I looked. We were in the dormitory hall and … I remembered. I looked at the wall next to us—into the mirror. I was older … and yet younger than when the battle in the courtyard started. I looked at the back of Barbara’s head. Her beautiful blonde hair was swirled and bound in a bun behind her head and the back of her neck—Benito! My Shandian babysitter was making a full-time job out of reprimanding me for daydreaming about Barbara.
Then the inner voice beside it remembered … something that last—angel or dream, I couldn’t remember—but the voice from my… I had no idea which dream it was. Separating them from reality was hard enough, but keeping track of each one and the events? I did remember the voice … and the riddle. My mind struggled to find it. “Escape is inside yourself,” the huge eagle of an angel had said.
I stared into the mirror. I was no one—a nothing without God, they had taught and tortured into me. Inside yourself, my Shandian mind reiterated the riddle.
“Inside…” I muttered.
“Damnation,” Barbara muttered to herself. “Yes, we’re inside, idiot. And if you don’t shut up we’re about to get caught.”
I stared at the mirror and pushed up my glasses—back tight against the bridge of my nose. And then my reflection smiled at me … but it wasn’t me. I hesitated and then—“Oh my…”
I squeezed hard into Barbara’s hand and she yelped.
I put my finger to my mouth. “Shh,” I said. “Come with me.”
Then I gently pulled on the side of the tall mirror and it slowly swung open, revealing a dark stairway down to… Anywhere was better than getting caught by Father D and burned in the stocks in front of the courtyard.
I could barely see Barbara’s face in the dimly lit staircase, but then something … happened. She turned a bright purple glow … all over. I took off my glasses and put them in my pocket, sure I was still hallucinating from the injection that she gave me. I rubbed my eyes and then looked at the hallway. The entire corridor lit up to a dim orange glow—I could see every detail of it. And I could see Father Dominic and the PI next to him, both glowing red hot flames of fire. And I looked at my hand. Blue? my inner voice said.
When I looked back down the staircase behind the mirror, it glowed deep yellow and orange and bright red—a burning rainbow of salvation that led to escape!
Barbara leaned into me and grabbed onto my arm with both hands. “What the…?” she whispered, looking down into the darkness. “I ain’t going down—”
I quickly stepped behind the big mirror, pulled Barbara in with me, and then I shut it quietly behind us. I held her close to me. I could feel her heart, trying to beat its way out of her chest.
The mirror barely closed, when I heard Father D say, “Where did they…?” He was right on the other side of it now … and I could see his face, glowing red! “Brother?” he said, looking right at me, into the mirror. Then he looked around and then back at Barbara and me, at the mirror. He squinted and then he adjusted his collar. When he did, flames lapped up and out from under the neck of his shirt. Then he turned back to the PI. “I thought you said they were still in the hallway?”
The PI stood right on the other side of our hiding place, facing away from it. “They’re here … somewhere.” If the mirror would have been a waterfall, I could have reached through and strangled him like he deserved.
“How…?” she whispered so softly that I barely heard her.
I put my hand over her mouth.
The PI turned around and looked at Father D. “I have no idea,” he said to the father. “Maybe they’re—”
“Find them,” Father D said, “or I’ll burn you alongside them!”
To Barbara, the dark down the steps behind the mirror was pitch-black molasses. But I could see the orange and yellow and red glow growing brighter with each step we took. We descended down the long curving staircase toward anywhere but the misery awaiting back in the student dormitory hallway.
I couldn’t believe we weren’t dead. Then a bright white light crashed into my face and I stumbled down the last of the steps, dragging Barbara with me. When we landed, I felt my face. It was crushed in on both sides—miserable meat hung from my cheeks and they burned acid into my head. Even my Shandian mind screamed out. “Aaaaaah!”
The scream echoed down the—it sounded like a long hallway. I was sure Father D and the PI would burst down the stairs and catch us, but no one came.
Barbara groaned a little. “Are you okay?” she said to me.
I sat up. “I’ll—” I couldn’t talk.
Barbara touched my face. “Oh my God, Benito,” she said. “Your face is… It’s hurt bad.”
A few seconds later, something pricked my neck, and then I could feel the bones in my cheeks … cracking and crunching themselves back together. I winced and my inner voice braced itself for the excruciating misery and pain that would surely follow. “Don’t.” I shut my eyes.
“Shh,” said Barbara, “you’ll be okay.”
I can’t describe the warm and wonderful feeling that swept through my head. It was the same joy I felt when Max licked my face. Like … no matter what happened, everything was going to be okay. “How can you do…? Why have you been helping me so much?”
“You don’t listen, do you?” Barbara said. “It’s a wonder they haven’t beaten and burned you to death by now. I never seen a idiot that don’t learn like you.”
I stared at her and smiled.
Barbara’s purple glow smiled back and then looked away a little. “Stop it,” she said. Then she looked back at me.
I pulled my glasses back out of my pocket and put them on, and her face turned back to bathed in darkness.
“What are you so happy about?” she asked. “I can feel you smiling.”
I took my glasses back off.
Barbara’s face had turned from purple to a bright shining blue. “You’re down a dark hole, got your face kicked in by a priest, and I just stuck you up with J … again. And you’re sitting there grinning at me, ya giddy little idiot. You are possibly the worst Shandian priest I have ever seen. I’m gonna have to start calling you a ‘gidiot,’ ” she said. “Father Gidiot—that’s a good name for you.” Then she giggled.
“Stop doing that,” I said.
“Doing what?”
I smiled at her. No idea if she could see my face or not, but I didn’t care. “Pretending you’re helping me so you can escape.”
“I’m not pretending nothing,” she said. “This is my Mother a Mercy penance I gotta do so God don’t hate me. You keep being a gidiot and I might just let him—leave you right here.”
I think I chuckled. “I know you like me,” I said. “You could help anyone in here. There was a thousand … when we started. Why me?”
“I … I don’t know,” Barbara said. “I just thought you was… And I was right, too.”
“About what?”
“You don’t understand,” said Barbara. “You’re little and I knew no one would notice if you went missing. Least that’s what I thought when I drove Father D to pick you up. And when I drove back, I could feel you watching me from the backseat. I figured I could get you to help me escape. But then—”
“Wow,” I said. I thought I didn’t know what to say. “That’s … pretty bad.”
“But,” she said, “then I started coming to visit you at night. You was so nice to me and … and the way you looked at me. And now… Damn, Benito, I ain’t never seen no one fight like you. And I knew I had to get you to help me … before they could send me to the Mike.” I barely saw her hang her head in the darkness—my mind felt it more than that. “I’m almost fifteen. You know what that means to a Saint Samuels Sister? … You think you’re the only one gets beaten and… I just couldn’t… I didn’t know what else to do.”
I looked around the darkness. We had escaped, but … to where? More importantly, my Shandian mind was telling me, When is this?
I felt Barbara fidgeting next to me. I pulled my glasses down my nose a l
ittle and looked at her. Her face slowly turned back to a light purple. Whatever her chi had felt when she was explaining her reasoning for tricking me into helping her escape, was now turning back to a combination dark and light aura of purpose.
“How are we gonna get out of here?” she said.
Now I was an unwitting knight in bloody and beaten armor, rescuing a… Was Barbara damsel or devil? My mind told me she was a little bit of both. But my little inner justification voice wanted what it wanted. You have to save her!
I can only remember staring at her and then into the darkness. I had no idea what to do, but somehow… So help me Heaven or Hell, I thought. I knew I would figure it out.
A voice boomed through the black. “Finally found your faith then, did ya?” it bellowed at us. “Right where your nose can sniff it, she hides it … don’t she?”
Then the entire tunnel lit up in an orange glow. I didn’t need glasses or my Shandian mind to tell me it was another angel … of sorts.
The front of the figure was as dark as the tunnel had been. He was outlined in orange light—lit from behind—and he was absolutely huge! Eight feet at least at the top of his head, and the bends of his wings—they were wings—jutted above his head like mountain peaks above a huge boulder. His frame was that of a big barrel of ale that I’d unloaded from trucks for the Priests Feast each Sunday. I could just make out the twisted tips of a mustache extending past both sides of his face. He was holding something big and long in his right hand and he had his left arm wrapped around something that squirmed and squiggled.
“Holy Mother of Mercy!” Barbara said. “You’re a damned ang—”
He bellowed a huge laugh and his breath hit us both like the flames from a hot fire. “Truer than time, lassie,” he said. It sounded like he cawed after he spoke. “She’s a whole house a horrors, this one is. I can see why you’re smitten, Benito. Damsels in distress, don’t ya know—death of every demon and deity in the heavens, they are. Can’t choose ’em though—Lucifer’s granddaughter, though they may be. The lust lies to you like love and then… Well”—he pointed what looked like an axe at Barbara—“there you have it.”
Barbara said, “He and me ain’t—”
“Don’t be offended, love,” the big angel bellowed. “He’s a right fine romp, this one. You’ll see it soon enough. Bit heavy on the boozin’ and blasphemy.” He chuckled. “Ain’t we all though? No finer weapon for the Word, he is. I’ll tell ya that … once he gets goin’.”
I could have lit up the entire tunnel with the whites of my eyes—wide as they were. “Who”—it was the only question to ask—“are you?”
“Better yet,” Barbara said, “what in the devil’s name are you?”
“Not playin’ that game any longer, love,” he said to her. “Fight for me friends now, I do. No god’s army angry as me.” Then he looked right into me. I could feel it. “But me friends is gonna have to start wieldin’ the weight a their half a the wagon right quick. Otherwise … a little cookin’ … be the bottom of your worries, mate. Yours too, lovely lady.”
I was just too shocked to say anything … but excited, too. Or maybe it was the injection, slowly wearing off. Barbara, on the other hand, wasn’t. She had turned back to her normal self.
“You got a name?” she asked. “All you … angels got names, don’t ya? What’s yours?”
For two young minds, beaten and burned towards a faith we had only heard about from a butcher, actually seeing proof of … I didn’t know what, left us with more questions than answers. Surely a demon would eat our souls, and an angel only spoke to… Father D was the only one who they ever talked to … according to him.
“Belligerent as well, are ya?” the angel said to Barbara. “Reminds me a me own lovely lady.” He looked over his shoulder—I still couldn’t make out his face. Then he looked back at me. “Best be busy saving her butt by now, Benito. Me mutton’s molasses be more precious than me own. Don’t go gettin’ any of her guts spilled neither, laddie.”
“Molasses?” I asked.
I would come to find out that Barbara’s mind lived in her mouth. “You talk funny,” Barbara said to him. “All a you long-winded like that? ’Cause if you are, Heaven must be full a hot wind.”
Then our angel got serious. “Heaven’s a cold cunt in a snowstorm, little dove,” he said. “And she’s run by an angry bitch what’s lost her big black marbles. But if you’re lookin’ for heat, Hell’s what you’re after, all right. And after all the cold Heaven’s been rainin’ down on you for your benevolent breakfast, I’d wager you could use a bit a Hell’s heat to warm up your supper.”
My Shandian mind told me that the time for talking to this … angel was over. “We have to go back,” I told him. I knew that for sure. “Not much time left.”
“Truer words,” the angel said, and then he looked over his shoulder again. “Less than you might mention, you have. The both of you bloody bastards, I’m afraid.”
And yet it was just all too much—even for another one of my dreams. And the part about Barbara … I desperately wanted it to be true.
“Another one of ya,” Barbara muttered.
“What’s that then, love,” the angel said. “Some word lose its way out your mouth ’ole then. Get stuck behind all his friends, rushin’ for the exit, did he?”
“Barbara!” I said, surprising myself. I wasn’t really sure if it was now my place to reprimand her rudeness. “He’s not—”
“He’s not answering my questions,” Barbara said to me. “That’s what he’s not doing.” She looked back at him. “I asked what your name was … and why are you helping us? How do we know you ain’t some deceiving demon?”
Our angel—at least that’s what he felt like now—scoffed at her. “Oh I’m demon, right enough,” he said. “Ain’t ever been much for deceivin’, however. If I was, you’d already be using that little glare of yours on your guts.”
It was the first aggressive thing that he had said, and it scared us both.
“I … I didn’t mean nothing,” said Barbara. She looked at me. “I just wanted to know his”—then she looked back at him—“I just wanted to know your name is all. Maybe we heard a you.”
“Ain’t nobody heard a me what’s not dead and damned, love,” he said. Then he paused and … just looked at us both. “But since a bee’s in your bonnet to be makin’ the trip, here’s the whole truth. A good name be better than precious ointment, love. And the day of your death be better than the day of your birth, right enough.” He stood taller than either of us was comfortable with and the tops of his wings scraped and sparked the roof of the rock tunnel. And then he spread his wings wide, screeching them along both walls, like millions of forks on a chalkboard.
We cupped our ears at the sound and cringed and cowered on the warm floor of the tunnel.
“But me name on me friends’ lips in this world be Shannon,” he said. “And me monicker that me mother in Hell gave me? Well, a four-letter word, I am. Guts for breakfast and grog before bed. And I come to give me friend Benito this axe, I have. Though Faith be the name that I hail him in Heaven, this here saint remembers me by Shannon in this world, and in my time … he called me Shax.”
When the angel, Shax … or Shannon—I would have called him whatever he wanted, because Shandian or not, I don’t think he would have had any trouble sending me to wherever he came from… But when he walked toward us, I could see that in addition to the little double-headed axe he had, there was a … little pig under his left arm.
“What’s the pig for?” Barbara asked, not even trying to hold back her giggles.
The angel stopped, looked down at the black-bladed axe in his hand, and then he said, “She’s for loppin’ off heads, she is. A right brutal blade at that, I’ll tell ya. Me ‘little pet pig’ I call her. And she’s infected with a right mean mind for makin’ monkey heads outta men.”
Whatever he was saying, I was sure of two things: one, he was telling the truth, and two, I had no idea
what he was saying. I pointed at the little potbellied pig under his other arm. “I think she means that pig,” I said. “I’m sorry, but that’s just—”
The big angel looked down at it. “That?” he said. “That there’s me partner, Piz, he is. He’s a cacodemon angel after me own left heart. Keep him ’round to remind me of me right.”
“He’s blinder than you, Benito,” said Barbara. “That’s a pig.”
“Oh, he look like beautiful bacon to you, love,” the angel said, “but he be me pig, Piz, sure enough. Reminds me at breakfast each mornin’ he does, not to let you monkeys cook me for dinner.”
And then the little potbellied pig squawked and screeched and … transformed into a muddy-looking miniature angel with wet dirt on his feathers, and crusted mud on his face. His eyes were big and round and … red, and he stood next to… He was barely a third the big angel’s size. He growled when he spoke. “You sure this is him? And this”—he flitted a wing at Barbara—“is his…?” He eyed Barbara, cocking his head to the side and grunting a little. “She does not appear as one he would ever consort with. Too … pretty.”
Barbara just stared back at them. I did, too. Judgment… I thought. The “heaven” Barbara injected into me, I was finding out, was more hallucination than healing.
Shannon, or Shax the angel, looked at Barbara, too. He gripped and shook his axe a little at her. “I’ll wager me little pet pig on it.”
“Looks like you may have to,” the little angel, Piz, said. Then the dirty angel, or devil, turned and walked behind Shax. “Give it to him then,” he said as he left, “and let us be gone, before he loses his head.”
Shax handed the big axe down to me—it was heavy and hard—and then he said, “Mind your melon with him, mate. He’s a traitorous bastard, he is. He’ll stomp in your face, he will. And don’t think turnin’ your other cheek will stop him. That’s a fine feathered fairy tale, that is. He’ll eat your eyes for breakfast, he will. You’ll have to hack off his head, before you lose yours.”
I looked down at the double-sided blade in my hand. “What do I do with this?”
TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3) Page 76