by M. K. Gibson
Khurzon lit a smoke for me and put it in my mouth. I took a drag and closed my eyes again. I just let the gravity of the situation close in on me. I’d been low before. But never this low with others depending on me. Khurzon pounded her fists twice hard against the transport’s cabin, and I felt us starting to move. We were rolling and I just bounced along in my seat smoking.
“Khurzon.”
“Yeah.”
“Where are we going?”
“Flotsam,” the big demon responded.
“Fuck.”
Chapter Eighteen
Warden of Flotsam
Back in the early 1980s, the army corp of engineers created Hart-Miller Island, dredged up from materials of the Chesapeake to create over a thousand-acre island. It once was a park. Kids used to play there. During the first war, it was a floating fortress. Hell, I was stationed there once, in the battle of Razor Bay.
Now, Flotsam Prison was where you went to die. A place for those people you were not prepared to kill yet and enemies you wanted to punish. An island prison for those who were intended to be forgotten.
I was taken to the Flotsam holding facility, the shore-side complex that was part processing station, part military prison. After another round of beatings, more charges were yelled in my face.
By that point, it was only background noise. I was thrown in an underground holding cell where I waited for transport to the island. They took my clothes and sprayed me with chemicals. Thin prison rags were thrown at me while the guards explained a little about our new home-to-be.
Flotsam was surrounded by the green-black, Lesser-Deep-infested waters of the Chesapeake. Once you were in the prison, you stayed there. If you tried to swim away or make a boat, you were pulled to the bottom by unspeakable things. The only way onto the island was by air.
When it came time for transport to the island, they would place sacks over the prisoners’ heads and we would then be bound and loaded onto a cargo helicopter’s sky hook. From there we would be dangled over the island and dumped from an altitude of about one hundred feet into a fifty-foot pool of rancid water.
No one had ever escaped.
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Hours later . . .
I was dropped from the sky hook and into free fall. The cold winter air clung to me as I fell. Fear raced up my spine. With the sack over my head, I couldn’t see anything. Immediately I balled up. Seconds later I crashed into water, just like the guards said.
Hitting water at that height and speed was like hitting a solid wall. The impact knocked the air out of me. Underwater, the sack slipped off and all I could see was pitch black. With my hands bound, I kicked as hard as I could to what I hoped was the surface. Breaching the water, I took in a deep coughing breath.
It was the middle of the night. It was freezing cold and I was beginning to shake. The pool of water stank of algae and scum. My face was covered in the green gunk and itched, but with my hands still bound in the enclosed manacles, there was nothing I could do about it. Powerful harsh spotlights were aimed at the pool that made me squint from the intensity. As my eyes adjusted from the light and crud, I caught a glimpse of a body floating nearby. One of the other prisoners must have hit the water neck first and died.
Lucky fuck.
I stuck my bound arms in the air as we were instructed before we took off and waited while I tried treading water. From beyond the pool and slightly far away I heard voices yelling, “Here we go, fish!” and “Fresh fish!”, as well as the less than encouraging “I’m gonna fuck that fish!” Every season of HBO’s Oz flashed through my mind and I felt my asshole clench.
Someone reached out with a pole with a makeshift hook on it and looped it around my manacles and reeled me in along the side of the pool.
Fish indeed.
A strong hand grabbed me by neck and held me there. I didn’t resist. But that didn’t stop the hand from dunking me back under water for a good minute. I was pulled back up and I coughed and gasped. Harsh voices ordered us to be silent. As I bobbed there with the strong hand around my neck, I got a brief look at my fellow new fish.
There were eight others besides me who were dropped. With the harsh lights, I couldn’t make out the fine details, but there were two male cyborgs, three female Lust demons, one of which looked to have a bad burn across her face, a regular female human and one male human, and the corpse that floated nearby. As the corpse drifted closer, I could make out the steel rod that connected the demon’s bound hands and feet as well as a weighted collar. He was never meant to live. If the fall didn’t kill him, then he would have drowned anyway.
I still say he got off lucky.
After everyone settled down, or were dunked a few more times, it grew eerily quiet. The only sounds were the lapping of the pool water or teeth chattering from the cold. After a couple of minutes there was a repeating clacking sound that reminded me of metal on concrete.
The spotlights on the pool suddenly turned off, leaving us night blind. In the distance a softer spotlight turned on, cutting through the dark and illuminating a single demon. The light followed him as he slowly and deliberately walked along a slick marble path beset on both sides by white petrified trees. The demon walked from a small, two-story marble building along the path towards the pool we were all shivering in. As the demon got closer, I tried to get a better look at him.
Through my hazy vision, he seemed very tall and very lean. He had pus-yellow veining along his gray toned skin and long claws and horns, so my first thought was Sloth demon. My last run-in with a Sloth demon was Dantalion, Archduke of Lemegeton, and that did not go over well.
My eyes cleared as the demon grew closer, and on second look, its wings weren’t wings. They were legs. Eight thick, spike-jointed, slightly hairy and clawed spider legs that sprouted from his back, giving the illusion of wings. The spider legs were the source of the clacking sound and how he “walked,” with his normal legs held aloft.
He approached the pool in a slow, measured cadence. The spider legs clacked in a hypnotic rhythm. His visage was that of a malevolent god He wore a duster jacket, a criss-cross wrapped black leather shirt, and matching leather pants. He had a bald head, pointed ears, and six red eyes that lined his head like a spider’s, and over his lower jaw he had two overly developed, pincer-like mandibles.
The spider-demon came up short of the pool and crossed his arms, looking us over. I couldn’t tell if he was smiling, but it was clear he enjoyed his job. A sadist. Someone who truly enjoyed inflicting pain.
Shit.
“I am Master Tormentor Mastema,” the demon said in a deep voice. He paused as if the name had weight. I didn’t react and neither did the cyborg or the human captives. But I heard the three Lust demons gasp from behind me.
I tried reaching out with my wireless data port to ask my mom, the former Theology Ph.D., to get an update on who the spider demon was. And . . . nothing.
Damn. I should I have known. Why should anything work out in my favor? Comm jammers all over the island preventing unauthorized conversations.
“I am the Warden of Flotsam,” Mastema said as his spider legs lifted him again off the ground and he continued walking around the pool. “You are meant for death, hence being here. And you will die. Slowly. And in great pain. The powers that be have deemed your lives forfeit.”
Mastema stood along the pool and with a clawed spider leg reached out and grasped one of the humans and one of the cyborgs by the throat and addressed them. “Maybe you pissed off the wrong people? Maybe you know a secret?”
He cast them back into the fetid water. “Truth is, I do not care. Your time here is meant to be one of agony, and I will provide you that agony. I tell you this, because I am now your god. You will fear me, believe in me. You will beg. You will cry. You will tell any lie you can think of to end your suffering . . . but in the end, it does not matter. Because I am a god that does not care for you. And your suffering is the only sacrament I will accept.”
No smart-ass line came to me. No desire to pull my guns and fight my way free.
I was beaten. Caught.
With the past that I had . . . hell, maybe I really belonged here. A lifetime of sin finally catching up to me. I was a fool to think I would always win, always survive. A beaten, wet, freezing fool.
“Get them up and get them processed,” Mastema commanded, and the strong hands that held my neck obeyed instantly. I was pulled out of the water, raised high into the air and slammed hard onto the poolside concrete.
Face first.
Red fiery pain blossomed across my face. I felt my septum break and blood pour out. With my hands bound, there was little I could do. Lying there, I could turn my head just enough to see my fellow captives. It looked like they were treated about the same as I was. But this was my first chance to get a look at our strong, rough-handed guards. I expected to see big-ass Wrath demons, or some overgrown hellions.
What I was not expecting to see were actual Frankenstein monsters.
Constructs. Pieces of men and demons and God knew what else, bound together by leather strips, surgical sutures and stainless steel staples. They were flesh golems. Giant, emotionless, and obedient. Each of them over seven-and-a-half feet tall. From what I could see, they did not speak or even think.
Hell, that made them perfect guards for a prison. Guards who couldn’t be bribed or show favoritism. Who would obey without question. Who would never be squeamish or hesitant to inflict pain.
I was hauled to my feet and my legs wobbled, nearly giving out. The cold and the water had numbed my body to the point of near unresponsiveness. The flesh golem assigned to me just grabbed my neck and straightened me up, then pushed me into a line with the others. My fellow prisoners and I marched in the cold, dark night along a fence line made of blood-red inferium-plated razor wire. The hell steel was necrotic to living tissue if it cut you.
A flesh golem guard opened the gate and we funneled into a caged tunnel that led to a large black rectangular brick and duranium building with an open tunnel that looked like the fanged maw of some long-dead colossal beast. I could still hear the prisoners calling out to us from their cells, loudly and graphically describing what they were going to do to us.
If I had to guess, the building that was before us was a processing station. Where we would be accounted for, given block assignments, and everything else you expect when you go to prison. At least, that’s what I hoped it was.
Heh . . . hope.
Hope was for fools and poets. The building was an indoctrination into Mastema’s world. His own private hell. A place of pain. A place that would haunt my mind forever.
I shuffled with the rest of the prisoners towards the ominous building ahead. I took a moment to look back at Mastema, who watched us march. He was balancing on his spider legs, watching us march into the prison maw, smiling.
“Vicious, even for a demon,” I muttered under my breath. One of the demons behind me, a tall, black-skinned, four-armed Lust demon, overheard.
“No,” she said. “He’s no demon.”
“What is he then?”
“An angel.”
Chapter Nineteen
Sway Upon Those Hooks
Once I asked Grimm, “What were real angels like?”
It was right after the people of Löngutangar began moving onto my land. I saw how the people believed in Vali and Vidar. How their belief in the Norse brothers gave them both strength, energy, and vitality. Bits of the believers’ souls flowed invisibly to the brothers. In turn, the brothers used their power to help the people, their people, survive and thrive.
“What do you mean?” Grimm asked as we sat outside on the porch of one of the old rickety false buildings I had built on my land to make it look like a ghost town.
I handed Grimm a beer and he nodded, taking it. We drank together, taking a break from the construction of the new town. I lit a smoke and leaned back on my elbows, watching the people work. They didn’t work hard because they had to, but because they wanted to. Watching them sweat and labor as the early October sun set and drinking a beer with my friend. That was a good memory.
“Angels,” I repeated. “You know, real ones. Not the Vali and Vidar kind. I mean halos, wings. Chubby flapping babies and harps. You know, angels.”
“I see,” Grimm said, his face turning dour.
Grimm took a moment and sipped his beer, selecting his words carefully. “Not all angels wanted to leave the presence of God. Most wanted to be in Heaven. In God’s presence. They wanted to remain the extension of God’s will. His messengers. His watchers. His guardians.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“And his assassins,” Grimm finished. I gave him a curious sideways look and took another drag off my smoke.
“In the Bible,” Grimm continued, “as well as many of the sacred texts, it was angels whom God sent to kill entire cities. Angels who killed all the first born of Egypt. Angels who reveled in the slaughter of man.”
“Why?”
“I cannot speak for all angels. However, most of them . . . hate you. Hate mankind.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Souls,” Grimm said as he sipped his beer. “They hate that God gave you souls. Even the angels who left God’s service to become the ‘gods’ of myth reveled in the torment of humans. Remember your mythology. How many humans were tortured and punished by the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptian gods? Forced to worship, and punished for any perceived slight. And even some of the loyal angels, whose service it was to protect mankind, did not do it out of a sense of altruism, but rather because it was God’s command.”
Oh, shit. That was . . . horrible.
Grimm saw my face. “Some do care,” he said reassuringly. “Some do wish to help. But in my experience, they are not the norm. The only thing the angels hate more than mankind are the angels who rebelled against God and fell into torment and became demons.”
I believed in many things. I always believed that angels were kind. That they were here to help us. After G-Day, I saw the rule of demons. The wars they brought. The pain and suffering. And deep down I always held out a sense of hope that angels would swoop in and help man.
“What happened to the angels? The ones who remained in God’s service?” I asked.
“The same as the ones who became mythological gods. Those that were on the Earthen realm when God left were abandoned. Bound to this plane for all time.”
“But how many?” I asked. “What happened to them?”
“How many? Again, I do not know for sure. But far less than you would imagine. Most are reclusive, having lost the will to continue after God left. Some live in the wastelands. Other remain in the super-cities. Some . . . homeless drunks. More man than divine being now, having lost their grace. Some live in a pocket dimension. Then there are the surviving gods, who seek out believers to fuel them.”
“And the little cherubic ones? Halos? Winged men?”
“Wings, yes. A common form they would take when visiting the world of men. The rest? Idealized visions of romantic painters. And believe me, not all angels were beautiful. Some, some were cruel twisted visions. Almost demonic. And those particular ones you should always be careful of. For they enjoyed the mutilation of mankind.”
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All the prisoners were brought into a cold, stone room, lit only by a few braziers. We were forced to kneel down in a circle with our backs to one another while flesh golems gripped our shoulders. There was something psychologically horrible about that. We knew, I knew, something bad was about to happen. But we were unable to see each other. Unable to mentally share and lessen our joint pain and fear.
Each of us were forced to stare at a single, simple object.
A large meat hook suspended from the ceiling by a length of chain.
“Strip them,” Mastema commanded.
The flesh golems obeyed immediately. The grotesque constructs took blades from the stone tables in the room an
d cut away our clothing. As they stripped us, strong hands forced us to continue to stare at the hooks.
The freezing air of the room hit my wet skin and the shivering started all over, from cold and fear. The stripping of a prisoner was classic psychological warfare because it worked. The feeling of vulnerability and violation. We were naked and freezing. The stone walls of the rooms acted like a meat locker.
I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but the anticipation forced adrenaline through my system as my mind raced with all the possible scenarios . . .
. . . of what the hooks were for.
The golems threw our wet, ragged clothing onto the braziers. The clothing smoldered and smoked, refusing to catch light. The scum from the pool burned, filling the room with a rancid stink as the room grew more and more visibly gray and smoky. In moments, each of the prisoners, to include myself, began coughing.
We shivered from the cold and coughed from the smoke. And again, I couldn’t help but wonder . . . what were the fucking hooks for?!
After a few moments, when each of us was shaking uncontrollably, Mastema spoke his next command.
“Hang them.”
A flesh golem hoisted me up by my neck. The golem’s strength was incalculable; it held me as if I were nothing. The golem took several steps forward, each step carrying me closer to the hook.
The survival instinct part of my mind kicked in as I brought my still-manacled hands up and tried to fight off the hands around my neck. From the sound in the room, I wasn’t the only one trying.
We are all were suffering from a primal fear. The need to escape. Human and demon alike had a sense of self-preservation. But the golems did not suffer from emotions or empathy. As we approached, the golem simply used its power to force my head back and open my mouth.
Fire blossomed from under my jaw.
The sharp point of the thick, tubular hook pierced the skin, tearing though the flesh under my jaw at the base of the tongue. The golem suddenly forced my head down. The sharp point was shoved through my mouth, the tip scraping along my teeth.