HOPES AND THE DAMNED:
A HELLRAISER NOVEL
Part I: Excrescence
Part II: Cynosure
Part III: Convergence
Part IV: Wolves and the War
Part V: The Lifting of the Swords
Part I: Excrescence
White doves floated in a bright blue sky, circling above
a green grove of large leafy trees. A creek ambled by, adding the sounds
of tiny waterfalls. A group of people picnicked in a meadow at the center
of the grove. This gathering included what seemed to be every race of
humanity residing on the Earth. Ages varied from just old enough to be out
and about to what looked to be over a hundred. Laughter and love floated
in the air not unlike the doves above.
He wanted to join them, but couldn't. He was a watcher to
this wonder, a voyeur to this joy. This then, he deduced, must be a
dream.
From the distance came a low rumble as storm clouds
appeared on the horizon. The laughter disappeared. Within seconds, black
clouds covered the sky. Doves began falling to the ground, singed black
and smoking. Everyone bolted for the cover of the trees but never made it.
Chains with sharp hooks shot out of the sky and caught the crowd, yanking
them one by one into the sudden night. The creek turned red as a rain of
blood fell on the meadow. The sound of waterfalls was drowned out by
screams from above.
Two were spared. The oldest and the youngest. The oldest
cackled a laugh so shrill that the baby's ears bled. The baby's cries
could not be heard.
The dreamer suddenly found himself at the baby's side. It
was no longer crying and instead smiled as blood spattered its face. Its
eyes were black as night and it turned its head towards him. He noticed a
very ornate lacquered box, sitting on the blanket covering the baby. The
old man stopped his laughing and spoke, pointing at the sky.
"Look at that, child! All of them! Gone to Hell's Heaven!
You are the way! Oh yes! You are the way!"
The dreamer heard bells chiming and felt a gust of cold
air hit the back of his neck. He instinctively turned to see the
source.
A church was on the other side of the creek, its doors
open wide. The cross on its steeple was on fire. The ground began to shake
violently and he noticed that the church was sinking. In it, he saw a
bearded man in robes falling against one of the pews. This man looked out
at them and started to yell.
"In my Father's name, I cast thee...".
The doorway to the church disappeared beneath the earth,
muffling the rest of the sentence. Within seconds, the church was
underground. The cross was the last to go, making a popping, crackling
sound as it went.
The dreamer felt the stares of the baby and the old man.
He heard the old man take in a deep raspy breath, then...
"Wake up!"
Andrew Riest awoke to the ringing of his phone. He felt
disoriented for a good three rings as the dream seemed to call at him. It
took two more rings for him to pull himself out of bed and get to the
phone, the experience becoming more forgotten by the second. If one
rehearsed a dream, Andrew knew, a person would be more apt to retain it.
No rehearsals today.
"Dr. Riest?" Said a gruff voice, sounding far too alert
for 3:13 a.m..
"Yeah." came the reply wrapped in a yawn.
"Could you please... come down to the Willowby Building?
We have a... major situation down here... and I'm afraid... well... um...
Just get over here, will ya?"
That was Sheriff Tom Burke. This must be something
really bad, thought Andrew. Tom was rarely bothered by anything. It
was said that he shed one tear at his parent's funeral, probably the only
tear he would ever make. Whatever could make that man fumble, thought
Andrew, would make most people crazy.
"Sure Tom. I'll be right there. Are you okay?" asked
Andrew.
There was a few seconds of silence, followed by a cough.
Then, "No. Don't suppose I am. See you in a bit."
The line went dead. Then came two things, the dial tone
and a dread the likes of which the twenty six year old doctor had never
known.
The dream was all but gone now.
He began dressing, thinking of what he would need. The
medical bag had most of his tools in it and whatever ambulance showed up
would no doubt have the rest. He would make sure to grab a soothing CD on
the way out. This would allow him to get his mind in the right frame
before arriving on whatever terrible scene awaited him.
This new soul was now ready for Leviathan's consumption,
thought the Cenobite. He had tortured the soul's flesh until it was just
about to cross over into madness. Easing up on the barrage of sweet pain
just enough to hold the soul in limbo, he thought of the skill he had
acquired through the dark decades since he himself was converted.
The task of balancing a soul on the brink of madness was
only for the most experienced of Cenobites. A little too much and the
subject would escape into madness. This would bring dire consequences for
the only way to bring a soul back was to administer the kind of pleasure
that brought Leviathan pain: the pleasure known as Joy. Not a smart thing
to do. Typically, the privilege of serving the Great One was taken away. A
Cenobite would be stripped of scars and power and forced to be nothing
more than a subject, a definite step backwards. Conversely, if not enough
pain was administered, the subject would begin to build defenses against
the pain. The more defenses built, the finer the line to madness was,
which increased the chances of demotion.
As he adjusted one of the long pins that had been driven
into his flesh long ago, he became aware of the human soul buried within
him, squirming to break free. The adjustment was for that soul. It had
cost him his chance to establish a dominion on Earth, something for which
there was eternity to exact revenge. Leviathan tolerated these ambitions,
he guessed, because such endeavors typically meant more souls. There had
certainly been a bounty culled from the Cenobite's attempt to leave.
At that moment, he felt the call. The room he was in
began to shudder as if a great beast was chewing on it. One of the walls
began to darken. Then a large part of the wall seemed to dissolve as the
chewing sound became a deafening roar. He instinctively eased up on the
pain to the victim. The direct attention of the Lord of Hell would
threaten anyone's grip on reality. The new acquisition would no doubt be
absorbed into the puzzle box God, and it was important to make the
transition as painful as madness would allow.
A great black beam shone into the room, encasing the
flesh of the subject (even the scraps on the floor) in a bubble of
darkness. The bubble lifted up and floated through the wall, picking up
speed as it went. The Cenobite could not see Leviathan, but there was no
mistaking its presence. As the bubble passed through the wall, the wall
slowly regained solidity. The roaring and the beam faded away and as the
wall remade itself whole, the room settled down. The whine of a high
pitched wind and chains clanging and rattling was all that remained to
keep the demon company. His newly anointed assistants were busy with their
own subjects. Four souls had been brought to Hell. The Twins took two. One
went to the Princess and the last offered to Leviathan.
The Cenobite knew there would be no thanks. None were
necessary. He simply did what he was created for. That was all. The newly
absorbed soul would be frozen in that last moment before the darkness
surrounded it, exuding extreme terror and suffering for as long as
Leviathan contained it.
Once again, the angel of pain had justified his
existence. It was now time to check in on his troops.
Andrew barely missed the deer that bolted across the road
in front of him. The car came to screeching halt sideways in the road. He
was just about to cross the Bethany Creek bridge. Now he was parallel to
the river and in his headlights, he could see the deer run down the bank
of the creek. It splashed through the water as it made its way to the
other side, its white tail bouncing like a ball. Just before it reached
the bank, it suddenly stopped and turned to look at him. its eyes glowed
bright as they reflected the headlights. The deer sniffed the air. Andrew
felt a chill as his imagination played a nasty trick on him and suggested
it was talking, warning him of a coming terror. It then turned away and
bounded up the bank and was gone.
Andrew pulled himself together and got his car going
again. He was now quite awake and scanned the street sides much more
carefully as he went. He noticed that a lot of people were out in their
yards and on the sidewalks. How they stared at him as he drove by! Their
expressions made him feel like the only entry in some dark parade of doom.
Their apprehension couldn't have been more visible if they had painted it
on big glow-in-the-dark banners and waved them at him.
The Willowby Building was around the next left and then
the right after that, up on Thompson Hill. Andrew recalled the story of
the miser, 'Old John' Thompson, who had built the place and had supposedly
given it to the town on his deathbed, with the catch that it only be used
to house the poor. His request was honored and fourteen years later, it
still housed the town's down and out. All utilities were covered by the
old man's trust fund as well as upkeep on the place. There were currently
twelve people living there: a husband, wife, and their two children; two
very old ladies, each without a family; a war vet who'd seen saner days;
and five siblings who'd been abandoned a few years back. They had appeared
at one of the local bars on Halloween night (the eldest, Joleen, turned
eighteen two days later, was appointed guardian of her younger siblings
and given a job at the feed mill). The four minors had recently began
causing trouble in town and by all accounts, seemed to have fallen in with
some bad, out of town elements.
Andrew saw bright colored lights at the top of the hill
as he made the last turn. This wasn't the first time he'd made this trip.
Two people passed away in that place since he came to town last year (both
from poor health and self neglect) and he wondered how many would be added
to the toll tonight. He pulled his car over out of the way and got out. As
he ran to the building, he got his answer. All four of Joleen's siblings.
This information came from Mrs. Batesley, the town snoop. He barely caught
an 'I told you so' as he came into the front yard of the place. Sheriff
Burke was at the front door, holding Joleen who sobbed uncontrollably.
Andrew couldn't see any of the other tenants. Tom looked up from Joleen
and noticed Andrew. He gently steered Joleen towards a man in white, who
escorted her away from the scene. The sheriff met Andrew halfway down the
eight or nine steps to the front door.
"Hey there, Andrew." Tom said as he wiped Joleen's tears
off of his badge, trying not to be obvious about it.
"Sheriff." said the young doctor, trying hard to not let
his fear show. The sense of dread had been multiplying the closer he got
to the place. Then, "What's going on?"
"All four of Joleen's siblings seem to have been...
butchered." The word hung on the air like a cloud.
"How? By who?"
The sheriff started up the stairs and motioned for Andrew
to follow. They passed through the front door and once inside, Tom turned
and spoke in a low voice just loud enough for Andrew to hear.
"That's the weird part. We have no idea. The room the
kids were in is covered in blood. That room has one window and it is still
locked from the inside. The door itself wasn't locked but as I opened it,
I noticed the chain was. There is no way someone could have gotten out of
that room after killing everyone in it. It's as if the killer disappeared
altogether. All four kids were seen going into the building at the same
time and we can't find them anywhere else."
"Bodies?" asked Andrew.
"Even weirder. There are none."
The next thought in Andrew's mind was that the kids
pulled some elaborate prank but the sheriff's next statement brought that
thought to an end.
"We thought it might be a nasty joke on their part, but
those people who were in the building and can still talk intelligently
claim the screams definitely came from the room. The stereo in there was
off when we found it and there was no other way sound could have been
piped in. They were killed and then somehow both them and the killer
disappeared. I've thought of every possible angle and none of them fits
the facts. We're looking at some kind of wicked mystery here, Andrew." The
sheriff actually looked scared. This made the whole thing even more
unnerving.
"What can I do?" asked Andrew, trying even harder to be
professional.
"Well, I thought I might have some bodies or possibly
patients for you here. I called once I was sure the killer wasn't here.
But like I said, no kids. Everybody else is off to the hospital. I can't
actually let you into the room but I can get you close. Wanna see it?"
Are you nuts?! thought Andrew. "Yes" is what came
out.
At this the sheriff turned and led Andrew up the long
stairs to the second floor. At the top he motioned to the left down the
hallway. There were two officers at the other end of the hallway, going in
and out of rooms. Andrew noticed a pool of blood on the floor in front of
one of the open doors. He walked to the room's door and peered inside.
Blood everywhere. On the walls, on the four beds against
them, the dressers, the ceiling and most definitely the floor. Everywhere
in there, blood.
Andrew felt disappointed in himself and like many times
before, doubted his sensibilities. This was because he felt absolutely no
fear anymore, now that he was actually looking at the scene of the crime.
He actually found himself fascinated by the patterns made by the
splattered blood. This behavior certainly helped him in his chosen field,
but it was downright distressing in this extreme. Can nothing get to me?
he thought. A thought popped into his head that he'd been trying to keep
deep inside.
He himself had lived in a place similar to this for a
while, but it was actually an orphanage. His mother had given birth and a
name to him and then died. Years later he used his influence as a doctor
to gain access to the records kept on them and found out the truth, or at
least some of it.
Then he noticed the glint of something shiny under one of
the beds.
"See that?", asked Andrew.
The sheriff said he didn't, but obviously believed
Andrew. He stepped into the room onto a spot on the floor that wasn't
covered in blood. There were spots like that in various places and it was
possible to negotiate most of the room without getting any fluids on
oneself. Andrew pointed to a blanket hung over the bed next to the left
wall and the sheriff maneuvered himself around so he could see under the
bed.
"Some kind of box. Looks like it's made of wood and
metal. We don't dare disturb it, but I'll definitely let the feds
know."
This brought back more memories. He knew his mother had
lost her mind before his birth and had to be watched all the way to the
end of the term. She claimed she had solved some kind of puzzle box that
guaranteed Heaven and actually went there. She had been blind all her life
and was given the gift of sight by an angel of pain, what others would
call a demon. She then did something no one else dared. She instantly fell
in love and forced herself on him. He had been surprised by not only her
lack of fear, but her utter adoration of him. He gouged her eyes back out
with his thumbs and shoved her back through the portal she had opened. She
tried to find the box but it was gone. She was now trapped here with no
way to get back to her professed true love, the only sight she would ever
see. As it turns out, she was pregnant. It said in the records that she
agreed to hold on until the child was born and would then die after giving
it an appropriate name.
The name he got was yet another mystery, Andrew Clayton
Riest. Her name was actually Bonnie Lynn Henderson. He could find no local
references to Riest as a last name but she claimed that indeed that was
the father's last name.
As he thought about this, he remembered Tom's statement
about the feds.
As if on cue, he noticed a group of suits and uniforms
rounding the corner at the top of the stairs and coming towards him. One
of the men motioned Andrew towards the stairs. He complied and glanced
back as he walked away from the room.
Andrew overheard the sheriff telling one of the newcomers
about the shiny box. This individual quickly walked to the room, slipped
some plastic bags over her black shiny shoes, pulled some rubber gloves
out of her pocket, put them on, and immediately disappeared into the room.
Thirty or so seconds later, she reappeared, holding the box. Andrew caught
only a slight glimpse but enough to see some kind of pattern etched on
it.
It then hit him like brick. It was the box from the dream
this morning and it also fit his mother's description of her box as well.
Again, the feeling of dread.
The federal agent headed for the stairs, wrapping the box
in some kind of cloth. As she was about to pass by Andrew at top of the
stairs, she fumbled her parcel. Andrew wasn't sure, but it seemed the box
jumped out of the woman's hand right at him. Andrew caught the shiny box
with both hands in a kind of cradle grip.
The first thing Andrew felt was a massive jolt, as if he
stuck his entire hand into a light socket.
The next thing he felt was a surge of knowledge;
knowledge of everyone's deepest fears and hopes. This was initially
limited to the people in the building and the yard outside, but it was
expanding outward through the town. Within a few seconds, he knew every
deep dark secret of everyone within the town limits and a few surrounding
farms.
He also felt a chill at the edges of his consciousness.
He could sense something was terribly wrong with the world. No, that
wasn't it. Something within the world, yet somehow removed from it. A
sense of overpowering suffering seemed to nip at his mind, begging him to
think it into existence. The hair on the back of his neck seemed to almost
jump off of his body, such was the severity of it.
He tried hard to think of nothing. Absolutely nothing,
but the world wanted in. He then noticed his eyes were shut and tightly
so. He started to open them but there came light so bright that it was
painful. His ears were then bombarded by a roar so loud it almost drowned
him with its fury. During this, his nerve endings started burning. He felt
as if someone had placed him in a red hot furnace, baking him with a fire
strong enough to melt metal. He wanted to scream but his jaws and tongue
screamed back a resounding 'No!'
He thought about his apartment and how much he would like
to pull the pillow on his bed over his head, but that thought disappeared
in the storm of sensations. He felt the first pangs of madness and the
sensory flood eased up and then fell away. He opened his eyes slowly as
the roar died out. He began to see colors and solid dark shapes moving by
him to his left and right. This puzzled him. He could sense he was moving,
but if he was in the building, he should see the walls.
Everything began to come into focus and the shapes slowed
their passage. As they solidified, they came to a stop.
The shapes were the buildings and cars which lined the
street he had just driven through a little bit ago. He noticed that the
sun was out and it looked as if it was late in the morning.
This can't be, he thought. What's happened to
me? No answer. Then, six hundred and fifty three answers. All fueled
by fear. All showing the same scene. Some were fuzzy because those minds
were imagining what had happened based on what they were told. There were
reporters here with their skeptical eyes. There were protectors of the
peace; the FBI, CIA, etc.. Everyone who was anyone was on their way. 'A
miracle' some said. 'A savior', some cried. Others, a devil.
He then got a basic understanding of what transpired from
what their minds painted. When the box had fallen/leapt into his hands, he
had burst into bright light. He had stood there for a few minutes, then
had lifted off the floor and floated down the stairs, out the front door
and through the yard. He had floated down the hill toward the center of
town where he was now. It had taken six hours to do this, with the media
buzzing the town like wasps. The National Guard were on the way to secure
the area. Everyone who got within a few feet of him got dizzy and passed
out. Sheriff Burke and his officers, as well as the suits, were all
recovering nearby. This he got from all the minds around him, each lacing
it with their own take, but the essential facts were the same.
One mind stood out among the rest. A mind with knowledge
of a world beyond ours and in it. A mind as sharp as a surgical saw, but
with a heart as empty as a vacuum. Empty of all compassion, all warmth,
all love. It was a servant and guardian, a taker and giver, a demon on a
long leash. It was the puzzle box's keeper and the box was a doorway to
Hell.
...and who is this? Why are they on this side? They've
the gift of reshaping and yet do not use it on the flesh near them. Is
this a test? Has my usefulness ended? ...and is this the replacement? Has
there been a change in Hell that I am not allowed to know? I gaze homeward
and all seems fine. The suffering crests an all time high. New souls go
daily through many, many doorways.
Mine is the honor of serving the greatest of all,
LeMarchand's Configuration. That name was Hell's sustenance for centuries.
There were other configurations, but none as pure. It breathes of Hell's
power. From one's hands to another's lap to another's bosom to another's
hands. And I, its sail. The winds of desire and damnation carry us further
on.
Leviathan, the one who was without form but whose form
was Hell, fulfilled the Configuration's dream for a likeness in order to
open the door wider. A new doorway for the unschooled, the lazy, the low.
Flesh being flesh, it is permissible...
Why is this one floating? He traveled, in a trance,
from the place of the opening to the middle of this village. He has come
to a stop and has dimmed from the glorious white of hellfire. He senses
me. My mind is open to him. How did he get over here and why hasn't he
been recalled for more training? He is not using his power in the way it
was intended.
Ah. Mine is the task to oppose him. He has the
Configuration. I must bury my true plan under layers of false routes. He
seems new to the game of the reading. Here is the advantage and the way. A
victory.
The Cenobite stopped at the doorway to the room that the twins were in. He sensed an old wind blowing from the past and remembered
his decision to let a woman have him in passion. He also remembered
planting his seed in her, with the instructions to not devour hers, but to
give her seed the powers he had. He had programmed the awakening to occur
during any contact with any Configuration. The seed would then be able to
open a doorway at will. Leviathan wasn't aware of this part of the plan.
When the Cenobite faced judgment for pushing the woman back through, he
had told the god that '...To inflict great suffering, Lord, one must know
great suffering.' Leviathan had believed him, forgiven him and set him
high in Hell's hierarchy. Now, all that was needed was to wait. It now
looked like the waiting was soon to be over. Still, he had duties to
perform. He stepped through the doorway to the twins' room.
Two teenagers hung in the middle of the room. Their limbs
were interwoven in a nearly impossible fashion with parts of them pierced
by chains coming from the walls and ceiling. Each little movement by one
of them caused the other great pain and the subsequent reaction caused the
initial mover even more. Their flailing came in waves as did their
agonized screams.
Excellent, thought the maker of the twins.
The twins had stumbled onto him and the Princess as they
were debating on how to bring about the end of the LeMarchand line
(presently known as Merchant). He had twisted the twins together into a
Siamese bond (this choice affected their choices in torture as well). The
LeMarchand line had survived that day and looked to continue on. One day,
the Cenobite knew, he would meet that bloodline again, and next time it
would be the end of it.
He turned back to the hallway. His non-involvement in the
twins play was enough for them to know that their actions were
satisfactory.
As he made his way to the Princess's area, he thought of
Hell's future. its god was growing more powerful every time someone came
through the portal. It had souls from a thousand dimensions and had spread
its presence into a few of them. It was said that each type of being saw
Leviathan in a different way. Those from Earth saw it as a massive puzzle
box. Those from elsewhere saw it as a massive tree, or a cloud, or an eye.
The interpretations of Leviathan were endless, and so were those of Hell
itself. This was Heaven, or a place visited during sleep, or a place of
some beings' true birth, the world behind being no more than a cocoon.
In addition, beings that came over had different traits
here. For instance, Humans were mortal on Earth but were immortal here and
any power they had was buried deep in areas of their brains which, as of
yet, were dormant. Not all of them had this buried power though, and the
ones who didn't became nothing more than playthings. Leviathan had found a
way to awaken the abilities of those who had the buried potential and
hence, the Cenobites.
He heard a long loud scream coming from the room the
Princess used. What sweet suffering had she pulled from the fourth of the
children? He would soon know...
Andrew floated down and settled to the ground. The box he
now held was the way for him to flesh out the demon that traveled on this
side of Hell. It would have no choice but to come for it. He had read the
demon's deeper intentions without it knowing. This creature was definitely
going to be honored. It would be the first to fall.
Andrew started walking back towards the hill, a crowd
awaited him. He gave them the warmest smile he could. When he got to
within fifty feet of them, he stopped. The demon was amongst them.
"Please do not fear me," he said. "I have been blessed
with a great gift. This box I hold is a doorway for evil. It jumped into
my hand and woke a part of me that had been dormant. I now have what would
be best described as telekinetic powers... I can manipulate matter with my
thoughts." The demon would be making a move soon, he could sense it.
"Among you is a demon, sent to watch this box. This demon won't hurt you.
It is bound by laws older than time to not directly cause injury to any
human or it forfeits its right to be here. It would then be pulled back
into Hell and the box would go unguarded."
It was then that a raggedly dressed man with unkempt hair
and an even more unkempt beard stepped through the crowd. He moved swiftly
towards Andrew, his arms outstretched.
The federal agent who had originally picked up the box
also broke from the crowd, her eyes fixed on the man coming towards
Andrew. She drew her gun and pointed it at the man and yelled for him to
stop. The man kept coming and Andrew knew it was now or never.
She pulled the trigger, and as Andrew expected, the
bullet came at him and not the bearded man.
The bullet stopped in mid-air two feet from Andrew's face
and dropped to the ground. At the same time, the bearded man also dropped,
hiding his head under his hands and sobbing loudly. Repeating the word
'incoming' over and over again.
Andrew held out his hand and beams of light shot from
ends of his fingers and struck the woman with the gun full in the face.
There was look of surprise on her face and then she changed shape into a
skeleton with horns, fangs, and wings as a grid of light encased her...
it. The keeper let out a ear piercing roar and in a flash of bright light,
disappeared, its scream echoing through the town.
He stood there and stared at his hand. What he did to the
keeper just... happened. It seemed completely natural to him, as if he had
been doing this sort of thing all his life. But he hadn't, had he? He was
unsure. As a doctor, he had repaired flesh and started the healing process
in order to...
Flesh?!
He realized he was thinking of the people he had healed
as mere flesh. This is not good, he thought as he let his hand drop to his
side. Something was happening to him. Something was trying to take over
his mind. He suddenly began to feel that destroying the keeper was
wrong.
No! It was right to do so! Flesh must be protected!
No. Wait. Not just flesh... People. People with souls, dreams,
ambitions... People with hope...
He had just begun to feel exhilaration at the power he
had. Not any more. He was changing. The power was changing him. Into what,
he wasn't sure, but if these thoughts he now had were any indication, it
wasn't good.
The scraggly man jumped up and started backing away,
looking at Andrew with an expression of intense fear.
"What is it?" asked Andrew.
"You're... you're... pulsing!" the man replied, and
continued to move back, whatever memory the man had just been reliving was
once again forgotten.
The crowd started murmuring and also began to move back.
Andrew looked down at himself and noticed his hands and arms were indeed
pulsing. And they were pulsing with light. The light seemed to be in his
veins and arteries. Every beat of his heart caused them to light up,
bright enough to be seen through his skin. He ran his left hand over the
palm side of the opposite wrist, where the blood vessels were closest to
the surface. He felt his pulse. Normal beat. This meant something solid
was moving through his veins and arteries. Something solid and it was
glowing.
Then the truth about the keeper surfaced in his mind. He
hadn't destroyed it, he had absorbed it. It was the demons life force that
pulsed through his veins, and it was the demon's mind that was trying to
take him over. Now that he was aware of it, he stopped it. It was still in
there but powerless. The keeper's thoughts were but a faint whispering in
the back of his mind, and he ignored it. The light show also stopped.
He wondered if he now possessed the keeper's ability to
change. He imagined he had wings and tried his best to believe it. He then
felt a sharp sting on his back and a sudden pull as if something had
grabbed his shoulders and pulled them back hard. He turned his head and
looked over his shoulder. Andrew now indeed had wings and strangely
enough, they felt normal there. Once again, the strange and bizarre
changes in him somehow felt perfectly natural. Could this be why blood and
gore and death didn't shake him? It made sense now. How could a body's
exposed inner workings compare to a body's reshaping? Thinking of that
reshaping, he tried and found he could move his new wings. He tensed his
back muscles and the tips of the wings appeared in his peripheral vision,
black and leathery. He also lifted off the ground a couple inches and
dropped back down.
Incredible!, he thought. He could be whatever he
wanted! He flapped his wings a few times, which brought him five feet up
in the air. He flapped just enough to stay aloft and hovered there.
Andrew looked at the people still moving away from him.
He moved towards them slowly.
"I won't harm you. It's still me, Dr. Riest. I've just...
well... changed some. Believe me, I have no intention of hurting..."
Something went wrong. He felt a pull. Not like the pull
on his back, it was as if something was tugging at his very essence. It
was the chill he had felt when he first got his powers. Hell was calling.
It wanted him and it wanted him badly. There was no denying it. He could
feel his world begin to slip away, being inexorably replaced by the place
which had given him his powers.
He saw a bright light and all at once, his world slipped
away entirely.
He was in some kind of room, floating a foot or so from a
wall. He spun around in mid-air, the use of his wings becoming more
familiar by the moment. He heard something whistling through the air as he
read the minds of the two beings in it. A sharp, long spike stopped and
floated inches from his face and, like the bullet from a few minutes ago,
harmlessly dropped to the ground.
The one who threw the spike was Angelique, a princess
from ages past, remade by Hell into a princess of pain. The other in the
room was her victim, one of Joleen's siblings, a girl by the name of
Rebecca. He felt Angelique's mind probing his own and given enough time,
she might be able to find a way in. Andrew had no intention of giving her
that time.
He grabbed the spike and threw it straight at Angelique.
Using his new found abilities, he caused it to change course at the last
second and slip by her upraised hand. It then struck her full in the
chest. She fell back, letting out a surprised scream as she did so.
His attention quickly turned to young Rebecca, who was
hanging in the center of the room and whimpering. He spent no time
cataloging what had been done to her, he simply undid it all. He was aware
of chains and pieces of broken glass falling to the floor, and her scream.
He then felt a presence in the hallway outside, a presence that sent a
chill down his spine. Whoever, or whatever was out there, he was not yet
ready to face it, so he grabbed Rebecca, screams and all, and thought of
his pillow.
A bright blinding light once again blasted his eyes.
He found himself in his room. He looked down and in his
arms he held Rebecca. She was healing rapidly, the wounds and scars
disappearing in moments. He definitely had the healing touch. He wondered
if he could heal the other wounds she had; the ones no bandage could
reach. Maybe later. Right now he needed to rescue her siblings. Her mind
revealed details that might help him. She had seen two of her brothers
dragged into a room not far from her. This was encouraging.
He set her down once her physical damage was healed and
concentrated on the room where her brothers might be. The bright light
came sooner than he expected and he almost wasn't ready.
As before, he had a moment to assess the situation and
act. This time was different in that he didn't waste time with whatever
demon was appointed to torture the two boys. He simply dove at them and
when he made contact, he again thought of that comfortable pillow of his.
He would undo the mechanisms of their torture when he got back. The world
was all light and again he was in his room, Rebecca on the floor.
He unwound the two boys, Jonathan and Nathaniel, from
each other and healed them as best he could. While he did so, he probed
all three of the children's minds for clues as to the fate of the fourth
child, Thomas. All he could get was that a Cenobite with pins in his head
took him to another room and later, a great roaring sound had been heard
from that direction. The rooms themselves had shaken as if a hurricane
were just outside. More disturbing than that was the remembered feeling of
hopelessness that seemed to increase with the proximity of the perceived
storm. The Cenobites had all stopped their tortures, kneeled to the
ground, and not moved until the sound had faded away.
Andrew had enough pieces to guess at what had happened.
Thomas had been fed to whatever power controlled Hell. He was for most
part, unreachable.
The fact that he got three of the four out of there was a
miracle in itself. He tried to feel good about that, but it was difficult.
Thomas had been the youngest, merely ten. For that alone, Andrew thought,
that power deserved to be destroyed.
He realized at that moment that the life he lived was
over. He was no longer a small town doctor, fighting the ailments and
sicknesses of a few hundred people. He was now an inter-dimensional
traveler about to embark on a quest to destroy a god. If that wasn't a
major career change, nothing was. He laughed out loud at the absurdity of
this. While he laughed, he thought of the horrors he had seen and the
horrors he was about to expose himself to. His laughs threatened to change
to tears, so he stopped. He knew he could walk away from the challenge,
use his powers on this side only and let the damned be damned, but there
was Thomas and who knows how many others. Perhaps the boy wasn't innocent,
but he certainly wasn't deserving of hopeless damnation. The memories of
the children attested to this. Thomas went along with the others out of
trust, not out of hatred or lust or envy. The boy needed saving and Andrew
had the best chance of doing so. There was no time to waste.
He dropped the three children off at the hospital,
altering his appearance so none would recognize him. He also took the
chance to slip a note into the administrator's office, explaining that
there was a life and death situation needing his full and immediate
attention which he couldn't discuss with anyone. Once that was done, he
took to the sky and circled the town to get a better feel of where to go.
A new keeper for the box had apparently shown up and had swept the box
away. That's where he would start, the acquisition of the box. His senses
were getting even better now and he could feel which direction the box
was. He went to his apartment one last time, took only what he needed, and
flew out of town.
Part II: Cynosure
Clouds floated peacefully above the world and all of its
turmoil. Since before life appeared on the surface of this muddy rock,
clouds had lived their lives in the air. They played games of shape,
forming and reforming, imitating the things below. Clouds controlled
weather patterns in a fashion that even the smartest beasts could not
grasp. The atmosphere was their ocean, and they swam from one end of their
lives to the other.
They made love without shame or reserve, their children
floated off, billowing across the heavens. Those children later rejoined
their parents as they prepared for the Storm: the time when clouds lost
control of their lives and were taken over by the dirt below. The dirt,
combined with the clouds, became the beasts and plants that roamed this
world. As those beings fell and rotted away, the clouds would be
reincarnated. Again floating, they shared stories of the lives they’d
lived (or touched). It was one of the many, near perfect, cycles of the
universe, and like many of these cycles, was unknown to the ‘sentient’
beings who probed that universe.
It was well known in the cloud community that the surest
way to depress, tease, or irritate most of those beasts below was to block
their view of the sky. It was also an old favorite to move in the way of
the beasts who stared through long tubes. The beast would then look up at
the cloud, frustrated that it was not able to probe those imagined wonders
out in space, not realizing that one of the greatest wonders it could ever
know just floated right into view.
The clouds also noticed that great steps had been taken
in order to learn how to predict them. Those beasts had no clue that they
were not just guessing at wind patterns and lay of the land effects on it,
but instead were trying to guess at the behaviors of beings that thrived
on variety and change.
Then one day, a cry of alarm shot through the clouds.
Apparently, one of the smooth-skinned apes from below had discovered the
Shaping. As the beast flew through and above the clouds, it touched them
and sent shock waves through their numbers as it changed forms,
experimenting with its powers. If one beast could do it, it wouldn’t be
long before the rest would too.
Many meetings took place and many Storms ensued. It was a
frightening time to be a cloud. An attempt was made to knock the beast out
of the sky, but the beast never even realized the threat as it deftly flew
out of harm’s way. The chance of being discovered was too great a risk, so
it was agreed that all actions would be reduced to ‘float with the flow’.
After all, they’d been hiding in plain sight for eons, and when all else
failed, it was best to follow one’s instincts.
Let the beast play, thought the clouds, if it
hadn’t realized the truth when it touched them, it was likely it never
would.
Andrew flapped his wings a bit faster and rose quickly.
He kept at it until he sensed the thinning of the air. He then let himself
soar, expanding his wingspan so that he fell only a few inches for every
mile he flew. After a short time this got boring, so he collected his
wings about himself, tucked his knees into his chest and allowed himself
to fall like a bowling ball. Just as he was about hit the top of the
clouds, he flung out his arms, legs and wings and did a swooping pass a
few feet above them. With the force of his momentum, he then shot straight
up as high as he could, laughing the whole time. As he reached the apex of
his climb, he began to flap again.
He wished that he could stay like this forever; flapping
and falling, rising and flying. The years he had spent locked to the land
would be much better as a distant, unwanted memory. This was the life. If
only he could stay up here. If only he could enjoy his luck instead of
pushing it. If only…
He let himself enjoy this aimless flying (and aimless
thinking) for a few more minutes before allowing the reality of his
mission to reenter his world. He had these powers, this gift, not from
luck, or from some jolly well-wishing deity who wanted only the best for
its recipient, but instead for the purpose of spreading pain. He was a
pawn in a diabolical scheme. A pawn that was moving it’s way about the
board; flitting and scheming on its own. A pawn after no less then
checkmate.
He had experimented with reshaping his body to provide
himself better camouflage. First he had tried to elongate a finger, (he
also disabled the nerves so he wouldn’t feel the pain of reshaping). He
extended the tip about an inch and then put it back to its original state.
He reactivated the nerves. No pain. He extended it a foot, borrowing flesh
from the rest of the finger and his hand. He then put it back. This went
fine. Considering he did this while flying meant he should have no trouble
doing this in an emergency.
The next thing he had tried was adding more flesh to his
body. Andrew tried to absorb his clothes and shoes and found he couldn’t.
Flesh manipulation seemed to be his limit.
As his wing muscles grew tired, he tried reabsorbing them
and creating new muscles. This worked. He also found he could render the
changes quicker with practice. He still needed to get new material into
himself regularly, but over the two days he had been traveling he had
‘optimized’ his body to the point to where he could get by on an apple a
day and a half of a glass of water. He did, however, encounter a very
rough storm the evening before, and had burned up a lot of energy making
his way through it. He had needed two apples this morning and three
glasses of water. Still, that wasn’t too bad considering all the effort he
had put out to stay aloft in the tumult. Not only that, this honing of his
skills would definitely come in handy in his endeavors.
Endeavors, indeed!, he thought to himself. More
like impossibilities.
Andrew chided himself for his negative thinking and then
made sure this wasn’t being whispered in his mind by the demon he had
absorbed. The demon was quiet for now, no doubt scheming and trying to
find a way to break into conscious control of its jailer. Andrew let out a
great laugh and forced himself to feel as if the world was a wonderful,
loving place, only thinking of the good things he knew. This adjustment
was for that demon. He had realized that it was the demon who first forced
him to go to Hell. It had found his ability to open the doorway to Hell
before he did and had ‘activated’ it, trying to return home.
Andrew considered figuring out a way to destroy the
demon, but decided against it out of fear that his shape-shifting ability
was the result of the demon’s presence in him. His mind reading ability
was his own, that much he knew, but the shape-shifting was in question. He
would keep the demon… alive, if that was what it was… for as long as he
could control it. The demon had thought out loud that Andrew had the ‘gift
of re-shaping’, but there were many contradictory statements in the
demon’s mind. These were meant to confuse Andrew, of course, but he had
sorted through the best of the lies, but this one eluded him.
He was learning more about the demon all the time, as his
sub-conscious attacked the demons mind, sifting for clues. One recent
discovery was that it was actually referred to as a ‘guardian’ and not a
‘keeper’. Although this distinction wasn’t really important in the grand
scheme, it was enough to make Andrew doubt some of his information.
He then sensed the box a few miles ahead, down below the
clouds. After spending a minute or two looking for good sized break in the
clouds (it wouldn’t be very helpful to his mission to enter the clouds and
end up a bloody pulp on some pilot’s windshield) he quickly dropped
through the cloud cover and surveyed the layout of the land. He descended
towards a point a few miles from where the box currently was. This was in
case someone noticed his descent and alerted whatever was sent to guard
the box. The area was some kind of suburban sprawl on the outskirts of
some major city. The box lie near the center of the city. Andrew picked
what seemed to be an empty backyard and headed down.
The twins and Angelique were being disciplined for their
failure. The fact that this had come at the hands of someone with greater
power was the only thing that saved them from being stripped of rank.
Still, it would be some time before they would be trusted alone with any
of the chosen damned.
Meanwhile, their Cenobite mentor set about the task of
finding out just what had happened. He knew it had to be his offspring and
this raised a disturbing question. Why did the boy come and take those
children away, and to where? He was supposed to snatch souls into Hell,
not from it.
The answer, he found, lie inside himself.
At the time he took part in the conception, he had not
been aware of the human named Elliot Spenser buried inside him. Elliot
must have had some input into the programming of the seed, adding a
conscience where there shouldn’t have been one. The Cenobite’s scheme had
backfired. Leviathan would no doubt destroy him, or worse, if this was
found out. It must then remain a secret. The reconditioning of the twins
and Angelique would wipe those events from their mind, he would see to
that.
He had faced Leviathan to answer questions about these
events. He could easily have said that his troops had lost control and
destroyed the children, but that was too easy. The challenge lay in
telling enough of the truth to protect it. This was achieved by admitting
that there might have been some element of the creation process he didn’t
pay enough attention to, which resulted in the problematic weakness. He
also admitted there was no excuse for this and that it was the result of
his own inferiority. Leviathan did not appear to realize that he was
talking about his child the whole time rather than his disciples. He gave
every indication that he expected to lose all his rank for this, knowing
full well that such signs of humble and intense loyalty were the keys to a
god’s favor. He succeeded and with some open disciplinary action inflicted
on him, purely for show, he returned to duty..
That left the task of capturing or destroying his
son.
One of the four children recently taken was still here in
Hell. This child was inside Leviathan and quite unreachable, but the
Cenobite’s spawn might still come for the boy. It was just a matter of
time.
He was soon to be assigned some new charges to study
under his tutelage. Hell was waiting for three who possessed enough of the
raw material in them to be put into Leviathan’s service. As they arrived,
he would be given the honor (as many times before) of shaping them into
full fledged members of the Order of the Gash. One extra order had been
passed on and that was to make sure they were more combat ready than the
twins and Angelique had been. He had already decided to make this part of
their final form. Also, he had decided they would help him with his quest
for his son. He would make this part of their new personality, a hidden
part. He wasn’t the first teacher to use the classroom for selfish
personal gain and if Hell still had its way, he wouldn’t be the last.
Andrew hadn’t tried to sense the minds of anyone near him
in order to keep himself hidden from the new guardian. He was going in
blind. He watched the windows of the houses within sight as he touched
down. He quickly walked toward an alley at the end of the yard in which he
landed, reabsorbing his wings as he walked. He would travel by alleys as
much as he could, so as to not be out in the open. He gave himself a new
hairstyle as well: short. This was very different from the long brown
locks he had when he started this adventure. Andrew watched the windows
carefully as he did this. He waited for a second or two. It looked like no
one had spotted him.
As he passed the tree furthest from the house, he heard
the snap of a twig from just behind the tree. A small boy suddenly fell
out into plain sight. Andrew took a quick step backwards. The child
couldn’t have been more than six. He looked up at Andrew; big blue eyes
amidst a mop of bright red hair. Andrew realized that the boy must have
been trying to keep the tree between them, and was making his way around
the tree as Andrew passed by when he had tripped on a fallen branch.
The boy seemed to notice that Andrew had stepped back and
it appeared that he had taken this as a good sign, because the little boy
slowly stood up, not looking scared as much as simply surprised.
"Are… are… you an angel?" came a tiny voice.
Andrew said ‘yes’ without thinking.
"Are you my… guardian angel?" asked the boy.
The look of wonder and awe on that little face was so
intense that Andrew felt a strong urge to turn around and check to see if
a real angel was floating behind him. He ignored the urge and instead took
a step closer to the boy and went down on one knee.
"No, not yours. Another little boy’s." Andrew replied
softly. "A little boy who needs my help."
Andrew sensed nothing but raw, unspoiled innocence
emanating from this child. He thought of poor Thomas, trapped inside
Leviathan. He began to feel angry, but looking at the boy in front of him,
another deeper emotion came near the surface, along with some wicked
memories. Memories of the orphanage, and the cruel, crazy man who had ran
the place for two years before he’d been caught beating one of the
children… Andrew, and had been taken away.
A flood of memories bombarded him and it was all he could
do to subdue them. His eyes started to water before he got control, but he
did get control, and blinked the wetness away.
The little boy’s expression changed from one of raw awe
to one of simple puzzlement.
"My dad does that," the boy said.
"Does what?" asked Andrew, wondering if he meant his dad
was a ‘guardian angel’ of sorts, a helper of children.
"Tries really hard not to cry," came the answer. "He has
to fight really hard. I wish he’d just cry. Could you make him cry?"
Andrew was momentarily taken aback. The sheer power of
this child’s question pushed the right/wrong button… and then, Andrew
broke into tears.
This time, some memories made it out. Andrew wasn’t even
sure of the cruel man’s real name, he had demanded being called ‘sir’ from
day one. The kids had called him Mr. Deem (short for demon). His favorite
method of ‘discipline’ was locking a kid in a wooden chest in the
basement. Andrew had ended up there more often than the other kids, simply
because he would stand up to the man and he also had trouble sitting
still. He remembered too vividly having his mouth washed out with soap by
Mr. Deem and then being locked in the chest with no supper. He spent many
nights hungry, with his lips burning from having them smashed against his
teeth, and a mouth full of soap, flaking and stuck to the insides of his
mouth. He would cry himself to sleep, but would wake up many times during
the night disoriented and choking, and would think he had been buried
alive. Even now, when it was very quiet, he could hear the echoes of his
sobs and screams. A few of those sobs were now escaping.
He finally got a hold of himself after the most
aggressive of the tears had fallen. As he wiped them away, he felt the
hand of the little boy on his shoulder. Andrew looked up and swore that he
saw, in the blue sky eyes of this child, all the wisdom of the world. He
finished with his tears and took the boy’s hand in his. He could feel his
resolve increasing with each breath he took, due in no small part to the
presence before him.
"What’s your name?" Andrew asked.
"Andy" came the reply.
"Well Andy," said Andrew "thanks for being my angel."
Andy smiled. "You’re welcome." He paused and then said,
"Are you… going to have to go now to help the other kid?"
"Yes, I am."
Then Andrew stood up, ruffled Andy’s hair, told him to be
good and turned away. He started down the alley behind the houses and
glanced back once to see if Andy was waving goodbye. He wasn’t there
anymore. Perhaps he was running to tell someone about the angel that came
to visit him. Perhaps he wasn’t even there. Andrew thought about the name
coincidence and wondered if Andy wasn’t just a part of himself that had
been ‘brought out in the open’ for him to deal with and draw inspiration
from. Could be, he thought. Then again, does it really
matter? The effect was the same. He was more focused now than he had
been in a while. Andrew was sure about one thing, he needed that
focus.
Up to this point he had reluctantly done what he was
doing, with a part of him not wanting to face up to the challenge he had
gotten himself into. His antics in the clouds were an example. Meeting
Andy had done something, however, that changed that. He knew what was at
stake. Something vastly more powerful and merciless had taken one innocent
child to Hell, a child who should never have went. Who knew how many
others languished there, victims of someone else’s desire to enter or to
escape Hell. Whether he liked it or not, he had the power to end their
suffering.
He stopped and closed his eyes. In his mind he conjured
an image of Leviathan from the mind of the demon inside him. He saw an
immense set of wings. Along with this image was the knowledge that this
was the way that the guardian saw Leviathan, that every kind of being saw
it differently. What would Leviathan look like to him, he didn’t know, but
it didn’t matter. He would find a way to destroy it, and for the
guardian’s benefit, Andrew imagined the giant wings bursting into flames
and collapsing. He sensed intense fear from the demon. This was a good
sign.
Andrew began to whistle softly as he walked. It was only
a matter of time.
Andy sprouted small white wings, giggled, and shot into
the sky. He went so fast, no human would have been able to see him go.
After a few minutes of gaining speed (he was now leaving the galaxy, if
one cared about such details) he passed into his dimension. He had
wondered, like any angel created from a mortal soul, if he should have
stolen a visit to his parents. They were probably still grieving. He
resisted and thought of his mission. He had been given the task of making
sure that Andrew had somewhat of a clear mind for the quest ahead. With
that done, he now needed to return. The Order of Healing most likely had
another mission lined up for him already. A child’s work was never
done.
Mindy took a towel and wiped herself off. She had gotten
quite sweaty in that last scene and was looking forward to a nice cool
shower. Her legs were still tingling from the orgasm (it was nice now and
then to have a real one and not have to fake it). One of the camera men
had gushed at her about how she was the best there was. She made up her
mind within seconds that he would never have her, but pissing off a camera
guy wasn’t smart, business-wise, so she just smiled and thanked him.
Pampering time was now over since all the guys in the
room (actors and crew alike) had gotten what they wanted. She would now be
left alone. As she turned on the shower she heard loud laughter from out
in the main room. The guys were most likely sitting around and
congratulating each other on having such great jobs. Someday, she thought.
I’m out of here. She still didn’t quite have everything paid off or had
she built the nest egg big enough yet, so she’d stay in the business for a
year to two more. Then it was goodbye.
After the shower, she dried off and put on a robe. There
would be a wrap party and she figured she’d hang around and enjoy the free
food and drugs. She knew she was lucky in that she could totally get into
that stuff for a night and then the next day was able to easily say no.
Not everyone had the self-discipline or stamina for it. Their loss, she
thought. Her self-discipline and stamina was also what allowed her to
excel in porn. There was no other woman in the business who could go
longer and harder, and still be able to keep an aloof attitude onscreen,
which of course, drove the viewers nuts.
She walked over to her trailer and once inside, looked at
her ‘to do’ list. Nothing much. She had already called her agent to
confirm her next film and called her mother to wish her happy birthday.
All that remained was the box.
Mindy had been working on it for days now. The man who
gave it to her said he was looking for someone to do some light S&M
and needed someone with some brains. There were going to be a lot of lines
and a short shooting schedule. She had started on the box immediately, but
hadn’t gotten anywhere with it. Tonight would be different.
She let her robe drop and walked into her bedroom. Mindy
felt intense excitement as she noticed the box laying on the bed,
glistening seductively in the late afternoon sun. She sat on the bed
cross-legged and naked. She picked up the box and held it in her lap. She
was suddenly aware of a growing wetness between her legs.
"Oooo. You’re a hot little number, aren’t you?" she
purred.
Mindy then noticed how her cunt was reflected in the
box’s surface. It was not hers, she thought, but her screen alter ego’s.
This alter ego went by the name of Jennie Hott.
In reflections, she saw Jennie, not Mindy. Mindy was on
this side, doing a job and paying bills. It was Jennie who enjoyed it and
had sex for it’s own sake. No responsibilities. No worries except how to
get off in as wild a way as she could. Nothing more, nothing less. Such an
easy, simple life.
Mindy explored some of her fantasies through Jennie, but
not all of them. Jennie was aloof and had her limits. She had been screwed
by men in practically every way except ‘very painful’, and she had
experienced other women as much as the average sex toy would allow. But
that was nowhere near what lie underneath. Mindy felt internal urges too
intense and twisted to admit fully to herself, let alone anyone else. Deep
down, she wanted more, much more.
She had flashes of men bathed in blood, masturbating and
screaming as she tore their skin off with her bare hands. She saw women
dangling from the ceiling, pierced in every possible way, moaning for
mercy and getting none. Mindy saw orgies which would last for days and
would end with her alone still alive. As soon as these images found their
way to the surface of her mind, she’d push them back down. She would swear
to not rent any more S&M titles, but she knew better. The stuff she
rented was to fill an urge already there, to appease it. This allowed her
to live her life.
She had decided long ago to never start doing serious
S&M, because she knew if she did, she’d never be able to stop and
would lose any semblance of decency. She’d probably wind up killing a
co-star and that would be it. No, she thought. Better to play with herself
and fantasize it, rather than act it out.
As she was thinking of this, running her fingers over the
box and feeling for an opening, the box clicked. It was a small click, but
there nonetheless. Her heart skipped a beat and she almost yelled in
celebration. She noticed now how the reflection was shifting. Then, she
swore she felt a tingling in her cunt. It felt as if someone were lightly
running their fingers over her pubic hair and lips, teasing her with
utmost urgency. She again caught the reflection and as the reflection
bent, she was sure she could almost feel it. Her body was aching to change
too. To be free of earthly limits, to be able to warp and twist without
constraint. That was the ultimate freedom, to be a body unbound. She would
spend eternity as flesh in constant, savage change. The box was calling
her, seducing her, giving her hope for the kind of existence that only
damnation could provide.
Her conscious mind shoved this partially away, but that
was all. Jennie was in there, trying to be aloof, but getting scared. This
existence was not what a highly paid, posh loving, aloof porn star should
want. The tease was the thing. These thoughts shattered all pretenses and
threatened her materialistic side. That side fought back.
"Now, now lover," she whispered. "Mustn’t get too pushy.
Jennie will say when."
The box felt hot, almost too hot to the touch. Still, it
also felt soothing to her hands. She, on the other hand, felt too hot not
to be touched. Mindy was so horny right then that she was absolutely sure
a strong breeze across the bed would thrust her headlong into an orgasm so
intense, she’d lose her mind. Jennie faded away and Mindy, or more
accurately, the deep dark animal in her, took over.
She lay back slowly and let the box slide across her
inner left thigh toward her cunt. As her head came to rest on the bed, so
did the box against her throbbing wetness. Her hands continued to work the
mysteries of the surface and these motions further pushed her closer and
closer toward ‘the little death’.
Mindy felt a very strong clicking from the box and then
she heard music. The music made her think of a music box she loved as a
child. The box began to vibrate and she heard the sounds of metal sliding
on metal. She could feel that the box was changing, but she also felt a
vibration coming from the box. It held her right at the threshold of
release. She dangled there while the box shifted and changed.
She opened her eyes and stole a glance toward it. One
part of the box was sliding down into the other. The top of this piece
looked much like the shape of a star. Then, when it finished, the box
began to vibrate even more.
That was it. She fell back and let out a yell as the
first wave of a massive orgasm smashed against her. She pulled the box
even tighter against herself. Pushing it as hard as she could into her
cunt, she roared as more waves of ecstasy rolled over her. She took in one
big breath and held it for a second as another wave began. As the wave
hit, she began to let it out. This was the biggest one yet.
… and suddenly in the midst of this mother of all
orgasms, something attacked her. She didn’t know what, but it had no
mercy. As part of her still reeled in the most intense orgasm she’d ever
felt, the other part reeled in excruciating pain. She felt hooks and
knives slicing into her body. She tried to reach down to fend off the
attack but noticed her hands were pinned to either side of her. She tried
to scream, but instead a laugh came out. She tried to kick with her legs
but instead felt her knees hit the sides of her head. She began to hear
popping sounds and felt a warm fluid running all over her body.
Then the fluid ran over her face and she discovered what
it was, blood. She knew without a doubt it was her own. She tried to open
her eyes and managed to open them for the briefest of moments, enough to
see a man looming over her. A man in leather fitted far too tightly. A man
with a head impaled by dozens of pins. A wave of pain overtook the
pleasure and she closed her eyes and screamed.
The screaming continued for hours, as did the pain. She
wanted to escape, to death, to madness, but neither was available to her.
She was so confused. Why was she suffering? What did she do? Where was
she? Why was she?
"Please stop!!!" came the scream. "Oh God, no! Oh God!
Please!"
Copulas looked at the woman before her, writhing and
begging for an end to it. How lucky this woman was, she thought, to just
spend her days without responsibility. To be able to just suffer and
endure. Nothing more, nothing less. Such a simple, easy life.
Copulas decided to go over to the wall and pull a new
instrument down. She was in training and the art of inflicting pleasure
was by no means easy. You had to balance pain with calm, to keep the
victim at the edge of madness, but firmly on this side of it.
As she reached for the nastiest looking tool on the wall,
she noticed her own reflection in the wide metal blade of the tool. The
reflection twisted and changed. She thought she saw a human woman for an
instant. The woman was screaming and seemed to be trying to say something.
Imagine that, thought Copulas, a screaming reflection. For some reason,
she could almost hear the screams. They were very faint and hardly
discernable, but Copulas was almost sure the woman was yelling a name. A
name that sounded like ‘Mindy.’ There was also a fair resemblance between
the reflection and herself. This might be what would she would have looked
like had she been born mortal, as opposed to being a Cenobite.
Interesting, thought Copulas, Mindy the Screaming
Reflection. She went back to work and chalked the experience up as one of
the many wonders of Hell. Hell had such incredible sights to show her, and
anyone with the vision to look for them could never, ever get bored.
As she inflicted pleasure on the woman before her,
Copulas thought of a dream that she had recently. One in which she was
alone, trapped in a delicate body, and dreaming of Hell and all its
glories. The dream was fading. She knew that if one rehearsed a dream, it
would be become a more permanent part of one’s psyche. No rehearsals
today. She loved being a Cenobite too much. There was nothing in the
universe that would make her want to be a frail, human weakling.
She also knew that one of those frail humans might break
in at any moment and try to steal this woman from Hell. She felt this in
every part of her essence. She would need to keep a mind’s eye open and be
ready for any confrontation. Copulas knew, as she guessed any Cenobite
did, that it was possible that a human could gain the power of the
Shaping, or the power to open a doorway to Hell at will. If that ever
happened (or worse, a human gained both skills), it could spell doom for
them all. Cenobites were Leviathan’s first line of defense against such an
enemy. She would not falter in that task.
He was too late.
Andrew felt the portal closing from many blocks away. He
started running towards it at full speed. It was mid-day and the streets
were full of people. He would have liked to change into something faster,
but again, he was trying to sneak up on the box and its guardian. He
wanted to get as close as he could before he was found out.
He then felt the probe of the guardian’s mind.
Andrew slowed down to a walk and concentrated on sending
a false mindset. He thought of a imaginary wife and kids twenty minutes
away and that they were going to rent a movie tonight and that he had to
stop on the way home and get some milk. He allowed himself to look forward
to it. He allowed those thoughts to float on the surface of his mind and
set up a false history behind them. This history covered the shield he had
erected, to hide his true mind and the demon inside him. The real Andrew
knew that Hell fed on the bored, the angry, and the unsatisfied. It fed on
those who yearned for more than this world provided, so he created a
persona that was quite content with what it had been dealt. He felt the
guardian’s probing almost reach the shield, but it stopped before going
that far. The mind it believed was Andrew’s was sufficiently banal enough
for it to lose the guardian’s interest.
Now he only had a few blocks to go and the box would be
his.
Even the rocks seemed different in the city, thought
Kenneth. They were alive with the histories of all those who had trod upon
them. They contained the excitement of opportunity. All those people who
could do whatever they wanted and see all the sights, without having to
drive for two hours to do so.
Kenneth Derra loved coming to the city and escaping the
farm, if only for a few hours. He reaffirmed his vow to save up enough
money to move here and find a job. Then he would work his way up the
ladder, and one day, he’d rule his own empire from the best house in the
best neighborhood this city had to offer.
How many times had he said that vow? And how many times
had he faltered, instead opting to purchase a piece of the magic, taking
home some device or trinket which reeked of technology and promised itself
as ‘the latest’. He then spent much of his free time enjoying it in his
room. This room was upstairs in the dusty, cracked old farm house that his
great-great-grandfather had built back when farming was something special
and most everyone did it. Those days were gone, and now, the struggle to
maintain the fields and/or raise the cattle had been overtaken by the
struggle to pay the bank every month.
His parents had played it safe. When the farmers around
them had taken out loans to expand and improve, using what they currently
had as collateral, Kenneth’s parents said ‘no’ and stayed as they were.
The Derra family then watched as everyone became richer. While they toiled
with equipment that was as old as they were, the surrounding farms did the
same work in half the time in machinery that was twice as expensive.
Expanding or not expanding, it was a gamble either way, and everyone but
the Derras won.
So a dozen or more years ago, the Derras joined the pack.
They took out some major loans and caught up with their neighbors.
Then farming went to hell, and dairy farming was hit
worst of all. The Derras had been dairy farmers for generations, and now
the current two generations, Kenneth and his parents, faced the near end
of that tradition on a monthly basis.
Kenneth was only a couple of years old when his parents
expanded, and only a couple of years older when the bottom fell out. From
that point on, his life was harder and more stressful than any of his
ancestors, or so he thought. Not only did he and his parents have to work
their fingers to the bone, but they also had to work for seemingly
nothing. The bank got their money before the Derras did, and quite often
the check would show up with zeroes on it, and they’d have to make do.
His parents had spent many evenings arguing about money,
and he would lay awake, vowing that he would not make their mistake. He
would not hesitate to chase his dreams, and would not only keep up with
everyone else, but beat them to the punch. He’d learned from his parents,
as every generation is supposed to. The trouble was, he applied it to the
other extreme.
He was so hungry for the new and great, that there was
nothing left for a rainy day. Quite often, he wouldn’t have enough money
to put gas in his car, but he had the latest electronic toys.
When Kenneth came home with the latest tapes or CD’s or
cartridges or game systems, his father always made a point to ask him ‘how
is that going to taste next year if things go bad?’. Kenneth wouldn’t
reply. He would just go up to his room, and imagine he had all the time in
the world to play with whatever it was he had bought.
Now here he was, once again walking along downtown
streets and looking for something, anything to take back home to alleviate
his suffering.
As he passed an alley, he caught a bright sign out of the
corner of his eye. He turned into that alley and as he walked toward the
sign, he was able to read it. It was a very ornate neon sign spelling out
the title Wonders of the World. Kenneth thought it was odd that such a
store would be buried back in an alley, but he decided to check it out
anyway. The name alone made it worth a look.
He was walking along the backs of other stores, and as he
passed them, he could hear the chatter of workers on a break, or hiding
from the boss, or flushing the toilet. Even these sounds were a lot more
exciting to him here in the city. All that activity. All that energy.
He maneuvered his way through dumpsters and cardboard
piles, careful to watch his step. He glanced further down the alley to see
if perhaps he had taken the hard way and that a nice clear walk to the
store was available from that side.
More dumpsters and garbage.
He stopped under the sign and looked at the entry way in
front of him. A small flight of stairs ended at a screen door. He noticed
that there were no windows on the back side of this building, even though
it was easily four stories tall.
So, he thought, here was a shop tucked in an alley which
made up the back ends of many department stores. It felt like a secret
place. One that not many city folk might know about. What treasures, he
wondered, lay inside?
"One way to find out," he whispered to himself, walking
up the small flight of stairs and then pulling open the door to the
Wonders of the World.
The store was an odd mixture of old and new. Video game
consoles sat next to ancient looking lamps, with both inside old display
cases with extreme lighting effects inside. A tiny, full-color television
sat atop a well-worn travel chest with stickers from places Kenneth had
never even heard of. An old ornate sword was balanced on top of a glass
container which had slow moving brightly colored liquids moving and
shifting about in it. An impossibly old looking wood stove was the
foundation for a large plastic video game cartridge case full of games. On
top of the game case was an hourglass full of multicolored sand in which
the sand changed colors as it sifted through the small hole at the center
of the hourglass. The hourglass supported a lacquered box, the likes of
which Kenneth had never seen.
The hourglass had a sticker on it which read ‘$100’.
Kenneth had thirty, but wondered if the whole stack was a hundred or just
the hourglass.
"What’s your pleasure, sir?" came a sudden voice from
behind him, making Kenneth jump in spite of himself. He spun around and
was greeted by a very tall, thin oriental man. He had a full head of gray
hair, but the hair only touched his head at its roots. His head looked
much like a willow tree with two small eyes and an even smaller mouth
visible beneath.
Kenneth thought about his question. Although the
hourglass and the rest of the stuff were cool, it was the box that held
his attention. He had read about Chinese puzzle boxes and had seen some
pictures of a few, but no picture he had seen could do this box justice.
It seemed to call him, begging him to solve it. It was as if he was the
only one who could, or would, dare to probe its mysteries.
What was strange about all this was that normally he
would go for the ‘highest tech’ item he could find. There was something
about the box that went beyond technology. It was as if the box was
alive.
He knew what he wanted.
"The box", replied Kenneth, "How much is it?"
"Whatever you think its worth."
Kenneth had a bizarre feeling of déjà vu, but ignored it
and said "twenty-five dollars."
"Thirty," said the old man.
"Twenty-seven fifty" countered Kenneth.
"Twenty-eight fifty-seven," shot back the old man.
"What would that work out to be with tax?" asked
Kenneth.
"At five percent sales tax, about thirty dollars."
Kenneth smiled, admitting defeat. He then dug the money
out and handed it to the shop keeper. The money disappeared in the pockets
of what looked like a cross between a smock and a coat. He turned back to
his prize.
He slowly reached out and picked up the box, tiny shivers
of anticipation coursed through him. The box felt sharp, yet not unlike
wax, and even more, like wood. As his mind tried to catalog the sensations
his fingertips sent, it seemed to discover a new impression.
It was magic… and it was love at first touch.
Kenneth started for the door, not even thinking to ask
for a receipt, so enraptured was he with the puzzle cradled in his hands.
He half-turned back to the shop keeper and said thanks.
"Take pleasure in it," was all the shop keeper said.
Oh, he would. No doubt about it. He would.
Kenneth made his way through the dumpsters once again and
then in the open air, headed back towards the parking ramp where his truck
was, barely seeing the sidewalk in front of him. The puzzle had already
vexed him, and his fingers were probing the surface, searching for a way
in.
A policeman thought he saw movement in the alley. He was
on walk today, and part of that walk was a quick jaunt down Dumpster Alley
to chase away anyone loitering at the back of the stores. Can’t have the
bums scaring away customers, he thought. He squinted his eyes into the
shadows. He saw movement all right. Someone in a trench coat was making
their way to the other end of the alley. He stepped into the alley in that
direction, pulling out his talkie to call it in.
He heard a loud creak above and glanced toward the sound.
An old rusted soda sign swung in the breeze, creaking and squeaking to the
rhythm of the wind. It was a remnant of a day when this alley was a
pedestrian walk way and thirsty souls would be lured into whatever store
the sign used to hang over with the promise of an end to their parched
state.
This place sure has gone to hell, thought the officer, as
he made it to end of the alley, looking left and right, expecting whoever
it was in the coat to be ambling away.
There was no one fitting that description in sight. He
poked his head in every store on either side of that part of the street,
but no one had seen anyone in a trench coat.
Oh well, he thought, whoever it was must’ve
beat it.
He took one more trip down the alley and continued on his
rounds.
Andrew arrived at the alley in time to see the policeman
moving away at the other end of it and disappearing to the left. The box
was no longer here. He could, however, sense an almost vivid echo of
Hell’s magic amongst the dumpsters. He saw the creaking sign.
The box had been passed on to its next victim.
Andrew could sense which way the box had gone. For a
moment, he heard the echo of a car starting in the parking garage down the
street. That’s where it was.
He took off at a run towards it.
Now I must protect the box and it’s prey. They need
the time alone. Hell must be fed. The wonders of hell await him. What
happened to the previous one? It has guarded LeMarchand’s Configuration
for a long time. Perhaps I will find out. Perhaps not. The last one was
special. She has now become a Cenobite. Leviathan’s realm increases
through many, many doorways. More Cenobites are happening. It will not be
long and this world will be added. Then the Cenobites can roam free and
the box will have served its purpose. I may then be able to guard it
forever, sealed with it inside Leviathan as it takes this world and
forever appears in this sky. I will be diligence. I will be success. I
will be victorious in all my battles. It is Leviathan’s will which in turn
becomes my will. He had left the large village. He will seek seclusion. He
will delve into the box and shall not return. I will watch as the box
seals and will make sure it is removed from the site. I will make sure it
is put before the next. I will not falter. I am…
Something is following me.
Part III: Convergence
The Sun slowly worked it way towards the west,
occasionally visible through openings in the clouds above Andrew. He
followed its lead as he chased Kenneth’s pickup truck. He knew where the
sun was without even looking, as well as the moon and thousands of other
objects in orbit around the Earth, both of human and non-human origin.
There were small alien objects watching and recording, avoiding objects
around them and sending short bursts of information toward a specific
star, one in the constellation known as Scorpio. This was worth
investigating, but not until after Hell had given up its innocent tenants.
Whatever aliens were watching us (and for a very long time) would have to
wait until this particular quest was finished, either by Andrew’s death or
capture, or by victory.
His capture, he thought, was the worst of possibilities.
If he was caught and converted into a servant of Hell, it would be all
over for the Earth. Andrew was able to open doorways at will, and Hell
would gain a permanent foothold. In a way, he would then be the
Antichrist.
Andrew Riest the Antichrist? Wait a minute…
There was a connection there.
Andy… Anti... Andy Riest. Antichrist. Andy Clayton
Riest… Andy C. Riest. Andy Christ… Antichrist. Oh god…What kind of corny
sicko was my mother?!
No wonder no one could find his father or any references
to Riest at the time he was born, his name was a play on words. His mother
knew all along what he was, or at least what she intended him to be. He
was to be the Antichrist. The utter stupid silliness of his name was
outweighed however, by it’s dark message. He didn’t want to think about
that. It was too…
Back to now…
Andrew had read Kenneth’s mind and knew that he had
already started working the box but stopped when he reached his truck. He
wouldn’t try again until he got home. That gave Andrew plenty of time to
get the box from him without drawing too much attention…
The Antichrist train of thought quickly went to the back
of his mind as he concentrated on his current mission.
… but in case there was a new guardian, he didn’t want to
make a move until they were out of town. This would hopefully keep the
risk of hurting innocent bystanders to a minimum. Besides, Kenneth had
picked up a hitchhiker. Some guy named Ian who was on his way home from
basic training. Andrew had probed his mind as well and hadn’t found
anything of great significance there. Ian was just catching a ride back to
a town that was a half an hour out of Kenneth’s way.
He skimmed along the bottom of the clouds, watching the
truck weave its way out of town. Up ahead, a very large dark bird
disappeared into the clouds. Andrew avoided probing it in case it was the
guardian. Surprise was his greatest ally in this endeavor.
There was subtle change in the air, like a small room
when the door is quickly pulled open. A battle was coming.
Old one must have been destroyed... Whatever could do
that can no doubt destroy me as well. I must protect the box and the soul
near it… Whatever is following me might be that which destroyed the old
one. I must make no assumptions nor take any chances… Perhaps the old one
got too sure of itself. Mistakes must be learned from if Hell is to be
served properly… Have to find a way to bring the follower to a vulnerable
place and make the attack unstoppable. Keeping the enemy occupied long
enough to let the doorway open and close is all that is required… Time to
begin.
The next one is on the way, thought Copulas.
Time to prepare.
Copulas understood the ways of the Order of the Gash
clearly. Her next responsibility was to take part in the creation of the
third member of her sect. Had she also been made from human stock?
Doubtful, she thought, that species is quite
young, and besides, I have always been here.
This was just an experiment to see if a Cenobite could be
made from a human. Her question became fuzzy and disappeared.
Once again, she found herself staring at him as he stood
patiently awaiting the next soul to travel the void and enter Hell’s
embrace. The pins in his head were placed in such an orderly fashion that
she found herself imagining how that must have felt to have them put
there. That combined with the regal way in which he carried himself made
him… She felt the blood run down her legs and licked her lips to the sharp
pains caused by her own lust. She could never have him, so Copulas vowed
to make sure to whet her appetite on the soul coming in.
She also took care to stand behind him and to one side.
Perhaps one day she would be the first sight a new soul would see, but for
now, she was content to play second scalpel.
Andrew pushed a little ahead of the truck and carefully
reached out with his mind. The city was behind them now and there was no
longer a need for slyness. He would check for the guardian and if it was
far enough ahead, Andrew would swoop down, grab the box, and be off before
anyone had a chance to react. It would no doubt scare the daylights out of
Kenneth and Ian, but considering the risk, this was acceptable.
The trouble was, he couldn’t sense the Guardian anywhere.
Either it was vastly more powerful than the last one, or it was just
better at hiding. He scanned for a couple of minutes more and then decided
that was enough. The large bird was staying ahead of them and deciding to
scan it, he found its mind was simple and serene. There was no trace
anywhere of Hell’s programming.
"So much for the cat and mouse shit," he said aloud and
then started his dive.
As he stood waiting for the next soul to come through,
the Cenobite suddenly sensed another portal opening. He could sense no
other Cenobite close to where the opening would be, yet something was
definitely on its way to Hell. For a second, he thought that maybe it was
his offspring, but that thought disappeared as he realized it had an
artificial flavor to it. The boxes and various other kinds of puzzles used
to create the energy fields and frames of mind that pulled souls to Hell
had a distinct ‘taste’ to them. They were more incantation than exact
science, which was why Hell didn’t just spill over to other dimensions, it
was not completely understood how the doorways worked. It was more raw
subconscious creativity that made the devices, not conscious cleverness.
Whoever was coming was using a new kind of technology to open a doorway,
one that felt precise, clean and efficient. There would be no light shows,
or energy sparks. It would simply exist.
He started towards where he knew the opening would be (a
few minutes walk). Copulas started to follow. He came to abrupt stop and
turned his head slightly towards her. She stopped and took a step
back.
He continued out of the room and headed down a long dim
passageway.
He walked for a few minutes until he came to what felt
like the right room. A shiny black spider was putting the finishing
touches on a web in one corner of the doorway. He glanced at it, getting
the feeling that it was satisfied with its labors. As he stepped through
the doorway, one of the pins on his head caught the web, pulling it off
the doorway. The spider came with it, landing on his shoulder. The
Cenobite turned his head so that he could see it. As the spider looked up
into those cold black eyes, a violent tremor went through its tiny body
and then it went into spasms. Two seconds later, it died of fright, then
fell off. Its last thought was the realization that it was seriously
outclassed and that the attention of whatever it had landed on was worse
than death. It had quickly made its escape before it had been snared. With
one quick motion of his hand, he stirred the air, which in turn pulled the
web off the pin that it was caught on. The web floated to the ground,
becoming a death shroud for its lifeless creator.
The room was empty and had been for quite some time. The
echoes of its last occupant's suffering however, could still be felt - if
one was sensitive enough. The Cenobite had always prided himself on his
sensitivity. He had been able to sense an approaching portal since his own
conversion and now his senses were screaming 'Here!'. He felt a ripple in
the room as matter from his universe began to mesh with matter from
another. He probed the opening mentally. It did not take long to find the
source of the increasing connection between universes.
They called themselves the Y'huni. They were aggressive
invaders of other dimensions, opening portals and pouring through, taking
what resources they could and then closing the portals if necessary. If
they happened upon weak enough races on the other side, they would
establish a stronghold and expand from it. They had spread into hundreds
of dimensions and had explored thousands more. Just the catalog he was
receiving was priceless, let alone any tidbits about their technology.
Unfortunately, even their collective knowledge had very little in the way
of portal opening. Those who designed and engineered the mechanisms for
this accomplishment were most likely far away and safe. These minds he now
perused were soldiers, nothing more, nothing less.
Hell was about to welcome them with an open maw.
Copulas felt a pang of anxiety. She had wondered when she
might be the first thing a soul sees, but she didn’t expect it so soon.
She had already taken part in exploring a few of the new members to Hell’s
fodder, but she was not even close to knowing how to make one of her
kind.
He’ll be back soon, she assured herself.
It hit the side of her head like a brick. Before she knew
what happened, she was picking herself up off the floor. Hanging in the
air was a tentacle with various slicing, mangling parts at its end. They
whirred and spun and sliced the air as it seemed to watch her. She
followed it to its source of which there was none visible. Its trunk just
faded into the black of a corner.
In her mind she heard it say that she was given an honor,
bringing one into the fold. How dare she doubt the gift and shrink from
the responsibility, rather than embrace it with enthusiasm and a desire to
do well in the task.
Again it lashed out. She quickly ducked to one side and
held out her hands, into which flew two large knives from the blackness in
another corner of the room. She made very fast hard slices up and down,
her arms becoming a blur almost instantly.
The ‘head’ of the tentacle hit the ground, sounding like
a dropped bag of wet sponges. The neck of the thing recoiled into the wall
with a high pitched squeal of pain.
Copulas dropped her hands as the knives returned to their
part of the darkness. She went over to the severed mass and picked it up,
examining it. In her mind she heard its last thought. It was just two
words, thank you.
This was puzzling. Why would something thank her for
killing it? It seemed to be in service of Leviathan and had obviously been
sent to make sure she took the challenge of conversion as a blessing. Had
it attacked her hoping she would kill it? Its message contradicted its
actions. It all added up to ‘You should be glad to serve Leviathan. I
serve Leviathan and want to die.’
This mystery would have to wait however, for the portal
could open at any time. Perhaps some day she would be able to sense
openings, but at this point, she had to rely on her mentor.
The thing started to dissolve in her hands. She tossed it
to a corner of the room and as it hit, it broke into tiny pieces, which in
turn broke down even more. By the time the thing came to a stop, it was
little more than a puddle. She didn’t doubt that the puddle itself would
evaporate shortly, and all evidence of the mind that prodded her and
confused her would be gone. She would be left with the message of purpose
and the question of its suicide.
Give and take. Such was the balance and mystery of
Hell.
Andrew hit the top of the truck and ripped it open like a
child with a gift. The truck (as does most wrapping paper) didn’t stand a
chance. Kenneth’s eyes were wide with shock as he looked up at Andrew.
Ian’s face however was quite different. Ian yelled something to Kenneth
and then sprang up into the air through the hole in the roof, catching
Andrew completely off guard as they flew up into the air.
Andrew felt his flesh ripping as the demon tore into him.
They were ascending quite quickly, and at this rate, would hit the clouds
in a few seconds. The guardian inside Andrew began thrashing as well,
yelling in his mind how it would torture him once he was defeated.
Andrew shut off his nerves and made himself as malleable
as he could to lessen the damage. Although he couldn’t be killed or even
seriously hurt like this, he couldn’t fight back either. He would need to
solidify in order to do any return damage.
Andrew worked up a body in his head, one that would be
all weapons and thick skin. His wings would need to be smaller and faster
to give him more maneuverability. He sent the order to his flesh and
prepared to strike back.
Kenneth barely got the truck under control as he skidded
to a stop amongst some trees on the side of the road, he grabbed the box
and jumped out, looking up in the air for Ian and the attacker. They were
high up in the air and still climbing. He couldn’t tell which was which.
All he saw was what looked like some kind of skeleton with wings
ferociously attacking something with immense claws and even bigger
wings.
"This thing is here to prevent you from getting into
Heaven! Open it, now! I’ll hold it off as long as I can!" Ian had
shouted.
Then Ian had jumped up into the air with surprising
strength and taken the monster who attacked them with him. Kenneth saw the
surprised look on the demon’s face. He was sure it mirrored his own.
Slamming the brakes, he went off the road into the woods to the left.
Kenneth was now leaning against a tree, listening to the
roar from above. The sound echoed in the woods around him, which was all
he could see in any direction. The combatants were now a dot in the sky.
He decided he’d better get started on the box before the battle was done.
If Ian lost, that dot would come down and take the box, and Heaven,
away.
He went around the tree and sat down with his back to it
and began studying the box, turning it over and over again. It slightly
reminded him of another colorful puzzle box that was popular a few years
ago. He had figured that one out in a day.
Ian had shouted that he needed to open it, so the
challenge was not to rearrange the box to some kind of order, instead it
was to take the order and undo it. Whatever was inside the box would be
exposed.
Kenneth had to find a way in. He glanced at the pickup
truck, a reminder of the hell he lived in, rusty, barely functional, down
to earth… boring. He crossed his legs in a squatting position and began to
feel around the box for both a way in and a way out. He was going to
Heaven and to hell with everything else.
He stood in the room where the Y’huni were trying to
bridge the gap between their dimension and what they hoped would be a weak
and bountiful one. Their thoughts spilled in like water through a hole in
a sinking ship’s side.
Gleaned from one of the stray thoughts was the
subconscious memory of an ancient beast. It had been the Y’huni’s natural
enemy back when fire was a newly discovered tool. They had drove the
beasts into extinction, but the memory was still in their collective
subconscious. They thought they had dreamed it up in their fictions
without knowing that at one time, they faced extinction themselves at the
claws of this ‘old enemy’.
This memory would serve his needs. He left the room and
went the opposite way he had come. He walked past a few doorways - pausing
occasionally to savor the sweet sound of suffering - and entered a room
near a five-way junction of dark hallways.
In this room a dozen large long wooden blocks hung on
chains, swinging and turning on their own. The buzzing of flies mixed with
the high pitched whine of the wind. Four chains with lit bulbs at their
ends hung from various parts of the room. They clanged against other
chains that ended in hooks of various sizes, some small and sharp, others
large and dull (like the kind used for pulling). Various hooks and cutting
tools jutted out from the blocks, each with a piece of meat or bone on it.
Some pieces just hung there, while others moved or shook, like bugs on
pins.
An eyeball skewered on a pin which pierced an ear and
held part of a severed human leg swung into view. The leg was pulled
around the side of the ‘block’ (the bend of the knee at the corner) and
was nailed through the ankle on a circular chunk of wood that stuck out
from the face of the block slightly. This circle slowly turned, causing a
sharp cracking sound as it did so. The leg convulsed.
This was only one of the many pieces in the room. Again,
he took a moment to savor it all as he walked further into the room.
He stopped in the middle of the room and turned towards
the largest of the blocks. All the knives and pins and nails retracted
into the block, the limbs and various other human parts they held falling
to the floor with loud slaps and splats. He then looked in turn at each of
the blocks and each of the walls and they did the same. It was a rain of
human flesh, and in a matter of moments, the floor of the room was covered
with it. Most of the pieces were twitching. During this, the whine of the
wind grew.
The Cenobite walked to the doorway and turned around. He
surveyed the flesh on the floor and as his gaze moved around the room,
each piece shook a little.
He lifted his arms slowly with his palms up, and as he
lifted them, a circular piece of the floor rose, becoming a small
pedestal, as far across as he was tall and about half that in height.
The top of it split into pie slices in which the points
at the center rose up and away from the center. Small mechanical ‘arms’
were pushing each piece, making it resemble a dark flower in bloom. Other
devices rose out of the new hole, each on a limb or a mechanical
construct. Sounds of metal scraping metal filled the room. The noise of
the wind stopped as more devices rose out of the pedestal.
Then they all extended out to various points in the room,
picking up the pieces of flesh and drawing them to the center. Much of
what came out of the pedestal were needles on long metal arms. These
needles started sewing pieces together. Bones were pushed together and
ligaments sewn into them. Very quickly a large ribcage became visible as
did what seemed to be a spine running down the center of it. As this was
going on, many arms and legs were being created. Each arm had a long bone
at the end which was sharpened into a blade. As each piece was completed,
it was added to the whole.
Within five minutes muscles were being added and finally,
internal organs were dropped in and connected. A large sixteen part heart
began to beat as a very large lung took its first breath. Skin was dropped
on the new body all the way up to where the head was being made. Pieces of
skulls were arranged into one large head. This head had eyes all over it
and those were also dropped in. All the needles concentrated on the head
as the cavity was filled with gray matter and connected in various places
to the rest of the ‘body’. There had been four humans in this room. They
were now one.
A single loud roar filled the room as the beast was born.
Its sound shook the chains dangling around it as its eight muscular legs
touched the floor. It stood up under its own power and the pedestal that
created it closed and returned to the floor. Eight deadly arms were
brought up into view of its eight eyes. It then turned toward the door,
each foot slamming into the floor with enough force to make the walls
shake and pieces of paint fall.
As its many eyes focused on the Cenobite, it lowered its
massive head in deference and let out a low guttural sound. More paint
fell to the floor.
He was satisfied and began the journey back to the room
of convergence, the newly made beast barely squeezing itself through the
hallway behind him.
An electric shock jolted Kenneth from his trance. The
puzzle box fell from his hand onto the leaf covered ground before him. It
sat there, gold and black, amongst the reds, yellows and browns of Autumn.
The unnatural in the natural. He began to feel quite frightened. What if
this was a trick? What if he was being led down a path of damnation? All
his options lie before him in two extremes, a magical escape from earthly
trappings, or a safe, sane existence in the known and proven. Even if it
was heaven that waited, would he wish that he had spent more years dealing
with the mortal world so that he could more ably savor eternal bliss? He
could not decide. He wanted to run and fall into his mother’s bosom and
beg forgiveness for his desertion to the chase of bright plug-in things.
Kenneth also wanted to scoop up the box and bravely step into whatever
existence it offered, shedding once and for all the simple life. He just
mumbled that he didn’t know which way to go.
An ant helped him decide.
One ant does not usually garner much attention, but this
ant had already found many vast sources of nourishment for its hive. It
now tasted the flakes of junk food in the tread on Kenneth’s boots. It
grabbed a load and went as fast as it could towards the nest. It took it a
little over thirty seconds to drop off the food and call for help in
collecting more. A few seconds after that, it was headed back towards
Kenneth. More joined the endeavor and soon there was a good number of the
nest engaged in the transfer. A few went ahead and headed up the boot
searching for an even greater bounty.
Kenneth felt the prickly wanderings of the ants on his
right leg. He pulled up his pant leg to see the ants crawling frantically
around through his leg hair. He brushed them off and stood up, stomping
his feet.
The colony lost a total of twelve ants in the process but
gained enough food to keep the remaining ants alive for a week. Humanity
was losing one more of its members to Hell as Kenneth decided he wanted no
more of what ants represented to him – endless toil.
He looked up at the box when he was sure the ants were no
longer on him and his mouth dropped open. There sat the box, with what
could have been its top, opened up towards the sky. It was as if a flower
had been planted on the ground and had just bloomed for him. It glistened
and shone, all at once seeming to be tiny and massive – a star sparkling
in the distance and a roaring flame in a fireplace two feet away. There
were other contradictory thoughts and feelings, but nothing as strong as
the sense that this was it. His great moment was here. Kenneth could not
hope to go back now, too much had already been revealed.
He took a tentative step toward it. If he would have
bothered to look down, he would have noticed ants and every other kind of
insect in an absolute panic to get as far away from the box as they could.
They did so with no regard for safety or forest floor politics. A large
caterpillar was stepped on and ignored by a brown spider who on any other
day would have wrapped that same caterpillar in a nice tight web without a
second thought (and in a later bought of hunger, would come back looking
for it). Two beetles missed a perfect opportunity to mate as they sped
along side each other, insect romance going out the window as the need for
distance took precedence. They came up against a piece of bark that forced
them to squeeze through a hole only big enough for one. The male knocked
the female aside and went through. Before the female could follow, a light
shone through the hole, immobilizing her where she stood. She sensed where
she was going and without hesitation, flipped on her back and died.
Kenneth slowly walked towards the box, trying to see over
its top to its internal workings. All around him, the woods crackled with
a sound like two large rocks rubbing on each other. This was accompanied
by the sound of cracking branches. In the distance a bell rang. This
caught his attention. It did not sound like a heavenly bell. It was more
melancholy, more banal. The clouds above became darker and the sun faded
away. A strange luminescence took form all around the spot as nearby
fields and roads were replaced by a giant maze of which Kenneth’s piece of
the woods was perched on top of.
He heard the bell again and looked through the trees to
the source. Kenneth saw a far group of trees disappearing and being
replaced by an opening in the ground a hundred yards across. He could see
what appeared to be roads along the top of ancient walls. These walls went
down seemingly forever. Kenneth got the sense that he was standing on a
vast plain that had been sliced up. The air had a stale, deathly smell to
it. The clouds were moving very fast. Much too fast for the kind of day it
was.
As he looked at the trees around him, he caught something
moving in the distance. As he moved his head to one side, he noticed it
was something turning… and it was very far away.
Kenneth then had the feeling that whatever brought him
here (wherever here was) was done bringing him, for a sense of closing
came over him. It was as if a lock was turned and his very essence felt
the click of the bolt against a stop. Wherever he was, it was for
good.
At that moment, the trees ahead of him began to fall. The
furthest one dropped down and disappeared. Then the next closer and the
next and so on. The ground just fell away as the snapping of roots and a
very loud sifting sound came at him. The ground was falling into whatever
abyss surrounded the small grove of trees and he would soon go with
it.
He took a step back and was stopped by the tree he had
leaned against while working the box. A cry shot out of his mouth but he
couldn’t hear it over the din of the collapsing piece of forest.
The collapsing slowed and by the time it reached the two
trees in front of him, it was moving at half the speed it had started
out.
The two trees began to lean away from him, and as they
did so, it revealed the spinning object he had glimpsed.
It was the box, or more accurately, a gigantic version of
it. It hung in mid-air, spinning on some invisible vertical axis. On one
side, it was opened just like the much smaller version which had brought
him here. Kenneth glanced down to the box and there it sat, identical in
configuration to the behemoth spinning in the sky.
The opening in the box in the sky began to glow as it
turned away from him, but not a bright glow, rather it seemed to be
glowing black. Then a black beam shot out and down, since that face of the
box was pointing down a few degrees from level. The beam panned across the
distant horizon and then came back his way. He noticed he was directly in
its path and hurriedly jumped behind the tree.
Blackness hit and everything inverted in color. His mind
was turned over and things that he kept repressed and buried were suddenly
his topmost thoughts. The coping mechanisms he used to keep these thoughts
at bay were suddenly repressed and he was bombarded by images he could not
turn away from.
They came almost too fast to catch them, but catch them
he did, despite his best effort to not do so. These images and sounds were
a mix of internal organs and violence and sex. It was as if someone was
watching television and changing the channels extremely fast… and every
channel was showing something disturbing.
A small black and white calf hung in a metal gate choking
and gurgling, its head stuck between two beams of the gate. A kitten
squealed as a cow laid down and forced out the kitten’s last breath. A
tiny mouse bit down on a scrap of bread as a cat landed on it and bit into
its neck. A mouse shot up the pant leg of his father as he swung a hammer,
missing the nail which was to hold a metal gate in place and instead
smashing into his wrist with a loud crack.
Then there was a rushing sound like air from a sliced car
tire and he saw the metal gate suspended and turning in mid-air as the
calf and the kitten and the mouse and his father spun in the air around
it, screaming and dying, blood flying everywhere. Kenneth’s sight turned
red as blood filled his eyes. He smelled rotted flesh as the blood turned
brown. The blood then fell away from his face and landed on the metal
grate as it changed and contorted into various shapes. The animals and his
father were pulled in and ground up, the mush piling on the ground below.
The mass of flesh moved and shook, various cries and screams escaping from
mouths that dissolved as soon as they formed.
The black light was suddenly gone and Kenneth found
himself kneeling on the ground, screaming at the top of his lungs. The
scream was so automatic that he didn’t realize it was his own for a few
seconds.
Before he could catch his breath, something dug into his
leg, then into his arm, and then his chest. He barely got enough air in to
let out another scream as a wave of pain hit him. He saw three hooks
imbedded in his flesh, each one at the end of a chain. He was yanked
toward the box and he realized the chains were coming out of it’s
opening.
Reflexively, he turned his body and pulled on the chain
attached to his arm. It popped out and was violently yanked inside the
box. Kenneth quickly executed more of the same kind of twists so that he
could free himself from the other two. The instant they lost him, he ran
behind the tree. He started to back away, keeping the tree between him and
the box.
Kenneth realized opening the box had been a huge mistake.
He didn’t know where he was, but it certainly wasn’t Heaven. He then heard
the whistling of the chains as their hooks struck the tree. He turned to
run but came to a very quick stop.
He was looking at what appeared to be a large flat one
story structure. It went on to the right and the left indefinitely and
there was no opening in it as far as he could tell. It was too high to get
on top of and the ground he stood on ended a few dozen feet to each side.
Kenneth was on a small flat area on the top of this maze, and he was
trapped. Waiting for him was the box on the ground and its chains and the
box in the sky and its dark light. This was Hell, he thought. Better to
run off the edge into the abyss then face those two boxes. The black beam
was now on its way back again. Kenneth let out a whimper and looked for
the closest spot from which to jump that would allow him to not be caught
by the chains trying at him.
He took one large step after choosing the spot and was in
mid stride of the second when the sound of the chains suddenly stopped.
Kenneth turned and noticed the box in the sky was closed and spinning
harmlessly. He carefully looked around the tree and the box sat on the
ground, closed as well, but not back in cube shape. Maybe what he had to
do was reverse what he had done and it would take him home.
Perhaps that was it, maybe this wasn’t Hell after all.
Maybe all he had to do was threaten to jump over the edge and the forces
that controlled this place would cease their attack, this might buy him a
chance to get home.
As if in answer, there came the grinding sound of a very
large stone door sliding open on a similar floor. A bright light came from
behind him and he turned to see the wall was opening up. It was as if
someone sliced right down the wall starting a few feet from the top and
then started pulling the crack open. The wall was not buckling however, it
just seemed to compress on either side, like a curtain being opened. Th