by Tim Hawken
Frantically, I looked to each side and whipped a thundering wind to tear down the trees around me. Trunks fell and scattered like twigs. I lifted them in pockets of air, stacking them into a narrow log-bridge across the divide between me and the garden. The white figure walked through the field of white flowers, beckoning me to come.
Scrambling across my tree bridge, I inched closer to my goal. I heard a dull rumble, growing louder and louder back inside the jungle. Turning to see the source of the noise I beheld a twisting firestorm shooting through the forest towards the ravine I was perched over. The shining head of Satan roared at the tip of the inferno, mouth open, consuming everything in its path, eating the Elemental jungle, surging ahead to devour me. Panicking, I stumbled, clutching at the trees underneath to keep me from falling into the dark river below. This is a test, I reminded myself. I gathered my wits, heaved myself back up and righted myself on the logs. Closing my eyes and concentrating on the green elements of water in my mind, I pulled a cloud of moisture around me. When I opened my eyes, I was encased in a bubble of water. I looked through and saw Satan’s fire spiral towards me. The bubble began to boil and hiss and the fire seared my skin. Orange and red combusted around me. I was burning. With all the focus I could muster, I drew cool water into my body. It soothed me as the roaring cloud of hell passed over. Panting, I let the water rain over me, quenching my steaming body further. Exhausted, I clawed my way over the bridge toward the garden. The white figure in the garden walked towards me. I smiled as it neared, hoping an impossible hope that it was my love. I finally scraped to the other side. The figure looked at me with a thousand eyes and laughed like birds.
“Very good, Michael,” the Perceptionist clapped. “Now I will teach you to fly.”
seven
ENDLESS DAY, AFTER ENDLESS DAY I honed my power over the elements. My teacher was very pleased with the progress I made. He praised successes and corrected mistakes harshly. I had finally become a master of water, wind, earth and fire. However, I knew nothing of the rest of the elemental spectrum, nothing of spirit and emotion. The Perceptionist flatly refused to show me.
“Do you teach a child calculus before doing basic sums?” he would counter when I asked him. “You cannot handle the power to create life, only to destroy at this point. Only once you’ve broken things for a thousand years will you truly understand how to fix them. Come to me once you understand this and I’ll show you how to create a soul, but no sooner.”
My protests fell on deaf ears, but it didn’t matter. I was happy with the weapons I had, content they were enough to reap my revenge upon the monster called Gideon. It was time I left my training and tracked him down. I was ready.
I approached The Perceptionist and asked my leave of him. He accepted that I was ready also, and with a nod of his head opened the blue portal that left the void.
“Thank you for your teachings,” I said earnestly.
“You were the perfect student,” he replied. “I hope you come back to learn the rest one day. There is still much that you’re not ready to understand, but I will be here to teach you when you are. Now, return to Hell and seek out an Egyptian named Sokar. He will help you with your resurrection to earth. He will require no payment if you tell him that I sent you. You will need to produce a miniature construction of the sun for him as a sign of my word. Sokar can be found on the west bank of the middle eye of Satan, the lake of sulfur. Good luck and goodbye for now.” He disappeared into the void, leaving me alone with no option but to go back through the portal from whence I came.
Marlowe and Phineus looked up from a game of cards they were playing. Germaine was still rocking in the corner, staring at the wall.
“That was quick!” Phineus said. “You mustn’t have been longer than five minutes. We’ve only just dealt our first hand here.”
“Oh, he was gone much longer than that, weren’t you Michael?” Marlowe interrupted in a knowing tone. “I would say around three months void time?”
“Something closer to a year,” I replied. Phineus’ eyes bulged and his jaw dropped.
“You mean to tell me time moves differently in the void?” he asked Marlowe.
“Not quite,” he replied. “Time doesn’t exist in there at all. It is a true void. The Perceptionist created it so he could learn at an accelerated rate while the universe didn’t move outside. It’s only him and the elements in there, not even space, and without space there is no time.”
“I thought I talked in riddles,” Phineus laughed. “What do you mean time can’t exist without space?”
“Well, time is simply a measure of the amount of space between two points,” Marlowe explained. “The ‘space’ that is between one point in history and another is measured by grades of time such as minutes, hours and days. Just like an inch is the measure of distance between two points in space, time is the measure of distance between two points as well. It is simply using a different dimension.”
Phineus looked at Marlowe blankly and then burst out laughing.
“I’ll never understand what you’re talking about if you try to explain it for a hundred years!” he giggled. “That’s fine with me, though, ignorance is bliss sometimes. I’m happy to not know.”
“You’re either very wise, or very stupid,” Marlowe responded.
“Maybe a bit of both,” Phineus conceded. “Well,” he said standing up, “I guess I’d better fulfill my end of the bargain.” Before I could say another word to the prophet, he had disappeared through the portal to the void.
Marlowe smiled at me broadly. “Are you equipped to do what you wish to do?” he asked.
“I am,” I said. “Would you walk me out, Marlowe?”
He stood and walked with me, back out into alleyway. I was still wrestling with the fact that I was the son of The Devil.
“Did you like your father, Marlowe?” I asked as we got outside.
“I killed my father,” he said without expression. “That is one of the reasons I’m in Hell. I’ll never be sorry for doing it. Why?”
“Never mind,” I sighed. “I just wonder if Sigmund Freud had a point with his Oedipal complex. I guess he did in your case.”
“Freud is a coke-head, gambling addict,” Marlowe said bluntly. “You can always find him in Smoking Gun on a Friday night. I wouldn’t listen to anything he has to say. I may have killed my father, but I never wanted to do anything sexual with my mother.”
I shook my head in amazement. I was still getting used to the idea of souls living on forever in this place; it seemed like such a long time.
“Do you need me to take you anywhere?” Marlowe asked.
“No thanks, my friend, you’ve done more than enough already by not chopping my head off earlier,” I winked. He smiled his white grin again.
“I take it the Perceptionist taught you how to fly,” he said. “I’ll see you around then, good luck.” Without waiting for an answer, Marlowe walked back through the yellow door and shut it behind him.
I was alone in the dark alley again. I felt older and wiser for my visit to the Perceptionist, but my desire for revenge was sharper than ever. I pictured my beautiful Charlotte as I gathered the elements of air around me and used them to lift me off the ground. I would soon be re-born to Earth.
eight
I SOARED THROUGH THE AIR, flying fast and high over the city of Hell, my hair whipping in the wind. It was the single greatest physical thrill I’d ever experienced. I flew at just under the speed of sound toward the Three Eyes of Satan, toward Sokar and the site of my imminent resurrection. The buildings and lights of Hell were a blur of color, streaking past beneath me. This was what it felt like to be a bird.
I slowed my flight as I drew closer to my destination, careful not to fly directly over the flaming lakes; the heat would have been unbearable, even with my cocoon of air around me. I flew down low over the west bank of the middle eye, searching for a sign of the Egyptian, Sokar. The place was deserted, but I spotted a small valley. It split the ba
nk down the middle, nestled in between the lake of fire and the lake of sulfur. I flew lower to get a better look and spied a mud hut nestled next to a large rock outcrop, right in the centre of the valley. I floated around the valley walls, looking for danger. I was full of confidence in my powers, but had learnt never to underestimate any situation during my days as a fighter. I saw no movement and so dropped lightly to the earth, a small distance from the mud hut. It was surprisingly cool between the two lakes, like an oasis in the desert, lined with lush grass and palms. Even ferns grew in between the shadowy nooks of rock that stuck out of the earth at various points. A small waterfall ran down the sheer limestone south wall of the valley. The trickle ran into a stream and eventually pooled into a murky pond to the back of the hut.
I called out to see if I could find anyone around.
“Hello? Sokar?” I bellowed. “I come with word from the Perceptionist.”
At the mention of the Elemental’s name, a head popped out from inside the mud structure. He had the dark, golden skin of an Egyptian, flawless and beautiful. Atop his head sat a headdress in the shape of a falcon that shone brightly in the shady valley. He emerged completely from the hut and stood to full height. Without the falcon on his head he would have been close to seven feet tall; with it on he looked absolutely giant. He wore a white, cotton skirt with a strip of brown leather tied around him like a belt. Naked from the waist up, his toned stomach muscles rippled as he walked silently toward me. He stopped a few paces away.
“I am Sokar, do you have his seal?” he asked.
Without hesitation, I gathered the elements of air into a ball of hydrogen above my palm, and ignited it with fire. It blazed brightly between us and lit up every shadow in the valley, a perfect miniature of the sun. He smiled in recognition and knelt down, holding up his arms, bathing in the glow of the orb in my palm. After bowing before me six times, worshipping the sun, Sokar motioned to me that he’d seen enough. I quenched the sun with a flood of water from the sky, and he nodded, obviously impressed with my display of power.
“What of the Perceptionist?” he asked in a deep voice fit for a god.
“He has sent me here to be re-born to Earth,” I replied simply, not wanting to waste any time with pleasantries. Sokar arched his eyebrow in surprise.
“I hope you died less than a week ago,” he said. “Unless, you want to be re-born into a rotting corpse.”
“I died three days and three nights ago,” I said. With the time in the void, I’d been in Hell much longer, but I knew that barely any time had passed on Earth.
“Very good,” he said. “As long as no one has cremated your body, we should be fine. Follow me inside and we will begin.”
Sokar strode back inside his hut without waiting for me. I rushed to catch up and entered his home just behind him. It was very plain inside, although much larger than it looked from the front. The floor sank deep below ground level, and opened into a large single room with high ceilings. The only piece of furniture in the place was a straw pallet in the far corner of the room. In the centre there was a fire-pit, which contained glowing coals. The walls were decorated with hieroglyphics that pictured the soul’s journey from life to the afterlife.
I walked around the walls slowly, studying the painted images. The closest wall to me showed a young man lying dead on an altar inside a tomb. Seven jars sat beside him and riches were gathered about his mummified body. In the next pictures, the man stood and carried his jars with him up a staircase to the sun and the clouds. He smiled as he reached the top and walked into the blazing light of the gods. These hieroglyphs actually looked like a blend of every different culture’s idea of the afterlife, rather than just Egyptian. The next mural showed a different person’s life force exiting the body, making his way to a lake. Once at the lake, he paid a toll to a man in a boat and sailed downward, toward the flaming pits of Hell. There, his jars were cast into the fire and he writhed on the ground before the unmistakable figure of Satan. Finally, I made my way to the far wall where a mural pictured the soul’s journey in reverse. Men came back down both of the stairs of Heaven, and up the waterfall of Hell. None were smiling. This was the journey from death back to life. It seemed I was definitely in the right place.
Sokar waited patiently for me to finish examining his artistry, and then led me to the middle of the room. He sat down next to the fire-pit, gathering bowls that were scattered on the ground. He dipped his fingers inside one bowl and scooped out some azure-blue paint, smearing it over his face with care, dotting points under his eyes, his chin and his lips before scrawling a curving line on his forehead.
“Lean forward,” he said.
I did as he asked and he dotted my face with the paint also. It was cool against my skin. I felt his fingers tracing the same patterns that he’d just drawn on himself. Once finished, Sokar pulled out a knife that was tucked into his belt and picked up an empty bowl at his side.
“Hold out your arm,” he instructed firmly. I hesitantly held out my wrist for him, bracing myself for what I knew was coming next. He took the blade and scraped it roughly over my skin, slicing my veins apart. I cried out in pain and he laughed mockingly at me as he caught my gushing blood in the bowl. The wound closed over quickly as my body healed itself, leaving dried blood caked over my arm and hand. Sokar dipped his fingers in my blood and used it to paint his face and then mine with more dots and lines. He looked ghoulish in the dim light, as the embers of the fire threw shadows around the room. Once he’d finished painting his face, he threw the rest of my blood over the coals. A hiss filled the room and my plasma erupted into a red mist that boiled up from the pit.
“Breathe in the fumes,” he instructed. I leant over and the iron smell of blood stung my nose. My head began to spin a little.
“You will now begin your journey back to the world of the living,” Sokar said in his deep voice. “Envisage how it felt to be inside your body and what the room looked like around you when you died.”
I closed my eyes and brought myself back to the painful scene of my death. Charlotte hung, skewered against the wall covered in her own blood. My broken body lay limp on the polished floorboards of my apartment.
“Picture every detail, but picture yourself without injury,” Sokar said, and then began to chant in another language.
I imagined myself on the ground unharmed, while I lay and looked up at my love. I looked around the room, my keys sitting on the dining room table next to a pile of men’s health magazines. Across the room, Charlotte’s bonsais sat in the corner, perfectly manicured to look like trees blowing in the wind. The image of the room wavered as Sokar’s chanting grew faster and more frantic. I held onto each detail of the room with every ounce of my will. I began to feel myself slipping out of consciousness. The river of death that welled around my body when I was dying rushed over my body again, drowning me in its turgid waters. It felt like my soul was dying. Suddenly, Sokar’s chanting stopped and everything went black.
nine
THE SMELL OF FAECES WAFTED INTO MY NOSTRILS. I snapped my eyes open and sat up gasping. I lay covered in the excrement that had left my body after I died. I sat there stinking of my own piss and shit. I looked over and saw Lotte’s stiff body pinned to the wall. The realization of what had just happened thundered into me. I had been resurrected. My soul had fused once more with my body. I was reborn, but Charlotte was still dead. Looking at my hands, I clenched my fists, making sure I was intact. My body felt strong, despite what it had been through. My muscles ached a little, but I seemed otherwise in perfect health; it was a miracle.
I slowly got to my feet, my head spinning. I stumbled over to where Lotte’s body hung and ripped the spikes out of her shoulders, letting her drop gently down into my arms. I’d begun to cry silently. With tears streaming down my face, I carried my love’s body to our room and laid her on the bed. I took off her soiled clothes and threw them in the bath of our ensuite. I turned on the shower and stepped under the scalding water, scrubbing
blood and shit from my skin as I tore the clothes from my body. I needed to be clean. Frantically, I scoured my skin raw, using a wire brush that Charlotte kept in the shower to clean dead skin from the bottom of her feet. Once I’d grated the muck from my body, I turned the shower off and dried myself. Drops of blood covered my body where I’d scrubbed too hard. At least the blood was my own. Looking in the mirror, I saw myself for the first time since my death. I did indeed look a lot like the devil. We shared the same pointed chin, high cheek bones and jet-black curly hair. But my eyes were much different. They were human. They were jade-green and still glazed with the tears I’d shed for Lotte. I studied my face. Considering I had made a living from violence, it was amazingly clear of scars.
I turned from the mirror and grabbed a clean towel from the bathroom cupboard. Soaking it in warm water, I took it back to Charlotte’s body. I cleaned her of the filth that clung to her, washing all traces of the monsters who had raped her. My tears dripped onto the dead skin of her body as I went about my work. Once I had cleaned her fully, I pulled her favorite dress from the wardrobe and dressed her in it. I arranged her arms so they were clasped, resting over her stomach. I went back to the wardrobe, pulled out my best suit and put it on. Lying down next to her on the bed I hugged Lotte as I cried and cried. We were two pieces of the jigsaw together again, but only in body. Part of me wished I could just stay with her forever like that. I lay there for hours sobbing into the pillows that she had slept on, crying into her hair. Finally, I simply went numb. I’d shed every tear left in my body. I kissed Charlotte’s cold lips.