I faced her again. “So, that’s why you never killed me yourself, why I’m still alive right now. You can’t touch me, can you?”
Lilith nodded once, slowly. “Like my father, I have so much power, but can only use it to influence.”
“Ah!” I said, “So then you are trying to influence me!”
“Of course,” Lilith admitted, but her expression remained undisturbed. “But influence is not the same as trickery or temptation. Surely you understand the difference.”
I became distracted by Sophia and how quiet and uninterested she was in Lilith’s presence.
“Sophia,” I said, “what do you have to say about this?”
I had a strong feeling something was off.
Sophia looked up. Her silky blond hair fell around her breasts. Her smile was radiant and soft.
“To say about what, Norman?”
I glanced at Lilith curiously and back at Sophia again. “A-about the land....”
“It’s wonderful,” Sophia replied.
When Sophia saw that I had nothing left to say she continued brushing her fingertips over the tiny flowers near her.
“She can’t see you,” I said to Lilith.
Lilith shook her head.
“I can offer you anything,” she said as she lowered herself next to Sophia and began combing her fingers through Sophia’s hair. “I can give your life back.”
That struggle was getting stronger. I can’t let her get to me. She’s lying.
Lilith laid her hand atop Sophia’s head, cupping it softly within her palm. Then she leaned in and pressed her lips to her hair. Her dark eyes closed as if to savor the moment before pulling away and standing to face me again. It was a curious gesture.
Lilith seemed about to say something, but then she stopped with a peculiar and even slightly worried look in her eyes.
“I must go,” she said. “Remember my offer, Norman, and remember who it was that sent you here.”
Lilith walked away on the outskirts of the green field. I watched until the trees eventually enveloped her. How could I let her get to me like that? But her words did, in fact, hold substance. I sat against the base of the Tree of Knowledge. I began to ponder more deeply. Sophia walked around the tree, admiring the greenery and the flowers nearby.
A butterfly landed on my hand. I studied it. Its wings were a rainbow of colors. I raised my hand to admire it, stroking it between its wings with the tip of my finger. Only when I pursed my lips and blew softly on the butterfly did it flutter away.
How could I even consider letting Lilith get to me? I thought of the creature in the Forest of the Cursed. And then there was Tsaeb. Although he did not deserve much sympathy, I could not help but feel sorry for him, too. This place, Creation, was a terrible place full of terrible people.
“I like being a woman,” Sophia said walking around the tree. She held a round, yellow fruit in her hand. “I feel new and important. I feel like I can do anything now.” She paused and smiled over at me. “Thank you, Norman. You can’t imagine how much this means to me.”
I smiled back, but it was a forced smile. I wasn’t sure how to feel.
Tsaeb came walking up and he too was naked. His hoofed feet were gone and he looked softer, different and older by at least eight or ten years. Even his smile was more human-like and good.
“I don’t know what you did,” he said, “but I feel wonderful!”
Wonderful? A word like that coming out of Tsaeb’s mouth in a non-sarcastic way sounded odd.
“Where is Taurus?”
“Oh, he disappeared,” Tsaeb answered. “Literally, I mean. He was standing there with me and then he faded like a mist, and was gone.”
Sophia let her hand fall to her side, the fruit still clenched in her fingers. Her smile abandoned her. “He was one of Lucifer and Lilith’s children,” she said staring out ahead. “He can only exist in one place.”
I looked upon her curiously. “How did you know that?”
“...it just came to me.”
Then Sophia’s face filled with anger. “No!” she shouted. “Norman, you can’t let him be damned to that terrible place! Taurus helped you! Look at what he did for you, for all of us!”
“Don’t listen to her,” Tsaeb snapped. “You made a deal and you can’t go back on it. Look at me. This is how I used to look. I was human once, just like you. I didn’t have much and got made fun of. My mother was a stripper and no telling who my dad was—”
“Wait a second...” I stopped him, “wait just a minute, Tsaeb.”
I moved closer to Tsaeb and walked two circles around him. Tsaeb looked awkwardly uncomfortable as though he were being undressed with a man’s eyes.
“You say you were once like me,” I said, “but there’s more to that than just meaning you used to be human, isn’t there?”
Tsaeb did not look at me.
“My guess would be,” I continued, “That you were once in my shoes weren’t you?”
“W-what do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean. This task was once appointed to you, but it didn’t turn out very good, did it? You failed and then you were cursed.”
Tsaeb was silent for a long time. I had him. That was true and he could not deny it. But Tsaeb also seemed tired; probably tired of hiding what he was for so long. This time however, I couldn’t be angry with him, or blame him anymore for anything. I could relate.
“Yes,” Tsaeb admitted, “I was like you. I met Eve and the twins and a man named Henry on my way from the baseball field.” He turned away from me and crossed his arms. “I was an awesome pitcher, could’ve made it to the big leagues someday if it weren’t for David Callaghan who hit my pitch right back to me at seventy miles an hour. My head caught it instead of my glove. You know the rest.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Tsaeb hesitated and went on.
“Obviously I failed,” he said looking over once, “but I only made it as far as Bastion City—every journey is different. They begin in different places, the paths are different, even the clues. Hell, the Tree of Life wasn’t inside a fortress when I met her, she was the fortress. I failed after I figured out her riddle.”
He added in a low voice, “They pulled the plug on me in the hospital. I never had a chance.”
“But then how could Lucifer curse you?” I said. “That wasn’t your fault.”
With his arms still crossed at his chest, Tsaeb turned at the waist and looked at me with anger-filled features. “I don’t know; you have to ask him that question. Least he could’ve done was take my memories, too, like everyone else.”
Sophia jumped in, “Because Lucifer never plays fair. His reasons for anything, his decisions, his agenda, they’re all only to benefit himself.”
She stepped up and held the yellow fruit out to me.
“Do you really think that Lucifer told you everything?” she said. “More importantly, Norman, do you honestly believe that God would ever make a deal with the Devil?”
Two facts became instantly clear in Sophia’s words. The first was that Lilith was dictating everything that Sophia was saying. Sophia could not have known about the deal the Devil had supposedly made with God. Secondly, regardless of fact number one, the question itself was a revelation. Why would God make any deals with Lucifer?
“No,” I answered, “I guess God wouldn’t.”
I never imagined in all my time in Creation that this part of my journey would be the most difficult. No choices or obstacles were as powerful as this one right here: having to decide whether to taste of the fruit. Seeing for the first time that it was likely that I had been tricked. I painfully weighed who was the heavier enemy, Lucifer or his daughter, Lilith.
I thought of poor Adam for a moment. I could only imagine what other factors were at work when he tasted the fruit and damned everything. I thought that the story of Adam and Eve lacked more than it told. Adam was not tempted by the cunning of a woman. There had to be so much more to it than that
.
Other things began to tickle my thoughts.
“What happened to Henry?” I said to Tsaeb. “The one you met with Eve and the twins?”
“He was who I chose, just as you chose me,” Tsaeb revealed. “When I failed, I took his place. I really hate to think about what might’ve happened to him.” He looked away. “What might happen to me if you fail.”
No matter what choice I would make, someone would lose. If I ate of the Fruit, I would fail and Tsaeb would suffer for it. I would end up in an alley, or a gas station restroom until the next fool came along, or maybe even as an oblivious wretch in this Godforsaken place that is Creation. But if I succeeded and left the Fruit alone, not only would Taurus—unknowing to him—serve an eternity in Hell, but I would end up an oblivious drone in a never-ending eternity of predictability.
I knew that Lilith was listening to my thoughts.
And I knew that she would answer to them….
It happened so quickly.
I grabbed the fruit from Sophia’s hand and took a swift bite, catching Tsaeb off-guard. Tsaeb screamed, “No!” and fell to his knees weeping.
Creation disappeared in an instant.
“No form of vengeance ever comes without consequence.”
--
“I HAVE TO SAY,” said the Devil, “I thought you had it in the bag, but I should’ve known.”
I raised my head and looked out across at the black smoke billowing from over the tops of the trees in the distance. But things were different. I was not myself. I was not the same Norman Anthony Reeves I was when I first met the Devil here in the park. My briefcase was next to me on the ground, but I knew that something was different about it, too. The clothes I wore. The way the air felt on my face.
“I’m not in that apartment building anymore, am I?”
The Devil laughed lightly and spread his arms out across the back of the bench.
“Nope.”
I waited.
The Devil shook his head. “No, you successfully screwed yourself on that one. I have to hand it to Him; my confidence in you people is seriously misplaced. But He on the other hand, knows that all of you have evolved far out of your senses.”
I smiled. “Not completely,” I said. “I’m not standing in an alley with Eve and the twins in place of Tsaeb as Tsaeb was the replacement for Henry. In fact, I feel a hundred times better than I did before. I wonder why that is.” My comments were tinged with sarcasm and the Devil noted this.
“I know, I know,” said the Devil. “But you’ll regret it later when the deal you made with Lilith comes back to bite you in the ass.”
“How so?” I wasn’t really worried. Maybe only a little.
“Because everything I told you before was true.” The Devil crossed his legs and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket. Thumping on the end with the side of his hand, a single cigarette shot halfway out. It was between his lips and lit seconds later. “It wasn’t a trick,” he went on. “What I sent you to do was real and valid. You could be living in paradise right now. Quite literally.” He puffed on his cigarette.
“But I wouldn’t know that it was paradise,” I said, still watching the smoke from the building, “so that’s a moot point. I could sit and dream all day about what paradise might be like and feel all wonderful and fuzzy inside, but that’s a desire and once I’m actually there, living it, I’ll get no satisfaction or fulfillment knowing that my desire was real because I won’t remember it.”
“Yes, and you wouldn’t remember your mom or your dad, or your childhood friends.” The Devil blew out a stream of smoke. “But you seem to have completely forgotten one important detail.”
I looked over at the Devil now. “And what detail would that be?”
“That paradise is ultimately only one of two places you can go in the End.” The smile the Devil displayed sent chills down the back of my neck.
I swallowed my arrogance quickly.
The Devil stood from the bench and dusted off his clothes. The half-smoked cigarette shot across the sidewalk and landed in a crevice.
“But you did make things more interesting,” said the Devil. “And since you made a deal with her instead of me, that sort of makes you my enemy, too.”
“I guess it does,” I agreed.
We stood in the same position, looking out in the same distance. Both entities were in extremely confident skin. One much younger than the other, but clever and with firsthand experience in being a man under his belt.
We looked at one another and nodded.
“I guess I’ll see you around then,” I said.
The Devil tipped his imaginary hat and walked away.
~~~
In the following days, I had to do a few things before I began carrying out the duties of my new existence. My first stop was the mental hospital.
“How’d you do it?” said Tsaeb sitting with the girl he liked so much with the checker towers. “I mean I’m still dead to this world, and a demon, but it has its perks.”
Tsaeb caught on quickly that I was changed. “Wait, you’re not human,” he added.
“Not quite,” I answered with a subtle grin. I was not flaunting my authority. Only Lucifer would feel the need to flaunt, really.
“Ah, shit,” said Tsaeb. “I go from being his pawn to yours. Great!”
“Would you rather spend the rest of your time in an alley, or next to a public toilet?”
“You have a point,” said Tsaeb. He reached out and patted me on the shoulder. “Alright then, boss, but how’d you pull it off?”
“Lilith”, I began, “presented an offer I could not refuse. If I ate of The Fruit, everything would go back to the way it was. You’d get to keep your human form instead of the boy, the snake people and the creatures in the Forest of the Cursed would go back to being what they were before and I...” I paused, “...well, I am Lilith’s Left Hand, her understudy.”
“Wow,” said Tsaeb, “that oughta piss Lucifer off bigtime!”
“Yes,” I agreed, “and that was Lilith’s intention. Though I don’t hold the keys to Hell and I’m not on the same level as Lucifer, I am not human and I am immortal. Most of all, I can do one thing Lucifer cannot.”
Tsaeb grinned. “Move in and out of Creation whenever you want, I take it?”
I smiled.
~~~
My next stop was Hugh Bastardi’s office, where I stayed long enough to whisper a few words in his ear. Tsaeb was allowed to do whatever he wanted, but his orders to haunt Hugh Bastardi in the mental hospital for the rest of his life was his one priority, and Tsaeb did it with pleasure.
I went to Creation to visit Sophia, unsurprised about what I found when I got there.
“I owe you a debt,” Sophia said.
“As do I,” said Taurus, holding the youthful young woman who was once an imp wearing the guise of a little girl, close to him.
Another part of the deal was that Taurus would get back his eye.
They were an inseparable pair, Taurus and Sophia. Lovers. The gentle giant and the tender woman who would always have the temper of an imp. But the two balanced each other and whenever Sophia was on the verge of a murderous rampage, Taurus was there to calm her down and save a life or two. He was the only person who could ever truly tame her.
Amanda, my ex-wife, ended up wealthy, like she had always wanted. I managed to influence her lottery numbers. Rich overnight, with enough money to feed a small third world country for a few years, but not a dime of it did she give to charity. Amanda was Amanda: greedy, hateful and addicted to sex. A different man in her bed every night, sometimes a woman. Plastic surgery was to her like rum to an alcoholic. But she was a miserable woman. I made sure of that. Not only did I give her what she wanted, but also I gave her what she deserved.
There was one last stop I had to make.
I sat at my usual table at Lou’s Coffee, close to the south window so that I could see Kate. She was as beautiful as ever and nothing like the image of her in
Creation. She was the real Kate, soft and sweet and full of bright welcoming smiles, though they were fake. If she really felt that way about me, the way her duplicate expressed, I could not tell. I still wanted Kate; nothing much would ever change that.
I walked right up to the counter.
“Did you want something else to go?” Kate said so sweetly.
“As a matter of fact,” I began, “I thought I’d take you with me.”
Kate looked surprised at first and then giggled with a blush in her cheeks. “That’s sweet,” she said, “but I have a boyfriend.” She was trying her best to let me down easily.
I casually leaned over the counter towards her.
“Are you sure about that?” I whispered.
Her smile lingered for a moment and then shifted to a flirty grin.
It was too easy.
I was living the life, but I always knew that like all things it would not last forever.
And so one day I presented a deal to God.
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