Chapter 33 #2
The world was cruel, and there was no God to blame, and they were all just insects trying to make something out of their puny lives.
And yet his older sibling had loved insects, had loved those as beautiful as monarchs and as dirty as roaches.
She’d fed Dante grasshoppers once by hand, and she had told him that this was a beautiful place, this planet.
Dante had always troubled with romanticizing ‘the land’ and tradition.
Hell, he liked modernity, he liked cars, he liked eating foreign foods, he liked modern medicines.
But there was a gaping hole in his chest, the same as there was an empty chair at the family kitchen table.
Maybe it wasn’t so terrible to be an insect, to live simply and be small and meaningless.
Dante finished his cigarette, left the house, and then he wiped his eyes of the tears that’d escaped.
Tadeo, on the other hand, stayed in the square for hours, until it was past midnight.
He hadn’t meant to, or wanted to, but the crowd had grown wider and wider around him even as the red moon continued to rise.
It was only thanks to one of his cousins, who noticed the anti-Christ slumping, that he was allowed rest. She shouted out that Tadeo was exhausted and then, afterward, she’d hurried to grab him as he stumbled off the crate.
Gasping, then coughing, feeling his body tremor like the Earth with every expel of hoarse air, Tadeo almost succumbed to the dark spots in his vision.
“Let him rest! Let him rest!” His grandfather’s voice.
In the fog of shapes that constituted the crowd in Tadeo’s exhausted gaze, he tried to find some grounding.
Briefly, he thought he saw a face like that of the Jesus he’d always seen in paintings, in books, but then he blinked, and he saw his father.
Then, he blinked, and he saw a man again — this one unfamiliar but dark-haired, dark-skinned.
And the passages in the Bible of Jesus duplicating food for a crowd flashed in his mind, suddenly, without explanation.
‘Did they crowd around you too, Christ? Did all the people beg for miracles until you dropped in exhaustion?’ No, no, the son of God shouldn’t feel exhausted, and Tadeo ought not to compare himself.
He was his opposite, after all. Anti-Christ.
Tadeo felt hands guide him down onto a bench, and he breathed out shakily.
His head pulsed in pain. His body was heavier than he’d ever felt it.
All he could do was shut his only eye for a moment, even when he heard the sound of the soldier — Dante — nearby, his voice, asking if Tadeo was alright.
The anti-Christ wanted to ask him what he was still doing here, but instead, he kept feeling his thoughts on Jesus, on the Bible.
He thought of walking on water, he thought of Christ in Gethsemane, begging his Father for the strength to die, to be sacrificed.
He could almost see it — the olive trees, the grass.
The shadow of a man, and then the armor of soldiers. The lips of a disciple, cold, angry.
He felt himself wanting to beg for God’s mercy like Jesus in the hour before crucifixion.
“Tadeo,” came Dante’s incessant calls. “Tadeo.”
Groaning, Tadeo fluttered open his eye to see his family still trying to lead the people away — easier now, due to the hour — and the soldier leaning to his height. “Fuck,” the anti-Christ grunted, then rubbed at his face tiredly. “What do you want?”
“Did you hear that the electricity is dead?” Dante hesitated, then asked, “How long do you think it’ll be before we all start starving?”
“Don’t say that.” Tadeo sighed, before lifting his gaze to the red moon.
If nothing else, the fallen stars were illuminating the town nicely, almost beautiful in its haunting.
Each of them breathed, and huffed, and sometimes one of their tongues would flick at the air.
“No one is… going to starve.” He hesitated before tilting his head up at Dante. “I thought you were going to leave.”
“Kind of hard to do that, and uh, if the world is ending, I want to be with the guy who thinks he can stop it.”
Tadeo winced. “I’m not sure if I can stop anything anymore, Dante.”
“Me neither,” Dante laughed bitterly, which oddly made Tadeo’s lips twitch in a terribly sad smile.
Tadeo, then, looked to his family nearby, sharing bags of chips now and talking.
Curious at that, he walked his gaze further, then pursed his lip at a convenience store nearby with its doors wide open, shelves presently being emptied by dozens of people.
“I’m sorry,” he said, to Dante and in general, though he felt his stomach begin to gurgle.
Weirdly, he had no want to fill it. Like starvation would be enough to clear his head.
Sometimes he desperately wanted pain as its own painkiller.
“Why are you apologizing?” Dante snickered. ‘I’m the one who’s fucked up.’ “You healed my hand.” He showed it off, wiggled his fingers.
“I’m also the guy who broke it.”
“So what?” Dante tried to drop the tension from his own shoulders. “I shot you in the head, and you don’t hear me apologizing, do you?”
“You’re free to apologize.”
“I’m good,” replied the soldier, then both of them laughed. “Anyway, I heard they’re gonna set up a carne asada nearby. You know, for the end of the world. You should eat.”
Tadeo blinked. “How did you know I’m hungry?”
Before he could reply, a sharp hiss sounded above, and Tadeo jumped to his feet.
Far above, there was a figure, dark face painted with white, wings spread behind him in what might’ve normally been a blue shade but seemed black beneath the darkness of a red moon.
Even from here, Tadeo could tell who it was — Azazel, the leader of the Watchers, holding the end of a chain that connected to a collar on another angel, Samyaza.
Dozens of the other Watchers rose behind him slowly; and remembering what the armored angels from God had done, all the humans who saw them cried out in fear or simply hurried away in strategic silence.
Tadeo tried to raise his hand, to tell Dante, or any of the others standing behind him, that these were the Watchers.
He had freed them. Under Dina’s guidance, he had broken the chains that were dangling from their wrists now.
But Tadeo’s words died in his throat when the angels flew, headed for one of the low-hanging stars.
Hours ago, Azazel had whispered, “The Lord doesn’t offer justice.” Samyaza had been tugging on his tunic, grip tight, desperate — but he ignored it. “We must build it with our own hands.” ‘But how?’
As if hearing his thoughts, Kokabiel had giggled, catching the attention of Azazel and all the other Watchers who were still in the yard after Dina left; they saw the angel of the stars grin greatly as he lifted a finger, pointing it up.
And Tadeo watched as one Watcher threw his chain at one of the many stars, narrowly avoided its bulging eyes and mouths, whipping off a squelching piece of itself.
Like an organ set aflame, the piece catapulted only to splatter against a building and engulf it in rage of fire.
And then there were screams again like the town had just suffered another strike.
Even the ground shook beneath, and Tadeo’s breath caught as he distantly heard Dante curse.
Then, another Watcher did the same as the first, sending another piece of molten sun down onto a car to explode it and send humans running in the opposite direction.
“Hide—” Tadeo gasped, looked at the soldier, then his family, before hurrying toward his mother’s wheelchair, where an aunt was paralyzed.
“Get out of here! Get out of the streets. Get everyone out of the streets!” Heart a battering ram on his ribs, Tadeo felt his skin prickle and begin to pull taut over growing, beastly muscle.
Overhead, more and more Watchers were swarming the sky above, and the anti-Christ morphed further, lowering to pounce and run after them.
“Tadeo!” Joana’s voice called, and instinctively, he froze, looked to his side.
“They’re all heading north! Don’t chase them!
” A rumble built in his throat, and his lips curled back to reveal infinite teeth — but Joana stared back, panting, hair stuck to her face in sweat.
Behind her, there was another woman, one Tadeo didn’t recognize, with faux blonde hair and a luxury top.
“Look!” And where she pointed at the Watchers flying away from them — crossing over the reddened river — and there was a distant boom. “Don’t call them back here!”
But so much rage shook Tadeo that a snarl slipped out of him, his entire body trembling, and feathers began to tear out of his body like daggers.
Except, he heard screams again, and he saw, from his periphery, humans crying out in terror at him.
‘Beast.’ Tadeo remembered what Satan had said.
‘Anti-Christ.’ He remembered the devil’s laugh.
‘My child.’ “No,” he rasped, but his own voice scared him, and his heart burst, filled his lungs, his mouth, his eyes with blood.
He remembered, suddenly, the copper taste of death, of darkness, of pain.
The burn in him. Hell, scorching his insides.
‘I’m sorry,’ he’d thought in the desert.
‘Mom and dad. For dying. For what they did to me. For all that I’m going to do.
’ He’d done it for them. He’d done everything for everyone but himself.
He’d needed to be their saint, their savior, because it was the only thing that could make anyone love this mutilated boy that he was.
And then Tadeo ran — not toward the Watchers, not toward Babylon. Praying he could arrive at death again and, this time, not be turned away at the door.