose you won’t bow down to your Lord?” He studied my face for a response.
“You really want me to?” I asked. “You know it won’t be because I respect you. It would only happen if you ordered it, and I like this outfit. I don’t want to get it dirty. Fuck, shopping for clothes in Helius is like getting your teeth pulled.” Getting shit out of your clothes was next to impossible. I was low on coin and goods to trade for a brand spanking new outfit.
Davos’s lips curved into an almost-smile. “I had forgotten how blunt you were. It is refreshing, but only at times.”
“Fuckin’ prick, that is what he is,” Bubba muttered under his breath.
I lifted both of my middle fingers in the air and gave them a good ole wave hello.
“Did I ask you to speak?”
“N… ” Bubba started to say something, but Rocco shook his head.
He nodded toward the brothers. “Wait outside.”
> Both scurried out after the command.
I looked around to find Cho, but he was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t blame him for hiding. The Lord’s arrival was bad for business.
“I have a proposition for you.”
“I hate to break this to you, but I’m no longer a Reaver. The risks are too high, and the rewards are little. Adam is too erratic for any more missions. You know this better than anyone. I can’t. I fucking won’t.”
“You say that like you have a choice in the matter.”
“What are you going to do to me? I’m already stuck in this damn hellhole.” I shoved both of my hands deep into the pockets of my jeans. “You can torture me all you want, and I still have all of eternity left to get over the pain. Pain is only temporary.” At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.
“What if I told you, I had the power to send you to Heaven?” Davos sounded like he was telling the truth, but I wasn’t sure.
I scoffed. “When was the last time you heard anyone say they’d been ascended from Helius to Heaven? It has been ages. Even the souls who repented for their sins haven’t gone up. No one gets out of here.”
I knew of one who deserved to ascend. Cho.
He had been a greedy bastard in life and had repented by helping the poor souls from Shantytown who had no food. He never charged a single coin for any of the food. If that wasn’t selfless and repenting, I didn’t know what was. Maybe I wasn’t the best judge of character, but I did call Helius my home. I had no idea what happened in my human life that had made me an inhabitant of this fine realm.
“Think of all you can do when you get to Heaven. Live in luxury, never having to want anything again. Never worrying about losing a limb or being tortured. You wouldn’t have to hide in the shadows like a rat.”
“Why wouldn’t you ascend?” I ask. That was the obvious question.
“And leave my home? You know I have a particular taste in blood and torture that wouldn’t be appreciated in that godawful holy place.” He spat on the ground. “I will not wash my hands of the dirt to rub shoulders with a bunch of pansy Angels.”