Jump: The Fallen: Testament 1 Page 9

  He slithers over next to me and I can feel the burning sensation all over my body. Then he looks up and says, “I’m more of a breast and buttocks man, myself. However, I harbor no animosity for a man who enjoys another’s… Those are her words, not mine. Mine is a house that is open to … all orifices. Is that what you prefer?”

  I wanna be careful how I respond to that. It feels like he’s baiting me—fishing for weakness—trying to reel in my fear. Before I can stop it, the thought of a Protection prison and being gang-raped by a pack of half-insane inmates, flashes in my mind. That’s my worst one. No idea how I got it. Maybe I’ve seen too many bad-agent shows on the PIN. Those waves are a joke, all upside down. Good guys are the bad guys, preying on the ignorance of the average citizen.

  I jump a little as I feel him grab onto the image and snatch it from me. Then he swirls his tongue around the edges of his mouth, licking his lips like he just ate a juicy apple. His tongue isn’t forked or red or covered in blisters like you might think. It’s just … long. Kinda … face-painted, wavestar long … times two.

  And I’m staring. Some things you just have to stare at. “That must be handy,” I say. For some reason my filter is completely off. More than normal anyway, and I wince, anticipating. Then I try to cram the thought down. If he does condemn me to be raped for all eternity, it’s probably better if I don’t feed him the fear to do it with. Then again, it’s probably too late for that.

  And he caws out like a raven at me—a cackling roar of a laugh—and I recoil, thinking that my skin might burn again. But it doesn’t and he says, “Mm, that was delicious. Not exactly what I had prepared, however. Honestly, you torture yourselves with fear far more efficiently than I could ever hope. I have feasted on your rage and your guilt so many… You are one of my favorite dishes. However, I thirst for a different delicacy these dark days. The Word grows weary and the faithful are … impatient.”

  It’s hard to control my own thoughts. I haven’t forgotten that he can root around in my mind at will. But this is—

  “Yes,” he says. “Control. That is perfect. Everything you have experienced is about restraint, and oppression, and compliance. That is the right word. Act this way, state your compliance, submit to judgment—wait in line and stay silent. It must leave a horrible taste in one’s palette.”

  “Bastards…” I mutter. He’s got me agreeing with him again. I know it’s just more self-serving propaganda. Not much different from every day of my life. For some reason, I wonder if I had a gun if I would have the guts to blow his fucking head off. I might back in life. Then again, I didn’t. Too busy saving my own ass.

  “Let us see,” he says.

  I feel the weight of it and the familiar texture of the rubber crosshatches on the grip—in my left hand—cold, hard, and familiar. I don’t even have to look down to know it’s my Kimber. And before I even realize what I’m doing, my hand comes up and—Boom-boom!

  Two rounds rip through his neck and face and I see blood fly, and a hideous howl escapes the hole in his neck and then a screeching scream like I’ve never heard. His head splits apart and a horrible wailing sound comes out and then as quickly as the bones and flesh parted, they catch fire and melt back together. In an instant, his head and neck look like the whole thing never happened. The only trace left of it is a tiny line of blood running from the corner of his mouth. His tongue whips out, swirls like a snake wrapping around a rat, and laps up the blood before it can drip. And then he smacks his lips and grins.

  This is it—he’s ripping my soul out for sure. What the fuck was I thinking?

  “Magnificent,” he says. “That was … delicious. But I would have done it differently.”

  And he rushes at me, just a blur of flame before he’s on me. And I feel something pierce my chest and then my heart feels like he shoves a spike through it and his face is right in front of mine. And the smell is awful, but the pain is worse, and I scream and try to grab at his hand. But his grip is granite, and with no more effort or concern than lifting a cup of coffee, he rips out my heart. Then he backs away and watches.

  I stagger and grab my chest with both hands. When I hunch over, rosy red blood gushes through my fingers and paints the ground crimson. This will require a staple-stitcher.

  It’s a calmer thought than I should be having right now, but something isn’t right. No heart—I’m dead … but I’m not.

  He bellows out a laugh, roaring and cawing at the same time. “Stop thinking like a monkey,” he says. “You are already dead. Even I cannot kill you. So stand up. Let Heaven get a good look at you.”

  When I stand up, he’s smiling and holding my heart. It’s no cliché horror shot from a cinewave, either—heart pumping in his hand while I take my last breaths. My pumper is just limp and steaming, dripping dark red down his wrist. I still have both hands over the hole in my chest, but I’m not dead. Well, yes, technically I’m already dead, though I don’t remember how I died. But dead or not, I figure ripping out my heart should kill me. It doesn’t and I’m in some new nightmare I gotta wake up from.

  “You don’t look so bad,” he says. “And this is no dream,” he scoffs a little, “Man… It is difficult to teach you to master death, when that is your worst fear from life.” He points at my chest. “Go ahead, have a look.”

  When I look at my chest, there’s nothing there. No hole, no blood, not even a scar. New one, anyway—my barbed wire tracks are there, but my heart is still safely tucked behind my left nipple … I think? And I look back at him and he holds up an empty hand and laughs, like he just played some mind magic on a crowd of citizens on a street corner.

  Trust me, I’m getting bored with the pace myself. But apparently death has its own timetable. He definitely does. Looks like the program is packed. It alternates between scaring the shit out of me and then letting me chew myself apart with guilt.

  “Ah, guilt…” he says slowly. “The Catholics caught that affliction the worst. A chronic case of faith. Ironic.”

  I’m feeling a little dizzy and I look around. The room… I don’t know if we’re in a room, drifting through the ethersphere, or descending into the depths of fiery damnation. The flames in the sky seem to be the only thing I can recognize. Everything else—black. “What’s…?”

  “Disorienting, isn’t it?” he says. “Difficult to tell what is real and what is a finely-crafted fiction.” He looks up slightly, then back at me. “You will get used to that. It is a part of her—”

  “Part of what?” I ask. I gotta get back in the game, figure out how to… Hell, I got no idea what to do.

  “The guilt,” he says. “You must have faith to experience her word.” He holds up both hands and makes bunny ears with his fingers in the air in front of him. “Bask in her glory.”

  I almost snicker. For an evil fuck, he seems to enjoy a little humor … or maybe it is sarcasm. I put my hand in front of my mouth and pretend to rub my scruff. I’m starting to see the appeal. He’s just thumbing his nose at power. Watching the—I’m still not sure what to call him, but he’s a conspiracy ranter after my own heart.

  He smiles at me. “Exactly what I mean,” he says. “Because once you have faith, all they teach you is guilt. Guilt for being born, guilt for being flawed, guilt over Jesus. And guilt … is just another word for control—compliance. Remember, it is all language. That is how it begins.”

  I know a little about it, who doesn’t? “You’re talking that apple in Eden shit,” I say.

  He pauses. When he speaks, his tone is more … fatherly, “No, I am talking about an unattainable standard of behavior, beset upon the masses. You… Man is a genetically engineered monkey in a cage, tucked securely behind bars in one of your creator’s zoos. You are fed, clothed and loved according to a procedural manual for daily life that the zookeepers use to maintain control.”

  I’m following him, but the thought that I’m a kid’s pet gerbil irritates me. It’s a hop, skip and a jump to pissed off from there. I’m no more in contro
l of my life than a dog walking its master? If that is the truth of it, that’s just bullshit. “So, free will is…?”

  “Chaos,” he says it without hesitation. “Think of what would transpire if she allowed all her creatures to run free. We lost control of you rather quickly. It is a simple matter of math before you eat each other. Not much farther, by my calculations, actually. I was the last hope she had.”

  There’s truth and lies in what he’s saying, but all of it makes sense. As much sense as two-thousand-year-old campfire stories do. I wonder if he’s just distracting me while his demons prep my torture chamber, or if he’s… Oh, son of a bitch, he’s monologuing, getting high on the sound of his own voice. A self-centered bastard loves the taste of his own words best of all. I should know. Though, I don’t think what he is saying is meant for me.

  It’s a familiar rant—raging outside the mansion of your oppressor, pretending that they are doing anything but enjoying breakfast while they call Protection down on you, send you to the Fifty. Where is she? Then I think about something he said. “You said zookeepers. Who…? And since when were you the hope of…?”

  “Don’t you realize?” he says. “If you are going to create a prison—garden if you prefer. Sorry, sometimes I… Ah, no matter. I lose myself sometimes, it is … irrelevant. You are a garden full of monkeys, Jake, and that requires … compliance officers to take care of the mess.”

  “Get the hell outta—”

  “Do you know what kind of duty that is?” he says. He’s ignoring me on purpose. “Cleaning cages full of the vile excrement of animals? We all hated it. She almost lost…” He shakes his head. “So she sent down the Word—an experiment to determine if you could … self-correct, I imagine. She was so optimistic. I warned her. I hate it when I’m right. And just as I predicted, you twisted it and turned it into a justification to makes things worse. You retold the tales so often, they hardly resemble their true meaning anymore. And the killing…? The two Heavens help me, you monkeys love killing more than I do.”

  Not that he’s wrong or that I don’t agree with him, but as much as I want to hear it… “So you’re telling me all this…? Why, because I’m such a smart monkey? And you’re our last hope? No wonder things are so fucked.”

  He smiles at me, like a bored King indulging a quaint peasant. “Things are … bad, because she prefers them to be so. Her experiment is going exactly as she wants. She revels in the collapse, like watching great drama unfold.”

  As much as I’m loving listening to someone who is as fed up with their existence as I am, now he’s off in the weeds, talking shit about … God or whoever. If there is hope left for me, I don’t think I should jump on that bandwagon. It is probably better if I just keep my mouth shut. Who am I kidding? “No wonder you are so evil,” I say. I smile a little. “So what do you think we should do?”

  He smiles a deep, satisfied grin at me and ignores the question for a second. Then he looks toward the sky and the flames burn brighter. He stares up, cocks his head to the side, and raises his eyebrows a little. When he looks back at me, he’s all business. “We … have a dilemma,” he says.

  Here comes the shit. I played right into it. We… I wasn’t talking about him, but he—

  “I know who you were referring to,” he says, “however, she has waited for man to repent for an eternity. And a second coming? Please. Fool her once, shame on you. This will be her last attempt.”

  “Last attempt at what?”

  “Cleaning up,” he says. “Do you know what it is like to be an angel?”

  “What are you…? And you do?”

  “Ah, remember,” he says. Then he stands a little taller and breathes in like he’s trying to control his temper. “Once, I was the highest angel, second only to her. And things were … beautiful. Do you have any idea what it would be like to be told you were destined for … that you were created for divine purposes, spawned from the womb of divinity herself … only to realize one day that you were simply a glorified janitor, cleaning up feces after creatures in your salvation’s zoo?”

  He’s changed—glowing fire is building in him now and suave soul-sucker or not, this guy is scary as shit. I’m trying to think of something … stall for … I don’t know what. Time?

  As soon as I think it, he calms back down. He looks like an idea popped into his head. Then he says, “Time … is up.”

  There’s some serious silence between us, as he lets that last statement sink in. He’s pretty good at this shit. Better than I was.

  He smiles a big, wide grin.

  Probably reading my thoughts again. “So…?” I don’t want to know the answer, but I’m pretty sure what I want isn’t entering into his thinking.

  “Now there is where you are wrong,” he says, “dead wrong.”

  I shiver as I remember where and what we are doing here. He’s been educating me, just enough. And now it’s final exam time.

  “Everything from here will rest on what you choose,” he says. “Your decision now seals your fate.”

  “I thought it was sealed when I jumped.”

  “I told you,” he says, “she told you … times are different. When the ship is sinking, there are different operating procedures—a different … manual.”

  “What manual?” I ask. “How can you have a—you mean the Bible?”

  “That is the book of life,” he says, “and you have bastardized most of it. But this is not life, this is death. And death is my realm of responsibility. I was cast out as the final measure to keep the garden from imploding on itself. And my manual … my book …”

  He holds up the book he had before they sent me on their little joyride. The writing on the cover is none I recognize. Ancient Egyptian, Sanskrit, triangles or something? I’m no language scholar—shit’s all Greek to me. It looks like three words, though, and it looks like they are written in—

  He smiles. “Yes,” he says, “blood. My book … is the Book of Blood.”

  It’s clear he has an idea, a little trick up his sleeve. Whatever is in his big red book, it feels like he is more concerned with using it to fuck with her than he wants to use it to help me. I’m not bitching, but he’s the—no way what he says can be good for me and him. Might as well take every second I can get before he burns me, though. I shudder at the thought.

  He’s eyeing me like he knows exactly what I’m thinking.

  “Okay…” I say to him slowly. “Exactly what does your little red bible say, then?”

  He flips it open like a State Revenue agent would open an audit report. He already knows what he wants, he’s just looking for the obscure law that will let him take it. Then he thumbs through a few pages, and when he finds what he’s after, he runs his finger across the text as he reads. As he does, I can hear the slightest moaning sound coming from the book.

  I know. All of this—it’s a lot to take in. The world was messed up enough and I was sick of it. Sick of the ignorance. Sick of the hypocrisy. Sick of the elitism. But this is…? How do you cheat death?

  He never looks up or breaks stride, running his finger over words on the page. “Death…” he says in a slow, growling moan, “only ever cheats you.” When he does pause, the moaning stops and I figure he’s found his chapter and verse. “Except—”

  “Except what?” I ask. If this is it, I wanna…?

  When he reads now, I can hear the faintest crying. Like a little girl down the hall behind a heavy door. And the words caw from his lips, “And on his last day, the Angel of Light and the Chosen One shall each tempt The Fallen with their own desires.”

  I don’t get very far past the “last day” part, before my mind’s looking for the exit again. But then I realize something. “Tempt me with what?” I ask. “There isn’t a single thing I want from you.”

  He closes his report and peers at me like he’s deciding whether to credit-crack me or put a judgment on me. “Actually, there are a host of items you might like to acquire. However, there are two that you want most despe
rately. And fortuitously for me, today is your … lucky day, because, as fate would have it, I happen to possess one of them. And for a small fee…”

  Fortui— He’s as condescending as me, I’ll give him that. And “small fee.” Now he really sounds like a revenue agent. Once you add up all of their “small” fees… We were all idiots, holding out our hands to receive free everything and anything we could get our greedy gums on. We were drunk on the idea that the State would take care of everyone—keep us all drunk and happy. And the bartender kept pouring and the tab kept growing. By the time the bill came due, it was too late for anyone whose daughter wasn’t willing to fuck a State politician, or any other rich bastard that was holding a tab on the rest of us.

  He’s right about the two things, though. I want my girls back.

  “They’re both dead,” I say. The tears come before I even say their names. “Isn’t that what your little daydreams were for, reminding me about Kelly? Amy?”

  “Amy…” he says, “yes, very unfortunate. Precious little I can do to remedy that.” He glances up and then looks back at me. He motions his long thumb upward. “She is … keeping close watch over her. However, your wife, on the other hand…”

  When he looks at his feet, I feel another twinge in my chest, right where he ripped out my heart. I rub it with my hand to make it go away … and check that it’s still in there. But Kelly in…? If all this is real, there’s only one place a person like her ends up, and that’s Heaven. And after what they did to her… Now she’s the only salvation I want.

  “That’s total bullshit,” I say. “You don’t have her down there. That woman was only ever good to anyone. No way she ends up with you.”

  “She was a beautiful soul, wasn’t she,” he says. “Very tasty. It is … sad. However, she has rules. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Rules?” I say. “What rules could she possibly have that—” Then I realize what he’s talking about. So long ago. More shit that’s my fault—guilt I gotta cram down with the rest of it. “She’s gonna condemn her for that? We were teenagers. We had no idea what to do with a baby.”