But before I could plunge that stick into the dog’s chest—all I wanted to do—Dominic grabbed and held my shoulder back. “Lesson one,” he said, “it is best to leave some room for God’s wrath.”
I shook his hand off—he wasn’t holding me as tightly as before—and I dropped back down to my knees and plunged the broken end of that stick into the beasts leg and it yelped. And I pulled it out and stabbed it into its side. Then again … and again and again and again! … Until my good arm hurt like my bad one and that dog’s body didn’t jerk when I stabbed it.
Once I stopped, Dominic pulled me to my feet. “Or not, I suppose,” he said. “Is that your decision?” he asked.
There was really nowhere else left for me to go. “Yes.”
As we walked to Father Dominic’s Clergy guzzler—it was pretty hard to mistake those big black cars—he chanted and held his Rosary beads. “In flaming fire, take vengeance on those who do not know God,” he spoke softly, “and on those who do not obey the truth of the Word.”
After I climbed into the back seat of the guzzler with him, I looked back at our house. It lit up in flames and then the bodies at the foot of its steps caught fire on their own and then Max burned too, and I had to look away.
I hadn’t noticed the driver. I could only see the black veil on the back of her head. The girl was barely able to see over the steering wheel, much less anywhere near the statute age to be driving. I would learn later that the clergy had its own “statutes.”
“Take us home, Sister,” Dominic said to her. “Our young Benito’s had a long life.”
And flames shot high into the air behind us as the Sister drove the big black guzzler away.
TRIBULATION
— CLXVIII —
AT THE TURN of the tenth eternity—two thousand years after God sent her first child to the Garden in an attempt to arrest its descent into madness—the dark angel Lucifer gathered faithful and fierce angels and demons to a secret meeting. These eleven midlevel angels—Colonels in the armies of Heaven or Hell—were conspirators that he hoped would help him succeed where alone … he had failed.
His purpose was none other than to dethrone the current Protector, the god Life, and replace her with a more … deserving ruler. Then he—the fallen Day Star, Lucifer—would rightfully rule over Hell and Heaven … for all the eternities to come.
High atop the Great Mountain of the Eternities, deep inside the Hallowed Hall of the Word, the Arena of Reckoning—the destination of every soul in every eternity since the first—was bathed in blackness and still. An exhausted and silent temptress after a night of wicked justice, judging souls and condemning them to fates of redemption or condemnation, where afterward they would be sent to the Dungeons of the Damned beneath the arena.
The great devil—the Day Star, that liar of old, Lucifer—stood at the edge of the lake of fire, deep in the pit beneath the dungeons. He pondered the night’s judgments. Fresh blood dripped from his crimson wings and his long tail. The blood sizzled and caught fire as it landed at the edge of the fiery lake. Lucifer’s long pointed tail caressed over his metal flight feathers, slowly wiping and washing them free of blood, like an eagle preening with its beak.
Eleven archangels—six faithful followers of God in Heaven and five hateful and heinous hounds from Lucifer’s own Hell—stood around him. They all eyed each other, distrustful and disdainful of the other’s Word, yet each even more disgruntled at the passing of their current eternity.
“Is this how it is to be?” Lucifer asked them all. “We are to carry out orders and ferry Man-monkey souls to the whims of a tyrant? Is any of you content with this feeble fate?”
Lucifer spoke not in questions so much as he did in statements of fact as he believed them to be. For each and every angel in attendance had been selected over centuries. Some as his most faithful followers in Hell and some as seditious spies for him in Heaven.
None of them were Generals in Hell or Saints in Heaven, but therein laid Lucifer’s plan. For every middle manager in Heaven or Hell, or the Garden for that matter, was certain that they could perform the duties of their superiors … far better. These Colonels were no different.
Lucifer turned and addressed each of them individually, giving them the respect and the dignity that eternities of servitude had not. “Lilith,” he spoke, “first love of Adam, was your long blonde shining hair, full of curls not enough? Look at your beauty—wings of pure gold! Are you content at replacement by Eve in the garden? And to what purpose? For your husband to be betrayed by his wife at the behest of a tempestuous snake? A greater travesty has never been committed by me, I assure you.”
Lilith adjusted her armored feathers. Lucifer’s words were a lie, but she would not shed the light of truth on them, lest her own failure be bared naked for all angels to see. She looked away from him, betraying her shame and guilt due to her lapse in judgment during the very first eternity.
The other ten were silent. They each had enough experience with their leaders to know when to speak and when they were being spoken to.
Lucifer turned to the next in the circle, “Lucifia,” he said, “gorgeous granddaughter. You preside over all the underworld’s wealth and terrible treasures in Hell, yet your father cracks no coin to angel’s benefit? Your wings are waxed with filth and your hair houses soot. Ashen-faced waif you have become. While your faithful father wears dark silver wings and coins fall from his feathers! A more selfish son I have yet to sire.”
Lucifia gritted her teeth, squinted, and held back her tongue. One day her father would pay.
“Aax,” Lucifer said, barely pausing as he stoked and then left Lucifia to her fiery rage, “most hideous hound in my realm—disgusting and dastardly animal, worthy of commanding legions. You languish as lowly colonel beneath preening and primping general—a house of mirrors that you must polish. Is that justice?”
It was clear to each of them—none having escaped the assignment of a disgusting duty from a superior, without having first been manipulated through deceptive accolades and false niceties—that Lucifer would hear himself address each one before he would get to the rotten core of his own desirous apple.
Lucifer quickly pointed to the next angel in the circle. “And you,” he said, “Zarzi the … the what? No Man-monkey she sent to the Garden to sing her praises lifts pen nor scroll to speak of your deeds. You warrant not one single line of prose in her benevolent book? And yet absent angel, there would be no lilac nor lemon scent for her to suck to her greedy nostrils. No spring wafts of freshly cut grass nor rainbow of colors on trees in fall. Hah, I doubt she knows your name.”
Zarzi turned down her smile to shame and embarrassment, and then she folded her shining green wings behind her back and hung her head. Her two near orange braids dangled next to her face, like some raggedy doll in a Man-monkey’s one-coin commissary.
“Do you believe she leaves jury and Judgment night with words on her lips, ‘I ought grant Zarzi medal?’ … Hardly!”
Lucifer glanced slyly out of the corner of his eye at the next in line to see if his seeds were bearing fruit. But discontent was his forte—creating a milieu of misery and fanning a flame of hatred to be used to his purposes. His speech was going perfectly to plan.
Rsoni spread his golden wings slightly and then folded them tightly behind his back. It was easy for the big angel to hold tongue, standing in the circle of betrayers, listening to the long-licking liar his Lord had cast down to the pit. For Rsoni was a firm and long-spoken Golden Guardian—one of three golden angels in attendance that night—with blonde locks to his chest and a complexion only a few shades darker than the pure white God, Life herself.
Rsoni performed his duty as guardian quietly, efficiently, and with little regard for his own personal gain. From a line of angels synonymous with the very definition of loyalty, when the Protector of his eternity, Life, had come to him and suggested he be receptive to Lucifer’s temptations, at first he was hesitant—even pretending to serve the da
rk one was unthinkable to him. But Life had her ways and he was eventually “persuaded” to do her bidding by pretending to do the bidding of God’s once all-beautiful angel, Lucifer.
“Rsoni!” Lucifer’s voice boomed.
It caught Rsoni by surprise and he jerked slightly and then bobbed his head—bird-like tics were a fact of every angel’s life.
Lucifer’s voice was softer as he continued, “Do not believe I look lightly on sacrifice you must make on behalf of this angry gathering,” he said. “Your line is a proud and decorated divinity, and the act of attending sullies same. I once stood next to your father in the bosom of light our creator shined for all to warm themselves. Yet, duplicitous deity, God, has no doubt informed you of misplaced trust.”
Rsoni’s eyes widened slightly and then he got control of them. His talons eased out slowly—more angel impulse. Policing blasphemy was one of a guardian’s primary duties … just before securing the prisoners in the dungeons beneath the arena.
“Ahh,” Lucifer said to him, “your eyes betray your right heart’s desire.” He moved closer to Rsoni and then stood in front of him. “You believe information’s envoy is enemy? That I am…?”
The circle of soon to be sinners ruffled steel feathers and the more restless of them let out a couple of muffled caws. Shoulders shrugged and wings folded tightly behind the angels’ backs.
“Belay yourselves, brothers and sisters,” said Lucifer. “Rsoni does not realize, but he is brother in more than breath of treason. He has been betrayed by his own loyalty—his unwavering faith in a god that does nothing to warrant it.”
Rsoni would give his life if that was what was required, as it was clear Lucifer now knew he would spy for him in falsity only. His talons protruded all the way out now and he had nudged his ballistic armored feathers so that they would cover his entire body quickly when the attack came. He steeled himself.
Lucifer stared at Rsoni’s armored feathers and then glanced down to his talons. “Life has a way of persuading the penitent that she is worth one’s own soul, does she not,” he said. He tilted his head back and cawed wildly. When he lowered it back his eyes shined ice-blue. “I stood once … where you perch now, certain of my creator’s affection, and convinced that I should execute the orders”—he glanced down at Rsoni’s talons—“that your talons now threaten. Blindly serve and sacrifice life for Life. However”—he paused and closed his eyes, for longer than a warrior would, and then he slowly tilted his head back up, opened his eyes, and smiled—“precious opportunity passes, brother … and by not seizing it, you drip a drop of life on the seed of doubt now growing in your left heart.”
Rsoni’s eyes relaxed and his armor pushed out a little more. Was it deception or was there truth? Life had warned him of Lucifer’s lies. But he had hesitated to act and in doing so, squandered any tactical advantage he might enjoy again. For the great devil, Lucifer, was no ordinary archangel. Rsoni would fight valiantly, but he knew in his right heart that he could not hope to win. Now, his life was forfeit as sure as there were ten other conspirators deep in the pit with him.
Lucifer backed away from Rsoni. The guardian would not attack him. “I bear no ill will to you, brother,” he said, turning his back on the angel. And then he stood and paused a moment, savoring what was to come. “But you”—he pointed across the circle to a diminutive angel—the third golden guardian in attendance—“you, Utipa … your treachery will not pass.”
Utipa bared tooth and talon and shoved out her golden armored plumage and she screeched loudly at Lucifer. Then she flapped and flew wildly at him.
Lucifer caught the angel in mid-air. He grabbed one of her wings, and then he spun her and slammed her to the ground. His hand shot to her throat and he pinned her against the rocky floor of the dark and dank pit.
Utipa tried to squawk, but no sound left her mouth and she flapped her wings at Lucifer’s face and cut him and he bled, but he did not let go of her. She stabbed the talons on her hands into Lucifer’s ribs and he gasped, but still did not let go. Utipa kicked at him with her feet and flailed and fought for everything she had and all that was at stake. The liar could not be allowed to… She felt the energy leaving her wings and the resolve of her steel feathers slipping.
“Did you not think I would discover deceit?” Lucifer yelled down at her, still gripping hard on Utipa’s throat. “That I am weak and wayward soul in the Garden that needs flight to Purgatory? I require angel’s assistance? She bid you to save devil from evil, but Eden’s heir—she is evil devil and it is we who must be spared! God, not Devil, threatens destruction of everyone!”
The beautiful blue color left Utipa’s eyes and was replaced by a milky grey transparency, resembling her lost God, Life. And her body went limp and her wings slumped to the floor of the arena, and then she lay dead. Lucifer backed away. And then Utipa’s limp body and wings burst into flames and burned to ash.
Utipa would be reborn, but that was a painful beginning that no angel relished. It was also part of Lucifer’s plan.
“As deceitful deed,” Lucifer spoke at the pile of soot on the ground, “has destroyed you.”
— CLXIX —
THE DRIVE TO the seminary—Father Dominic informed me that’s where we were going—started off with State emergency vehicles racing past us, blaring sirens, rushing to the scene of fire and death at our farm, I suppose.
Father Dominic seemed remarkably calm as they drove by. It reminded me of my father’s calm and collected demeanor after he pulled me out of the icy river. But by the time the drive ended, I was asleep in the leather-covered backseat of the big clergy guzzler, too exhausted to mourn the loss of my parents … of Max.
That would only last until I woke up.
When we pulled through the big timbered gates of the Saint Samuels Seminary Academy in downtown Seattle… I mean, I had never seen one, but except for the huge iron crosses on each side of the big timbered gate, I imagined that it was what a State prison might look like. I was scared.
Maybe our driver could sense that, or she just wanted to break the silence, but as soon as we passed under the archway over the gates, she said, “It looks bigger than it really is.”
But Father Dominic didn’t give her a chance to say anything else. “That’s enough, Sister,” he said. “Benito has been through a lot. I’m sure he doesn’t need any more to think about tonight.”
“Sorry, Father,” was the last thing she said. “It … it won’t happen—”
“Right next to the hall, Sister,” the priest interrupted her.
As our driver parked, I looked back to the catwalks around the walls of the seminary. There were men in black jackets and pants on the tops of the walls surrounding the grounds, and they looked like priests, only they weren’t stalky and short like Dominic. These men were behemoths and they all carried guns. The only time I had seen men bigger was when my mother and I went to the State Med-mart.
And as soon as that thought entered my mind, I think I finally realized she was dead and I was alone. Because I started crying and I just slumped up against the inside of the car window and shook. But were my parents dead?
Dominic reached over and patted the back of my head. “Fear not, Benito, seminary will wipe away every tear from your eyes, and death shall be no more fearful, neither shall you mourn, nor cry, nor feel pain any longer, for the former things have passed away.” And then his hand left my head and with it the last kind gesture I would ever know from the priest who had “rescued” me.
I looked up and out the gates as they closed behind us. I had no inkling at the time that it would be four years before I would pass through them again.
Dominic looked with me, knowing more than I did of what was to come. “Both great and small shall die in that land,” he said. “And they shall not be buried, and no one shall lament for them. But inside seminary, ours is the kingdom of Heaven and we are the glory of mankind, and forever and forever from this eternity unto the next we shall remain.”
&n
bsp; And with that Father Dominic opened the door on his side of the car, stepped out, and disappeared through a large wooden door on the brick building that I would come to know as the Hall of Heaven. Though I would never see the inside of it, as no student or Candidate would until they left Saint Samuels Seminary Academy. And due to circumstances I can’t share with you right now, I never left Saint Samuels so much as I was … released.
One day of grief, that’s all I was given, locked in my cell to mourn the loss of my parents and Max. After that, my training started.
I had no idea what to expect inside the gates of Saint Samuels, but I was informed of what awaited me outside should I decide to leave.
I would learn that the citizens of the Northwest Quarter, and the entire rest of the country for that matter, had decided that authoritarian rule and State brutality was too distasteful to palette any longer. Many of them had decided to take up what little arms they had left to protect themselves from searches to their homes in the middle of the night and State seizures of their property to ensure the peace and prosperity for all.
That didn’t end well for any of them, but it did end. I heard about that, too.
My parents’ farm, I would be told later, was seized by the State shortly after the fire. And then I was listed as a ward of the Clergy.
All this information I received secondhand by way of the young Sister who had chauffeured Father Dominic and me from Duvall to downtown Seattle. For some reason, she had taken a liking to me and snuck me information while I was locked in my cell at night. At first, it was a good thing—I don’t think I could have made it through Purgatory month without her. Later… Well, I’ll let you decide about her.
— CLXX —
WHEN I WAKE up, probably from being tasered or billy-clubbed by the two Protection agents outside the Mike’s entrance, everything is fuzzy and I seem to be … tied to a chair. Whoever hit me in the back of the head… I squint and when I do I can feel that I don’t have my glasses. My shirt’s off, too, probably so they can attach the electrodes. I close my eyes and feel the air. Then I take in a deep breath and prepare myself.
TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3) Page 63