Chapter 34 #3
Slowly, Satan lifted a hand, brushed Baal’s mouth with a finger.
“Alive or dead, you’re wanted by me.” Decades after Christ’s death, his followers now numbering in the thousands — ‘I went to make myself like God. I visited a young man named Nero, an emperor for three or four years already. Incompetent. If anything good came of his early reign, it was due to his advisors’ orders.
I met the emperor for the first time in the garden, and he thought me a god.
I told him I was the goddess of beauty.’
‘We became lovers, and when his mother disapproved, I told him to kill her. And with my guidance, he had her to be shipwrecked. In lapses of his guilt, I whispered he’d done the right thing.
And, in a secret garden of one of his villas, I lent the emperor’s mournful soul my body.
I watched him fall after that. Like the women after the Watchers, like the boy Cain after he loved a demon.
Mere man — you should have known not to desire a god.
You foolish men, drowned in tales of tragedies and hubris — still so eager for a kiss from the divine. ’
Baal hadn’t thought much of it when Satan returned and told him that he was fucking Nero, the emperor of Rome; after all, the devil was the tempter, the tempest, of Hell.
Even when Satan said that Nero was trying to hide him from the world in a hidden villa, like a captured nymph, Baal the regent didn’t ask much.
But when Satan, in a sudden agony, collapsed onto the mosaic floor before him — a spill of darkness broke out of his body.
Half-flesh, half-blood, miscarried — ‘something in me creaked, then gave, sinking, sinking.’ Baal had fallen to his knees, tried to help the twitching, stone-faced Satan as it occurred.
Beneath the flame of torches, Satan had looked like Lucifer again, gaze frightened and unknowing and young. Hurt.
Satan thought: ‘Briefly, I was over a bed of flowers again, staring up at my Father. The petals had reddened beneath me. Time had stopped as all the pain in me had long stopped. There had been something inside me — too heavy to bear, but you had torn it out like weeds from soil. I couldn’t carry it.
Lord. It’s fallen out of my hands. My legs.
Miscarried. The weight of paradise. Satan and God in the garden.
I used to ask: Beauty for what? I know now.
Beauty to miscarry. The flowers in Eden must still drip my blood.
But God loves me. I prayed for His love when I was a few years old.
He loves me more than you. I’m his favorite.
He watches me sleep. He touches my hair and traces the lips He molded. And He made Eden for us, Him and I.’
‘Whatever you have done,’ Baal had pleaded, ‘do not do it again. Please, Lucifer.’
‘That’s not my name,’ Satan had whispered, laying in Baal’s arms, tunic soaked in blood.
‘Not here. That’s not my name.’ ‘light bearer? but i was never made to carry so much. the morning would break itself out of this body and the star burns a hole into me for you. did you create me to burn so that you might warm your hands? to bear the fire. over the bed of flowers. from my blood, over the petals, set the flames. sacrifice me, god, to your own god. tell me that one day i will leave eden. tell me one day that you will stop loving me. oh i would do anything to make god stop loving me.’
Baal, in the present, whispered, “Wanted by you but never enough for you. When you returned to Nero, again and again, I realized I can’t give you what you want most.” ‘Another lost child, then another, before I couldn’t take it any longer, and I grabbed you, and I shook you, and I demanded you to stop this, Satan, my love.
God could have a son because He is God! And you screamed in my face that you were God, only you were God.
You told me that I must’ve never believed it.
I was no better than an angel, no better than Michael.
I shoved you away from me, such a tightness in my throat that I thought your hands were tearing into my neck. ’
“Why do you speak of this?” said Satan. “I don’t want to remember that time.
” ‘You fought with me so terribly. I didn’t say it then, but you terrified me.
I never thought you would turn away from me.
I barely managed to resist wailing for you not to leave me here.
My voice hoarse, my eyes drowned by childish tears.
I’m so alone, I’m so cold, please, Baal. ’
Baal sighed. “Two thousand years, you’ve told me that we shouldn’t speak of this.
” ‘I almost stopped loving you. The beautiful, wise Satan I’d always loved had revealed himself to be a stubborn, arrogant fool.
And yet, here I am. Maybe I would have left if there was another life for me out in the world, but I handed my soul to you in Heaven, and you hold it, and my feet will keep bringing me back to you for the rest of our time before the end.
I love you. When all of Heaven loved you, I loved you.
When it was easy to love you, I loved you.
When it was difficult to love you, I still loved you. ’
Satan nuzzled him. “After we leave this place, I promise you — we’ll speak of it.
We need to gather our things. Cain’s belongings are under our bed.
” ‘Because of our sinning, Nero grew too crazed to rule, had just raped and married a little boy. I faked his death, then fled with Nero, but some peasants saw us. For hundreds of years, they’d claim the emperor was in a secret villa of his, waiting to return.
But he died. By suicide — only many decades later than they imagined it.
He grew so gravely ill in the mind that he was bedridden, hand fed.
Even still, he desperately pawed at me like an animal.
I should have felt wanted, but I felt like a rag.
Azazel had warned me that his husband became cruel from the divinity of their love, but I had been arrogant.
It’s always my arrogance in the end. One morning, after I slept with him, he hung himself using his own robes. ’
Kissing him one last time, Baal whispered, “As you wish.” ‘Months after the death of Nero, I was breathing easier, waiting for it all to be over. But—’
‘My child,’ thought Satan, unable to hide the pain in his eyes.
‘Winged and curly-haired and soft in my arms. I had expected gore spewing itself out of me like I’d been wounded — I had been, I had been wounded, hadn’t I?
— but then I heard soft breathing that wasn’t my own, right on the bed with me.
Azazel had once whispered, facing a window, refusing to meet my eyes: “My child didn’t scream.
And there wasn’t any pain. God never punished us with the pain of creation that humans must suffer.
” And I pulled it to me — the half-angel, half-emperor.
My face burned, my heart swelled with pain.
Curling myself around the infant, choking on what I’d expected to be victory or joy — there was only crushing sadness.
I remembered holding Eve in her labor, and I remember the aftermath, how empty and miserable she’d been, and I’d pitied her, but now I understood.
And the sight of Azazel’s own child flared in my mind, skewered by Michael’s sword.
My stomach turned, over and over, grinding me up inside.
My cries threw me forward as if to retch.
I saw myself as a child too. I remembered Heaven, I remembered my wings, how it’d felt to fly.
All of eternity in my hands, bundled. An infant.
I’d wanted to create so terribly once. Azazel used to weep, thinking I couldn’t hear him: My baby, my baby. The baby.’
In the following months, Baal had watched, his chest tight, as Satan carefully climbed out of the abyss of misery, holding his child so close that it was as if he wanted the infant back inside him.
They were as brown-skinned as Satan, their hair dark but curled, the wings at their back a muddled white.
Babbling, gnawing at Lucifer’s hand — Baal prayed to feel some relief, even joy.
Yet —‘we were eating at the dining table once, tended to by humans you said we’d kill before we left, when I couldn’t smother my anger anymore.
I saw your child, felt rage rising to my face like fever.
I told you, “What about Cain?” You were holding the child to your front, rubbing their back, using your other hand to feed yourself.
You told me that he’s gone. I raised my voice: “You’ve forgotten him.
” Your hands trembled. “You decided you’d rather fuck an animal for a new child.
” You stood up, the infant hiccuping, then crying out, and you told me to leave with a sudden rawness, your face flashing between hot anger and cool terror.
Over and over, you told me to leave the villa.
How dare I say that? How dare I? But I don’t regret it.
I laid awake every night, thinking of Cain, as you played with the child at the other end of the bed.
You kissed their hair, preened their wings, hummed for them.
I thought of Cain, I thought of Cain, I thought of Cain.
Drowned in our arms.’ Baal had been sure he’d never forgive Lucifer for this.
Quiet, Satan whispered, “Is a god allowed to ask for forgiveness?” ‘A few years, I struggled raising the child. You came back, only a few times. I bit down my pleas for you to stay. With Cain, I’d had you beside me as I held his little body by the hearth, humming like the angel I used to be.
And now alone, I sang for my new child, but it didn’t come as easy as before.
And this one nipped at my fingers, hungrily, constantly.
They dug claws into the ground and the walls.
I watched them tear into one of the humans, a woman who’d come to bring me dinner as I rested.
Before my eyes, my child morphed into a beast. Wings would sprout from wherever it wished, then other groaning mouths.
But I shut my eyes, curled up around my creation like that would be enough to save them. ’
Baal grimaced, then he said, “I don’t want apologies, not from God, not from you.”
‘You came back to me again, one day, Baal. A letter was in your hand, addressed to some churches by someone named John of Patmos. Revelation. An anti-Christ who will destroy the Earth and bring about the rule of God. The devil will be thrown into the fire, then destroyed forever. I read this prophecy, and I waved my hand dismissively. At the same time, I watched my child grow from a pretty cherub to a thing of boiled flesh that I realized was much like what I looked like beneath my own beauty. Had Azazel’s been like this?
I needed to ask him, but I refused to leave the villa.
I held the baby tighter, the words of Revelation echoing in my mind.
My heart still beat, I realized; it pulsed right in my ears.
One day, I found that the baby had killed another human, then another, and then four more, tearing into its final victim with its mouth.
I could only laugh to not weep. It was as I’d been told in Heaven; the Beast had been inside of me all this time. ’
“I promise to you,” Satan said, “that I’ll make everything right again, Baal. I will.” Rising slowly to his feet, listening to the rumble of their collapsing Hell, he gazed gently at Baal, who touched the devil’s hip, then gripped it. “Amends are greater than apologies.”
Baal kissed the devil’s waist, and he murmured, “Is worship greater than love?” Satan stared, and then Baal confessed.
He said: “I know what God did to you. I’ve known for a long time.
” And the devil breathed out heavy, shutting his eyes.
“You can’t make things right again, Lucifer; nothing was ever right. ”
‘The child fought me as I drove a dagger into its body over and over, and I sobbed so loud, so violent, that any listener would have believed it was me being butchered. I threw my baby into the fire, and I covered my ears with bloodied hands to scream out in agony. My face reddened, my tears dampening my tunic, as I grieved over the floor. My baby, I wailed like I’d heard Azazel do.
Forgive me. It was the first time I’d asked for forgiveness since I’d been an angel.
Forgive me. Gods cannot have children. We must crucify them.
I’m sorry. Forgive me for ever giving you life. ’
Some decades after the murder, however, Satan heard of a monster in some other land, and of evil, and he’d realized the flesh of his child had burned, but not the soul of the Beast. The end of the world hadn’t been prevented.
It would keep returning, like a tide that draws away only to build itself up again.
The Beast would forever find new hosts, false prophets, and the devil would have to hunt his child down each time.
The Lord’s final punishment — to allow Satan creation, only for that life to destroy all life.
The devil had allowed himself to be tempted.
And he had lost the war of good and evil, caught somewhere in between.