Kasmilah

An arrow of the road, the smoky run-down car sped through the deserted passage of gravel and dust, begging to stop. The filth of its mechanical waste bled into the morning spectrum of numbing sunshine and beauty. Richard biting onto a dead cigarette was driving with his right hand while his injured left, wrapped with folds of bloodied bandages hung out of the window to dry in the wind. The sunny dawn was alive only because of the death in the vehicle.

Kasmilah was at the back of the car, holding her son's head in her lap, caressing it. Her hair was in her wet face, her hair was everywhere.

Kasmilah ignored the short bursts of sunlight and fixated on the flapping of Richard's bandages in the breeze. She saw the eyes of the driver through the side mirror. Richard's eyes had been serene now, almost glassy like a doll's. Kasmilah wondered how long did it took for those eyes to slimmer after a murder, or even any else’s to. Richard's eyes had been licking with vile trepidations when he had bludgeoned the National Guard to death yesterday’s morning. They had been trying to get through the Public Health Checkpoint and there was trouble. Trouble was a shameless host, inviting death everywhere these days. Now he could live forever in her heart as the defender for he could just surrender, but he didn't. He had killed for her. Or did he ever? Everyone for himself, even if murder, especially murder. Then, will Richard kill her? Those young eyes. Alive for only the meanest stuff in this hell. And in this hell, anything goes.

But he wouldn't. Kasmilah had the pistol. Panting from his blood lust of killing the National Guard, Richard as if knew he had transcended into something bestial, unleashed from primal cages of reasoning, knew that if survival was the sole excuse then no one would be safe from him. He handed Kasmilah the Guard's pistol. Five bullets intact. Five times over.

Coming to a junction, they saw more cars on the road. Survivors of the 'Grip'. They were heading to the North. Word had spread that the Communist North had the cure. It was only five weeks ago that Hans Scolofey had declared that he found the vaccine too. The zealots renewed God, the bacteria had begun to fry in pure oxygen, people recovered and tons and tons of bullshit like that. Richard reeled his choking and sputtering vehicle into the direction heading towards the beach. 

In the cool evening, under the blanket of stars, their car was dead like a rock. Miles of grassland stretched endlessly in the darkness.

Kasmilah mouthed, 'That's that.'

Richard ignored her and restarted the engine for the thousandth time. Sweat reeked from his pores and veins turned at his temples.

Kasmilah put her hand over Richard's shoulder, her softness sunk into his heaviness, 'It's over.'

Richard stared wrathfully at the night skies and mumbled, 'Get the torch.'

He got out of the driver seat and fetched Sal from the passenger seat, away from his mother.

'Don't touch him!' Kasmilah screamed and pointed her pistol at him. 'I'll shoot you. I'll shoot your brains out! I will shoot you, shoot you, shoot you.' Five times over.

Richard held the young Sal in his arms and walked on the gravel of blackness. 'Get the torch.' He repeated. Little stones crackled under his shoes echoed against the trinity of shrouded darkness. Under the pale moonshine they walked on foot to the sea.

When they were tired, they sat by the road side catching their breath. Wordless, the night was only filled with insects and bullfrogs. A jeep had drove by, Richard jumped at the chance to hitch a ride. An old woman had loaded her jeep with supplies peered out of her car at them. 'The sea? What for? There's nothing at the sea. No ships, no shit. You want to die there, you walk there. You could be there at dawn. I'm not nearing folks like you. What you got there? Wanna trade? I have eggs.' The crone asked.

Kasmilah withdrew to stroke her son's hair.

The hag took a long look at Kasmilah and her son and grinned her yellow teeth, 'Your kid. Sick like the others?'

Kasmilah shook her head.

The crone realized what Kasmilah meant, spat at their feet and sped her jeep away, away from death.

'Come on.' Richard got on his feet to take over Sal. 'We can reach there by dawn.'

The crone was right. They had reached the sea at the time that the sun began to flower the horizon with golden petals. The sea was unaffected by the Grip, sodium scented and breeze breeding. It was the ideal place to reborn and relive. Richard took off his shoes to feel the brown sand between his toes. The little rubbles of nature held false promises of hope and salvation, of help and future. But Grip was nature as well; the bacteria thrived on the very same elements as those of the sea and the sand. The cosmos of enemies and friends wrapped together in the same bed covers. Furthermore, nature spewed characters like Hans Scolofey and his lackeys, which so believed in genocide. They breathed the same sea and sand in their lungs and would stand to awe the sight of nature if they were here. Everything belonged together, righteous or not. Richard wore his shoes back and began to work.

Kasmilah held Sal by a coconut tree and admired the glorious sunrise over the jeweled ocean. She watched over her shoulder at times to see Richard working away. She was grateful. Sal's father should be here for the rites, he should be the one digging in the sand. She started crying. Why did she never have time to bring Sal to the beach before? The dry land was mere mass compared to the oceans and children should know and love the beaches. There were many things children should have the chance to explore, to learn and understand. But many would not live past their next birthdays. The Grip had hit the children the hardest. Their immunity was raw and unfit for such invasion of the meninges. With that she wept her heart out. For her son and all the mothers in the world.

Richard had a deep hole prepared and stood in silence as Kasmilah descended into the hole to rest her child. She was trembling with fits of sobbing as her hands crawled and pushed the sand over her dead child's body. She had refused Richard's help in the burial, was determined to see it through herself. Richard went to the water and smoked in the grainy breeze. Her crying had only gotten louder in time. Washed away into the sea.

They did not mark Sal's grave, leaving him to enjoy his peace. Folks had tried to bury their love ones all over the South, defying the mandatory rule to incinerate their bodies. Graves marked would be dug by law to burn along with the rest in the pyre.

They then walked in silence, in search for a shelter as rainclouds formed from a mist by the horizon. They settled in a ruined shophouse among the cluster of deserted beach haunts. The storm fell like silver coins. Richard took out a Campbell soup from his supplies and cooked it. In stony silence, they sat at a table and ate the stew. Hunger had always been an issue but not today. They ate only because it was the only sensible thing to do. Soon, Richard expected, they would part and would not see each other ever again. His role in her life had played its due. He watched the shadows jigged at the windows. Kasmilah boiled water and took Richard's bloodied hand and unwrapped the bandages. She cleaned the wound and re-bandaged it with bits from the curtains and held his hand for a long time. The thunders raged on, its discharges rapping onto the roof as if the most spectacular show had ran on Earth and the clapping went forever.

Kasmilah leaned closer to Richard and put his wounded hand on her heart. The love they made was quiet and tender, marking a contrast against the storm. They slept like pebbles in a waterfall, the first for many weeks.

Daylight bounced through the morning dews into the shophouse. The storm was over. Richard woke up to find Kasmilah gone. He had made plans for them to travel to the North. The country infested with the Grip was now torn even further apart by civil wars. Hans Scolofey's short regime was crashing down. That fascist fucker. Richard put on his clothes to ward off the freeze and attempted to find Kasmilah.

Richard found Kasmilah dead by the entrance of the woods. She had shot herself in the mouth. Richard gritted his teeth, his eyes swelling up as he held Kasmilah close. 'Shit.' He muttered in his trembling breaths, rasping as his chest tightened. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’ He found himself saying as pearls of tears hopped from his shaking face. Maybe they would never get to the North at all. The genocide had gotten too many people. The wrath of God spared nobody. The nature He made out of His shinning hands, He had made the Grip too. With an intention to kill and made His children kill one another. He had made Hans Scolofey. He had made doom for Man. Maybe the North would kill them too even if they had made it there. To reject the infected. To reject the South for rejecting them. The North had been impoverished and outcast from the world. To reject the South justified everything. Democracy after all had shot to hell. The woods had appeared appealing. The freshness and the rotting mosses and greens. The cycle of life unaffiliated by Man. We had gone back to three hundred million years ago, thought Richard, where unmanned floras were the zeitgeist of this world. We are back to the Paleozoic period where ferns and corals ruled the Earth. We are all walking with our backs into the future where we would meet the past even as we walked further and further away from them. The circuitry existence. The ascension to the bottom. Soon, we would fry in the air we breathe when the Earth had returned to its organic stage where the atmosphere, our Teflon was doused with hyper-oxygenation, the fumes by Alpha of birth. In chemical euphoria, we danced forever in flames.

Richard put the pistol in his mouth. He could taste Kasmilah's blood. Same warmth, different orifice. No anticipation should be greater than ending your life. He gave the trigger a squeeze. It was that easy. ‘That’s that’ He thought he had heard Kasmilah said. Suicide was no longer ritualistic, like everything else around Man, it was made convenient like making a drink or changing a channel. It was made so everyone had the right to sought death. Richard wondered if he would ever live long enough to hear the bang in his head. The fireworks of his smearing brains. The magnificent red on the magnificent green. But there was none. He felt his eyes roving with curiosity and disappointment, his ears listening to the living sounds of the forest. He pulled the trigger again with spite this time, hurting his palate with the gunpoint. He wanted his insides to feel the gun, the bullet tearing his nerves away. And again. And again until he felt the pistol was snapping apart. Click! Click! Click! The barrel was empty. Five bullets. One for the maiden. There should be four bullets intact. He could die four times over. But the gun was empty. Kasmilah had discarded the rest of the bullets, leaving one for herself, fully expecting that Richard would use it. Kasmilah had not committed her suicide in the shophouse was her way of not scaring Richard, not robbing him of her gratitude and love. She had wanted Richard to live on.

1. Vivi

2. Dara

Dara

The television was the jumpy moon in the cave of his apartment. The measly device completed with a prehistoric VHS player was his only window to the fallen society. Fallen prey to only themselves. Seven weeks of quarantine, bounded not an inch further than two city blocks had drove the pacing man to streaking roots. His loneliness had turned into despair. He had never mastered the art of solitude and was always dependant on the intimacy of humanity. He needed to get out.

Let’s called him Richard.

Richard shuffled the room with motives and temperaments, suggested a hunt in progress. The television went on undaunted by the lack of love, it’s projectile lights contoured and fucked with both speed and sound. He had turned on the news a while ago, which after he had gotten bored of masturbating himself to old Japanese pornographic videotapes. The Internet was cut off for two weeks now, part of the Hans Scolofey’s intervention for Internal Security. His administration had to stop the jitters of conspiracy theories from reaching more households. Big brother is watching you.

‘Eighteen additions to the Public Healthcare Checkpoints had installed over the nation with adequate medical resources in aid to combat further transmissions.’ The television crackled, ‘For the safety and the welfare of yourself and your love ones, it is mandatory to register yourself or your love ones with the Checkpoints should you present with the following signs and symptoms…’

Richard peeked into the fridge. The ration of electricity had stretched the expectancy of the perishables to its max and had them dying in his pantry. At least he had eggs. But he wasn’t looking for food. The apartment was a dump, just the way Dara had left it before the outbreak.

Dara.

Richard felt a muscle tightened in his guts. Where on Earth are you? Dara. I missed you so much. Eighteen hours ago, he had contacted Dara’s household since the family had been evicted from the Hotspots. Dara’s mother had only muttered that her daughter was dead and put down the phone. Richard hadn’t been feeling like himself again. The news had promised that the quarantine would end soon, the disease would die quickly, that people would be okay again, and the vaccine was found. Seven weeks! No one is okay, the disease is in this room with him and Dara was dead!

Dead!

Fuck it. He wouldn’t believe it. How can someone be so alive in his head be dead? Dara is not dead. She can’t be. She is the only thing that holds him together in the womb of his own flat. She is the embryonic fluid, encompassing and divine. Don’t plug a hole to drain her out, please, not today, not ever!

‘Persisting fever, fatigue, muscle spasms and coughs. Sudden onsets of seizures or syncope. Rigidity of body parts. Photophobia. Phonophobia. Rashes over lower extremities. Breathlessness. Hallucinations. Headaches.’ The television quacked.          

He had saw the face of Dara in every limited faces he had seen. The moaning and the thrashing pornstars, the nape of their pale stomachs, their fluttering eyes of ecstasy, their brown and black and blonde hair. He heard her last said words of fury beating against the chest of the wall like an imprisoned butterfly and her gritted sentences the carbon monoxide sapping the sweet air. He needed to get out. He had his papers, his fitness seal, his cloak and his mask. He needed a weapon. Hopefully for self defense. The quarantine was strictly enforced on martial laws. In the cyanotic rush of public outrage, the people had propelled in pigheadedness the Reformative Socialist Hans Scolofey to fill the power vacuum abandoned by the incompetent ruling party. Hans Scolofey had proved himself to be fascist in his new lawmaking. The terror regime under the even more terrible plague stricken South had caused the citizens of their freedom and him his occupation.

Richard pulled out a power torch from the stack of belongings in the closet. He felt the burly weight of the metal, stark black and heavy in his hands. Someone rapped on his door. Richard stood in disbelief. A sound that was man made, not of nature, science or fantasy. He moved only upon hearing it for the second time. ‘Who is it?’ He called out in his quivering lips. He wrapped his fingers around the torch. It must be the military. This apartment must have been zoned. Zoned for eradication. The stories on the Net, that stuff about ridding everybody, it must be true.

‘It’s unit fourteen.’ The sound was crumby and grainy.

‘Huh?’ Richard moved closer to the door and barked. He put his eye to the peephole and saw that it was a brown girl with a child in her arms.

‘I… I lived down your left. Unit fourteen? I’m your neighbor?’ She explained.

‘What do you want from me?’ Richard barked again.

‘I… I need something. Well, it’s my boy.’ She said with much effort. ‘I haven’t got anything else to feed him other than the milk. I was wondering if I can get some food from you? Anything? Maybe an egg?’

The son looked very small and tired in her arms.

‘What is your name?’ Richard asked hastily, ‘You said you lived on the left, what is your name? How come I have never seen you before?’

‘Does it matter? Sorry. I’m Kasmilah.’ She introduced herself. ‘This is my boy, Sal. He’s four.’

Kasmilah. He almost sank to his toes from listening to her name. Nobody had talked to him in weeks. He would remember this name for years to come.

‘Kas… Kasmilah.’ Richard said to the door. ‘Turn away, please. I have no food here. But I have many sharp things in the house. I will use them if you don’t leave this minute.’

Silence.

Beneath the door, the shadow shifted and disappeared.

‘The government is urging the people of the South to be patient.’ The television squeaked, ‘The vaccine has been developed and clinical trials had been proven very positive on human agents.’

‘Shut up!’ Richard roared at his electrical moon. ‘Shut the fuck up! There is no cure. This is no hope! There is no vaccine! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’ He threw his torch into the television, ruined it and sat in the darkness for the longest time.

 

Vivi

Let's call him Richard.

Of course that wasn't his real name. His folks wanted to name their firstborn Richard, but decided against it in case he grew up not liking it.

He had mentioned that the name sound like an old man would have.

But Richard was a bitter old man trapped in the soft flesh of a young boy. That's why let's call him Richard.

It was intended to start his story with him lying on back in his bed on New Year's Eve, the room was dark and he was just staring into the ceiling.

But that doesn't sound appetizing enough to begin a story, so let's start early at the eve of New Year's Eve. In an enclosed toilet of a karaoke club banging a prostitute from her rear.

It's not because I think sex sells, it was then Richard discovered that he didn't like sex at all.

The reason he was fucking that hooker in the ladies was that he doesn't like having sex with his girlfriend. He wanted to see if it was sex that repulses him or his girlfriend. That reason was of course one of the many excuses he had when he decided to pay Vivi the Hainanese prostitute for sex. I think he just wanted to be free from himself.

It was always the same for him in sex, middle of it, he was bored and he couldn't cum. Vivi was moaning away softy, clutching the skin of his backside. Another hooker was rapping onto the door, chiding them for taking so long, for she had wanted to pee. Vivi moved her perfect arse faster, trying to milk her client physically. Richard with resignation had too wanted the disappointing intercourse to be over. He asked Vivi to look at him while he continued to thrust. He wanted to see her brown eyes. Their eyes stared right into each others' while they moved beneath the maddening screaming of someone really wanting to pee.

That was the eve of New Year's Eve. He had told me the reason that he returned that immoral place of lust, false promises, diseased kisses and expensive desires was he had needed someone else to talk to. He said that he knew he was not attractive and he had no confidence, he could only pay for attention. For two hundred bucks, he could have five hours of attention from the prettiest women whom would never in real life paid him any decent attention at all. That was Richard playing the fool. His excuses. His girlfriend, Dara was beautiful. But I believe his part about wanting to talk to someone else. For the longest time, Richard had been a lonely person.

On New Year's Eve, he had returned from his work at the hospital. While the world ushered into the year two thousand and eight with fireworks and abhorrent countdowns, Richard was learning to blow circular smokes from his eleventh cigarette.  He was on his back against his bed, staring at the ceiling in the dark of his room. He was there quietly on his own, something that he doesn’t like doing much but was forced into character by unexplainable circumstances. He was there until the New Year’s sun came up. And he slept finally.

Richard hates to dream. He only has two kinds of dreams. One in which he was always locked behind a door and the other was always about seeing friends and lovers that had abandoned him. The two dreams had the same effect on him whenever he wakes up. He feels alone and wretched.

On New Year’s day, Richard was blissfully able to sleep a dreamless sleep. In fact he enjoyed it so much, he had decided to sleep through the rest of the day.

Richard was sleeping while the rest of the world started to get sick.

Seven weeks later, Vivi had called him up. They arranged to meet in her motel room. There were not many people on the streets now. Public transport was cut back to limit the risk of transmission. Richard’s sixteen minute taxi fare ran up to seventy five dollars. Like the current fashion, he went for his appointment with gloves and a face mask. Inside her room, Vivi was wearing her face mask too. She appeared relieved to see Richard. She was wearing a pair of sunglasses. That was not a good sign at times like these.

‘Like I say, I don’t have any money.’ Richard greeted Vivi void of expression.

Vivi invited Richard into the gloomy room for a sit. As he sat in front of the television blazing with the news, Vivi poured Richard some water. The coffee table was full of empty cans and cup noddles.

‘I will cut the chase. It’s not money.’ Vivi undressed herself and stood naked in front of Richard. ‘I want you to check me for the disease. I need to know. You work in the hospital, don’t you? Check me out. I can’t go to the hospital, I’m an illegal entrée. You have to do me this favor.’

‘How do you know I work in the hospital?’ Richard asked, remembering strictly that he had lied about his name, his age and his profession.

‘I saw you on the TV. You are one of the healthcare worker.’ Vivi answered, ‘Please. I will pay you.’

‘Even if I want to. It’s not so easy. You have to take blood sample, take a spinal tap or an MRI. You can't do it here.’ Richard rose to walk away.

Richard walked to the door.

‘Then why did you come?’ Vivi asked.

There were many reasons that Richard had decided to meet Vivi. He was curious, he was bored, he wanted sex, he wanted blowjobs, he wanted her breasts to suckle, he wanted her perfect hands to caress his hair, he wanted to feel Dara through her, he was lonely, he hadn’t talk to someone else in ages, he wanted attention, he was sick of himself, he was sick of work, he was sick of this life, he was sick of how the virus had infected everyone else, he was sick of the news, he wanted a human touch, a voice, any voice, soothing and warm, a warm body, a pair of eyes to look into. Someone real.

Richard decided not to abandon Vivi at this moment, returned to his place in front of the television and asked, ‘Wear your undies back. You don’t have to be starking naked.’

He could feel Vivi’s smile through their baby blue surgical masks.

Richard switched off the television of horrid soothsaying and lighted a table lamp near Vivi.  He had Vivi sat by the edge of the bed and felt her legs, he felt the icy smoothness of her thighs. His touch went from the trees of her arms to her neck. He could felt her heaving, her large chest panting. He grabbed her neck, digging his nails into the flesh. He tried to flex her head and sensed rigidity. He could smelt her shampoo in her brown hair. They were staring at each other, just like the time she was making him cum in the karaoke toilet.

‘Well?’ Vivi asked.

‘Take off your sunglasses.’ Richard ordered. He held the table lamp near Vivi’s face. Her exposed eyes immediately flinched as she drew quickly away from the light.

He had Vivi laid on the bed as he toured the table lamp’s light over her flesh.  ‘No rashes.’ He announced plainly.

‘Does that mean?’ Vivi asked anxiously.

‘Get back down. Do as I tell you to.’ Richard scolded. He had Vivi’s knees flexed, and then he tried to extend Vivi’s legs. She winched at the action.

Richard had finished his examination, ‘Like I say, you cannot tell if you have the virus by a physical. You have to undergo detailed medical assessment.’

‘Then what are you doing? Molesting me?’ Vivi asked angrily.

‘Ya. That’s right. I’m gonna go now and that’s nothing you can do.’ Richard grinned.

Vivi started crying. She switched off the table lamp and hid back inside her covers on the bed.

Richard ignored her crying and exited the room.

Richard returned twenty minutes later and found Vivi had cried herself to sleep under the blankets.

He pulled out a large plastic bag from the closet and started clearing out Vivi’s leftovers of cans and cup noodles on the coffee table. He made some coffee and turned on the television. He muted the volume and watched in silence.

‘Why have you come back?’ Vivi asked. Her hair was in her face.

‘I bought you some dinner. Eat them while they are hot.’ Richard said without taking his eyes off the news.

Vivi attacked the food hungrily. After her dinner, Richard brought a naked Vivi to the bathtub and started to sponge her feverish body with gentle ice water.  With a cigarette at the thin of his mouth, he washed Vivi’s hair with a bar of scented soap and massaged her back with foams and bubbles. He carried Vivi back to the bed with his arms where he lighted up another cigarette. Finishing that cigarette, he was in the covers with Vivi in the dark of the motel room.

They stared at each other in the covers with their arms around each other.

‘What is your real name?’ She asked.

‘Richard.’

She had slept very well that night, avoiding nightmares of abused childhood and the monsters with eyes.

Richard didn’t sleep at all. He knew his dreams of locked doors and lost loves have all the time in the world to wait, but his companion doesn’t have.

She had probably only a week left.

D Is For Dangerous

The Comedy Of Memory is a bizarre story about two girls. One has no future to boot and the other comes from the future. Almost everyone have their names that begins with the letter D.

Darcy.
Dorian.
Daniel.
Dahlia.
Furiya. (Probably have to kill him off in the story for not having a D in his name.)

It's a common habit not to name characters with the same letters as to avoid confusion. And then I read Austen's Persuasion. I think there were three or four dudes named Charles in the book. It was hard at first, I have to identify which Charles was who by finding who's with hanging out with him at that time.

Thus, the experiment with the D's. Will good management with the storytelling able to ease reader's way into easily identifying characters with similar names?

D Is For Damage.

Dorian jumps the tracks of time against her will by a greater plan. She's a space monkey, training to press a couple of buttons, whom will never know what was her purpose or why she had died. Like a phoenix, she was nauseatingly reborn again and again into a variety of space, time, culture and locations. Determined to learn about her purpose and the identity of the higher power that shuffles her in the flux of time, she had to remember to remember.

Question: What effect will time travel have on people?

Brain damage! Time travel shatters memories. It was not known if Dorian's selective amnesia was deliberate or due to the trauma of time jumping. Dorian have no effective time based perception, deficit in attention span and possesses a damaged retrospective memory. Dorian functions instead by prospective memory which are event based. She can only progress her life with cues.

Stuff her into a MRI machine and have her on a CT scan, Dorian will present a complicated case of neurological disorders with plenty of lesions and stenosis, preferably in the prefrontal lobe and the hippocampus region.

D Is For Darcy

The questions with Darcy.

Darcy's occupation - Chiromancer or hair dresser? It's a tougie, though I thought it would be interesting to feature palmistry in the story.

Darcy's involvement in the greater plan? I'm still trying to figure that out. Can a single person ever strive to doom a planet?

D Is For D-Cup
Unfortunately, there is no person with such bust size in the story. Only God, Bryan, Chang and all those who knows me knows I love Big Busty Naturals.

Darcy Goes To Work

Currently writing a short fiction called 'The Comedy Of Memory'. Despite the title, it was however not funny, at all. Want to write it decent and readable - testy, but trying. I'm posting an excerpt of the first draft, probably will bleach it again and again, probably will delete it altogether if it clash with the other parts. Am posting it because I sort of like how this one turns out.

Darcy Goes To Work

   Darcy decided that she had sat by the fridge long enough for the shadows to seep in from the window grills. It had begun to rain and the storm was matronly to care into every homes. Daniel's rage parasitic to the roving climate always invites rain without fail. Darcy had wanted to grin at her grim observation was hindered by the ungenerous black eye stinging on the right.
   What is the time now, Darcy wondered as she gotten up from the floor. She had work to get to. Avoiding splinters from the broken blender and the porcelain plates, she ran the tap at the sink. Daniel won't be back for hours, she would have to clean up the mess before he gets home. With a damp rag, she pried the bruises and blood off her discolored cheek with abrupt grimaces. Darcy wondered if they could afford another blender? Do they really need one? It's only good in making cocktails in this home. Alcohol always give Daniel an excuse to act up. The vicious circle with Darcy at its mercy. She also wondered if her body would ever get used to Daniel's rage?
   She thought about the times when she was being little, with Dahlia. Their father used the belt on them all the time. Time is a funny thing. Human is the funny thing, that it. With enough time, human can get used to almost everything. She had gotten used of the belt by the time she turned eleven and she didn't even winced once. Then their father had decided that the time for corporal punishment was over in their household and never laid another hand on the girls again. How funny humans can be? She ran away from a home that had decided not to beat her ever into this home that hits her every other day. The cycle again. Will Daniel come to that epiphany that her father had? Her right eye throbbed wickedly at that hint of suggestion.
 
   Mopping away the glasses and her blood off her kitchen floor, Darcy went for work downtown. It was a school night and the evening bus was packed to hilt. The shingles and the concrete roofs were drummed with the machinations of the monsoon. As Darcy had stayed before the school, she had a seat by the window staring listlessly at the wayward rain before the wet kids trampled onto the bus. The city cried its teardrops down her window panes. Her murky reflection showed a middle age woman, malnourished and black-eyed. Though the wind sewed her bones, it smeared a numbing frost on her epileptic cheek. Her eyes, uneven and seemingly hollow glared at herself in the splashing lights of the evening traffic had tried to explain that it had almost always rained whenever she was hurt was nature’s compensation for her inability to cry. It’s hard not to get self philosophical and spiritual when you are always with yourself. With no one to talk to. And when you have no where else to run and hide, you’ll seek comfort in that space, no matter how claustrophobic, will shelter a womb for you to crawl inside. Just to die in there so you could live another day. She looked to the urban infrastructures and its unnatural lights for an escape.
   There will be none, Darcy had decided long ago. She would have left Daniel if she could, but she couldn't do it. The sacrifices she had made for their relationship and they had gone through so much together.  She still loves the young poet. It was this love that burns her most than his rage. Perhaps if one day, both her heart and the clouds could stop crying, just like when she was eleven again, when the alligator belt with silver buckle stop breaking her soul, then she could be forever free from men. The groundhog days of Darcy Kathiravan are in prefect sync then, she thought, with all that ever will be in her future. Imprinted on every reflection on the windows, the buses, the gutter puddles, the moonshine and every broken blender was her future on the kitchen floor with Daniel and the thousand puzzles of glassware.

Andriod Shorts - Junior Detectives

Pacific Creation, Sector Seven Seven Four. Midhours to the Seventh Ration Period.

The rusty staircase creaked meekly under their weight. The two detectives moved along the chest of the wall with pale moonlight beaming through the dusty windows of the run down building. Precisely seven greened signals ago, the House had received information of a local smuggler and dispatched two junior detectives to the slums of Sector Seven Seven Four for justification.

'This is it.' Whispered Detective Smoz, throwing his head towards the nearest door near the stairs. He pulled out a pistol shaped Disabler and started charging it with red bulbs of crystals. The Disabler churned silently and clicked to confirm energy satisfaction.

'Smuggler, right?' Smiled Detective Banks. 'I get to crack open his head this time, right?' He played with a mean looking baton with his gloved fingers.

They proceeded to get closer.

'What's the creeper smuggling?' Banks asked as he spun the baton faster. 'Sapient related ding a dong?'

'Why are you asking me?' Hissed Smoz in annoyance, keeping his eyes on the door. 'You heard the radio!'

'Yeah. Yeah. Bugbed.' Said Banks. 'Since when they dispatch gismo like us to smuggling cases? I swear that folks at the House are pulling this one on us. Shitbags never forget a debt. I will mend their Pods one day, I had promised, right?'

'Just shut up.' Said Smoz as he kicked the door, exploding away. He pointed his Disabler into the dark hall and went in cautiously.

'Wait! Wait! I'm not ready yet!' Shouted a teary voice from the master room.

Banks bolted and bashed his way into the master room, yelling, 'We don't care!'

They saw a young android packing furiously and spun in shock as he saw their presence. He raised his arms in surrender quickly.

'What you have there, droid?' Asked Smoc as he pointed his Disabler and proceeded to ransack the bags on the bed.

'No! No! No!' Shouted the suspect in panic but raised his hands back in the air with Smoc's Disabler churned red towards his eyes. 'Please don't touch them! Please! I haven't figure out what I'm supposed to do with them yet!'

'Shut up. Banks, you are permitted to hit him as much as you desire.' Said Smoc as he went for the bed.

The suspect ripped open his shirt and exploding from his chest, he shot a brick size rocket at Smoc. A loud crash and Smoc was decapitated in flares and smokes. The young suspect grabbed his bags and darted for the exit. He rocketed another shot, barely missing Banks. Banks leaped onto him, snatching away at his shirt and hair, trying to steady a firm grip. And when he did, he hacked his baton repeatedly at the suspect's head.

Five dozen times later, Banks stopped and found wires and blue goo splashed all over his coat. With disgust, he kicked the head and it rolled to the edge of the hall.

'Carry me! I want to see him!' Yelled Smoc.

Banks grabbed the bags and went into the master room which had now started a small fire. 'Look what that bleedin' creeper got here?' Banks brought out some jars of organs. There were two wet hearts and a floating brain.

'We got a trafficker.' Shrugged Banks. 'Probably rotating them to the Cyborgs.'

'I said carry me! I want to see him!' Repeated Smoc.

'Okay! Alrightey!' Spat Banks and he carried Smoc's head in his arms. He brought it to the hall and stood over the suspect body, now draining electrical fluid all over the place.

'The head! Why did you bring me to the body! I want to talk to the head!' Yelled Smoc infuriately.

'You best be careful with your manner. I'm the only one with head kicking legs in this room. Want to fraternise with my sole?' Smiled Banks.

Banks carried Smoc's head and went to the edge of the hall where the head of the suspect was. The suspect's head moaned in agony.

'Always shoot the head, mister! You never aim for the body, you aim for the fucking head! That's why you criminals are idiots! That's why you never win!' Laughed Smoc.

The suspect's head opened his jaws wide and shot a walnut sized rocket at Smoc, blasting it into pieces. Banks reeled in his surprise and stomped his boot over the suspect's head, killing it.

Banks dumped the burning head of Smoc down the rubbish chute with a snicker, gathered the bags in the master room and went to sit at the moonlit corridor while the fire had spread to the hall from the master room. He gently pushed his temple and muttered to himself, 'Detective Banks to House. Officer down. Suspect killed in action. Requesting backup and statement protocol.'

The Soothsayer - Epilogue

Swane's Residence, Old Compton Street, London. Year 2006.
Midnight. Droopy silver crescent and dotted stars. Wet streets and moist ambiance.
The shadows round the tattered edges of the corner walls slided gently.

'Thud.'

Eilert Swane woke up from the noise from his locked door. About time, he thought. His dreams about Degaliel were too long and unbearable to carry each time he awaken to find himself all alone in London. Someone had broken the spell he had cast on his door.

Eilert Swane felt for a baseball bat from the dressing table. He glided silvery to the chest of the walls, the powdery moonlight splashed on his features. He had barely aged since the Exodus, except his head full of white mane and some crowfeet beneath his eyes whenever he grins. The Exodus happened a hundred and fifty years ago in mortal time line.

'Identify yourself! This is your only warning!' Eilert threw his voice into the dark living room as he sneaked stealthily into the kitchen for sharper weapons.

'It's me. You fucking bastard! What the fuck did you do to your door?' A throaty voice which Eilert had not heard from over a decade, cawed out indignantly.

Eilert felt for the switch and lighted his house. A tall pale man in pilot sunglasses with dirt brown suede climbed over the white couch with his soiled shoes and threw his branded bag over the coffee table.

'Suicides.' Smiled Eilert Swane as he disarmed himself of the iron bat and went into the kitchen, 'It's a defensive ward. Scotch?' He dug into the cupboard and tugged out two old fashioned.

'Want them with rocks.' Requested Suicides thinly as he took off his sunglasses, revealing his blood red pupils. He relaxed himself in the comfort of a proper home, switched on the television through the remote and tossing channels after channels. 'Any games on?'

'Dunno. Haven't been watching them for a while.' Said Eilert as he handed an old fashioned of Scotch over. He settled himself in an armchair facing Suicides.

'Why the need for the ward?' Asked Suicides, barely looking at his host. As he drank his Scotch, his mouthful of canine teeth glistered in the shine of the alcohol. 'Haven't they by now get the general idea that you can't be hurt at all?'

'I had indeed destroyed their worlds. And that general idea? It's not so true after all.' Eilert drank his Scotch in a grimace shot and started pouring from the bottle again.

'Ah. That wickedly beautiful lass of Cherubim? Whassa' name? Degaliel? It's a pity they don't make angels like that anymore.' Chuckled Suicides over the sound of the television displaying a football match. 'You know where is she now?'

'They should be preparing for the final stage, seeing that the date is set.' Answered Eilert Swane.

'Oh. So they know the date? Do tell.'

'Yes. Just got it yesterday, from Degaliel.' Eilert went for his third shot, 'It's the 19th of August, 2007.'

'You know something? My folks had nominated me to reign.' Snorted Suicides as he pulled out a dog-eared notebook of names. 'And these people will fucking get it when they die pissing and goes to my Hell. What a boy, that traitor Ndmh! Manage to rebuild the freaking City on his own. I say, here's to that boy!' Suicides raised a toast.

'To Ndmh.' Cheered Eilert quietly as he touched his old fashioned to Suicides'. 'Yeah. What brings you here all the way?'

Suicides peered sideways at Eilert Swane and said, 'I've found the last book.'



St. Owen Psychiatric Nursing Home, London.

Eilert Swane turned from the heat of the afternoon into the air conditioned admission office of the nursing home. He looked around the dozen of people and saw her towering high and flawless in front of the vending machine. Some men were looking at the beautiful creature in mesmerising stares and unable to look away. Only Eilert knew that they were looking at an archangel, one of the last surviving Cherubims that Oriaries had stationed on Earth for its defense against the Inferno. For he was able to see her three pairs of flagging wings and the halo that emitted from her core. Despite losing the physicality of the Fire Of Judgment, Eilert Swane could still see souls. The glorious angel sipped her pipping coffee in ecstasy. The Cherubims had counted to three hundred then, but as the Heaven burst, most of them had perished in heartbreaks and absolute sorrows.

That was how he had found Degaliel. Several years he had spent in the hospital from recovering from his injuries, he had returned to the Tainted Seal of Samuel where he first descended to burn sinners a hundred and fifty-seven years ago. He learnt that the local authority had tried to explain the town's wreckage with an unfortunate event of gas explosion and they were the survivors. It seemed that when Eilert returned to the town, it was in the process of being rebuild. Just as Eilert was leaving, he was made to follow a distant mewing of a fox. The fox had lead him under the spoils of a deserted mansion where he had found Degaliel paralysed with grief in the depth of a stony well. 

Eilert Swane walked over and introduced himself to the angel at the vending machine, 'Hi. My name is Eilert Swane. Are they here already?'

The angel as if was pricked by the mention of Eilert's name, frowned intensively and stared venomously at him. She allowed their silence sheared by, as if trying to tell Eilert how much she had loathe him. With a swift glance. Eilert had saw her reaching for something in her jacket.

'Eilert!' Higelot called out as he walked towards them. He pumped Eilert's hand heartily and led him to the admission counter. Balthial was unbearable to look at in her wheelchair. She stared glassy into the blank air, her body shriveled into a frail frame of an old woman whom looked like a thousand years old. Balthial had a feeding tube dangling from the innards of her nostril and her bony fingers wrapped in sores and wrinkled skin clasped onto each other as she rocked forth and back in her wheelchair, muttering to herself mindlessly.

'I have failed Oriaries...' Higelot hung his head in shame.

Eilert patted Higelot on the shoulder, 'You offered your best. There is not much you could do for a person who refuse to be heal. So this is where she wants? And you? Will you be going back?'

'I reckon not.' Replied Higelot, 'I can't leave her here alone in this place. As much as she hated my presence, I have promised Oriaries and I will see to this task until the very last breath.'

'I will visit you guys more often. Erm. Do you remember Vvael's dying wish?' Asked Eilert softly.

However they had delay in aging in regards to mortal longevity, they are still vulnerable to the human cycle of sickness and death. Vvael upon spending his waking hours caring for Balthial had caught on her madness. He had gone insane for most of his mortal livelihood and published a book on the War Of Judgment and Exodus. For the last couple of hours on his deathbed, Vvael became sober and had requested Eilert to seek and destroy all the publications. Eilert had traveled far and wide around the world since, and had burned all Vvael's books saved one.

'What about it?' Said Higelot absent-mindedly as the nurse led them to Balthial's ward.

'I know where the last book is.'



Jane Masaki's Funeral, Melbourne, Australia.
The evening skies hang lowly with flashing bits of lightning crackled amidst its humid atmosphere.
Rain approached cautiously, scouting with its herald and sister - the wind, fussing outside the funeral parlour.

Eilert Swane and Suicides got out of their rental car that they had parked in front of the funeral parlour. They entered the parlour and settled themselves at the back row of the attendees. A tall blond was giving an eulogy in front of a huge picture of an Asian looking girl. The blond was having difficulty giving her ill prepared speech as sounds of muffed crying kept perturbed from the background. Someone was apparently torn from the death.

Jane Masaki looked so young and innocent in that picture without the glitter of her makeover. They found the happiest picture that Masaki was ever caught in, where she smiled the heartiest, her brown mane tossed in the breeze and a secret twinkle in her eyes. The twinkle of hope. This was her picture before pornography. Her parents were in a corner, looking rather flushed with embarrassment than sadness. They kept staring with incredulity as boys and girls from the amateur porn industry entered the parlour to pay respect for the tragic fate of Jane Masaki.

'Oh sing it. This is so cool.' Whispered Suicides at the corner of his lips. He had kept his pilot shades on and looked as if he was enjoying the funeral. 'They are porn people!'

'Who's funeral is this?' Asked Eilert. The muffled cries got more and more hysterical as the tall blond struggled to finish her speech.

'What you seek is in the coffin, boy.' Said Suicides as he buttoned his coat and moved towards the front seat with a grieving redhead, 'Get your own dinner, I would probably see you in the next morning.'

Suicides sat beside the redhead, 'Surely it is too cruel to be alone at this moment of time. My name is Bob. How are you acquainted with the deceased?'

Eilert had to get closer to the coffin, he walked to the altar and bowed to the picture. When asked if he would like to view Jane Masaki, he agreed.

Eilert went behind the white backdrop of the picture and saw that an opened coffin was situated at the center of the small room with flowers all over the walls. A girl in her early twenties was howling her lungs out in her wheelchair. Her arm was bandaged with a triangular sheet. She was bawling her puffy eyes out and couldn't cease to tremble in sweat. Her composure was convulsing in utter sorrow.

Eilert Swane looked into the grieving soul of Sarah Qwek and learnt the terrible tragedy behind her friendship with the deceased Masaki. Sarah Qwek hadn't died back then in Rios' Diner where Masaki had held hostage. Percy had shot Qwek in the left chest, where her left lung was blew and she had massive hemorrhage. Qwek had recovered through extensive surgeries and rehabilitations, although she could never partake in strenuous exercises again with a single lung in place. Of course, crying her eyes out like that toiled and tortured her body breathlessly, but Qwek didn't cared a bit about herself. Her bestie was dead.

Jane Masaki was still awaiting trial when she committed suicide in her cell. Her suicide was very brutal for she had bashed her head against the wall until she had bleed to death. There was so much blood afterwards and the botched marks on the wall had revealed that she had repeatedly smashed her head into the wall again and again in guilty fury. In her mind, Masaki was thinking about the little girl she had shot at Rios'.

Eilert Swane grabbed a chair and sat beside Sarah Qwek quietly.

After a while when Qwek gasped for air and ceased sobbing, she turned to Eilert, 'I'm... I'm sorry. How... how are you... related ...related to Jane?'

'Not at all.' Said Eilert truthfully, 'I'm here to recover a book.'

'Wha... What?'

Eilert pointed to a couple of books of the shawl on Qwek's lap. 'Bou Blanc. Did it belong to Jane?'

Qwek pulled up a tattered book titled 'To Hell With Heaven', and said, 'No. It's mine, but I've decided to bury... bury...' Qwek threw another crying fit at the thought of burying her best friend.

'Bury the book with her, I see.' Eilert nodded, 'I take it she likes the book? Have you read it?'

Qwek nodded as she blew her nose with a tissue. 'You... You read Blanc too?'

'Not really. Is he any good?'

Qwek smiled in her tears and shook her head. 'Blanc is probably the worst writer ever. But he is an interesting worst writer.'

'I know the good bits in the story. Tell me who do you think are the bad guys in the book?' Asked Eilert Swane.

'It's complex. Too complex. There is no such things as good or bad guys anymore.' Answered Qwek, 'We are all walking on a paved path.'

'And you can easily understand how it can happen to good people like her?' Said Eilert as he looked at the coffin.

'But Blanc said that there was no God at all. You can't walked on a paved path without its creator.' Asked Qwek.

'Blanc was mad when he wrote that. Tell me about the ending.' Said Eilert.

'Without heaven and hell, the human world eventually perished slowly and painfully.' Replied Qwek.

'Blanc was wrong. There is still hope for the living.' Said Eilert as he gotten up and folded his chair.

'I thought you wanted the book?' Asked Qwek.

'Not if you want to bury it.' Said Eilert.

'You want it to be gone. Do you know Blanc?' Questioned Qwek.

'He... He is a dear friend of mine. It is his wish to recover all his publications.' Admitted Eilert as he turned to exit the room.

'Wait!' Said Qwek as she rolled her chair, dropping all other books in the process. 'Blanc was a century old now. Blanc... Blanc had mentioned that the displaced angels now roamed our world. Are you...?'

Without turning back, Eilert returned his answer. 'I'm the one whom displaced them.'

Eilert Swane got out of the parlour and realised that it was beginning to rain. Suicides had took the car and no doubt comforting the redhead at this very minute. In the shower of the silvery rain, he thought of the distant Silver City being rebuilt by Ndmh, how he would missed Degaliel deeply next year when she had to return to Heaven and how Suicides will rule Hell. Eilert thought about his ability to see souls and his immortality. Unlike the other survivors of the Exodus, imbued once with Judgment, Eilert Swane could never die. Without death, he could no longer see Degaliel, or even Suicides. He would be alone in this world where everything decays and dies but him. Not that solidarity was ever a problem for him. Yes. Not a problem at all, for God will return. He thought all there was to contemplate about the end and beginning.

God will return.

Comforted by that thought, Eilert Swane pulled up the collar of his coat in the cold and strolled away in the rain.






This concludes the running series of The Soothsayer.

The Soothsayer - Exodus (II)

Exodus is a two parter in which the sequel will tell the plight of the Inferno.

Hell upon the Infinite Hours.

In the relinquished lands of shattered time, tempest brimstone of ebb fire, sulphur and smitten evils; the wanton figure of the mortal cripple was the first to awake from their traumatic exit.

Eilert Swane in manky mangled cavity of spit and blood stared at Hell with his swollen eyes from behind a hill of ravaged corpses from both realms had found himself waking in the meaty rubbles of limbs and blood. The skies lit with the raging triplet suns sharpened with a formidable energy of raw venereal, smelt of futile tussles and trepidation of crushing fear electrified the skin and bones. The extrangled sentential host of himself - the Fire Spirit in the form of a star drawn crucifix across the horizon of the Wall seemed to expand with vigour, its flames crawled along the aerial carpets and its proportion swelled vehemently full.

As Eilert sat between his angelic and demonic liberators; both destroyed and lingered with dying breaths, he remembered a lore he once heard when he was little. Three idiots sat beneath the falling skies and thought they had grew so large to fill up to the heaven, celebrated in joy that they will be something else than idiots had their happy brains squashed as the world ended. It was a funny story, Eilert thought, for lore were rarely about dissolution. What moral values could it impart to the young generation if destructions matter?

Eilert began a soft humming of an old German Lutheran hymn taught by Pastor Nathan, 'Christe, Redemptor omnium'. His muffed voice from the soft of his palate reached out into the bristling air, like the invisible wings of a butterfly over the corpses of the hosts and likened to the bleak taste of abandonment and alienation on the tongue of a featherless crow, cawing out the songs of gratitude and redemption to the fallen in the mire of their defeat.

'We are not bleedin' idiots.' Coughed Suicides, the Zephr in grievous injuries. He clawed his talons across the trembling soil, propping himself in a sitting position. 'Mine, mine. That drudge is fast jolly growing!' He commented as he watched the Fire Crucifix burning a distance away, shielded by the mast of corpses.

Eilert laughed and snorted, 'I think I may have pissed blood. It's true, idiots we may not be destined, but it's sure is how things like to end.'

'How's the Cherubim? Dead?' Cloaked Suicides as he tried to get up, for he knew the longer they stayed here, the sooner death becomes them. But, alas the toil of the rescue took away much of him, leaving him battered afflictions, the Zephr fell back to his weakening knees.

'By the scared and the feared, look at the size of that eldritch!'  Claimed Vvael, of Cherubim in thunderstruck, then deeply embarrassed by his spoken thoughts. 'It's shifting and Kepharel no longer could will it.'

'We are truly the three idiots here and now. For idiots watched with awe and awe is coming when the skies are falling. Not total awe though, but horrors beyond horrors. It is coming and brace yourself. It is but a nasty feeling for the skies had truly fallen.' Prepared the wretched human in fear and anticipation.

'You're reckless with words. Only the single-minded knaves fashioned the habit and their lives to tell tall tales to threaten the world, and you had the nerves and the atrocity in this hour to...' Suicides stopped short of his words, allowing them to trail in the long silence while his hand went for his heaving chest. His palpitations were crushing him from within.

'I'm what I am, remember? I hold the truth. In entirety.' Smiled Eilert unbearably that he bit the lips and his tongue so hard from convulsion that they kept bleeding. His head was whirling in swampy murk, hung heavy with giddiness.

Vvael for a moment forgotten the primary wound in his guts and went clawing for his temples, he rolled to the ground crying with nausea. He couldn't stop throwing up. Tears poured from his orifices.

'What is going on?' Cried Vvael, snatching at an invisible pain in the itch of his heart.

'It's heaven.' Said Eilert as he laid on his back and clutching his fists, attempting to tame his convulsions.

And Eilert's words came truest. There was a soundless snapping motion as if the grandest creature of the world broke its heart and died. The silence quivered and dragged the moment as the flying angels from the skies all fell to the ground and cried for mercy. The demons howled in exasperations and Vvael realised the ultimate of all horripilations combined had happened.

'It's heaven.' Realised Suicides, as he stared blankly into the space and his tears flowing. 'The angels invaded us but it was their home, it was heaven that went first.'

'It's burst.' Completed Vvael. 'It burst just like that. The paradox of the entanglement between the two planes feeding off each other came true. Without one, the other perished in order.'

'Yes. Just like that.' Muttered Eilert in quiet eulogy. 'And we are next...'

The Fire Expurgate burnt brighter and seemingly growing. It looked more like a tree in combustion than a charring crucifix. Hell wobbled for a while. The angels picked themselves up from their sorrows of Heaven's passing and prepared themselves in defensive stance. A new enemy? Lucifer? Hell shook again, split the ground and the sour warmth of the air stung their eyes. They fell back against one another. They were surrounded by the wrath of Hell itself. The Fire Spirit swelled to a triple size and continued to jet hairs of fire into the infernal skies. It was like a blooming tree of flames, blazing scorched growth into the warmth of the aerial atmosphere until the clouds hung heavily with the dripping flames. It made a sound of soft macabre at first. Then Hell hurled again, sweeping the angels off their feet. The inferno terrain cracked like a shattered mirror.

The tongues of fire tried to eat the triplet suns but they burned brightly in resistance. A cumbrous belch from the Fire Tree a distance away as if trying to add strength to consume the suns pulverized the basalt. The suns exploded violently and rained flares. They shot down like piercing meteorites, slaying some hundred angels and demons alike. The rest scurried for shelter. Soon the entirety of Hell's ceiling was devoured by Fire Fir's flames.

The angels realised that it was too late to flee as there were nowhere to take wing.

'You meddlers!' Roared Kepharel with maddeningly eyes as he found the mortal, the angel and the devil behind the carneous hill. Kepharel himself was heavily damaged from his war with the Infernal dragon, used his sword as a clutch. His entourage of loyalist followed closed behind, they were all too with tears in their eyes from the passing of the glorious Silver City, each muttering prayers beneath their lips.

'Kill them all! Annihilate them all!' Barked Kepharel in raucous dismay. Of foremost of his schemes, he hadn't plan on wiping out his homeland. The wayward bound of his ideals suggested strongly that he had to act from will now, instead of depending on the vision given by Yahweh. But it was in Yahweh's devices, that he was the chosen Epoch! How have things led to such end, where such he could no longer bring his angels home?

Ndmh, of Dominions in his battle weary form spoke out against their leader, 'It is of utmost importance that you domesticate the rampancy of the Fire Colossus! Be advice that with the growing demise that Hell could no longer wield the refuge and stand to encumber the same straits of The Silver City!'

'Stand down, Ndmh!' Ordered Kepharel, 'The Silver City... The Silver... These three must have ordinate the death of Heaven somehow. Seek vengeance!'

'Ha! Boy, just admit to your minions!' Spat Suicides in a grim laugh, 'You no longer can will your Fire Pygmy now, can you?'

To that resort, Kepharel offered no debate. His bloodied fists shook with a helpless rage as if the devil was right.

'Kepharel.' Ndmh pursued further in a firmer tone, 'Are you able to will your Fire Spirit?'

Kepharel looked at Ndmh with his fluttering eyelashes, his porcelain features splashed with the silence of his blood remained as it was, his eyes deepen with an inner confusion that he could not fathom, a suggestion of his power decline.

'Are you still in control of this war?' Asked Ndmh, drawing a step away from their leader.

Kepharel peered gloomily at the brimming star of an incinerating tree and muttered to himself, 'Surreal. This is not supposed to be it. I have the reins. I hold the truth. I am the becoming.'

'Kepharel.' Ndmh asked for the third time. 'The angels are dying. What are we going to do now? What is your plan now?'

Kepharel kept his trembling eyes, full of tears in view of his estranged weapon of destruction, now it seemed to be cause of their destruction as well. Flashes of fiery bolt rained forth endlessly, lighting all creatures in golden luster, tearing them holes in torsos and splitting limbs apart. Kepharel quivered, 'this is not how I had seethe. Not like this!'

'Kepharel!' Declared Ndmh as he drew his sword, 'I have no choice but hereby relieve you of your charge to the Hosts and commit my command in your place.' Ndmh turned to the dust embroiled angels, 'Keep your loyalty with Kepharel if you desire, for those who will not see to their own annihilation fight with me!'

Another basal agitation growled as the Fire Fir belched in its blossoming, sending burning arrows of firestorm, seeing to the massacre of the creatures in Hell. Ndmh gave orders for two dozen of hosts to surrounded the Fire Fir in mid-air, valiantly beneath their shields against the firestorm, each reached out a claw towards the Fire Fir. The Fire Fir as if expecting resistance, began to swing its overbearing branches of flaming trunks and leaves to smite the darting angels. The intensity of the angels' concentration was so severe that rain of fire bounced right off their field of focus and static seemed to be rushing to the monstrous Tree.

'No! Don't be foolish!' Roared Kepharel in desperation.

The formation of the angels cruised their energies in unison and cast serial mean-spirited waves of blinding chain lightning bolts. The Fire Fir cried in agony and seemingly cowered down in defeat as the flashes of their attacks exploded simultaneously, smashing its talons of branches away. The sizzling statics lit a dome powered by the lightning of the angels as they concentrated to spend all their strength to booster the kill.

'Stop it! Stop it!' Cried Kepharel, he tried to proceed to the formation site, but was hindered by his injuries. 'You don't understand, if it went berserk, attacking it will only make it worse!'

The chain lightning were draining all of their powers, but the Fire Fir appeared not to back down. With a roar of defiance, it rose with its wicks of spanning branches of golden flames, spun in fury and knocked the wind out of the angels. Expecting more assaults, the Fire Fir bellowed deeply in pain and cracked itself straight down to a half. It's half of fiery bastion heckled and began to mould its shape unlike the tree. It grew long limbs of fire and a dark mouth as the only feature in its effulgent appearance. It was fast and sprung towering to the angels, slaughtering them in a single blow in furious claws. It ran on fours and spat arraying liquidated flames, appearing like a giant rabid wolf. It seek out the remaining creatures of demons and angels, chewing them in hurry. The Fire Fir resumed it's stance and continued to focus on its expansion.

'Ndmh. That is pure judgment you are fighting. The odds are not on your side ' Said Oriaries, of Cherubim accompanied by Higelot, of Virtues, emerging at last in the lands of mutilated flesh.

'Judgement, Oriaries? I fear we had abandoned the dire fear of being judge the minute we've descended to Hell.' Jeered Ndmh in a mouthful of blood as his chest was crushed by the strength of the Fir. The Fiery Wolf as it screamed hysterically, exploding the atmosphere in crushing hue of black and yellow. From the ashes, the Fire Fir raised a dozen more Herculean creatures of brimming claws and hungry jaws. It was determined to annihilate all.

'Let us be or trial us, whatever it is, be fast.' Spat Ndmh as he regrouped his forces. Ndmh boomed his hoarse voice to the defeated mass, 'Hosts! Strike them until reckoning! We will not go down without a fight!' He became the first to arraign, leading as an example. The desperate angels war cried and joined Ndmh, accelerating into their doom.

Oriaries called out to the fallen and the Hordes in favor of Ndmh, she urged them to join the hosts, their very harbingers of destruction to fight against the Wolves and the Tree. Her argument that their collaboration at this point will be vital to their survival and that the hosts had indeed suffered foolishly with the nullification of The Silver City as retribution for their greed.

Having enough of being strike down helplessly, the Hordes reworked their war machines and fired offences back to the Wolves, while its fitter kins soared into the steaming atmosphere and faced them head on. The Hordes were nevertheless reluctant to fight alongside with the hosts, they banded themselves together to attack a Feral while the Hosts concentrated on another, the surge in numbers favored their warfare and kept the Wolves from wiping out everything.

'Have you realised what you just did?' Said Kepharel wide eyed to Oriaries.

'I know the truth behind them, Kep. I certainly know what I had done and of most, yours... I had Higelot uncovered your trails and we knew what you had and perhaps much more than you.''

Higelot began. 'I tracked your tracks right back to the Old Throne of His Glory just before The Silver City crumbled and found out the truth behind your Fire Monster of the Danish Mountains. Vvael, surely being one of the Cherubim there in witness of the Rebellion, you must have found the Fire Beast familiar.'

'The Rebellion Of Pride? Where Samuel was strike down by Father ten hundred thousand years ago. He was struck down by the Fire of Judgment!' Recalled Vvael in realisation, now understanding why he had saw the statue of Lucifer in the mind of Eilert Swane.

'You must still be a cherub back then.' Suggested Oriaries to Kepharel, 'And our Father struck Samuel down with His Fire. You were there. And you went back, didn't you? You went back for the soft burning barrage. Through the lingering flames, you saw your desire to rule. It made you thought you were chosen. That luster of Judgment marred with the Samuel's desire. You kept it, and planned it all along. You imbued it into a mortal and your plans work out fine. Eilert Swane was never a dream eater, nor soul burner. He was a walking judge. The true sin eater. You got here. You got Hell. You got everything save one thought. That we are on the stand now. That we can be judged too.'

'I was there by His Will. He wanted me to possess His Fire. I was the chosen one!' Hissed Kepharel. 'For I hath seen through His eyes!'

'Look around you, young rouge.' Offered Oriaries, 'Is this what you had seen in your visions? The destruction of both realms? The fire and the darkness. This belongs to the dreams of a soothsayer, not an Epoch. These were all what he saw in his visions. The end is nigh. He had meant that for us. This judgment had meant for us all along. Of all of us, it was the mere mortal who was above us.'

'What?' Asked Kepharel, turning around to see Eilert.

Eilert Swane smiled, almost with pride. 'Yes. I have allowed myself to participate in your scheme. Judgment is nigh. Haven't you been listening to what I had been saying my whole life? You had indeed made me dreamt into becoming what you want me to be, but I had seen much more. I had seen the downfall of God's firstborns. Who is the puppeteer and who is the puppet now?'

A shadow swooped down with the raining hailstorm of meteorites. So swift and silent that it was undetected by the hosts.

'Look at us. Scrambling for allies, trading loyalties and plotting against one another during Father's absence.' Croaked Vvael in shame. 'It's a domino sprung in action that we have basely fulfill all that takes to lead us to our destructions. We are all nothing better than the damned marching towards their end in their judgment.'

'Ndmh and the Hordes are not able to hold out any longer!' Alerted Higelot over the maniacal screams of the Fiery Wolves as they tried to smite the titillating warfare by the angels and the demons. Hell shook violently as if it could no longer contain the fight it had pregnant. The Tree had became the skies. 'These hide of the hill won't able to hide us from the Wolves and the meteorites.'

The Zephr sniffed the air and picked a scent. It was a scent that the devil carried his entire life. He knew that it was going be very interesting soon.

'The entrances of Hell were all gone and so were the exits. However I have come to contemplate an alternative.' Suggested Oriaries grimly, 'the mortal realm that I had suspended, it seemed to be the last places of the worlds that His judgment had not beamed on. The legions of Cherubims wait there. However, there will be a heavy price to pay.'

The Zephr saw the shadow that was sneaking onto them and surprised at its animosity.

'The only way to join the mortal world now was through the Valley Of Passing. It was supposed to be a one-way trip for dead mortals. Though it won’t dissipate the Hosts if they tried to go through it, but with reversing such nature, will cost us our stations as the Hosts.’ Offered Oriaries solemnly.

‘So be it, comrade.’ Said Vvael. ‘At least we live. Whether we will it or not, we are already judged in His eyes, along with the treacherous and the vile.  This is no more salvation at this point of time, perhaps if we lived long enough, working in His grace, Father would return and take us in his blessing again.’

It was Balthial, mute and disillusioned that had descended to the fleeing Kepharel. Her name was the last word that Kepharel ever tried to sound. Balthial struck the jeweled sword of Oriaries deep into the young angel's back. She twisted and wedged the blade so viciously, making sure that Kepharel had suffered every bit of her wrath.

'Balthial! What are you doing?' Yelled Oriaries as they rushed to Kepharel's aid.

Balthial stood with crestfallen eyes at the demise of the world's end. The world that she was charged with the highest order. Her tears ran blood pellets down her soft cheeks and her shivering lips clattered in rage. She raised the sword and plunged away at Kepharel's face. Oriaries grabbed Balthial away but Kepharel was already dead.

Balthial didn't celebrate her vengeance, but cried more blood at how things had come to such. She allowed Oriaries' sword to fall from her grip and knelt strengthlessly to the floor. Oriaries hugged Balthial tightly in her arms as she felt the protege of Gabriel growing sicker and sicker from her fate.

'We have to act now.' Said Oriaries as she hushed and comforted the sobbing Balthial who was now rendered to a defenseless child with her hands full of blood. In a distant, she could hear the indignant voice of Ndmh, 'Stop them from spawning more! This is madness!'

'To the Eastern end, you will find the Valley of Passing unscathed and intact.' Said Oriaries as she unfurled her wings. 'I will create a diversion that give you a moment to escape. Higelot, use that opportunity to gather as much survivors, be it the Hosts or the Hordes. Save as much as you can. Take them without discrimination. Ensure the safety of Vvael and the mortal. And promise me that you will take good care of Balthial. She needs it.'

Before Higelot could protest, Oriaries said, 'Only I can hold them off now.' She turned to Suicides, 'Iahmel, please help gather all the surviving Hordes the best you can. It's so nice to see you after so long.'

The Zephr stared silently at the Cherubim. Despite his refusal to acknowledge, he knew that this was the only chance the Hordes had in face of extinction.

Oriaries to Eilert Swane, 'your campaign is by far the most successful of us. As a supposingly meek neutral agent, you have managed to turn the table and destroy Heaven and Hell singlehandedly. Such destiny! Human, I ask of you to answer me truthfully. Is it really Yahweh? Is He back?'

Eilert said, 'I don't know but I had always believe so. Maybe not now that everything is gone, but He will return when it's time.'

Oriaries smiled with eyes brimming with light tears, 'Thank you, that's all I need to know.'

Oriaries took to air with her three pairs of wings and threw a blast of charge at the giant Feral that Ndmh was battling with his burnt wings, the Feral was stunned and smashed onto the basalt. The Wolves gathered closer with curiosity.

Ndmh laughed in harsh irony, 'They kept spawning, it had became a full forest of them, just wanting to tear us apart.'

Oriaries told Ndmh her plan to the mortal world and explained its consequences, 'Get all your defenders out of Hell, angels and demons alike. Your valor had been outstanding. Your fight is no longer in the wretchedness of this arena, you have to rebuild The Silver City in due time, restore His Glory and gain His forgiveness to us all. You have to do it and you can do it.'

'But I am a traitor!' Ndmh claimed.

'So am I when I strike back against his Judgement. We all are in His eyes now. Believe me, one day when Father chose to return, you must lead us back to The Silver City. Only you can do it. Stay with the mortal agent, you will have a lot to learn from him about unwavering Hope and Faith. Those are your primary constructions of The Silver City.' Said Oriaries as she fled off into the mist of the flaming Wolves and meteorites.

Ndmh pulled back the defenders, angels and demons alike. Suicides rounded up the Hordes, while Higelot cast a temporary shield when they had emerged from the fleshy hill and extended it to cover the fleeing creatures of Hell. Oriaries muttered a brief prayer of forgiveness to Yahweh as she sped like a lightening bolt through the Fire into the core of the Tree. Her collision created a blinding effect as the Wolves howled in anguish as if it had hurt them as well.

When the blinding light finally ended, Hell shrieked for the final time in loathsome burden and ceased to exist no more.

To Be Continued...

The Soothsayer - Conscription

The Suspended World of Mankind, Denmark, 1894 - The Vacant Town Of Tainted Seal.

Degaliel, Of Cherubim wandered off in sheer boredom, from the flock of thousands of Cherubic defenders in lieu of Inferno's possible invasion of Earth.

For the young Cherubim waited long with waning patience and a soundless neighbouring city, though suspended by the powers of The Great Oriaries, was filled with alluring sights and colors that beckoned Degaliel to venture.

Folks paused stop from their way to work in the dusky morning, street lamps frozen like yellow lumps and the mist appeared shimmering in its muted struggle to dissipate. Everything looked like an art piece from the museum. Degaliel trotted her bare feet, with soft brilliance melting the dusk with her wings, she explored the city filled with mannequins blissfully ignorant of their fates that came crumbling down.

They were like dolls, with curious eyes and eager expressions, probably wanting to get ahead in life. 1849; the beginning in the course of history that brought violence to the corners of Europe with its working class revolutions, as if a poetic reflection to the events that took place by the hungry youths in The Silver City.

Their idyllic township tucked away from the mandates of Amsterdam's ruler-ship and its eventual displacement into constitutional monarchy did not troubled its citizens. However, no matter cities if regardless sizes, were preoccupied with their war with the Prussians. Perhaps, that was why the government was so inclined to possess the mythical monster of Fire so desperately.

Degaliel belonged to the infantile ranks of the Great Cherubims, had never set foot in the realm of mortal sins before, was fascinated with the tragedies beneath each human creature she encountered. In the mortal world, happiness unlike in Heaven was not a basic attribute but a far twisted version of emotion which could only be place with the likes of self gratification and delusive assurance. It was more of a process of in which its environment and the human culture abused its beings to the breaking point where they could only appreciate random things like sunlight, music and even feed off each other's tragedies. Perhaps that was why these mortal folks looked up to their kind whom could rise beyond their personal miseries, and not to be castrated by their wretched destinies and miserable backgrounds.

They said the world had become a more and more difficult place to survive, despite the advancement of its technology and science. It was their spirituality that requires saving. Yahweh had left his creations to their own devices, and it had proved such heartbreaking impacts in their lives. It was true that they had gotten more convenient and smarter, but they walked around with holes in their hearts. They couldn't sleep with ease in most nights and they thought about ending their lives every single day.

Degaliel found a pair of lovebirds in the gloom of a park. Agenthe, the girl which looked no more past her sixteen birthday was laying on the thighs of an older man, Emil.  Degalial sat with them, attempting to learn what was making the smiles on their faces. The nearby lamp was rock of glow with little moths hanging around it like stars to the moon. Apparently, the lovebirds had spent the entire night, probably talking away until the dawn cracked.

Degalial looked at Emil. She realised that Emil was married and that he hadn't told his naive girlfriend. And Agenthe was so in love with the two timing Emil! Degaliel could make Agenthe learnt the truth with a snap of her fingers. Degaliel squirmed and looked into their futures; after Agenthe knew that Emil was married, she was so obsessed with the loss of her innocence, that she harassed Emil and his family again and again until she appeared one day in their doorstep, doused in pig blood and hung herself in front of Emil's wife and children.

Degaliel was a little surprised by the course of events that could led to upon a simple truth. Degaliel looked into the possible future if she had made Emil eloped with Agenthe to a faraway place where their love could sustain; the youngest of Emil's son would grow up in void of love and full of poverty, engaged in a terrible heist on the date of his fourteen birthday with his friends and a gun that would take the lives of five innocent people, furthering altering and endangering fifty other lives in their network of collision.

Degaliel walked on the soft mud of the park to the lamp and plucked away a brown moth to examine the tiny creature. What if? Degaliel thought, if she had made Emil and Agenthe upon unsuspenion, as if waking up in amnesia, believed that they had never fall in love before and then leave each other forever. Degaliel looked again and realised that they would meet again as strangers three years later in this park and became lovers all over again. Such verbosity of the nature in love! Degaliel looked into their fates and counted that it would take at least a hundred bouts of divinity interventions and at least two disasters of huge proportions that would implicate more than a thousand lives to stop them from falling in love. And one of that disasters involved apocalypse in which Hell will engulf lives on Earth.

Degaliel smiled with a sighed and placed the brown insect back to the surface of the air. Perhaps in their short fervent lives, lying with each other in the park was the ultimate happiness that humans could wish to obtain, and this was everything to them. Not wanting to ruin that, Degaliel did not alter the lovers' fate in any way. Degaliel wanted to explore the rest of the city, but she wanted to sit with the lovers, busking in the maddeningly glister of the love. Degaliel split herself into two entities, with one sitting in the park with Emil and Agenthe, while the other self explored the morning city.

Degaliel passed rows of dew moisten windows along the blocks of buildings down the turn of the street. The mail office, the grocery store, the dance school and other quiescent architectures of a singular pattern cambered beneath the distant half light of an impotent sun. It's shadow was the township's surname with breaths so poignant and immutable. Degaliel skipped in front of her reflection through the glass window and was amused by it. The Silver City was practically raised on glass, yet the hosts never spared a thought for their reflections. It was refreshing to learn that how some creatures of this world could triumph or decline just by mere aging skins and bones. Degaliel paused in her play and listened in the paralyzed echo of this funny little world. She was not entirely alone on Earth.

Degaliel's twin had stopped wondering about the affection between Emil and Agenthe and went further deep into the somber park. She returned with a shard of glass and a can of morning dew. With an angle facing the lovebirds, she projected their shapes into the morning dew in which their fuzzy images came to motion in the can. Degaliel's twin could watch the romanticism of Emil and Agenthe as if they had been unsuspended. Under the indecency of sunlight through the trees in the park, she watched the lovebirds reacted their passion with kisses and muted whispers that drew secret giggles. She watched Emil's burly hand over Agenthe's waist and the maiden's fingers running along her lover's beard. She observed as Emil sighed with an invisible burden and Agenthe's pristine comfort that was selfless and divine, as if her bosom was a blanket of a clear sky and her lips sang the hymns of gallantry. Agenthe's face was the morning sun in which would drive away the doloriferous veils from the dusk and bring forth the light into Emil's heavy heart.

Degaliel's twin wondered about the mysteries of their languages and the sensation that their touch brought and gratified their souls. Her curiosity grew with passing moment, intensifying so greatly that she had to act upon it. Degaliel's twin began to snap the shard of glass into dust and sprinkled into the morning dew. She then proceeded to mould medium sized figurines with mud, dead leaves and branches like a sculptor. Degaliel's twin pressed her dolls into the features of Emil and Agenthe. Upon satisfaction, she brought the mud figurines to animation with the drain of the morning dew on their faces.

Degaliel's twin folded her legs like a child and watched earnestly as her figurines staged out Emil and Agenthe's love in dreamy declarations and unbridled exuberance.

After a stretch of time unmarked by the frozen dusk, Degaliel's twin was not satisfied with just watching and listening to the clay borne lovers caught in the twilight moment of mortal euphoria. Degaliel's twin needed the participation, she needed to feel what the Emil and Agenthe went through. She mashed up the mud figurines and gathered more dirt in her arms. She went to a strong and sturdy maple tree and plastered the earth on its trunk. Upon completion, Degaliel's twin hugged the tree tightly with fingers clawing into the wood, her tears bursting through her sore eyes and her heart wanting to feel love.

For Yahweh had absconded for too long.

With a long deep sigh, Degaliel's twin pulled out a radiant creation of a man from the tree who was designed to love her and nothing else.  The twin then flew her lover into the mist of the trees and settled on a nice brunch. She felt the lines in his palm, tracing to the popping veins at his wrist into the dale of the forearm. She felt him brushing away the fringes of her golden locks, his eyelashes to her eyelashes and their pupils met with constrictions of attention. The hearts were in their lips as she heard him whispering his first words in her ears. The message formidable and stung the flesh of the ear gently. Her heart was in her ear and his was in his words. Their toes greeted with passion in a smaller wars of their own. Her lover held her from behind and rested his forehead between her scapulae, the weight of his shoulder pressing and his warmth suppressing the coldness of the marrow.

The twilight blinkered.

Degaliel who was standing outside the soda shop peering her sight through the morning crowd to see what was moving towards her. Could Oriaries' enchantment over the mortal plane be altered? Degaliel braced herself to a stroke of posture as she prepared herself for battle. To the end of the street, the flawless Degaliel ventured, with her proud wings spanned willowy despite the suspended breeze.

It was a whimpering fox, leaving a braze of blood trail in its wake. It cawed softly to the angel. Degaliel turned quickly to look at the town, as if expecting the spell to be broken and its people awaken to witness her. But the sleepy town remained frozen with only two creatures breathing at this moment. The magic was flawed! But Oriaries had been powerful beyond her worlds, either it would take a higher divine intervention to crack her charm, or that Oriaries was in too deep with the troubles in Hell so much that the distance was cutting her off from her instructions. Degaliel held the dying fox in her arms, with an understanding that the fox must have free itself from a hunter's trap in the local woods but had grew delirious from its mortal injuries and wandered into the town. If only it had the intelligence to appreciated the suspension of Earth's nature, for the townsmen, if unsuspended would care less for the little dying beast.

When Degaliel healed the fox's wound, the winds of the world restored. Soon, a flood of strong breeze found its way into every corner of the world. It tipped the hats and scarves off the human beings and rocked the boats wobbling in its still waters. The winds made sounds from dry throats and hollow caves. Degaliel thought its revival had to do with her intervening from saving the fox's life. Then it produced more. The skies moved by the carrion of winds, swollen with darker clouds and flashes of lightnings swam among them. Degaliel saw a pair of shooting stars drawn from the horizon to the darkness of the fall. The winds determined to cracked open the harden seas and exploded splinters of ice shards all over. The skies was red and unbearable. Blood red. It wasn't her doing, Degaliel decided. Something was happening to The Silver City. She felt that the rest of the Cherubims reacting. She had to fall in with them. The skies looked as if it would burst any moment now. Degaliel had to get to her twin first. She let go of the whining fox and proceeded on her way.

Degaliel reached the shadowy park where she left her twin with Emil and Agenthe. Her twin was laid dead on the floor of the dirt with a heap of smitten clay mess all over. Emil and Agenthe sat in their bench, with frozen eyes admiring each other, unaffected by the deaths. Degaliel held her dead twin in her arms, her twin had been crying when she died. Degaliel touched the forehead of her twin and learnt the wilful story of their creation and love.

'You wanted to feel the mortal love. And mortal love hurts most in all realms combined.' Said Degaliel softly to her twin, as if reciting a eulogy. 'Creation is never difficult. To emulate Father in his works is a dream shared by all worlds. Mortal love is a self abused addiction. Perhaps that's why Father had left in the first place. And you have learnt it in its hardest way.'

The heart broken twin swayed by the overbearing winds and blew into dust on the heap of her lover's clay torso. The skies were brimming with murder. Degaliel hasten her pace to her kinsmen.



To Be Continued...

The Soothsayer - Exodus (I)

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