Thursday, September 20, 2012

Lucifer's Story

This is a short story for Chuck Wendig's contest. From the categories, I picked to include in the story:

Splatterpunk
Hell
Tattoos

“I’m  Beelzebub, Satan, Father of Lies, Devil, Prince of Darkness, Beast, Leviathan, Thief, Serpent of Old, Star, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, and let’s throw in Anointed Covering Cherub for fun. Yeah, I’m the bad guy,” said Lucifer.

“Please, I don’t want to be here!” a woman pleaded desperately, kneeling in front of him.

Lucifer harshly kicked the woman in the ribs and then quickly knelt down and got right in her face.

“You’re not listening!” he shouted in her ear. “When I’m speaking, you fucking listen!”

He pulled her up by her hair, yanking her back to her feet.

“Now, what did I just say?” he asked, eerily calm.

The woman whimpered, not sure what to say without setting him off again.

“You’re the bad guy?” she answered uncertainly, cringing.

“Damn right. I’m the bad guy. At least, that’s what everyone thinks.”

He let go of her and walked to his seat. It was a throne fitting the Ruler of Underworld, not golden and majestic but dark and terrifying, forged from the fires of Hell itself. The black metal throne glinted maliciously whenever it ensnared the light with its ridged teeth, while shredded claws of iron strained out from the legs and arms of the chair, desperate to seize anything within its reach.

The room was one of many rooms in Hell. This one was a dark and dank cellar with cinderblock walls lined with tortuous, blood-stained toys for Lucifer’s amusement. He picked one now, a long, thin and sharp knife, perfect for careful incisions.

“Please, God, save me!” she begged as she back away from him.

Lucifer threw back his head and laughed, full and rich laughter that came deep within his core.

“God? God save you?! Please, it’s because of God that I’m here.”

He grabbed her violently and dragged her to an operating table then strapped her in with leather cords. When he was done, he stopped and looked right into her fearful brown eyes.

“Will you be a good girl and listen now?”

She only stared back.

Then, he began his tale as he slowly started slicing the skin of her stomach with the knife, leaving a thin red line in its wake.

“In the beginning, there was God. Don’t ask me how He came to be, He just was, okay? Well, God didn’t begin by making Earth as you humans love to believe. He first made us angels. Yes, I said us, me included. He made us to worship Him and tremble at His mighty feet. As angels, we were in heaven and were made to be perfect creations of His. We were holy, therefore, we couldn’t murder, rape, steal, or even lie,” Lucifer explained calmly as he pulled back the skin, exposing the organs underneath.

“After awhile, God then decided to make Earth in six days and rested on the seventh. Yada, yada, you know the story. Well, in this time, He created the first two humans, Adam and Eve. When He did this, we angels were confused because He made us, why is He still making stuff? And we wondered about these humans He created. I mean, they were molded out of dirt - how filthy! At first, we mocked them from a distance. What a joke they were to us - these lowly, dirty humans compared to holy, pure angels of the Lord,” he continued, but the tension in his voice grew and his knife cuts became more jagged as he sawed the ribs. He ignored the screams, just background noise.

“But then, God started spending more time with them. They would go on walks around the Garden of Eden, naming shit. Soon, we barely saw God at all! He was abandoning us for those stupid humans! Well, I for one was furious and I talked to the other angels about it. We agreed to confront God about it and I would lead them. Not all the angels agreed with me, mind you, some were still goody-two-shoes who thought we shouldn’t question God. Anyway, we went up to Him and asked Him what was with these humans and why are they so special? God replied that He had created them in His image and had given them the freedom of choice,” he snarled. He threw the bloody, busted ribs aside with a clatter to reveal the frantically beating heart. In the suddenly silent room, the sound of the blood pumping through the heart made the whole room throb.

“So you see,” Lucifer whispered intensely over the throbbing sound, “He gave the humans freedom to chose whether they wanted to follow God or not, but I.... But when I question God, what happens?” Lucifer stopped and looked at her.

“Look at me!” He screamed at her. “LOOK AT ME!”

She forced herself to stare back at him through the pain. He wasn’t red like all the cartoons depicted. He was bald with odd piercings in his nose and ears. But that’s not what he wanted her to see. It was that he was covered in black markings that looked like tattoos. The markings were everywhere, on his eyelids to the tips of his fingers.

“These tattoos are the marks of evil that I got when God cast me out of heaven. He threw me out and sent me here to rot until time itself comes to an end. And I’m the bad guy?!” He raged.

He plucked her heart out of her chest. It was still beating, pumping away uselessly as blood dripped in long rivers down his arms.

“All I have now is torture and pain! All I have, all I do, is to torture the sinful,” Lucifer grasped the heart tightly in his hands.

“And I love it!”

He clenched the heart so tight that blood sprayed everywhere. He could feel the sticky warmth on his face, in his mouth, on his lips. It tasted so good.

“Yeah,” he said slowly, “I am the bad guy.”



Check out Chuck Wendig's site: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2012/09/14/flash-fiction-challenge-a-second-game-of-aspects/

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