But Benito was too tired, much too tired. “Let me go to Heaven,” he said. Then he softly whispered to himself more than the hallucination he was having, “I must… God help…” It was more exhaustion than anything else, but habit from his mother as well. “I can’t take any more suffering, Mother.”
Then the bird spoke again, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,” and then Benito saw the angel’s talons come out. On its feet, too, he thought.
“So, my little fallen friend, to prevent further suffering and injury”—Benito smiled at the bird’s words. He knew their literal translation—“you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.” Then the bird sank all twenty of its razor-sharp talons deep into his chest. “Awake, little sleeper, and arise from the dead!”
— CI —
I WAKE UP to a serious bunch of bitching down the hall. At least, I think it’s—sounds like it’s down a hallway. Someone is screaming and screeching, like a dying… I have no clue, but it’s kinda like … like birds killing each other or some crazy shit.
And I can’t move, and holy—I’m face down! Oh my God, I can’t move! And I’m … I feel…
I turn my head a little and the pain spikes into my spine so hard! “Aaaah!” the screaming doesn’t help my back or anything else, because I can feel it—I—I know.
I scream through the thought, and I finally get my head turned. Brie is gone and so is the gurney that Tessa was on. And I’m in this—Where am I now? I try to turn the other way, but every move is killing me and I’m in here all by myself. Nothing looks the same.
I need my father to show up—he needs to get his ass in here, because like, I’m seriously—Tessa is dead! How did this…?
But when I try to move this time—Which time is this? I’m hallucinating or—Please let me be hallucinating, I think. Or … I don’t know what. And then pain shoots though my chest and it’s—it’s just kicking my ass just like … just like…
They beat the shit out of me in the lobby, and they killed them both, back there. I try to scream again, but it comes out too quiet, and the pain burns into my breasts. “Jesus!” I manage a scream this time. Then bright spikes of light and pain hammer my head. And like, everything is fuzzy but bright in this—Mexican Protection cell? That’s where I was—am—I don’t know anymore.
The pain finally goes down enough, and I try to—I can only turn my head a little and I can feel the searing in them—I have breasts now? But the pain shoots again and shoves that shit out of my head and I—I’m … I just don’t know shit! “Help meeee!” I scream it as loud as I can, and mother … fucking … shit the pain!
I start crying—sobbing down onto this steel table. And I’m cold … so cold. I wish I was back.
I barely remember the words—so zoned out when she dragged me there. But I can remember my mother chanting them by her bed at night, crying herself to sleep after my dad did that. I can hear her words in my head, God … save me from my … my … my weak self. Save me from greed … and power. Save me from pleasure. Save me from betraying you, God. Amen.
— CII —
WHAT DID YOU little purgatories think was going to happen? I told all of you that! No! No one is coming. I’m dying right in that room. Don’t you get it? Whenever he gets back, he’s just gonna kill me. You think I would be praying if everything is just going to be…? You need to figure this out. I’m not supposed to help you. You have to do it for yourself. What the hell do all of you think redemption is, anyways? You have to do something—sacrifice something … for somebody else.
Goddamn squawking little purgatory hatchlings. Stop whining! Damn, if I ever do get back, you are answering to Rain about all this blasphemy, because seriously—not my fault. What? … What if you don’t sacrifice? Then you just get trapped in your own little hell, that’s what!
— CIII —
LIFE AND LIVED rested on their perches on opposite sides of their cell. “At last,” Life said, observing the last stages of Fury’s fall. “That should be sufficient.”
Lived was not as certain. “She utterly butchered—you believe that was…?” he said. “She failed to recite even half of it.”
“It is a small concern,” Life replied. “The interpretation is the same—the important verses were included. And she spoke my name far more than the requirement.”
“You and your ‘small concerns.’ That is two then,” Lived said. “One final feather remains … to pluck from under his hell.”
They both heard the portal door open and shut.
Life stood up, and then she walked slowly to the iron bars of their cage and grasped them, turning her hands—gripping the bars would assist with the sting of the whip. She peered down the dark tunnel. Then she spoke softly, beneath one of her last calm breaths, “The worst one.”
Lived pushed his face between the bars and peered down the tunnel. “Ah,” he muttered, “fashionably late.”
Then the words wafted back down the tunnel, like the smell of Man-monkeys and misery. “Ladies, before this is over, you shall worship no god but me!” their son said.
— CIV —
JUMP’S PLAN WAS simple—they always were. They typically resembled something like using a sledgehammer to pound in a spike. Finesse was not his strongest sin. “Break down the door, go down in their nasty little love nest, shine the light on the two of them, stuff ’em in a sack,” was how he had so eloquently put it to Rain and Salvation. Then he went down to the lake to get something.
Whatever Jump retrieved was safely concealed beneath his feathers when he got back. Then he gave Rain and Salvation one last reassurance. “Nothing to it,” he said. He leaned over and kissed Salvation on the forehead. Then he left.
But something had gone wrong. And when Jump didn’t return on time, Salvation and Rain both got nervous. Since her husband had been pretty specific that they were not to go looking for him under any circumstances, Salvation knew even Rain was concerned when she said they should go check on his progress.
Rain had felt or understood, or some other sense that a Protector couldn’t explain to a mere archangel, but whatever it was, Salvation could see fear written all over her daughter’s face.
When the portal to the dungeons twisted open in front of Rain and Salvation, the foul stench of souls, burning in agony, blasted them both.
Salvation bent over and almost retched. “Son of a—what is that?” Not that every time she had ever been to the dungeons they didn’t stink worse than Hell itself—before Jump cleaned it up, anyway—but this … this was something else.
Rain held her mouth. She motioned for the two guardians standing watch to enter. Then she and her mother waited while they flew in to scout ahead. That was their purpose—protect the Protector, deal with danger, so a deity didn’t have to do it.
A few moments passed, and with the portal door wide open, the tide of terrible smells was starting to recede. However, the guardians had not returned.
Salvation and Rain were just about to go in when the two golden angels flapped back out onto the arena field. They fluttered wildly and then crashed to their knees, and coughed and spit and shook their feathers. Ash and blood fell from their plumage and blanketed the arena floor, forming little circles of red on the ground around them.
When the guardians finally stopped, they both stood and the first one informed Rain that, though it was decidedly not dangerous inside, she should consider staying out.
“Mother,” Rain said to Salvation, “I’m not certain you will want to see any of this.”
Salvation felt older somehow and she didn’t like the taste of it. But after cleansing the garden, what could her husband possibly do to an angel that she hadn’t seen done to a Man-monkey … ten billion times before. She looked at Rain. Her daughter smelled older now. Some scent she recognized between the wafts of angel urine, shit and … blood? “I’ve seen more than y
ou know, little girl,” she said. “I’ll be fine.” When she finally recognized the scent, she looked at Rain with her face full of motherly glow. She was concerned, but curiously and to herself, secretly happy. “You … you’re—”
Rain frowned. “I am fully aware, Mother,” she said. “However, now is certainly not the time.” Then she turned her feathers to their full brightness and fluttered in front of Salvation toward the portal. It was never a question—they were going in to find Jump.
And Salvation flew, following behind her daughter, smiling and shining.
“Mother,” Rain said without looking back, “don’t.”
Once Salvation and Rain got through the portal door, they quickly realized they would have to walk. The rock on the ceiling of the tunnel was burned black and when they flapped their wings, burnt, ashen blood fell on their heads. So they fluttered to the floor and walked down the tunnel toward the two liars’ cell.
There was charred blood everywhere, caked and crusted to the rock walls and iron bars, like a tale of torment etched on old parchment.
As they passed each cage, every creature in it was in varying stages of melding back together, having obviously been blown apart and burnt. The ones that were further along in the process had long thin wounds oozing blood and puss from their flesh. And the moaning… Asylums were quieter.
Salvation and Rain kept walking, covering their mouths and noses with their hands. Slowly stepping over the blackest sections of the floor. They walked past Rain’s self-denial of what she had sent Jump to do, stepped right over the burning corpse of Salvation’s disbelief that her husband was capable of such things. And as they got closer to the truth—approached the one cell they had come to see—the faint odor of burnt vanilla and the smoking smell of charred souls tore away any delusions Rain had had about the difficulty of ensuring, much less enforcing “To the Benefit of All.”
Standing in front of Lived and Life’s cell, neither Salvation nor Rain could believe—it just wasn’t possible. The man they knew could never… They stood in silence, not even wanting to look at each other for fear that they would have to admit the truth.
Lived had a broken wing and singed feathers and when he limped his way over to help Life to her feet, Salvation could see what looked like … whip marks on his back?
Life took Lived’s hand and winced and chirped as she struggled her way to her feet. Once she stood up, she favored one leg and held one of her arms with the other, like a sling. Then she pushed her wings forward, covering the front of herself as best she could. Her gaze was down and the look on her face was none that Rain or Salvation had ever seen. It was the look of a person who had been thoroughly beaten—had the will torn out of them.
And lying in the corner, limp and completely still, was one of Lived’s snakes. Lived hesitated before he looked at them. “I am very reticent to inform you, Your Eminence…” Then he looked Rain in the eyes. It wasn’t a look of defiance or his gaze of condescending curtness. To Rain, it looked … meek. “It seems our son… The apple … did not fall far from the proverbial tree.” Lived glanced at his severed snake, and then he said, “Though it was very decent of him to leave me with one, don’t you think?”
Guilt. That was the lynchpin of her plan. Life slowly raised her head, making sure to avoid eye contact with Rain. She had no idea how powerful the little whelp was yet. “I … I am sorry,” she said softly. “I just find it…” She paused and looked down the hallway at the mayhem her second son had wrought. Holding back the smile was the hardest part. “I cannot reconcile… How is this to the benefit of all?”
— CV —
WHILE RAIN AND Salvation attempted to get information that her son had already brutalized out of them, Life had felt the churning in her stomach growing. She was worried that she might actually retch right in front of them or “precarry” from the beating she endured.
Somehow, Life managed to keep both of them at bay. All four, when she thought about it, because neither she nor Lived had divulged any further information.
The wailing from down the dungeon tunnels subsided, and Life turned her head toward it and smiled. “They prepare.”
Lived followed her gaze and took a deep breath, enjoying the sweet smell of burnt flesh and blood … and the aroma of impending birth. “Ah, the dawn of gods,” he said. “Soon … very soon.”
Life touched her belly and grinned. “Yes, she is almost ready.” The aroma from Lived’s bitch down the hall was masking her own scent. Hole was useful in more ways than Lived knew.
Life bent over and hunched her back and then she vomited a long stream of blood and bile onto their cell floor. When she was finished, she fell to her knees, and then slumped back against the wall. She slowly slid her knees up to her chest and crossed her arms around them. Her head hung down. “He is your son, isn’t he?”
“Are you…?” Lived asked. Then he paused. Life never was one to accept assistance or pity. He considered asking anyway, but thought better of it and limped to the corner. His snake lie motionless. He bent over and picked it up. He shoved it inside the feathers on his waist, and then sat against the opposite wall. He stared across their cell for several seconds before he spoke, “And yet, he has somehow acquired your … charm, don’t you think? Though, the irony of his words as he worked was more to my taste.”
The entire time Jump interrogated them, while the other watched, tied to an adjacent cell, powerless to help, their son had quoted scripture. Neither of them could break free from the heavily-prayered Rosary beads that bound them, legs and arms spread like eagles caught in a web of iron bars on the cells.
When Jump began, they had both growled and roared in defiance and anger. But they quickly succumbed to exhaustion and the misery of trying to escape his whip, and their defiance turned to moaning and wailing for mercy.
It would take longer than it usually did to repair themselves. That much torn flesh and loss of blood was not easy to restore. So they passed the time doing the one thing that that kept them sane during their half-eternity incarceration, they traded quips and quills to amuse themselves at the other’s expense.
“Your snake,” Life said, “beaten by its own fruit.” She let out a small caw and then she laughed. “I pray you find the irony in that.”
Lived’s face tightened as he pondered her words, frowning as he remembered Eve in the garden. Still healing himself, he found none of his clever responses. “Yes,” he said. Then his face loosened a bit and he smiled. “As I said to them, your apple is an … acquired taste.”
Life leaned back against the bars. The feelings in her womb were getting more powerful now. There were several times during Jump’s “questioning” that she feared he might beat it out of her. However, she could feel the seed growing again. The girl—though male or female hardly mattered—the life inside her would be a god … and it would rule.
“That,” Lived groaned and scrunched his face. “Ah… I was worried for a moment.” He started to laugh, but the pain in his ribs made him stop.
Life looked up. “It was difficult to—I think I … I nearly giggled. How odd?”
“Did you see her expression?”
Life tucked her wings behind her. “Whose?”
“The whelp, of course,” Lived said. “I was never worried about her bitch mother.”
“Ah, yes,” Life said, “she hasn’t any idea.”
“Neither of them do.”
Life smiled at him and stretched out her damaged wing. The metal bones in it cracked and snapped as she popped them back into place. “I’ve told you this many times,” Life said, wincing, “Guilt—it carries twice the potency of fear.”
— CVI —
JACOB OLIVER BLAKE—Protection Agent Blake—badge number 333, freshly promoted from the interrogation division to PAIC, stretched his tight, black leather gloves over his hands. He stared straight into the interrogation cell as he reached in his pocket and felt for the syringe full of Judgment.
He was inches from the b
astard—the man who destroyed his life, took his daughter, Amy.
It had been two years since he lost his little girl. He and his wife, Kelly, had never been the same since. Before Amy was gone, everything made sense and the three of them were happy. It was a good life. The PAIC lived well, and the way things were … well, that’s how they were supposed to be, how they had always been.
In the beginning, Jake was worse than a rook—an agent in training at the Rookery academy, where Protection “Forged the Force” that would protect the citizens.
Jake figured he already knew everything there was to know about Protection, more than the instructors, for sure. After all, his father had prepared him for the rigors of training, and that man had been one of the most highly decorated agents in the history of the “Rook.”
But stories weren’t experience, so until he “got his feathers wet,” his dad liked to joke, he would never fully understand what it meant to be an agent of Protection. “Get a little blood on your shield,” he had told the eager young Jacob, “you can squawk after that. Be careful, though, because it doesn’t wash off.”
Despite his father’s warnings, at Protection’s “invitation”-only academy, Jake was an up-and-coming rook, soaring his way through his flock, faster than any other hatchling who graduated before him … except for his father, of course. But that was a different breed of old buzzard—a different time where mighty eagles bared talons and puffed out their chests for all to flee from and fear—an eternity ago.
Finally, Jacob was kicked out of the nest—he graduated. He was a freshly “cracked” hatchling agent, shining wings and shield insignia on his back. And he wore the badge like he’d earned it—bloody, hard and proud. Jacob Blake was a mighty agent of Protection … but not.
Until a graduate earned their wings and became a full-fledged agent—and there was only one way to do that—they were a hatchling, envied by rooks at the Rook, desperate to graduate and end their misery, and condescended to by every other full-fledged agent on the force.
Caught in the middle between being entrusted with heavenly duties as an agent and the hell of training at the Rook. And unless another agent took a hatchling under their wing, it was going to be a long flight through “purgatory.”
TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3) Page 44