The uproar down the passageway continued for a few seconds and then it died down to occasional caws.
The creature in the cage in front of him growled and Faith turned back toward its cell.
“Ah,” it said, “they already know.”
Faith leaned in and grasped the bars on the gate with both hands. He put his face between the bars and squinted. His eyes were much better than they had been back in life—he was nearly blind then and wore thick bifocals—yet even an angel’s razor-sharp eyes could not see into the black. “They know what?” he asked.
“Look at you,” the creature growled and laughed, “always poking your face into tight places you shouldn’t.” And then it choked and coughed—the sound of hacking up phlegm. Then it sounded like it spit on the floor again. When it was finished, the voice said, “Sorry”—it cleared its throat—“occupational”—and it coughed and spit again—“occupational … ha—ha—hazard… . I’m sure you understand. You remember, don’t you, sweetie?”
“How could I have…?”
“Yes,” it growled at him, “how could you have abandoned us? Left me to rot for so long! How could you have?”
“I had no choice,” Faith said. “He made me—he said he would kill—”
The creature let out a loud roar like a lion. Then it shouted, “Shut your filthy mouth!” Then it faked crying and sobbing, mocking him. “Oh, Babs, the devil made me do it, the devil made me do it! You priests with your lies and your—I should have cut your cock off, so you—”
“Please!” Faith cried. “I am trying to—”
“Half an eternity!” it roared at him. “You call that trying? I guess I didn’t need to cut your cock off, because you’re impotent. Why did she even give you dicks?”
A loud screech and moan from down and across the tunnel, interrupted the creature’s accusations.
There was barely a pause though, before it yelled back, “Fuck you, bitch, they could have pissed out their asses.” Then the red eyes turned back to burning from the darkness at him. “Piss out your ass, Benito … like a lazy cow! … Why didn’t they just cut your dicks off when you joined the church? That way, you would have never been able to—now that’s faith, that’s commitment to God.”
The scream from down the tunnel was louder this time, and it felt to Faith like there was a warning in it. He knew who it was, but the—Life hardly had power to follow through with a threat. Does she? he wondered.
The creature in the cell yelled back down the tunnel, “Next time, cut them off!” Then it turned its attention back toward Faith. “Dumb bitch,” it muttered. Then it whispered to him, “Don’t worry, lover—too late to cut yours off, isn’t it.”
“Babette, please!”
“Fool!” it yelled. Then it raced to the front of its cage, at the gate. And the creature stopped just short of Faith’s face and snapped its jaws and bared its fangs at him.
The hideous animal looked nothing like the woman he had visited in the Smith Tower back in life. She had snakes for hair that hissed and struck at him. And there were oozing pustules on her face and her mouth breathed smoke.
Faith shoved himself away from the bars and flapped his wings at the cell gate, hurling himself across the dungeon tunnel. His back slammed into the bars on the other side, and then he closed a wing around his face. She—it was just too hideous to look at. His wing was over his eyes, but Faith closed them anyway and he wept. “I am…” and he couldn’t contain himself. “I—you are right. I am so … so sorry. I can’t…”
“What’s the matter, Benito?” she said, cackling like a crow, “Don’t you want to lick my tits anymore?” Then she growled louder. “Look at me! Look at what you did to me!”
Faith couldn’t—his beautiful lover in Life’s eternity had turned to a twisted nightmare in this one. And he knew he was to blame.
“What, you want to suck on your little flask first, you boozing bastard? I’ve got something better for you to suck! Look, I said! You owe me that!”
And Faith opened his eyes and slowly raised up his wing.
A blood-soaked paw reached out from the iron bars behind Faith’s head and grabbed him around the throat. He tried to jerk himself away, but the paw squeezed and choked him and he gurgled. He kicked his legs and flapped his wings, beating them back as far as they would bend behind him.
Faith’s wings slammed the bars on the cell behind him and then another paw was under one wing and it wrapped around his feathers and the steel bone along his wing, and then pinned it against the outside of the cell. Now he couldn’t struggle and he couldn’t breathe and the dark dungeon got fuzzy.
The paw on his neck loosened its grip. “No, no,” the voice behind Faith growled lowly, “relax, everything’s going to be fine … just fine. We don’t want you to pass out, do we?”
Faith coughed and choked and grabbed at the paw on his neck.
The creature behind him smelled like a wet dog that had just rolled in fresh shit. It repositioned itself, maintaining its grip on Faith’s neck and wing. Then it spoke again, “We wouldn’t want him to choke to death, would we, Babs?”
Faith heard his—the creature’s voice growled back from across the tunnel.
“I just want to talk to you,” the dog’s voice behind him said, “that’s all.”
Faith barely recognized the voice—so long ago. But he would never forget the evil bastard’s calm and collected demeanor. The cold and calculating manner he used when he threatened him, lying to Faith’s face. Well, not Faith then. Back then he was a—
“Father Ben,” the growling dog said, “you are looking good. Come to visit your little dove?” the voice asked. “Seems like you’re always visiting her when she’s locked up in a cage. Why is that, do you think? Okay, okay, maybe not always. Sometimes your little visits are in my bed, aren’t they? Or were—can’t tell what’s past or present down here. So dark all the time. Hard to tell if it’s night or day, much less what eternity it is. I guess that’s what being in a cage feels like.”
The dog repositioned itself again, moving its head and stinking breath back and forth, from one side of the back of Faith’s head to the other.
Dirty dog, Faith thought. Frank King…
“What do you think, Babs,” Frank growled over at her, “is this as good as the Fifty?”
Her voice growled back, “It’s better than the Smith.”
“Yes,” Frank spoke into Faith’s ear, “you remember my loft, don’t you? Wait, don’t answer, don’t answer. We all know. I watched you up there … with my wife in my bed. That was some nasty—she would never do that for me. I even threatened her tits—nada.”
“You are such an—”
Frank barked back across the tunnel at the creature. Then he turned and spoke to Faith again, “I had to drug her to get in there. Then she started with that menopause-headache crap. The first time I caught you two… I thought she was just handling it with her little lady’s companion. Imagine my surprise when I saw you show up on the building security wave.
“I mean, are you kidding me? A priest was—nobody at the club believed it! So you know what I did? I brought them to my office and let them see for themselves. Hell, we were just gonna wave the backup file over some secretaries and beers, but I’ll be damned”—Frank chuckled to himself—“Now that’s funny! Huh… Oh, yeah. I’ll be God damned if my remote sentries didn’t net in another live wave, and you two were at it again. And that got me thinking … maybe that wasn’t the first time.”
“Let him go,” The creature across the passageway pleaded. “Please … let him go.”
Frank ignored her.
Faith struggled on the floor. And as the dog told his story—with the parts that he obviously didn’t like—he squeezed tighter on Faith’s throat, alternating between choking him near to death and letting him gasp for air to stay alive. Back and forth between Heaven and Hell—Faith was friends with that misery.
“You know how many times you…?” Frank the dog said,
“They must have kept you in the basement of that church forever. Thirty-three times, Ben. I don’t think I … I can’t even remember that far back. I watched you two for years after that. I didn’t think she knew, but when I waved in that day… You remember, don’t you? Standing in the corner like a little kid, covering your prick. Maybe you don’t remember—eternities are funny like that. Eh, doesn’t matter. What am I saying? It all turned out, right? I mean, here we are—the three of us—old friends.”
Faith choked a little and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. His body started to shake and his wings flapped wildly.
“You’re killing hi—”
“Shut up!” Frank yelled at her. Then he let go of Faith’s neck. “He can’t die, you dumb bitch!”
Faith choked and coughed and sucked for air. Technically he could die, but his death wouldn’t have been permanent. Though all of them knew that angel resurrection was as traumatic as getting killed.
Frank the dog wrapped his long claws around the back of Faith’s head. He pointed Faith’s face across the tunnel at Babette’s cell. Then he whispered in Faith’s ear, “So you’ve come to see your beautiful lover. Well, let’s get a good look at her, shall we?”
— LXXXV —
NO, YOU IGNORANT little purgatories! Aren’t you paying attention? My father is not coming to get me, so stop asking me that. If you haven’t been watching, he was the one who put me in this cell. What? Oh, Jesus, stop cawing—it’s me that has to go through it, not you.
You’re bigger babies than Rain. Shit, blasphemy! She’s going to kick my—now I gotta pray. See what you little shits are…
Mighty Salvation, full of hate. Jump be with thee. Blessed art thou amongst the fallen, and blessed is the seed of thy womb, Rain. Oh, holy Salvation, mother of Rain, pray for me, make my armor strong at the hour of my judgment. Amen.
Yeah, you better say it with me.
Any of you little purgatory bitches tell her I said that, I’ll fire and fury every last one of you. Better yet, how about like, I just put you in the arena with no training … and no hope in hell of surviving, either!
Annihilation? You’ll think annihilated. I don’t know what’s worse, getting beat to shit and raped in this cell, or listening to all of you whining. “Oh, Fury, who’s coming to rescue you? Oh, Fury, why didn’t your mommy save you?” Listen to yourselves … grow some talons, already!
And when I wake back up, they are all over Brie, because I can hear her screaming and yelling and crying, and then I hear her clothes rip, but I can’t see anything because they’ve still got her behind me.
I rock my head back and forth so hard I think my neck is gonna break off, but the chair won’t move. And I can’t move.
And in between the crying and the slapping and the laughing behind me, Brie is grunting and crying and then she says something that scares the living shit out of me, “Mommy.” That’s it—the last words she ever spoke.
“Get off her!” I yell, but no words come out and it’s kinda like I lose energy or something, because my voice sounds far away. “Dirty cocksuckers…” And I have no idea where that came from, because I’m… Then it’s like, I leave my body and it’s not really me.
I float above the whole room—above my body taped to the chair. Duct tape, no wonder, I think.
I hover for a while, while they work on us. And from up here, we look like work to them. Not like I imagined it when the bag was over my head.
One thing that scares me is this huge—I don’t wanna think about it, I just want it to go away. It’s kinda like a big snake or like, two snakes wrapped around a long shaft or something. And when they stick it in Brie, her head tilts back and her eyes roll back and turn black, and then she just falls over and she’s out … or dead … or I don’t know what. But when they poke it into my body—in me—a blinding white light shoots through my head and I squint, and I think I yell, but there’s no sound and then my body goes limp, and I start convulsing or something. It looks like a seizure, only I don’t have those.
And then another white light and then—but I’m not dark and I’m starting to wonder if resurrecting was the best idea I’ve ever had, because I just wanna go back to Hell.
I watch them roll another gurney into the cell and then they put Brie in a big black bag and zip her up and then she’s on the gurney. They wheel her out of the room and the last thing I hear is a great screeching sound from the gurney’s wheels and then the white searing light in my head again and I’m dark—out.
— LXXXVI —
FAITH SAT ON the floor of the dungeon kicking his legs and wings, struggling against the filthy dog, Frank’s, claws on the back of his head, forcing him to look at the creature. He peered across the dark dungeon tunnel at his once beautiful lover, Babette, in her cell.
Babette… Faith had failed her at the Fifty—abandoned her in a sanatorium in life. He hadn’t been able to—they both paid the price for it with their lives. And when their souls hung in the balance, he had failed her again.
Babette had become a hideous hound of Lived’s hell … and it was Faith’s fault. Now, he could barely look at her body, but when he was finally able to force himself to look at all of her, he realized the creature—his Babette was pregnant.
“Ya see there … father Ben,” Frank the dirty dog said. He held Faith’s head and forced him to look closely at Babette, now lying on her side with her belly heaving and something pushing against it from the inside. “How do you suppose that happened?”
Lived smiled at the smell, then he looked down at Life, busy trying to tame his snakes. After a few moments, he spread his wings wide and cawed out above his head.
Life got to her feet and walked to the edge of their cage. She peered through the bars, down the tunnel and across to the cell. She had the time for her plan to bear fruit. She would endure until that fruit was ripe. So she played her part. “Your little bitch is bursting at her seam,” she said. “Your seed finds a path to the darkest of dungeons.” She felt to her own stomach, busy churning from the performance of her duties. Then she laughed and cawed down the hall at the three of them, “She is a wretched wench, father. And you have condemned her to a fate more disgraceful than damnation.” Then she turned back to Lived. “How are you able…?” She looked at his snakes and frowned. “How do you persuade them to bathe in her breaches? She is appalling!”
Lived was just coaxing his two-headed snake back to its nest. When he finally pushed it beneath his feathers, he looked up and then he shook all of his plumage. And the remnants of Life’s scent misted their way to the floor. “Why, Your Majesty,” he said, “the same way I am able to bask in yours. Yours are a … small matter, however.” He moved beside his current concubine-slave. “One hole is as satisfying as another.” Then he cawed down the tunnel at Babette King’s cage. “Isn’t that true, Hole?” he shouted. “She screamed for you, Faith. Not even the decency to call out my name. Benitoooo!” Lived howled down the tunnel.
Life’s lip quivered. She bit at it, attempting to silence her inner-God. It was an ever-increasingly difficult task. “How can you tolerate yourself? … Filthy beast.”
Lived cawed a little and laughed, “We hounds are not known for our … discerning tastes.”
Down the hall, Life’s Dogg, barked and whined back to his master.
“You see,” Lived said. “Dog in a cage—we merely search for somewhere to bury our bones.” He turned and howled back at the dirty dog. “Dogg!” he yelled. “Set him free, Frank. He’s gotta go save her … again.”
The hound down the hall barked a few times and then howled back.
Lived turned to Life. “Why doesn’t he obey?” he asked.
“He does,” Life said. Then she called down the hall to Dogg, whistling and moaning a little. “Let the father loose, my pet. He has to re-find his faith.”
Then she recited the prayer.
And with no more than that the filthy animal, Dogg, let Faith loose. “Have fun, Benito,” he said. “I hear
the Fifty is … unforgettable. Owooooah!”
And Faith stood and adjusted his wings, stretching them to make sure they weren’t injured. He winced at the pain in the one Dogg had held. Then he rubbed his throat. He looked down the great tunnel to the light shining from their cell. “Very well,” he said softly, “I am ready.”
Faith stood in the darkness of the arena, just outside the portal to the dungeon. Seeing Babette like that was more than he could take. He bent over, fell to his knees, spread his wings and dropped the tips of them onto the floor of the arena, trying to steady himself. Then he vomited everything in his stomach. When he was finished, he spit and stood up.
As hideous as Babette looked when Frank forced him to look at her in the dungeons, he still loved her. But now he pitied her even more. Because now he knew the truth about his lover.
The first time he visited her in a place like that, he could never bring himself to believe it. At the Fifty—the 5150 sanatorium for the insane—he had denied the truth of her words. He flapped his wings and lazily fluttered off the arena floor, slowly flying to nowhere. And he closed his eyes and remembered.
— LXXXVII —
THE FIFTY WAS an old granite and iron sanatorium with tiny slits for windows that no living body would fit through. A fact that was proven over and over by insane addicts who tried to squeeze their skulls through the barely six-inch-wide slits. Most failed, but the few who succeeded were killed by the orderlies, jerking the unfortunate souls’ cracked skulls back in.
Powerful people used the Fifty as a convenient place to dispose of the weak. And torment them, Faith knew, because anyone who could afford to put someone in there could afford to have them killed and disappeared much easier … and cheaper.
But that wasn’t how the mind of a Man-monkey worked. Treachery and revenge and retribution needed to watch misery. That infection needed to see suffering, ooze over its enemies, and then burn and choke them with a dark black oil of desperation and hopelessness.
Father Benito hadn’t known that when he became a priest, but he learned it soon enough. Even the clergy would condemn a “heretic” to the Fifty if that person was in danger of overthrowing their authority.
TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3) Page 35