Descending Winged Rapture

 

 

 

Two cracks of lightning illuminated the kicking throes of his latest victim, who, despite the current condition of his thoracic cavity, maintained a low and almost musical moan.  The vile creature known, if he was at all, as Kyder sucked greedily at the luscious delicacies contemporarily called eyes. He savored the soft lenses floating about his crimson forked tongue, its twin tips caressing the soft organ as a squirrel might greedily clean a nut before ingesting it or hiding it for winter, deep in the soft dirt. Kyder, with geodesic wings unfolded in a flimsy shadow, looked down at the tall man lying broken on the floor. The afore mentioned victim’s former stature, now a crumpled heap of slaughtered meat, groaned what might have been a plea of innocence, if there could be such audible dialogue between the monstrous Kyder and his helpless victim. Leaning down to look into the eye sockets of the hapless man, Kyder unhinged his jaw and engulfed the tip of the maimed mortal’s head, severing the top cranial plates and most of the man’s brain. With one last mournful plea, the hapless victim neurons began their interspersed dancing, before finally resting in a static state. Flipping his head back, the ancient abomination consumed the learned thoughts of yet another of the Institution’s finest. 

            Kyder looked down at his latest accomplishment and, in what might have been his least favorite part, he opened his broad talon-hands. The various Denochian incantations oozing from his many-toothed mouth, summoning forth the power granted upon him by the Father, invoked the spell needed to turn the pile of matter into nothing. The fire which erupted from his hands roasted the fallen mortal in the hottest flames unimaginable.

Even as the flames of hell consumed the meat, the apathetic fiend known as Kyder carefully picked up his neatly folded Shady Limited hoody. After the sweatshirt, he systematically stepped into his baggy Southpole pants. With a shrug, his wings were drawn into him, melting into two poorly inked tattoos upon his back. The ancient creature, now dressed, strode his way out of the alleyway and into the streets of the local borough attempting to house far too many of society’s worst.

            “K, Sup min, what you been doin’?” a voice called from behind him. Kyder stopped in the sidewalk, turning slightly to meet the gaze of his assumed earthly friend.

            “Nuttin’, you?” he managed the local tongue easily enough. After all, if he could learn Latin, he could speak Ebonics, though the dialect spent so much more energy. “W’t ju b’n doin’, Tuck?” Jason Tucker Millsworth, now known to most of the population as “Mutha Tucker,” spent his days pretending he did not enjoy biochemistry, but was really a thug from Philly. By Philly, Jason really meant his parent’s house in some place named after one of the kings of Prussia. The entity called Kyder sought the name, which seemed to elude him at the moment.

            “Nada min, I’s out back wit Jim,” Kyder watched the white man gesture adamantly with his hands, something the local population seemed to do when speaking. Kyder thought of a certain Greek politician whose soft hands had made the same unconscious gesturings. “I guess some fuckers jumped ‘m on da way to school. Can you believe dat shit?” Kyder, of course, did not give a rat’s ass who Jim even was, though he was certain it was one of Tuck’s even more ineloquent friends, their obnoxious drunk antics even more annoying to the ancient entity known as Kyder. “Yeah, anyway, I got to bounce. Smoke your ass later, bitch,” he playfully punched the winged death known as Kyder, who smiled a farcical smile, carefully showing only the tops of his sharpened, grey teeth.

            “Later,” Kyder watched the young mortal pull his pants up and begin to strut his way past a couple female mortals. “baiis,” he commented to himself; though livestock hardly backstabbed each other as much as this population did.  With a shrug, the ancient creature began its slow trek up a hill towards his dorm. He despised walking; it always left him with very little breath. The five hundred pound creature, which could weigh exactly what it wanted, when it wanted, found that its small lower body left much to be desired. He was graced with massive leather wings, as beautiful in their vileness as they were splendid in their hidden magical nature. He never got to fly anymore. With the skies a local way of entertainment- aliens and all- the tired horror strolled his way amongst the masses of a small town struggling to remain separate from its beating organ: the Institution struggling in its midst.

            Fifteen minutes in the cold night, Kyder walked up to his dorm door. Reaching down gently, he tried the lock. It clicked its audible resistance to being opened. “Fich dich,” the guised demon swore at the metal turnkey. Inside, Kyder heard the soft groans of his roommate’s lustful mating. Kyder, powerful enforce of the Hells, was held back by his idiot roommate and his insatiable desire to ejaculate into a T-shirt. A growl emanated from deep in his chest, and the demon called upon an ancient patience to stop from tearing the door down, consuming the mortal’s genitals, leveling the entire complex, and walking down the roads as a roman conqueror might after besting Pompey. Instead, the demon swore again, this time abandoning his affections for the German language, and walked down the hallway. There was a lounge where Kyder spent his time; he got exiled to the lounge at least four times a week.

            The pissed persona of pure evil sat down on a soft couch where countless mortals had screwed. The building, built in 1948, had seen millions of ejaculations over the course of its lifetime. Kyder, on the other hand, had known one: the excretion of his expulsion from the pillar of misogyny into the maternal womb of hell. His crime lay somewhere between aversion to authority and a pride for completing a task he was assigned to do: to war and win against a deity, on behalf of a deity. Kyder felt like an idiot. The then justified bravado had landed him right from the heavens into the domain of a narcissistic demi-god, the personification of self-loathing expressed through self-appreciation. Kyder remembered the conflicted landing and his inability to escape the rules. Lucifer, that creature of beauty, sat upon his throne of saffron fabric hoping God would allow him one victory, once, before it was all over.  Kyder, on the other hand, hoped that he would be forgotten and dropped from the memories of omniscient deity. The newly titled ‘Kyder’, fallen angel of hell, longed to be separated from the dogma into which no mortal could be forced, and to finally escape back to his former position, no matter the cost.

            In the meantime, closing the soft black tissue of his eyelids, the ancient abomination slept upon a couch, a lucid dream for a sleeping demon.

 

            Kyder awoke to the soft hums of someone playing the piano. It was the Moonlight Sonata. The demon shook his short cropped black hair, and looked about the room. He had never noticed a piano, but there it sat, bench and all. The pianist playing the elementary version of the song sat focusing on the piano. He had a fedora on, shoulders pulled forward, long hair over his forehead. The shy demon sat up and watched carefully, noticing each and every time the boy missed a note or searched too long for the right key. Though Kyder once served as an ancient soldier, the fallen Engel knew the German musician well, having self-taught himself at least an affection for music. He, of course, was forbidden from playing the art form. Kyder, former soldier of Heaven, found himself jealous of the friendly choirs of old.

            In frustration at missing a note, said note falling flat on the floor, the pianist slammed his hands on the piano. “Fucking pile,” it said, but the effeminate voice danced an eloquent wafting over the piano. Looking up, the pianist gazed her eyes into that of the warrior known as Kyder. “Oh, you woke up. I’m sorry, I can’t seem to play this piece of shit for the life of me. How’d you sleep?” she asked him, gray felt fedora carefully resting on her brow.

            The creature known as Kyder gazed hesitantly at the women before him. This one, so androgynously dressed in a shirt and tie, slacks and man’s hat, threw the perceptive demon off; his curiosity, on the other hand, was peaking. “I sleep poorly.”

            She giggled, “You sleep poorly or you slept poorly?”

            Kyder, confused over her gentle laugh, commented, “I sleep poorly, as in, I have been sleeping in less than favorable way as of late.” He stood up, adjusting his wrinkled sweatshirt, “You need to practice.”

            She smiled a cracked smile, lips parting over the bitter remnants of front teeth. The demon noticed a bruise rushing its way from her ear to lips, internal hemorrhaging just now awaking.  A grimace of pain slapped her, and she put her head back down.

            “What happen to you,” the demon asked. He did not care, nor wished to know; so, the question appeared as a conundrum even to him.

            “Repeatedly it happened, you mean,” she paused for a second, “I have a childhood illness called stupidity. Lucky for me,” she muttered into the piano keys, “I also have a lot of valium,” she sleepily, as if remembering the drug made her tired, wiped her eyes.

            Kyder, former commander of angels, rubbed his hidden fangs with his fork tongue. “Someone hit you? Were you fighting?” he asked, walking over to the piano. “Let me see,” he reached a well moisturized and cared for hand towards her.

            “Don’t touch me,” she pulled away, jumping to her feet. “Please, I’m sorry, just please.” She moved away and sat upon the couch Kyder, until this new found interest, had been sleeping on. “Yes, someone hit me,” the girl said. “Don’t say anything to anyone; it’s my fault.”

            Kyder, the fanged demon, watched her, “You’re front teeth are gone. Do you know that?” the demon pointed out. He had never lost any teeth. “They’ll need to be reconstructed.” His teeth were as immortal as he was. “Go to the hospitals or something.”

            “You mean the dentist; they don’t have mouth doctors at the hospital.”

            Kyder shrugged his small frame. “Whatever,” he started walking towards the door, hoping his roommate was dead. “I’m gonna go, you should go to your local law enforcement, get that shit taken care of,” he said to her.

            “You mean the police. Where you from anyway? You have a weird accent,” she looked her bruised face up at him.

            “Why are you dressed like that,” he asked walking down the hallway. Kyder strolled down to the door, checking the lock. It clicked open and the ancient demon wanted to go to sleep.

            “GET THE FUCK OUT KYDER!” there was a yell, “BEFORE I KICK THE SHIT OUT OF YOU! YOU SHIT EATTING SPEAR CHUCKING SON OF A FUCKING BITCH,” Kyder frowned his ancient eyes, fires dancing just behind the retinas. There was a little giggle and a noise of movement. Kyder’s hulking roommate Brad leaped out of his bed, naked white form towering over the little framed Kyder, and waved with his hairy, feral arm. “Did you hear me you nigger piece of shit! Get out of my room,” he shoved Kyder out the door. “Take your black ass to the couch; I’ll come get you when I’m done.” The demon walked back down the hallway, plopping down beside the battered girl.

            “It’s the only set of cloths I could find; my other ones were in his car, so I took these,” she spoke to him through her hands. She kept her eyes and mouth gently locked away from his sight, hair strategically placed over them.

            “I’m from a lot of different places. My father was in the military,” he said. “Are you going to go to the doctors?” he asked her. It was possible for him to heal the wounds on her face. It was possible but not possible, for he was used only for destructive missions, a one-sided window continually viewing only destruction. Kyder was never beautiful; it was not in his nature. No more than it was possible for him to heal the girl. “Why did you say it was your fault,” he looked at her blue-painted fingernails, carefully trimmed and acuminated to typing, he figured.

            Sliding her hands over her face, she lowered her weight carefully down into her open palms. “I should have left him when my brother was here last week,” she said, “I don’t ever think of these things ahead of time.” She looked at him through a gap between her right index and middle finger, “don’t think badly of me. Christ, I shouldn’t even be telling you about this. I’m normally not like this.”

            “Me ne’der,” he said accidentally slipping into his guise. Suddenly, his phone began to vibrate, his favorite rap song Bring Your Whole Crew thumping in the inadequate and crappy midi sound. “Hang on a sec,” he said.

            “What are you doing?” the command/question rolled off the tongue of a certain downunder.

            “I’m just hanging out for a few,” he said in plan English.

            “Stop. It’s not allowed. Follow orders or be transferred back home,” the creature spoke a different form of Denochean, so Kyder had to think about the translation carefully. “You did well with the Professor. Expect further news when it arrives. Out.”

            Kyder hung the phone up and muttered, “picha baca.”

The girl on the couch laughed, “habla Español?” She was smiling those broken teeth again.

“Oh, um, no, that’s it. Just a lil’ bit I picked up here and there. You want to go get a drink somewhere?” He asked more to get away from her. No one would want to be seen with such broken teeth.

“Sure, I need to get out of here. I don’t even live on campus. This was the only place I could think that was open at three in the morning,” she stood up from the couch. She started walking in front of him towards the doorway. Kyder, ancient destroyer of immortals, rolled his enflamed eyes. “So, what’s your major and by drink, do you mean beer, cause the bar’s closed, or do you mean coffee” she asked, slowly placing each foot in front of the other as she walked away.

“Coffee ‘n Theology,” he said.

“Wow, that’s a disaster!”

“What’s your major,” he commented. Of the millions of knowledge glyphs bouncing inside his immortal conscious, he may have forgotten more than the poor girl could hope to learn in five lifetimes.

“Me?” she did not bother to turn around, “I’m just your everyday Human Psyche major. I have a passion for other people’s problems,” she said. “We’re both in the healing practice: I heal minds, you heal souls. We need to hook up with a pre-med, and we got the planes complete!” Kyder thought her jolly enough, even with her front teeth split in half.

Theology majors were the journalist of the spiritual world, he thought. “I don’t heal anything; I read,” he answered. She replied with a hum and let it go. Kyder shrugged his small shoulders, gently opening the door for the battered psych major accompanying him for coffee. The wind roared through the doorway causing the girl to shiver.

“It’s freezing,” she drug the coat about her tighter, its well hemmed fabric overlapping her shivering body. The demon stopped and took off the white hoody, handing it to her. His dark arms, exposed skin, showed no signs of bumps or reactions. The demon had walked deserts, mountains, hills, graveyards, seas, clouds, sands, and times: an eternity of soulless movement over geographic constructs imposed upon his controlled wandering. The winters in the northeast were nothing to the winters in Hell. She reluctantly took the sweater, draping it over her arms and heaving the jacket over the hoody. They continued walking.

The two of them walked silently in the snowfall. Occasionally, out of the corner of his eyes, he would see her open and close her mouth. Each time, the bruise paraded about her face and shone even crueler in the moonlight. The small creature known as Kyder made a left down one of the small towns small roads; she followed obediently. Two blocks and no conversations later, the ancient warrior known as Kyder held the door for his coffee companion.

The girl behind the counter recognized him. She offered her usual warm smile and handed him a cup, exclaiming happily, “Have a goodnight tonight!” smiling a perfect smile, teeth cleaned nicely with strips the toothpaste company sold to cover up their lousy toothpaste. The fanged monstrosity used small diabolic bacteria to eat away the grime on his teeth. He thought toothpaste, on the other hand, tasted horrible and refused to eat it.

“Thank you,” he took his normal cup of coffee and sat down. Seconds later, the female accompanying him sat down. He spoke a simple word, “tired?” and hoped that would be enough to spawn her to talk. The eternal demon had run out of things to talk about decades after mastering the English tongue. Other than the occasional conversation with a bus driver, he was left to search for conversation via his cell phone; the demons of hell were never as conversationally adequate as the mortals.

“Tell me a story,” she offered. Gently, she reached into her bag and popped a small pill into her mouth; she swigged the cup of coffee, rolling her eyes into the back of her head as if kissing a new boy for the first time. The Ancient demon shudder for one split second.

“I don’t know any good stories,” he took a swig, allowing the freezing liquid to pass down his throat into the furnace of a stomach. Between digesting the wrinkly grey matter, said brain matter still burning, and the coffee, the former soldier of Heaven knew he would have a bad stomach ache.

“Are you kidding me? The bible is full of stories! Tell me a good one! But one I haven’t heard about either!” she prodded his hand gently.

Kyder, Vengeance and Retribution personified, rubbed his smooth hands against the cheap plastic table of the coffee shop. “If you want me to tell you a story, I’m not telling you one from the Bible. I’ll tell you a story, a love story, of epic proportions,” he shot his hands out across from each other to show how epic it was. He began:

 

“It started with a married couple,” – too many decades had past for Kyder, too many long steps down from the heavenly throne. It had started with a longer and more beautiful hallway than he could imagine now, that’s for sure. God sat upon his wheeled throne, unblinking eyes watching the young angel’s ascension up the stairs. - “One day, the man returns home from his job. He’s vegetable stock boy, making sure to remove all the rotten cabbage, lettuce, and onions before they had a chance to infect their fellow veggies with”- The Lord, the flawless patriarch of eternity’s limitless kingdom, had looked over the brow of his chariot., reaching his slender and delicate fingers down to one small angel’s presence. He stopped, peered, wondered, all and all, that the Lord would come in brief contact with his undying zealous faith; the God Almighty reached his fingers down- “blight. Then, one day, he heads home after work. He steps in the door to see his wife sitting on the couch with a sheet of paper in her hand, she says of him , as if reading from the paper,”- you must prove your worth to me; you, dedicated and humble, my loved servant. Go you to the sand of sands and bring me the head of Baal the lesser. Go, cut him down and level his armies in my name. Do this, and I will remember you as I always have- “‘I don’t love you anymore.’ Those words, exited her mouth, and he felt broken, his heart fell to the floor…”

 

The girl sitting across from him placed a small hand upon her face watching intently with every breathless blink of her eyes, “Keep going, don’t stop. Why was she leaving him?” He continued:

 

“I think we were married for the wrong reasons. I want you to go to the store and bring me home one item. One you’ll think I’ll want,” – the Grand Executer spreads his massive wings, those eloquent feathers of scales as limitless as the stars, and rose into the heaven’s heavens. There, Vengeance swarmed down unto the kingdom of Baal; murder visited upon the lesser deity of the Canaanites. Kyder opened his endless maw, speaking forth the word of God- “She handed him a shopping list, and urged him out the door. The man, well, he was beside himself in sorrow. He loved his wife like he had never loved any women, no, could never love anyone. Nothing, not even his own life, meant more to him than that person questioning his love now. How could he fail, he thought, how could this possibly fail. For it to fail, he would have to not love his wife; so, with this in mind, he went to the store” – “Know that God judges in absolution,” he spoke, descending down unto the hapless kingdom of the lesser divinity. The fire flowing from his unbridled fury could be nothing less powerful, nothing less severe, than the Lord himself decreed. Months past as the battle roared on. Low, beneath the clouds, human soldiers fought each other, hacked each other, and butchered each other. High above, one mighty angel, stronger than any of the other host, spread his wings and landed before the limitless creature known as Baal. When the two immortals clashed, the heavens fell down around them and the fire oozed forth from the clouds- “Well, he stepped up to the doorway, small box in hand, and walked into the household. He had come to this conclusion: He’d give her his wedding ring back, the only item he could think she would want. As he signed the papers, the man asked her, “why are you leaving me,” she said, “Because” – Retribution marched up the stairs, dragging the enormous skull of the god Baal behind him. The emblazoned angel’s wings dripped the immortal blood of a limitless god. The Father looked down from his throne and nodded. The angel, wings spread apart, felt the glory and honor he so rightly deserved; The Holy Father gazed down upon his creation and shook his just head. The angel, wings spread like an eagle latching its first serpentine meal of the day, gazed up unknowingly. He could not perceive why the Almighty gazed so intently, so angrily, down upon him. “She married another man not long later.”- “Removed, my angel, you will know the sorrow I am filled with today,” the Almighty spoke, wrenching free one more fallen angel and casting him from the pure clouds- “As to the man, well, his love would not change despite the transparent avatar he poured his love into.”

 

Kyder finished his tale and leaned back away against the booth wall. The battered female, whose face did not seem so battered now, watched him intently. “Well, that’s it,” the fallen angel spoke to his coffee companion.

She sat, blinked, and opened her mouth. Slowly inhaling, she said to him, “That was probably the lamest story I have ever heard in my life,” she frowned at him, “That doesn’t happen!” in the same breath, “I’m not reading into that babble!” She took a slow sip of her coffee, rolling her eyes as the well creamed liquid stained her teeth.

The ancient terror known as Kyder leaned gently forward, “What’s your name?”

She looked at him, eyes barely visible under one bruised and one soft eyelid, “Let’s keep this business like. I don’t ask why you let your roommate treat you like shit, and you don’t ask why I let my boyfriend beat me.” The fedora wearing female brushed her shaking fingers through her hair. “It’s not what you think.”

Kyder was not even thinking about the abuse of the girl. He could tell from her face what was going on. He had seen the routine before. Though, it had only recently become taboo. “I don’t presume to,” he let the issue drop.

His cell phone rang, this time playing Horst Wessel Lied. Kyder quickly answered the phone, “…” he screeched into the phone, the Denochian language roaring like a broken flute. Quickly clearing his throat, he added, “What?” in the English tongue. The mortal sitting across from him pretended not to be paying attention, instead starred into her coffee. “Don’t change my cell phone-“

“Go to Salt Lake City. Call when you’ve reached the limits. Go immediatel; you were ordered to stand down,” the whimsical voice on the other end of the phone ordered. Kyder the long-suffering rose from his seat, turning slightly to gaze down on the girl sitting by him.

            “Leaving?” she asked him, gently pursing her lips over the small hole in her coffee cup. “I guess I’ll see you around campus.” Arching her back, the unkempt female leaned over the booth rim, cracking her back on it. It was then that the demon noticed something he had not before; the perceptive and observant ancient soldier noticed what he presumed to be an expanding womb.

            “You should really lay off those pills. The pain should be going away by the morning,” he began walking from the coffee shop, dragging his pant legs slightly as he did while tightening his belt.

            Her holler was blurred by the gusting winding following him out of the shop. Kyder, former majesty, headed his way slowly down the sidewalk. The night, started so much differently, ended not so much emotionally different than it began. The fallen angel looked up at the sky above him. As distant as it was, it seemed like it was the same distance from his beating heart- an organ he and the mortals shared, despite their metaphoric meanings. Kyder watched the moving clouds. Not high enough, he thought, to distance himself from; yet, higher still than his ambitions had ever been. If only it was as true, he thought, as he wished it.

Having only some nineteen thousand miles to travel by the morning, the fleeting creature took his time walking. Spending this leisurely pastime thinking made only perfect sense to the sometimes simplistic creature. He felt there were so many less important things in life, that, occasionally, it was nice to spend it contemplating concepts not attached to his occupation. As the demon pursuit his own self-analysis, the moon forced the translucent clouds away from it, visualizing only its watchful presence above him. The demon himself did not notice, nor would the idea have even come to him on his own. Thoughts, his companions of millions upon millions of decades, comforted the ageless immortal. Kyder’s slow foot falls carried him away from a place he’d called home for only a few months. He pitied the death of yet another of his personifications; through them he lived so much of a different lifetime than the Demon could. Identity aside, the abomination fell upon the wanton thought he wished for beyond any other wish: death. It was in this feature the demon mourned his immortality. “Endless torment,” he sighed. Only the moonlight, bending so around the clouds, brought any pleasure to the listless Kyder. 

            For the first few decades, maybe, he had enjoyed his life on earth, but, those days, like so many others, blended into a watered-down landscape painting- still a vivid picture, but of something he could never identify with again. Lucidity aside, the fallen angel gazed up. “Nine days an anvil would fall, and that would be the distance from the heaven and the earth; nine days an anvil would fall, and that would be the distance from earth to hell. Eighteen days separating us.” Days he could muster, distance he could cover, but there was no matter of time to convey the soul detached from him. The mortals, he mused, had it lucky. They were temporal in their miseries: Pain of birth (felt by others), gave way into pain of living, (felt by self) which turned to pain of death (felt by others). He, on the other hand, was birthed of a hierarchical need to fulfill an occupation: a tool designed to accompany a task. It was his lifetime, his hind-thought, and, consequently, his future. Dropping his arms to his side, the entity known as Kyder allowed his wings to rip apart his t-shirt and flew into the sky with a shrill scream.

            The shriek which tore from his now gaping maw would not have been recognized by any human living today. Those, maybe, of Ireland might have known it as the sound of tormented souls cursed to roam the earth, and, thereby, torment anyone unlucky enough to happen upon them. It was in those days that the ancient demon known as Kyder first felt frustration echoing through his immortal chest. He took it out on the local peasants. Transgression aside, the demon did his best to fulfill his duty; so, the ancient creature did his best to maintain complete and utter separation of his job and sentencing. In the meantime, presently, the ancient worker flapped his unholy wings, flying with apathetic intent towards his next layover.

Upon review of his working records, I have found the above stated party innocent of his intents and the charge of PRIDE. If judging in this matter alone, relying on nothing but his transcript, I could not hold him accountable for anything but curiosity. It is hereby noted that he has shown great restraint. It is this reviewers note that the following account be prefaced by the accounts hence described.

As to his promotion, his ignorance of duty, seen through his unchecked interaction with an outside party stains an unfortunately spotless file. It is thereby the judgment of this review he be kept in his current position until his next review occurs. Slowly, the above stated party has been showing signs of rehabilitation. In summary, this file will, hopefully, be up for appeal again shortly. Until then, it is one reviewer’s humble opinion the above party be limited in his interaction with outside parties until he has mastered a slight matter of frustration. With that said, this case has been thoroughly reviewed and to remain closed until his next appeal.