"I don’t begrudge him," Davina moaned. "How can I hate the man my son loves? And I thank him, for what he did. But I only wish…I only wish he would go home. Just come back to visit from time to time."
"I know, love." His hand slid down and inside her veil of hair to stroke her wet cheek. "I feel the same way. We just have to wait, and see…"
««—»»
After his experience inside the Skull, Michael and Dawn would not enter into the administrative building of the Demons, with its Art Deco winged baboons flanking the front steps, until a carriage arrived in Apollyon bearing an Angel accompanied by two Celestials—an androgynous heavenly race, almost ghost-like in their silence and with their empty stares, but wearing all-too-solid swords in scabbards.
The Angel had been a priest in life, so in the afterlife had been given a position of some authority. When he and his guardians stepped down from the carriage and the couple moved forward to meet him, he pushed back the hood of his white robe and beamed a smile, extending his hand. Michael felt a kind of disgust for him already. Weren’t the Demons better, in a way? They didn’t hide their hatred for the Damned behind bright grins. Well, except for the Kilcrops…
"So nice to meet you," the man said, next pressing Dawn’s hand between his two. "I’m Reverend Worthy." In life he had been called Father Worthy, but in Heaven there could only be the one great Father. "Shall we go inside to talk?"
Finally, Michael consented to enter the building that he hadn’t been in since Iblis Al-Qadim had taken him here to consult the goat-headed Baphomet. He saw that entity watching them from across the foyer as Worthy led them to a doorway. A corridor beyond, but no Demons waiting to ambush him, no ticks springing from holes in the walls to slash at him. They entered a small office, where Worthy seated himself behind a black marble desk. The Palladinos sat in front of it.
"So…" began Reverend Worthy.
"So," cut in Michael, "my son…Mark. I’d like to take him back to Heaven with me."
The former priest’s smile rippled at the corners. "Ohhh, Mr. Palladino…I’m so sorry, but that is utterly out of the question. It’s impossible—just not allowed."
"Maybe because no one has persisted before. Maybe the Creator could make an exception."
"You must know…many people have persisted before. But the Creator can make no exceptions; it would be against the very reason that Hades, and more importantly Heaven, exist. But I am truly so sorry." He spread his hands, which Michael had found too soft and puffy.
He saw Dawn look over at him, as he lowered his head and nodded. "I understand. I didn’t expect you to say yes…but I had to ask, anyway." He didn’t add that he had promised his wife he would try. That it had been her idea to ask. But he was actually relieved, in a way, by the Angel’s words. How could he think to take his son into Paradise, away from the two people in Hades who adored him? Could all the replica Disney theme parks and replica McDonald’s burger stops and glittering shopping malls in Heaven replace those two Damned souls?
"Well," Reverend Worthy said, "I’m told you were considering remaining in Hades, then."
"Yes." Michael raised his head, but was afraid to meet the eyes of the woman seated beside him. "It’s my choice to do so."
"It’s…something you are allowed to do. But do you know how very awful it is in this place?"
"I believe that’s been well illustrated for me," Michael said ominously.
"Yes…of course. Well, as I say, it is permissible. An uncommon request, but not without precedent. And you…Mrs. Palladino?"
At last, Michael summoned the strength to look over at her, but now it was she who lowered her head and murmured, "I won’t be staying."
The former priest nodded slowly, looking suitably pained by their dilemma. "I see. But you know you can visit your husband here any time you wish…and he can visit you, without his son, as often as he likes."
"Yes," she said quietly.
"Will you be returning with me, then, to the palace?" It was the palace where the governor Iblis Al-Qadim had resided, also housing the portal through which these Angels had entered into Hades.
"Yes, Reverend. I just…I just need to talk to my husband alone, first."
"Of course, of course." Worthy floated to his feet, out from behind the desk. Michael hated the perfumed proximity of him. "I will leave you two alone to talk for as long as you wish. In the meantime I will be speaking with the Baphomet, Mr. Palladino…to instruct him that you are not to be interfered with."
"And my son. And those two Damned."
"I cannot guarantee that any Damned soul will not be punished…all I can guarantee is that you will not be opposed, if you step in to protect them."
"However you want to phrase it," Michael said darkly.
"A devoted parent, to be sure. You are to be admired."
"If only the Father of all children were as devoted…eh, Reverend?"
"Michael," Dawn whispered.
The former priest’s smile faltered more than before. "I know your pain makes you…unaware of what you say, Mr. Palladino."
"I am only too aware of what I say. And maybe now you think Hades is the place I should have been sent to all along."
"I would not think that. The Father, in His great love for you, judged that you should be in Paradise."
"I’m sorry to disappoint Him, in not wanting to be there any longer. Then again…He’s been a disappointment to me, too."
For several moments Reverend Worthy looked horrified, as if afraid to be consumed along with Michael should a lightning bolt crash through the ceiling just then. But there was no sign at all that the Creator was even in attendance, and now it was Michael who reached to shake hands, squeezing the other man’s filmy silk handkerchief of a hand in his own firm grip.
"Goodbye, Reverend."
««—»»
There was a knock on their door, and Roger went to it with his shotgun ready. He let it droop when Michael crossed the threshold.
"You won’t need that anymore," he said, gesturing at the weapon.
"I’ll still feel better to keep it." Roger tilted his head toward the sofa behind him. "He’s sleeping."
Michael stepped close to the sofa to gaze down at Mark’s gentle profile, his mouth open against a pillow. The room’s stinging blue light made it appear as though the boy had fallen asleep in the glow from a TV, as when he had been alive. "Let him sleep," he whispered, then he looked up at Davina—who had risen to her bare feet. "Thank you, for taking care of my boy."
She nodded, but crossed her arms tightly.
"Back at the Demon outpost, there, I acquired a lot of the money you people use here, when I told them I’d be staying in Hades."
"I don’t want your money," Davina told him.
"I didn’t mean it the way you think, Davina. What I was going to say is, I paid your next door neighbors, over here, to move to another apartment…so I can have that one." He turned to study one of the room’s walls, rubbing his goateed chin. "We could put a door right there, don’t you think? So Mark can go through it, any time he wants?" He shifted his eyes to meet Roger’s. "So that one house is no more his house than the other?"
Roger’s eyes began to fill. "Thank you," he managed.
"Well, I’m not as unselfish as all that," the Angel replied. "It’s for this guy." He smiled down at his child, but a half-stifled sob made him look up at Davina. She came to him, put her arms around him. He laughed uncomfortably, patted her back, "Hey, you can share my son, but you can’t share me…sorry." He flicked his chin at Roger. "This guy is pretty bad-ass…I wouldn’t want to mess with him."
"What about your wife?" Davina asked huskily.
He slid out of her embrace, his smile strained. "No," was all he could answer.
««—»»
Another knocking at the door, and this time Michael rose to answer it. Despite what he’d told Roger earlier, he brought his M16 with him. Mark was awake now, and watched his father with concern.
&nb
sp; Michael unlocked and opened the door to see Dawn standing in the hallway beyond, escorted by the two eerie Celestials.
"Honey…" Michael said.
He saw that her eyes were red, but she smiled and told him, "I’m staying, too."
Michael pulled her through the door, into his arms. The ethereal Celestials looked on without feeling. After they had held each other for a good minute, Dawn peered over her husband’s shoulder and said, "Hi, baby…"
Mark approached them uneasily, but Dawn gathered him into their embrace.
"I’m sorry, Dawn," he mumbled.
"Shhh. I love you, baby," she said, her lips moving against the top of his head.
Roger slipped his arm around Davina, should she become troubled by the sight of the reunited family, but she was content and whispered to him, "What about Mark’s real mother, when she dies? She was an atheist; she’ll be here. But we Damned can’t see our loved ones from when we were alive—we’re kept impossible distances apart. So do you think Michael can make them bring Mark’s mother here, too?"
"I don’t know if that’s possible," he told her. "But this man is…rather determined. And there’s always the apartment of our neighbors, on the other side." He indicated the opposite wall.
"Hm." She pressed her smile into his neck. "I’m so very proud of you…my husband."
"And I, you…my love."
Piece of Mind
— For Minh Nguyen
1: The Underworld Wide Web
Out of the sea of fog rose black metal towers like stove pipes or chimneys, a forest of them. Recesses gaped in the towers at various heights, and suspended in each black socket was a glass globe containing a luminous orange fluid. Floating in the fluid of every globe was a human brain. And attached to each and every brain by threads of nerve/muscle/blood vessel were two eyes that could not blink, that could do nothing but stare. Watch. Observe. Witness, like the unblinking lens of a television camera.
From underneath each brain sprouted a long structure like an immense spinal column. It emerged through a watertight rubber collar at the base of the sphere and extended into the distance like a tightrope, like a telephone line.
And so this was all that remained of Leon Brown besides his brain and eyes. All that was left had been stretched and extruded, broken and torn and then woven together again into one long rope. All his muscle tissue. All his veins and arteries. His bones, pulled apart into thin white fibers. And his nervous system, of course—most importantly. All of his body drawn out like taffy, like a bundle of cables, reaching far across the misty void until the other end was secured to a metal ring in another tower. Just as the cord of a person confined in that tower was secured to a ring somewhere above his globe. He could not lift his eyes to see it. But he could see the great web spread directly in front of him, of which his body was just one of countless crisscrossing strands.
He watched with dread, wanting to weep tears but lacking the mechanism, as a spider-like form picked its way across the neighboring strands. Slowly crept toward his own.
The orange fluid in which his consciousness floated did not preserve his brain tissues, per se. Instead, it prevented them from regenerating, as they normally would. In Hades, no matter what injury was inflicted upon the human body, it would always reconstitute itself. Burned flesh would go smooth again. Bullet and sword wounds would close up. Severed limbs would grow back like the arms of a starfish. It was a miraculous form of healing…but only so that more tortures could be inflicted afresh. All this was possible—the miraculous healing of flesh, the spinning of flesh into a far-reaching cord of yarn—because it was not real flesh, of course. It was flesh as hallucinated in the mind of the Creator.
The spider-like thing was drawing nearer, so that Leon could see it more clearly. Not that it was the only creature of its kind. They were all over the web, diligently setting new globes into the hollows in the metal totems, or taking old globes away to release the brains at last, so that they could finally regenerate after having been part of the web for months, perhaps, or even years of terrestrial time. But mostly, these creatures seemed to be nibbling at the strands. Plucking and sawing at them, as if to set off a vibration only they could hear. A kind of music; an orchestra of suffering.
Yes, Leon could imagine those multiple pincers and claws and scalpels of the insect-thing when it finally climbed onto his cord. His cord with its raw, exposed nerves, which it would scrape and abrade, slice and gnaw.
The approaching Demon—for such it was—lifted its head to look his way, and orange light from the many glowing spheres flashed back at Leon’s naked eyes, flashed back from the mirror that was the Demon’s face.
2: Hell on Earth
In a way, Leon Brown was probably better prepared than most of the people who found themselves committed to Hades. In life, he had been a television news journalist.
In Sierra Leone in 1995, he had seen numerous people who had had their hands cut off with machetes by rebels. One woman whom he interviewed said that after a rebel had lopped off her left hand she had begun sobbing prayers to God. The rebel had told her if she pointed to heaven with her remaining hand, God might spare her—then he proceeded to hack at her right hand. But after three failed attempts he had to leave it dangling partially attached. This woman told Leon that she felt her appeal to God had prevented the machete from cutting all the way through her wrist. Leon did not have the heart to tell her that if God had felt like dispensing miracles that day, He should have had the rebel trip and fall on his own machete. Or struck his machete with lightning when he uplifted it. Or prevented men from looking for hands to chop off at all.
Twenty-thousand people—children included—had lost limbs in this way. And as if that hadn’t been enough of a demonstration of inhumanity, instead of inspiring compassion the amputees were shunned by their neighbors as "half people." Because they frightened their neighbors. They were a reminder of the dangers that could come so easily amongst them. They were a reminder that all was not right in the world.
Who were really the "half people"? Leon wondered.
He had been to Somalia, where tens of thousands of people had died of starvation. Americans had been sent to capture Mohammed Farah Aideed, who was considered to be the obstacle in the way of aid distribution. Ultimately, some of these Marines had their bodies dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, beefy American carcasses flaunted by jubilant thin-limbed Somalians.
Brown had wondered what their parents felt. When they saw those pictures, did they remember the milky smell of their babies’ heads when they kissed them, their first Halloween costumes, crying a sweeter brand of tears as they sent them off for their first day of school?
He had been to Rwanda, seen heaps of machete-hacked bodies (always, always, the machetes). Hundreds of thousands had been exterminated by the interahamwe—"those who attack together." Even tall Hutus, mistaken for Tutsis, were slaughtered. When the murderers became too exhausted in their work, they would slash the Achilles tendons of their victims to prevent them from fleeing until they could be "processed" the next day. In addition, thousands of women had been raped, and even those who survived the machetes or sexual mutilation often found themselves HIV-positive later on.
He had covered the issue of violence against women in Senegal, where two out of five women suffered physical abuse, often from husbands who believed the Koran gave them the authority to beat their wives.
Brown had been in Liberia, where thousands upon thousands of people had been killed in their civil war. Practitioners of juju had committed ritual murder and rites of cannibalism. Children had been forced to rape their mothers. He had personally witnessed the killing of a man by a group of Krahn militiamen. One of the killers had been a nine-year-old boy, who had stabbed the fallen man in the back with a kitchen knife. Later, he had seen this boy and others playing soccer with a human skull still dressed in rags of skin and hair.
Leon knew why he had been sent to these places in particular. He had been told on
a few occasions that it was good to have the perspective of an African-American at these African locations, but he knew it was not that so much. It was because he was a "good" black man. While reporting these horrors, his civilized demeanor and articulate delivery on camera would reassure American TV viewers that they need not fear or hate their black countrymen. He was like the "good Mexican," perhaps a cook or sidekick or pretty senorita, included in a western movie to offset the "bad Mexican" villains.
Whatever had caused him to be in these places, Leon had always come back horrified, disgusted, sickened in his very soul. If he were indeed to consider these "his" people, it was frustrating to him that they should be killing their own kind. But he was sure the Hutus had not thought of the Tutsis as "their" people, any more than the Crips of Los Angeles County thought of the Bloods as "their" people.
Leon would wonder if the hard lives human beings endured excused them somewhat for their evil acts. Was empathetic behavior a luxury that only affluent and civilized societies could afford? Did achieving a better way of life result in compassion and mercy, or did compassion and mercy lead to that better way of life?
Leon had sometimes forgotten in which country he had seen this or that specific murder scene or howling orphaned child. He and his crew had repeatedly been stopped in their van and threatened by militia with AK-47s and mobs with machetes. But somehow he had lived through it all himself. Somehow he had come back without a scar.
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