How did we…? They caught us in the hall. They’ll burn us! “Barbara!” I screamed. I had to save her, she had helped me … so much. I still didn’t understand why she had done it, but I didn’t care.
“Let her go!” I screamed.
“I warn you,” Father Dominic bellowed back, “as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now your works of the flesh are evident for all to see: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife”—then his voice sounded like it got louder and it felt like he was speaking straight up at God—“your jealousy and fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and vile things like these are a shadow of the past eternity. I shall entertain them no more.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, because I hadn’t done any of those things. I struggled through the pain to look at Barbara—I had to rotate my head slightly to see her. She was whimpering, her face was contorted and her eyes were closed tight. I felt a jolt go through my heart when she screamed for me. “Benito! Don’t let him beat me!”
I was sure that Father Dominic would not burn a Sister of the—
“These trials,” he bellowed, “will show that your faith is genuine, my children. It will be tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though it is far more precious than mere gold. So if your faith remains strong, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when God is revealed to the whole world.”
He paused so long that I thought he wasn’t going to continue. My body prepared for the flames to burn me again.
But then Father Dominic spoke again, “Most of you do not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? So I ask you”—an eerie silence fell over the courtyard—“are you a slave to sin … or a servant of righteousness?”
Three years of broken fingers, beaten bodies, and burned-in benevolence brought one to the realization that Father Dominic’s questions required no answers. No one spoke, and no one would save Barbara and me from the fire.
I could feel the rage inside me building—my Shandian mind be damned to the inferno for calling for calm and restraint! But as angry as I was, I could feel that my mind … pulling me inside my memories and my training … raged even more.
I remembered the first day of… I think by then I had suffered two or three days as the chosen fingerling … and at least one horrific morning of being burned at the pulpit until it … felt like I was dead. And I knew that Barbara had nurtured and comforted me, no matter what she had said back in the dormitory hallway.
But on day six hundred and sixty-five—one year and three hundred days into our indoctrination as seminary students at Saint Samuels, faithfully following the Word as preached to us by our new father—Dominic made an announcement that would change every one of us into “Warriors for the Word.”
From high atop the courtyard pulpit he had addressed the roughly seven hundred of us still left alive. Barbara had informed me each night of the evil and vile fates that the other three hundred young souls had suffered. One by one they fell to some brutal test or another, administered by the only authority we knew. Because the merciful God Father Dominic spoke of clearly had no control or presence at Saint Samuels. And one by one he handed down judgment and secret execution to send their souls to Heaven … or Hell. No one would really ever know which soul received which.
“Today,” Father Dominic had boomed at the front of our formation back then, “you shall all put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the Devil. Today you shall become Shandian warriors of the Word of God. Your souls have been tested by water and earth and wind, and at Saint Samuels we have burned in your faith and purified it in the crucifix of fire”—he looked down and addressed the cadre of Priest Instructors—“and we have done our best to empty your hearts of evil sins of the flesh.” Then he looked back up at us. “Now your minds shall become empty glasses. And then we shall fill them up with the power and purpose of the sweet nectar of life’s Word. Today … you shall all become Candidates in the battle against evil and darkness. Those of you who survive will become priests and be granted your own church from which to save souls from damnation. Those of you who do not will join our Lord in Heaven.”
As my Shandian mind took me back to re-witness its birth, the only message it carried with us was He is a liar! But then it focused my dream and made me pay particular attention to the next words that Father Dominic had spoken.
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood,” he said, “but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Stand therefore, having fastened on a belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, with your brothers in benevolence.”
And that’s how it went … for a full two more years. Father Dominic would start the day telling us how lucky we were to be warriors for Heaven, and then the PI’s would take over and beat and brutalize us for the rest of the day. Then we would wince and drag our bloody and beaten Shandian skills back to our dormitory and collapse.
Our exhausted bodies and our hallucinating minds would be woken up a mere five hours later to be slowly rinsed by the relentless Seattle rain, and then we would repeat the process—the kicking, punching, agility training, and mental mind melding.
Time folded into itself as our blood and bruises blended together. None of us could separate the results of one beating from another. But slowly, and as certainly as each day started with Seattle mist, we got stronger, faster and more powerful. Students started fending off Priests during sparring, fingers stopped getting broken, Candidates stopped being beaten and burned, and then … we all started resisting our masters as we became stronger than they were.
PI’s were bested in combat sparring—a few of their fingers got broken for a change—and we developed into a pecking order pack of wild wolves, hungry and thirsting for the blood of our enemies in Hell. And though it would take a Shandian dream trip back into my mind to realize it … I was poised to ascend to the pinnacle of that pack.
By the end of our Shandian training—year four for any of us who hadn’t completely surrendered to the relativity of time—there were barely a hundred of us left. All of us were strong, all of our minds were more powerful than we could have ever imagined … and I was the strongest one. And for an arrogant, prideful and brutish dictator, absolutely certain of his righteousness and rank … that was a very big problem.
So Dominic, the priest that we all knew and feared as Father D, but whose real name none of us would ever understand the meaning of even if we discovered it… For a vengeful archangel from … which Heaven none of us knew, turned traitorous and treacherous spy for his new and only God, Life. Standing behind another was simply intolerable.
But my mind had taken to Shandian so completely that it became an otherworld entity all its own. It knew events before they happened, felt thoughts from people and beasts and beings, and understood what it had been called to do … though the vessel that it found itself inside, resisted and cowered at every dangerous and dark corner.
And there was no more dangerous, dark or deafening turn of events than when my Shandian mind told my little inner voice of reason that it had to kill Father Dominic.
When my Shandian mind allowed my body and soul to come back to the sin and misery of the stocks, I looked across at Barbara’s head and hands, bound and shackled like mine. Then I closed my eyes and said a prayer. But it wasn’t a prayer to God—it was clear that God had forsaken me right along with the thousand other boys who started at Saint Samuels and the hundred that remained living. And my Lord Savior had made suffer a girl who had only ever tried to ease my own suffering at that place.
I spoke quietly at first, staring into Barbara’s anguish
as I set my mind to the prayer. I made a vow and a promise to her for her kindness and comforting soul, and then I handed my fate over to the Shandian warrior inside my mind, now preparing for justice. “Lord Almighty … if you dare to listen,” my mind said aloud, “my name is Benito Octavio Benedetti, and I will smite these evil people with blindness of heart and turn their reproach upon their own heads, and offer them for prey in this land of captivity.”
The cadre of PI’s grumbled and mumbled to my left.
So I spoke directly to them, “I shall not cover up their iniquity so that their sins may be blotted out by thee. For I have been provoked to anger, and now I shall give and believe and have faith according to deeds, and I shall send an avenging archangel of Lucifer if need be, to chase and persecute and confound them. And death shall come upon them as they have come upon me with untruths.”
And then the murmurs started to sift their way through the remaining formation.
So I spoke to my fellow students. “I shall slay them, my brothers,” I promised, “lest my own people forget. Then I shall scatter them and bring them down, for the sins of their mouths and the words of their lips let them be taken in their pride, and for the lying which they speak, I shall consume them in wrath, and let them know the heart of their true God that rule in Heaven.”
And then I spoke directly at the man who believed he was God in our eyes, the devil demon, Father Dominic, “So I bid you … Aax, traitor of Satan, reveal yourself and pour out thine indignation upon me if you feel your faith as I do, and let thy wrathful anger take hold of me. And bid your master to blot me from her book of life … as I shall replace your ink with my blood in the book of those who have loyally lived.”
There was no sound more deafening than the cracking and splintering of the top half of the crossbeam that held my head and hands … as it slid up and off my neck. And there wasn’t an eye to be turned away from me, blind or otherwise, when the stocks around my neck and hands broke and I stood up.
TAINT
— CXCI —
THE SEATTLE DAY gives way to dark at the Mike with barely a change to be noticed. When I peer out the window of Shannon’s shop, the night glow of lights from beneath the thick blanket of fog looks little different from the dim gray glow that the sun casts. During the day, the sunlight tries desperately to boil its way through the mass of moisture above the Mike. But the fog shifts like quicksand, never allowing escape from its grasp no matter how much the sun struggles.
There is no escape from the squad of Protection soldiers marching down the street toward us either. They spit and spray bullets at any citizen or sinner who dallies too long getting out of the way. Blood and bile from spilled guts mix with the accumulated mist and heads for storm drains, swirling together with the stench and excrement of millions in the pipe under the street. Soon it will all be joining their fellow followers’ lost liquid in the Pacific Ocean’s vast vat of forgotten friends.
The Protection squad is single-minded in their purpose and they march ever closer to our hiding place as if they can see through the walls to us. This is no raid, it’s an ordered execution. But by whom? Protection wouldn’t murder one of the Clergy, black-bagged at three in the morning or beaten bloody out in the broad daylight. Another question I’ll have for Shannon if we live through this.
I raise my voice at him, “They’re headed straight here!” I’m sure he already knows. He … knows things like I do. “Three minutes at most.”
Shannon’s voice is all business and—I never noticed it before—his voice is as calm as the crucifixes on his wall. “Bloody bastards,” he mutters. He looks at his remaining watchman and says, “Slow them down.”
All three of us know what he means.
“And, Omia…” Shannon says to his soon-to-be-dead watchman.
Omia turns back straight-faced—I don’t think I’ve seen him smile since I met him. “Yeah, boss?”
Shannon smiles at Omia. “…hand ’em a couple angel asses, will ya? Let ’em know what end’s what, mate.”
Omia shakes his head. “Fucking resurrection…” he mutters.
Shannon smiles at him. “She’s a bloody box on your beard, ain’t she.”
“See you back in Hell,” Omia says, and then he’s out the front door.
“If you can still call it that,” Shannon mumbles.
The two of us stare at each other. I’m not sure if the silence is because Shannon just sent his last watchman to his death, or if it’s because both of us knows what’s coming next, but time slows and we listen to the muffled screaming and screeching, and wild cries and roars out in the street as if none of this is really happening.
“Down me rabbit hole, then,” Shannon says. “Don’t go getting your blind ass burned to ashes this time, eh.”
I can’t seem to remember what was down the escape door in the floor of Shannon’s shop, but my Shandian mind tells me that I’d better. “Peace be with you, brother,” I say. It’s the only thing I can think of, and I’m more than a little bit perturbed at myself afterward, as it might be the last thing my friend remembers of me.
Shannon chuckles a little. “And Christ died on a cross on account a me sins, too. I’ll wager you even money, Benito, that there tale ain’t true. But if it makes your brain feel any better, I’ll pray to me plucked pig if the sow gets us clear of this.” And with that he scoops up his little potbellied companion and they both vanish down the door to … I still can’t remember. Maybe I never knew.
— CXCII —
THERE WERE NO bright sons left at Saint Samuels that day, just as there would be no bright shining sun that could burn or boil its way through Seattle’s thick blanket of fog to shine truth down into the seminary’s tortured halls. Anyone who survived the battle in the courtyard would be bathed in the bile and blood of false beliefs and treachery turned to torture.
The Clergy would remain shrouded in misery and mystery, like the deep gray glow that engulfed the Northwest Quarter on near every day of its existence. It didn’t matter which faith emerged triumphant at the dawn, truth and deception would meld together to cloak the depth of the plot. It was my task to see that done. And my Shandian mind told me I had until the end of the day to set that deception in motion. I had to get back to … somewhere.
That distraction proved near fatal. CRACK! A searing whip burned into my back and I screamed out in pain.
And then another crack in front of me and Barbara was screaming and begging, “Please!” she yelled. “Benit—aaaaaaahhh!”
I saw the one behind her with the torch, smiling like some sort of possessed priest as Barbara screamed. And I ran at him.
I didn’t get far before I took a bursting blow to my side and went rolling across the ground. I was up in an instant, searching for my attacker.
It was Father D turned evil demon, and he smiled at me—a wicked grin that I’d never seen on his face, despite years of obviously enjoying torturing all of us. “Let all who are under a yoke as slaves regard their own masters as worthy of honor,” he said. At least the lying was over.
We stood and looked at each other. Maybe we recognized the other’s power for the first time, maybe we hated one another just enough… My mind pushed at him and then his burned back at me. Fire and heat and hatred toward me … and everyone like me. And then I realized it.
The entire formation in the courtyard—what was left of us students anyway—was deep in battle. Student Candidates fought against PI’s and they kicked and elbowed and kneed as they themselves had been beaten. And the Priest Instructors whipped and swung torches and yelled scripture at the remaining students as they had been trained to.
Blood spilled, and limbs cracked and fingers twisted completely off, on both sides, as screams of agony accentuated the fighting. And I paused to feel it. Blind rage and hatred almost pushed back the damp cold of the lingering fog up into the dark gray above the courtyard. And my mind—Focus!
“Benito!” Barbara’s voice screamed at me a split second later,
“he’s—”
Father “Demon” punched Barbara so hard, he knocked her unconscious. Her head hung limp in the stocks. “Your mouth invites a beating, Sister,” he laughed down at her.
I moved like a cat that can taste the tail of a mouse it’s going to eat, and I punched him twice in the lower back and ribs, then I kneed his hip and punched at his neck, but he spun and blocked my blow.
Then his other arm followed his block and a sledgehammer hit me on the right side of my face. I tried to spin to my left with the blow—absorb some of the impact—but I wasn’t fast enough.
The sounds of my brothers fighting their masters got muffled. “And a fool’s lips walk into a fight,” the demon said as I fell.
Then a bright light flashed into my mind and I stared up at the glowing night fog, mist blanketing my glasses and face.
Father D’s face appeared over mine. “Father”—he looked even more demon now than wannabe deity. His faced was contorted and … he looked like a lion and a bear mixed together, and I knew my mind had snapped into another one of my hallucinations.
Then the demon lifted up his leg and a huge hoof hovered above my face. And I turned my head to the right, exposing my cheek. “I shall not rise up against you, demon,” I said to Father D, turned evil devil. “Take my left cheek as your prize.”
“Very well,” he said, “let it join your right, Priest.” And his huge cloven hoof stomped down onto my face and the dark damp night air turned to a bright and burning flash of star and my mind was gone—brains smashed into the black.
When I woke up … I was squeezing someone’s hand and I was terrified … but I felt … woozy too.
“Barbara?” I whispered, not sure if I should. I mean, clearly I was hallucinating … yet again. And my Shandian mind reminded me, You don’t have much time—a few hours at most. “Quiet,” I whispered at it.
“Yeah, quiet,” Barbara whispered back at me. She squeezed my hand hard. “We gotta get out of here,” she barely made sound when she said it.
TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3) Page 75