Darkroom Saga Omnibus 2

by Poppet

  10% of every single income is a universe-wide of money considering how many centuries they’ve been receiving the monthly premium from the gormless. The thing is no one knows for sure if this lifetime purchase provides any kind of dividend because no one has ever come back from the dead to let us all know this shit is the bomb. If it was the bomb you’d be ouija boards all over the world would be dialling in to say ’bro you gotta try this, this place is friggin awesome’.

  It is shit. It’s a pretty lie sold to the gullible, it’s a flaccid fib used to sanction genocide, and it’s a lie that has made men powerful, rich beyond their wildest dreams, and it’s all tax free.

  Clever.

  Fucking clever.

  Moloch really knew his shit when he made them pitch a tent and cover it in blood.

  We’re still covering it in blood. And gold, tithings, and devout loyalty. My father idolises Moloch and I have spent my life in servitude and service to both.

  Epiphanies always suck like septic gobstoppers.

  What never ceases to amaze me is how its followers call the book proof. How is it proof? Pages and words are proof? That’s as much proof of existence of a god and afterlife as my toilet paper is that there is a tooth fairy. My toilet paper is made of the same stuff and printed to boot, but you don’t see me buying shares in toilet paper now do you?

  Although that truly is something everyone needs and would probably be a very wise investment. It’s one product that every single person needs regardless of income or demographic, plus it’s endured the test of time.

  The operative word here is test.

  When you start to doubt religion and all it stands for, because you begin to see that it doesn’t serve you or your life but instead suppresses and represses freedom of thought and logical intuition, that’s when your shelf date expires. Before you can turn on the system the system will turn on you.

  Don’t fall in love, it will only lead to a heartache you are entirely unprepared for. It led to self doubt – doubt in the father, doubt in the disciples, doubt in our agenda, and doubt in the son: me.

  He took everything I had to give and then violated the one thing that was mine.

  I had one thing in the whole world that was mine: Shauna. And he broke her. He broke her so badly that she suffered the psychological damage of eternal shame. She ate to give herself armour so no man would ever look at her with desire – which included me.

  She embodied the reverse of the statutes of our brotherhood. Sloth and gluttony are deadly sins, so she embraced them. I shudder to think what else she embraced in my absence.

  It’s better this way. There’s no one left for him to use against me. Well … no one he knows about.

  I can tell you this much, when the chips are on the table and the loans are due, there is no brother in brotherhood.

  It’s only now when I get to the States that I find the time to contact Jude. He lives in the periphery of this world, with so many fail-safes in place that I am frustrated that it may well take two or more days before he even knows I’m ready and need contact.

  Jumping through hoops has never been my style, but I follow every precaution by adhering to his instructions, purely because he’s the only living being I trust in this world. He saved my life and I owe him the same freedom and loyalty. We’re not running from the cult any longer. We deserve the same liberties Alpha takes for granted.

  Like a man in the highest seat of government my father has become disassociated with the suffering of the commoner. Those wielding the power live with so many freedoms that they cannot imagine the slavery and hardship most exist within.

  For coin and comfort mankind toil, while the law maker is free from every restriction placed on the minions providing his comfort. Alpha whipped us and subjugated us to his will, we break the law so he doesn’t have to, our hands are dirty which is why he cannot perceive that the one in charge is the guiltiest, he’s the one with the dirtiest hands despite never getting dirt under his own fingernails.

  Sitting in a seedy motel room because it doesn’t have a thousand cameras hooked up for facial recognition – which I’d encounter if I went to a hotel offering the comfort to which I am now accustomed, I’m surprised when my cell phone rings. Only one person currently has this number, it’s the one I sent to Jude.

  This is the moment of truth. Jude either has me surrounded with a legion of snipers – while my father watches from his limousine out front of this dive, or he’s stayed faithful and loyal.

  “Hello?” I answer with caution.

  “Vengeance!” laughs a happy voice. “Tell me the end is nigh, brother. I’ve been waiting, readying, and drooling for some retribution.”

  I always seem to overlook that Jude knows everything about everything. He was the eyes and brains behind a lot of Alpha’s operations, and that’s why I need him. If anyone knows where Alpha is, it’s him. He wrote every program on his computer, for all his businesses, and has a back door entrance into the most confidential and covert of Alpha’s operations.

  “The time is nigh,” I say, grinning to the peeling wallpaper.

  I have a burning question to ask, one that has kept me under the gun all these months. “Did Alpha survive the demolition of his compound?”

  “He wasn’t even there,” tells Jude, popping the last shred of hope I carried in my wistful heart.

  “Fuck.” I sag, defeated that he’s not already dead. My life would be so much easier if he was in a coffin, preferably cremated so I know he’s just dust.

  “John, as you recall is dead, so the asshole who popped you three slugs to the vitals is no longer available for your revenge. James took his place at the Satanarium, but in true James style he had to put his stamp of ownership on it, so it’s renamed the Sinnergog.”

  “Synagogue?” I muse.

  “You are so out of the loop, dude. Sinner, get it?”

  Scowling, I nod. “Yes. No brainer.”

  “James is dead too.”

  “I don’t rightly care,” I state to the stained wall and carpet. I was raised in sanitary confinement, this place is like dropping a man with OCD in a room full of mismatched lines.

  “Peter runs the show now.”

  Now he has my interest. “Peter?”

  Jude clears his throat. “Uh, yeah. Vic, listen brother, I didn’t mean to listen in on your affairs, but I kept tabs. I can’t help it, if you ended up on the funeral pyre I needed to be prepared to take over the mission and see this through on my own, so I know what Peter did to you and Shauna.”

  I was misguided back then. In order to follow my father’s laws I let Peter hump Shauna. He was threatened by her, plus he’s the arsehole who turned me in. It’s because of him that I almost died.

  “ … Vic, I understand your silence, but you gotta understand brother, Alpha isn’t happy that John is dead. He’s pissed about it, so he renamed Peter, John.”

  Nodding, I scuff the pile of the mustard carpet with my boot. “Yup, it’s his way.”

  “It is?” asks Jude.

  And I thought I lived under a rock. “Didn’t he make you learn all the old writings before ordaining you as a disciple?” I challenge, amazed that my veins are pumped with righteous anger at my brethren’s ignorance.

  I simply assumed we all knew the past, the past not in the bible because a man in a dress thought it was distasteful and perhaps a little too revealing, so he put the big red stamp on the file: Heretic.

  “Jude, seriously? He did this right from the get go, well the real god my dad is trying so hard to be. Samael went by the name Yaltaboath, so no one would know he is Samael. He had kids with Eve, wrongly accredited to Adam because our black book simply says she conceived via the line ‘I have gotten a man through God.’ Genesis 4:1 His help was holding her down and violating his virgin. So she had twins - twice. The books never say the female name but Cain was born with a twin sister, yet his name is not Cain, it’s Eloim, and Abel was born with a twin sister later, but his name was really Yave.
He always renamed those who were instrumental and important to him. Daniel was renamed Belteshazzar, Eliakim became Jehoiakim, Gideon became Jerub-Baal, Jacob became Israel, Naomi became Mara, Simon became Peter, Joshua’s real name was Hoshea, Abram was renamed Abraham, Saul was renamed Paul, Moses was Minios, and of course the greatest of them all is Immanuel, who was renamed Jesus. Pick up a book and start educating yourself, brother. If Alpha hears about this you’re dead seven times over.”

  “Basically you’re saying that Peter is so far up his ass that he’s sacrificing sheep in the wilderness?” says Jude.

  My skin crawls with realisation. Shit! “I think you spiked the sinner with a thorn, Jude. The Sinnergog is in the wilderness alright, and those lambs are dying for his shitty ego. Who’s there? Tell me what’s new.”

  “I did some digging on that eastern block chick, but we need to meet. We can’t have a discussion like this, burner phone or no burner.”

  He’s right. We’ve reached our time limit.

  “At the hour of the eclipse, on the street after his age, meet me on the holiest day in the saints corner,” I say, hanging up.

  You’d have to be so far into religion to understand that cryptic message. The only person who could decipher that is Alpha, and I’m hedging my bets that his hands are too full to be caring about monitoring random phone calls in the ether.

  Jude will get it though. The holiest day is Friday night. The hour of the eclipse was at midday, twelve o’clock, as it lasted three hours on the day Immanuel was crucified. Because the holiest day is really alluding to time, Jude will understand we’re meeting at midnight on Friday night. Immanuel died when he was thirty-three, so he’ll understand we’re meeting on 33rd Avenue. He’ll have traced this call and know I’m in Wylie, Texas. The Saints corner is St Paul’s street.

  I’m heading to the Sons of Cain once my guys get here. They’re en route from just beyond Utah. I’m looking forward to moving on out, cos I’m not much into Southern charm and nosy neighbours.

  Quite frankly I’m in nowheresville in nowheretown.

  Staring at the gross room, I decide it’s safer to sleep outdoors. It’s fortunate that there is a lot of wilderness lining lake Ray Hubbard.

  Once in the outdoors the crows are calling. Circling high above me their caw is gruff and distinctive. They either have prey or can see prey.

  The wind is blowing so hard I feel like I’m stuck in a primordial blowjob. This is the weirdest place. Not five minutes ago the toxicity of the smog brought in on the wind was making my head throb with a migraine, my glands swelling while they revolted to the poison overload, and now the wind is howling, and yet it’s a berg wind. You’d swear I was two steps from the Namib desert

  It’s a hot wind, a midsummer’s tropical wind, the kind that makes the aurora borealis wish it could move to the Tropic of Capricorn instead of hanging out at the poles. She’s an odd bird, the original pole dancer with so much makeup on you’d swear she was auditioning for carnival.

  But I’m not complaining, finally the cold has blown away and the noxious stench has been thrust to the stratosphere. That’s the gift of a warm wind, it elevates the stink. Before it was all held down like a veil of doom over the land, now it’s clear and clean and when I inhale the air almost smells sweet. Like jasmine and gardenia sweet. Even the green gill syndrome and the crushing migraine have evaporated like vapid wisps on a bonfire’s sparks.

  I tell you what, I’m grateful for all this hot air. I’ve been in a New York winter, I’ve been in a London winter, and nothing is as brutal and merciless as Norwegian winter.

  Landlocked smog is worse than nuclear soup.

  •

  Polina:

  Mikah made me so accustomed to clean, and now I sit in a place smelling of old corpse and piss. It reminds me too much of Oleg.

  I spit in the corner whenever I think of him.

  Polina is stupid no more, she knows things. In my heart I know why they do this, it’s to break my mind into sharp edges so I cut myself. But I’m not falling for it. I won’t crack in my head.

  My thoughts won’t slice me inside like they want. The concrete is so cold it makes my bones ache, my muscles get tired here just by sitting, and the lack of colour is enough to make me want to go crazy, but I won’t because I know that’s what they desire.

  The enemy of my enemy is my friend, Victor said so. He’s so wise and beautiful. He is right, because his message spoke to my essence and forever forged me to his heart. So I keep my mind sharpened with the book they give me, practicing my English and reading, sometimes shouting to the others in my corridor to ask what a word does mean.

  It is a must for me to understand the enemy, so I read the book. It keeps my light on too, instead of the infernal darkness. When you don’t read the word of god then you must sit in darkness so deep, because it is to remind us of how lost we are in our sin. I laugh because now Polina play mind game with Father John. God said James no come back, so now we have John, but the big man Evan says he is not John, he is Peter. Peter denied Jesus, so I think he’s a snake pretending to be holy, and Polina understands snake so she taunts snake.

  With the light on because I read and read until I can keep my eye open no more, I read something that calls all these suka liars!

  I read it again, getting excited so much that I feel the cold prickle of sweat in my stinking armpit. Peter-John not let me wash, so that I can know how disgusting sin smell to God.

  And I lifted up my eyes and looked: and behold there came out two women, and wind was in their wings, and they had wings like the wings of a kite: and they lifted up the vessel between the earth and the heaven. Zachariah 5:9

  The angels are women! I am not sin, I am angel!

  How did I miss this the first two times I read book?

  Standing abruptly I rush to my door, banging on it, yelling as loud as my voice can go without me coughing, “You lie! You all lie! Your god lie! Peter-John you lie! Polina is an angel!”

  Some idiot down the corridor yells back, “A dirty angel! Pay attention luv, or they’ll just keep putting their cigarettes out on your face.”

  ~ Chapter 14 ~

  the Lord gave them laws to live by,

  and there he also tested them

  ~ Exodus 15:25

  Peter-John:

  THE SECOND I open her door to deliver her meal, she charges at me, shrieking like a meth addict seeing zombies. I don’t have time to react when she’s thrust the tray up into my face, dripping gruel all over my clothes.

  I’m so done with this deranged bitch. I have never met a case of such severe possession. I’m tempted to call her Legion because this chick is moving tectonic plates in heaven with her blasphemy and evil.

  Leaving the tray where it lands I lash out, punching her three times swiftly to the face, expecting her to stand down. She’s so covered in bruises and swelling that she should hurt everywhere, but Polina seems to build resistance to pain like a woman giving birth. The more she has the more her body rises to the challenge.

  The lunatic has blood streaming from her nose, scabs hiding her complexion, and a snarl that belongs to Cerberus. She’s full moon fucking insane, looking more deranged than ever with fresh blood gushing to paint over the dried crusts still on her white slip. There’s no point in putting this dirty angel in white silk, she fucks it up every god damn time. I’m done cleaning her up.

  I’m screwed up mentally, I know I am, but this chick is beginning to scare the bejeezuz out of me. She smashes into me, kicking and clawing, grunting and screeching, grabbing my arm and biting down. She snarls, her teeth saturated with haemoglobin. She’s toxic and psychotic, with blood-matted hair and fading damage for makeup. What creeps me out the most is she smiles when she sees me, when she smiles I know she’s about to attack.

  •

  Polina:

  Peter-John grabs my throat to hurl me to the floor, but I am too clever for them now. Anticipating everything I simply roll when I fall, preventing more
injury. He pounces to me, grabbing my tongue, barking, “I’ll cut this filthy thing out!”

  But I bite down so hard, grabbing his scrotum in my hand, crushing tight as possible until my hands shake with effort.

  He releases my tongue when I let go and still regaining his balance with penis-purple face, I charge him by pushing off the wall corner-to-floor, smashing my head into his.

  I am so in pain all I know now is numb. Maybe the throb has become friend to me in my loneliness? He shudders back, then escapes so fast I laugh. The metal door gongs like a death knell, ringing and echoing up and down the empty crypt we ferment in.

  “Your time is running out, Disciple Man. You are going to die screaming! Like you make me scream, you will die!”

  “Dream on, Polina. I am the law here and if you keep this shit up I’ll drug you and amputate your arms while you sleep.”

  I catch breath while stare at steel door. I like steel door, it makes much noise when I bash against it. Now they no longer give me spoon to eat food. They make me eat with my hands like a savage, and they wonder why I treat them like I am one.

  “What means amputate?”

  “Cut them off and feed them to the dogs! It means cut them off completely so you can’t attack the son of god.”

  “You not his son,” I snarl, chastising him. “You never be. I met the fallen angel and he looks to come from heaven, you look like piece of shit Peter-John. You smell like piece of crap too.”

  He mumbles through mail-slot in door, like we play confession. “Keep trying to goad me, Polina. It’s not going to end well for you. You’re weak and powerless, so you insult instead. You can’t cut me, bitch, I’m protected with power you can’t begin to understand.” Pointing his finger at me, he hisses, “Feeble and totally fucked.”