6:7
As Sally looked into Jack’s eyes, everything she thought she knew crumbled around her. The evil that she had never believed existed was there, inside his dark gaze. In all that he thought, all that he did, in everything that he was, lived the only pure evil Sally had ever seen. It was real.
But it did not originate from some all-powerful demonic force, tempting the world with its hate. Evil was inside in all of us, just as she always thought. It was loneliness. The solitary, lack of love. Anger, hate, guilt, sadness, and fear did not need more than one person to thrive. Those things easily fed on themselves, inside a single soul.
Love however, depended on others to exist. It required one to give and at least one to receive. It couldn’t live inside pure loneliness. Sure, one could love themselves but even that would diminish underneath the pain of one who was completely alone. It was absence of love that created a need to control, despise and hurt others.
That, coupled with the power the dark entity had found, was the source of the evil that blazed in his eyes. It had been created, fed and had flourished right there on earth. It not only lived inside him, it had completely consumed him.
Sally figured that love was the only cure for such a condition, but for him there was no going back. It was far too late for that. The only true sin man had ever committed was allowing that spirit and others like him to be unloved.
Yes, the world had taken upon itself the business of creating monsters. While society was busy pointing fingers, not willing to accept its own blame, children continued to grow up uncared for and unloved. They began to despise the world that seemed to hate them. In the vast sea of population on the planet, they were the ones that were utterly alone. Lashing out at the ones around them was the only thing that seemed to give them any purpose at all. So beget rape, abuse, murder, and every other hate crime a resentful mind could imagine.
The criminals created victims, which in turn, became criminals themselves. The circle spun round and round. Loneliness was a contagious disease, spreading from one to another. As Sally watched the evil spirit smiling, with eyes ablaze, she knew just how deadly a solitary man could be.
Jack’s energy floated above Sally looking down. Her and the thing that had stolen his body had been silently staring at each other for ten minutes. It was grinning, studying her.
She didn’t know what to do and couldn’t think of anything to say. So she just sat quietly, waiting it out. She prayed that Jack would come back soon. She hoped he could return at all. It spoke again.
“All right sweets, here’s the deal. If you cut me loose I won’t rape you before I kill you. Have we got a bargain?”
Sally crossed her arms, “Fuck you.”
His smile got bigger.
“I’m not the bad guy you know. You may think I am, but I’m not.”
Her words were sarcastic, “Oh yeah? Then who is?”
He ignored her question, “Do you want to know what Hell is like? Do you?”
“No.”
He ignored her answer, “Hell is where people like you and I go when we die.”
“I’m nothing like you!”
“Oh but you are. In Jehovah’s eyes we are all damned, except a choice few. Abraham, Noah, Jesus. The list is so short that I could name them all off in just a few minutes. And the rest of us? Well, we are destined for fire.”
“Liar!”
“Just think about it a moment. How much time have you spent serving God? None, I’d expect. How much time have you spent in prayer, seeking his will? Same answer, I would guess.”
He paused to soak in her reaction. She stared down at the floor. Her hair was hanging down over her eyes.
He started again, “Your God calls to him those that are close to him, that is all. Hell waits patiently for most of us.”
Sally’s eyes were angry, “What’s your point?”
His stare seemed to burn into her skin. She could almost feel its heat penetrating her soul. As he looked through her, into the heart of her being, Sally’s hands started shaking again. Sweat ran down her face, stinging her eyes. She knew that no matter how evil they perceived him to be, no matter what his intentions were, there was some truth in what he was saying. He’d been there. He’d experienced it. It was real.
“When you are drifting through the core of damnation…
…when your soul is on fire and the fear and pain are boiling in the center of you…
…when you would do anything, and I do mean anything, to make it stop…
…you’ll wish that I had consumed you, made you part of me. At that point, in the very pinnacle of torment, non-existence would be a blessing. If I had eaten you up, your consciousness would be gone and I would take the pain for you. So you see, I am not your enemy…I’m your savior.”
6:8
Jack watched from above as Sally and the entity spoke to each other. She could not see him hovering over them, but Jack knew that it could. It hadn’t yet acknowledged him, but it knew he was there nonetheless. Everything it had said and everything it was going to say was for Jack’s benefit as well as Sally’s. Its eyes, Jack’s eyes, stayed with the girl.
“Men and women are very different creatures, you know. Not just on a material or societal level either. On a spiritual level.”
Sally stayed silent.
It continued, “The female spirit, much to the dismay of the male idea, is the stronger of the two. The determination is sharper, the concentration denser, and the threshold for pain is thicker.”
“The threshold for pain?”
“Yes, my sweet. Agony is not limited to the flesh. Astral pain is much more complete torment than one could ever experience in this place. Hell depends on it.”
Sally didn’t know what to say. It was almost as if the son of a bitch was paying her a compliment. She watched him closely. His face had become relaxed, nonchalant.
“Gender goes far beyond the sexual organs. They are different sides of energy, completely opposite signatures.”
She sat up against the wall and folded her arms in front of her.
He held a casual smile, “They even taste different, male and female. Of course, I prefer women. More gristle mind you, but the flavor is superb.”
Sally’s frown was cold and disbelieving. He was amused.
“I do not mean that I have eaten the actual flesh. That would be crude, disgusting really, and would serve no purpose. What I’m talking about is the essence, the life force. The soul. That’s where the power lies, inside.”
He had always been one to talk with his hands, motioning here or there as he spoke. He found it extremely irritating that he was not able to gesture with those previous words. He felt it would have had so much more impact if he’d laid his fingers on his chest. But alas, his arms were still down at his sides, wrapped in nylon rope.
He pulled hard against it, making sure it was still tight, proving to himself that he hadn’t missed anything. The knots she had tied held strong around him. He would have broken Jack’s arm to get out of his restraints if it had been possible. He wanted so much to pounce on top of that girl in front of him. To beat her, to rape her, to kill her. But she remained safe, for the time being.
There would come a time where she would not be so protected. He was positive of that. And when that moment came, there would be no mercy. She would scream until there was no blood left in her body. Her soul would scream until there was no consciousness left in it. He would eat her up with more enthusiasm than he’d ever had for anyone. She had defied him. Sitting there across that room, acting as though she were worthy of even being in his presence, she was mocking him.
Yes. The bitch had to die. And he knew just how he would do it.
Slowly.
Very slowly.
6:9
If they were going to fight this thing they needed to know more about it. They had to find out who, or what they were up against. Sally pushed herself up from the wood floor. She kept a safe distance between herself and the thing with the blood-shot eyes. He carefully followed her every movement. She walked to the stool behind the counter and sat down.
“Tell me who you are.”
“Haven’t we gone over this?”
“You never gave me your name.”
“You still think you’ve got a chance, do you?” He smiled, “A chance to beat me?”
She looked down at the purple velvet box on the glass case. A greasy handprint had been smeared onto the shiny surface. It looked like frost.
“We are going to beat you.”
His bloody grin was pouring with ferocity and self-righteousness. The high powered confidence dripped onto the floor in long red streaks.
“Knowing my identity will not help you.”
“Humor me.”
The jagged red lines in the whites of his eyes were like lightning. The anger of the storm was in his vision. There was nothing that would stop it now. He would tell her his name. The words coming out of him sounded like a punch line to a bad joke. It amused him to say it.
“In life, I was known as Howard James Killien.”
6:10
Killien stood at the bathroom mirror with his mouth wide open. His shiny blackening gums dripped with dark blood. With his index finger he pushed against the loose tooth at the front of his mouth. He’d already lost three teeth and it looked like he was about to lose another.
On a nearby radio, Janis Joplin could be heard wailing out the chorus of Me and Bobby McGee. Singing along with the tune happily, he wiggled the tooth back and forth. He felt around the counter for the pliers. With them in hand, he curled up his lip and viced down on the tooth, watching his reflection carefully. It didn’t take much force to pull it out. The root and a long strand of glistening nerve went with it. Dark brown fluid dripped into the otherwise bright white sink.
The astral pressure inside his whole body pushed at his flesh. He could feel it vibrating just underneath his skin. Killien ran his hand over his balding skull. The diameter of his cranium had grown to at least three inches bigger. His forehead protruded out in a kind of monstrous visage, making his eye sockets look dark and sunken. The flesh tone was bleached almost totally white in spots, while other patches still held some color. His fingers had thickened and the wide gold bands on them were tight. With all of the souls he’d now consumed he had become the most spiritually powerful man alive. Killien was, in fact, the largest human spirit who had ever lived.
With a continual consumption of souls he would soon reach the might of the Elioud, the third class of angelic giants who’d once walked the earth. He figured another twenty should do it.
He grinned down at the bloody tooth in his hand. Dropping it into the trashcan, he knew that the feast would not stop at the Elioud. He was shooting for full angelic power. He needed to reach that goal before the true shift could begin. Once there, he could take any mundane mass he wished into himself.
He could eat the whole world. He would do what God’s adversaries could not. They were powerless over creation because they were never a true part of it. Their power had once mingled with it, but the energy had been separate. Killien was, as all humans were, part of God. He always had been. Only a true piece of creation could manipulate creation, if it held enough might.
The spiritual strain inside of him made his muscles and bones ache. He continually had a pounding headache and his elongating spine stabbed at him with the pain of growth. He was a half a foot taller than a few weeks ago, before the first black communion ritual.
His eyes met their reflection in the mirror. Killien still could hardly believe that the horrible face he was seeing was his own. He appeared as a kind of Nosferatu, minus the pointy ears and fangs. He leaned up close to the looking glass, examining the pale tones of his face.
“Blah,” he said to himself in his best Transylvanian accent.
Another tooth dropped down onto his tongue as he started to laugh. He spit it into the sink and continued laughing. He pulled his shirt open. The thickened torso was powder white, except for a small area over his stomach. The blackened sternum and ribs underneath showed through the skin clearly. He dropped the shirt to the floor behind him. His shimmering black spine sat on top of the torn flesh. It was bulging and twisted.
Another tune came over the airwaves and out the speaker on the little metal radio. The song was Spirit in the sky.
Killien sang along happily.
When I die and they lay me to rest. Gonna go to the place that's best.
When I lay me down to die. Goin' up to the spirit in the sky.
Goin' up to the spirit in the sky. That's where I'm gonna go when I die.
When I die and they lay me to rest. Gonna go to the place that's the best.
copyright ©2002 Brian Holtz
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