Every bite you take of it with your big fangs, every last claw you scrape across its back, tearing into its flesh, and every organ you rip open with your blood-soaked face. And then that thing is just dead, nothing on the outside but rotting meat and nothing on the inside but maggot food. Even its soul is gonna stink when you fly down to collect it.
Oh my G—I know animals don’t have souls. Aren’t you paying attention? I don’t know how much more hate I can waste on hammering this into you little—focus!
The lion? Well, you—you just walk away. You go back to whatever rock you live on and you lie down and just like, sleep and shit. You lick the blood off your balls or whatever. And then you know what you do? … Not even close. First thing you do is you try to find—you just do it again. Because you’re a lion, that’s why! Jesus!
You were hungry, you ate, you took a shit, and then you’re hungry again. Because you’re a filthy lion.
Oh, but don’t worry, because pretty soon, because you don’t know any better, or you just don’t give a shit. No one will ever know how a lion thinks.
What? Yes, yes, except another lion, that’s true. But you don’t even care about other lions … unless you wanna fuck one.
Let me tell you a little something they never showed much on the PIN nature waves—too like, offensive or something, I think they said. Anyways, a lion will kill its own babies so the bitch lion wants to do it again. You believe that? That is some benevolent being, creationist shit, right there, don’t you think? Eat its own babies!
Where was I? … Yeah, you get caught. Right out in the open, killing like you were created to, and you get snatched up by a Man-monkey and thrown in a cage. Zoo, I think they used to call them. “For your own protection.” I loved that one.
A zoo. Now, they just call it Animal Protection. Why? Who knows why Man-monkeys do anything, idiot! They just do it—they’re crazy hypocrites. But here’s what happens next.
Now, you are just like, lazing around in your cage all day, waiting for the guy who brings the food. And you’re shitting and yawning and all the curious Man-monkeys come to gawk at you in your nice, safe little cell—cage. And to them, it looks like you couldn’t give a shit, because you’re all fed and happy and farting or whatever.
And maybe if you’re lucky, they put you in with a girl lion so you can pass the boring day away, fucking. And if the Man-monkeys are lucky, the two of you make a vicious little baby lion. But even that’s boring, because it’s not like the little baby lion is ever getting out anyways.
What? … You’re not gonna eat that little—you don’t have to. Bitch lion isn’t going anywhere, so what’s the point to that?
And now, like, you’re locked up for years and years, and to you it seems like eternity goes by, one of them at least, because to a roaming and raping lion, a day in a zoo is like an eternity—relative time, remember that shit? Still confuses me, too.
Now, the Man-monkey that feeds you gets lazy one day, and he’s all chucking the food in and there’s blood all over and whoops! Yep, he slips into the cage with you, and you know what you do?
No! Are you even paying attention? You eat him, that’s what you do! … Why? I just told you, because that’s … what … you … do. It’s what all lions do. And I don’t care how long they lock you up in Heaven or back in Life’s garden, lions eat things. No amount of resurrection or redemption rehab is fixing that. Nothing to fix. You’re not broken, you’re just dangerous … to everything else. That’s not broke, that’s just Life. She’s a bitch.
Listen, a lesson grandpa Jump hasn’t taught you yet—you don’t like something dangerous and it’s like, not even broken? Only thing you can do with it, get rid of it—kill it before it kills you. Understanding it is a silly little dream, just like life.
What? … Rape? Rain almighty! Save me, Salvation, what do you think I’ve been talking about?
Shut up! You’re so—now, I’m not even answering questions anymore. I talk, you listen. That’s how it’s gonna be from here on. You will learn this shit, Rain help me, or I’ll give you to someone who will teach it to you the hard way. That’s how I had to learn it, and let me tell you something, you wide-eyed, whining wingnuts, it’s no lamican roast by the fiery lake, either.
When the people you thought were your protectors get done with you… After they twist up your mind—turn you upside down and inside out, they will put you on trial in front of everyone, not the bastard who did it. And then they’ll infect your soul with their vicious judgment, and they’ll sentence you—condemn you to a lifetime of guilt, locked in a cell with yourself. And then they’ll annihilate any chance you have at redemption. And God or Rain or Eden or whatever eternity’s Protector you think is coming to save you, won’t be able to resurrect one ounce of pity for you.
There’s no eternity in Heaven or Hell that can wipe that out. There’s only two times you will know after that—everything before … and every miserable thing after. That’s just the way it is.
Last thing, you will never ever see it coming.
— XCII —
LONG BEFORE RAIN almighty and long before the Lord almighty, Life’s, eternity… All the way back to the very first eternity—the eternity of Eden—the Protector Eden had commanded that the dungeons be built in a very specific way.
She decreed that since the dungeons would house some of the most vile and dangerous souls, sinners, and sodomites that would ever be brought to creation, there could be no risk of letting them escape.
The only entrance to the tunnels and passageways of the dark dungeons underneath the Arena of Reckoning would lead right out into the arena—into the open for all to see. Any escape attempts would have to be carried out in full view and truth of the stars above the Hallowed Hall. And this safeguard, it was thought, would prevent any dark soul, plotting escape, from harboring any hope in their hearts of avoiding detection.
Even the always-skeptical golden guardians liked the design. With only one entrance to secure and nowhere for a prisoner to flee but out into the center of the arena, the drudgery of guard duty was easier to abide. And since it would only take two guards to secure the portal entrance, the rest of the guardians could take their turn patrolling the tunnels and then take a break from the tedious duty of keeping evil angels caged up.
It also meant that they could enjoy some of the more stately duties entrusted to the guardian angels in Heaven. Duties such as escorting evil souls in and out of the dungeons during the judgments, or branding the condemned with molten fire once they were judged, or the best task of all—Protector protection. “Guarding gods,” the golden angels referred to it. Before Rain’s reign outlawed the word, that is.
The food was more succulent, the scent sweeter, and the class of angel more stately, as well.
However, security safeguards—locked down and impenetrable front gates—were only as effective as the people or angels patrolling them. And even if the front entrance to the dungeons was Purgatory-proof, all Protectors required their own private entrance, so they could sneak in through the back.
But just as it had since the dawn of despots, the “rules-are-not-for-the-rulers” rule would eventually lead them straight to damnation. Though, they never considered themselves vulnerable until it was too late.
Had Rain known any of this, she might have taken a little more care when she cast the current occupants into the dungeons and left them down there to rot. With fewer and fewer golden guardians dedicated to patrolling the dark tunnels and passageways, the evil souls were left largely alone with their bitterness, to plot and plan and bemoan their captivity.
And had she known any of it, Rain might have realized that one of the occupants in the great dungeons harbored a secret—one which Rain believed only she knew. A special prayer that would allow them to resurrect any soul in the dungeons, freeing them from their torment and misery and allowing them to unleash that anger and rage back in their own life.
And if that person—a Protector with the power of pe
nance—decided to try and free themselves, then it was just a short flight away from resurrection—escape.
There had only been one imprisoned soul in all the eternities who had successfully escaped the dungeons. Life had sent him back to try to regain control of her garden. But it wasn’t to be, and the entire trial and judgment had ended with disastrous results.
That unfortunate angel had ended up spiked to a cross, speared, and bled out next to thieves.
Lived sat with his wings against the granite wall of his cell, brooding. His cellmate had divulged vital information to their enemies. The whelp and her parents were his enemies, but no one could wrong him as much as Life had.
Yet more immediately damning was the fact that she had been bested by the child, Rain. He looked across the cell at Life and growled. Eventually she would pay. As would they all.
Life stared back.
“Well,” Lived said. He bounced back several times against the wall, before he clasped his fingers together and stopped, “that was—that was simply…” He sighed, and furrowed his brow. “I have no taste for you now. You cast me from Heaven for less offense. What fate shall I…?”
Life sat on the opposite side of their cell, trying to understand how Rain had deceived her. She knew how, but she didn’t understand how she had let the child manipulate her so completely. That insolent little bitch, she thought.
Understanding arrogance and jealousy in oneself was difficult, even for a god.
But for a devil? Why would he even consider it?
Lived cawed, crowing a little at her silence. “Yes,” he said, “for you, it is much better to remain silent, it seems. Because we have witnessed enough of the fruits of that folly for one day. We—I commanded you to send her back for a reason!” he shouted. “I bade you one—you have managed to fail me on the simplest of tasks.”
Life was used to Lived’s crowing, and she knew they would have to attend to their son and his daughter by the end of it all. Yet by the time any of them realized the depth of her plan, it would be too late for them all. “It is hardly—it is of little concern,” she said. She measured her words carefully. “They will waste themselves and time in understanding. There is precious little of that remaining.”
“Little concern?” Lived crowed. “You divulged everything! Ignorant… So this is how they taste Hell—why they fear it so. Trapped in a cage with failure … for eternity. Misery … torment. The taste is so vile in my mouth.”
You are vile, Life thought. “This is no hell,” she said. “Hell is trapped beneath an angry little fledgling, penetrating you while he continues to attempt to play at God. And I would have never believed it had I not witnessed it myself, but you have become quick to relent. How did you become so…? You fold your wings at the first gust of wind. That is a weakling’s way, and I did not create you to be a weakling!
“What fate shall I save for you, my failed creation? Because clearly, you are of no use to me if this is how you respond to deception and threat. I wondered how he bested you in the arena, and how I killed you so easily. You are a featherless fledgling!”
Lived cawed wildly and then he laughed thunder down the tunnels of the dungeon. And all the creatures in it knew what usually came next. They crowed and cawed and screeched and howled and their sounds echoed down the passageways. Lived stood up and pulled back his feathers. He spread his wings at her and stretched them, scraping his bloodstained steel feathers against each other, sending sparks to the floor.
Life sat against her wall and eyed her creation’s display. As easy as she had been to fool, there was no deceiver like one of her creation’s snakes. She watched the two heads slither out and then point toward her and stiffen.
Wisdom… Life thought. That’s what she had bestowed upon the snake. She created all the other beings in her garden with such beauty, that it seemed the most intuitive of decisions to make.
Temper unrivaled beauty with godly intelligence. Life never understood how mistaken she could be. With Man as his vessel, the snake quickly turned vile and manipulative, and it perverted her beautiful Man’s soul. And it used him to slither and slink through the garden, telling lies and tempting everything it could to get anything it wanted. And what it wanted was fruit.
In Life’s eternity, the sweet blossom, Eve, was the snake’s first devilish meal. And from there, the succulent seed that Eden entrusted to all the Protectors of the eternities after hers… Eden’s garden plunged into chaos.
Life’s creations fornicated with such reckless abandon that they quickly grew out of control like rats. She sent plagues and famine and pestilence to try and control their proliferation. None of it slowed the swelling tide of Man’s thirst for more fruit.
The single-minded, insidious focus of the snake. Life knew it was the source of her ruin. She looked from Lived’s snakes to his face. “Ah,” she said, “it seems you are not the sole ruler in our small kingdom. Perhaps his heads are more useful than your own.” She looked back at Lived’s snakes, now rigid and angrily staring at her. “When I married the two of you together, I had hoped for a better result. Yet, his wisdom has only given you the power to deceive, and your beauty and arrogance have given him a singular taste for fruit. You cloud each other’s minds such that neither of you can think to save the other from destruction. You wish to fornicate while our great mountain falls into ruin? Imbeciles… You fornicate, my beautiful Devil, when you should fight.”
Lived’s snakes hissed up at him, bidding him to ignore her and plunge them into Life’s fruit. But he hesitated, sifting through her words for the truth.
Life smiled. She had learned to manipulate her vengeful captor once again. She pushed herself off of the floor and got on her hands and knees, facing away from him. She hung her head and smiled through her hair—her slave turned master was returning to her power. “Your master’s wishes shall be fulfilled, my devil,” she said. “Do as he commands—give him my fruits.”
Lived roared and growled down at his snakes and they cowered and softened and slinked back toward his waist. And he pushed all his feathers back out and over them, and then fire sprang from his wings. “I am your master,” he said, “and I shall decide whether we bath ourselves in fruit … or blood!”
Life knelt in the middle of their cage. She spread her wings wide and her feathers glowed bright white. The beings in the dungeon howled at the sting of their light.
Even Lived shrunk away from her bright. Then he growled down the passageways. “Silence, putrid pigs,” he said, “or she will resurrect every one of you!” Because that’s what he was about to do.
Resurrecting a condemned—as their ruler, Lived believed it was his right. But only a Protector of the great eternities had that power—only a god could send someone back to their life.
Lived would have done it without her—spoken the words to open the portal back to life, recited the Prayer of the Protectors. But for anyone but a Protector, speaking the words was pointless.
He hadn’t believed it, at first—he had warned Life not to lie to him. But trust was a scarcity in the deceit-filled dungeon, so he violently fed her fruit to his snakes to be certain she was telling the truth. When Life finally relented and told him the prayer, he released her. But when Lived spoke the words, nothing happened—she had told him the truth.
Life, it seemed, had her own personal pet—a lap dog, in every sense of the word. And they would send him back first, to quicken the pace.
She spoke the words of Eden—the Prayer of the Protectors: “Sweet mother of mayhem and mercy, Eden, I am Life, your banished child. Bring us redemption now, and the sweetness and the power of resurrection!
“I send up my sighs, mourning and weeping in my dungeon of tears. Turn, most gracious Protector, thine eye of mercy and thine hand of mayhem toward him, deliver him from his exile, return him unto my eternity, the bastard fruit of thy womb, the fallen archangel … Dogg.”
— XCIII —
THE LAUGH WAKES me back up. Thank God, I think, my da
ddy—
“Look at you,” he says to me, “God’s glorious little children. All twisted and tied up, wondering what in the—trying to figure out what in the two hells is going on, I bet.”
“Daddy?”
He smiles and his teeth are crystal white, and now I have no idea what he’s talking about or who this guy is, because like, I know he looks like him—I don’t even know where I am. Well, I’m still in this Mexican Protection cell, I can see that, but I’m starting to wonder if it’s real.
“Mr. King,” Brie says from behind me. And she’s—she’s still alive? “I—I wanna go home.”
Brie’s alive? I think, What’s going…? Oh, shit. “Tessa?” I say.
“She’s fine,” his voice is like smooth peanut butter on pancakes.
I can smell the syrup. Mmm! And I smile and giggle at him. That’s what he used to make me when he stayed home from work. It wasn’t very often, but every once in a while it was pretty cool, ya know.
“I’m just letting her sleep,” he says. “She’s probably pretty tired after all of that.”
And, I mean, he’s standing right in front of me, and I know it’s him, but that is not my father. And I just stare at him. I don’t even struggle against the tape holding me to this chair. Because it’s like, I don’t even care.
“Everything’s going to be just fine,” he says again. And I believe him, ya know … because…
But something’s—he’s just not right, but I don’t feel scared anymore, I’m just … curious or something. I wanna figure it out—put the pieces together like a little puzzle.
His clothes are pressed and creased, his hair is combed tight, and his shirt—he’s not even sweating. And in Cancun, that’s like, just impossible. In this room, for sure, because I’m soaking wet and I can taste the damp in the air. But he’s like … too perfect-looking. Like, I don’t know how else to put it.
TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3) Page 39