Lucifer's Odyssey

by Rex Jameson

  ***

  Lucifer woke with his head on the table and a terrible pain in his arm. He must have gone to sleep on the chair instead of the bed.

  “Good morning, Prince Lucifer,” Garion said.

  “What’s going on?” Lucifer asked. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m leaving,” Garion said.

  Lucifer tried to raise his arm, but an intense pain stopped him, and the light was absolutely overwhelming. He grabbed his left elbow and felt something wet and sticky. As his hand slid upward, he found a gory stump. Another bright light filled his vision.

  “I am sorry,” Garion said, “but I told you that I would have to do this.”

  “King’s orders,” Lucifer said as he rocked in his chair. “I understand.”

  Garion raised Lucifer’s severed arm in front of him. The sight of his appendage made Lucifer’s head spin. He grabbed a wooden pail from beside the door and emptied the contents of his stomach. The door slammed shut and the lock fell in place.

  The smell of the vomit was awful, but the outlines of the swirling contents in the pail made the retching worse. He rolled away from the bucket onto the hard floor and watched as a liquid approached his face. He sat up and traced the swirling waters back to himself. He was bleeding all over the place.

  He ripped his shirt and used his teeth to tie it around the remains of his left arm.

  He looked at the void where the lower half of his arm should have been and then stared at his remaining hand. He sighed at the complicated layers of skin, bone, and the constantly moving liquid.

  Doesn’t mean it’s impossible, the pattern said. I guess it comes down to a simple question: do you want your arm back?

  Lucifer crawled to his chair and studied his right arm. The skin and hair didn’t appear to be too much more complicated. It was alive, but it was relatively rigid in structure. The blood he could see coursing through veins, capillaries, and arteries was a different matter. He watched it spread into the skin.

  Memorize it, the pattern said.

  “That will take hours,” Lucifer said.

  Were you planning on going somewhere?

  Lucifer snarled and grabbed the tray of food that had been left next to the pail. If he was going to work for hours, he needed some sustenance.