The Devils Harvest: The End of All Flesh.

by Glen Johnson

  That would eventually be taken out of my hands.

  The day passed slowly. It always does when you’re waiting for something, someone. Time seems to stretch. But evening came; there was no stopping it.

  I had everything ready. My trusty Sony minicorder resting on the table that I had placed next to my chair. A new spiral notepad and a simple black Bic ballpoint pen.

  I found as I watched the clock hands slowly make there journey around the clock face that my hands had started to shake. In anticipation, or fear? I had no idea. Possibly too much caffeine.

  I hadn’t eating anything since my brunch, or rabbit food, whatever you want to call it. And I had so much coffee inside me that if I made any sudden movements I could hear it slurping about. But no more alcohol tonight, I needed to keep my wits about me. But I would break that promise all too soon.

  It was now dark outside. Of course it had been getting dark since around three o’clock. Short days and long night this time of year. It was also blowing a gale. I had to step outside the front door and shovelled the snow away that was building up, making a small clearing so he could reach my doorstep. Not that I think he needed my help.

  Several times while waiting I stood inside the parlour, the light around the back being on, my eyes fixed on the oval long mound poking up though the white snow. But it was still there. The bright halogen light reflecting off its sides, which was growing by the hour, more snow piling up, rounding off its edges making it look like just another bulge in the ground.

  I found myself pacing back and forth around the large sitting room, then back into the kitchen. Once or twice having to go to the bathroom and empty my sloshing bladder. It was at that time I noticed I was still in the clothes I was wearing from the night before, having eventually falling asleep in them and not changing since arising this morning. I hadn’t even brushed my hair or shaved. I looked a complete mess.

  I now stood in my small downstairs toilet. Just a toilet and a sink, with an age misted mirror hanging above on a single nail. I ran the water, running the toothbrush over my teeth, and then splashing some water over my face and hair. With a shaking hand I brushed my light brown hair into some semblance of order. I still looked a mess. But some how I didn’t think my visitor would mind that much.

  Sudden realization hit me – I was waiting for the devil to knock on my door. The devil! A couple of days ago I would have scoffed at his very existence.

  I ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, reaching my large master bedroom, trying to distract my thoughts. I pulled off my crumpled jumper and shirt; I pulled on a clean one from the drawer ignoring the rancid smell of unwashed armpits in the process. A quick swipe of Vaseline for Men underarm deodorant took care of that.

  It was while I was debating whether to change my trousers when the banging on the front door started. It was slightly softer than the night before, but still the same horrid tune. It sounded like the death march.

  One quick glance in a hammered metal edged full length mirror – which I had brought in Porto Rico – I proceeded down the wide twisting (creaking) stairs, which came down into a large open area, with the kitchen, scullery (also with a door leading down into a large, freezing, root cellar) and dinning room to the left, and the main large front room, drawing room, and a toilet with a separate bathroom to the right. I headed into the front room, and across the old worn Turkish carpet and to the thick oak front door. I fumbled with the catches and swung the door open with more force than I intended. I still received a shock. Standing at the door was a woman, in her late forties. Dressed like a cheap hooker with no coat against the numbing cold. And what she was wearing promised considerable frostbite.

  3

  That Smile

  I stood aside as she walked past. Her cheap high heels tapping against the wooden floor, until she reached the carpet that I had brought on the spur of the moment while on holiday in Istanbul, once she reached it the tapping was dulled out.

  This time I closed the door myself, but not before I noticed that once again no footprints made there way to my doorstep. In fact, while I had been wandering around my home, changing and doing last minute jobs, the heavy snow outside had built up again, until the point where there was only a small section outside my door free, because of the overhang. A couple foot away the snow piled right up, and there was no evidence that someone had climbed over it. And besides, how do you walk in deep snow in high heels?

  When I turned she was sat in the same seat, already reaching into the confines of her top, feeling around inside her large sagging bra, looking for her pack of Lucky Strike Original Red, or Luckies as they are often called. I hadn’t seen a pack outside of America, certainly not in England. I wondered where she had got them from?

  I suddenly felt untidy. Even though he had chosen, for some reason, to appear in the guise of a woman tonight, I felt underdressed, as if he was trying to make some point.

  She sat there quietly. Legs crossed. The skintight black fake leather dress riding even further up her thighs – if that was possible. Cigarette held loosely in her long fake plastic nailed grasp. A few of her fingers had no fake nails, as if being ripped off in a struggle.

  Was there a particular reason why he had picked the form of a female to appear tonight? I could only guess at his dark twisted reasoning. Now I know he most likely had no choice. She was probably all that was available.

  But I knew it was the same entity that was sat before me from the night before because of that smile. The old Cheshire cat had returned. A smile twisting her old tired features right to there limit. Her dull-yellowed teeth glowing from the light of the roaring fire that was burning in the grate.

  I studied her body. She had seen too much pleasure in her lifetime. Now it had turned her once taught young body in to an old used sack – skin hanging in places it shouldn’t. Her self-respect had gone long ago. Now she had to choose dark alleys, old men, still making the money. Until whatever it was had taken her, and she now sat before me as a host for something far more sinister and powerful.

  I slowly made my way across the room. Somehow she seemed far more terrifying than the man in the black suit from the night before. You always heard stories about him turning up in a black suit; folklore tales were full of such happenings. But using the dead body of a washed out hooker?

  Then it dawned on me that I would be dragging her body outside in the cold blistering wind, placing her beside the black suited man. Then awaking tomorrow to check that yes, there was two mounds besides my falling down shed. Her voice brought me back to the moment at hand.

  “Shall we commence?” She lit another cigarette from the butt of the last.

  “I see you are prepared,” she stated, not taking her eyes off me, but rather pointing the smouldering red end of her cigarette at the small table that was nestled beside me. The same one I had kicked over from the night before, but now the useless telephone sat on a George II oak low boy table between a pair of 19th Century Bohemian glass overlay vases.

  I didn’t answer. I simply lifted the minicorder and motioned it towards her.

  “By all means, please do,” her husky used voice said. The kind of voice transvestites would give their left leg for – a voice of far too many cigarettes and heavy-handed customers, and possibly an assortment of illegal drugs.

  I snapped on the record button, reassured by the blinking little red light. I placed it softly on the early 19th century mahogany square cellarette that I used as a small table, facing it in her direction. She cleared her throat, making a throaty noise before spitting a big glob of yellow phlegm into the fire. She then stirred in her seat, making her flabby thighs a little bit more comfy. Then she began:

  “My story is a long one, traversing time unlike anything you have ever known. My age you cannot even begin to imagine. You simply judge time by the rotation of your small inconsequential planet, twenty-four hours, a day. A simple planet. There were hundreds of billions He could have chosen from.” She flicked the wrist hold
ing the cigarette in a dismissive gesture. “But you already know that from the Drake Equation. N equals R-star, dot fp dot ne dot fl dot fi dot fc dot L, and all that shit.”

  She shrugged a shoulder. “But I was created long before time meant anything. Long before this ball of spinning dirt was even conceived.

  “I will lay my story out before you, for you to write down in your own fashion. I will tell of the beginning of the universe, creation of mankind itself, and where I play in all these roles. How I changed the course of history and life itself. How I condemned mankind to suffering and torment by simply raising small insignificant questions.” When she said insignificant, she twitched, and I got the impression the word insignificant would be the last word she should of used. She continued undaunted:

  “And how I played the part in getting not only myself, but thousands of other angels thrown out of the heavens, unable to ever return to stand before His presence. The four corners of earth now being our playground, our prison.

  “Also not forgetting our adulterous habits that created giants among men; one of the many reasons why He sent the flood to sweep away an unruly world, an unthankful creation.

  “All about His nation of Israel, and how I continually turned them away from Him, up until the point where He sent His only-begotten son – His first of all creation – Jesus, to earth to undo everything that I had been working towards for thousands of years.” A twisted smile played across her lips.

  “How I had mankind kill his most precious. Destroying their very means of salvation.

  “So much to impart. So much to say, and so little time in which to say it all.” She gave a long ragged sigh, spittle flicking from her red painted lips.

  “But alas, everything in its proper place.” She seemed to shake herself down and rise a little in the seat. She sat with one arm across her stomach, cradling her sagging breasts, with her other arms elbow in the palm of her hand, as if her arm was to weak to support the cigarette.

  “Time for the story to being and where it rightfully should, at the beginning.” A long deep suck on her cigarette, as if drawing strength from it. She then said, “In the beginning.” She gave a mocking laugh, spluttering smoke and spit across to where I sat. “I always did like that part.

  “He created the Heavens and the Earth.” She spat out the word He, as always looking up towards the ceiling when she said the word.

  “He created us all. All powerful. All beautiful. Myself along with all the other attractive angels that stands around His glorious personage.” She lit another Lucky Strike, inhaled deeply and gave a long sigh. She picked a fleck of skin off her scabby lip.

  “See I’m not what people think. Tall biped, red skin, broad wings like a bat and a wicked forked tail. No, the Book –” she always refers to it as the Book; of course she meant the bible – “says He created all things and it’s true. Do you think He would create something as vile as that? No of course not. It’s just one of my many transfigurations. In this story you will hear of many.

  “I was as beautiful as all the others. And still am, I might add. No, those images I created to make myself seem fiercer. It’s hard to demand respect looking like a playgirl model. Would anyone take me seriously looking like Brat Pitt? I think not. I needed a commanding form, so I simply created one.”

  She scratched an itch on top of her left breast. Her long artificial red nails leaving raked channels in her greying, flaking skin. No blood ran from the deep wounds that had congealed hours ago.

  “I influenced the mind of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri in his famous works Inferno, who got his inspiration from another of my creations, like the mythological Greek god Pan; which in turn influenced the minds of the medieval artists of the time.

  ‘The Father of the Original Sin they call me. The Original Liar.’” She made an attempt at a laugh. It sounded like a pack of kittens being drowned in a cloth sack.

  “So many names… so many.” Her head slowly shook from side to side.

  “I had a great position. Not envied, because of course they don’t envy anything,” she said looking upwards once again, as if there was a group sitting on the roof listening. For all I knew there could’ve been. Nothing could surprise me now. Many spirit people could be crammed into the very room where we sat, listening to her discourse and I would be none the wiser.

  “I watched as the worlds became reality. Great cheers arising from tens of millions of angelic throats at His accomplishments. Of course I joined in, what else could I do? But even then something didn’t seem right. Something off kilter. Something not meant to happen… Jealousy!” She stirred, as if the words were affecting her in a way I couldn’t begin to understand. Then again how could I possibly conceive everything this entity has been through?

  “We were all made unique – different. Just like mankind, no two of you the same. Likewise even with hundreds of millions of us up there, no two of us were alike. But one thing we all had in common was free will.” She flicked one of her high heel shoe downwards, catching it on her toes, swinging the gaudy bright red plastic coated shoe back and forth, revealing holes in the soles of her stockings, and a dirty sole to her blistered foot. Too much street walking looking for customers?

  “All of us had that precious gift. Also like mankind. You yourself,” she said waving her glowing cigarette in my direction. “You could have been anything you wanted to be. A serial killer, a rapist, a paedophile, a politician, a pianist, an artist, but you chose to be a writer. The beauty of free will.” She continued:

  “I saw many wonderful things. Many amazing new things all brought into being by His power and might. Whole worlds being brought together out of the cosmic dust. Galaxies cluttering around each other like a string of precious jewels.” She wiped dribble coming from her nose, giving a loud unladylike snort, before coughing at the back of her throat, then swallowing loudly.

  The story reminded me of all those long Sunday afternoons, sitting at the back of the Sunday School classroom. I thought I was daydreaming. Staring at Jane Gilmore’s back, admiring her growing body. But some of it must have struck home because some of what she was talking about registered somewhere deep inside me. Maybe it was all buried deep in my subconsciousness.

  I could also see the hooker’s body was slowly changing to a greyish putrid green. Skin beginning to peel, lank unnaturally blond hair with over an inch of jet-black hair at the roots, starting to fall over her uncovered bruised shoulders. She didn’t bother to hide the large unsightly love bites anymore. An advertisement to her profession – the oldest profession there was. Or it could have been marks of her death. I couldn’t tell and didn’t want to stare too closely.

  After my first inspection of her I tried to keep my eyes averted slightly to one side, never staring straight into those glassy eyes. Eyes that seemed to be constantly shifting, one minute clear registering eyes drinking in their surroundings, then they would suddenly glass over, unseeing, dilated – the eyes of a corpse.

  “That’s when it happened,” she continued; bringing me back to the moment at hand. “Man. Man came into being. He wanted a perfect world, a perfect subject to have and control, to rear in His perfect ways. He had His spirit creatures, but now He wanted something different, something to fill the worlds He had created. They wouldn’t have the same abilities as us, who watched from above, but they would still have qualities like us. One was immortality.” She coughed. “I soon put a stop to that, for now,” she said. “But as I already said, everything in its place.

  “He said: ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.’ Who do you think He was talking to? Us, His angelic children.” She gave a small laugh, which turned into a coughing fit.

  “At first all the animals were brought to man. Adam he was called. Adam gave all the beasts of the field names, the flying creatures of the heavens, all the crawling creatures. Everything that moved upon the earth. But nothing was found for him to be his partner. A complement for him. For His perfect little Adam.
” She said Adam’s name in a mocking tone, as if everything that had happened was in someway Adam’s fault.

  “Until He had a deep sleep fall upon His little pet. He took Adam’s rib bone to make a perfect companion.” She took on a flat monotone voice. “See, it was a rib bone for certain reasons. Couldn’t possibly be from the foot or leg because that would mean being beneath his feet. Couldn’t possibly be from his head because that would mean she was lording it over him. No, it was taken from his chest, next to his heart, so they could be equal.” Once again the mocking laugh that put my teeth on edge and for some reason made the hair on the nape of my neck stand on end. Was it a primal instinct, set in my DNA, a warning that a predator is nearby?

  “And what did little Adam say when this perfect woman was placed before him? ‘This is at last bone of my bones. And flesh of my flesh. This one will be called woman because from man this one was taken.’ The cretin,” she said.