“Okay.” Juno squirmed as Cadence’s third tongue continued to lap up the blood from her temple and drool it back over her face. “I promise I’ll be quiet. I won’t say another word. I swear to—”
“You don’t comprehend very well, do you?” Cadence asked as her third tongue withdrew and her tertiary teeth slowly chomped at the air to the left and right of Juno’s terrified face. Juno shook her head, then nodded. Then she gave up trying to indicate whatever it was she was trying to convey and put up her hands in a gesture of defeat.
As soon as Juno conceded, and swore in a whisper she wouldn’t be opening her mouth again any time soon, all Cadence’s teeth retracted and her face reshaped itself. Looking even more stunning than before. Looking even more like a mature version of the Melody David once knew, before it finished shifting.
“Please don’t interrupt me,” Cadence said. Juno shook furiously as she cried silently. “I owe David this explanation and it’s best if I tell him without interruption. This is going to be difficult for me and...” Cadence looked into David’s eyes. “And I hope not too much for you to bear, my beloved.”
David nodded again. The truth is all I ask for, Melody. Or Cadence. Or—
“I will not lie to you, David. Though it may ruin us, I swear to you every word I will speak to you, and to Juno, is truth.” She grinned, weakly, through her fear. And you don’t have to cast a spell upon me. But, I respect your wishes and understand your need to. Just know that I swear on my life. I swear on my hope of our future lives together. I will not lie to you.
And I promise you, David said. I will give you every benefit. Even if it hurts. I need to know.
And so you shall.
Cadence sat back down. Juno still stood shivering in the kitchen. “Is this part of the story?” she asked. “What’s going on? I—”
The house grew dark, as if storm clouds were teeming above it, and a little red waggon sped out of the unused bedroom and into the kitchen, bashing into Juno’s ankles and causing her to wildly stumble. Franklin walked out of the hallway, past the refrigerator and grabbed Juno by the throat, keeping her from falling. “How you doing, Davey? Don’t worry. I’ll make sure this pestilent monkey keeps her fuckin’ mouth closed.”
“Franky?” Juno asked, frightened, as he squeezed her neck harder. “What happened to you? Your face? It’s missing parts.”
“Ugly as that fuck was, how can you be sure it’s missing pieces?” Juno stood and stared. “Franky’s dead, you stupid bimbo. And time don’t treat the monkey flesh all that well. Never has. It’s a miracle this skin suit is still hanging on. You monkeys are nothing but bacteria and disease. Bad enough when you’re still breathing.” Franklin looked over at David with disdain. “Didn’t your faggot junkie ex-boyfriend tell you already?” Juno shook her head. Then nodded. Then shrugged. “What? You don’t know? Anyway, pudding cup. Shut your fuckin’ mouth. Keep it closed. Zip that lip or I’ll break your fuckin’ neck and take you to a place you’ve only dreamt of suffering. And I’ll keep your diseased ass there forever.”
Franklin smiled as Juno tried not to break down and Cadence and David both looked at him with futility.
“Well? Go on,” Franklin continued. “Talk, Cadence. Melody. Whatever the fuck you’re calling yourself these days. Explain everything to my favourite monkey. I’ll keep this chippie piece of shit quiet. She may blab later, but none of the monkeys she knows will believe anything you have to say.”
Cadence swallowed and calmed herself.
“Are you trying to test me? For fuck sake, do it now, mommy,” Franklin roared, picking up the waggon and throwing it at Cadence’s head. Watching it dissolve into wisps of red smoke as it nearly connected. Cadence’s body trembled violently with a deep sadness and David grew confused. Wondering if Franklin was still just messing with his head, and to what end. “You two ain’t bound yet. You drag this out much longer and I’ll kill all three of you. After I figure out which of you would hurt the worst having to watch the others go. I’m not joking. I’ll do my additional time happily.” He spit on the floor, looking at Cadence. “And, to keep you honest, for every lie you tell, I’ll break one of my favourite monkey’s bones. After you’re done. While you watch. I’ll take your precious David apart. Anything’s better than waiting for you to work up the nerve to open your fuckin’ eyes.”
Cadence waved Franklin down, shaking. “You detest the monkey flesh so, yet you threaten me with its destruction. You must know if you harm him in the slightest we will be at odds for eternity. I’m not so weak as you might believe.”
Franklin growled and tightened his grip on Juno’s neck. “You willing to bet his life on it? Your choice. Either tell him the real deal, and risk losing him or tell him lies and guarantee it, you unbearable little—”
“Give me twenty-four seconds to compose myself. Damn you, shadow.” Cadence sucked in a heavy breath and began.
First of all, please don’t interrupt me. This is going to be as hard for me to tell you as it may be for you to hear. And some of it you may not wish to believe, though I swear on our union that what I speak is the truth. Please save your questions for later, all of you.
David, this is my story and your long overdue explanation:
Much of what I say to you may be contradicted by the doctrines of your religion, if you subscribe to one. It is not my intention to contest your spiritual convictions. You are free to choose what you believe in that regard. This truth is my own.
You remember me as Melody. You know me now as Cadence. I’ve been known on this earth under many different names. In many different forms. My actual name is unpronounceable by any person, or thing, with fewer than seven vocal chords. Twelve sets is optimal, if you want it to sound as it should.
The beginning of my story is longer than you can possibly fathom, so I’ll just sum it up as such: I am not of this world. I was made by God. In the beginning. Not born of him in the way humans are born. Not exactly. I’ve existed since well before the creation of your physical universe. It’s... hard to explain. And it’s not important.
From the time of my creation, I existed eternally at God’s side. In His grace. I realise that for the blessing it is now. But, by the time my story on earth began, I had shunned my true Home in the Above. What you may call Heaven. Which isn’t a place way up in the sky. In fact, we’re partially there right now. Always have been. All of us.
Along with a host of others, I was tasked with watching over the In-Between. Specifically, this place you call earth, and its inhabitants. And, the more I watched, the harder it became to understand how God could love what the entity you know as ‘the shadow’ refers to as ‘monkeys’. I used to call you—all of you—by that name too. Such simple creatures, and so completely ridiculous. I couldn’t fathom that you were all created from the same Father as I. That you could be born of Him felt like an insult to me. Because I thought We were all so much more than you could ever be. But my Father loved you, and so I tried to, as well.
But, as a watcher, I missed my time in the Above as I kept my attention fixed on the In-Between. While I observed all of you closely in your slow measure of time. Relatively, your time moves much faster, to be precise. But, to my way of thinking, thousands upon thousands of years in the In-Between weren’t nearly as precious as the split second in the Above watching you caused me to miss.
And I realised, as I watched, that all you monkeys. All of you were lost. And you found yourselves in ways I never dreamt of. Some of which delighted me. Most of which made my soul feel blackened.
And I asked my Father how He could allow and excuse some of the things I witnessed you monkeys do to one another. I asked Him how He could permit such behaviour to continue and still love you all. How He could allow such ugliness to exist side by side with such beauty. And He told me your outward appearances, and your unique expressions of the beautiful souls He made for you, were all designed to help your souls learn. So, when They returned and joined Him in the collective pool of lig
ht, where everything is One, They could reflect upon the lessons They’d either failed to learn or succeeded at understanding while They existed in the In-Between. And that your souls were free to return there. That They chose to. Over and over again. And that made no sense to me at all.
I watched you monkeys and, over time, I noticed, more and more, the horrible things you did to one another. And all the unjust suffering and unpunished sin infuriated me. And I realise now I was vain. I was prideful and I was angry. Vanity and pride being the same in His dictionary, that made me guilty of two of the big seven things He considers totally unacceptable. And I felt them very strongly as I watched you monkeys.
And the more I watched, the more I felt sure that the perfect classroom He’d created was flawed. And the more I watched, the more I felt sure I could fix it.
And so I fell. Not from the sky like a raindrop, but from His grace. And I did so with purpose. Though I was heavy with sin, my Father still loved me and He did not reject me. In point of fact—something I look back on with regret now—I rejected Him. I wanted no part of what I considered His failed experiment. And I knew then, as deeply and as perfectly as I’ve ever known anything, that I could set things right. And that, when I did, He would see the error of His ways and welcome me back Home.
And I’ve never heard His voice since.
When I first breached the barrier between the Above and the In-Between, I took many forms. I could not inhabit, or possess, a living body, but I could assume the form of one quite easily. Our true Angelic forms being rather unappealing to you monkeys who grew up looking at pictures of smiling faces wearing haloes, He had gifted us all—in His infinite wisdom—with the ability to shift to any monkey form we wished. So we could watch over you all more closely if we desired to.
Ever since I fell, I’ve been abusing that gift.
As I noted, I took many forms. I created them from lifetimes of memories of faces and shapes and I became one generic monkey after another. A monkey who could disappear and never be missed, when it came my time to return to the Above. And I killed without compunction. If I felt a monkey deserved to die, and be delivered back to the Above, I dispatched them back from whence they came as immediately and as cruelly as possible. And I prayed they would reflect upon their execution so that, if their soul decided to return, They would come back and make this world—this existence—a better place and a safer playground.
For seven years, I killed without mercy and without obstacle. I could never be brought to earthly justice because I could change my outward appearance—and I could act—at the speed of thought. I could move in this existence so efficiently I could kill in more than one place at a single time, from your monkey perspective. And I left every monkey I turned into mud with specific instructions to remember what they’d learnt. To ensure they never returned and caused hurt, or pain or suffering to come to any of the other monkeys they shared their classroom with. In my interminable state of rage, I’d forgotten that, while the lessons could be brought back from the In-Between and pondered in the Above, when a soul transferred from the Above to the In-Between, Their monkey birth effectively erased all memory of Their previous earthly manifestations. No monkey is born with the knowledge that it ever failed, or succeeded, at learning anything in its previous incarnations. Or, for the most part, that it ever previously existed at all.
And I sent a lot of monkeys back Home. Some monkeys might have likened my body count to that of a great war, but I never really existed in that persistent sense. And it soon became apparent that, no matter how many foul monkeys I sent back to the Above, even more were sent to replace them.
Nothing changed. Perhaps things grew worse. And I had become exactly as the monkeys I so despised.
It was then that I realised the grievous error of my ways, and I longed to return Home. I knew, at the core of my being, my Father would accept me back into His grace, but I had become lost. Perhaps I still am. The shadow would certainly agree I’m hopeless. That is why It is here. Its mission is to show me the way back. That’s what It tells me, anyway. It tells me this is not a fairy tale.
And so I determined I would make right for my misdeeds, to humble myself before my Father and show Him I was worthy to be called Home to again live in His grace. I determined I would do a good deed. I know that sounds simplistic and childish, but it made more sense to me back then. I determined that, if I could change a bad monkey into a good monkey, without resorting to sin of any kind, that would redeem me in my Father’s eyes.
And when I had been living among you monkeys for seven of your years, I began my quest. But, before I could act on my newfound inspiration, I stumbled into a quandary.
I was formless and invisible one evening. Loitering in an alleyway in a city I didn’t know the name of. In the company of four teenage male monkeys who weren’t aware of my presence. And, while I was floating around, a young female monkey came walking past me. She was approximately the same age as I was, if I were to consider my fall from His grace my birthday. And she was innocent and beautiful. I found myself adoring her, even as I felt the fear pulse from inside her as she made her way to her home. Clutching her lunch box so tightly she threatened to break it. Her name was Melody and she was the highest order of monkey. Which is to say I tolerated her existence with comfort.
And, as I watched her begin to pass a collection of industrial waste containers, she was set upon by those four monkeys. They’d been idling behind the dumpsters. Waiting, I sensed, not for her, but for anyone to torment. Little monkeys having their fun.
They took her lunch box from her and she fought them vigorously to keep it. And I wanted to help her, to take her into my arms and whisk her away from the riff-raff that assailed her, but I’d resigned myself to only watching you monkeys at that point in my journey. No longer interfering, in my search for the one bad monkey I would surely change. The only thing I was considering, as I watched, was which of the four wayward monkeys I would attempt to peaceably change from a sinful monkey into a moral one.
I watched as they teased her. Pulling at her orange-red hair and dumping the contents of her lunch box on the ground. Hurling all manner of insults at her. All superficial, of course, because she had such white skin and the colour of her hair made her something of an outcast. As if any feature of a monkey’s body determined their nature. And they pushed her around between them, hitting her and smacking her and spitting on her, as she curled up into a ball and tried to wish them away.
Then she struck one of them back. Right below the belt, where the male monkeys know the special kind of pain only they deserve. That monkey dropped to the ground and the female monkey ran. But the other three monkeys caught up with her before she could exit the alleyway, and they dragged her back to the dumpsters as they muffled her screams for help.
And I watched as the four monkeys tore the clothes from her body in a primitive frenzy. I watched them violate her as they fractured her frame with their fists. And when the last of the monkeys purposefully dislocated her jaw and finished releasing his seed inside her bloodied mouth, they picked her up like a piece of trash and threw her in the garbage bin nearest them. Heaping rotting waste from the adjoining containers on top of her. Forcing it down her throat, suffocating her with it. Beating her to death as her body retched. Crushing her bones and tearing open her flesh with pieces of brick from the rubble on the street as she struggled, her body spasming. Choking even more violently, on the refuse that clogged her windpipe and her own vomit. Even as she cried more weakly. Even as she began to drift out of consciousness. Fighting with what little strength she had left, for her monkey life that I could have saved.
When they departed, running like the frightened monkeys they all were, I collected the contents of her lunch box and closed it back up, opened the lid of the dumpster where they’d left her, climbed in and cleared the waste from around her. I placed her lunch box in her lap and rested her twitching hands upon it, though it was too late for that gesture to bring her any comfor
t. I felt the weak, humid breath leave her broken body and I saw her soul beginning to separate from Its monkey form through her eyes.
I looked into her eyes as she stared into the darkening night sky and, as her soul passed through me slowly, I saw and felt every ounce of joy and pain she’d ever endured. Every emotion. Her entire abbreviated lifetime. And I felt, most immediately, the sheer terror she’d just given her life to experience. And I committed the faces and bodies of her monkey tormentors to memory so I could choose the most evil of them to change later. After I finished holding her and her spirit completed Its passage.
Of all the monkeys I’d sent back Home, since I fell, I’d never before allowed myself to truly drown in the incident of its passing.
And, as I looked into her eyes and I immersed myself in her experience of life as a monkey, I saw and felt much more than I’d ever perceived observing, dispatching or instructing a primate from afar. I saw her parents. I felt their unconditional love for her. I saw her dressing herself in the morning. I felt the shame she experienced because she believed her body wasn’t perfect and beautiful. I saw her laughing. I felt her bliss. I saw her hiding. I felt her crying. I saw the light that still shone in her eyes. I felt her inner beauty and the sadness inside that her monkey mind equated with her monkey worth. I saw and felt everything she was. And all those things. Everything she had been, and had the potential to become, coursed through me like a flood of unfettered passion.
And in that moment, I knew, with an absolute certainty I’d never felt before, why my Father loved the monkeys. I knew why He loved me, and my kind, so deeply too. Because, in her eyes, I saw and felt that she was part of the One. That she was love and light and darkness and fear and everything We were, just in a transient container. Without a clue as to why she had ever begun existing or why she was now dying. And it broke my heart. It damaged me. This beautiful creature, passing away in my arms. Brutalised and tortured unto the death I’d witnessed with supreme detachment. This angel was a part of me. And she was a part of my Father.
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