Death Read online

  Father had suggested we try to raise as little fuss as possible in leaving so as not to alert the rest of the damned. However, since secrets cannot physically exist in Hell, where all plots are public knowledge, all conspiracies well known and familiar, and all cabals openly recruiting new members, our whispered words soon drew a numberless horde of imps and succubae flocking to the Gates of Hell. With one flap of his immense wings, Father hurled them back, and Mother and I swatted frantically at the multitude of mischievous sprites who were desperately trying to force their way into our clothes and luggage.

  The Darkness (profile): The Puppy Fat Would Soon Go.

  Just as we were edging our way out of the gates, who should come running toward us but Reginald, his toga on fire, being pursued by a hundred imps with pitchforks.

  “But what about me?” he cried. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “I’m sorry, Reginald,” I replied, tearing the last of the sprites from my pockets and flinging them back toward the fire, “but rules are rules.”

  Little did I know then how those words would come back to haunt me. When I think what I could have spared myself by listening to them! If only now I could tell my younger self to stop and heed the wisdom I spoke then without knowing it. But I can’t, and I didn’t. I slammed the gates shut, turned the key in its lock, and as the bolt slid home heard Reginald’s familiar screams begin yet again.

  It was the first trip we had ever taken as a family, and the first time I had ever left Hell. But as we swam, sank, waded, and crept across the unbridgeable void separating the damned from the saved, I barely noticed the vast expanses that stretched out before us. Instead my eyes were locked firmly on my parents as we moved relentlessly as one, toward the coast of Earth.

  Father was at his most charming, and Mother giggled and blushed. I noticed she had shined her scales and covered her chest in a particularly loathsome shade of vomit especially for the journey. Every now and then she would wiggle her tail in delight, and Father would pinch and slap her playfully and let out peals of laughter. It is a joy for a child to see his parents so deeply in love, and as they passed exploding supernovas arm in arm they seemed like the perfect couple. My animosity toward Father was gradually slipping away, and although I noticed he could not stop himself from ogling any black holes we passed, he was putting on a good show. He kept turning to me and telling me how excited I would be when we got to Earth.

  The Universe (detail).

  But it was a long trip. The epochs ticked by, and the conversation subsided. The farther from Hell we went, the more anxious Father became. I didn’t know then what his relationship was like with God, but I did know the Gates of Hell were there for a reason, and we were meant to be on the other side of them. Looking back on our journey now I feel certain that Father had come to some kind of arrangement with the heavenly powers. How else to explain our unperturbed progress through the hollowness of pre-Creation? I even seem to recall that our way was lit, at several points, by thunderbolts that looked suspiciously divine. Yet knowing what I know now, I realize making a deal with God did not necessarily mean He was going to hold to it.

  Our tempers began to fray. Father kept insisting that we were approaching the Beginning of Time, but Mother began to nag him to look at the map—a large, mostly empty chart that, since it was made in Hell, only told you where you weren’t. Bored, I kept asking “Are we nearly then yet?,” which caused Father to scowl all the more. It was beginning to seem as if this was another of Father’s doomed schemes, as when the nine-fathom deep water bed he had installed in Hell had evaporated.

  As we made yet another wrong turn, I sighed loudly. Flames burst out of Father’s head and he swung around terrifyingly.

  “Do you want me to leave you here?” he roared. “Do you want me to leave you here in the middle of the void?”

  I shouted back that yes, he could leave me here, I didn’t care, and I never wanted to go to Earth in the first place. Well, Father paused, surprised at my response. But then, gathering my protesting mother in his arms, he flapped his wings and in a moment the two of them had disappeared.

  I was left all alone.

  “Mother?” I cried out, but there was no reply. Without Father’s flames, the utter blackness of the vast emptiness seemed to grow even dimmer. Yet I wasn’t scared. I had always been attracted to absence, to lack, to want, and there was something about this infinite oblivion that was comforting. As the dark crept toward me invisibly, reaching out to envelop me imperceptibly, filling my being impalpably, I felt remarkably…perky. With a spring in my step, I began striding across the vacant expanses of the yet-to-be, and felt a slipping of my hellish chains. A new figure inside me was awakening. All thoughts of Father, Mother, and Earth disappeared. In fact, all thoughts disappeared. Nothing filled my mind.

  I was so enraptured by these new and strange feelings that I stumbled headlong into a large white angel. He was a vast creature, easily as big as Father, but he was dressed in gleaming white robes. Atop his head buzzed a pristine halo, as bright as a fluorescent bulb, and when his wings flapped together, feathers of the most shimmering softness imaginable fluttered from them. He was wildly swinging a fiery sword around his head while making loud screeching noises. Nevertheless, there was something ungainly about him. His sandals looked much too big, and his sword swept through the air haphazardly. At one point he dropped it so close to his foot that he squealed and leapt back in horror. It was at that point he noticed me. He screamed again.

  “Who goes there?” he screeched in the voice of a thousand startled sparrows.

  “Just me,” said I.

  “Oh! Please forgive me, my Lord. If I had known it was just You I would have begun the hosannas.” And then the angel cleared his throat and began singing a hymn. It was woefully out of tune. I just stood there, very confused, shuffling my feet. After a while, the angel peered at me out of the corner of his eyes and slowly stopped singing.

  “You’re not Him, are you?”

  “Er, no,” I foolishly replied, “I’m me.”

  “Me?” said the angel. “Or me?”

  “Just me,” I confessed.

  “Oh.” There was an awkward silence. I leaned over and picked up the sword, whose flames immediately expired. I handed it back to the angel.

  “Hold on!” he said. “Are you from Earth?”

  I felt my head begin to spin. I had inherited none of my parents’ natural deceptiveness. Now, however, I needed to dissemble.

  “Yes?” I said, thinking that as long as the angel didn’t know I was from Hell I would be safe.

  The angel dropped his sword again, slicing a sliver off his sandal.

  “I knew it! I knew it!” yelled the angel. “I’m Urizel,” he said as he extended a soft, heavily moisturized palm in my direction. I shook it. “What are you doing here?”

  “I…got lost,” I decided.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” whispered Urizel conspiratorially. “I get lost all the time. I mean, how can you keep up with Creation? One minute there’s nothing, then there’s something. It’s simply impossible to keep track.” He stepped back and looked me up and down. “So are you a sheep? Or a human? I can never tell the difference. In either case, I thought you didn’t have wings?”

  “Oh, we do for now, but it’s just to begin with,” I said, flapping my scaly wings nonchalantly. “Apparently we’re going to evolve out of them soon.”

  “Evolve?” said Urizel, turning the word round in his mouth. “Is that one of His new projects?”

  “Yes,” I said. If only Father could have seen me, he would have been proud.

  Suddenly however, a loud trumpet sounded, and from out of the ether appeared three more angels. They looked a lot fiercer than the one to whom I was speaking. One was blowing a silver trumpet, one was cloaked in a thundercloud, and one was wearing shining white armor and had dazzling golden hair. They surrounded me in an instant. The trumpeting continued.

  “Israfel,” boomed the angel clad
in white armor. “Israfel! When you’ve quite finished ravishing our ears, will you please be quiet?”

  Israfel, looking pink-cheeked and a little out of breath, lowered his trumpet. The trumpeting continued.

  “Israfel!”

  “Sorry,” said Israfel and hid the trumpet beneath his robes, where it continued to sound.

  “What’s going on here, Urizel?” said the angel in the white armor as he shook out his golden hair. He had a medal pinned to his chest that read CHAMPION OF THE FAITH, and another below it that read RUNNER-UP, DISCUS.

  “Hello, Michael,” said Urizel. He swallowed nervously.

  “That’s Archangel Michael to you, Urizel,” roared the angel in the thundercloud, “you miserable excuse for a heavenly being.”

  “Yes, yes, of course Gabriel, I mean Archangel, Gabriel, sir. Sorry. I was just inquisiting of this being from whence he cameth.”

  “Really?” proclaimed Michael, looking down his perfectly aquiline nose at me. “We have heard whispers of beings in the wrong places, and you know how He hates beings in wrong places. From whence cameth he?”

  “From Earth, sir, Archangel, sir.”

  The faces of the three archangels darkened.

  “We don’t like your sort round here,” Gabriel spat at me.

  “Now, now, Gabriel,” said Michael, before fixing an unconvincing smile of piety to his face. “All His creatures are beloved to us.”

  “Oh really? Is that so?” said Gabriel, turning his thunderous aspect to his colleague. “Well, what about the creeping things?”

  “I told you we’re not talking about the creeping things anymore,” hissed Michael.

  “You said you didn’t like the creeping things,” said Gabriel, unpleasantly warming to his theme. “You said they kept getting in your hair.”

  “Listen,” said Michael, “what I may or may not have said is unimportant right now.” He turned his visage toward me and reaffixed the smile that had slipped somewhat in the previous conversation.

  “So are you a sheep, or a human?” he said.

  “Oh, I’m a human,” I responded, furling up my wings as tightly as possible.

  Archangel Michael: Do Not Touch His Hair.

  “Prove it!” Gabriel leered.

  “Yes,” said Michael, glad to be on the offensive again. “Yes, I think you shall have to prove it. It’s the only way.”

  “But how can I prove I’m human?” I complained. I began looking frantically for a suitable piece of nothingness to hide in.

  “Well,” said Michael, “He said that He made you people in the image and likeness of Him, although I personally can’t see the similarity. So go on then.”

  “Go on what exactly?” I inquired.

  “Do Him,” said Michael, as if the answer should have been obvious. “Do God.” So there I was, separated from my parents, in the middle of the void, surrounded by a group of rather surly angels, being asked to do an impression of a deity I had never met. My earlier enthusiasm had all but vanished, and I suddenly became aware of what a sheltered existence I had led, and how little I knew of the ways of Creation. Here was I, a simple being from Hell, who thought he knew everything there was to know about existence, and already I was at a loss as to how to proceed in this sophisticated and perplexing Universe. Truly such moments are humbling to a young supernatural being. But I had no time to bemoan my fate. I hadn’t the slightest idea of what God was like. All I could imagine was that He was the exact opposite of my own father. Clinging to this belief, I spread my arms, as if in a warm embrace, and boomed in a high, unthreatening voice, “I…I love you…my child?”

  “Oh, he’s very good, isn’t he?” interjected Urizel, clapping his hands together.

  “Not bad,” said Michael, a little disappointed.

  A deafening trumpeting gave Israfel’s answer.

  “Oh, give it a rest,” moaned Michael. He seemed to have lost all interest in me. He opened a small mirror and began combing his blond locks.

  Only Gabriel didn’t say a word. He just stared at me.

  “Haven’t we met before?” he growled.

  “Not that I know of,” I said as I desperately tried to look as un-Satanic as possible.

  “No, we have. Now where was it?” continued Gabriel. “Heaven?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” I replied desperately. “I’ve never been there.”

  “Your face,” continued Gabriel, looming closer toward me now. “I’ve seen your face somewhere before.”

  “Come on, Gabriel,” said Michael, snapping shut his mirror. “It’s hosanna time.”

  Gabriel took a long final look at me.

  “Humph,” he said.

  “Okay then, human, on your way,” said Michael. “Don’t forget. We know if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake. Urizel, as you were.”

  “Yes, sir, Archangel, sir. Thank you, sir,” replied Urizel as the three archangels flapped their wings and disappeared into the void. When they were out of sight, I collapsed, exhausted. But what exhilaration swept through my body! I had done it! I had lied my way out of trouble as if I were Father himself. I felt a shudder of nondread, of unpain, of antiagony, of what I now know can only have been the first inklings of Joy. It was some time before I realized that the angel next to me was crying.

  “I’m going to be stuck out here for all eternity,” he sobbed. “No more hosannas for Urizel. It’s just blackness and guard duty and…” he gestured at me, “sheep.”

  “Human, actually,” I responded, much more confident now that the archangels had gone. “And I think you’re doing a splendid job.”

  “Really?” said Urizel, lifting up his head.

  “Oh yes,” said I. “I bet very few angels would have spotted me wandering by.”

  “I suppose so,” said Urizel, wiping the diamond tears from his cheeks.

  “In fact,” I continued, “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you were made an archangel yourself one day.”

  “You think so?” said Urizel, brightening considerably. “Archangel Urizel does have a nice ring to it…”

  “Well,” I said, slapping his feathered back. “I should be on my way.”

  “Of course, of course,” said Urizel happily. “It was Earth you wanted, wasn’t it? Just go past that inscrutable piece of blackness and take a right and you’re pretty much there.”

  I thanked him and was just about to leave when Urizel raised his lily-white hand and cried, “Wait!” If I had had blood in my veins, or veins in my body, they would undoubtedly have frozen. After all my evasions, was I about to be caught?

  “Before you go,” said Urizel, “what do you think of this?”

  He swung his sword over his head in a frighteningly unstable elliptical arc, before whirling it beneath both wings and arms. He leapt in the air, let out a high-pitched yelp, and ended crouched before me, holding his sword quivering above his head, a small bead of angelic sweat dripping down his forehead before evaporating into a cosmic mist. A flurry of feathers fluttered down upon us. Urizel looked up expectantly.

  “Well,” I said, feeling every inch the spawn of my father. “That’s just brilliant.”

  Slowly nothingness became somethingness and I found Mother frantically searching for me behind a crab nebula. As I approached I heard Father insisting that I had probably returned to Hell and that they should carry on without me. I cleared my throat and Mother rushed across to hug me, swearing that she’d never leave me again, while Father avoided my looks of reproach and said we should be getting on.

  Earth was like nothing I had ever seen before. For a start it was smooth and round. Nothing in Hell had been smooth and round. There was a famous saying in Hell that went: “If it isn’t spiky and it isn’t painful, it isn’t Hell.”

  As we flew closer we could see that instead of being a scorched wilderness of fire and smoke, the ground was covered in a lush blanket of green, a color I had previously only seen on the festering wounds of the damned. I was amaze
d to see that the oceans of Earth did not consist of roiling slicks of brimstone, but of a nonacidic liquid that swept calmly into the shore in gentle translucent waves. What’s more, the trees were not knotted and bent, nor were their branches impaling the screaming bodies of fallen angels. The air did not choke; the sky did not sag; the lakes and rivers were not filled with sickening, oozing, teethsome creatures, or indeed any of my relations. In short, it was nothing like Hell. At least not to begin with.

  Upon arrival, Father stood arms akimbo surveying the new land, while Mother was all aflutter, slithering back and forth across the lush grass, perplexed as to why her scales were not being hideously scraped by jagged stones. After a few minutes of frolic she stopped and turned to Father excitedly.

  “So where are the gates?”

  “What gates?” said Father.

  “Well, what are we meant to do, dear, if there aren’t any gates to guard?”

  “Whatever you want,” said Father, with an expansive gesture.

  “Oh,” said Mother, and stopped her slithering. I could see she was confused.

  “The same goes for you…you,” said Father pointing at me, his brow knitted as my name once again eluded him. I didn’t know what to say.

  That first night we sat around Father’s flames and held one another close. It was all so new and strange, and I had a feeling that while I had been Satan’s son in Hell, here I would have no special dispensations. I was to be a nobody, a nothing, a nonentity. That night I let the Darkness of the Bottomless Pit out of my bag. It shook itself out and looked at me with a vacant stare. I patted it and it curled around my feet. For the first time in my existence I felt totally free. It felt terrible.

  The next day I began to explore this new world. I found Father already hard at work tempting. He was lying on his side trying to convince a hovering mosquito that it should drink blood rather than tree sap. The mosquito was putting up a fight, but Father was quite strong willed when he put his mind to it.