Enigma of the Soul - Book 1 - Pieces

by Cassidy LionHeart

  “What are those red streaks in that river?” David asks.

  “That is blood from the damned. They will forever bleed for their sins until the day of final judgment.”

  David looks closely at the trees to see people hanging upside down by their feet. Demons whip their flesh off them and wait for it to grow back to repeat the torture in a never-ending cycle.

  “Who are they to have this done onto them?” David questions.

  “They are the people that lusted after others. So now, in punishment, they feel everlasting pain, never to feel the joy of death. Asmodeus governs over this area of Eden. He takes care of all that have committed the deadly sin of Lust. Asmodeus was one of my father's greatest generals in the Great War, but he is dead.” Alfonzo replies without mercy.

  Alfonzo and David turn at a huge bend in the river, heading to the next section of this lost paradise.

  David peers into a dark cave's opening to find what is lurking within. The cave is fifty feet in diameter with very little sunlight reaching far into it. No sound resonates from the cave's cold interior.

  “If you are wondering about that cave over there, it is home to one of the oldest creatures that my father created. You may know it by the name Leviathan. Many have heard of it by the legend handed down by storytellers. Leviathan's legend is wrong. The truth is Leviathan was the snake that spoke to Adam and Eve at the Tree of Knowledge before they bit into the fruit that banished them. Leviathan was but a baby then. Now it hunts all who are Envious and eats them whole, slowly digesting them until the day of final judgment,” Alfonzo flies towards the Valley of the Pig, which used to be known as the Valley of the Orange Moon.

  The sight before David was horrifying. He wished his eyes would be torn from their eye sockets so he may never look at this sight ever again. What lay before him was millions of people crawling on the ground eating anything that they could get their hands on. Insects were also eating them alive on the outside, little by little. Some people resorted to cannibalism. Others ate the leftovers. In the middle of all this vile consumption was a demon standing on top of a tower. The demon was in the form half hornet and half human.

  “Beelzebub throws bread laced with insects down to the people. These insects grow inside of you then eat their way out, leaving holes for the insects on the ground to have a way in. Gluttony is their sin.”

  David is quiet as he thinks about all the people that he knows. He wonders if any of them are down there.

  “Please, no more,” David says with a heavy heart.

  “We are only halfway there.”

  As David closes his eyes, he can see the smiling faces of the family. His mother is blowing kisses at him; his father is smiling back at him ever so proud. Then his sisters and brothers appear as they all wave at him. A smile and a warm feeling came over David.

  “You can open your eyes now,” Alfonzo tells David.

  What David sees in simply breathtaking. Grassy fields stretch away until the eye sees mountains in the background with snowy caps. Trees of all colors and sizes line both sides of the field. There was nobody in sight. Nobody screaming or crying for their lives to be spared. Where was he now?

  “This is a place that I come to when I need to get away from everything and everyone. This place was kept especially for me and only me,” Alfonzo says as they turn to head out.

  Over the mountains, they fly heading straight towards a place that David can barely make out.

  “I'll try to make it through here as fast as possible. I even hate this place.” Alfonzo says.

  They look down upon a God forsaken city filled with people scavenging through junk. Each person claims useless stuff long since fallen apart. It is a chaotic situation with people killing others for garbage. The people that are killed are revived only to continue the process of Greed.

  “The demon Mammon used to oversee everything, but he, too, fell in the Great War. This place saddens me because I realized that humans could become monsters, too. This makes me cringe at the thought of it,” Alfonzo says as they fly over rocky terrain, one step closer to Alfonzo's home.

  The rocky terrain softens into a pebble grid of twenty-four feet diameter holes. The holes are six feet apart from each other, horizontally and vertically. The holes are six across by six feet up, making a thirty-six-hole grid. Each hole is thirteen feet deep, just high enough for a person to climb onto another’s back and escape the torturous pain of one hole. When a person arrives at the top of the hole, they are greeted by a demon that grabs the individual by the head and throws them into a new hole; laughing at them as they do it.

  As Alfonzo and David fly over the holes and demons, David peers into the holes to see what is happening within them. To his horror, he finds average people fighting with one another. Clawing, biting, tearing hair out, breaking limbs on each other people's bodies, hitting, and scratching their way to the top. The winners will only find a demon waiting for them.

  “What crime did these people commit? And what is to become of the losers?” David asks Alfonzo.

  “Their crime is Anger - pure, bitter, evil, Anger - and the losers are on the bottom of each hole. The winners trample the losers. Each one of the holes is caked in fresh blood making the walls very slick. Their anger fuels their hate for the common person. This is what makes them into monsters. Only the best become demons and even those are more monstrous than the demons themselves. May God have...”

  “...Mercy on their souls.”

  David finishes what Alfonzo is saying. The last thing David remembers seeing is fields upon fields of these grids of holes.

  David closes his eyes; “Take me out of here, please.”

  “One last place to fly over then we are home,” Alfonzo hopes that David is done with his questions.

  Lava flows like a river from the area that they came from into a sea of bodies. The bodies floating on the top rotate like decaying logs, and the bodies just underneath the surface try to stick to the surface for a suck of air. No one tries to swim. All the people within the river float away, doing nothing. Demon fish and sea monsters feed on these damned souls for their daily bread.

  “Before you ask, I will explain. The people that you see are those of the Belphegor Sea. The sea’s name comes from the demon Belphegor. He oversees all those that were condemned of Sloth. These people remind me of the goatfish, lazy and shiftless. They never to do anything with their lives and before you ask, the losers of Anger wind up here, after they are beaten.”

  David has now seen the seven layers of hell, but he still wonders.

  “Am I in Hell? Or in the Garden of Eden?”

  “Both. The garden was taken over by demons after the Great War. God tried to cover up the war but still lost Eden in the end,” Alfonzo replies.

  “But what about the Tree of Life?” David wonders.

  “That was taken to heaven, along with the Tree of Knowledge. That is all that I know,” Alfonzo goes silent.

  Coming up in front of them is a castle unlike any castle David ever saw before. The walls around it had to be one hundred feet in the air. There were birdlike demons flying all around the outside. Every once in a while, they would pluck people trying to climb the walls off. David learns from Alfonzo that these demons are harpies. They were some of the first demons ever made.

  Rounding the castle walls, Alfonzo and David come upon the giant castle that Alfonzo calls home. Many windows of numerous rooms line the outer walls. Towers hide spiral staircases behind their walls. The castle is a fifteen-sided shape with a six-sided keeps in the middle. Corridors branching out like roots on a tree connect the keep with the outer wall. Five circular skylights are placed on the roof of the keep and each skylight is arranged with corresponding point on a star. A single tower, thirteen levels tall, rises out of the middle of the keep, stretching high into the air. Each level has a balcony wrapping around it, making it easy for the demon guards to watch the grounds below.

  David and Alfonzo ascend to the eleventh floor an
d glide into an open set of French doors. David separates from Alfonzo and drops to the floor to land on his feet. Alfonzo flies behind a decorated panel wall and begins to transform. David can only make out certain shapes from the shadows that project on the decorated panel. The shadows start as a small shape and grow into a tall slender shape standing five feet three inches. Alfonzo moves away from the decorative panel, so no shadow will cast on it.

  Putting on a robe and Alfonzo yells to David, “Close your eyes please.”

  David closes his eyes and turns around to prove that he will not look in her direction.

  Alfonzo tiptoes in front of David to try and sneak up on him. She grabs David quickly and screams loudly making David jump out of his skin and open his eyes to see what is in front of him. Standing before David is a young lady with red hair down to the middle of her back and royal blue eyes. Alfonzo steps back from David, twirls once, and stops to face him as she fixes her hair.

  “First off, thank you for everything that you have done. Ever since my father told me about the blessing that he cursed me with in order to keep me, one of his children, out of God’s wicked hands. I now know the price that he paid to watch his baby girl transform into a monster. My father's cursed blessing has been partially broken due to you. David, you have become my hero, my champion, that can overpower anything. I have wished this curse would end for a long time now. You, David Turner, have changed me back into a woman. I am no longer a demonic monster. I feel like an angel that could fly away…” Alfonzo dances around the room rejoicing in being a woman once more.

  David stands back and watches the joy that he has brought Alfonzo. Remembering all of the happy days, they shared. It made sense why their two souls could join. A smile comes to his face as David feels a warm fuzzy feeling coming over him. But one thing is still bothering him. Why does he still see himself as gray?

  Alfonzo dances up to David and hugs him, never wanting to let go.

  'Now comes the hard part,' she thinks to herself.

  “David. Please don't get mad at what I am about to say.”

  David nods.

  “I did some research about the joining of two souls, also known as soul mates. What I found out is that only people that are soul mates can have children. Wait, let me rephrase that. Only Angels and Demons can mate with each other. Now that you are part Angel and part Demon, there is only a small amount human left in you. The only person that you can have children with is me,” Alfonzo finishes and waits for David to say anything.

  David is shocked at the answer that he has been waiting for so long to hear.

  'How am I going to tell Zaria?'

  Holding on to David, Alfonzo thinks about the other news that she must tell him. Alfonzo leads David to the balcony.

  “There is something else that I must tell you. I played a trick on you with the fiery lion by making it chase you and lick you in the face after you stumbled to the ground. I did that because I was falling in love with you. I wasn't sure if you had caught on yet, with all the things that were happening in your life…” Alfonzo goes silent while David thinks about all that she has told him.

  'I can't stand this anymore.' Alfonzo pulls David close to her and kisses him passionately. As they kiss, rain begins to fall around the castle. Drops of water dance on the balcony and bounce off of their bodies. Alfonzo and David’s body heat rises, and the raindrops catch on fire as they land. The kiss seems to go on for hours but it has been only seconds. After a while, Alfonzo backs off and puts her hand on David's cheek.

  “I wished that I was your bride. I wished that you told me, I do. I wished that you could have seen me long before you ever meet that other girl. But what is done is done, and we must live with it,” Alfonzo cannot take her eyes off David.

  “Everything could have been different if you would not have kept so many secretes from me. Why didn't you just tell me about that you were a beautiful woman? Why couldn't you have been truthful with me?” David pushes away from Alfonzo.

  “Because I didn't know until the day that you told me to take you away. That day I dropped you off in my special place. I left you for a little bit to fly home. I nearly died from happiness when I saw myself in the mirror. From that day on, I had no clue to what happened to me or how to tell you.”

  Alfonzo steps closer to David, her hands reaching out for him. David backs away, and her hands drop. Alfonzo turns to walk back into her room to dress. David stands in the rain wishing that his life could have been different. He realizes that he is being soaked to the bone since he is no longer burning off the rain. Alfonzo steps behind the folding screen as David comes into the bedroom. She returns in a black dress. She walks up to David and stands three feet away from him. She holds out her hand and a little flame forms. She blows into the flame making it shoot out from her hand. The fire from the flame surrounds David and dries his clothes.

  “There, all better now?” Alfonzo feels David’s clothing.

  “Yes, thank you,” David’s eyes catch Alfonzo’s eyes and he tries to find a reason not to kiss her. He leans into her personal space but quickly pulls back. “No. No, I can’t do this… I can’t…”

  Alfonzo searches her heart for the answer. Her heart answers back.

  ‘One day, he will be yours.’

  “We need to leave.” Alfonzo heads to the balcony and David follows. They combined into one phoenix and start flying back towards David and Zaria's apartment. David has no clue how to tell Zaria what he found out or what just happened.

  On the way through the Garden of Eden, David sees nothing but gloom, death, and destruction. Thoughts race through David's mind at a million miles per second - thoughts of Alfonzo, thoughts of Zaria, thoughts of the deal made so long ago. One thought that crosses David’s mind was something his father once told him.

  “Every man, woman, and child has a choice. This choice will guide them to their destiny whether they want it or not. Sometimes when you choose something, it is not meant for you, and it does not work out. It was never meant to be. But, when you make the right choice, everything just clicks like a clock never losing time.”

  “You have been silent almost the whole way back. What are you thinking about?”

  “My father. He was a smart man, I am just thinking about the knowledge he tried to pass on to me.”

  David doesn’t say anything the rest of the trip. He only thinks about his father and wonders what his father would do.

  When Alfonzo and David arrive at the back of the apartment building, Night has already settled in and the soft sounds of crickets singing to each other greet them. Alfonzo and David separate slowly, trying not to make too much sound and bring attention to themselves. Alfonzo looks at David, but David speaks before she can utter a word.

  “There is only one thing that I can do.”

  “What is that?” Alfonzo gets worried.

  “Lie. Lie like I have never lied before. This is only to protect Zaria from all of this. Zaria cannot find out about any of this… about the deal that we made, the Garden of Eden, or the fact that it is the new Hell. She must never find out about me being part demon, angel, and only a little bit human. I have to lie for Zaria’s own good.”

  David cannot believe what he is saying. He also knows that this will come back to haunt him.

  “Are you sure?”

  "Yes," David says with the heaviest of hearts. “Please leave now. I will see you in three days, if that’s okay with you.”

  “That will be fine,” Alfonzo walks away from David, no longer hiding her true self from him.

  Walking up the two flights of steps to their apartment, David fights each step because it feels as if each step were one hundred steps repeated. A nauseous feeling comes over him the closer that he gets. The very thought of lying to the woman he loves kills him. He has never before had to lie to her, or even had the thought cross his mind. It still feels like it took a year to climb the steps. David stands only twenty feet away from the door. Every step becomes harder as t
he pain in his side becomes stronger.

  Turning the knob, David wishes that everything could be different. After opening the door one inch, he realizes something just doesn’t feel quite right. The door flies open and a pan whacks David on the forehead. David drops to the floor and catches a glimpse of Zaria’s face. Zaria has an oops, sorry, look to her face. She drops the pan, quickly lifts David’s head up, and puts it in her lap.

  “Oh God, I am sorry, I thought that you were a burglar because of how you were opening the door slowly. I am so sorry for hitting you, my love,” Zaria rubs David’s head.

  “That’s okay because I probably deserve this. How many days have I been gone?” David tries not to move too much because the room is still spinning.

  “You have been gone for thirteen days, counting today. I thought that you were dead or left me. Some people asked about you, and I told them that you were away on business. I really had no idea what happened to you. I just prayed that you were alright,” tears start forming in the corner of her eyes.

  “I’m sorry for hurting you like that and putting you through these heartaches. Please forgive me,” David sits up to sit on his knees and faces Zaria.

  “I forgive you. Just don’t ever do that again,” Zaria and David kiss.

  “Okay, I won’t.” David holds Zaria’s hands. “What I am about to tell you will shock you and help to answer why we cannot have children. In the past thirteen days, I traveled back to my hometown to speak with some of the people that knew me when I was a child. I asked about my past and if there anything may have happened, I don't remember. What I found out was that I was struck by lighting and was in a coma for one month when I was a child. When I woke up, I thought that it was the next day. I didn’t remember anything about what happened or know of the extent of the damage that it would cause. I only wish that I knew this before hand so I could have told you up front.”