Author's note:
And with this begin weekly posts. I picked Monday's and hopefully I can brighten someone's Monday somewhere. If you thought it was getting real back in Chapter 3 and 4, this one should be a treat.
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Most people wouldn't know what to expect when they first arrive in heaven. Zeph certainly didn't. But discovering his body was a blueish, amorphous blob was at the bottom of his list.
"I'm a slime!" Zeph shouts again, resonating the sound from the outer layer his gelatin membrane.
"No, you're a buffoon." Retorted the grizzled one. "That form is just your soul. It will solidify later, given the chance. It's not some made-up creature from a video game."
Pete added on in a much kinder tone "It's okay, Zeph. Normally that's part of the orientation but this is more important right now." Pete hurried over to him, helping to bring him upright. "We need to know what happened to you that led to this."
"Led to this?" Zeph sat up in a soft, conical shape, "I died. That's what happened!"
But he cut himself off when he saw a bright purple light flash from the reflecting pool. The gruff man wasn't concerned with Zeph's existential crisis. Instead, he muttered to himself, transfixed on the pool.
"This isn't it, there must be more," He took a heavy drag off his cigar before making a sliding gesture with two of his fingers.
The events of Zephaniah's death played out for him at a speed he wasn't sure he could handle. He wanted to scream to his past self not to go back toward that house, despite speed walking somewhere between two and three-times speed. He was watching his death in fast forward. If he felt out of control before he died, this was like a sick roller coaster with tracks he could see terminating at a brick wall.
He watched the events that led to his gruesome death like a synopsis-turned-movie. He saw his body thrown at the wall as if he was just wet pasta. He watched the blood pour from his arm. He watched himself viciously stab his floating best friend in the arm over and over and over. A fly on the wall. If he had tear ducts, he would be crying right now.
"There!" The man's hand straightened to halt the image. "What the fuck is that?"
The image was frozen on the demonic that stole Jodie's. The creases in her skin seemed to humanity and curse the very air that image-Zeph breathed. Hidden in the anger and hate, there was something else. Lined under her eyes or at the corner of her mouth was something truly unsettling.
As she held the dark, shadow blade, the scar on the face of reality, she seemed to revel in what she was doing. A sick sense of pleasure capped her other-worldly rage. She enjoyed killing Zeph.
She enjoyed taking his life.
"Hey! What the fuck is that?"
Zeph didn't notice he was being asked anything.
Before this, he had no memory of those events.
It didn't seem that long ago but somehow those memories sifted like sand between his fingers.
Until now.
Each moment echoed for him. Each cut, each drop of blood, and all the pain that came with it ricocheted in his mind. The memory flooded into him when suddenly, Pete's soft features filled his vision. "Come on Zeph. Wipe those tears, my man. What is that in her hands?"
He didn't have tears, of course. But there was something that Pete saw in Zeph's face. Pete could see him for something deeper than tracks on a cheek. And Pete's voice carried the sound of sympathy. It sounded like someone who genuinely cared how he felt and his own well-being.
Zeph swallowed, somehow, before speaking.
"Some sort of sword or something." He sniffled. "She called it a name... but I don't remember what she called it." He tried to breathe but the air didn't come. The sensation of tears came to him again and he was back there, in that room, with the sharp pain impaling his chest. He instinctively clutched the chest he didn't have with a pointed part of his form. It was as if he could feel the fingers of the sword digging and prodding through his insides.
He was at a loss and thoughtless in this moment but the probing swelled and what rose to the surface was a single word. "Dunbal"
"Dunbal?" The smoker spoke seemingly disinterested whatever new hell Zeph was going through from across the pool. "The weapon's name matters none. This-" he gestures angrily at Jodie in the pool. "This is impossible. This can't happen."
"Well, it looks like it happened to me." Pete piped in, shaking his head.
"How did they get a possession of that magnitude? Her soul is barely even there! And that weapon." His tone got progressively more hostile to the water as he spoke until his focus shifted up to the pile of Zephaniah on the floor. "I mean look at what it did to that thing"
"Hey, he is still human!" Pete rose up dismissing the reflecting pool with a single sweep of his hand. Pete faced the smoker, pointing to his chest. "I called you to figure this whole thing out. You even said what they did to Josephine was impossible. Aren't you going to- to- investigate?"
"Is he human? Look at him closely, Peter" The man stamped over to Zeph and gestured an implicative hand to him. "He is an abomination. Tainted and vile. As for the harlot, I don't know why you bother to learn their names anyway.
"It's over. This bumbling idiot managed to stop their plans so there was never any chance of their success in the first place. The vessel will die and the demons will resign. There aren't enough resources on earth to sustain a vessel for a demon that size."
"How could you know that?" Pete moved between Zeph and the other man but not before feeling his own tears begin to roll. "She is still alive. Heaven or hell, her name would show in the book if she was ready for judgement."
"Soon, the whore will die and her bastard child will be free from whatever devilish plan she subjected him to." The man stepped closer to Pete now towering over him.
"The fuck did you say, geezer?" Zeph scooted up from behind Pete, posturing as intimidating as a slime could.
"Zephaniah!" Pete's head snapped toward him, interrupting the blob before he got too close. "Please, you do not want to fight this fight right now. He was never human like us. He doesn't understand our plight."
He said 'never' with some point to it, but it didn't phase the smoker.
"He doesn't understand a Goddamned thing, does he?" Zeph bit down on the words.
"You see, Peter? That's what you are trying so hard to save." The man rolled his shoulder back, unamused. "It's time to send him away. I will hear no more of this."
"Hold on, there must be some other way." Pete pleaded.
"There isn't. He doesn't belong here. It's not my job to figure out where he goes and it's not your job to save him." The man's voice was ice on each word, "Send him away. Now."
"Isn't it your job to find out what happened here? This isn't right! Even I can tell there is something more going on!" Pete was sheets on a clothesline in the other man's storm. "We can't just turn our backs on him. He is a victim!"
It was then that the man decides the time for conversation was over. In a single practiced step, he distanced himself just enough and extended his arm and a great length of ornate sliver extended instantly from his hand. It was an elegant sword, as long as its wielder was tall, but even fully extended, it did not sway, appearing weightless in his hand. It hovered next to Pete's bare neck, threatening to cleave the saint's head from his body. "Send. Him. Away.
"Now"
Pete's tone turned sullen, almost pitying, "You really have fallen from grace, haven't you? Are you going to kill me?"
"I will do what I have to to keep this kingdom safe," he said. "Will you?"
Pete didn't respond to the man but turned to Zephaniah and hung his head.
"Send him away, Peter, or I will rid us of him my way," the man said. Pete lifted his head, to meet Zeph's gaze. His face was a beautiful mess of genuine despair holding back a terrible sob.
"Peeeteeer." The man dragged out the name, goading a response.
"Okay. Okay." Pete's voice quivered. He blinked out a stream of crystal blue tears. "I'm so sorry, Zephaniah. I wish there was another way. I have to send you away now." But Pete hesitated a moment longer when his face loosened as if he thought of something.
"Peter!" The man urged forward with the blade a little closer to Pete.
"Hold on!" Pete snapped at him. If he was afraid of the other man swinging the sword, there was no evidence of it in the face he gave him.
Unphased, the man started to count down, like dealing with children. "Five."
Pete started to rattle off a torrent of information. "Zephaniah. You are going to hell but it's not over! It's never over!"
"You are wasting your breath. Four," the other man continued.
"There may be a way out of hell. I know you don't have any self-regard but Josephine and Dylan are still alive. Their fates are not written but I think they are still in danger" Pete spoke faster than humanly possible, lips becoming a blur.
"Three." The counting continued.
"Survive! Find a way to help them. Don't trust demons." Pete slowed down for emphasis. "Don't. Make. Deals."
"Two." The man gave up on threatening the saint and instead maneuvered his blade toward Zeph. But the promise of Jodie and Dylan was enough to bolster him. He wouldn't be threatened by some deadbeat detective with a great sword. It brought a smile to Pete's tearful face. The pitiful human was both brave and dumb.
"You have to go now. I'm so, so sorry, Zephaniah. Good bye." Pete said. "And good luck."
"One." Just as the number came, the water parted a perfect circle beneath Zephaniah. He fell through, leaving the men standing with their feet sticking out over the edge of the hole. He stared into the opening, watching Zephaniah fall.
Zeph watched the bright hole to heaven become small in the backdrop of yet again more darkness. And then it blinked out of existence.
**
Pete closed the hole he made. Then he wheeled on the smoker.
"Angel's had sin before us." His voice was steel.
"Wrath too." The man responded. "We made the right decision, Peter."
"Did we? How are you going to sleep tonight? Should I hazard a guess?" Pete started back to his podium. "That kid would have sacrificed everything to save even you." Pete huffed out a laugh, "And maybe he just did!"
"Enough, Peter." The angel dismissed his sword and it shimmered out of existence once again.. "It's over now. I will return to my post."
"You know." The saint took a shallow breath before continuing. "I wonder if the gates would open for you if your name showed up in my book." Their eyes locked and it was clear both of them wondered the answer to that question. "I wonder the same for many of your kind."
"Enough!" He said it with finality. "Have you forgotten that judgement found your name too? Your born-name, your true-name, is still in that book of yours. Do not lose sight, Peter."
"Oh, we lost a lot more than sight, today, Michael."
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