Chapter 29 #2
God’s voice said: “Once I said — that because of your detestable pride — I would bring on you blood vengeance of my wrath and anger. I said I shall deliver you to the hands of the angels, so that they strip you of your clothes, jewelry, and leave you without flesh. I said that I would command a mob against you of all your lovers so that they stone the body that I fit for you. With their swords, I said, they would hack you to pieces.” And an ancient tightness built in Satan’s own skull, beating down into his core, his hands.
“And look how all that I promised has come to pass. The anointed cherub will ask himself why this is happening to him, I said, and it is because of his disobedience.”
“You,” Satan addressed, refusing Him a title, a relation, “will never cease this war. Almighty, if you’re almighty and true, I would not have been given the soul of the wicked to tend, nor the Earth to roam.
You have all done it for me to maintain this.
For the sake of war, you will never do away with me. ”
“The feet of the Throne burn you. You were made for the feet of the Throne, but you made its touch burn. Your sin is the fire that destroys you. The spectacle of blood and ash is your own creation. You craved to create, but you have only destroyed. Yourself above all. A rebellion for nothing; a war only for you to begin again, groveling. You were Jerusalem once, my morning star. I adorned you in every precious stone. I covered your nakedness in the finest drapery. From the ground, I groomed a flower, and I picked you and made you sing. And you spread violence. You betrayed me. You betrayed what you were created for. And you have found your death where you began.”
“You will never cease,” said Satan, careful, like he didn’t feel a quivering, submissive fear awaken in him like the other faces he used to carry; God resurrecting the dead.
“The devil will burn in the lakes of fire, and Lucifer will be reborn, the new Jerusalem. And the new Jerusalem will present itself as a bride to God. Are you the Lamb or the Lamb’s wife?
On the day you were made, you were one, and you will return to what you were created for.
Jerusalem will be dressed for her husband, I once said, and God will live among His people.
A marriage in a New Eden. The end will bear a new beginning. ”
‘Bride.’ Now, Satan opened his eyes, and they tore themselves open.
Blood tore out from his golden gaze to flood his cheeks, and he remembered how angel Lucifer had cried flower petals once.
Long ago. ‘Over a bed of flowers.’ It had been so long ago.
‘I thought you’d already married me, God, and that I had slit my own throat on the wedding bed.
You will do it all again. It will never cease.
’ Baring his teeth, drinking his own pain, Satan refused to look anywhere but forward.
He met God, the Father, with crimson eyes, in hungry agony that broke a body he refused to bow.
‘Look at me,’ he wanted to snarl, ‘and see how I’ve always looked at you. ’
Michael, suddenly, grappled Satan’s shoulder, and distantly, Raphael and Gabriel made noises of shushed alarm.
But the Lord spoke once more: “Yet, the apocalypse has yet to pass.” Satan felt a hiccup in his throat that surged him forward, then a hilarity that struck at him like the arrow from a bow.
He laughed, through the agony that was blinding him slow.
“Michael,” He suddenly called, “why have you brought the fallen cherub before me?”
Satan, through his hysterics, almost didn’t hear Michael’s hurried, tight voice: “My Lord—”
“You’ve brought the serpent of Hell to the Throne before the promised time.”
Michael tried again: “Father, you know that he interfered with the return of your Son and the apocalypse. I only brought him here for you to meet again before I hold him for the right day. The Judgement day.”
But the Lord did not reply, and Satan was still laughing and laughing, curling up no matter the raw scorch in his eyes, all the bloody tears swelling.
All about, angels were speaking again, to one another, then to God.
Again, they asked Him to do something, to punish the one who’d had all of them punished.
‘Retribution,’ they begged for. ‘Revenge. Give us revenge.’ But the Lord didn’t heed to them.
Instead, He banged a fist on His Throne, silencing the host, and urging: “Take the Beast of Hell far from Throne! Do not bring him before me!”
His wrath settled heavy terror over all the angels, many of which instantly swerved to leave, to return to their city, their cage.
The archangels remained where they were, Satan still on his knees, thinking of turning back and seeing all the six wings and the flames that made up Michael to cackle at his face.
‘I told you,’ he wanted to say, ‘that you can’t quench His bloodthirst, Michael.
God will never love you enough, and if God ever loves you too much, it will only hurt too.
’ But he could not see; he couldn’t feel the floor before him.
He must be dying. Darkness seeped into him like poison.
Soon, Michael released the devil’s throat, then took him by the chains again.
Spinning, spiraling, like he were about to tip over, Satan could no longer fight the pull of pain leading him into the abyss at the opposite end of life.
When Michael, roughly, tugged on him, and Satan moved in what saw as emptiness, he felt as if he were free falling.
The sensation was enough to recall the agony of his soul and flesh burning together in the fall, only one of which was able to be repaired.
His soul had turned ash and scattered itself over all the Earth.
But Lucifer could still remember rearing her — the Earth.
He could remember encouraging the demons to mend the soil and the sea, to allow the new creatures to flourish and roam alongside them.
Perhaps his soul wasn’t dead, after all.
Perhaps all the Earth was the devil’s wicked soul, and that was why it must be destroyed.
To kill the devil, you must destroy the Earth.
As Satan was pulled back into the sea of stars, far too dark, his stomach lurched, and he realized he’d stopped laughing.
Only pain composed him now. He didn’t know where Heaven was.
He began to wonder if it was anywhere at all or if it was in the place where nothing was, if it was separate from what is, what is real.
The un-real place where the angels and God lived. The lie.
It was several turns of the Earth later that Satan awoke.
He was chained, hands bound high over his head, wrists locked together, whereas his ankles were chained but not bolted in place.
A healer must’ve wet the devil’s eyes, for now he could see enough to not recognize his surroundings.
The walls were stone, which Lucifer couldn’t recall to have been typical for Heaven — but his memory was faulty and he had known quite the different paradise.
What he could recognize, however, were the weapons.
Each wall was lined with them — swords, spears, shields, maces.
All of it seemed very archaic to Satan, who’d grown quite accustomed to every firearm of the Earth, including those from the place bordering Babylon, where Tadeo was.
The anti-Christ, the child of the devil.
Bitterly, he laughed. Then, the devil listened to the sound of a door dragging against the ground, but he didn’t turn to it.
He maintained his attention on the details of where he was, the links of his chains, and the dips in the stone walls.
The ground, cold as the room, burned his bare feet.
But he was not naked; he had been dressed in a white tunic, like an angel.
Oils had cleansed his body, including of blood, and he smelled of lavender.
Even his hair had been brushed excessively, some small braids scattered within the golden sea falling from his scalp.
God had declared that Satan would live another day without Lucifer being resurrected out of his body, but it seemed Heaven was not going to wait to begin the conversion back to his dead faith.
Clink, clink — an armored person was approaching, an angel.
‘How long was I asleep?’ Time had always been difficult in Heaven.
He remembered being an angel and never quite caring for it except on rare occasions, and living on Earth had made him submit to the sun’s orders on the hours.
Slow, the devil lifted his face to see the chief prince before him.
His helmet was missing, but Michael remained in his silver armor and reddened cape as always.
His lips were pressed tight, his jaw was set, his eyes bore holes into Satan.
And he had, in a gauntlet, a fruit — red, gleaming. An apple.
“Satan,” Michael said.
The devil replied: “How long have I been asleep? Where am I?” His head throbbed like a pulse, and he rocked a heel, realizing he couldn’t steady it well.
“Didn’t your God tell you that it’s not the proper time for the convent to be fulfilled?
You may have broken the Revelation’s prophecy by bringing me here, Michael and now the world will continue.
My demons will roam the Earth and rule Hell and tempt every human to turn away from God, every last one, until there are none who can be saved. ”
“Many times,” said the prince, “I asked myself why the apocalypse never came. I suspected it, that you were involving yourself and killing the anti-Christ each time it was reborn before the other prophecies of Revelation could be fulfilled. You’ve delayed the destruction of the Earth for thousands of years, killing and killing — but see how rotten it has become? See what you have created?”