I ignore her. “You’re just gonna torture me?” I say at the ceiling. “What’s the point?”
“No one is doing anything to you,” Kelly says. “It’s not always about you. Jesus, this is about Amy. Come on, you need to hold it together. That little angel’s coming out of there, and she needs you to be strong. I need you to be strong, so stop mumbling and start praying.”
Praying… Kelly tried and tried to get that to stick. Never did. “Mumbo-jumbo,” I would tell her, “cult bullshit.” Now I feel kinda … stupid at the thought. Problem was, doing it over and over again with no results seemed naive to me.
“Is this the lesson?” I ask into the air. “You never know what you got ’til you’re dead?”
“Jake,” Kelly says. The tone is unmistakable. “Don’t you say that again.”
It catches me off guard. It’s been a while since I took an ass-chewing from her, and I look at her with a blank face. She has no clue, but I question if now is real or not. To tell you the … all these jumps … I have no idea where they are headed. The sights, smells and sounds, though… I look at Kelly and say, “She’s not coming out of there.” I regret the words as soon as they come out.
Kelly slaps me across the face and starts crying. “Shut your mouth,” her lips quiver around the words. “She’s coming out. My baby’s coming out.”
Crying… I hate the crying. No amount of it changes shit, and I know better. Dream or not, Amy is already dead.
Two hours later, the surgeon comes out with a citizen grief counselor … and our little angel is gone. Feels as real as when I listened to the bastard butchers explain it the first time, and I wonder…
I wonder what the consequences would be if I choked one of them out in a dream? And Kelly’s sobbing on my shoulder and the whole thing is a big case of bad déjà vu. I gotta get out of… I look up again. “I know it’s my fault,” I shout. “You think I don’t know that?”
Reliving it, I notice that Kelly doesn’t stop me when I say that. Did she blame me? How could she not?
Things were never the same after that. We trudged along, pretending to be alive—numb existence. No citizen can afford therapy and my Protection allotment ran out pretty quick. Liquor didn’t help, either. You can’t pour enough in that hole to fill it.
Kelly never said that she blamed me for pushing for the surgery. She didn’t have to. I punished myself every day.
I don’t know how people can have another kid after something like that. Neither of us had the stomach for it. And with the world melting apart at the seams, and the State and Protection squeezing the people harder and harder… Humanity’s train wreck seemed too close to make another baby grow up and ride it off the rails without us.
Anyway, Kelly wouldn’t have been able to handle a third loss. We never talked about it, but I knew she regretted the first one even more after Amy was—I could feel it all over her. That one? We never called it a he or she—easier to pretend it never existed. It would be thirty by now.
“Enough already,” I say. The whole thing is making me wanna vomit. I close my eyes and mutter, “I’ve had enough.”
They haven’t.
— XXI —
WHEN I OPEN my eyes back up, I’m standing out on the street in front of the med-mart. Back then, I went outside and puked in the gutter after they told us.
And I bend over and spew out whatever I had for breakfast into the storm drain. Wasn’t much, and I dry-heave to a halt pretty fast. And the rain is pouring down on my back and I’m soaked. Then I start crying. Ironic, I know, but what else can I do? I yell up at nothing, “You two are… Why did you need her? Just—just take me already! Leave her alone!”
There’s no answer.
Water is running down my face and I let the drops pelt my eyes. I hold them open, refusing to blink. I want the tears to wash it all off—the pain, the anger, the stench of death and despair—drown me and give me a new life.
Then I hear the voice, Rain is coming.
More “sarcasm for the soul” from my inner critic? And then I realize that it’s them. That little voice in my head was—it was always them. But now, I can’t figure if it was more him or her.
“Rain—no shit,” I shout up. “What do you want from me? … I never said I was perfect.”
It’s the best I can manage to pretend that all this isn’t ripping my will apart … all over again.
“There’s plenty of reasons,” I say. “You can condemn me for any one of them.”
Still nothing. The silence gives me more time to punish myself.
“Is this it?” I say. “This is Hell, or whatever. I gotta relive my mistakes for eternity? You think I need you for that?”
The thought that this is Hell is scarier to me than ripping flesh and a tortured soul. You wanna torture someone? Show him the mistakes of his life … over and over again. He’ll do the job for you.
Maybe that’s his… Two thousand years to perfect eternal damnation and what he comes up with is self-loathing and guilt. That’s pretty much perfection, right there.
Rain starts to pelt me now, and the downpour turns to a torrent. The drops sting when they hit my face, and I can’t look up any longer. I wipe my cheeks and when I look at my hands, they’re … red. And I look out across the street and everything is raining red-hot blood. And the steam rises from the liquid as buckets of smooth red water fill the gutters, and then the street turns to a raging river of boiling liquid life, spilling into the city’s storm catchers, draining the life out of everything living.
I grab the streetlight pole and hang on as a wave of blood crests over my face. It burns like acid and I can feel blisters forming on my skin. Then my skin is on fire—boiling hot—and I wonder briefly if the “reliving” thing is really that bad, because this is real pain!
Chunks of flesh fall from my hands and I watch them turn to bony, skeleton fists, and then I lose my grip on the street pole and I’m sucked into the undertow.
My flesh falls off of my body, like loose meat in a crock-cooker. I feel every last chunk shrivel and drop away until I’m nothing but bones and then the fillings in my teeth boil and pop out. And then the crappy crowns on the worst ones fall off. The pain is insane.
The whole time, I try to scream away the agony, but my mouth just fills with boiling blood—there is no sound in my Hell.
Then my eyes pop out and I’m blind, but I don’t die. I should be dead? He must not be done with me. Then I realize … there is no “done.”
— XXII —
INTERROGATION CELLS ARE cold, hopeless places. They’re hard and cruel and designed to do one thing—force you to believe that doing what your interrogator wants is your only hope of salvation. It’s a lie, of course, but it doesn’t take long for you to want to believe it’s the truth. Don’t ask me how I know that.
And I’m on the right side of the mirror this time. Depending on how you look at it, I guess. Kelly is on the wrong side—legs and arms duct-taped to a hard metal chair. Big oval-shaped, stainless-steel gurney for a table in front of her.
That’s how you do that—don’t even have to talk about it. Just put it in the middle of the room, like a huge elephant that you don’t ever mention or talk about—the cold, metal table you’re gonna wheel their dead body out on.
“Kelly!” I yell and tell my hand to bang on the glass, but I can’t move.
I know what’s coming—it’s how we … that’s how they “interrogate” all women. And I’m going to have to watch. I tell my eyes to close, but that’s not happening either.
The big metal door opens and two of them come into the room. And they’re dressed right—clean-cut, cold, professional. Whatever mercy these two might’ve had got whipped out of them a long time ago.
“Motherfuckers,” I say. It’s for anyone who can hear me, but mainly for her. I don’t care if she is God, I’m done with this shit.
But I’m not done. Neither is Kelly.
They start out by cutting the tape off of her an
d ordering her to undress in front of them—make her feel ashamed. If it was a man, they would have cut him loose and ripped his clothes off themselves—more emasculating that way. Next they’ll slap her across the face for nothing.
It only ever gets worse from there.
When they’re finished with her, I’m crying, but I still can’t look away. They won’t let me.
Kelly is on the floor. She didn’t tell them anything, because she didn’t know anything. I knew the answer to most of the questions they had—the locations of lots of weapons caches and names … lots of names.
But I wasn’t in there. If I would’ve been, I would be looking at two dead men, naked and violated, bleeding from every orifice they had. As it is, it’s Kelly’s life leaking out on the cold, concrete floor, oozing slowly, headed for the little steel-grated drain in the middle of the room. It’s stainless steel, actually … so it won’t corrode from the blood.
Whatever I think of the other dreams—if that’s what they were—I hope this is just a serious paranoid nightmare or I’m losing my mind. Otherwise, this is … this is the worst goddamn thing.
I can finally shut my eyes and I squeeze them tight. “Wake up, Jake. Wake up.” I say it out loud.
When I do, someone’s gonna pay.
— XXIII —
THUNDER OUTSIDE THE Hallowed Hall of the Word shook the Great Mountain of the Eternities, and all the angels within in the grandstands heard its warning.
Dal grinned a little, then he turned away from the fall and tried to put on a straight face. “And so it is done,” he said to Life.
When Life raised her head, her hair was just turning back to white. “He may yet surprise you,” she said.
“Unlikely,” said Dal. Then he looked at the grandstands and eyed the hounds of both Hells—the fallen and faithful angels of the two Heavens. “One man’s Heaven…” he said slowly. “No, there shall be no surprises on this day, your majesty. However flawed, they are predictable creatures. Though I will stipulate, love is an unpredictable thing. We both realize the truth of this, do we not?” He paused—baiting her was his final enjoyment of a successful fall. “But you do not understand the Man-monkey as I do. Not the way you once did.”
“I… I created them in my—”
Dal smiled and gave her their look, stopping her as it always did. “We are a long way from the comfortable and confident being you planted in the garden. These are insecure, insidious imbeciles, hiding behind rage and retribution, hell-bent on revenge.”
“Poetic,” she said. “Do you ever tire of—?”
“No,” said Dal. “I love being me.” He pointed his long finger toward the fall. “They would love to be me, as well. Do what they wish, when they wish … how they wish. No fear, vanquishing enemies. That is freedom. You believe he desires utopia—allow the ones who raped her innocence to run free and unpunished?”
“And yet there is no love and no peace in your version of the Word,” Life said. “He can still know peace—find joy and happiness.”
Dal paused and closed his eyes, thinking back to the beginning—the time before the Word when he was the most, the all … her favorite. When he opened them back up, he said, “From the experience… Once you sink your teeth into both sides… I much prefer the taste of souls.”
“Even now,” Life said, “you may still rejoin me. Have you even considered that he may be…?”
“There is no angel in Heaven that could…” Dal said. He looked back at the fall—this couldn’t be, could it? “And I am no longer your pet.”
“Most certainly,” said Life. She smiled brightness onto him. “You are who you choose to be and the actions you take each day. You … and they, are the choices you both make. It is a pity that your choices have led you both to darkness.”
“Choices?” said Dal. “What choice do you think—what choice did I have? Your choices are not choices at all. Look at the unjust among them?” He shook his finger at the fall. “To them, I appear common—a Hallows Day costume. Hah, they are more afraid to wear a Hitler mask or Ku Klux Klan sheet than mock me with red horns and a tail!”
Life no longer recognized him from their days together. Her beautiful creation had transformed into her children’s nightmare. Would he ever repent and return to her side? Could he? “Are you to stand in judgment, then?” she asked. “Shall you be their salvation?”
Dal paused and stared at the fall, thinking. Then he said, “Judging is not for them or you to decide. Judgment is for the Word. And the Word has neither mercy nor oppression. You know as I do—the Word is the word.”
“Yet you revel in the misery of their fall,” said Life.
His eyebrows raised at her. “And you do not?”
“I give them the opportunity to come to the light,” Life said. “You extinguish it from them … for eternity.”
“A matter of perspective,” Dal said. “Maybe I free them from the oppressive bondage of your word. Maybe I help them to see a new light.”
“And what new light would this be?” she asked. “What could you possibly show them? You shine only darkness.”
Dal flared his nostrils and puffed out a small burst of smoke through his nose. “Ah, yes,” he said. “The cleansing fire … of anarchy.”
— XXIV —
THE LAST THINGS little Amy remembered about life were the blinding headaches. The final one was in her med-mart operating room. It sounded like a crack of thunder and then the brightest lightning she had ever seen spiked through her eyes and into her brain. And then the headaches went away, and everything was warm and she floated above her body and watched them drill into her skull.
When it was over, they let her mother come in and see her body. Amy watched her scream and cry and wail for her to come back, gripping and tugging on her hand as if she could pull Amy’s spirit back to the living. Her mother wouldn’t leave the room. And when they finally came to take little Amy’s body, she begged and pleaded with her father to make them leave.
Amy watched her daddy, too, like she had never seen him before. He cried and shook. He was always so mad at everything, but now… Her father yelled at everyone in the med-mart.
Before the headaches started, Amy’s daddy would take her for walks in the city. Not to parks to feed ducks, or to an old playground with broken swings—their walks were different. He would tell her to watch out for Protection agents, the State authorities. And he taught her how to hide from bad people, especially men.
Sometimes he was fun and he would give her piggyback rides. But then he would tell her things like how she needed to bite someone if they tried to take her, because her jaw muscles were the strongest thing she had. She just listened and said, “Yes, Daddy.” The walks made her afraid, but she never said anything. Her father wasn’t so angry then.
When the visiting med-mart doctor at school told her she had to have a cancer shot, Amy said she needed to talk to her daddy first. But the doctor wouldn’t listen and the man held her arm down and gave her the first one. It hurt and the doctor had to stick her three times. Then she sent Amy to the Headmaster’s office for “Open Educational Defiance.” That was worse.
Amy was afraid to tell her daddy about the beating she took in the Headmaster’s office, and she was terrified to tell him about the doctor. Her daddy had already warned her that she couldn’t get anything from the State med personnel without his permission. So when she was called to the office for her second injection, Amy kept quiet. She never told anyone.
After that shot, the headaches started. They got worse and worse until she woke up screaming through nightmares almost every night. Then her parents took her to the State Med-mart downtown, and Amy admitted to a nurse that she had been given shots at school for cancer.
Her father went crazy, yelling and screaming at the nurse about all kinds of things that Amy didn’t understand. That night, she overheard her parents talking. Her mother was worried that the nurse was going to call Protection, and then they would find the unauthorized g
un her father had at home.
Amy knew where he kept it and she also knew he wasn’t supposed to have a personal one at home. Every kid knew that. It was one of the first questions that the teacher asked at the beginning of each school year, and whenever she went to see a State doctor for a checkup they would ask her again. “Are there any guns in your house?” Amy knew to say no.
The doctors prescribed all kinds of drugs to try and make her headaches go away. Some of them made the pain worse and her daddy took them all away and flushed them down the toilet. After that, he was always angry, and her momma always pretended not to be sad. But Amy knew.
At night, the headaches got worse. The pain was so unbearable and Amy remembered screaming at the ceiling from her bed. Her mother would come to her room and cry them both back to sleep. And her daddy would go in the hall and yell and curse. She just wanted them to be happy.
She tried to control the pain so her parents would be happy again—love her again—but it hurt too much … so she prayed.
She prayed that her headaches would go away. She prayed that her mom wouldn’t have to cry anymore. And she prayed that her daddy wouldn’t be so mad at everything. She never understood, she thought it was her fault. “I’m sorry, Daddy,” she would say to him, trying to get him to calm down—love her again.
But in the end—floating above her body on the med-mart bed—he was angrier than she had ever seen him. And now, sitting in the wet corner of her cold concrete cage, listening to the sounds of angels screaming and cawing above her, floating through the iron bars on the gates to her cell, Amy knew she was a bad child … and she knew she had been sent to Hell for it.
— XXV —
WHEN I OPEN my eyes, I realize that I’m awake. I have been the whole time. This is the reality of it. Life is a sick joke.
The only two people I cared more about than myself… Eh, who am I kidding, I’m a selfish bastard. Always have been.
But the truth is that Kelly … is gone. She never made it out. I never took her … there. Maybe there was no “there?” I don’t know.
My little Amy went before her. That is clearer. But where did they go? If it was with these two, I don’t know which one of them is worse.
TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3) Page 8