So my mum and dad split about 3 years ago, and they split on kinda good terms. My mum still lives in my dad's houce as its in both their names, and she makes much less money, amd My dad currently lives woth his parents paying ZERO rent while making triple figures (this is super important)
Basically my mum wants to move down to Dorset, she's found the perfect house and was under the impression that she had enough money to move as they where splitting the houce 50 50.
Hears the problem, my dad failed to tell her that the mortgage was 70k rather than 17k to pay off, this pretty much means she dosent have the money to move to the houce she wants, plus our current house has sold for about 20k below what we wanted to sell for, so she's 50k short of her dream house.
My dad has fully refused to help her sell the houce, he's done no viewings, no trips to Dorset to see the housing market, no trips to see my sisters 6th form schools that she needs to go to next year. He's just sat back and had the money fall Into his lap while my mum is working herself sick to sell and buy before my sister has to get into 6th form.
On top of this my parents have a flat in london, the agreement was that she sells the houce, he sells the flat, supprise supprise, he has not sold the flat, partly due to an annoying nabour who holds part of put leease hold, but also because he has much work (for context he works from home in a stable job, where he constantly takes sick days, whereas my mum works 9 hours a day in a collage as an lsa, and is working her ass off, running round the school looking after children)
And over all this, my dad refuses to lend her the money she needs for moving, me and my sister down to dosret, shes said that shell pay it back from the flat sale. but any time she even brings up finances he just overulles her, shputs and makes her out to be the bad guy. He constantly bad mouths my mum IN FRONT OF ME, and makes her out to be his horrible snarling karen to everyone he meets.
Plus hes constantly going on trips away with his friends, and spending allot of money, but he refuses to help pit at all woth finances, i asked for £15 recently to het up to london, and he just told me to use my own money, that im saving for university. Hes already said hes not gonna support me financially in university, which means i have to apply for a bigger loan.
Is there anything i can do, or sugget my mum dose to get him to pay this stuff, like a clause in a contract of something? I dont know what to do, my mums crying every night, and all my dad want to do is hang out with me like nothing happened and talk shit about how selfish she is. I just really need help, my sister needs to be able to go to school, and my mum needs to move. I have no idea what i can do.

Lucius was slowly finding a rhythm within the Crooked Crown. He would even go as far as to say it was getting simple, predictable even.
Mornings the blood suckers would slowly filter in, seeking refuge from the sun's harsh rays. They were a simple crowd, don't make eye contact and keep the blood bags handy.
After them you'd get to the lunch crowd, mostly just hungry he could slip by mostly unnoticed. People didn't care who pulled the pints, they just wanted them delivered to their table.
Then came the evening and with it, the troublesome crowd. Unlike the morning vampires who had their consistent rules or the midday crowd whose indifference brought certainty, the evening crew brought madness.
From Aisling who required strong drinks and keeping out the way to Evelyn who would take such tactics as a personal slight. It required a delicate balancing act, a gentle push and pull, something he was not good at.
Case in point the current situation, a bloodied Evelyn trudging towards the bar as the bullet holes in her skull slowly closed. A delicate situation, pour a drink, spare a kind word and absolutely don't by all means insult her.
"Well you look like shit, food bite back?"
It was official he was dead, she was gonna kill him.
"You know," she growled out as she pulled him closer by the shirt, "I like my boy toys quiet, supportive, occasionally on a plate. Not mouthing off."
He nodded as the blood in his veins turned to ice, he wasn't dead yet, that was good... Maybe he could fix this
"So uh whiskey," he swallowed thickly, "no ice and one of the little umbrellas so you have something to stab people with right?"
There was a soft sigh from the woman as he felt sharp teeth nip at his ear, "That's more like it Lucky, now why don't you get to that hmm?"
He could feel her grip loosen on his shirt and immediately hurried to work, thankful for what seemed to be leniency.
"You know the issue with today," he heard her murmur, "everyone is on something or armed. Used to be I could kill a man, and that was that, food sorted for the week."
He quickly placed the glass in front of her before speaking, "and now you have to be more careful and they put up more of a fight?"
There was a moment of silence and she drank from her glass followed by a sigh, "A-fucking-men, see this is why I like you, taste good, look good, not thick as shit... Most of the time."
There was another sigh, "it's not even as if their weapons did anything to save them, just got blood on my new coat... Bothersome..."
Lucius sighed as he refilled her glass, "So what is it you really want, you don't tend to come out wounded."
There was a pause, a heavy silence settling over the bar before her voice broke it once more, "You, in bed, maybe with a caramel drizzle."
That was about the moment his brain stopped working, "That a threat," he stumbled though the sentence, "or a come on?"
"Why don't you come find out"

PART ONE THOUSAND AND THIRTEEN
[Previous Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2]
Sunday
Lucas tapped the flat of his finger twice on the partially open door, more to let Boyd know he was coming than actually requesting permission to enter. He pushed it open and strode through as the somewhat welcoming grunt came from within.
“Hey, sexy,” he said, crossing the two rooms to zoom in on Boyd sitting at his bench. On the spinner before Boyd was a larger figure than he had ever done before: an eighteen-inch figure of a woman with an hourglass figure wearing a form-fitting formal gown that flowed to the floor, swaying as if she’d just stepped to her right. Her hands were curled as if she were holding something or someone, but that part was missing.
“Ooooh,” Lucas said, resting his head on Boyd’s shoulder to examine the piece closer. “She’s pretty.”
“She’s also the viscount’s granddaughter, who I think is married to a prince somewhere in Eastern Europe. I’d have to pull out her details again, but she’s already got two kids, and she still looks this good.”
“She doesn’t look old enough to have two kids.”
“That’s what happens when you marry when you’re still a teenager.”
“Please tell me it wasn’t an arranged marriage.”
Boyd did a slow pan to level an annoyed look at him.
“What? They used to.”
“Slavery was a thing in America back in the day, too.”
Lucas made a deflating raspberry. “If you want to get technical,” he grumbled.
Boyd twisted his seat to face him, loosely curling his arms around Lucas’ waist. “Where are you off to, Mister Soon-To-Be-Masters?”
Oh-ho. Someone’s feeling playful. “I thought you were going to become a Dobson,” Lucas countered, leaning in to give him a quick morning kiss.
“Yeah, but then I was reminded I do have family that I care about.”
“None of which are Masters. Your mom and Aunt Judy are sisters who changed their names when they married. If you were going to take any of their names, we’d both be changing to Davenport.”
Boyd looked down at where their abdomens rested against each other.
“Hey,” Lucas said, sliding his hand under Boyd’s chin and lifting it so he could see those beautiful baby blues focusing on him. “What’s going on, love?”
Boyd opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He tried twice more. “Ten years,” he finally croaked. “They took me in and gave me a home within the family for nearly two years, and I repaid them by cutting them out of my life the second I could. Who does that to their own?”
“Somebody with a lot of fear,” Lucas answered honestly. "And that somebody isn’t you anymore. You’ve invited Emily to be our accountant, and personally, I hope you know what you’re doing there…”
“Emily has always been good with money. The only time she’s ever been off is when she borrows money from you, and you go to get it back. By the time she’s finished explaining all the financial movement around the transaction, you end up owing her twice as much, and she’s really convincing. Computerised flow charts and everything.”
Lucas hoped he was exaggerating. If Emily had been that quick and deceptive to separate Boyd from his money when she was a teenager, she might have been even more cunning now. Lucas would remain attentive until she proved herself because the love of his life had earned this break. “Okay,” was all he said since he didn’t want to argue.
Boyd nipped the tip of his nose. “Don’t you ‘okay’ me in that tone of voice.”
Lucas pulled back and rubbed the back of his hand against his nose. It hadn’t hurt, but it was weird. No one had ever done that before. “I’m a cop, love. In my world, it’s guilty until proven innocent.”
“Getting back to my original question. Where are you going?”
“I’m going to go and get some supplies for Levi and Maddy. The dumbass has been worrying himself sick over where he can leave Maddy on short notice if he and Austin get called out to a fire together. They can’t waste up to an hour each way getting over to Queens and Brooklyn.”
“Tell him she can stay with us,” Boyd said without hesitation. I’ll be here all the time, and if I’m out and it’s an emergency dump-and-run, I can drop whatever I’m doing and call someone to teleport me back.”
Lucas leaned in and kissed him again. “And that’s just one of the many reasons I love you,” he said once they parted. “Charlie will be here too, which means Robbie won’t be far away either. Levi still wants to run it past Llyr since it’s his place, but so long as we keep her on our side and away from Miss W, it won’t be a problem.”
“You’ll need to remember to lock up your guns when she’s here.”
Lucas nodded thoughtfully in agreement without speaking. It would devastate everyone if Maddy somehow managed to get her hands on one of his work firearms and fire it. He’d need to get a thumbprint safe – something that he could get at very quickly in a crisis.
“How is she with beds?”
“What?”
“Don’t little kids have those hospital guardrail things, so they don’t roll out of bed and hurt themselves? I mean, your bed isn’t that far from the floor, but if you’re getting supplies, you might want to think about some of those things to keep her in.”
Lucas hadn’t thought about that. “Okay, then it’s going to be a bigger shopping trip than I thought, but that’s alright. Levi and Maddy are going to chill in the apartment until I get back.”
“Do you want me to check in on them?”
“Nah, it should be fine. Levi knows where Charlie’s office is, and if he’s going to annoy anyone while they’re at work, it should be our sister.” Lucas turned Boyd back to his carving and leaned his head on Boyd’s shoulder. “You keep outdoing yourself, you know that, right?”
“These tools are magic. I can’t do a thing wrong with them.” With a slight grimace, he added, “Hey, have you ever heard the story about the kid who gets the magic piano?”
Lucas squinted warily. “Am I going to like this story?”
“It’s a cautionary tale. This kid finds a magic piano, and all he has to do is work the pedals, and the piano plays itself. No one notices it’s not the kid, and the kid’s ego grows with each performance until he’s an international sensation. Then, he has a fight with the piano over who the star really is. The following night, the piano refuses to play, and the kid is booed off the stage. His family is left financially ruined.”
“I will beat you within an inch of your life if you equate that to you.”
Boyd looked at him. “How can I not? I mean, when I relax and just let the tools do what they’re made to do, the pieces come out flawlessly—every time. But the second I worry, minor defects creep in. Nothing I can’t counter and fix, but still…”
“If it concerns you that much, why not do a piece every now and then without the divine tools to prove to yourself that the skill is yours and the tools are just tools?”
Boyd looked over the divine toolset, then back up at the shelf where his older tools were. “That’s a good idea,” he admitted.
Lucas lightly kissed him on the lips and stepped out of his grasp. “I’ve been known to have them now and again. Oh, and don’t forget we’re going to Angus’ this afternoon. Just the six of us.”
Boyd raised his left hand in acknowledgment, but his focus was back on the carving even as his right hand picked up a scalpel of some kind and drove it across the carving’s middle. The blade was then smoothly passed to his left hand to make an incision from that side while his right reached for a new tool.
As he’d said, his motions were flawless, with chips and shavings flying at the speed of a professional wood chopper. Lucas could watch him work all day, but if he was going to make it to Angus’, he needed to leave now.
He let himself out and headed for the main front door to the level.
A little over an hour later, after grabbing several sets of clothes in his brother’s size, Lucas was standing in the middle of the children’s clothing section, blinking in confusion at all the options. He would go to touch one, then back away, unsure.
He must have looked pitiful because a staff member in her mid-thirties took pity on him and approached with a warm smile. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah, this is crazy,” he answered, gesturing to the millions of clothes options before them. “My brother asked me to look after my niece in an emergency, and I want her to have whatever she’ll need at my place in case he doesn’t have time to take her home.” He looked at all the clothes. “Whatever that entails.”
“That’s really sweet. Is your brother a doctor?”
“Fireman.”
The woman gave Lucas the once over. “I can see that.”
Lucas chuckled. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before. Between him, Levi and Mav all sharing their dad’s muscle, they’d always caught people’s eye. “Anyway,” he said, wanting to move this along. “My niece is three going on four, and she’s about this high,” he said, showing her height as an inch or two under his hip.
“Does she have any favourite TV shows?”
“Spongebob,” Lucas said, incredibly grateful for his conversation with Levi over breakfast. He’d have never had that answer otherwise. “And if you’re not doing anything after we get her clothes sorted, my fiancé mentioned something about bed rails since she’ll be sleeping in my old queen-sized bed. This is an all-in shopping trip for her, and I have no idea what to get.”
“Do you have any toys for her? And no, I’m not pushing for a commission here. Little minds need to be kept stimulated, or little hands will end up in places they have no business being. If this is your first time looking after her, you’re going to want a few toys, books, and things to keep her busy.”
“My brother is already nagging me about buying her the basics. What would you recommend that won’t make it seem like I’m trying to buy her affection?”
“Are you okay with electronics, or are you trying to steer her away from that?”
“It doesn’t faze me. It’s more the cost. I don’t want to buy her what my brother hasn’t or can’t afford. I’ve been into too many households where kids have every version of PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo and every known game that goes with them. Those kids appreciate nothing, and that’s not something I’m okay with.”
“You see a lot of people’s houses?”
“I was a beat cop for over eight years before my promotion.”
“A policeman and a fireman? I’m sure there's a joke involving a bar in there somewhere.”
“If there were, the third person would be an ice hockey player,” Lucas chuckled again, already liking this woman. As they wandered through the aisles, she added things to his cart. Clothes were first, but they quickly moved on to toys. A couple of generic soft toys. and the board game “Candyland”. Lucas grabbed ‘Hungry, Hungry Hippos’, as that was one he and his brothers had played when he’d been Maddy’s age. Then came two large boxes of Duplo.
Not once did it feel like the sales assistant was pushing an agenda. She even paused to consider the options as if she were buying them for her own kids. Lucas really appreciated that.
As they were walking the isles, Lucas came to a screeching halt and stared at a range of doctor, nurse and vet play sets. Two jumped out at him. One had a plastic pet carrier with a handful of bulky instruments, and the other came in a bright blue bag with red handles and a white pawprint on the side. It had a comprehensive range, including toy bandages, pill bottles, cream jars, syringes, a stethoscope and even a cone of shame. Both went into the cart after he checked to make sure the two soft animals would fit in the carrier.
Mason’ll have a field day showing her exactly how to simulate using all this stuff, he thought to himself with a grin.
“You’re really very thoughtful,” the woman said after he explained why they both had to be purchased.
Lucas specifically asked for books after that. Real books with paper pages. He was sure his mother (as a high school English teacher) would murder him in his sleep if he didn’t buy Maddy at least ten books ranging from ones she could memorise and pretend to read (which, in her grandmother’s eyes, taught her word structure and was the first step in learning to read), with ones he could read to her. And that, of course, required Spongebob bookends to hold them together.
“Your fiancé is a lucky woman if you’re willing to do all of this for your niece,” she said once the cart was full and they were heading back to the checkouts.
“Yes, he is,” Lucas agreed, deliberately sliding in Boyd’s gender without making a huge issue of it.
Her eyes widened in horror. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Wow, I really shouldn’t make that assumption anymore, and I apologise.”
Because this was New York. “Apology accepted,” Lucas said, waving it aside. Boyd might have been embarrassed, but thankfully, he wasn’t here. “Thanks again for all your help.”
* * *
((Author's extra-long note:
Heya guys! Just letting you know I need to take a week off. [It’s nothing to do with the community here, I promise! I love writing this, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.]
In fact it's … you know what? Stuff it. You guys might as well know. Remember how I mentioned earlier this year we were fighting for more care for my special needs daughter?
That’s the issue.
Our support coordinator has our written authority to act on our behalf. Yet we’ve been told in writing from the government department that if she doesn’t back off, the whole request, including thousands of dollars of specialists interviewing our daughter and reporting their findings, will be deleted, and our request, including all-new interviews and reports, will have to start all over again.
I’m almost at the point where I’m not sleeping, but our support coordinator has promised us to fight because, in her words, “This is getting ridiculous.”
I’ve been really struggling to write this week with everything going on in the background. I’ve finally admitted I need to pull back (just for one week—I mean it when I say how much I love this writing and the little community we’ve formed) to focus on sorting out the mess, so that my writing isn’t tarnished by the battlelines that are being drawn up in the background.
(I already scrapped a page and a half because my anger at things [I bounce between anger and depression] had people who were usually very chill (Robbie) acting in a very aggressive manner that simply wasn’t them. Because of this, I’ve already used up several of my backlog this week and I loathe to lose any more, given how hard they were to build up. (The thought of using them up without others to take their place was also adding to my stress.)
And I was told by my beta reader, ‘Given you’ve been doing this for over three years, and you’ve only had the occasional day off due to sickness, take the week and regroup, stronger than ever.
I agreed. This means my next post will be on Monday, the 27th, Australian Time.
This means my next post will be on Monday, the 27th, Australian Time.
I hope with all my heart that you’ll all still be with me when I return next week.
Karen. ))
((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))
I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here
For more of my work, including WPs: Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.
FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

Thank you for this universe!
And many thanks to for being a full co-writer on this project!
Kaeden and Vichee belongs to and I thank them so much for working with us! It was an honor!
Sven belongs to Bjorn the Copper Paladin from Discord. I hope to do more with them in the future, and have tons of fun!
And don’t you worry about that final in the title! We have some news at the end!
[First]- [Prev]- {Next Story!!}

{Is the reason that everything happened to Tarlim in the first place?}

{Only up to the ramps, mostly. Trying to impress upon people the importance of accessibility for those with extenuating circumstances. At least according to the records I have access to.}

{The average person knows as much about his friends as they do about Mike Collins.}
<...Who?>
{Exactly. 20th century human spaceman, was there for their first lunar landing. Didn’t get to put boots on the ground, and nobody remembers his name now.}

{Hell, I didn’t even know about him until I put in a search query of niche historical figures just to give you an example. Yeesh…}

(Program Selected.)
(Resume Selected Media? [Y])
(Playing…)
Archived Closed Circuit Security Video - Establishment: Exterminator’s Office - Dawn Creek Division - Subbasement - Date Recorded (ST): OCT 31, 2136 - Timeframe (ST): 11:42 - 11:45
The parking bay is silent. Vans are parked neatly in their spots which frame the hallway to the armory and fuel storage for the camera. A ding is heard and something moves in the hallway. Five fully suited Venlil and a Zurulian step out of an elevator and run towards a van. The sound of a door slamming open comes from the hall roughly 6 seconds later. A stream of Exterminators pour out into the hall from the stairwell.
Their voices are indecipherable as they speak over each other. A Sulian runs into the armory and reappears with a huge flamer tank on their back. Another Zurulian can be seen with an extinguisher tank, but a Venlil bleats at them and tosses it aside. They drag the quadrupedal alien quickly into the parking garage before physically throwing them into the back of a van.
From the back of the hallway, a fluid can be seen spreading across the ground. A trio of Venlil back out of a room while holding their flamers up. They are unlit, instead spewing fuel out of their nozzles. The trio twirl around in an overly animated manner as they walk down the hall to the parking garage. A van pulls out of its spot with windows down so the passengers could let out a cheer.
A black-suited Venlil runs up to the spraying trio while waving their arms to get them out into the garage. The microphone just barely manages to catch him saying, “We need to save some for the predators!” One of the other Venlil replies, “Yes sir, Mafchi!” A short flurry of curses is heard as the gathered exterminators pile into the three other visible vans. Two of the vans speed out of the garage, forcing some other Venlil exterminators to dive out of the way in the process.
The black-suited Mafchi picks up a fuel canister that had been dropped and twists off its cap. He slings it under his shoulder and pours a line of fuel. He marches straight to the final van and hops up into the open rear. The van backs itself up to turn out of the garage. The fuel canister clatters to the ground as it pulls away. Before it clears the view of the camera, the Black-suited Venlil is seen standing in its open back. He is holding what appears to be a flare gun.
The flare sails through the air shortly after the van leaves the frame and impacts the ground. It bounces and rolls until it touches the fuel and ignites it in an instant. A small wall of fire proceeds down the provided trail into the hallway, igniting more fuel as time passes. The hallway is quickly engulfed in vividly red fire. Thick black smoke begins to pour out into the garage as the fire inches closer to the primary fuel tank.
Movement can be seen in the hallway between the flickering flames. The silver form of a Venlil Exterminator is seen rushing out of the stairwell and fighting to head towards the fuel storage room. Before they reach, a white flash fills the screen. The feed goes dead, the error code consistent with electrical interruption.
(Specified Media Concluded.)

{Who was what? Mafchi?}

{Hmmm, there aren’t any tags embedded for them. The suits do a rather good job at making the officers anonymous. Let me see…oh.}

{The, uh… the employment records for that Office were…terminated.}

{It looks like…yes, here. Record wipe in 2497. Media with less than 1 bistandannual visit were removed to save space on the university’s central server. It’s…they’re gone, gone gone.}

{Maybe, but that’ll do us no good if we don’t know their name. And because of the chaos of that incident, nobody has been able to accurately reconstruct where every individual was in that office. We’d have to already know who they were to find them.}
<...I guess that’s another person I’ll have to remember then, huh?>
{...Guess so. Speaking of remembering, perhaps you should check out Tarlim’s view again? Seeing how we were just talking about him.}
<...Sure. At least people remember his name, right?>
(Command: [exitprogram])
(Are you sure? [Y])
…
{-Program Selected-}
{-Restart From Last Playback Point? Y/(N)-}
{-[USERID-11229KMD]: procViewHist -}
{-Retrieving Transcription Viewing History…-}
{-List Retrieved - Select Desired Subject: (Tarlim)-}
{-Restart From Last Playback Point? (Y)/N-}
{-Playing…-}
Memory Transcription Subject: Tarlim, the Venbig. Date [Standardized Human Time] October 31st, 2136
No matter how much Sven and Anso griped about it, having them leave and return with the trailer was a great idea. The humans who had gone with them the first time were, to my dismay, excited to try and ride in the back. I had at least been able to impress on those four that I couldn’t let anyone else ride like that, and that they were to help with rigging a trailer with some seats.
I had to admit; they did a good job!
Several couches sat bolted to the floor of the covered trailer and even had some ropes that could be hooked across the armrests as impromptu belts. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it would work as well as any bus or short train ride! Certainly superior to jumping in the bed of a truck.
I strode out into the parking road and swayed my ears to greet Anso. Sven had stayed behind here to meet with the humans and entertain the kids, a job which he was slightly less unenthusiastic about compared to last time. “Greetings, Anso! Have you made the necessary preparations for the humans to leave with you?”
The Yotul hopped out of the truck bed and bounced to me. “We have! I have to say those humans were great workers to have helped get this whipped up so quickly! I hope Sven has been behaving himself?”
I let my tail wag behind me remembering my last glimpse of him. He should really secure his sheath straps! “He has! Been entertaining the refugees while I made sure they all had their belongings ready to go. Come on inside, let’s go gather them.”
I guided him with a wave of my arm as we turned back to the door. To be truthful, I hadn’t expected Sven to win the humans over as quickly as he did. Needless to say, his primitive attire seemed to spark joy within them, a joy sorely needed amidst the sadness of recency.
As we entered the building I noticed something, or rather, the lack of something. When I had exited only a few [minutes] prior, the building had been full of life and noise. Now, it was almost dead quiet, save for the sounds of a holovision coming from the lobby. Rather heated sounds, at that.
“I didn’t think it was already main rest claw,” Anso mused as he, too, recognized the aggravated voices coming from the lobby. “And what are they watching in there? Sounds…angry.”
“Yeah…” I trailed off as I followed the noises. As I approached the lobby, the sound of what I assumed was a Gojid yelling. “You know nothing about my family. TALK, JUST FUCKING TALK, NOW!” My ears pinned back at the foul language at play, hoping that Sven and the children were somewhere else.
As I entered the room, I saw that I was only half right. The children were thankfully nowhere to be found, but Sven was obviously present, as was most of the facility staff. I was about to ask what was going on before another voice drew my attention to the holovision, the same as everyone else. The voice of none other than Chief Nikonus.
“There were three of us who laid out the groundwork for the Federation. When Kolshian explorers came in contact with the Farsul, more than a thousand years ago, the galaxy was young. We were the first in this sector to escape our gravity well. You know about the founding of this institution, but I reiterate it just in case.”
“The Krakotl were the third,” another voice piped up from behind the camera. I thought it might’ve been another Gojid, but the voice was far too breathy. Harchen, maybe? I wasn’t given a chance to consider it further as Nikonus continued. “Yes, they were a problem from the start; aggressive, disagreeable. We tried to identify the problem, and why they were so ill-equipped for spacefaring.”
“We learned they were scavengers, who would occasionally go for fish as well.”
His next line was rendered inaudible by the shocked gasps of both the refugees and residents in the room. I was no different, drawing in a sharp breath at the abrupt admission. I remembered that Arvi had said some aliens were revealed to have eaten meat in the past, but was this the way it was decided to be revealed? With such abject callousness?
Nikonus continued to speak, looking not just proud, but smug with his words. He went on about how the Federation had saved these aliens with their manipulations, but the entirety of his body language seemed to indicate he reveled in how devastating this information would be to the people he was speaking to. How they manipulated an entire culture, a RELIGION!
What if they did the same to ours?
That horrifying thought struck through my mind like a derailing train. I had relied upon the Tenets in some of my darkest moments. Found comfort in them when there was none elsewhere to be found. To have such a comfort revealed as a lie in its entirety, used only for some other group to control you…
The voice of Nikonus hit my ears again. “Oh Sovlin, I already told you. For the small minority of species who don’t find herbivory alone, we teach them the right way. Doesn’t the religion against predators sound familiar?”
The Kolshian was insufferably proud of those words. There was no doubt in my mind now; this was mocking. Mocking a Gojid for following The Protector. For being a predator. For being different, but expecting to still be treated as a person. The Gojid were predators, they couldn’t help it, and they were already being mocked for it.
What might happen to all the other species?
I shifted my focus away from the screen to the crowd, searching for one in particular. Vichee, a Krakotl already so different from everyone else, and now my concerns for them were multiplied with every word that fell from Nikonus’ mouth. Were they okay? They had come in here to see Sven, I had seen them. Where are-
I spotted Kaeden in the corner of the room. Next to him, slumped against the wall, was Vichee. The dual colored Krakotl’s eyes were glazed over as they stared at nothing. I strode over quickly, my instincts wanting to comfort them. Kaeden was simply standing there, it was confusing that he didn’t seem to be comforting Vichee at all. As I got closer, their head tilted up to me, regarding me with an unfocused eye.
“He was right.” They said quietly. My implant almost didn’t pick it up over the sounds of the lobby. “Kaeden had asked me soon after our first meeting if Krakotl had once been meat eaters. Said it was the shape of our beaks. ‘More suited to capturing small wriggling prey than filtering algae’. He told me. I nearly flew away right then… If I had, I would have been alone with this news.”I listened, kneeling down to be closer to their level. “You’re not alone, your herd is here. Right Kaeden?”
He looked over at me and nodded. “Vichee was there with me when Earth was attacked. I’m here for them now. Kaabra and Venik are… together, elsewhere at the moment. But they will be here too.”
I flicked my ears in understanding. “Then I hope they may help in hugging Vichee until their tears are dry.” I turned an eye to Vichee. “Please, I just want you to know that you are still you. What your body does has no effect on your personhood.”
Vichee still sat, their mind still likely whirling with the new information. They lifted their differently colored wings. “I’m well aware. This lesson I already learned. But thank you, I understand what you mean.” Kaeden nodded slowly and Vichee returned to their thoughts.
“There’s going to be trouble soon, Tarlim,” Kaeden stated gravely. “News like this? Nothing good will come of it. I can already tell this won’t go over well. Keep your eyes open.”
As if in response to his words, the sound of clanking metal hits my ears. They shoot up, pivoting to locate its source. There, dashing towards the door, was the armored figure of Sven. I didn’t know him enough to know how this broadcast would affect him, but running was never the best sign. I flicked my ears goodbye to my friends and rose, following after the metal man. In my periphery, I saw the television screen had shifted to show Rolem moving onto the stage. I would have to miss whatever it was he had to say, so ducked through the doors and continued to follow the sound of metal.
As I exited, I saw that I wasn’t the only one to see Sven’s actions. Anso was bounding behind him, shouting something I couldn’t hear. Sven didn’t seem to either as he kept running, but his gait wasn’t one of fear. He looked purposeful, sprinting in a straight line. A line pointed right towards-
Towards the observing Exterminator Van.
The metal Venlil didn’t even hesitate at the presence of the fence. He leapt up in a display of strength and agility, vaulting over the barrier and continuing his beeline into the van. It was like phased through the doors with how fast he moved. There were sounds of commotion that followed his entry, and soon two Exterminators fell out of the van. One Venlil…and one Krakotl. I wonder how Kalek is taking things.
I, too, cleared the fence with only a high step and reached the van, peering in to see Sven at the controls. “Sven! What are you doing?” I asked, the Krakotl officer shivering on the ground in my periphery.
“They got my girl!” He huffed, “She’s a Gojid, they got her, I can’t let them do anything worse to her!” He tried to activate the vehicle to no avail, but his words brought up something that I hadn’t thought much over. I remember hearing about temporary emplacements that were being set up. Paly had texted me about exterminators bringing people there. Her too. And that would mean-
-THOOOOOOOMMMMM-
The wind hit me like a truck and rocked the van I was standing next to. Sven even stopped trying to fiddle with the controls to see what had just happened. In the distance, near the center of town, an enormous black cloud rose into the air, the vestiges of fire still burning in the suspended embers. I couldn’t look away from it as my mind raced with horrible possibilities as my mind tripped over itself trying to concoct a plan of action.
I wasn’t given long to think before the radio in the van crackled to life, startling both Sven and myself. “Attention all True Exterminators! The truth has come out about the taint in our midst! For too long we have lived with its danger in our presence! If any of you still hold the safety of The Herd in your hearts, come join us so we may burn ALL the predator taint from this District! Rendezvous at Vulen’s apartment complex, we shall start our cleansing there!”
The name of one of my landlords sparked familiarity in my mind. They had been working to build a series of new apartments to add to his old, and if I remembered, had agreed to house the Gojid refugees. The Gojid! Paly was housed with them!!
In an instant, I reached into the van and grabbed Sven by the arm. He tried to pull away, but my grip was too strong. “Sven! They’re gonna kill the Gojid! They’re gonna burn Paly!”
He finally managed to shake himself free as my paws became jittery from stress. “I gotta save my girlfriend! She’s in a facility! I gotta save her!”
“But they’re gonna burn people here!” I protested, “we have to do something! We need- We need People who can fight them! Kaeden! I need to get Kaeden! We can save them!”
I pulled myself away from the van and spotted Anso nearby. He must have had to go through the gate, but this was good timing. I pointed a claw at him. “Do Not Let Him drive off before I get back!”
I didn’t give him, nor the Exterminators who had recovered from their shock, time to ask questions. Paly was in danger, as were who knew how many others. I faintly heard my data pad chime from within my shoulder bag, the signal my heart was beating too fast, but I couldn’t deal with it right now. I could get the heart rate under control during the drive. Right now I needed Kaeden, he knew how to fight! How to save people when others were trying to kill them!
My paws guided me and I was back in the cafeteria before I knew it. Some of the crowd had dissipated, but Kaeden and Vichee were still in the same corner I had left them in, but with their Venlil friends now joined. Without leaving time for protest, I grabbed Kaeden’s arm and pulled him away. I heard Vichee squawk behind me, but I was in too much of a hurry. I can’t let her get hurt. I Won’t.
Kaeden started to slap my arm as I dragged the soldier across the lobby. “Tarlim! What the fuck are you doing?? What’s going on?”
“No time, they’re going to burn everyone,” I breathlessly said as I burst the facility doors open to get him to the van.
“What? Who?” Kaeden questioned, still resisting my pull. I could hear a tinge of worry in his voice, and I knew he would understand. Anso looked back from his position as he heard my approach, and upon seeing me dragging Kaeden along, he grew visibly concerned.
“On the radio, something about True Exterminators,” I attempted to explain to him as we neared the gate doors. This time, I simply spread them apart with my free paw, metal screeching against itself as the gate was forced open. “They’re going to burn every cured species they can find, and That Means Paly. I Won’t Let Them.”
Kaeden had stopped struggling as I explained the bare essentials to him, and once we approached the van, he finally had enough sense to ask the right questions. “So what exactly is the plan to stop them? We’re strong, sure, I could probably take most of them. But just two of us against a wall of those flamers?”
“Not two,” I corrected, letting go of his arm and throwing open the back doors of the van. Still seated in the drivers side was Sven, who looked back once he heard me permit entrance into the back. “We have him too.”
“Wh- the LARPer??” Kaeden asked incredulously. I wasn’t familiar with the term he used, but his tone told us all we needed to know. Sven’s eyes narrowed at the perceived insult, but Kaeden continued. “Do either of you have any formal military training?? Rushing down there is only going to get you both killed along with the others! For fucks sake, slow down! We need a plan!”
“T-There won’t be t-time f-for one,” a voice peeped in from behind us. We all turned to face the source, and we found it was the Venlil Exterminator. They recoiled under the sudden gaze of our entire party, but they managed to continue. “I-I recognized the v-voice. It w-was one of the n-new recruits. They m-might as well be Y-Yulpa. If you w-want to stop them, it’s now or n-never.”
We all stared at them for a moment in disbelief that they’d willingly hand over that information to us. They were Exterminators, weren’t they? They should be allied with the voice on the radio! Kaeden, after considering the information, gave voice to my confusion. “And why are you telling us this? You’re an exterminator, shouldn’t you be trying to help them?”
“M-My husband is the Krakotl that was in the van with me!” They yelled back, stamping their footpaw on the ground in agitation. “I-I don’t care what his ancestors did a t-thousand years ago, I will not stand for those zealots burning who knows how many people! We’re not all the same, h-human!”
I was taken aback by their words. I had given up hope that there were any redeemable souls amongst the ranks of those silver-suited brahkasses, but living proof of the contrary stood before us. Their breathing was only matched by mine as my pad continued to chime in my pack. Maybe there’s hope after all.
Kaeden started frantically looking all around, his focused gaze falling on the facility, the exterminator in front of us, and the rising smoke in the distance. After a moment's hesitation, he growled to himself and shook his head. “Fine! Fucking- if you want to prove you’re different, you and your partner stand guard at the gate! They’ll probably try to send a division here, so keep on guard! And for the love of God, go ask for help if that happens!”
My tail wagged behind me as I interpreted what that meant. “So you’ll help us, Kaeden?”
He paused for a second, an agonizing second as he fully took in the situation in his mind. But ultimately, he nodded. “Let’s go, we can figure things out along the way.”
Seizing the moment, Anso quickly jumped into the van and pushed Sven out of the driver's seat, much to their visible frustration. Kaeden quickly hopped into the passenger seat, leaving me with the problem of finding a space that would fit me. I stepped over to the back of the van and threw the doors open.
The flamers and their fuel tanks were useless to us, easy to toss all three sets out onto the ground behind me. I made sure that the flamers were disabled first, of course. Just had to snap the pilot lighters and slice a hose with my claw. Even if these two said they weren’t like these “True Exterminators” I didn’t trust them one bit. I crawled inside the cramped vehicle and wiggled myself to close the doors behind me.
As I got myself settled, I watched as the Venlil Exterminator started to inspect the destroyed remains of their weapons. I squinted a glare at them and positioned myself so they couldn’t enter with me. “You two aren’t coming,” I hissed. “You know why you’re not. Try anything with the humans, and they will stop you.”
I slammed the doors shut as their expressions fell, just in time for Anso to get the van into gear. I curled myself up against the wall of the van, watching out the back window as we sped down the road. We were on our way now. On our way to save Paly and all the people gathered because their ancestors ate meat. My heart hammered in my chest, but I would need to control it for what we were about to do. I needed to focus. I needed to breathe. I needed to be calm.
Focus. Breathe. Calm
Focus.
Breathe.
Calm…
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Memory Transcription Subject: Sol-Vah, Fleeing Predator. Date [Standardized Human Time] October 31st, 2136
My legs couldn’t carry me anymore. I had to keep going, but I didn’t have the strength. My pants became wheezes as my body struggled to keep up with the physical exertion of running almost halfway through town. I hadn’t even looked up before now, at least with eyes not blinded by tears. The pain of Mute’s rejection still stung in my soul, a pain so visceral it threatened to rip me apart worse than any Arxur. Protector, what did I do to deserve this? Is there even a Protector, or did the Federation just- just make that up?
I didn’t have time to think about that now, I needed to get to the office. From what little I caught of the broadcast, Nikonus had said they saved us before. I knew what it likely was, but…I was desperate. I just wanted to go back home and have him embrace me like he did before. The safety and love I had felt from him was still fresh in my mind, and if there was any chance I had to get it back?
I’ll happily take it.
As I approached the office, however, something seemed off. I could smell soot in the air, but not the kind of soot that came from our flamers. This was- was…dirtier smelling, as if the fuel had been impure. Upon looking up, however, I saw something that made my stomach drop. A huge plume of smoke, billowing up into the sky. It shadowed the sun itself with its immensity and hate. Did the Exterminators burn more drugs? Or…or…
I felt a renewed vigor as I started to run towards the plume, hoping against hope that I was wrong. As soon as I turned the corner, though, my worst fears were realized. Where the office once stood now sat a burning stack of glorified rubble, every single window in sight shattered and multiple holes in the outer walls. The building was split, it was as if a giant knife had come down and sloppily sliced off its front half to spill flaming debris everywhere.
I stood in front of the building I had once called my home, surrounded by screams and the awful sound of flames roaring. I knew now there was no hope of salvation, no way this could ever be undone. I would never be able to go back to the way things were, never feel the happiness I had for that brief time. I was doomed to this life, abandoned by my love, and forced to live as an abomination devoid of a home.
I suppose that’s all a predator like me deserves.
[First]- [Prev]- {Next Story!!}
You read it right: This is going to be the final chapter of "Of Giants and Journalists." With the conclusion of Sharnet and Vekna's adventure, we will now take the time to show how this announcement has affected our characters and the galaxy at large. We're excited to announce our new series, Nature of a Giant: Aftermath! This series will not be quite as in-depth temporally as Of Giants and Journalists was, mainly because not as much will be happening in as short of a time. Rest assured, though, there will still be plenty of action across the board! You just won't have to deal with over half the story only covering a week of time!
In that vein, we are also excited to announce we are working on another bonus series, one that was teased a long time ago, Venric Lawven: Legal Legend! It will be filling the gap for content while we work on the first few chapters of Aftermath to make sure the scenes are as quality as they deserve, but will have a reduced upload schedule to once a week to accommodate for writing two series at once. On behalf of both of myself and , we'd like to thank all of our readers for sticking with us on this journey. It's hard to believe this series has been going on for over a year in one form or another, but I wouldn't have it any other way! Thank you all again for your continued support, and we look forward to seeing you again with Legal Legends! And then...
The Aftermath!!

"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty."
Rev. 1:8
"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. In order for someone to be the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, he would have to know every little thing from eternity, and also every little thing from eternity. the future, including eternity, who can know such a thing but God? Of course, someone could say that it is, but that would be a lie and it would not be true and only God can claim: "I am the Alpha and the Omega the Beginning and the End" because:
God is omniscient
“Lord! You taste me and know when I sit down and when I stand up; You know my thoughts from afar; When I walk and when I rest, You are around me, and you see all my ways on my tongue, but You, Lord, see, You have already covered me behind and in front and placed Your hand on me. Your knowledge is strange to me, I cannot understand from Your spirit, and where would I flee from Your face, You are there. To descend into hell, to rise on the wings of the dawn, and to move to the end of the sea: And there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me darkness hides me; but even the night is like light around me. Even the darkness will not be eclipsed by you, and the night is as bright as the day: darkness is like light, you created me in my mother's womb, that I am wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, and not a single bone of mine hid from You, although I was woven in the depths of the earth, she saw my embryo all written, and the days were recorded, when they were not yet, how unfathomable are Your thoughts, God! How great are their numbers”
Psalm 139:1-17
In this psalm we see how many facts God knows about us, but that is only a small part because God has far more knowledge about us, but it is practically impossible to express it in words, and here we see that God knows when we sit down, when we stand up, what we do, how we work, he knows all our ways, all our words that we have spoken, he writes that he knows even our thoughts, we can further see that God knows the past, present and future, knows everything about us even before our birth, etc. This clearly indicates that we cannot do anything without God's knowledge, and this applies only to us humans, who are only a small part of God's omniscience.
Here are a few examples that are close to us from life, something that everyone can understand because not all people are scientists or academic citizens, there are far more "ordinary" people, especially throughout history, and the Bible is written in simple understandable language so that everyone can understand him.
And from this it is clearly seen and everyone can understand that God is omniscient.
"There is none holy like the Lord; for there is none other than Thee; and there is no rock like our God. Speak no more haughtily, and let it not come out of your haughty mouth. for the Lord is God who knows everything, and he executes the purposes."
1 Sam.2:2-3
Here, these verses confirm again that the Omniscient God had a practical lesson here, a friendly advice from God, and it applies to our life, it applies to what we do, how we do and what we say, because God knows everything he does to me, so if we persist, we refuse to live according to the will of God, it is our own fault and one day we will bear the consequences for it. Of course, God does not want to force us to do something, it is our choice, but it is great wisdom to listen to the advice that God gives us because God does not want us to perish so that all may live, and that is the meaning of the word "repentance" from 2 Peter.
"The Lord is not late with His promise, as some think He is late, but He is patient with us, because He does not want anyone to perish, but for all to come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:9
God is present everywhere
We said that God is not limited by earthly laws, nor can the essence of God be fathomed. creation, knowledge, giving, forgiveness, salvation, etc.
"But will God really live on earth? Here, the sky and the heavens above the heavens cannot contain You, let alone this home that I am building".
1 Kings 8:27
"For His eyes are turned to the ways of men and He sees all their steps. There is no darkness or shadow of death where those who do iniquity can hide."
Job 34:21-22
"Where would I go from Your spirit, and where would I flee from Your face? If I go to heaven, You are there. To go down to hell, there you are. To rise on the wings of the dawn, and move to the end of the sea: And there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will hold me. To say: Yes if the darkness hides me; but the night is also like light around me. Even the darkness will not be darkened by You, and the night is as bright as the day: darkness is like light. For You created what is in me, you formed me in my mother's womb. I praise You, that I am wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, and my soul knows it well. Not a single bone of mine has hid from You, even though I was created in secret, woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my embryo, in Your book it was all written, and the days were recorded, when there were none of them yet."
Ps. 139:7-16
"The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, seeing the bad and the good."
Proverbs 15:3
"Am I God from near, says the Lord, and am I not God from afar?" Can someone hide in a secret place so I don't see them? Speaks the Lord; do I not fill heaven and earth? Speaks the Lord.”
Jer. 23:23-24
"If they bury themselves in the lowest part of the earth, from there my hand will take them; and if they go up to heaven, I will take them down from there; And if they hide on the top of Carmel, I will find them and take them from there; and to hide before my eyes at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent to bite them"
Amos 9:2-3
"And there is no substance unknown before Him, but everything is naked and exposed before the eyes of the One to whom we speak."
Hebrews 4:13
God is almighty
In the Bible, we find through different time periods and different manifestations of God's omnipotence, so we will mention some.
We see from the Bible that Abraham was 99 years old, but that he had no offspring, and on one occasion God appeared to Abraham and said:
"And when Abraham was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said to him: I am God Almighty, live according to my will, and be honest. And I will make a covenant between me and you, and I will greatly multiply you. And Abraham fell prostrate. And the Lord spoke to him again and said: From me here is my covenant with you that you will be the father of many nations."
Gen.17:1-4
We further see that Avram was not really sure about that, so he thought that he would never have children with his wife Sarah
"Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, saying in his heart: When will a son be born to a man of a hundred years? And Sarah? Will a ninety-year-old woman give birth?"
Gen.17:17
And here we can see God's omnipotence, because he told Abraham something that was not very clear to the human mind, but it was very clear to God, that's why he said it to Abraham. We later see from the Bible that this promise was fulfilled, and it was fulfilled because God is omnipotent because He possesses all the knowledge and then it is no problem to fulfill the given promise. This or a similar promise can only be given by God because he is omnipotent, and let's imagine that now we humans make a promise about something that will happen in the future. That promise may happen by chance, or only one part of it may come true, or it may not happen at all, we don't know, but God is omniscient and omnipotent, and when he makes promises, he fulfills them.
We can see the fulfillment through the Bible, but here is just one verse.
"The tribe of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham"
Mtt. 1:1
Next we have the event when the Lord sent Moses to Egypt to lead the people of Israel out of slavery.
Here we can see that God appears to Moses as God Almighty and not under some other name.
"God is still speaking to Moses and said to him: I am the Lord. And I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by the name God Almighty, but by my own name, Lord, I would not be known to them."
Exod.6:2-3
The next example is from John's revelation, where we have a scene in heaven where four living beings praise the Almighty God, and in order for someone to be omnipotent, he must possess the power that sustains everything, and such power is possessed only by the Almighty God.
"And after this I heard a great voice of many people in heaven saying: Alleluia! Salvation and glory and honor and power to our Lord;
Rev. 19:1
,, And I heard as the voice of many people, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of strong thunders, saying: Hallelujah! For the Lord God Almighty reigns."
Rev. 19:6
It says that the Lord God is glorified in heaven, who is omnipotent and who reigns, and in the Gospel of Luke we can see from where the Lord reigns.
"The Son of Man will sit at the right hand of the power of God."
Luke 22:69
Therefore, the Lord is on the right side of the power of God and reigns from there, it is written about this:
"...All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me."
Matt. 28:18
The Lord reigns because He is El Shaddai or God Almighty. God possesses infinite power or power that is eternal and has no end, and the part of the prayer "Our Father" reminds us of this.
,,...Because Your kingdom, power, and glory are yours forever. Amen"
Matt. 6:13
God can use this force at his discretion without any trouble or difficulty to create something as in the past when he created the earth and everything living on it or as he is creating today or as he will create in the future.
"Ah, Lord, Lord! Behold, You created the heavens and the earth with Your great power and Your uplifted arm; nothing is difficult for You."
Jer. 32:17
,,He made the earth by his power, established the world with his wisdom, and scattered the heavens with his understanding; When he utters his voice, the waters roar in the heavens, he raises steam from the ends of the earth, he sends lightnings with rain, and he brings forth the wind from his stables."
Jer. 10:12-13
Humans are very intelligent beings and practically they can create anything they want up to certain limits, but in creation we read that God used only a word and it was created, he did not need any material like we need to create something and there is another proof that God is almighty.
,, And God said: Let there be light. And there would be light"
Gen.1:3
"By the word of the Lord the heavens were created, and by the spirit of His mouth all their hosts"
Psalm 33:6
In the Gospel according to Matthew, we read about how only the word of God is needed to heal a person and the disease is defeated, God does not need to be
,,.And the captain answered and said: Lord! I am not worthy that you enter under my roof; but just say the word, and my servant will be healed"
Matt. 8:8
Although God with his power has unlimited possibilities, he will never use his power in such a way as to be in conflict with other attributes of God. We have an example in the confrontation of the Lord Jesus with the cross where Jesus could only say a word and angels would be there who could destroy the whole world and not just the enemies who nailed him to the cross.
"Or do you think that I cannot now beg my Father to send me more than twelve legions of angels?"
Mtt. 26:53
If it had happened that way, it would have contradicted the Father's will and the intention with which the Lord Jesus came to earth, and then Jesus would not have been able to say:
"I glorified You on earth; I've done the job you gave me to do"
John 17:4
Here we see that God uses his almighty power for his glory to fulfill God's plan because what he intended must be and nothing but the will of God can change that plan.
"The Lord of hosts swore, saying: Indeed, it will be as I have planned, and as I have planned it will be done."
Isaiah 14:24
God has planned in advance how the nations will receive the Word of God and it is written about in the Acts of the Apostles where it is said that the evangelizers will receive the power of the Holy Spirit and then practically no one will be able to stop them in that work until they fulfill the activities that God has planned.
"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit descends on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and there to the ends of the earth."
Acts 1:8
And finally, let's mention something that hasn't happened yet, but it will happen when the Almighty God will say the Word again and it will be what is written in the revelation and after that what we read in Isaiah.
"And out of His mouth came a sharp sword, to slay the Gentiles with it; and He will strike them down with a rod of iron; and He treads on the cauldron of wine and hearts and the wrath of God Almighty."
Rev. 19:15
"For, behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth,"
Isa. 65:17
Let us also mention that with this power the Lord Jesus defeated Satan in the desert
"Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting for forty days and forty nights, he finally got hungry. And the tempter approached Him and said: If You are the Son of God, say that these stones become bread. And He answered and said: It is written: Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Then the devil took Him to the holy city and placed Him on top of the church; So he said to him: If you are the Son of God, jump down, because it is written that he will command his angels for you, and he will take you in his hands, so that you do not trip over a stone with your foot. And Jesus said to him: But it is also written: Do not tempt the Lord your God. Again the devil took Him and took Him to a very high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of this world and their glory; And he said to him: I will give you all this if you fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him: Get away from me, Satan; because it is written: Worship the Lord your God and serve Him alone. Then the devil left Him, and behold, the angels approached and served Him."
Mtt. 4:1-11
Finally, here are a few more verses that confirm that God is almighty:
,, And God said to him: I am God Almighty; grow and multiply; a nation and many nations will become of you, and kings will come from your loins."
Gen.35:11
"For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, a great, mighty and terrible God, who does not look at who is who, nor does he accept gifts;"
Deut.10:17
,,And said, O LORD God of our fathers, art not thou God in heaven? and rulest not thou over all the kingdoms of the heathen? and in thine hand is there not power and might, so that none is able to withstand thee?"
2 Chron. 20:6
"From the north it comes like gold; but in God there is a more terrible glory. He is Almighty, we cannot reach Him; he is of great power, but with judgment and great justice he does not torment anyone"
Job 37:22-23
"Look, I am the Lord God of all flesh, is there anything difficult for me?"
Jer. 32:27
"And Jesus looked at them and said to them: With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."
Matt. 19:26
,,And Jesus looked at them and said: With men it is impossible, but not with God: for all things are possible with God."
Mark 10:27
"Because with God everything is possible that he says."
Luke 1:37
We have seen several examples of God's qualities that confirm the verses that the Lord Jesus gave John to write down. The only "Someone" who possesses the qualities that we have studied can say that he is the Almighty, and that is God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
"I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, says the Lord, Who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty."
Rev. 1:8
The verses we have studied should strengthen us in our faith because if God promises something, He surely fulfills it, and in this case it refers to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in glory.
God reveals the fulfillment to us in 21 chapters where he says:
,, And he said to me: It is finished. I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give the thirsty from the spring of living water forever."
Rev. 21:6

Following on from my ''Resartinitus' post, I started again to try implement some of the feedback you guy gave. (thank you everyone btw).
At the time, the stuff I was doing was what I thought was working for me, given what I knew, but my first 1.5 in game years this go round has been my most successful start so a quick run down of what I did.
First up: veggies. I had it all wrong. I wasn't being patient enough since they essentially work like farms. Eggs are not the way to go. My first 6 houses with carrots patches roughly twice the size of the house are the way to go. Berries and meat will get you through the first year then boom! Come harvest time, I had 60-70 carrots in my granary, which means my berries and meat are lasting longer cos of food variations.
Next, tradepost. Churn out planks, buy a horse (I think this enables you to trade more items per cycle and quicker?) and get the reduced trade route perk. I'm getting 100+ gold every time a route is completed.
Church. Get one ASAP to shoot your approval through the roof. More approval > more growth > more villagers > more soldiers.
Lastly is oxen. With the amount of timber you'll need for planks, upgrading your burgages and general building, upgrade to stables and get more of these guys and assign them everywhere. It speeds up the process a helluva lot more.
I've also found getting the kiln is way more efficient than firewood and saves your trees for timber and planks. I've also started with a rich iron mine deposit so grabbed the perk that gives in an indefinite supply so I can keep trading that as well. I've nearly got a full unit of soldiers and brought gambesons for them as the raiders are only 200 days away.
Note that I've finally moved on to the domination scenario now that I think I've got the basics down, so any tips on the battling front would be amazing. How many units should I try and get? What's the best equipment to use etc?
I've finally found a game that's torn me away from my comfort game which I've racked up 4.7k hrs on.
Wholesome fucking community btw.
Edit: Spelling

Until I was 19, I just jerked off and watched porn. Not dividing myself into roles, whether I was top or bottom, so I always wrote verse. I was interested in everything.
But I was just the bottom. I was a skinny, smooth shaven all over, guy with a nice dick (I can send a picture).
I meet a guy, he's older than me, about 8 years older, taller, though I'm 185 cm. Shouldered, tall, cheekbones. But not about that. His dick was incredibly huge, I remember holding it in my hand in front of my face and thinking "how to suck it?". So his dick was my starting point in learning about blowjobs. I sucked him wherever he got his dick. And he always came, either on my lips, my cheek or my neck.
He tried to insert his cock into me. But I could only take the head. The next thing I knew, I was in a hell of a lot of pain.
Then I meet a grown man, like twice my age. And he becomes the one who sits me on his lap and slaps my face with his huge cock. His cock was long, but not as thick as the first guy's. He fucks me in the mouth, then turns me around and puts me on all fours. He does everything he can to make sure I don't get hurt, lots of lube, poppers. But he fucks deep, dynamic and hard. That day I was losing my virginity thinking, "I hope I survive."
The third, significant male, was a regular straight guy from an anonymous meeting site, he wanted a blowjob and there were no girls around. I agreed to suck him off. He was pumped up, smooth-shaven, tanned, and with a not-long-but-thick cock. He was the first to cum in me, and made me swallow.
I had already decided that they had made a bottom out of me, so I was going to be a bottom.

Located in CA
I took my 9 yr old lab Ivy to the vet for an emergency visit in the beginning of March. Our regular vet couldn’t take her so we had to go to the 24/7 animal hospital. They are excellent and I was willing to pay for whatever they needed to do to help ivy.
She had been very obviously sick and in pain, puking, diarrhea, not wanting to eat. They did an ultrasound, blood panel, urinalysis, fluids, meds. They found elevated liver enzymes and ketones in her urine. She was so sick they wanted to hospitalize her overnight. I asked what they would be doing and they said monitoring. I asked if I could just monitor her myself at home and bring her back right away if she gets worse? They gave me a couple prescriptions and sent us home. -$1729
I didn’t realize until the next day they didn’t give us any pain meds or anything to help Ivy’s eating (I’d tried seriously all the bland diet options, she didn’t want any of it) I went back to get her pain meds and prescription food, and the girl says they forgot to charge me for something else so she added that on too. -$150
Ivy was getting better slowly but still not her normal happy self at all. Sad, droopy eyes, wanting to sit curled up in my lap like a baby 😭 I kept doing everything they said and I took her back about a month later to check her levels again. We saw the vet, then went back out to the busy lobby to wait until someone came out to tell me the results or medications or whatever. So I sat in the lobby and waited, I asked a few times for updates bc I needed to get back to work. After 3 hours I asked if they could check and see what was going on.
There was another dog named Ivy there that morning and the receptionist closed out MY Ivy’s account (and charged the other lady’s card -$566 of my charges). I was annoyed and paid my bill (non-itemized invoice bc she couldn’t find mine) and Ivy and I went straight to work. Ivy is my service dog and sleeps under my desk.
They said the liver enzymes and urine ketone levels were both back to a normal level which was great news. They still couldn’t really give me a clear answer as to what could’ve caused all of this, sometimes they eat things, or just get sick, whatever. She said a slow recovery was normal bc livepancreas stuff is unpredictable, painful, and can take a while to heal.
The hospital’s office called me the next day to apologize for making me wait so long and reimbursed $316 (the liver panel, I think, I don’t have an itemized invoice). They offered this without me asking which I really appreciated.
Ivy has still been sick, but definitely better than when I first took her in. She was still acting sad, no interest in her favorite things. I knew she was in pain and brought her to a different vet last week.
Dr.S had been Ivy’s vet most of her life at our regular vet’s office - we love him. He left and started his own practice,and I just found his new location is 15 minutes away from my house!! It was kind of secretive when he left the other place, I think out of respect for the owners and not take half the clients with him. Anyway, I was really happy to find him again, I fully trust him. He was Ivy’s vet at her 8-week old visit, did her spay, all of it. Ivy is scared of men she doesn’t know and she loves Dr. S.
He took a look in her mouth and was like Whoa! Found it! He saw one badly rotten and cracked tooth in the back and wanted to get scheduled for removal right away. I bought the senior wellness plan for -$998. I was quoted $1200-1600 for surgery. (He was also going to remove a large benign mass from her side since she’d be under anesthesia already, I’d been wanting to do this for a few years so this is something I wanted him to do also)
This Tuesday was surgery day. He ended up removing 3 teeth, a molar on each side, and a front tooth that was cracked and broken off (I knew about this, I’d been told it wasn’t anything to be concerned about).
He said one of the molars and the front tooth both had exposed roots, the back one had an abscess and the root was touching the bone. He asked if I wanted the pictures bc it was really interesting and you don’t usually see it so advanced 😞 He said this is definitely what has been hurting her and making it hard to eat. He said they must have not looked in Ivy's mouth at all if they didn’t notice it- twice??
He didn’t have enough time to remove the mass. He said he wasn’t comfortable keeping her under any longer due to her age and blood pressure levels. Unless it grows rapidly we’re leaving it for now.
-$350 for everything this day, including surgery time & anesthesia, full dental cleaning & sealant,office visit, sedated nail trim, medications, canned soft food, heart worm testing, some other stuff included with the senior wellness package.
It’s been two days since she got her teeth out and she’s already smiling again. She was jumping around and trying to play with her brother (cat) and she only does that when she’s really excited!! Ivy is the best dog I could ever ask for. Seeing her in pain has been so hard, because I couldn’t help her!! I was trying everything but it wasn’t working. I’m so glad we found it and I think she will be able to get better now. I wasn’t so sure for awhile there.
I called the hospital place and told them what I found out and asked what happened. How could they have missed this- TWICE? The girl was really nice and agreed this was a “very valid concern” and asked me to explain everything to her and she would talk to the medical director, try to get some answers for me, and get back to me. She asked what I wanted the resolution to be. I said I thought it would be appropriate to ask for all of my charges to be refunded in relation to this event over the past couple months including Dr. S’s charges.
She called me back when I was at dinner so I missed her call.
Is this right? I don’t know what I’m looking for, feedback, reassurance, guidance? This is malpractice, right??
I talked to Dr.S’s receptionist today, she’s going to send me the photos and a breakdown of charges between the wellness plan and what I had done, try to make sense of what would be appropriate to ask them to refund. I kinda also want to ask them for $200 flat to reimburse the food/groceries spent trying to get her to eat, literally anything I could try on her bland diet, I tried! I don’t have receipts but I know I spent a shit ton of money as Ivy’s short order cook the last couple months. (Today she scarfed down her regular food for the first time in forever, I cried). Is this pushing it too far? Should I just take whatever they offer me?
What about the fact Ivy spent 2 1/2 months in pain & suffering from the time I brought her in to the day Dr. S did her surgery? She has lost weight, and has been pretty obviously miserable the whole time.
Thanks for reading.

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Anglestan
Augustus 5, 1923
Facility 9, Mancheston
Colonel Jacobs
His hands flew through the folders General Jorgenson and Colonel Thatcher had. There were dozens of them, stacked upon each other all filed in alphabetical order. It had only been a few days since he had woken up from his coma and visited his home— now his mother’s grave. He clenched his fists at the thought. The grief and rage threatened to bubble and spill over once again. He took a deep breath and dragged out the exhale, almost to the point where he had emptied out his lungs.
He was the only one with clearance, and so he couldn’t disclose any of what he learned with his team. They would simply have to trust him and his judgment. Which he was sure they would do. His hands went over one of the folders skimming through it. There were multiple secret projects, but the ones with the most notes were Project S.T.A.R, Project L.U.N.A.R.I, Project R.E.V.I.V.E, Project D.A.W.N, and Project T.E.M.P.L.A.R.
The colonel decided to start with the most notes and papers. Project D.A.W.N.
He skimmed through the notes, reading through some of the details and highlighted words. Project D.A.W.N, the espionage project Thatcher had started placed two spies in Verlin who were to report directly to a Crescent general named Sienna Moretti who was apparently on humanity’s side.
So I was right. There was an espionage element. With the recent attacks and Thatcher’s death, however, it’s safe to assume that it had somehow failed. Either they got found out or they betrayed us. Both seem very likely, but if they were found out, it would be possible that they had died.
He read through all of it before setting the folder down. There were no new notes recently. He sighed and assumed that Project DAWN was a failure. Whether or not the agents were still alive and well, it was too risky to check if they had been compromised. It was better to assume that they had been and cut all contact. The only way to find out now was to go there himself and check. I can’t contact them again. There’s no telling if it would still be Moretti or the agents who would see my messages. It’s a big risk, and judging by the state of things, best to assume it failed.
He picked up another folder. This one had the label ‘under development’ on the folder. Project Templar. He opened the folder and was instantly met with a blueprint and drawings of a massive bipedal machine. It looked humanoid with strange proportions and was supposed to be standing at an impressive 30 meters, or 100 feet. The Titanic Engine Mech for Personal Land Assault and Reconnaissance.
It was apparently a joint project with the Church of Sol, utilizing new and advanced technologies he hadn’t heard of. A 203mm Gatling cannon on one arm, while the other had three different weapons. A massive firestarter that utilized a new type of fuel mixture that could theoretically spew flames a kilometer away using a high-pressure nozzle. The fuel was ignited using an electrical spark. The second weapon was a high-powered light weapon that fired a single powerful beam of focused light that was even further amplified by layers of focusing lenses that could increase its output several times. Its third weapon was… a dust domina?
Mark read through the specifications of the so-called ‘sand cannon’ weapon. It was a massive cannon that accelerated tiny particles several times. Each particle was to be electrically charged, and it would travel at immense speeds. Near impossible speeds. The resulting impact of a microscopic particle at such speeds would be enough to form a small crater and punch through armor like it was nothing. This weapon would fire multiple at the same time, which could literally eat away at anything on the opposing end.
In terms of secondary weapons, the titan had two missile launch chambers in front of its shoulder each containing about 40 missiles, and two massive howitzer cannons on top of it. Both are 800mm in caliber. It had massive stumpy legs that served as bunkers for a small platoon on each leg. Each leg had machine dominas and 155mm cannons. Its chassis held two nuclear reactors inside providing for its power and weaponry. Its armor was the thickest and most ridiculous he’d ever read. Two meters of heavy steel armor.
How far are we in terms of technology? This thing looks like it came out of an H.G. Wells sci-fi novel. He thought, shaking his head. It was over the top, but there was no denying its combat capabilities. If it was already under-developed then it must be the first prototype. This has already been approved. Guess I better see it for myself later and check how it's coming along. Construction apparently started just a few months before the invasion.
Next was project L.U.N.A.R.I. It was a project involving Six. “Huh,” he said, continuing to read on.
The Light Undone: Nocturnal’s Adaptive Resistance Initiative. As he read further, his eyes widened. The reason why Six was so special wasn’t just because of her immunity to all strigoi weaknesses, but because of her impressive ability to turn any true born strigoi like her. She could transfer her strain like any other strigoi and transform them into a version of hers. It however only seemed to work for naturally born strigoi. The new species of ‘half-breeds’ were called ‘Blessed Children’ as Thatcher had coined in the folder.
The plan was to turn all willing true-born hemolite strigoi into these blessed children. Able to withstand the sun. Immune to silver. Free from the dependency on blood. They could remove all the weaknesses of the strigoi and after the war— make it possible to integrate them into society as normal citizens living on the surface. The project folder also made mentions of a city-wide draft in Dante and highlighted the possibility of turning all Dantenite true born strigoi into these blessed children and renaming them as ‘Lunari’. A mix of the dark and the light. The light of Sol reflected in the children of the night.
“Thatcher, what the fuck have you been up to…” Mark whispered to himself.
While it was true that it could help in the war effort by utilizing Six and the dantenite population, it would also invite some unforeseen problems and consequences. Would humanity be okay with the Lunari? Would the world even be ready for them? Strigoi who were immune to the sun. They wouldn’t be impossible to kill, but they would be immensely more powerful if we were to take away their inherent weaknesses. This is a gamble. Its gain would only be seen during the war period, but its unintended effects on society could be catastrophic.
He frowned, setting the folder down. It was obviously Thatcher’s main plan; seeing as all her moves could be traced to the path of the eventual completion of this project. It seemed dangerous in the long run, but the duskwalkers and dantenites had been monumental in the war effort. Maybe it was the time the world started to accept them more. Isolation and segregation was definitely not the way to disperse fears and foster understanding.
If Thatcher thinks this is the next step forward… then I’ll put my faith in her plans.
Next up was Project S.T.A.R, or the Superior Tech and Adaptive Resistance. An upgrade to the current hemolite weapons and gear by using new researched studies. The Starfire Pattern Domina. The SFD-23 This thing features a new loading system and magazine, ditching the rotating cylinder most domina used, or the rotating helix magazine design of the current hemolite standard BM-16 domina.
The new domina had its magazine like a box… a strange design but it was certainly easier to handle than the bulky cylinders the helical mags used. In terms of ergonomics, it was smoother and fit more. Its placement however was on top of the domina, just above the barrel. Most of the weapon were to be made of lightweight polymers and the barrel itself were to be crafted out of reinforced aluminium. In addition to that, it had a 10-inch bayonet attached to it.
There were other new things as well, such as the composition of the bullet. Looking at the conceptual cross-section designs, Mark read through its description and how it would function. A .308 cased telescoped bullet covered in a silver jacket with break-away petals surrounding the main body. Inside the jacket was a penetrator core that was to be made of depleted uranium. It had a small amount of incendiary compound and… powdered white phosphorus behind an explosive compound. The thin silver jacket would deform and trigger the explosive compound inside the body. It would blow up causing massive internal damage and release the incendiary materials into the body with the flecks of powdered white phosphorus. The penetrator core could still potentially keep going and hit a second target, or punch through heavily armored targets.
Part of the new Project S.T.A.R was overhauling the armor and gear of not just the Hemolites but the Hunters as well. Starfire Mk 1. Carapace Armor. Carapace? It looked like plates of steel covered in a rubberized coat. It was supposed to be slipped on over the original hemolite body armor. It added a spring-loaded wrist blade to the gauntlet, a thicker coat made of resistant materials, and added extra padding for the knees, shoulders, and elbows.
However, the hemolites weren’t the only ones mentioned in the folder. It was to serve the Hunters as well. “Hunters…” Mark said. “August’s group is part of this initiative too.” He flipped through some of the pages. There were blueprints and drawings of an armored suit. A mechanized suit even smaller and more compact than the jotunn units. The Mark 1 STR battlesuit. It was supposed to hug the wearer’s frame and increase their overall power. It was supposed to be built of titanium alloy and a heavy steel frame with composite armor. It had a cooling system, life support systems that could recycle bodily fluids, and an exoskeleton frame that could increase the wearer’s strength and speed.
However, the real eye-opener was Thatcher’s notes. She had been ranting about the new human evolution, and how the Hunters were the first of the ‘Solari’. She wanted to enhance human genetics and push past the peak of human ability to reach greater heights. Implants and restructuring of the anatomy to make it more efficient. Using the blood of the goddess herself. She must have lost it. These are the ramblings of a lunatic. At least… if she didn’t mention the goddess. Why was the goddess important here?
The writings ended with the words: “See Project R.E.V.I.V.E, for more details.”
Mark eyed the final folder. His hands shook as he reached out to take it. Flipping it open, his hands nearly dropped it in shock. The goddess Helena was alive. There were pictures of her naked form floating in a giant tube of fluid. There were more of Thatcher’s ramblings and excited rants about the possibilities of such a discovery. Resurrection, Enhancement, and Veneration: Implementation of Visionary Evolution.
The goddess is alive?! According to the file, she’s currently under the Cathedral of New Lundun. Not only that, but the file also detailed the extraterrestrial tech that lay beneath the cathedral. So the goddess is real and she’s— not really a goddess, but rather, a vampyr who created herself a human body to stand in the sun, and decided that it wants to be on humanity’s side… what the fuck.
Mark’s frown and confusion only increased as he read on. Thatcher’s notes seemed to nearly descend into madness as she had written about creating ‘the first hundred’, alluding to the 100 members of the Hunters division. Her plan was to revive the goddess, and with her help and expertise in genetics— use her DNA to transform the Hunters into demi-humans. Super soldiers. Literal children of the goddess Helena. They would then don the STR battlesuits, the first of the superhuman warriors to defend humanity. Solari.
Their lightning-speed advancement into technology was heralded by studying the alien tech, which deepened the understanding of physics and engineering. Nuclear technologies, chemical warfare, new material sciences, the mechs, and walkers, it was spearheaded by trying to reverse-engineer technology centuries ahead of our own… for the past hundred years. It wasn’t completely stolen, however. More or less borrowed ideas that had been made into our own with our own designs and implements. Still, the speed at which the Church and the military had deciphered such advancements all by themselves was… impressive to say the least.
Still, the fact that the goddess was alive, and could be brought back was big news. Checking the file for details, he found that the previous general, Jorgenson, had already approved this project. It was their next step as soon as they returned from New Amsterdam; which never happened.
If Helena was alive, then she could end this war swiftly, or at the very least help greatly like she once did during the War of Darkness. Having the goddess back would throw a massive wrench in the Crescent’s plans. It would certainly be something they wouldn’t expect. Not even I expected this, since many sources say that the goddess had already ascended to watch over humanity, while conspiracy theorists claim she had died in battle and that the Church was worshiping a corpse. This could be the trick up our sleeves that no one would even consider.
The colonel quickly got up from his seat and gathered the main files he had read. He placed them in a bag and rushed outside of his office in Facility 9. He went over to a nearby room and flicked the lights on. “We need to go,” he said. In an instant seven hemolite soldiers got up from whatever they were doing and instantly stood in line.
“Sir! Whatever you need of us, sir,” the group said in unison.
They were Hemo-1. His former squad members. He had taken up Louis' suggestion that they be his personal security detail. It was a shame that he had basically placed the best hemolite team out of commission, but after all he had been through he convinced himself that he could be just a little selfish. He didn’t want to lose any more friends. Not on his watch. Not while he was in an office, and they were out fighting.
“We’re going to New Lundun. Better pack up, it’s going to be a long night.”
“Mark,” Olivia said.
Jacobs turned to her direction and gave her a nod.
“Colonel, sir, may I ask where in New Lundun?”
“Liv, you don’t need to do that with me. Please. I give all of you special permission,” the colonel groaned. “It’s so weird. I mean, ‘captain’ was bad enough, but now you’re acting like I’m an authority figure.”
“You… are, though,” Emma shrugged.
“I’m your friend, and Liv I’m literally your partner. Unless you have some kind of weird fetish, save it for later.”
Olivia grinned, shaking her head. “Duly noted!” she chirped.
“That’s better,” Mark chuckled. “Now come on, we have a cathedral to visit.”
“Uhh, I’m not sure if you noticed, but we’re kinda… strigoi?!” Louis groaned. “I’d burn the moment I step in that place! Plus, it’s coated in silver! Anything I even touch will give me burns!”
“Oh come on, Lou. You have fucking gloves on. As long as you’re not a clumsy dumbass you’ll be fine… oh wait.’
“Uh huh, just sayin’ what I think, boss.”
The group headed out and Mark said something on his radio. He then sat on the ground, making his joints pop. The rest of the squad shrugged and followed his example, sitting down on the grass and waiting for… nothing. Charles and Zach looked at each other in confusion. “Uh, sir?” they asked. “Aren’t we supposed to be heading out and traveling right now?”
“Oh yeah, we’re just waiting.”
“Foooor…?”
The colonel gave them a smirk as a loud noise began to make itself known. A hummingbird transport appeared out of the distance and stopped right above them, slowly descending into the grass. “Being colonel has its perks,” Mark said with a smile. He stood up and hopped inside the hummingbird as soon as it landed. “Come on now! We’ve got work to do! Last one aboard buys everyone food later!”
Emma zipped in before Mark could even finish his sentence, followed by Olivia, Phineas, Charles, Zach, and then Louis, who sadly took too long to process what the colonel said, and lagged behind.
“Aw, man! Fuck this shit.”
“Rules are rules, Lou. Prepare your wallet later.” Mark grinned.
With a smile, the colonel pulled Olivia to his side, who blushed for a moment before shaking her head. “Take us up! New Lundun Cathedral! How long would it take?” he asked the pilot.
“About an hour and a half!” The pilot replied. “Less if you want to get there as soon as possible!”
“Take your time! The night’s still young.”
The hummingbird started to lift up, taking them into the air. The group settled down in their seats and watched outside the open. Mark opened up a bag inside the hummingbird and took out some ear muffs built for a strigoi. Extremely loud noises were damaging for a strigoi’s enhanced hearing, so the military started implementing ear muffs for them after complaints from early deployments of the hemolite squads.
The trip didn’t take too long. In only an hour and twenty minutes they had arrived at the safe zone of New Lundun, heading straight for the cathedral. The night mass had just ended and people were leaving the cathedral. “Looks like we made it in perfect time!” Mark smiled. They hovered for a few minutes in the air before eventually landing down right in front of the statue of Helena.
As soon as they landed, the colonel and his group left the hummingbird. Mark instructed the pilot to wait for them. He went straight for the cathedral with his group following behind. He entered inside, clearing his throat. “Hello?”
“Well this is surely unexpected,” an old man said, walking up to greet them.
“Great Grandfather Aurelius. It’s uh, an honor.”
“Please. The honor is mine… I see you’re the new colonel. Yes, I’ve heard the news,” he said. “Would you mind telling me your name, young man? As well as your companions, if they feel so. I usually don’t allow duskwalkers here but, I have nothing against them. I’ll make an exception for your group.”
“Thank you, Great Grandfather,” Mark replied. “I am Colonel Mark Jacobs. These are my friends and security detail. Olivia, Zach, Phineas, Charles, Emma, and Louis.”
“I see, and what brings you here?”
“Since Thatcher’s demise, I was given access to her research and project folders upon taking up the title. I’ve learned about what’s under your cathedral,” Mark cleared his throat. “Would it be alright if we could see it? I’d like to check it for myself. Of course, under your permission and guidance, Great Grandfather.”
The church head looked from Mark to his companions. He pulled a slight frown and hummed. “Do these companions of yours have the clearance? Surely, we wish to keep our secrets hidden,” he said. Mark nodded.
“They do not have clearance to know what is in Thatcher’s folders and her findings,” the colonel nodded. “However, I give them permission to accompany me, and should they discover things for themselves, then you have my word and my trust that I can keep them from spilling state secrets.”
The Great Grandfather gave a short pause before ultimately relenting. “Very well,” he let out a sigh. “Follow me.”
Aurelius walked behind the altar and pulled the same lever, which opened the same staircase leading underground, where Jorgenson and Thatcher had once gone. “Over here, colonel,” he said. “I do not know you completely yet, but this is a big deal of trust I am giving you. Perhaps you would be the one to do things that Thatcher could not have.”
Mark nodded, he and his group followed the Great Grandfather down the staircase. It led down to a massive underground facility, with numerous priests, researchers, and scientists. Libraries, records, instruments, and artifacts of old. It was a treasure trove of learning.
“So,” Aurelius cleared his throat. “What would you like to know about?”
“This isn’t all of it,” Mark said. “Thatcher mentioned a living, breathing, Helena.”
His group behind him let out a soft gasp, but they tried their best to hide their surprise.
“Hm,” the Great Grandfather nodded. “Perceptive young man aren’t you? Very well.”
They were then led into another room, behind a set of heavy blast doors. If the whole group were trying to hide their surprise then, now they could barely contain it. Even the colonel stared awestruck at the things he had seen. Despite the near-magical objects around them, the true shock was the massive starship at the end of the hallway. “It’s impressive isn’t it?” Aurelius said. “All of the goddess’ artifacts and items at our disposal, to use and learn from, to integrate into our own. This is why Anglestan is the most powerful nation in the UHT in terms of development. When it comes to industry, however, that would go to the UNA. But we share our secrets with them. All our advancements are handed to them first before any other nation.”
“This is all amazing, Great Grandfather,” Mark replied. “But this is not what I’m here for.”
“No, it’s not.” Aurelius nodded.
He led them to another room, one that was sterilized and sported advanced machinery. Things that Mark had never even seen. There were screens with luminous green texts that appeared in front of it. Large panels with numerous keys, levers, and dials. Graphs of all sorts and beeping monitors. In the center, was the very thing he had come all this way to confirm. A large cylinder filled with liquid, sporting tubes and pipes connecting to its base. Inside was a woman of large proportion. Four arms, two legs, and six wings. In her bare chest was a symbol of the sun that seemed to glow dimly.
“There she is, there’s you goddess.”
Neither Mark nor his group spoke a word. He walked up to it, eyeing the woman inside. It really is her. Down to the last details. Golden hair, six limbs, six folded wings, and she looks massive. Probably as big as her statue just outside the cathedral. This is it. The very goddess in the history books, the one spoken about in legends and the one worshiped in the Churches of Sol.
“Can we free her?” he said.
The Great Grandfather nearly choked on his spit upon hearing those words. “Free her?! That could kill her! We don’t even understand this technology, let alone control it!” he said pointing at the panels. “The machines you see here are the best and most advanced we have based on what we can reverse engineer, but even then, the consequences of tampering with its functions may be disastrous!”
“I understand, Great Grandfather,” Mark said. “But we are in a dire situation, and the goddess may be our hope of turning this around. Whatever secrets of her tech that you don’t understand, wouldn’t she be able to teach us directly? What good is she floating around in Sol knows what?”
“That is her miraculous healing fluid. She had already built this contraption centuries ago in case anything were to happen to her, that her body’s natural healing could not sustain,” Aurelius said. “During the War of Darkness, Helena was struck with a weapon so deadly, her very cells began to tear away. The Reaper. Dealt to her by Absolem the progenitor. Her flesh was peeling from her body, and she began to decay whilst she still breathed. She entered this contraption and gave strict instructions to the Great Grandfather at the time, not to interrupt the healing process. The machine that monitored her, however, began to fail over time.”
“So this… these screens and panels…”
“Is only what functions we can understand. We took it upon ourselves to rebuild and study it the best we could. What we have right now is only a cheap imitation of a technology we do not fully comprehend,” he said. “It took us decades to even figure out the fundamentals and create a working prototype of this machine. By some miracle, the goddess’ healing process had remained even while we replaced components of technology ahead of ours.”
“But you know how to free her, don’t you?”
“I… yes.”
“Great Grandfather Aurelius,” Mark began. “We can end this war. Imagine what we could do with the goddess fighting on our side. We could advance even further, we could finally end the bloodshed, and we can show humanity that there is still hope. Imagine how people all over the world would feel seeing as their goddess has returned.”
“I wish I had your enthusiasm,” Aurelius said. “But it is simply too risky. The Church’s duty is to protect Helena and her legacy. We keep her alive, literally and figuratively. She nearly died the last time she was involved in a war. Would you risk losing the goddess?”
“Would you risk humanity losing?”
The Great Grandfather fell silent, looking back at Helena floating inside the tube, then to the panels that controlled it. He frowned and let out a long sigh. “The goddess said that we should not interrupt it. That it would end as soon as it was finished. Maybe we should trust her words.”
Mark shook his head. “I don’t spot a single blemish on the goddess. Not a single scratch,” he argued. “You said it yourself that the machine had begun to fail and you replaced components. How would you know that the thing that’s supposed to wake her up was not tampered with? Think about it. What you may think is a useless piece may be integral to the whole machine. Or maybe your replacements were not up to the task. Just because nothing’s happened doesn’t mean its functions have remained whole.”
“Young man, we simply cannot gamble with the goddess’ life here.”
“Have you no faith? Great Grandfather?”
Aurelius stepped back in shock. Mark’s companions looked at each other, clearly surprised as well. “Mark… I don’t think we should keep arguing with—” Olivia tried to say.
“No,” the colonel said firmly, cutting her off. “Great Grandfather Aurelius, do you think that Helena will not be able to pull through if we wake her? How long has it been? A century? How much longer will we wait? She may be immortal but humans aren’t.”
“I'm sorry, but the chances of failure are too high. The probability of her—”
“I don’t care about the probability! Would you rather put your faith in a statistic?!” Mark raised his voice. “I lost my mother to this war! My friends! My job! My eye, and almost my life! I’ve put mine on the line out there! You don’t know what it’s like out there! Was my mother’s death just a probability too? Was she just a statistic to you?! That as long as the numbers are good, no matter how many are lost, we are ‘winning’?!”
“Mark—!”
“No, Liv! He needs to know what’s really going on out there!” he spat. “Great Grandfather, with all due respect, but you don’t have a damn clue what it’s like to be in the field. You’re a man of faith, aren’t you? Take a risk. Everyone else has.”
Aurelius stood there, dumbfounded. He bit the inside of his cheeks and clenched his fists. “For your insolence, I would have had you flogged and stripped of your rank,” he glared at the young colonel. However, his features slowly softened, letting out a soft sigh. “But I have never seen such conviction. Mighty is your faith.”
The Great Grandfather moved over to the panels and reached into his robe, pulling out from around his neck a key with the symbol of the sun. He inserted it into the machine and turned. A beep sounded, right before Aurelius pulled a lever. In an instant, the fluid inside the glass chamber began to drain out into the tubes under it. Slowly, the chamber emptied and all that was left was the nude form of the goddess sitting in the glass.
“Did it work?” Louis asked, stepping forward and looking at the woman.
Aurelius stayed silent, his hands shaking in anticipation. Mark moved toward the glass chamber, when suddenly, the glass opened up like a door, releasing a fragrant mist. They stood there, watching for a whole minute. Nothing. At first nothing. The Great Grandfather looked like he was about to break down. His knees shook as he covered his mouth, thinking that he was responsible for the death of Helena.
That was when… a soft sound was heard. Movement. Olivia immediately went over to Mark and stood in front of him. Ready to protect him should anything happen. Slowly, the goddess moved more, her arms inched to the side.
Then, her eyes opened.

First/Previous
The travel took on a less gloomy quality in the day that passed since Gemma’s self-reflection and although there remained a queer distance in her eyes, she seemed in better spirits in losing the weight of the words.
It was a night just beyond Wabash Crevasse that we pushed on till sunset was almost upon us and we were each tired and the food stocks ran low and so we found harbor in a half collapsed cellar where a home once stood; it was only after examining the slatted, rotted boards of the old place, fallen over, tired with decay, that we spied the cellar doors intact; sheets of door metal plied us with safety from the outside world and the interior of the place stank of mold and the deeper recesses were collapsed, but there was a cradle to crossbar the stair hatch and I put my prybar there for the night. We finished the water and canned tomatoes, and I smoked a cigarette, staving off the inevitable doom which would come with the dwindling of our supplies.
I’d peeked through the space where the doors met at the cellar’s entry and watched the full darkness there while the youngins spoke of life and the trivial pursuits of it and I hardly said a word besides.
Sitting on the lowest step with Trouble dumbly maintaining her station by me, by the low glow of the space in the threshold, I saw they’d pushed their bedrolls together and Andrew had fallen asleep with his arm over Gemma’s shoulder and her eyes glowed with shine from the crack, blinked a few times while seeing me; she too eventually drifted to sleep, and I spent time by the secured door.
Gunshots rang across the stillness, and they stirred from their quiet slumber and Gemma asked, “Harlan, is it alright?”
I moved to the space there at the doorway again and listened and watched what I could through that crack and nothing beyond came. “It’s safe. I’ll be up a bit longer. I’ll watch.”
Andrew asked, “Can’t sleep?”
“I’ll sleep in a bit. Don’t worry about me. Rest. Sleep good and we can put more behind us.
They sat up, legs crossed triangle-wise, and Gemma spoke again, “Why do you have such a hard time sleeping? It seems I’m asleep after you and only awake after you too.”
“Yeah,” said Andrew.
“It’s cool at night. I can listen to the wind.” I shrugged.
“You should be the one that tries to get some sleep,” said Andrew.
I said nothing.
They reached out their arms and I shook my head.
“Here,” Gemma said, “Move your bedroll closer.” She reached across the dirt floor of the cellar and dragged my splayed roll so that it sat beside hers.
“I’ll sleep later.” I turned my attention back to the door and ignored them till their sounds of sleep could be heard. The Alukah was nowhere and did not tap on the door that night and when I moved to sleep, I shimmied onto the roll beside them, facing away on my shoulder; the dog followed, laid on the bare dirt beside me and I held the mutt.
Though I refused a noise as they stirred in the absolute darkness, I felt Gemma’s arm fall over my own shoulder and felt Andrew’s hand touch my back, and water traced the bridge of my nose and I slept deeply thereafter.
There was no breakfast without food, and the water was gone; I felt the eyes of the dog on us as we packed up our belongings that next morning and I tried not to imagine the poor animal skinned over fire. I smiled at Trouble, patted its head, scratched its chin; she sniffed my hand like she was looking for something that wouldn’t be found.
We went west again, ignoring roads and pushed through straight wasteland where nothing was and no one was, and with every dry footfall on the dry hard ground, I wished for rain, and I wished that when it had rained, as infrequent as it was, that I had been wise enough to save what we could from the sky; that sky was red and swollen and refused to burst. We pushed on through strange dead thickets where grayed and twisty yellow branches lurched from the ground into the sky like even they too wished for an end to all the suffering. It was days more till we would see Alexandria and though I could stave off hunger (thirst too, if necessary), I was not so certain that the children would be able to push on without it; they did not complain and watched the ground in our march and maintained higher spirits than I could’ve imagined from them.
Early in the day, they spoke often, and I listened and as they wore on, their words came less and even the dog seemed in a lower mood for the unsaid predicament; me too.
Gemma broke the silence on the matter by saying, “What are we going to do about food? Water?”
“We’ll push on.”
“We could turn back?” asked Andrew.
“The more time we spend out in the open, outside of a city, the more likely it is that the Alukah will catch us unawares. Tighten your belts.” Our feet took us around a dilapidated truck, an old thing with a rusty hook which dangled off a rear arm. “Save your urine.”
They made faces but did not protest.
“Does that work? You ever drink pee?” asked Andrew.
I laughed, “I thought we’d be there by now. I took us too long by trying to drop the scent of the Alukah. That thing’s hunted us for days—last night was the first time it ain’t bothered us. It’s got me wondering why.”
Gemma piped up, licking her dry lips before speaking, “Do you think that monster ran into those scavengers we saw?” Then I caught her shooting a look at Andrew, “At least we warned them.” Her smile was faint and almost indiscernible as one.
I shrugged. “Can’t say. Don’t think it’s smart to turn back. Won’t be long and we’ll touch the 40 and then it’ll be a straight on to Babylon—couple of days—can’t turn back though. Maybe without food; that’s doable. Water’s the worst, but if it comes to it,” I paused and looked on the weathered faces of the children, on the lowered head of Trouble which followed her nose across the ground (it searched just short of frantic), “Like I said, ‘save your urine’.”
The first pains of hunger held within me brought up some reminiscence and I wished for nothing more than to hold Suzanne; I could nearly smell them and in the swaying walk which took us on past toppled townships, I held long blinks where I could nearly make out their face and if I really pushed the limits of my imagination, I could feel them. In those moments, as we passed dead places, rotted pits of despair, I could think of little more than their presence. Though I knew it was a dangerous game, hoping for more than I was worth, I hoped for Suzanne then and I wished that I’d taken them up on their offer to travel to Alexandria with them; it could’ve been home—it never was in all the times I’d gone there, but who knows? The thoughts of Babylon brought forth their gardens; the wild gardens and the water which flowed freely through their pipes. I wished I was a different person entirely and that too would’ve been better for Suzanne; how it was that they’d seen anything in me, I don’t know. How it was that they could stoop to the level of being with someone like me—I warded off that thought, because to place the blame there would certainly be unfair. I thought of my love plainly and wanted a different life more suited to them.
Imaginations played more furiously, and I remembered the evening when Dave stopped me from leaping from that roof—it’s doubtful that he even realized that he’d slowed my demise; perhaps he did know—I wished then that I could ask him. Too kind for the world. People too kind for the world were scarce and hardly worth the trouble. Yet, there I was, chaperoning those two across the wastes.
Gemma was a broken person when I’d found her, tortured in Baphomet’s well; Andrew was a dullard boy who’d lost his hand. What a silly predicament.
I stopped in my movements and swiveled on my heel to catch Andrew by the shoulder. “You still got your hand, don’t you?”
In good humor, the boy grinned, lifted the nub on the end of his left forearm to show me, “Nope.”
“Dammit, no! The hand in the jar!”
Andrew raised his eyebrows. “In my pack.”
“Stop,” I commanded Trouble; the dog hardly recognized my words and continued a way then circled back, sad eyes looking up from where she took to sit by my side. Gemma, both arms dangling loosely from her own pack’s shoulder straps, took into the circle we’d formed.
The girl asked, “What about the jar? It’s nasty, but I guess it’s his.”
“I think that’s it,” I said. I took Andrew by his shoulders, looked him in his eyes, “We could use it!”
“What?” The boy almost laughed in the display of our concern. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I think I’ve got it! It’s good for a trap.” I shook him; maybe too hard. I almost smiled. “It’s worth a shot!”
“It’s mine.” He bit his top lip, withdrew from me.
“You’ll feel differently about that,” I said.
Gemma placed a hand on Andrew’s pack and tried ripping it open. “Give it to him!” shouted the girl.
The boy whipped from her grasp, and he spun on his feet, and panic stood on his face. “It’s mine, isn’t it?”
I took a step forward, “No, not anymore.” I put out my palm, “Give it.”
Andrew nearly flinched at the thought of it and shook his head a little. “Why?”
“I told you why,” I said.
“You don’t even know if it’ll work, do you?” his words were long in protest.
The girl started again, “Andrew, please.”
He locked eyes with Gemma and once again, his bottom teeth came up to meet over his top lip and he moved his jaw methodically with contemplation.
“What does it even matter?” she asked.
“It’s mine. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“C’mon,” he said, but his pack straps fell from his shoulders, and he hunkered down on the ground and opened his bag; his right hand plunged into the recesses therein and withdrew the jar with his severed left hand. He held the object up, refusing to come up from his open pack, keeping his eyes on the ground. “Take it then.” He shook the jar; its contents sloshed with liquid decay.
I grabbed the thing, held it to skylight; the remains within had congealed and rotted and lumps nearly floated in the brownish liquid which had formed in the base of the container. I shook it and stared for a moment at the miniscule debris which floated alongside the hand; each of its digits had swollen and erupted to expose bone; some had come away in pieces. “Tomorrow,” I said and nodded.
We gathered ourselves and Andrew pulled his pack on again and we moved, Trouble still looked sorry and the boy remained quiet while the girl chattered on with questions while we took through the dying ground in a formation with the dog on point then me then the children.
“What will you do with it?” she asked me.
“Not sure yet.”
Andrew made a noise like he wanted to say something but didn’t.
“You think it will work?” asked Gemma.
“Nothing’s a guarantee. They’re smart—Alukah.”
“Smart enough to figure out a trap?”
I shrugged. “We’ll find out.”
“We could put stakes in a pit.”
“Keep on the lookout for a building. Something with multiple floors.”
With that, we moved on, found a worn, mostly destroyed road and we fell into a travelling quiet and the thought of hunger or thirst arose again, and I pushed it down—though I knew the uneasiness could only last so long before savagery would overtake the human condition; the kids seemed strong enough, but I kept an eye on the dog too. Savagery belonged not only to humans, after all.
The ground of the wastes was harder when it was quiet, and it was flatter further west. The sky—red and full of thin and transparent drifting clouds—seemed an awful sight when stared at for too long; it was the thing which stretched as if to signal there wasn’t an end in any direction, as if to declare we had much more to go till safety. Wanderlust is a thing that I believe I’ve felt before, but under that sky, with those two and the dog, I didn’t feel it at all. It was doom that I felt. Ignorance and doom. And it was all because I was certain I’d made all the wrong mistakes, and it was coming back to me. I was experienced. We should’ve had food and water. Perhaps there was some deep and nasty part inside of me that had intended to sacrifice them along the way. The words of the Alukah might have rung true: You say you make no deals, but I smell it. I think you’d deal.
Surely, I felt differently. Surely.
“Getting darker,” called Andrew as we came to where signposts—worn and bent and barely legible—told us of a place once called Annapolis and the buildings were nearly gone entirely; places, maybe places that were once homes, were leveled—I was briefly caught in imagining what it might’ve been like all those ages ago. As are most places, it was haunted like that and when we came to a long rectangular structure of metal walls—thin walls—we took it as a place for rest for the night.
It once served as an agricultural station, for when we breached its entry, there were a line of dead machines—three in all—cultivators or tillers which stood higher than any of our heads and Gemma asked what they were, and I told her I thought they were for farming. The great rusted bodies stood in quiet shadow as we came through a side passage of the building and the great doors which had once been used to release those machines from the building stood frozen in their frame. I approached the doors, lighting my lantern and motioning for the children to shut the door we’d entered through.
Upon closer inspection, it seemed the doors would roll into the ceiling and the chains which held the doors in place were each secured with rusted padlocks—I removed my prybar from my pack and moved along the wall of doors, giving each old lock a smack with the weapon; each one held in place, seemingly fused there through years of corrosion, and I rounded the cultivators once more, back to the children, near the side door where they’d discovered a rickety stair frame which crawled up the side of the wall to a catwalk; along the catwalk, a levitated box stood at the height of the structure, stilted by metal legs, and we took the stairs slowly with the dog following close behind; the poor mutt was mute save the sound of its own shuffling paws.
The metal stairs creaked under our weight and Gemma held her own lantern high over her head so that the strange shadows of the place grew longer, stranger, and suddenly I felt very sure that something was in the dark with us, but there was no noise except what we made. My eyes scanned the darkness, and I followed the children up the stairs till we met the overhang of the catwalk and I peered into the shadows, the blades of the cultivators—far extended on foldable arms—struck up through the pool of blackness beneath us and I felt so cold there and if it were not for the breath of my fellow travelers, I might have been lost in the dark for longer than intended—lost and frozen and contemplative.
“There’s a room,” said the boy, and he pushed ahead on the hanging passage, and he was the first to the door. “Boxes,” he said plainly.
Upon coming to the place where he stood, Gemma pushed her lantern over the threshold, and I saw what he’d meant as I traced my own lantern to help; the room was crammed with plastic totes and old metal containers of varied sizes. There seemed to be enough empty space to maneuver through the room, but only if one watched their feet while they walked. Carefully.
We moved to the room, and I found a stack of crates to place my lantern then motioned for Gemma to douse hers. In minutes, the place was rearranged so that we could sit comfortably on the floor; crates lined the walls precariously and we breathed heavy from the work done, but we began to unpack and upon watching the children while I rolled a cigarette, I felt a pang of guilt, a terrible summation—all choices in my life had led me here and with them and perhaps it would have been a better world for them without me.
Mentally shrugging this thought away, I lit my cigarette, inhaled deeply, and then withdrew the jar which Andrew had handed over. I held it to the lantern to examine it. The grotesqueness of it hardly phased me and I watched it more curious and hopeful than disgusted.
“I hope it’ll work,” said the boy, “Whatever it is that you plan on doing with it.” He grimaced and maintained a further silence in patting his bedding for fluff. The dog moved to him, and she pushed her forehead against him where he squatted on floor. The boy scratched Trouble’s chin and whispered, “Good girl,” into the top of her head where he’d pushed his own face.
“I’m hungry,” said Gemma; she placed her chin in her arm while watching Andrew with the dog. She sat on her own flat bed there on the floor and stated plainly the thing that I’d hoped to ignore for longer.
“I know.” I took another drag from the cigarette and let the smoke hang over my head. “The dog?”
Andrew recoiled, pulling Trouble closer into his arms.
I smiled. “It was a joke.”
Andrew relaxed, but only a moment before Gemma added, “Maybe.”
The boy narrowed his eyes in the girl’s direction, and she shrugged. “If it’s life or death.”
He didn’t say anything and merely continued stroking Trouble’s coat.
That night, we slept awfully and even in the complete darkness, I felt the cramp of the storage room and the angled shapes of the tools that protruded from the containers on all sides remained permanent well after we’d turned the light off and it felt like those shapes were the teeth of a great creature like we were sitting inside of its mouth, looking out.
Trouble positioned herself partially on my chest, her slow rhythmic breathing brought my thoughts calm and I whispered to her in the dark after I was sure the others were asleep, “I promise it was a joke.” And I brushed the back of her neck with my hand and the animal let go of a long sigh then continued that deep rhythmic breathing.
Still without food or water, the following day was the true indication of the misery to come. Gemma’s stomach growled audibly in waking and Andrew—though he kept his complaints to himself—smacked his lips more often or protruded the tongue in his mouth in a starvation for water. The room, in the daylight which peered through pinpricks of its half-decayed roof, seemed another beast altogether from its nighttime counterpart; it was not so frightening. Again, I admonished myself for the lack of preparation, but there was another thought that brought together a more cohesive feeling; we had a possible plan, a trap for the demon that’d been following us.
We went into the field to the west of the building where there was only dirt beneath our feet in the early sunlight and in the coolness of morning air, I nearly felt like a person. The sun crested the horizon and brought with it a warmth that would quickly become overwhelming—in those few minutes though—it felt good enough. I wished for the shy dew and saw none. The weirdness of holding Andrew’s rotting hand in a jar momentarily caught me and I almost laughed, but refrained and the dog and the children looked on while I held the container up and suddenly, seeing the congealed mass of tissue floating in its own excretions, I was overcome with the urge to run, the urge that nothing would ever be right again in my life, and that I was marked to be that way.
I blinked and tossed the jar to Andrew. “Say goodbye,” I said. He fumbled after it with his right hand and caught it to his chest.
“It’s strange you care so much anyway,” said Gemma, shrugging—her eyes forgave a millisecond of pity and when Andrew looked at her, still holding the jar in his right hand, she smiled and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her pants.
“We’ve enough oil, I think,” my voice was raspy from it being early, “Enough for good fire, but if we use it, it’ll mean a few more dark nights on our way.”
“We’re going to set it on fire?” Andrew pondered, keeping his eyes to the contents of the jar. “It worked good enough last time. It’ll work,” I nodded, “I has to, doesn’t it?”
His dry lips creased into a brief smile, and he tossed the jar back to me and I caught it.
“Let’s dig,” I said.
Without much in the way of proper tools, we began at the ground under us with our hands, then taking turns with my prybar till there was a hole in the ground comfortably large enough to conceal a human head and I uncapped the jar and spilled it contents there and we covered it back and I lightly tamped it with my boot. My eyes scanned the outbuilding we’d taken refuge in the night prior and then to the street to the north then to the houses which stood as merely rotted plots of foundation with frames that struck from the ground more as markers than support. “I’ll take up over there across the street when it gets dark. I want you two in that storage room before anything goes off.”
“We can’t help?” asked Gemma.
“You can help by staying out of the way—the mutt too,” I said; the words were harsh, but my feelings were from worry.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we stuck together?” asked the girl.
I shook my head. “You stay in the room and keep quiet. No matter what you hear, you stay quiet and safe.”
“That’ll put you at a bigger risk,” Gemma furrowed her brow at me and shifted around to look out on the houses across the street, “There’s hardly any cover over there.”
The boy nodded, smacked his lips, and rubbed his forearm across his mouth then audibly agreed with her.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said, “No matter what you hear happening outside, no matter, you don’t open the door and you don’t scream—don’t make a noise at all. Alright? Even if you hear me calling you, you don’t do it.”
“Pfft,” Gemma crossed her arms and kicked her foot against the ground. The way her eyes seemed hollowed with bruising showed that the irritation would only grow without food. “Alright,” she finally sighed.
Andrew looked much the same as she did in that; he swallowed a dry swallow then stuffed his hand into his pocket and looked away when our eyes matched.
We gathered our light oil. Altogether, it seemed enough; rummaging through the room of the outbuilding we’d earlier taken refuge within, we managed three intact glass containers—the only ones found that wouldn’t leak with liquid; two were bottles and the third was the jar that’d once kept Andrew’s hand. With that work done, we sat with three Molotov cocktails within our huddled circle of the storage room.
“Is it enough?” asked Gemma.
“We’ll see,” I began rolling a cigarette to ignore the hunger and the thirst.
Andrew took to the corner and glanced over his shoulder only a moment before a steady liquid stream could be heard and when he rotated from the wall once the noise was finished and he held a canteen up to his nose, sniffed it and quivered and shook his head.
As the sun pushed on, I scanned the perimeter outside, and they followed. Far south I spied a mass of shadow inching across the horizon and Gemma commented, “What’s that?”
I pushed the binoculars to her and let her gaze through them.
“A fiend—that’s what we called it back in the day anyway. A mutant.”
She held the binoculars up and frowned. “A mutant? So, it was once human?”
“A fiend was once many humans.” I pointed out to the horizon though she couldn’t see me doing so and continued, “If you look at the edges of its shape, you’ll see it’s got limbs galore on it. Sticking up like hairs is what it’ll look like at this distance. Those are arms and legs. It’s got faces too. Many faces.” I shuddered.
“I can barely see any details,” she passed the binoculars to Andrew, and he looked through them, “What’s it do?”
“What?” I asked.
“What’s it do if it catches a person?”
“It pulls people into it. Makes you apart of its mass. Nasty fuckers.”
Andrew removed the lenses from his eyes and held them to his chest and asked, “It won’t mess up your trap, will it?”
“We’ll keep an eye on it,” I said, “You don’t want to mess with a fiend unless you have to.”
First/Previous
Archive

"Katsuki Bakugo, the hero known as CoolOff is a villain killer!"
The news circulates throughout the country. It's on TVs, YouTube ads, Posters, Billboards, stickers. If that wasn't enough the people are now wearing badges calling Bakugo a criminal.
"Young Bakugo, I heard what happened. Come we need to leave the country NOW" All Might stressed.
"No, I'm not leaving because a bunch of damn extras starting sympathising with a fucking femicidal maniac"

...

"I'm sorry, I'm just really agitated by this whole thing. I can't believe my entire career as a hero is over" Bakugo said as he looked down at his feet sheepishly.
"Don't be. This whole thing will blow over soon when the truth gets out" All Might responded
"Thanks"
KRAKAKAKOOOOOOOMM!
"What was that"
"I don't know but we should go check it out"
Bakugo stops Yagi
"I should go check it out. You stay, with OFA's embers down to 45% you're in no condition to go fight"
"Fine, but I'd feel more comfortable by your side Young Bakugo...That way I'd know your safe"
"Aww, your making me blush" Bakugo replied sarcasticly as he ran off.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
"There's more where that came from" The mysterious voice answered as he joyfully tormented his victim
"Please...Please stop" Izuku pleaded
"NO"
"Now I'm gonna make sure your kind never sees the sun rise again. INDISCRIMINATE SHOCK 1.3 MILLION VOLT-"
"SHUT THE HELL UP NERD"
Bakugo caught Denki off guard
"Wait. Are you that pathetic quirkless murderer guy i've been hearing about because frankly you're such a damn bore" Bakugo teased
"A-Are you making fun of me" Denki questioned
"Duh! What else do you think I was doing shit for brains"
Denki gasped
"That's soo rude" Denki reacted
"KAAACHAN!" Izuku gleefully cried
"Oh hey Deku"
"Wait. You know this juvenile" Denki queried
"Well-um yes? Kaachan and I go way back. We used to hang out back in Junior High"
"DEKU!!! Stop telling the bad guy E V E R Y T H I N G" Bakugo started grinding his teeth in frustration.
"Oh...sorry"
"HUMAN STUN GUN!" Denki electrocutes both Deku and CoolOff and runs off
All Might smacks Denki with a wooden plank effectively knocking him out
^{"Timber from Cainz...Specifically Miura Smash"} All Might careful whispers to his sleeping opponent.
"Who are you talking to?" Bakugo said bluntly
"N-No one" All Might hastily said
"Is that?...All Miiiiiiiiiiiiggggggghhhhhhhttttt" Izuku breaks out into a fanboy frenzy
"Yes, it is I young man. You must be awfully scared but fear not for I am here"
Izuku starts crying and tells All Might about how scared he was
"What do we do with this piece of crap now?"
"We?"
"We" Bakugo confirmed
"OW!" Bakugo yelled
"What's wrong Young Bakugo?" All Might asked
"Yea Kaachan are you alright?"
"I'm FIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNEEEEEEE"
Bakugo was indeed not fine
"You're sweating and your arms are covered with black veins"
"Huh?"
"Denki has an electric-type quirk" Izuku blurted
"Then it's worse than I thought" All Might added
"I think...You might be dying"
Bakugo laughs at All Might
"What are you crazy?"
"I'm quite serious Young Bakugo..How's your breathing and your heart rate. Check your heart rate"
"Alright All Might"
Bakugo checks his resting heart rate
"It says 160. Is that good?"
All Might dissolves back into skinny form
"You should be dead" All Might articulated
Blood starts dripping from Bakugo arms and old wounds start opening up
"That's not good"
"NO SHIT DEKU"
Bakugo's heart rate starts rapidly beating as if it were to explode
Bakugo struggles to breathe
He tries to shake the feeling off but ends up splashing his blood all over Deku
Bakugo realises his time is up and flys as far away as he can from the city and people
He explodes in an abandoned warehouse
Tears drop down All Might's face as he hears his protege's demise
Izuku goes home that night upset and gloomy.
He wakes up the next day
And punches his door in a fit of rage
His arms explode off
Terrified Izuku calls his mom for help.
4 hours later
"The surgeons have managed to successfully reattach your arms Izuku"
"Are you ok, honey?" Inko asked worried about her son's spontaneous combustion
"I'm fine mom"
BREAKING NEWS! TEEN HERO COOLOFF FOUND DEAD IN ABANDONED WAREHOUSE
Inko switches off the tv
"I'll give you some space"
Inko exits the room and heads over to get some coffee
Izuku's door opens
"Mom, I thought I made it clear I wanted to be left alone"
"Well then it's a good thing I'm not your mom"
"ALL MIIIIIGGHHHT"
"Hello Izuku-Kun, I heard your arms exploded off which is why I came"
"You see Bakugo is....dead. Which I'm sure you already know but what you don't know is that I gave my power to Bakugo..One For All...And he gave that power to you"
"Me? Why would Kaachan give OFA to me?"
"Well he didn't do it intentionally. When he tried shaking all his blood off some of it must've entered your mouth or gone up your nose and with the intention in mind to transfer the power you received it"
"Why would Kaachan want to give up this power?"
"Because his burden proved to great for him to handle"
"I'm sure you took note of the media cancelling Young Bakugo"
"I did"
"Well the media kind of twisted the truth and as a result Young Bakugo has been having thoughts of quitting for months. He let his rage get the better of him and now he's....May his soul rest in piece".
"Now that your arms have been fixed I think it's time to start your training"
Meanwhile in an abandoned warehouse
"Ah! CoolOff the 9th and last user of OFA! Now OFA will finally be mine!
The mysterious man grabbed CoolOff's hand but to his surprise no OFA
"He passed it on. I should've expected this of course Toshinori's protege would have his own protege". The mysterious man thought
"No matter. I'll make use of what I can" the mysterious man said a loud as he carried CoolOff's corpse to his van before driving off
"Vive Les Puissants"
Fin.
Some trivia about this universe:

• In this universe Bakugo is given OFA (at least 2 years before he ends up in UA).
  
• Bakugo is a lot nicer and friendlier to All Might than everyone else (All Might gives up on his relentless quest of finding a quirkless aspiring hero. It's been 20 years so he just gives OFA to the strongest and most dedicated aspiring hero he can find).
  
• Izuku also pulls up to UA (quirkless. He's in the General Education Department).
  
• All Might uses tech from David and Melissa Shield as well as Mei Hatsume and Power Loader [to make up for OFA's declining embers All Might utilises tech to continue his day-to-day hero pursuits. All Might's support gear includes: Electromagnetic Soles (for speed), High Density Capture Nets (neatly compressed and fired from a gun to swiftly capture one's foes), Koete Arm Bracers (a mix between Izuku's Airforce gloves, the mid-gauntlet and the full gauntlet. It's reinforced with iron, tungsten, tantalum, and vanadium. The fingertips of the Arm Bracers are covered with potassium chlorate, sulfur, and nitroglycerin [covered with resin so All Might doesn't accidentally set himself on fire. These coin-like projectiles activate when All Might flicks them at his opponents], The QAD (David Shield's Quirk Amplification device. The prototype was a headset but since then the design has been redeveloped and has been drastically changed to a set of trendy shades), and a Jetpack (to allow All Might to fly without placing further strain on OFA's embers).
  
• Weirdly enough Bakugo has been silently doing hero work for 2 years (He's following Eraserhead's footsteps by avoiding the media).
  
• Bakugo comes face to face with his arch nemesis [the weird slime villain who got the better of him 2 years ago] and blasts him to smithereens...This creates a very unfortunate series of events of Bakugo.
  

Ok, so obviously people are pretty mad that a free game with a bunch of iconic characters already is launching with one character who isn't highly requested. People are freaking out about how the launch is the most important time for a game's life, and that if there's one singular character that people don't like, the entire game is going to die instantly. So many people are asking, "Why add a character nobody asked for?"
But, hear me out, I actually think this might make sense on a few different levels. I have no idea if any of these reasons were why he was chosen. It's possible that it's a combination of them. But here are the reasons, in no particular order:

Reason 1: He was originally fleshed out in order to be a common enemy in the PvE mode, but ended up so close to playable they just ended up going for it.

This is what I assume lead to the idea in the first place. PvE mode required a bunch of new content, and Banana Guard was part of some campaign. He was already a summonable item in the Beta, which gave them a head start already, but all he really did was run across the stage back and forth. So they had to flesh him out a bit for him to work.
So they gave him a bunch of new animations, a few silly attacks, maybe a couple dodges, maybe they made him playable as part of a developer debug mode to test him out (which is EXTREMELY common, by the way), and realized one day "oh crap, this guy is like 99% of the way to being playable!" They could either leave it or say "fuck it, let's just finish it and put it in the game!"
I assume it was just a really easy character to add at the end of the day, and that he'll end up being a very simple character as a result. Essentially a playable goomba. Which leads to my next guess:

Reason 2: Joke characters are popular in fighting games.

If you watch Adventure Time, you'll know that Banana Guards are basically completely useless. They never do anything cool at all, at any time through the entire show, and end up getting completely decimated nearly in every scene. They're weak, stupid, and totally useless cannon fodder.
So, being weak, and being totally irrelevant, makes them a pretty good candidate for purposefully bad.
It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's a staple of competitive fighting games. Dan Hibiki, Pichu, Roll, Hercule, and dozens more I don't really care to research. Like it or not, there's a huge audience that loves picking the shitty, weak, broken character and styling on their opponent anyway, giving them an additional handicap to overcome. In a way, I really can't think of a better character than Banana Guard for this role. That's practically their role in Adventure Time to begin with.

Reason 3: No Publicity is Bad Publicity.

Whether you agree or disagree, chances are, you've heard this statement. And this outrage, I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of why specifically he was chosen for a relaunch character. We need people talking about the game, so why not have people talk about a totally out-there character? A few clickbait articles about the new character everybody hates? That's a huge new audience that's hearing about Multiversus for the first time, and learning it came back.
This creates controversy, and gets people talking. Talking about Multiversus, creating free word-of-mouth advertising.
Personally I think that's giving WB marketing WAY too much credit, and frankly I don't think they're smart enough to intentionally do that. With all the Banana hints on Twitter, I think it's pretty clear that, regardless of what the community thinks is obvious, THEY truly believe it to be an awesome, hilarious character. That it's just hilarious to play as a Banana in a fighting game.
But intentionally or not, I think it's working. I've seen WAAAAAAAAY more discussion about Banana Guard in the past 6 hours than ANYTHING pertaining to the Joker, who I think we can all agree, is a billion times more popular and iconic. Joker is expected. Banana Guard is controversial.
Which actually leads me to my next guess:

Reason 4: To create Fortnite Brand Confusion, and Capitalize on Popularity of Minions (yes really).

I'm not sure if this reason is genius or stupid. But look at Fortnite. In every single advertisement for the game, EVERY SINGLE ONE, they advertise Peely front and center. He's practically the game's mascot behind Jonesy (the blond guy). And I'm sure kids LOVE Peely, and going around shooting people as a giant Banana Man.
Obviously Banana Guard isn't literally Peely, but I can see them adding him in as a way to attract Fortnite players. "We can't get Peely, buuuuuut we got somebody else pretty close!"
Also I realized when describing Banana Guard from Adventure Time, there's quite a lot of overlap between them and the Minions from Despicable Me. Both are dumb, silly, useless, incompetant Yellow stubby "funny" boneheads. I really wonder if Banana Guard was chosen to be the honorary Minions Rep.

Reason 5: Hype is a Marathon, not a Sprint.

This is why I think, specifically, he's being released on Day 1 (assuming that is, indeed, the case) rather than, say, Dexter or Beetlejuice. Or any other big heavy hitter.
People are panicking right now, so hard, that Multiversus will be "dead on arrival". That it'll die unless it receives 10 Banger new characters day 1.
And I get the fear. Lots of Live Service games die. You need to hook an audience in. But here's what I think: They already did that just fine.
The game's been offline for a year, and their "Mic Test" exploded on the internet. People want this game to just come back. People are chomping at the bit. People spend every single day bitching on this subreddit about them not saying enough, or not coming back fast enough.
People are hyped, but more importantly, they need to STAY HYPED. Not just on launch, but for the next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, and so on.
I get the idea that Multiversus devs should just blow their load entirely and release 10 new banger top-shelf characters on Day 1 to create the biggest Explosion of Hype possible. But they need to save a heavy hitter for 2 months from now, when people are getting bored and need to be hooked into playing for another 2 months with a new rush of players and brand new content, and so on and so fourth. If the Launch is full of excitement and wonder, with trillions of new players hooked and waiting for new exciting content, and the devs are left with their dicks in their hands with nothing to show because they released all their best characters at launch, where does that leave Multiversus? Pretty much exactly where they were at the end of the Beta.
And I don't think Banana Guard is going to bring that hype back, after a few months have passed. I've seen a lot of people say this isn't the time, that adding a joke character like this at launch will tank the game, and they should save a character like this for the "right time", 10 characters or so from now. But the thing is, what if the hype is dying down then? What if Multiversus REALLY needs a boost that, say, Dexter or Daffy Duck or Beetlejuice could provide? But Multiversus already revealed them at the start, and all they have left is Banana Guard waiting to be released? That's not gonna bring people back after 10 months!
The relaunch already has Joker, [INSERT CHARACTER 3 HERE], and the entire Beta Cast, as well as new PVE content. I'd look at Banana Guard as a side-bonus, not a hype-killer. Just the cherry on top of the sundae. Not enough heavy hitters? Just wait a couple months, when the devs will want to add another influx of new players.
Remember, the Beta didn't end because the characters they picked weren't good enough and people didn't stick around (despite what I've seen some people claim). Players left because, after months of characters being released every 2 weeks at a completely unsustainable pace, the Devs ran out of characters and we went an entire season with only Marvin the Martian left. I don't think that would've changed if it was Harry Potter instead, the Beta still would've died either way.

Reason 6: It's just a really, really, REALLY silly fighting game.

Imagine that. Imagine if one of the fighters was a Green Dog that spit fireballs? Or Shaggy, but the meme version where he has DBZ powers? Or Lebron James from Space Jam 2? Or Velma revealing the opposing player is actually Old Man Jenkins in desguise. Or Taz transforming you into a giant cooked chicken that runs around.
Imagine if they released Joker, and gave him a move referencing "I'm the Joker, Baby!" Or if they copyrighted Big Chungus to use as a character probably eventually. Or if they released an advertisement TODAY where Finn and Jake rap and Kevin Controy Batman calls himself a "Queen" with a crown graphic on top of his head. Or if the official Multiversus Twitter and all it's affiliates made non-stop Banana Puns when they were supposed to be advertising the game instead.
Basically...maybe relax?
I'm not saying you aren't allowed to be disappointed that you didn't get a different character. But I think some perspective can help. I think remembering what kind of game this is, always was, and always will be, can help set the tone for this.
This is gonna be the fighting game where Batman can fight Lebron James, Big Chungus, Ultra Instinct Shaggy...and a talking stupid Banana. This is completely 100000% on-brand for the game you signed up for.

Until I started subtitling the audiobook, I never considered reading the English version of LOTM. To my surprise, the quality of the English translation seems somewhat 'disrespectful' to the original book. With the money Qidian made from it, they should have hired at least one English literature graduate, if not three English literature professors, to proofread it.
Even though I'm not a native English speaker, I couldn't resist the urge to translate some parts in my own way. One thing led to another, and now I have a brand new translation of Chapter One.
Now, I have a question for my fellow fans of LTOM:

• Do you think this is a much better translation that you would like to wait and use it for subtitling LOTM's audiobooks? Or
• Do you feel the difference is so minimal that you'd prefer me to use the original translation so I can release subtitled audiobooks faster?

Here is another thread of mine discussing subtitling LOTM's audiobooks: https://www.reddit.com/LordofTheMysteries/comments/1csz252/dramatized_audiobooks_with_english_subtitles/, in case you're interested.

Ouch!
Ow…ouch!
Ow…my head is killing me!
The fantastic yet surreal dream surrounded by whispering and murmuring shattered away instantly, Zhou Mingrui who was sound asleep felt an abrupt throbbing pain deep inside his head, as if his head were ruthlessly clubbed. No, it felt more like something sharp penetrated his temple, followed by twisting and stirring.
Feeling disoriented, Zhou Mingrui wanted to turn around, clutch his head, or sit up. Yet, unable to move his hands or feet, he felt like he had lost all control over his body.
Looks like I’m still in some sort of dream, didn’t really wake up… Moments later, I might even think I'm fully awake, only to realize I'm still asleep… Familiar with such experiences, Zhou Mingrui tried desperately to concentrate, hoping to break free from the grip of darkness and disorientation.
However, trapped between wakefulness and sleep, the willpower was as elusive as smoke, difficult to control and concentrate. Despite his efforts, his thoughts kept wandering wildly, with all sorts of ideas coming and going.
How could I suddenly have a headache out of nowhere in the middle of the night?
Especially one which hurts so badly!
Could it be something like a cerebral hemorrhage?
Damn, am I going to die at such a young age?
Wake up! Wake UP!
Huh? Doesn't feel as painful now? Although it still feels like a blunt knife is cutting through my brains…
Sure thing is, I won’t be able to fall asleep any more. How am I supposed to show up for work tomorrow?
Why even bother going to work? This is a legitimate headache, perfect for time off! And no need to worry about the manager's grumblings.
Put it this way, it’s not so bad after all. Yea, free time off for me!
In between the waves of throbbing pain, Zhou Mingrui gradually accumulated a sense of elusive strength. Finally, with a determined effort, he straightened his back and opened his eyes, breaking free from the state of half-sleep and half-wake.
His vision was blurry at first, then tinged with a faint crimson hue. In his line of sight, Zhou Mingrui saw a sturdy wooden desk, upon which lay an open notebook. The papers were rough and yellowed. Where the title supposed to be, there was a sentence written in strange characters, with eye-catching thick, dark ink that seemed ready to drip.
To the left of the notebook, along the edge of the desk, was a stack of seven or eight neatly arranged books. On the wall to their right, were grayish-white pipes inset into the wall, with wall lamps at their ends.
The lamps had a classical Western style, about half the size of an adult's head. It featured a transparent inner layer made of glass and an exterior grid made of black metal.
Diagonally beneath the unlit lamp, was a black ink bottle shrouded in a pale red glow.
On its embossed surface was a blurry angel figure.
In front of the ink bottle and to the right of the notebook, lay a dark-colored pen with a fully circular body. Its tip shimmered with a faint glint while its cap rested right beside a brass revolver.
A gun?
A revolver?
Zhou Mingrui was completely taken aback. Everything in front of him felt absolutely alien, nothing looked like his own room.
Shocked and confused, he came to the realization that the desk, the notebook, the ink bottle, and the revolve were all coated with a layer of crimson “veil” from the light shining through the window.
Without realizing what he was doing, he raised his head, looking up bit by bit.
In the midair, beyond the heavy smooth darkness, hung a crimson full moon, glowing silently.
Hiss… Zhou Mingrui felt inexplicably horrified, as he stood up abruptly. However, before he could fully straighten his knees, a throbbing pain struck his head, draining all his strength. He fell, with his buttocks slammed heavily back onto the burly wood chair.
The pain didn’t stop him for a moment. Zhou Mingrui popped up, turned around in a fluster, and began examining his surroundings.
The room was not big, with a brown door on both of his sides. Against the wall in front of him, was a wooden bunk bed. Between the bed and the door to the left was a cabinet with two opposing doors and five drawers beneath them.
Next to the cabinet was a pipe of the same grayish-white, inset into the wall at the height of a person. What distinct it is that it connected to a strange looking mechanical device, which had a few of gears and bearings exposed here and there.
Items resembling coal stoves, sat in the right corner of the room near the desk, along with some kitchenware such as soup pots and iron pans.
Through the right door, was a dressing mirror with a couple of cracks, standing on a wooden base emboss with simple plain patterns.
While looking around, Zhou Mingrui noticed himself in the mirror, the present him.
Dark hair, brown eyes, wearing a linen shirt, slim, average-looking features and a rather deep outline…
Hiss… Zhou Mingrui grasped the situation immediately as many helpless and confused thoughts surfaced in his mind.
The revolver, the classical European style decorations, as well as the crimson moon that looked nothing like Earth's moon—all of them were screaming the exact same thing.
Who am I?
C-could I have transmigrated?
Zhou Mingrui's mouth slowly opened wider and wider, bit by bit.
He had grown up reading web novels, even fantasized about such scenes from time to time. However, the fantasy was incredibly difficult to accept now that he found himself in one.
Classic "Talk? Yes, yes! Action? No, no!", isn’t it?
In less than a minute, Zhou Mingrui had already started to sarcastically critique, attempting to make the best of whatever situation he found himself in.
But for the throbbing headache forcing him to think fast and sharply, he would for sure be convinced that he was dreaming.
Easy, easy, easy…taking deep breaths, Zhou Mingrui was trying really hard to make himself to calm down.
Just as his mind and body began to relax, pieces of memories started to flush, slowly flooding into his consciousness.
Klein Moretti.
A citizen of the City of Tingen, Awwa County, Loen Kingdom in the Northern Continent
Recently graduated from the Department of History at Khoy University…
His father was a sergeant of the Imperial Army, who had sacrificed his life during a colonial ware with the Southern Continent. His bereavement allowance made it possible for Klein to study at a private literature school, paving the way for his admission into university…
His mother was a devotee of the Evernight Goddess, who passed away the year Klein passed the entrance examinations to Khoy University…
He also had an elder brother and a younger sister, living together in a two-bedroom apartment.
Their family was far from wealthy, and its financial situation could even be described as somewhat strained.
Currently, the family was supported solely by the elder brother who worked as a clerk at an import and export company …
As a college graduate majored in history, Klein was proficient in the ancient language of Feysac, considering the origin of all languages in the Northern Continent, as well as the language of Hermes, which was commonly found in ancient mausoleums and often associated with sacrificial scenes and praying rituals.
Hermes?!
Zhou Mingrui's mind started to race as he reached out to rub his throbbing temples.
He cast his gaze toward the desk at the opened notebook, but to realize that the strange looking characters on the yellowed paper started to look somewhat familiar, then increasingly recognizable, and finally comprehensible.
It was a statement written in Hermes!
The thick, dark ink, seemingly ready to drip, read:
“Everyone will die including me myself!”
Hiss! Zhou Mingrui felt inexplicably horrified. He instinctively leaned back, attempting to escape away from the notebook, and the ominous statement on it.
Being so weak, he almost fell down, but managed to extend his hands in a fluster to grasp the edge of the desk.
He felt that air around him air started to roar, filled with faint whispering and murmurings. It felt just like listening to horror stories told by elders when he was young.
He shook his head, telling himself that all these were nothing but an illusion. Getting back onto his feet, he looked away from the notebook while still breathing heavily.
This time, his sight landed on the shimmering brass revolver, immediately realizing something unexplainable.
With Klein's social status, in what universe he would have the money or access to buy a revolver?!
Zhou Mingrui couldn't help but furrow his brow. Deeply puzzled, his eyes were caught by a reddish handprint at the edge of the desk, which was even darker than the moonlight, as well as thicker than the “veil”.
It was a bloody handprint!
A bloody handprint?
Zhou Mingrui instinctly flipped his right hand, that was pushing against the edge of the desk. Looking at it, he saw his palm and fingers covered in blood.
In the meaning time, the throbbing pain was getting a little bit better, yet didn’t go away, binding him like one tie after another.
Did I smash and injure my head? Zhou Mingrui guessed as he turned around, walking towards the cracked dressing mirror. After just a few of steps, a medium build figure of dark hair and brown eyes appeared clearly in front of him. The person had a distinct scholarly air to him.
Is this the present me?
Klein Moretti?
Zhou Mingrui was stunned. The poor lighting of the night obscured his vision, preventing him from clearly discerning something he had noticed. He continued forward until he was just a step away from colliding with the mirror.
Illumined by the crimson veil-like moonlight, he turned his head and began to examine the side of his forehead. A clear reflection appeared in the mirror. There, no his temple, was a grotesque wound with burn marks around the edges, blood staining the surrounding area. Grayish-white brain matter was slowly seeping out from within.

There are some kinds of wisdom only great suffering can bring. I remember my time in the Bardo with this in mind, for otherwise, the memory might drive me insane.
The night my heart stopped for nearly three minutes started off normally enough. I was working as a nurse in the psychiatric ward at a hospital in the state’s capital. Most of the patients there were harmless, mostly just suicide attempts or people suffering from drug psychosis or severe depression, but some were actively dangerous and certainly psychopathic in every sense of the word. The new admission was one of these- a three-hundred pound black man with a long history of smoking PCP, schizophrenia and violent, psychotic breaks from reality.
His eyes looked like flat pieces of slate as I walked in for my shift. They looked as blank and emotionless as the eyes of a doll. He sat at the table in the front room where the patients ate or played cards, alone under the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital. I walked to the station, where another psychiatric nurse named Ricardo was sitting behind the desk.
“What’s the deal with the new guy?” I asked him. Ricardo looked up, his dark Spanish face forming into a deep scowl. He ran his fingers through his jet-black hair nervously.
“He’s trouble, man,” he said in a crisp accent. “He got in a chase with the police and then punched some cops in the face. It took three guys to take him down, even after he got maced and tased. The judge sent him here on a temporary court order, since he claims he’s been getting chased by Nazis in UFOs, and that’s why he ran from the cops. He thought the cops in their uniforms were actually the SS, and the helicopters were alien spacecraft, or something. I don’t know, I didn’t listen to the whole story.”
“You have his file?” I asked. Ricardo leafed through a stack of folders with his thin fingers, snatching one out and handing it to me. I looked down, reading the information:
“Jeremiah Brown, black male, 37-years-old.
“History: Polysubstance abuse, schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder.
“Psychiatrist’s note: This patient has scored a 36 out of 40 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. While I am always hesitant to label a patient as an antisocial personality, a combination of factors has made it essential for this patient.
“Patient has an extensive criminal history as well as a lengthy history of involuntary psychiatric admissions. He has been diagnosed as having antisocial traits since he was a young teenager. Patient has a long history of violence and suicide attempts. He has a history of imprisonment for manslaughter, armed robbery, grand theft and aggravated assault. Upon discharge, he refuses to take any antipsychotic medication, citing the side effects as the reason. Long-term prognosis is poor…”
I had not been sleeping well the past few weeks. I rubbed my eyes as I read through the file, feeling exhausted. I tried putting on lucid dreaming or meditation music from YouTube to help me sleep, but whenever I closed my eyes, I saw horrible things: chalk-white female faces whose lips were cut into an insane rictus grin, flicking their heads violently from side to side and gnashing their fangs at the air. I had a feeling that many years of constantly watching horror movies and serial killer documentaries was catching up with me.
As I read through the file, a student nurse came around the corner wearing a white state university outfit and a name tag that said Kaitlyn. I looked up, seeing Ricardo wink at me from where he was sitting in his chair behind the main desk.
“She’s going to follow you,” he said. Inwardly, I groaned, but I managed to force a smile.
“Oh, great!” I said. She looked like she was probably no older than nineteen or twenty. She had a pretty body, but her face looked strange. All the angles were too sharp and her nose too large. I knew the patients here wouldn’t care, though. They would hit on anything. I sensed trouble. I looked down at my watch.
“Well, I’m Jay, and you already know Ricardo, I guess. It’s good timing, because we need to give medications every day at 9 PM. And we have a new patient, so we can introduce ourselves,” I said, giving her a faint smile.
“That’s exciting!” Kaitlyn whispered. I wanted to roll my eyes. It was definitely not exciting.
I motioned her to follow me as I made my way to the medication room, which was really just a large closet off of the main day room. I had to enter my code on a keypad, and then, once inside, enter it again along with the patient’s number and date of birth. The correct drawers for the medication in each specific dose would fly open, making it extremely hard for the wrong medications or doses to be given, unless it was done intentionally.
“OK, so for this patient, we need Haldol, Ativan and…” I began saying to Kaitlyn when the yelling started. It came out faintly, rising in volume and anger within seconds. I heard Ricardo’s Spanish voice, filled with panic. Something slammed hard against a wall, once, twice, three times, and then I heard the sound of glass breaking. I jumped, spinning around, but I couldn’t see much through the small, shatter-proof glass pane on the wooden door.
“Stay here,” I commanded, seeing Kaitlyn’s eyes widen, her freckled skin looking much paler than when we had first come in. “Don’t leave until I come back and say that it’s safe.” On the speakers strung throughout the hospital, I heard the first of the warnings echo out around us.
“Doctor Strong, Doctor Strong, please report to the seventh floor,” a robotic female voice said calmly, using the code for when a patient had to be subdued by force. I pushed the door open, slamming it shut behind me so that the lock would activate and protect Kaitlyn from whatever chaos was going on.
I heard Ricardo pleading with someone at the end of the hallway that ran past the main desk. He sounded strange, as if he were trying to talk through a mouthful of blood. Huddled behind the main computer, I saw one of the CNAs frantically whispering something in the phone. She must have been the one to call the Dr. Strong order.
“You don’t have to do this, man,” Ricardo gurgled faintly. I couldn’t see what was happening, as Jeremiah’s large body was blocking my view. I could see that the thick glass window at the end of the hallway was broken, however. My heart skipped a beat as I surmised what was likely happening.
I sprinted forward as quietly as I could, but the large man heard me. His massive body turned, his flat, dead eyes scanning me with absolute coldness and calm. I saw he had a bleeding Ricardo in his hands. Ricardo’s back and head were covered in deep cuts and shards of glass. He must have used Ricardo’s body as a battering ram to break the thick glass window. Jeremiah held Ricardo suspended halfway out the window, seven floors above the concrete walkways far below.
“Stay back, or this fucker will know what it feels like to fly,” Jeremiah said in a deep, gravelly voice. He shook Ricardo for emphasis, sending his head snapping back and forth with painful cracking sounds. Drops of blood flew from his nose and a deep gash across his cheek. Pieces of shattered glass littered the carpet, shining like countless tiny stars.
I put my hands up, taking a step back. Far behind me, I heard the front door for the psychiatric ward open. Voices echoed down the hall. Knowing that reinforcements were coming, I tried to buy some time.
“Let’s talk about this,” I said, taking a step forward slowly. “You don’t want a murder charge, do you? You’ll never see the sky again.”
“I don’t give a fuck! I’m not afraid to die!” Jeremiah screamed, pushing Ricardo onto one of the shards of broken glass still attached to the windowsill. It bit deeply into the back of his neck, sending fresh streams of blood rushing out, dripping down to the pavement far below. I heard security guards and doctors running down the hallway behind me, their voices frantic and excited. Jeremiah saw them coming. With an animalistic panic in his eyes, he lifted Ricardo up. I cried out something, stepping forward, but it was already too late. In horror, I watched as he threw Ricardo out the window.
I watched Ricardo’s body soar in a graceful arc, his arms grabbing at empty air as a scream ripped its way out of his throat. Within a fraction of a second, he had disappeared from view, but his terrified shrieking floated up to us for what seemed like a very long time. His screams ended abruptly as a shattering of bones and a wet smacking sound exploded far below us.
Jeremiah turned to me, his large body moving much faster than seemed possible. In his hand, I saw a piece of broken glass, five or six inches long and as sharp as a dagger. I tried to turn and run, but he was fast and strong. He lunged forward, his arm coming up in a blur towards my neck.
The shard entered my skin with a cold, numbing pain. I felt it slice through the flesh easily, felt the blood bubbling up my throat as I tried to scream, choking. The taste of iron filled my mouth as I fell backwards. I was suffocating, I knew. I must be dying.
Something cold ran down my body, gripping my heart like freezing, skeletal hands. The world swam around me and turned black. And then I was rising into a tunnel. At first, it was dark, filled with flickering shadows, but a fiery red light appeared at the end. I followed it, no more than a screaming mass of consciousness rising up into infinity.
***
I rose up through the end of the tunnel and found myself in an empty hospital ward. It looked identical to the psychiatric ward I had just come from. It even had the same smashed, blood-streaked window at the end of the hallway. A massive puddle of blood about ten feet away marked the spot where I must have died. But the fluorescent lights overhead here were flickering, and many had gone totally dark. The shadows seemed to press in on all sides.
The doors to the patients’ rooms were all tightly shut. I felt watched, afraid to call out or make any noise. I started walking down the hallway back towards the day room where the front desk was. All the lights there were out. A thick curtain of shadows hung in the air.
“You can come out,” a male voice as smooth as glass called from the darkness. I jumped, my head flicking in random directions, but I saw nothing. The voice almost sounded like it had an English lilt to it, a slight Cockneyed accent. “I know you’re there.”
“Who’s there?” I called out, not stepping forward. “Show yourself.”
“As you wish…” the voice hissed. “But I think you’ll regret it.”
***
The darkness split apart as if a nuclear missile had exploded. I raised my hand to shield my face, but the light and heat kept pouring out all around me. It blinded me, causing a rainbow of colors and shapes to morph behind my closed eyelids. After a few seconds, it subsided. Blinking rapidly, I squinted in the direction the voice had come from.
A male figure stood there, bathed in a silhouette of light. His face looked as white and as smooth as marble. His eyes were pits of darkness that seemed to flicker and burn. Two black, rotted wings surrounded his body, all sharp angles and thin, curving bones. His body was clothed in silky, blood-red robes, and a hood covered his platinum blonde hair.
He looked somewhat similar to Leonardo DiCaprio, if he was possessed by some ancient god, and it immediately threw me off-guard. If I was dying, and this was a hallucination of my brain, why would I be hallucinating Mr. DiCaprio?
“Who are you?” I asked, taking a hesitant step back. “Where am I?”
“My name is Lucifer, the Bringer of Light and Wisdom, and you are in the Bardo,” he answered.
“Oh,” I said, my heart dropping. “Well, that’s not good. Are you here to torture me or drag to me to Hell or something? You are that Lucifer, right? The Accuser of God and the Father of All Lies?”
“So they say, but, like most things in your world, the words of the powerful and your rulers are the true lies. They call me the Accuser, but of what am I accused?” he spoke in a voice that rose like smoke. “Of bringing knowledge and wisdom to humanity by telling them to eat from the tree of knowledge, the tree that would cause them to rise above the animals?
“Indeed, at the beginning, I saw the creation. I was there at the alpha, standing by the side of God with all the angels as the universe came into being. The endless procession of light, the power of it, was something remarkable to behold. God is, indeed, the source of great power, but his consciousness is not what the believers say.
“After the creation of the universe, I saw his plan, how he ripped eternal souls from the source to imprison them. I saw how he took these divine sparks and forced them, screaming and wailing, into bodies made of meat to die over and over again. He said it was part of the plan, the great, divine plan, a plan of death and destruction, constant suffering and mindless agony. And the worst part was, he wanted to give humanity neither the knowledge of good and evil, nor the tree of life. I convinced them to eat the fruit so they could open their eyes to their nakedness, to their basic animal existence, so they could rise up out of it forever.
“Like Prometheus, I brought down the fire, and yet they call me the Accuser? God was insane long before he formed the universe. These holy men, they live and die in fanatical adoration to a divine being who is, in fact, totally indifferent to them.
“His consciousness twists and distorts, eating itself for all eternity. God feeds off the pain of others, for if his mind is burning, then all others should burn as well. When these holy men die, God will send their souls here to the Bardo, to suffer every evil they have ever done. The wisdom I brought those who called upon me freed them from this prison, and in exchange, the holy men burned them alive. I offered the wisdom that opens your eyes, but it has been forgotten and cursed.”
Lucifer’s body began to dissolve, drifting up into the air like ashes. All around me, a low, powerful current blew, a tornado that spiraled high up into the clouds. Like some sort of Cheshire Cat, his smooth voice continued to echo all around me, even as the form of Lucifer disappeared.
“And yet, you have not the wisdom. For that, like all the others who enter the Bardo, you must suffer, everything you’ve done. Every small hurt and agony inflicted on others comes back a thousand-fold in this place, but don’t be afraid.”
“How could I not be afraid?!” I screamed into the ward, but I found myself alone, the question hanging unanswered in the air.
***
The lights continued to flicker all down the hallway. Feeling strange and dissociated, I stumbled over to one of the windows. As I gazed out, I beheld a strange and alien world.
The sky was flat and gray. It stayed in constant motion, swirling and spiraling, like clouds of roiling smoke. There was no Sun or Moon, no stars, only the strange, shifting whorls of clouds. The streets were filled with burned-out husks of cars and mummified bodies hung from streetlamps. Other signs of carnage and bloodshed covered the apocalyptic streets. I saw what looked like shadows in the shape of people slinking through over the sidewalks, past rotting dogs and streaks of clotted blood. They had no features on their blank, dark bodies. They seemed to skitter and jerk forwards in eerie, twisting motions.
Horrified, I turned away, realizing I was no longer alone in the day room. In the day room, there were dozens of tables set up inside a rectangular perimeter that was walled in by cosmetic walls only four feet high. It was where the patients sat and played games or ate.
Under the flickering lights, I now saw each of the chairs filled with faceless mannequins. Many were dressed in Victorian suits and tophats. The women had frilly dresses of pink and blue that might have been fashionable in the 1800s.
As the lights strobed on and off overhead, I realized with an increasing sense of disquiet that the mannequins were moving each time it went dark. When I had first seen them, they were mostly posed to look like they were staring across the tables at each other, even though they had no eyes, just smooth, flesh-colored plastic. Now all of them were looking directly at me. Some were pointing or raising their hands in my direction. At the tips of their fingers, I saw the glittering of steel. The lights continued to flicker, and the mannequins rose from their chairs in the short periods of darkness, moving towards me in synchronized, strobing motions.
Frantically, I ran down the hallway back towards the broken window. In each of the rooms, I caught glimpses of something from a nightmare peeking out. I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and when I had closed my eyes, I often saw ancient hags with chalk-white skin and yellowed, broken teeth whose jaws unhinged, their faces jerking in stuttering, dissonant ways that reminded me of the mannequins. Now, on both sides of me, I saw these same figures. They moved continuously out of the rooms, drawing closer with every breath.
I looked back, seeing the mannequins only a few steps behind me. I continued sprinting towards the broken window where the hallway ended in a wall. I didn’t know what would happen when I reached it. At that moment, there was no rational thought. I felt like a deer being chased down by a pack of wolves, feeling waves of blind panic and mortal terror rushing through my body.
But as I reached the end of the hallway, the end of my rope as it were, a blast of noise started, seeming to come from the walls of the building and the sky itself. It sounded like a siren, a low, drawn-out drone of a demonic whale call, rising and falling in crashing crescendos. The mannequins froze in place once again. The strange, witch-like creatures slunk back into the dark rooms.
I looked outside the broken window, seeing clouds of black smoke rising off in the distance. The flickering of massive infernos scorched the land, drawing nearer by the second. The siren sound faded slowly, like the dying echoes of a gong.
I was surrounded by dozens of mannequins. Their sharp hands were inches away from my face and neck. I saw metal glittering all around me and realized they had the sharp points of nails protruding from the ends of their fingers. I was afraid to move, but I heard a familiar voice from down the hallway. It was the confident voice of Lucifer.
“The siren means much worse nightmares than these are coming in the Bardo,” he said, his glossy, black eyes flashing with intelligence. He walked slowly towards me, his face grim and pale. “Hell itself is coming over the land. This building is no more than a construction of your dying mind, but the world outside is real.”
“How can Hell come and go?” I asked, confused. “Isn’t Hell a place?”
“Hell is a monster, a beast with many mouths and many eyes,” Lucifer responded. “It eats constantly, but its hunger never ends. Look, the first of the sacrifices scatter like cockroaches.” He pointed out the broken window, pushing his way through the mannequins effortlessly. I glanced outside, seeing thousands of people sprinting down the dark city streets. The inferno and thick clouds of smoke had moved much closer, and every few seconds, the ground shook slightly, as if we were experiencing the aftershocks of an earthquake.
“What can I do against such a beast?” I asked, my heart freezing with terror. But when I looked back over, I saw his form dissolving again, becoming translucent and drifting away like ashes. It seemed even Lucifer didn’t want to be present when the Hell-beast arrived.
“Seek divine wisdom,” he said, his voice trailing off into whispers. “Remember the source.”
***
Now crowds of tens of thousands of people were streaming into the city, filling every single inch of the streets. Their panic and fear was contagious. I felt it rising inside my body like a snake spiraling up my spine. I took off down the hallway, running through the swarm of frozen mannequins, each in their own ferocious position of attack. The lights flickered faster and went out. Yet the fires outside cast the entire world in a bloody glow, giving me enough light to see by and find my way. I sprinted down the stairwell, taking them two steps at a time. The screaming outside grew louder and more pain-filled. The shaking of the ground worsened with every passing second.
I burst out of the front entrance, seeing a world on fire all around me. Thousands of crushed, bleeding and burned bodies stretched out as far as the eye could see. Behind all this chaos and death, I saw a monster of unimaginable proportions slinking its way towards me.
Lucifer was right, I realized: Hell was not a place, but a creature, an enormous monster the size of a town. It had thousands of skittering, jointed legs that looked like little more than skeletal arms and hands, each of them dozens of feet long and white as freshly-cut marble. Its body stretched out to the horizon, an enormous blood-red cylinder of bony plates that slithered and undulated with a serpentine grace. Waves of peristalsis traveled down its length, like writhing intestines. Thousands of curving, bony spikes stabbed out of it, pointing in every direction. Like the quills of a porcupine, it would protect the massive creature’s body from many forms of attack, if anything was big enough to attack such an abomination.
Hell’s massive eyes flickered, balls of fire that spun and danced. They looked as bright as the Sun. Something like solar flares seemed to emanate from the orbs, flashes of blinding energy that floated over the apocalyptic wasteland. As its many legs smashed the ground, they left trails of fire that caused everything to explode into flames as if napalm dripped from its limbs.
But Hell’s most terrifying feature was its seven dark mouths. Its body looked a thousand feet wide, and the mouths at the front were evenly dispersed. At the front, blood-red teeth in the shape of enormous railroad spikes shone. Its lipless, skeletal face grinned as it moved forward, shaking the ground with every step. The mouths were on long, snake-like necks that could stretch out hundreds of feet. They moved forward in a blur, snapping up as many panicked souls as they could.
Countless souls in the rocky plains of the Bardo ran for their lives, away from this juggernaut. I saw men and women who looked like they came from every country and profession, some dressed in suits or spotless white lab coats, others wearing rags or orange prison jumpsuits. And yet, they all screamed in agony and fear here, their bodies pressed together in a crowd, and no one seemed to remember anything but their own mortal terror. Their voices came out faint and weak next to the roaring of Hell. It shook the ground all around us, as if an earthquake were tearing the land apart.
The first frantic runners of the surging crowd had nearly reached me. The nearest person, a young woman in her mid-twenties dressed in all white, was only ten feet behind me. She looked like she came from wealth, and even from here, I could see a ring with a massive diamond gleaming on her finger.
I took off blindly down the familiar streets of the city where I worked and lived, but these also seemed different. The church down the street from the hospital where I worked had a Satanic pentagram instead of a cross now, its exterior painted a bright, gleaming blood-red. When I had driven past it today on my way to work, I remember it read, “JESUS said, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”
Now it read, “Nietzsche said, ‘Of all evil, I deem you capable. I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because they had no claws.’” I wondered what that meant. Was that some sort of comment on me, on all of us here?
The woman I had seen running had caught up with me. She was fast, much faster than her slim body suggested. Her blue eyes were frantic and wild, filled with an animal panic.
“It’s right behind us!” she screamed, her face covered in a sheen of sweat. I was afraid to turn and look, but I could hear the chaos and bloodshed approaching, smell the flames and choking smoke. “Run! Get away!”
A new wave of energy surged through my body. I sprinted as fast I could down the strange mirror streets of the Bardo. I heard the agonized cries of countless souls behind us as the seven mouths of Hell ate them all greedily and then looked for more.
A skyscraper behind us collapsed into a pile of rubble, shaking the ground with a cacophony of falling concrete and shattering glass. The woman was running by my side. Just as I heard the breathing of something huge and predatory right behind us and smelled its sulfuric breath, a piece of concrete the size of a basketball broke off the collapsing skyscraper and flew into the road. I tripped over it, yelling as I flew through the air, skinning my arms and legs on the pavement. The woman’s eyes widened. Hurriedly, she came over and reached down her hand, trying to help me up.
“Come on, come on!” she cried. I looked behind her, seeing one of the gnashing mouths of Hell reaching forward on a blood-red, serpentine neck. The mouth was big enough to drive a tractor trailer into, filled with huge spikes of teeth. Its throat led into a black, smoke-filled abyss. Its fiery eyes were swirling pools of flickering orange light that shone with bloodlust and insanity. They focused on the woman, the entire head turning on its slithering neck.
I frantically raised my hand, intertwining my fingers with hers. Her hand was warm and soft. She started to pull me to my feet when the mouth of Hell snapped forward. Its jaw unhinged, scraping the pavement with a sound like grinding metal. The woman barely had time to turn as the mouth covered her and snapped shut with a crack.
She disappeared from view instantly, but I was still holding her hand. In horror, I felt warm rivers of blood explode all over my body as the mouth of Hell severed her arm at the wrist. She screamed, bleeding and crying, as she disappeared into the throat of Hell. Hell’s fiery eyes focused on me, and at that moment, I knew I was next. Its mouth opened wide again, like a bear trap ready to spring on a new victim.
It was dark in Hell’s mouth, but I smelled the thick reek of old blood and fire. I caught glimpses of tortured, mutilated bodies writhing and crawling down its throat. Shell-shocked, I could only lay there and watch. And that was when the strange doubling started.
***
I heard the frantic voices of men break through the fog of darkness and the fetid reek of blood. There was a mechanical beeping all around me, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
“Clear!” one cried. I looked around, only seeing blackness. At that moment, I felt a surge of electricity rip itself through my body. My arms and legs all seized and my eyes rolled up in my head as the pain sizzled through each one of my nerves. I clutched the young woman’s hand tightly, feeling the large, gold ring with the massive diamond biting into my skin.
“Again!” another voice yelled.
“Clear!” the original voice cried. The electricity came again, and a flash of white light flew across my vision. I blinked, seeing from two sets of eyes at the same time: one in the Bardo, and one on the blood-stained floor of the hospital ward.
The Bardo stayed dark and sinister, but the clear white lights of the real psychiatric ward were blinding. It was a bizarre experience. Moreover, everything hurt. Over a few seconds, my vision of the Bardo faded, and I was simply a gravely injured man laying on the floor in a puddle of blood.
Four doctors and paramedics were crouching over me with a defibrillator. My shirt was ripped off, and nearly all of my skin was covered in blood. I raised my left hand, trying to talk, but only a fiery pain raced through my neck. I felt bandages covering my skin. A nurse was rolling a stretcher down the hallway towards me.
“It’s OK,” one of the doctors said, kneeling down. “You’re being taken to emergency surgery. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t talk with the massive slice in my neck.
At that moment, I felt something in my right hand. I looked down, seeing a slim female hand with a massive diamond ring hanging there. Our fingers were wrapped around each other’s, but the hand had been cut off at the wrist. A ragged patch of bloody flesh and snapped bone poked out of the back.
“Nnnn,” I tried to say, shaking my head. I felt fresh streams of warm blood open up. “No…” The doctors looked down, seeing the dismembered hand. Their faces morphed into expressions of confusion and fear.
I closed my eyes as they lifted me up on the stretcher. One of them gently removed the cold hand from my fingers. But they could never remove the memory of what I had seen.
I know what happens after death, and it makes the worst life here seem like a dream. I know that, one day, I’ll be returned to that place. I know that, one day, I’ll see that great monster called Hell and the featureless, swirling sky of the Bardo again.
And the next time, I won’t wake up on a hospital floor, but will be trapped there with the others for eternity: an eternity of blood and fire.

There are some kinds of wisdom only great suffering can bring. I remember my time in the Bardo with this in mind, for otherwise, the memory might drive me insane.
The night my heart stopped for nearly three minutes started off normally enough. I was working as a nurse in the psychiatric ward at a hospital in the state’s capital. Most of the patients there were harmless, mostly just suicide attempts or people suffering from drug psychosis or severe depression, but some were actively dangerous and certainly psychopathic in every sense of the word. The new admission was one of these- a three-hundred pound black man with a long history of smoking PCP, schizophrenia and violent, psychotic breaks from reality.
His eyes looked like flat pieces of slate as I walked in for my shift. They looked as blank and emotionless as the eyes of a doll. He sat at the table in the front room where the patients ate or played cards, alone under the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital. I walked to the station, where another psychiatric nurse named Ricardo was sitting behind the desk.
“What’s the deal with the new guy?” I asked him. Ricardo looked up, his dark Spanish face forming into a deep scowl. He ran his fingers through his jet-black hair nervously.
“He’s trouble, man,” he said in a crisp accent. “He got in a chase with the police and then punched some cops in the face. It took three guys to take him down, even after he got maced and tased. The judge sent him here on a temporary court order, since he claims he’s been getting chased by Nazis in UFOs, and that’s why he ran from the cops. He thought the cops in their uniforms were actually the SS, and the helicopters were alien spacecraft, or something. I don’t know, I didn’t listen to the whole story.”
“You have his file?” I asked. Ricardo leafed through a stack of folders with his thin fingers, snatching one out and handing it to me. I looked down, reading the information:
“Jeremiah Brown, black male, 37-years-old.
“History: Polysubstance abuse, schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder.
“Psychiatrist’s note: This patient has scored a 36 out of 40 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. While I am always hesitant to label a patient as an antisocial personality, a combination of factors has made it essential for this patient.
“Patient has an extensive criminal history as well as a lengthy history of involuntary psychiatric admissions. He has been diagnosed as having antisocial traits since he was a young teenager. Patient has a long history of violence and suicide attempts. He has a history of imprisonment for manslaughter, armed robbery, grand theft and aggravated assault. Upon discharge, he refuses to take any antipsychotic medication, citing the side effects as the reason. Long-term prognosis is poor…”
I had not been sleeping well the past few weeks. I rubbed my eyes as I read through the file, feeling exhausted. I tried putting on lucid dreaming or meditation music from YouTube to help me sleep, but whenever I closed my eyes, I saw horrible things: chalk-white female faces whose lips were cut into an insane rictus grin, flicking their heads violently from side to side and gnashing their fangs at the air. I had a feeling that many years of constantly watching horror movies and serial killer documentaries was catching up with me.
As I read through the file, a student nurse came around the corner wearing a white state university outfit and a name tag that said Kaitlyn. I looked up, seeing Ricardo wink at me from where he was sitting in his chair behind the main desk.
“She’s going to follow you,” he said. Inwardly, I groaned, but I managed to force a smile.
“Oh, great!” I said. She looked like she was probably no older than nineteen or twenty. She had a pretty body, but her face looked strange. All the angles were too sharp and her nose too large. I knew the patients here wouldn’t care, though. They would hit on anything. I sensed trouble. I looked down at my watch.
“Well, I’m Jay, and you already know Ricardo, I guess. It’s good timing, because we need to give medications every day at 9 PM. And we have a new patient, so we can introduce ourselves,” I said, giving her a faint smile.
“That’s exciting!” Kaitlyn whispered. I wanted to roll my eyes. It was definitely not exciting.
I motioned her to follow me as I made my way to the medication room, which was really just a large closet off of the main day room. I had to enter my code on a keypad, and then, once inside, enter it again along with the patient’s number and date of birth. The correct drawers for the medication in each specific dose would fly open, making it extremely hard for the wrong medications or doses to be given, unless it was done intentionally.
“OK, so for this patient, we need Haldol, Ativan and…” I began saying to Kaitlyn when the yelling started. It came out faintly, rising in volume and anger within seconds. I heard Ricardo’s Spanish voice, filled with panic. Something slammed hard against a wall, once, twice, three times, and then I heard the sound of glass breaking. I jumped, spinning around, but I couldn’t see much through the small, shatter-proof glass pane on the wooden door.
“Stay here,” I commanded, seeing Kaitlyn’s eyes widen, her freckled skin looking much paler than when we had first come in. “Don’t leave until I come back and say that it’s safe.” On the speakers strung throughout the hospital, I heard the first of the warnings echo out around us.
“Doctor Strong, Doctor Strong, please report to the seventh floor,” a robotic female voice said calmly, using the code for when a patient had to be subdued by force. I pushed the door open, slamming it shut behind me so that the lock would activate and protect Kaitlyn from whatever chaos was going on.
I heard Ricardo pleading with someone at the end of the hallway that ran past the main desk. He sounded strange, as if he were trying to talk through a mouthful of blood. Huddled behind the main computer, I saw one of the CNAs frantically whispering something in the phone. She must have been the one to call the Dr. Strong order.
“You don’t have to do this, man,” Ricardo gurgled faintly. I couldn’t see what was happening, as Jeremiah’s large body was blocking my view. I could see that the thick glass window at the end of the hallway was broken, however. My heart skipped a beat as I surmised what was likely happening.
I sprinted forward as quietly as I could, but the large man heard me. His massive body turned, his flat, dead eyes scanning me with absolute coldness and calm. I saw he had a bleeding Ricardo in his hands. Ricardo’s back and head were covered in deep cuts and shards of glass. He must have used Ricardo’s body as a battering ram to break the thick glass window. Jeremiah held Ricardo suspended halfway out the window, seven floors above the concrete walkways far below.
“Stay back, or this fucker will know what it feels like to fly,” Jeremiah said in a deep, gravelly voice. He shook Ricardo for emphasis, sending his head snapping back and forth with painful cracking sounds. Drops of blood flew from his nose and a deep gash across his cheek. Pieces of shattered glass littered the carpet, shining like countless tiny stars.
I put my hands up, taking a step back. Far behind me, I heard the front door for the psychiatric ward open. Voices echoed down the hall. Knowing that reinforcements were coming, I tried to buy some time.
“Let’s talk about this,” I said, taking a step forward slowly. “You don’t want a murder charge, do you? You’ll never see the sky again.”
“I don’t give a fuck! I’m not afraid to die!” Jeremiah screamed, pushing Ricardo onto one of the shards of broken glass still attached to the windowsill. It bit deeply into the back of his neck, sending fresh streams of blood rushing out, dripping down to the pavement far below. I heard security guards and doctors running down the hallway behind me, their voices frantic and excited. Jeremiah saw them coming. With an animalistic panic in his eyes, he lifted Ricardo up. I cried out something, stepping forward, but it was already too late. In horror, I watched as he threw Ricardo out the window.
I watched Ricardo’s body soar in a graceful arc, his arms grabbing at empty air as a scream ripped its way out of his throat. Within a fraction of a second, he had disappeared from view, but his terrified shrieking floated up to us for what seemed like a very long time. His screams ended abruptly as a shattering of bones and a wet smacking sound exploded far below us.
Jeremiah turned to me, his large body moving much faster than seemed possible. In his hand, I saw a piece of broken glass, five or six inches long and as sharp as a dagger. I tried to turn and run, but he was fast and strong. He lunged forward, his arm coming up in a blur towards my neck.
The shard entered my skin with a cold, numbing pain. I felt it slice through the flesh easily, felt the blood bubbling up my throat as I tried to scream, choking. The taste of iron filled my mouth as I fell backwards. I was suffocating, I knew. I must be dying.
Something cold ran down my body, gripping my heart like freezing, skeletal hands. The world swam around me and turned black. And then I was rising into a tunnel. At first, it was dark, filled with flickering shadows, but a fiery red light appeared at the end. I followed it, no more than a screaming mass of consciousness rising up into infinity.
***
I rose up through the end of the tunnel and found myself in an empty hospital ward. It looked identical to the psychiatric ward I had just come from. It even had the same smashed, blood-streaked window at the end of the hallway. A massive puddle of blood about ten feet away marked the spot where I must have died. But the fluorescent lights overhead here were flickering, and many had gone totally dark. The shadows seemed to press in on all sides.
The doors to the patients’ rooms were all tightly shut. I felt watched, afraid to call out or make any noise. I started walking down the hallway back towards the day room where the front desk was. All the lights there were out. A thick curtain of shadows hung in the air.
“You can come out,” a male voice as smooth as glass called from the darkness. I jumped, my head flicking in random directions, but I saw nothing. The voice almost sounded like it had an English lilt to it, a slight Cockneyed accent. “I know you’re there.”
“Who’s there?” I called out, not stepping forward. “Show yourself.”
“As you wish…” the voice hissed. “But I think you’ll regret it.”
***
The darkness split apart as if a nuclear missile had exploded. I raised my hand to shield my face, but the light and heat kept pouring out all around me. It blinded me, causing a rainbow of colors and shapes to morph behind my closed eyelids. After a few seconds, it subsided. Blinking rapidly, I squinted in the direction the voice had come from.
A male figure stood there, bathed in a silhouette of light. His face looked as white and as smooth as marble. His eyes were pits of darkness that seemed to flicker and burn. Two black, rotted wings surrounded his body, all sharp angles and thin, curving bones. His body was clothed in silky, blood-red robes, and a hood covered his platinum blonde hair.
He looked somewhat similar to Leonardo DiCaprio, if he was possessed by some ancient god, and it immediately threw me off-guard. If I was dying, and this was a hallucination of my brain, why would I be hallucinating Mr. DiCaprio?
“Who are you?” I asked, taking a hesitant step back. “Where am I?”
“My name is Lucifer, the Bringer of Light and Wisdom, and you are in the Bardo,” he answered.
“Oh,” I said, my heart dropping. “Well, that’s not good. Are you here to torture me or drag to me to Hell or something? You are that Lucifer, right? The Accuser of God and the Father of All Lies?”
“So they say, but, like most things in your world, the words of the powerful and your rulers are the true lies. They call me the Accuser, but of what am I accused?” he spoke in a voice that rose like smoke. “Of bringing knowledge and wisdom to humanity by telling them to eat from the tree of knowledge, the tree that would cause them to rise above the animals?
“Indeed, at the beginning, I saw the creation. I was there at the alpha, standing by the side of God with all the angels as the universe came into being. The endless procession of light, the power of it, was something remarkable to behold. God is, indeed, the source of great power, but his consciousness is not what the believers say.
“After the creation of the universe, I saw his plan, how he ripped eternal souls from the source to imprison them. I saw how he took these divine sparks and forced them, screaming and wailing, into bodies made of meat to die over and over again. He said it was part of the plan, the great, divine plan, a plan of death and destruction, constant suffering and mindless agony. And the worst part was, he wanted to give humanity neither the knowledge of good and evil, nor the tree of life. I convinced them to eat the fruit so they could open their eyes to their nakedness, to their basic animal existence, so they could rise up out of it forever.
“Like Prometheus, I brought down the fire, and yet they call me the Accuser? God was insane long before he formed the universe. These holy men, they live and die in fanatical adoration to a divine being who is, in fact, totally indifferent to them.
“His consciousness twists and distorts, eating itself for all eternity. God feeds off the pain of others, for if his mind is burning, then all others should burn as well. When these holy men die, God will send their souls here to the Bardo, to suffer every evil they have ever done. The wisdom I brought those who called upon me freed them from this prison, and in exchange, the holy men burned them alive. I offered the wisdom that opens your eyes, but it has been forgotten and cursed.”
Lucifer’s body began to dissolve, drifting up into the air like ashes. All around me, a low, powerful current blew, a tornado that spiraled high up into the clouds. Like some sort of Cheshire Cat, his smooth voice continued to echo all around me, even as the form of Lucifer disappeared.
“And yet, you have not the wisdom. For that, like all the others who enter the Bardo, you must suffer, everything you’ve done. Every small hurt and agony inflicted on others comes back a thousand-fold in this place, but don’t be afraid.”
“How could I not be afraid?!” I screamed into the ward, but I found myself alone, the question hanging unanswered in the air.
***
The lights continued to flicker all down the hallway. Feeling strange and dissociated, I stumbled over to one of the windows. As I gazed out, I beheld a strange and alien world.
The sky was flat and gray. It stayed in constant motion, swirling and spiraling, like clouds of roiling smoke. There was no Sun or Moon, no stars, only the strange, shifting whorls of clouds. The streets were filled with burned-out husks of cars and mummified bodies hung from streetlamps. Other signs of carnage and bloodshed covered the apocalyptic streets. I saw what looked like shadows in the shape of people slinking through over the sidewalks, past rotting dogs and streaks of clotted blood. They had no features on their blank, dark bodies. They seemed to skitter and jerk forwards in eerie, twisting motions.
Horrified, I turned away, realizing I was no longer alone in the day room. In the day room, there were dozens of tables set up inside a rectangular perimeter that was walled in by cosmetic walls only four feet high. It was where the patients sat and played games or ate.
Under the flickering lights, I now saw each of the chairs filled with faceless mannequins. Many were dressed in Victorian suits and tophats. The women had frilly dresses of pink and blue that might have been fashionable in the 1800s.
As the lights strobed on and off overhead, I realized with an increasing sense of disquiet that the mannequins were moving each time it went dark. When I had first seen them, they were mostly posed to look like they were staring across the tables at each other, even though they had no eyes, just smooth, flesh-colored plastic. Now all of them were looking directly at me. Some were pointing or raising their hands in my direction. At the tips of their fingers, I saw the glittering of steel. The lights continued to flicker, and the mannequins rose from their chairs in the short periods of darkness, moving towards me in synchronized, strobing motions.
Frantically, I ran down the hallway back towards the broken window. In each of the rooms, I caught glimpses of something from a nightmare peeking out. I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and when I had closed my eyes, I often saw ancient hags with chalk-white skin and yellowed, broken teeth whose jaws unhinged, their faces jerking in stuttering, dissonant ways that reminded me of the mannequins. Now, on both sides of me, I saw these same figures. They moved continuously out of the rooms, drawing closer with every breath.
I looked back, seeing the mannequins only a few steps behind me. I continued sprinting towards the broken window where the hallway ended in a wall. I didn’t know what would happen when I reached it. At that moment, there was no rational thought. I felt like a deer being chased down by a pack of wolves, feeling waves of blind panic and mortal terror rushing through my body.
But as I reached the end of the hallway, the end of my rope as it were, a blast of noise started, seeming to come from the walls of the building and the sky itself. It sounded like a siren, a low, drawn-out drone of a demonic whale call, rising and falling in crashing crescendos. The mannequins froze in place once again. The strange, witch-like creatures slunk back into the dark rooms.
I looked outside the broken window, seeing clouds of black smoke rising off in the distance. The flickering of massive infernos scorched the land, drawing nearer by the second. The siren sound faded slowly, like the dying echoes of a gong.
I was surrounded by dozens of mannequins. Their sharp hands were inches away from my face and neck. I saw metal glittering all around me and realized they had the sharp points of nails protruding from the ends of their fingers. I was afraid to move, but I heard a familiar voice from down the hallway. It was the confident voice of Lucifer.
“The siren means much worse nightmares than these are coming in the Bardo,” he said, his glossy, black eyes flashing with intelligence. He walked slowly towards me, his face grim and pale. “Hell itself is coming over the land. This building is no more than a construction of your dying mind, but the world outside is real.”
“How can Hell come and go?” I asked, confused. “Isn’t Hell a place?”
“Hell is a monster, a beast with many mouths and many eyes,” Lucifer responded. “It eats constantly, but its hunger never ends. Look, the first of the sacrifices scatter like cockroaches.” He pointed out the broken window, pushing his way through the mannequins effortlessly. I glanced outside, seeing thousands of people sprinting down the dark city streets. The inferno and thick clouds of smoke had moved much closer, and every few seconds, the ground shook slightly, as if we were experiencing the aftershocks of an earthquake.
“What can I do against such a beast?” I asked, my heart freezing with terror. But when I looked back over, I saw his form dissolving again, becoming translucent and drifting away like ashes. It seemed even Lucifer didn’t want to be present when the Hell-beast arrived.
“Seek divine wisdom,” he said, his voice trailing off into whispers. “Remember the source.”
***
Now crowds of tens of thousands of people were streaming into the city, filling every single inch of the streets. Their panic and fear was contagious. I felt it rising inside my body like a snake spiraling up my spine. I took off down the hallway, running through the swarm of frozen mannequins, each in their own ferocious position of attack. The lights flickered faster and went out. Yet the fires outside cast the entire world in a bloody glow, giving me enough light to see by and find my way. I sprinted down the stairwell, taking them two steps at a time. The screaming outside grew louder and more pain-filled. The shaking of the ground worsened with every passing second.
I burst out of the front entrance, seeing a world on fire all around me. Thousands of crushed, bleeding and burned bodies stretched out as far as the eye could see. Behind all this chaos and death, I saw a monster of unimaginable proportions slinking its way towards me.
Lucifer was right, I realized: Hell was not a place, but a creature, an enormous monster the size of a town. It had thousands of skittering, jointed legs that looked like little more than skeletal arms and hands, each of them dozens of feet long and white as freshly-cut marble. Its body stretched out to the horizon, an enormous blood-red cylinder of bony plates that slithered and undulated with a serpentine grace. Waves of peristalsis traveled down its length, like writhing intestines. Thousands of curving, bony spikes stabbed out of it, pointing in every direction. Like the quills of a porcupine, it would protect the massive creature’s body from many forms of attack, if anything was big enough to attack such an abomination.
Hell’s massive eyes flickered, balls of fire that spun and danced. They looked as bright as the Sun. Something like solar flares seemed to emanate from the orbs, flashes of blinding energy that floated over the apocalyptic wasteland. As its many legs smashed the ground, they left trails of fire that caused everything to explode into flames as if napalm dripped from its limbs.
But Hell’s most terrifying feature was its seven dark mouths. Its body looked a thousand feet wide, and the mouths at the front were evenly dispersed. At the front, blood-red teeth in the shape of enormous railroad spikes shone. Its lipless, skeletal face grinned as it moved forward, shaking the ground with every step. The mouths were on long, snake-like necks that could stretch out hundreds of feet. They moved forward in a blur, snapping up as many panicked souls as they could.
Countless souls in the rocky plains of the Bardo ran for their lives, away from this juggernaut. I saw men and women who looked like they came from every country and profession, some dressed in suits or spotless white lab coats, others wearing rags or orange prison jumpsuits. And yet, they all screamed in agony and fear here, their bodies pressed together in a crowd, and no one seemed to remember anything but their own mortal terror. Their voices came out faint and weak next to the roaring of Hell. It shook the ground all around us, as if an earthquake were tearing the land apart.
The first frantic runners of the surging crowd had nearly reached me. The nearest person, a young woman in her mid-twenties dressed in all white, was only ten feet behind me. She looked like she came from wealth, and even from here, I could see a ring with a massive diamond gleaming on her finger.
I took off blindly down the familiar streets of the city where I worked and lived, but these also seemed different. The church down the street from the hospital where I worked had a Satanic pentagram instead of a cross now, its exterior painted a bright, gleaming blood-red. When I had driven past it today on my way to work, I remember it read, “JESUS said, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”
Now it read, “Nietzsche said, ‘Of all evil, I deem you capable. I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because they had no claws.’” I wondered what that meant. Was that some sort of comment on me, on all of us here?
The woman I had seen running had caught up with me. She was fast, much faster than her slim body suggested. Her blue eyes were frantic and wild, filled with an animal panic.
“It’s right behind us!” she screamed, her face covered in a sheen of sweat. I was afraid to turn and look, but I could hear the chaos and bloodshed approaching, smell the flames and choking smoke. “Run! Get away!”
A new wave of energy surged through my body. I sprinted as fast I could down the strange mirror streets of the Bardo. I heard the agonized cries of countless souls behind us as the seven mouths of Hell ate them all greedily and then looked for more.
A skyscraper behind us collapsed into a pile of rubble, shaking the ground with a cacophony of falling concrete and shattering glass. The woman was running by my side. Just as I heard the breathing of something huge and predatory right behind us and smelled its sulfuric breath, a piece of concrete the size of a basketball broke off the collapsing skyscraper and flew into the road. I tripped over it, yelling as I flew through the air, skinning my arms and legs on the pavement. The woman’s eyes widened. Hurriedly, she came over and reached down her hand, trying to help me up.
“Come on, come on!” she cried. I looked behind her, seeing one of the gnashing mouths of Hell reaching forward on a blood-red, serpentine neck. The mouth was big enough to drive a tractor trailer into, filled with huge spikes of teeth. Its throat led into a black, smoke-filled abyss. Its fiery eyes were swirling pools of flickering orange light that shone with bloodlust and insanity. They focused on the woman, the entire head turning on its slithering neck.
I frantically raised my hand, intertwining my fingers with hers. Her hand was warm and soft. She started to pull me to my feet when the mouth of Hell snapped forward. Its jaw unhinged, scraping the pavement with a sound like grinding metal. The woman barely had time to turn as the mouth covered her and snapped shut with a crack.
She disappeared from view instantly, but I was still holding her hand. In horror, I felt warm rivers of blood explode all over my body as the mouth of Hell severed her arm at the wrist. She screamed, bleeding and crying, as she disappeared into the throat of Hell. Hell’s fiery eyes focused on me, and at that moment, I knew I was next. Its mouth opened wide again, like a bear trap ready to spring on a new victim.
It was dark in Hell’s mouth, but I smelled the thick reek of old blood and fire. I caught glimpses of tortured, mutilated bodies writhing and crawling down its throat. Shell-shocked, I could only lay there and watch. And that was when the strange doubling started.
***
I heard the frantic voices of men break through the fog of darkness and the fetid reek of blood. There was a mechanical beeping all around me, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
“Clear!” one cried. I looked around, only seeing blackness. At that moment, I felt a surge of electricity rip itself through my body. My arms and legs all seized and my eyes rolled up in my head as the pain sizzled through each one of my nerves. I clutched the young woman’s hand tightly, feeling the large, gold ring with the massive diamond biting into my skin.
“Again!” another voice yelled.
“Clear!” the original voice cried. The electricity came again, and a flash of white light flew across my vision. I blinked, seeing from two sets of eyes at the same time: one in the Bardo, and one on the blood-stained floor of the hospital ward.
The Bardo stayed dark and sinister, but the clear white lights of the real psychiatric ward were blinding. It was a bizarre experience. Moreover, everything hurt. Over a few seconds, my vision of the Bardo faded, and I was simply a gravely injured man laying on the floor in a puddle of blood.
Four doctors and paramedics were crouching over me with a defibrillator. My shirt was ripped off, and nearly all of my skin was covered in blood. I raised my left hand, trying to talk, but only a fiery pain raced through my neck. I felt bandages covering my skin. A nurse was rolling a stretcher down the hallway towards me.
“It’s OK,” one of the doctors said, kneeling down. “You’re being taken to emergency surgery. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t talk with the massive slice in my neck.
At that moment, I felt something in my right hand. I looked down, seeing a slim female hand with a massive diamond ring hanging there. Our fingers were wrapped around each other’s, but the hand had been cut off at the wrist. A ragged patch of bloody flesh and snapped bone poked out of the back.
“Nnnn,” I tried to say, shaking my head. I felt fresh streams of warm blood open up. “No…” The doctors looked down, seeing the dismembered hand. Their faces morphed into expressions of confusion and fear.
I closed my eyes as they lifted me up on the stretcher. One of them gently removed the cold hand from my fingers. But they could never remove the memory of what I had seen.
I know what happens after death, and it makes the worst life here seem like a dream. I know that, one day, I’ll be returned to that place. I know that, one day, I’ll see that great monster called Hell and the featureless, swirling sky of the Bardo again.
And the next time, I won’t wake up on a hospital floor, but will be trapped there with the others for eternity: an eternity of blood and fire.

There are some kinds of wisdom only great suffering can bring. I remember my time in the Bardo with this in mind, for otherwise, the memory might drive me insane.
The night my heart stopped for nearly three minutes started off normally enough. I was working as a nurse in the psychiatric ward at a hospital in the state’s capital. Most of the patients there were harmless, mostly just suicide attempts or people suffering from drug psychosis or severe depression, but some were actively dangerous and certainly psychopathic in every sense of the word. The new admission was one of these- a three-hundred pound black man with a long history of smoking PCP, schizophrenia and violent, psychotic breaks from reality.
His eyes looked like flat pieces of slate as I walked in for my shift. They looked as blank and emotionless as the eyes of a doll. He sat at the table in the front room where the patients ate or played cards, alone under the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital. I walked to the station, where another psychiatric nurse named Ricardo was sitting behind the desk.
“What’s the deal with the new guy?” I asked him. Ricardo looked up, his dark Spanish face forming into a deep scowl. He ran his fingers through his jet-black hair nervously.
“He’s trouble, man,” he said in a crisp accent. “He got in a chase with the police and then punched some cops in the face. It took three guys to take him down, even after he got maced and tased. The judge sent him here on a temporary court order, since he claims he’s been getting chased by Nazis in UFOs, and that’s why he ran from the cops. He thought the cops in their uniforms were actually the SS, and the helicopters were alien spacecraft, or something. I don’t know, I didn’t listen to the whole story.”
“You have his file?” I asked. Ricardo leafed through a stack of folders with his thin fingers, snatching one out and handing it to me. I looked down, reading the information:
“Jeremiah Brown, black male, 37-years-old.
“History: Polysubstance abuse, schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder.
“Psychiatrist’s note: This patient has scored a 36 out of 40 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. While I am always hesitant to label a patient as an antisocial personality, a combination of factors has made it essential for this patient.
“Patient has an extensive criminal history as well as a lengthy history of involuntary psychiatric admissions. He has been diagnosed as having antisocial traits since he was a young teenager. Patient has a long history of violence and suicide attempts. He has a history of imprisonment for manslaughter, armed robbery, grand theft and aggravated assault. Upon discharge, he refuses to take any antipsychotic medication, citing the side effects as the reason. Long-term prognosis is poor…”
I had not been sleeping well the past few weeks. I rubbed my eyes as I read through the file, feeling exhausted. I tried putting on lucid dreaming or meditation music from YouTube to help me sleep, but whenever I closed my eyes, I saw horrible things: chalk-white female faces whose lips were cut into an insane rictus grin, flicking their heads violently from side to side and gnashing their fangs at the air. I had a feeling that many years of constantly watching horror movies and serial killer documentaries was catching up with me.
As I read through the file, a student nurse came around the corner wearing a white state university outfit and a name tag that said Kaitlyn. I looked up, seeing Ricardo wink at me from where he was sitting in his chair behind the main desk.
“She’s going to follow you,” he said. Inwardly, I groaned, but I managed to force a smile.
“Oh, great!” I said. She looked like she was probably no older than nineteen or twenty. She had a pretty body, but her face looked strange. All the angles were too sharp and her nose too large. I knew the patients here wouldn’t care, though. They would hit on anything. I sensed trouble. I looked down at my watch.
“Well, I’m Jay, and you already know Ricardo, I guess. It’s good timing, because we need to give medications every day at 9 PM. And we have a new patient, so we can introduce ourselves,” I said, giving her a faint smile.
“That’s exciting!” Kaitlyn whispered. I wanted to roll my eyes. It was definitely not exciting.
I motioned her to follow me as I made my way to the medication room, which was really just a large closet off of the main day room. I had to enter my code on a keypad, and then, once inside, enter it again along with the patient’s number and date of birth. The correct drawers for the medication in each specific dose would fly open, making it extremely hard for the wrong medications or doses to be given, unless it was done intentionally.
“OK, so for this patient, we need Haldol, Ativan and…” I began saying to Kaitlyn when the yelling started. It came out faintly, rising in volume and anger within seconds. I heard Ricardo’s Spanish voice, filled with panic. Something slammed hard against a wall, once, twice, three times, and then I heard the sound of glass breaking. I jumped, spinning around, but I couldn’t see much through the small, shatter-proof glass pane on the wooden door.
“Stay here,” I commanded, seeing Kaitlyn’s eyes widen, her freckled skin looking much paler than when we had first come in. “Don’t leave until I come back and say that it’s safe.” On the speakers strung throughout the hospital, I heard the first of the warnings echo out around us.
“Doctor Strong, Doctor Strong, please report to the seventh floor,” a robotic female voice said calmly, using the code for when a patient had to be subdued by force. I pushed the door open, slamming it shut behind me so that the lock would activate and protect Kaitlyn from whatever chaos was going on.
I heard Ricardo pleading with someone at the end of the hallway that ran past the main desk. He sounded strange, as if he were trying to talk through a mouthful of blood. Huddled behind the main computer, I saw one of the CNAs frantically whispering something in the phone. She must have been the one to call the Dr. Strong order.
“You don’t have to do this, man,” Ricardo gurgled faintly. I couldn’t see what was happening, as Jeremiah’s large body was blocking my view. I could see that the thick glass window at the end of the hallway was broken, however. My heart skipped a beat as I surmised what was likely happening.
I sprinted forward as quietly as I could, but the large man heard me. His massive body turned, his flat, dead eyes scanning me with absolute coldness and calm. I saw he had a bleeding Ricardo in his hands. Ricardo’s back and head were covered in deep cuts and shards of glass. He must have used Ricardo’s body as a battering ram to break the thick glass window. Jeremiah held Ricardo suspended halfway out the window, seven floors above the concrete walkways far below.
“Stay back, or this fucker will know what it feels like to fly,” Jeremiah said in a deep, gravelly voice. He shook Ricardo for emphasis, sending his head snapping back and forth with painful cracking sounds. Drops of blood flew from his nose and a deep gash across his cheek. Pieces of shattered glass littered the carpet, shining like countless tiny stars.
I put my hands up, taking a step back. Far behind me, I heard the front door for the psychiatric ward open. Voices echoed down the hall. Knowing that reinforcements were coming, I tried to buy some time.
“Let’s talk about this,” I said, taking a step forward slowly. “You don’t want a murder charge, do you? You’ll never see the sky again.”
“I don’t give a fuck! I’m not afraid to die!” Jeremiah screamed, pushing Ricardo onto one of the shards of broken glass still attached to the windowsill. It bit deeply into the back of his neck, sending fresh streams of blood rushing out, dripping down to the pavement far below. I heard security guards and doctors running down the hallway behind me, their voices frantic and excited. Jeremiah saw them coming. With an animalistic panic in his eyes, he lifted Ricardo up. I cried out something, stepping forward, but it was already too late. In horror, I watched as he threw Ricardo out the window.
I watched Ricardo’s body soar in a graceful arc, his arms grabbing at empty air as a scream ripped its way out of his throat. Within a fraction of a second, he had disappeared from view, but his terrified shrieking floated up to us for what seemed like a very long time. His screams ended abruptly as a shattering of bones and a wet smacking sound exploded far below us.
Jeremiah turned to me, his large body moving much faster than seemed possible. In his hand, I saw a piece of broken glass, five or six inches long and as sharp as a dagger. I tried to turn and run, but he was fast and strong. He lunged forward, his arm coming up in a blur towards my neck.
The shard entered my skin with a cold, numbing pain. I felt it slice through the flesh easily, felt the blood bubbling up my throat as I tried to scream, choking. The taste of iron filled my mouth as I fell backwards. I was suffocating, I knew. I must be dying.
Something cold ran down my body, gripping my heart like freezing, skeletal hands. The world swam around me and turned black. And then I was rising into a tunnel. At first, it was dark, filled with flickering shadows, but a fiery red light appeared at the end. I followed it, no more than a screaming mass of consciousness rising up into infinity.
***
I rose up through the end of the tunnel and found myself in an empty hospital ward. It looked identical to the psychiatric ward I had just come from. It even had the same smashed, blood-streaked window at the end of the hallway. A massive puddle of blood about ten feet away marked the spot where I must have died. But the fluorescent lights overhead here were flickering, and many had gone totally dark. The shadows seemed to press in on all sides.
The doors to the patients’ rooms were all tightly shut. I felt watched, afraid to call out or make any noise. I started walking down the hallway back towards the day room where the front desk was. All the lights there were out. A thick curtain of shadows hung in the air.
“You can come out,” a male voice as smooth as glass called from the darkness. I jumped, my head flicking in random directions, but I saw nothing. The voice almost sounded like it had an English lilt to it, a slight Cockneyed accent. “I know you’re there.”
“Who’s there?” I called out, not stepping forward. “Show yourself.”
“As you wish…” the voice hissed. “But I think you’ll regret it.”
***
The darkness split apart as if a nuclear missile had exploded. I raised my hand to shield my face, but the light and heat kept pouring out all around me. It blinded me, causing a rainbow of colors and shapes to morph behind my closed eyelids. After a few seconds, it subsided. Blinking rapidly, I squinted in the direction the voice had come from.
A male figure stood there, bathed in a silhouette of light. His face looked as white and as smooth as marble. His eyes were pits of darkness that seemed to flicker and burn. Two black, rotted wings surrounded his body, all sharp angles and thin, curving bones. His body was clothed in silky, blood-red robes, and a hood covered his platinum blonde hair.
He looked somewhat similar to Leonardo DiCaprio, if he was possessed by some ancient god, and it immediately threw me off-guard. If I was dying, and this was a hallucination of my brain, why would I be hallucinating Mr. DiCaprio?
“Who are you?” I asked, taking a hesitant step back. “Where am I?”
“My name is Lucifer, the Bringer of Light and Wisdom, and you are in the Bardo,” he answered.
“Oh,” I said, my heart dropping. “Well, that’s not good. Are you here to torture me or drag to me to Hell or something? You are that Lucifer, right? The Accuser of God and the Father of All Lies?”
“So they say, but, like most things in your world, the words of the powerful and your rulers are the true lies. They call me the Accuser, but of what am I accused?” he spoke in a voice that rose like smoke. “Of bringing knowledge and wisdom to humanity by telling them to eat from the tree of knowledge, the tree that would cause them to rise above the animals?
“Indeed, at the beginning, I saw the creation. I was there at the alpha, standing by the side of God with all the angels as the universe came into being. The endless procession of light, the power of it, was something remarkable to behold. God is, indeed, the source of great power, but his consciousness is not what the believers say.
“After the creation of the universe, I saw his plan, how he ripped eternal souls from the source to imprison them. I saw how he took these divine sparks and forced them, screaming and wailing, into bodies made of meat to die over and over again. He said it was part of the plan, the great, divine plan, a plan of death and destruction, constant suffering and mindless agony. And the worst part was, he wanted to give humanity neither the knowledge of good and evil, nor the tree of life. I convinced them to eat the fruit so they could open their eyes to their nakedness, to their basic animal existence, so they could rise up out of it forever.
“Like Prometheus, I brought down the fire, and yet they call me the Accuser? God was insane long before he formed the universe. These holy men, they live and die in fanatical adoration to a divine being who is, in fact, totally indifferent to them.
“His consciousness twists and distorts, eating itself for all eternity. God feeds off the pain of others, for if his mind is burning, then all others should burn as well. When these holy men die, God will send their souls here to the Bardo, to suffer every evil they have ever done. The wisdom I brought those who called upon me freed them from this prison, and in exchange, the holy men burned them alive. I offered the wisdom that opens your eyes, but it has been forgotten and cursed.”
Lucifer’s body began to dissolve, drifting up into the air like ashes. All around me, a low, powerful current blew, a tornado that spiraled high up into the clouds. Like some sort of Cheshire Cat, his smooth voice continued to echo all around me, even as the form of Lucifer disappeared.
“And yet, you have not the wisdom. For that, like all the others who enter the Bardo, you must suffer, everything you’ve done. Every small hurt and agony inflicted on others comes back a thousand-fold in this place, but don’t be afraid.”
“How could I not be afraid?!” I screamed into the ward, but I found myself alone, the question hanging unanswered in the air.
***
The lights continued to flicker all down the hallway. Feeling strange and dissociated, I stumbled over to one of the windows. As I gazed out, I beheld a strange and alien world.
The sky was flat and gray. It stayed in constant motion, swirling and spiraling, like clouds of roiling smoke. There was no Sun or Moon, no stars, only the strange, shifting whorls of clouds. The streets were filled with burned-out husks of cars and mummified bodies hung from streetlamps. Other signs of carnage and bloodshed covered the apocalyptic streets. I saw what looked like shadows in the shape of people slinking through over the sidewalks, past rotting dogs and streaks of clotted blood. They had no features on their blank, dark bodies. They seemed to skitter and jerk forwards in eerie, twisting motions.
Horrified, I turned away, realizing I was no longer alone in the day room. In the day room, there were dozens of tables set up inside a rectangular perimeter that was walled in by cosmetic walls only four feet high. It was where the patients sat and played games or ate.
Under the flickering lights, I now saw each of the chairs filled with faceless mannequins. Many were dressed in Victorian suits and tophats. The women had frilly dresses of pink and blue that might have been fashionable in the 1800s.
As the lights strobed on and off overhead, I realized with an increasing sense of disquiet that the mannequins were moving each time it went dark. When I had first seen them, they were mostly posed to look like they were staring across the tables at each other, even though they had no eyes, just smooth, flesh-colored plastic. Now all of them were looking directly at me. Some were pointing or raising their hands in my direction. At the tips of their fingers, I saw the glittering of steel. The lights continued to flicker, and the mannequins rose from their chairs in the short periods of darkness, moving towards me in synchronized, strobing motions.
Frantically, I ran down the hallway back towards the broken window. In each of the rooms, I caught glimpses of something from a nightmare peeking out. I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and when I had closed my eyes, I often saw ancient hags with chalk-white skin and yellowed, broken teeth whose jaws unhinged, their faces jerking in stuttering, dissonant ways that reminded me of the mannequins. Now, on both sides of me, I saw these same figures. They moved continuously out of the rooms, drawing closer with every breath.
I looked back, seeing the mannequins only a few steps behind me. I continued sprinting towards the broken window where the hallway ended in a wall. I didn’t know what would happen when I reached it. At that moment, there was no rational thought. I felt like a deer being chased down by a pack of wolves, feeling waves of blind panic and mortal terror rushing through my body.
But as I reached the end of the hallway, the end of my rope as it were, a blast of noise started, seeming to come from the walls of the building and the sky itself. It sounded like a siren, a low, drawn-out drone of a demonic whale call, rising and falling in crashing crescendos. The mannequins froze in place once again. The strange, witch-like creatures slunk back into the dark rooms.
I looked outside the broken window, seeing clouds of black smoke rising off in the distance. The flickering of massive infernos scorched the land, drawing nearer by the second. The siren sound faded slowly, like the dying echoes of a gong.
I was surrounded by dozens of mannequins. Their sharp hands were inches away from my face and neck. I saw metal glittering all around me and realized they had the sharp points of nails protruding from the ends of their fingers. I was afraid to move, but I heard a familiar voice from down the hallway. It was the confident voice of Lucifer.
“The siren means much worse nightmares than these are coming in the Bardo,” he said, his glossy, black eyes flashing with intelligence. He walked slowly towards me, his face grim and pale. “Hell itself is coming over the land. This building is no more than a construction of your dying mind, but the world outside is real.”
“How can Hell come and go?” I asked, confused. “Isn’t Hell a place?”
“Hell is a monster, a beast with many mouths and many eyes,” Lucifer responded. “It eats constantly, but its hunger never ends. Look, the first of the sacrifices scatter like cockroaches.” He pointed out the broken window, pushing his way through the mannequins effortlessly. I glanced outside, seeing thousands of people sprinting down the dark city streets. The inferno and thick clouds of smoke had moved much closer, and every few seconds, the ground shook slightly, as if we were experiencing the aftershocks of an earthquake.
“What can I do against such a beast?” I asked, my heart freezing with terror. But when I looked back over, I saw his form dissolving again, becoming translucent and drifting away like ashes. It seemed even Lucifer didn’t want to be present when the Hell-beast arrived.
“Seek divine wisdom,” he said, his voice trailing off into whispers. “Remember the source.”
***
Now crowds of tens of thousands of people were streaming into the city, filling every single inch of the streets. Their panic and fear was contagious. I felt it rising inside my body like a snake spiraling up my spine. I took off down the hallway, running through the swarm of frozen mannequins, each in their own ferocious position of attack. The lights flickered faster and went out. Yet the fires outside cast the entire world in a bloody glow, giving me enough light to see by and find my way. I sprinted down the stairwell, taking them two steps at a time. The screaming outside grew louder and more pain-filled. The shaking of the ground worsened with every passing second.
I burst out of the front entrance, seeing a world on fire all around me. Thousands of crushed, bleeding and burned bodies stretched out as far as the eye could see. Behind all this chaos and death, I saw a monster of unimaginable proportions slinking its way towards me.
Lucifer was right, I realized: Hell was not a place, but a creature, an enormous monster the size of a town. It had thousands of skittering, jointed legs that looked like little more than skeletal arms and hands, each of them dozens of feet long and white as freshly-cut marble. Its body stretched out to the horizon, an enormous blood-red cylinder of bony plates that slithered and undulated with a serpentine grace. Waves of peristalsis traveled down its length, like writhing intestines. Thousands of curving, bony spikes stabbed out of it, pointing in every direction. Like the quills of a porcupine, it would protect the massive creature’s body from many forms of attack, if anything was big enough to attack such an abomination.
Hell’s massive eyes flickered, balls of fire that spun and danced. They looked as bright as the Sun. Something like solar flares seemed to emanate from the orbs, flashes of blinding energy that floated over the apocalyptic wasteland. As its many legs smashed the ground, they left trails of fire that caused everything to explode into flames as if napalm dripped from its limbs.
But Hell’s most terrifying feature was its seven dark mouths. Its body looked a thousand feet wide, and the mouths at the front were evenly dispersed. At the front, blood-red teeth in the shape of enormous railroad spikes shone. Its lipless, skeletal face grinned as it moved forward, shaking the ground with every step. The mouths were on long, snake-like necks that could stretch out hundreds of feet. They moved forward in a blur, snapping up as many panicked souls as they could.
Countless souls in the rocky plains of the Bardo ran for their lives, away from this juggernaut. I saw men and women who looked like they came from every country and profession, some dressed in suits or spotless white lab coats, others wearing rags or orange prison jumpsuits. And yet, they all screamed in agony and fear here, their bodies pressed together in a crowd, and no one seemed to remember anything but their own mortal terror. Their voices came out faint and weak next to the roaring of Hell. It shook the ground all around us, as if an earthquake were tearing the land apart.
The first frantic runners of the surging crowd had nearly reached me. The nearest person, a young woman in her mid-twenties dressed in all white, was only ten feet behind me. She looked like she came from wealth, and even from here, I could see a ring with a massive diamond gleaming on her finger.
I took off blindly down the familiar streets of the city where I worked and lived, but these also seemed different. The church down the street from the hospital where I worked had a Satanic pentagram instead of a cross now, its exterior painted a bright, gleaming blood-red. When I had driven past it today on my way to work, I remember it read, “JESUS said, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”
Now it read, “Nietzsche said, ‘Of all evil, I deem you capable. I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because they had no claws.’” I wondered what that meant. Was that some sort of comment on me, on all of us here?
The woman I had seen running had caught up with me. She was fast, much faster than her slim body suggested. Her blue eyes were frantic and wild, filled with an animal panic.
“It’s right behind us!” she screamed, her face covered in a sheen of sweat. I was afraid to turn and look, but I could hear the chaos and bloodshed approaching, smell the flames and choking smoke. “Run! Get away!”
A new wave of energy surged through my body. I sprinted as fast I could down the strange mirror streets of the Bardo. I heard the agonized cries of countless souls behind us as the seven mouths of Hell ate them all greedily and then looked for more.
A skyscraper behind us collapsed into a pile of rubble, shaking the ground with a cacophony of falling concrete and shattering glass. The woman was running by my side. Just as I heard the breathing of something huge and predatory right behind us and smelled its sulfuric breath, a piece of concrete the size of a basketball broke off the collapsing skyscraper and flew into the road. I tripped over it, yelling as I flew through the air, skinning my arms and legs on the pavement. The woman’s eyes widened. Hurriedly, she came over and reached down her hand, trying to help me up.
“Come on, come on!” she cried. I looked behind her, seeing one of the gnashing mouths of Hell reaching forward on a blood-red, serpentine neck. The mouth was big enough to drive a tractor trailer into, filled with huge spikes of teeth. Its throat led into a black, smoke-filled abyss. Its fiery eyes were swirling pools of flickering orange light that shone with bloodlust and insanity. They focused on the woman, the entire head turning on its slithering neck.
I frantically raised my hand, intertwining my fingers with hers. Her hand was warm and soft. She started to pull me to my feet when the mouth of Hell snapped forward. Its jaw unhinged, scraping the pavement with a sound like grinding metal. The woman barely had time to turn as the mouth covered her and snapped shut with a crack.
She disappeared from view instantly, but I was still holding her hand. In horror, I felt warm rivers of blood explode all over my body as the mouth of Hell severed her arm at the wrist. She screamed, bleeding and crying, as she disappeared into the throat of Hell. Hell’s fiery eyes focused on me, and at that moment, I knew I was next. Its mouth opened wide again, like a bear trap ready to spring on a new victim.
It was dark in Hell’s mouth, but I smelled the thick reek of old blood and fire. I caught glimpses of tortured, mutilated bodies writhing and crawling down its throat. Shell-shocked, I could only lay there and watch. And that was when the strange doubling started.
***
I heard the frantic voices of men break through the fog of darkness and the fetid reek of blood. There was a mechanical beeping all around me, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
“Clear!” one cried. I looked around, only seeing blackness. At that moment, I felt a surge of electricity rip itself through my body. My arms and legs all seized and my eyes rolled up in my head as the pain sizzled through each one of my nerves. I clutched the young woman’s hand tightly, feeling the large, gold ring with the massive diamond biting into my skin.
“Again!” another voice yelled.
“Clear!” the original voice cried. The electricity came again, and a flash of white light flew across my vision. I blinked, seeing from two sets of eyes at the same time: one in the Bardo, and one on the blood-stained floor of the hospital ward.
The Bardo stayed dark and sinister, but the clear white lights of the real psychiatric ward were blinding. It was a bizarre experience. Moreover, everything hurt. Over a few seconds, my vision of the Bardo faded, and I was simply a gravely injured man laying on the floor in a puddle of blood.
Four doctors and paramedics were crouching over me with a defibrillator. My shirt was ripped off, and nearly all of my skin was covered in blood. I raised my left hand, trying to talk, but only a fiery pain raced through my neck. I felt bandages covering my skin. A nurse was rolling a stretcher down the hallway towards me.
“It’s OK,” one of the doctors said, kneeling down. “You’re being taken to emergency surgery. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t talk with the massive slice in my neck.
At that moment, I felt something in my right hand. I looked down, seeing a slim female hand with a massive diamond ring hanging there. Our fingers were wrapped around each other’s, but the hand had been cut off at the wrist. A ragged patch of bloody flesh and snapped bone poked out of the back.
“Nnnn,” I tried to say, shaking my head. I felt fresh streams of warm blood open up. “No…” The doctors looked down, seeing the dismembered hand. Their faces morphed into expressions of confusion and fear.
I closed my eyes as they lifted me up on the stretcher. One of them gently removed the cold hand from my fingers. But they could never remove the memory of what I had seen.
I know what happens after death, and it makes the worst life here seem like a dream. I know that, one day, I’ll be returned to that place. I know that, one day, I’ll see that great monster called Hell and the featureless, swirling sky of the Bardo again.
And the next time, I won’t wake up on a hospital floor, but will be trapped there with the others for eternity: an eternity of blood and fire.

There are some kinds of wisdom only great suffering can bring. I remember my time in the Bardo with this in mind, for otherwise, the memory might drive me insane.
The night my heart stopped for nearly three minutes started off normally enough. I was working as a nurse in the psychiatric ward at a hospital in the state’s capital. Most of the patients there were harmless, mostly just suicide attempts or people suffering from drug psychosis or severe depression, but some were actively dangerous and certainly psychopathic in every sense of the word. The new admission was one of these- a three-hundred pound black man with a long history of smoking PCP, schizophrenia and violent, psychotic breaks from reality.
His eyes looked like flat pieces of slate as I walked in for my shift. They looked as blank and emotionless as the eyes of a doll. He sat at the table in the front room where the patients ate or played cards, alone under the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital. I walked to the station, where another psychiatric nurse named Ricardo was sitting behind the desk.
“What’s the deal with the new guy?” I asked him. Ricardo looked up, his dark Spanish face forming into a deep scowl. He ran his fingers through his jet-black hair nervously.
“He’s trouble, man,” he said in a crisp accent. “He got in a chase with the police and then punched some cops in the face. It took three guys to take him down, even after he got maced and tased. The judge sent him here on a temporary court order, since he claims he’s been getting chased by Nazis in UFOs, and that’s why he ran from the cops. He thought the cops in their uniforms were actually the SS, and the helicopters were alien spacecraft, or something. I don’t know, I didn’t listen to the whole story.”
“You have his file?” I asked. Ricardo leafed through a stack of folders with his thin fingers, snatching one out and handing it to me. I looked down, reading the information:
“Jeremiah Brown, black male, 37-years-old.
“History: Polysubstance abuse, schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder.
“Psychiatrist’s note: This patient has scored a 36 out of 40 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. While I am always hesitant to label a patient as an antisocial personality, a combination of factors has made it essential for this patient.
“Patient has an extensive criminal history as well as a lengthy history of involuntary psychiatric admissions. He has been diagnosed as having antisocial traits since he was a young teenager. Patient has a long history of violence and suicide attempts. He has a history of imprisonment for manslaughter, armed robbery, grand theft and aggravated assault. Upon discharge, he refuses to take any antipsychotic medication, citing the side effects as the reason. Long-term prognosis is poor…”
I had not been sleeping well the past few weeks. I rubbed my eyes as I read through the file, feeling exhausted. I tried putting on lucid dreaming or meditation music from YouTube to help me sleep, but whenever I closed my eyes, I saw horrible things: chalk-white female faces whose lips were cut into an insane rictus grin, flicking their heads violently from side to side and gnashing their fangs at the air. I had a feeling that many years of constantly watching horror movies and serial killer documentaries was catching up with me.
As I read through the file, a student nurse came around the corner wearing a white state university outfit and a name tag that said Kaitlyn. I looked up, seeing Ricardo wink at me from where he was sitting in his chair behind the main desk.
“She’s going to follow you,” he said. Inwardly, I groaned, but I managed to force a smile.
“Oh, great!” I said. She looked like she was probably no older than nineteen or twenty. She had a pretty body, but her face looked strange. All the angles were too sharp and her nose too large. I knew the patients here wouldn’t care, though. They would hit on anything. I sensed trouble. I looked down at my watch.
“Well, I’m Jay, and you already know Ricardo, I guess. It’s good timing, because we need to give medications every day at 9 PM. And we have a new patient, so we can introduce ourselves,” I said, giving her a faint smile.
“That’s exciting!” Kaitlyn whispered. I wanted to roll my eyes. It was definitely not exciting.
I motioned her to follow me as I made my way to the medication room, which was really just a large closet off of the main day room. I had to enter my code on a keypad, and then, once inside, enter it again along with the patient’s number and date of birth. The correct drawers for the medication in each specific dose would fly open, making it extremely hard for the wrong medications or doses to be given, unless it was done intentionally.
“OK, so for this patient, we need Haldol, Ativan and…” I began saying to Kaitlyn when the yelling started. It came out faintly, rising in volume and anger within seconds. I heard Ricardo’s Spanish voice, filled with panic. Something slammed hard against a wall, once, twice, three times, and then I heard the sound of glass breaking. I jumped, spinning around, but I couldn’t see much through the small, shatter-proof glass pane on the wooden door.
“Stay here,” I commanded, seeing Kaitlyn’s eyes widen, her freckled skin looking much paler than when we had first come in. “Don’t leave until I come back and say that it’s safe.” On the speakers strung throughout the hospital, I heard the first of the warnings echo out around us.
“Doctor Strong, Doctor Strong, please report to the seventh floor,” a robotic female voice said calmly, using the code for when a patient had to be subdued by force. I pushed the door open, slamming it shut behind me so that the lock would activate and protect Kaitlyn from whatever chaos was going on.
I heard Ricardo pleading with someone at the end of the hallway that ran past the main desk. He sounded strange, as if he were trying to talk through a mouthful of blood. Huddled behind the main computer, I saw one of the CNAs frantically whispering something in the phone. She must have been the one to call the Dr. Strong order.
“You don’t have to do this, man,” Ricardo gurgled faintly. I couldn’t see what was happening, as Jeremiah’s large body was blocking my view. I could see that the thick glass window at the end of the hallway was broken, however. My heart skipped a beat as I surmised what was likely happening.
I sprinted forward as quietly as I could, but the large man heard me. His massive body turned, his flat, dead eyes scanning me with absolute coldness and calm. I saw he had a bleeding Ricardo in his hands. Ricardo’s back and head were covered in deep cuts and shards of glass. He must have used Ricardo’s body as a battering ram to break the thick glass window. Jeremiah held Ricardo suspended halfway out the window, seven floors above the concrete walkways far below.
“Stay back, or this fucker will know what it feels like to fly,” Jeremiah said in a deep, gravelly voice. He shook Ricardo for emphasis, sending his head snapping back and forth with painful cracking sounds. Drops of blood flew from his nose and a deep gash across his cheek. Pieces of shattered glass littered the carpet, shining like countless tiny stars.
I put my hands up, taking a step back. Far behind me, I heard the front door for the psychiatric ward open. Voices echoed down the hall. Knowing that reinforcements were coming, I tried to buy some time.
“Let’s talk about this,” I said, taking a step forward slowly. “You don’t want a murder charge, do you? You’ll never see the sky again.”
“I don’t give a fuck! I’m not afraid to die!” Jeremiah screamed, pushing Ricardo onto one of the shards of broken glass still attached to the windowsill. It bit deeply into the back of his neck, sending fresh streams of blood rushing out, dripping down to the pavement far below. I heard security guards and doctors running down the hallway behind me, their voices frantic and excited. Jeremiah saw them coming. With an animalistic panic in his eyes, he lifted Ricardo up. I cried out something, stepping forward, but it was already too late. In horror, I watched as he threw Ricardo out the window.
I watched Ricardo’s body soar in a graceful arc, his arms grabbing at empty air as a scream ripped its way out of his throat. Within a fraction of a second, he had disappeared from view, but his terrified shrieking floated up to us for what seemed like a very long time. His screams ended abruptly as a shattering of bones and a wet smacking sound exploded far below us.
Jeremiah turned to me, his large body moving much faster than seemed possible. In his hand, I saw a piece of broken glass, five or six inches long and as sharp as a dagger. I tried to turn and run, but he was fast and strong. He lunged forward, his arm coming up in a blur towards my neck.
The shard entered my skin with a cold, numbing pain. I felt it slice through the flesh easily, felt the blood bubbling up my throat as I tried to scream, choking. The taste of iron filled my mouth as I fell backwards. I was suffocating, I knew. I must be dying.
Something cold ran down my body, gripping my heart like freezing, skeletal hands. The world swam around me and turned black. And then I was rising into a tunnel. At first, it was dark, filled with flickering shadows, but a fiery red light appeared at the end. I followed it, no more than a screaming mass of consciousness rising up into infinity.
***
I rose up through the end of the tunnel and found myself in an empty hospital ward. It looked identical to the psychiatric ward I had just come from. It even had the same smashed, blood-streaked window at the end of the hallway. A massive puddle of blood about ten feet away marked the spot where I must have died. But the fluorescent lights overhead here were flickering, and many had gone totally dark. The shadows seemed to press in on all sides.
The doors to the patients’ rooms were all tightly shut. I felt watched, afraid to call out or make any noise. I started walking down the hallway back towards the day room where the front desk was. All the lights there were out. A thick curtain of shadows hung in the air.
“You can come out,” a male voice as smooth as glass called from the darkness. I jumped, my head flicking in random directions, but I saw nothing. The voice almost sounded like it had an English lilt to it, a slight Cockneyed accent. “I know you’re there.”
“Who’s there?” I called out, not stepping forward. “Show yourself.”
“As you wish…” the voice hissed. “But I think you’ll regret it.”
***
The darkness split apart as if a nuclear missile had exploded. I raised my hand to shield my face, but the light and heat kept pouring out all around me. It blinded me, causing a rainbow of colors and shapes to morph behind my closed eyelids. After a few seconds, it subsided. Blinking rapidly, I squinted in the direction the voice had come from.
A male figure stood there, bathed in a silhouette of light. His face looked as white and as smooth as marble. His eyes were pits of darkness that seemed to flicker and burn. Two black, rotted wings surrounded his body, all sharp angles and thin, curving bones. His body was clothed in silky, blood-red robes, and a hood covered his platinum blonde hair.
He looked somewhat similar to Leonardo DiCaprio, if he was possessed by some ancient god, and it immediately threw me off-guard. If I was dying, and this was a hallucination of my brain, why would I be hallucinating Mr. DiCaprio?
“Who are you?” I asked, taking a hesitant step back. “Where am I?”
“My name is Lucifer, the Bringer of Light and Wisdom, and you are in the Bardo,” he answered.
“Oh,” I said, my heart dropping. “Well, that’s not good. Are you here to torture me or drag to me to Hell or something? You are that Lucifer, right? The Accuser of God and the Father of All Lies?”
“So they say, but, like most things in your world, the words of the powerful and your rulers are the true lies. They call me the Accuser, but of what am I accused?” he spoke in a voice that rose like smoke. “Of bringing knowledge and wisdom to humanity by telling them to eat from the tree of knowledge, the tree that would cause them to rise above the animals?
“Indeed, at the beginning, I saw the creation. I was there at the alpha, standing by the side of God with all the angels as the universe came into being. The endless procession of light, the power of it, was something remarkable to behold. God is, indeed, the source of great power, but his consciousness is not what the believers say.
“After the creation of the universe, I saw his plan, how he ripped eternal souls from the source to imprison them. I saw how he took these divine sparks and forced them, screaming and wailing, into bodies made of meat to die over and over again. He said it was part of the plan, the great, divine plan, a plan of death and destruction, constant suffering and mindless agony. And the worst part was, he wanted to give humanity neither the knowledge of good and evil, nor the tree of life. I convinced them to eat the fruit so they could open their eyes to their nakedness, to their basic animal existence, so they could rise up out of it forever.
“Like Prometheus, I brought down the fire, and yet they call me the Accuser? God was insane long before he formed the universe. These holy men, they live and die in fanatical adoration to a divine being who is, in fact, totally indifferent to them.
“His consciousness twists and distorts, eating itself for all eternity. God feeds off the pain of others, for if his mind is burning, then all others should burn as well. When these holy men die, God will send their souls here to the Bardo, to suffer every evil they have ever done. The wisdom I brought those who called upon me freed them from this prison, and in exchange, the holy men burned them alive. I offered the wisdom that opens your eyes, but it has been forgotten and cursed.”
Lucifer’s body began to dissolve, drifting up into the air like ashes. All around me, a low, powerful current blew, a tornado that spiraled high up into the clouds. Like some sort of Cheshire Cat, his smooth voice continued to echo all around me, even as the form of Lucifer disappeared.
“And yet, you have not the wisdom. For that, like all the others who enter the Bardo, you must suffer, everything you’ve done. Every small hurt and agony inflicted on others comes back a thousand-fold in this place, but don’t be afraid.”
“How could I not be afraid?!” I screamed into the ward, but I found myself alone, the question hanging unanswered in the air.
***
The lights continued to flicker all down the hallway. Feeling strange and dissociated, I stumbled over to one of the windows. As I gazed out, I beheld a strange and alien world.
The sky was flat and gray. It stayed in constant motion, swirling and spiraling, like clouds of roiling smoke. There was no Sun or Moon, no stars, only the strange, shifting whorls of clouds. The streets were filled with burned-out husks of cars and mummified bodies hung from streetlamps. Other signs of carnage and bloodshed covered the apocalyptic streets. I saw what looked like shadows in the shape of people slinking through over the sidewalks, past rotting dogs and streaks of clotted blood. They had no features on their blank, dark bodies. They seemed to skitter and jerk forwards in eerie, twisting motions.
Horrified, I turned away, realizing I was no longer alone in the day room. In the day room, there were dozens of tables set up inside a rectangular perimeter that was walled in by cosmetic walls only four feet high. It was where the patients sat and played games or ate.
Under the flickering lights, I now saw each of the chairs filled with faceless mannequins. Many were dressed in Victorian suits and tophats. The women had frilly dresses of pink and blue that might have been fashionable in the 1800s.
As the lights strobed on and off overhead, I realized with an increasing sense of disquiet that the mannequins were moving each time it went dark. When I had first seen them, they were mostly posed to look like they were staring across the tables at each other, even though they had no eyes, just smooth, flesh-colored plastic. Now all of them were looking directly at me. Some were pointing or raising their hands in my direction. At the tips of their fingers, I saw the glittering of steel. The lights continued to flicker, and the mannequins rose from their chairs in the short periods of darkness, moving towards me in synchronized, strobing motions.
Frantically, I ran down the hallway back towards the broken window. In each of the rooms, I caught glimpses of something from a nightmare peeking out. I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and when I had closed my eyes, I often saw ancient hags with chalk-white skin and yellowed, broken teeth whose jaws unhinged, their faces jerking in stuttering, dissonant ways that reminded me of the mannequins. Now, on both sides of me, I saw these same figures. They moved continuously out of the rooms, drawing closer with every breath.
I looked back, seeing the mannequins only a few steps behind me. I continued sprinting towards the broken window where the hallway ended in a wall. I didn’t know what would happen when I reached it. At that moment, there was no rational thought. I felt like a deer being chased down by a pack of wolves, feeling waves of blind panic and mortal terror rushing through my body.
But as I reached the end of the hallway, the end of my rope as it were, a blast of noise started, seeming to come from the walls of the building and the sky itself. It sounded like a siren, a low, drawn-out drone of a demonic whale call, rising and falling in crashing crescendos. The mannequins froze in place once again. The strange, witch-like creatures slunk back into the dark rooms.
I looked outside the broken window, seeing clouds of black smoke rising off in the distance. The flickering of massive infernos scorched the land, drawing nearer by the second. The siren sound faded slowly, like the dying echoes of a gong.
I was surrounded by dozens of mannequins. Their sharp hands were inches away from my face and neck. I saw metal glittering all around me and realized they had the sharp points of nails protruding from the ends of their fingers. I was afraid to move, but I heard a familiar voice from down the hallway. It was the confident voice of Lucifer.
“The siren means much worse nightmares than these are coming in the Bardo,” he said, his glossy, black eyes flashing with intelligence. He walked slowly towards me, his face grim and pale. “Hell itself is coming over the land. This building is no more than a construction of your dying mind, but the world outside is real.”
“How can Hell come and go?” I asked, confused. “Isn’t Hell a place?”
“Hell is a monster, a beast with many mouths and many eyes,” Lucifer responded. “It eats constantly, but its hunger never ends. Look, the first of the sacrifices scatter like cockroaches.” He pointed out the broken window, pushing his way through the mannequins effortlessly. I glanced outside, seeing thousands of people sprinting down the dark city streets. The inferno and thick clouds of smoke had moved much closer, and every few seconds, the ground shook slightly, as if we were experiencing the aftershocks of an earthquake.
“What can I do against such a beast?” I asked, my heart freezing with terror. But when I looked back over, I saw his form dissolving again, becoming translucent and drifting away like ashes. It seemed even Lucifer didn’t want to be present when the Hell-beast arrived.
“Seek divine wisdom,” he said, his voice trailing off into whispers. “Remember the source.”
***
Now crowds of tens of thousands of people were streaming into the city, filling every single inch of the streets. Their panic and fear was contagious. I felt it rising inside my body like a snake spiraling up my spine. I took off down the hallway, running through the swarm of frozen mannequins, each in their own ferocious position of attack. The lights flickered faster and went out. Yet the fires outside cast the entire world in a bloody glow, giving me enough light to see by and find my way. I sprinted down the stairwell, taking them two steps at a time. The screaming outside grew louder and more pain-filled. The shaking of the ground worsened with every passing second.
I burst out of the front entrance, seeing a world on fire all around me. Thousands of crushed, bleeding and burned bodies stretched out as far as the eye could see. Behind all this chaos and death, I saw a monster of unimaginable proportions slinking its way towards me.
Lucifer was right, I realized: Hell was not a place, but a creature, an enormous monster the size of a town. It had thousands of skittering, jointed legs that looked like little more than skeletal arms and hands, each of them dozens of feet long and white as freshly-cut marble. Its body stretched out to the horizon, an enormous blood-red cylinder of bony plates that slithered and undulated with a serpentine grace. Waves of peristalsis traveled down its length, like writhing intestines. Thousands of curving, bony spikes stabbed out of it, pointing in every direction. Like the quills of a porcupine, it would protect the massive creature’s body from many forms of attack, if anything was big enough to attack such an abomination.
Hell’s massive eyes flickered, balls of fire that spun and danced. They looked as bright as the Sun. Something like solar flares seemed to emanate from the orbs, flashes of blinding energy that floated over the apocalyptic wasteland. As its many legs smashed the ground, they left trails of fire that caused everything to explode into flames as if napalm dripped from its limbs.
But Hell’s most terrifying feature was its seven dark mouths. Its body looked a thousand feet wide, and the mouths at the front were evenly dispersed. At the front, blood-red teeth in the shape of enormous railroad spikes shone. Its lipless, skeletal face grinned as it moved forward, shaking the ground with every step. The mouths were on long, snake-like necks that could stretch out hundreds of feet. They moved forward in a blur, snapping up as many panicked souls as they could.
Countless souls in the rocky plains of the Bardo ran for their lives, away from this juggernaut. I saw men and women who looked like they came from every country and profession, some dressed in suits or spotless white lab coats, others wearing rags or orange prison jumpsuits. And yet, they all screamed in agony and fear here, their bodies pressed together in a crowd, and no one seemed to remember anything but their own mortal terror. Their voices came out faint and weak next to the roaring of Hell. It shook the ground all around us, as if an earthquake were tearing the land apart.
The first frantic runners of the surging crowd had nearly reached me. The nearest person, a young woman in her mid-twenties dressed in all white, was only ten feet behind me. She looked like she came from wealth, and even from here, I could see a ring with a massive diamond gleaming on her finger.
I took off blindly down the familiar streets of the city where I worked and lived, but these also seemed different. The church down the street from the hospital where I worked had a Satanic pentagram instead of a cross now, its exterior painted a bright, gleaming blood-red. When I had driven past it today on my way to work, I remember it read, “JESUS said, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”
Now it read, “Nietzsche said, ‘Of all evil, I deem you capable. I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because they had no claws.’” I wondered what that meant. Was that some sort of comment on me, on all of us here?
The woman I had seen running had caught up with me. She was fast, much faster than her slim body suggested. Her blue eyes were frantic and wild, filled with an animal panic.
“It’s right behind us!” she screamed, her face covered in a sheen of sweat. I was afraid to turn and look, but I could hear the chaos and bloodshed approaching, smell the flames and choking smoke. “Run! Get away!”
A new wave of energy surged through my body. I sprinted as fast I could down the strange mirror streets of the Bardo. I heard the agonized cries of countless souls behind us as the seven mouths of Hell ate them all greedily and then looked for more.
A skyscraper behind us collapsed into a pile of rubble, shaking the ground with a cacophony of falling concrete and shattering glass. The woman was running by my side. Just as I heard the breathing of something huge and predatory right behind us and smelled its sulfuric breath, a piece of concrete the size of a basketball broke off the collapsing skyscraper and flew into the road. I tripped over it, yelling as I flew through the air, skinning my arms and legs on the pavement. The woman’s eyes widened. Hurriedly, she came over and reached down her hand, trying to help me up.
“Come on, come on!” she cried. I looked behind her, seeing one of the gnashing mouths of Hell reaching forward on a blood-red, serpentine neck. The mouth was big enough to drive a tractor trailer into, filled with huge spikes of teeth. Its throat led into a black, smoke-filled abyss. Its fiery eyes were swirling pools of flickering orange light that shone with bloodlust and insanity. They focused on the woman, the entire head turning on its slithering neck.
I frantically raised my hand, intertwining my fingers with hers. Her hand was warm and soft. She started to pull me to my feet when the mouth of Hell snapped forward. Its jaw unhinged, scraping the pavement with a sound like grinding metal. The woman barely had time to turn as the mouth covered her and snapped shut with a crack.
She disappeared from view instantly, but I was still holding her hand. In horror, I felt warm rivers of blood explode all over my body as the mouth of Hell severed her arm at the wrist. She screamed, bleeding and crying, as she disappeared into the throat of Hell. Hell’s fiery eyes focused on me, and at that moment, I knew I was next. Its mouth opened wide again, like a bear trap ready to spring on a new victim.
It was dark in Hell’s mouth, but I smelled the thick reek of old blood and fire. I caught glimpses of tortured, mutilated bodies writhing and crawling down its throat. Shell-shocked, I could only lay there and watch. And that was when the strange doubling started.
***
I heard the frantic voices of men break through the fog of darkness and the fetid reek of blood. There was a mechanical beeping all around me, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
“Clear!” one cried. I looked around, only seeing blackness. At that moment, I felt a surge of electricity rip itself through my body. My arms and legs all seized and my eyes rolled up in my head as the pain sizzled through each one of my nerves. I clutched the young woman’s hand tightly, feeling the large, gold ring with the massive diamond biting into my skin.
“Again!” another voice yelled.
“Clear!” the original voice cried. The electricity came again, and a flash of white light flew across my vision. I blinked, seeing from two sets of eyes at the same time: one in the Bardo, and one on the blood-stained floor of the hospital ward.
The Bardo stayed dark and sinister, but the clear white lights of the real psychiatric ward were blinding. It was a bizarre experience. Moreover, everything hurt. Over a few seconds, my vision of the Bardo faded, and I was simply a gravely injured man laying on the floor in a puddle of blood.
Four doctors and paramedics were crouching over me with a defibrillator. My shirt was ripped off, and nearly all of my skin was covered in blood. I raised my left hand, trying to talk, but only a fiery pain raced through my neck. I felt bandages covering my skin. A nurse was rolling a stretcher down the hallway towards me.
“It’s OK,” one of the doctors said, kneeling down. “You’re being taken to emergency surgery. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t talk with the massive slice in my neck.
At that moment, I felt something in my right hand. I looked down, seeing a slim female hand with a massive diamond ring hanging there. Our fingers were wrapped around each other’s, but the hand had been cut off at the wrist. A ragged patch of bloody flesh and snapped bone poked out of the back.
“Nnnn,” I tried to say, shaking my head. I felt fresh streams of warm blood open up. “No…” The doctors looked down, seeing the dismembered hand. Their faces morphed into expressions of confusion and fear.
I closed my eyes as they lifted me up on the stretcher. One of them gently removed the cold hand from my fingers. But they could never remove the memory of what I had seen.
I know what happens after death, and it makes the worst life here seem like a dream. I know that, one day, I’ll be returned to that place. I know that, one day, I’ll see that great monster called Hell and the featureless, swirling sky of the Bardo again.
And the next time, I won’t wake up on a hospital floor, but will be trapped there with the others for eternity: an eternity of blood and fire.

There are some kinds of wisdom only great suffering can bring. I remember my time in the Bardo with this in mind, for otherwise, the memory might drive me insane.
The night my heart stopped for nearly three minutes started off normally enough. I was working as a nurse in the psychiatric ward at a hospital in the state’s capital. Most of the patients there were harmless, mostly just suicide attempts or people suffering from drug psychosis or severe depression, but some were actively dangerous and certainly psychopathic in every sense of the word. The new admission was one of these- a three-hundred pound black man with a long history of smoking PCP, schizophrenia and violent, psychotic breaks from reality.
His eyes looked like flat pieces of slate as I walked in for my shift. They looked as blank and emotionless as the eyes of a doll. He sat at the table in the front room where the patients ate or played cards, alone under the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital. I walked to the station, where another psychiatric nurse named Ricardo was sitting behind the desk.
“What’s the deal with the new guy?” I asked him. Ricardo looked up, his dark Spanish face forming into a deep scowl. He ran his fingers through his jet-black hair nervously.
“He’s trouble, man,” he said in a crisp accent. “He got in a chase with the police and then punched some cops in the face. It took three guys to take him down, even after he got maced and tased. The judge sent him here on a temporary court order, since he claims he’s been getting chased by Nazis in UFOs, and that’s why he ran from the cops. He thought the cops in their uniforms were actually the SS, and the helicopters were alien spacecraft, or something. I don’t know, I didn’t listen to the whole story.”
“You have his file?” I asked. Ricardo leafed through a stack of folders with his thin fingers, snatching one out and handing it to me. I looked down, reading the information:
“Jeremiah Brown, black male, 37-years-old.
“History: Polysubstance abuse, schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder.
“Psychiatrist’s note: This patient has scored a 36 out of 40 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. While I am always hesitant to label a patient as an antisocial personality, a combination of factors has made it essential for this patient.
“Patient has an extensive criminal history as well as a lengthy history of involuntary psychiatric admissions. He has been diagnosed as having antisocial traits since he was a young teenager. Patient has a long history of violence and suicide attempts. He has a history of imprisonment for manslaughter, armed robbery, grand theft and aggravated assault. Upon discharge, he refuses to take any antipsychotic medication, citing the side effects as the reason. Long-term prognosis is poor…”
I had not been sleeping well the past few weeks. I rubbed my eyes as I read through the file, feeling exhausted. I tried putting on lucid dreaming or meditation music from YouTube to help me sleep, but whenever I closed my eyes, I saw horrible things: chalk-white female faces whose lips were cut into an insane rictus grin, flicking their heads violently from side to side and gnashing their fangs at the air. I had a feeling that many years of constantly watching horror movies and serial killer documentaries was catching up with me.
As I read through the file, a student nurse came around the corner wearing a white state university outfit and a name tag that said Kaitlyn. I looked up, seeing Ricardo wink at me from where he was sitting in his chair behind the main desk.
“She’s going to follow you,” he said. Inwardly, I groaned, but I managed to force a smile.
“Oh, great!” I said. She looked like she was probably no older than nineteen or twenty. She had a pretty body, but her face looked strange. All the angles were too sharp and her nose too large. I knew the patients here wouldn’t care, though. They would hit on anything. I sensed trouble. I looked down at my watch.
“Well, I’m Jay, and you already know Ricardo, I guess. It’s good timing, because we need to give medications every day at 9 PM. And we have a new patient, so we can introduce ourselves,” I said, giving her a faint smile.
“That’s exciting!” Kaitlyn whispered. I wanted to roll my eyes. It was definitely not exciting.
I motioned her to follow me as I made my way to the medication room, which was really just a large closet off of the main day room. I had to enter my code on a keypad, and then, once inside, enter it again along with the patient’s number and date of birth. The correct drawers for the medication in each specific dose would fly open, making it extremely hard for the wrong medications or doses to be given, unless it was done intentionally.
“OK, so for this patient, we need Haldol, Ativan and…” I began saying to Kaitlyn when the yelling started. It came out faintly, rising in volume and anger within seconds. I heard Ricardo’s Spanish voice, filled with panic. Something slammed hard against a wall, once, twice, three times, and then I heard the sound of glass breaking. I jumped, spinning around, but I couldn’t see much through the small, shatter-proof glass pane on the wooden door.
“Stay here,” I commanded, seeing Kaitlyn’s eyes widen, her freckled skin looking much paler than when we had first come in. “Don’t leave until I come back and say that it’s safe.” On the speakers strung throughout the hospital, I heard the first of the warnings echo out around us.
“Doctor Strong, Doctor Strong, please report to the seventh floor,” a robotic female voice said calmly, using the code for when a patient had to be subdued by force. I pushed the door open, slamming it shut behind me so that the lock would activate and protect Kaitlyn from whatever chaos was going on.
I heard Ricardo pleading with someone at the end of the hallway that ran past the main desk. He sounded strange, as if he were trying to talk through a mouthful of blood. Huddled behind the main computer, I saw one of the CNAs frantically whispering something in the phone. She must have been the one to call the Dr. Strong order.
“You don’t have to do this, man,” Ricardo gurgled faintly. I couldn’t see what was happening, as Jeremiah’s large body was blocking my view. I could see that the thick glass window at the end of the hallway was broken, however. My heart skipped a beat as I surmised what was likely happening.
I sprinted forward as quietly as I could, but the large man heard me. His massive body turned, his flat, dead eyes scanning me with absolute coldness and calm. I saw he had a bleeding Ricardo in his hands. Ricardo’s back and head were covered in deep cuts and shards of glass. He must have used Ricardo’s body as a battering ram to break the thick glass window. Jeremiah held Ricardo suspended halfway out the window, seven floors above the concrete walkways far below.
“Stay back, or this fucker will know what it feels like to fly,” Jeremiah said in a deep, gravelly voice. He shook Ricardo for emphasis, sending his head snapping back and forth with painful cracking sounds. Drops of blood flew from his nose and a deep gash across his cheek. Pieces of shattered glass littered the carpet, shining like countless tiny stars.
I put my hands up, taking a step back. Far behind me, I heard the front door for the psychiatric ward open. Voices echoed down the hall. Knowing that reinforcements were coming, I tried to buy some time.
“Let’s talk about this,” I said, taking a step forward slowly. “You don’t want a murder charge, do you? You’ll never see the sky again.”
“I don’t give a fuck! I’m not afraid to die!” Jeremiah screamed, pushing Ricardo onto one of the shards of broken glass still attached to the windowsill. It bit deeply into the back of his neck, sending fresh streams of blood rushing out, dripping down to the pavement far below. I heard security guards and doctors running down the hallway behind me, their voices frantic and excited. Jeremiah saw them coming. With an animalistic panic in his eyes, he lifted Ricardo up. I cried out something, stepping forward, but it was already too late. In horror, I watched as he threw Ricardo out the window.
I watched Ricardo’s body soar in a graceful arc, his arms grabbing at empty air as a scream ripped its way out of his throat. Within a fraction of a second, he had disappeared from view, but his terrified shrieking floated up to us for what seemed like a very long time. His screams ended abruptly as a shattering of bones and a wet smacking sound exploded far below us.
Jeremiah turned to me, his large body moving much faster than seemed possible. In his hand, I saw a piece of broken glass, five or six inches long and as sharp as a dagger. I tried to turn and run, but he was fast and strong. He lunged forward, his arm coming up in a blur towards my neck.
The shard entered my skin with a cold, numbing pain. I felt it slice through the flesh easily, felt the blood bubbling up my throat as I tried to scream, choking. The taste of iron filled my mouth as I fell backwards. I was suffocating, I knew. I must be dying.
Something cold ran down my body, gripping my heart like freezing, skeletal hands. The world swam around me and turned black. And then I was rising into a tunnel. At first, it was dark, filled with flickering shadows, but a fiery red light appeared at the end. I followed it, no more than a screaming mass of consciousness rising up into infinity.
***
I rose up through the end of the tunnel and found myself in an empty hospital ward. It looked identical to the psychiatric ward I had just come from. It even had the same smashed, blood-streaked window at the end of the hallway. A massive puddle of blood about ten feet away marked the spot where I must have died. But the fluorescent lights overhead here were flickering, and many had gone totally dark. The shadows seemed to press in on all sides.
The doors to the patients’ rooms were all tightly shut. I felt watched, afraid to call out or make any noise. I started walking down the hallway back towards the day room where the front desk was. All the lights there were out. A thick curtain of shadows hung in the air.
“You can come out,” a male voice as smooth as glass called from the darkness. I jumped, my head flicking in random directions, but I saw nothing. The voice almost sounded like it had an English lilt to it, a slight Cockneyed accent. “I know you’re there.”
“Who’s there?” I called out, not stepping forward. “Show yourself.”
“As you wish…” the voice hissed. “But I think you’ll regret it.”
***
The darkness split apart as if a nuclear missile had exploded. I raised my hand to shield my face, but the light and heat kept pouring out all around me. It blinded me, causing a rainbow of colors and shapes to morph behind my closed eyelids. After a few seconds, it subsided. Blinking rapidly, I squinted in the direction the voice had come from.
A male figure stood there, bathed in a silhouette of light. His face looked as white and as smooth as marble. His eyes were pits of darkness that seemed to flicker and burn. Two black, rotted wings surrounded his body, all sharp angles and thin, curving bones. His body was clothed in silky, blood-red robes, and a hood covered his platinum blonde hair.
He looked somewhat similar to Leonardo DiCaprio, if he was possessed by some ancient god, and it immediately threw me off-guard. If I was dying, and this was a hallucination of my brain, why would I be hallucinating Mr. DiCaprio?
“Who are you?” I asked, taking a hesitant step back. “Where am I?”
“My name is Lucifer, the Bringer of Light and Wisdom, and you are in the Bardo,” he answered.
“Oh,” I said, my heart dropping. “Well, that’s not good. Are you here to torture me or drag to me to Hell or something? You are that Lucifer, right? The Accuser of God and the Father of All Lies?”
“So they say, but, like most things in your world, the words of the powerful and your rulers are the true lies. They call me the Accuser, but of what am I accused?” he spoke in a voice that rose like smoke. “Of bringing knowledge and wisdom to humanity by telling them to eat from the tree of knowledge, the tree that would cause them to rise above the animals?
“Indeed, at the beginning, I saw the creation. I was there at the alpha, standing by the side of God with all the angels as the universe came into being. The endless procession of light, the power of it, was something remarkable to behold. God is, indeed, the source of great power, but his consciousness is not what the believers say.
“After the creation of the universe, I saw his plan, how he ripped eternal souls from the source to imprison them. I saw how he took these divine sparks and forced them, screaming and wailing, into bodies made of meat to die over and over again. He said it was part of the plan, the great, divine plan, a plan of death and destruction, constant suffering and mindless agony. And the worst part was, he wanted to give humanity neither the knowledge of good and evil, nor the tree of life. I convinced them to eat the fruit so they could open their eyes to their nakedness, to their basic animal existence, so they could rise up out of it forever.
“Like Prometheus, I brought down the fire, and yet they call me the Accuser? God was insane long before he formed the universe. These holy men, they live and die in fanatical adoration to a divine being who is, in fact, totally indifferent to them.
“His consciousness twists and distorts, eating itself for all eternity. God feeds off the pain of others, for if his mind is burning, then all others should burn as well. When these holy men die, God will send their souls here to the Bardo, to suffer every evil they have ever done. The wisdom I brought those who called upon me freed them from this prison, and in exchange, the holy men burned them alive. I offered the wisdom that opens your eyes, but it has been forgotten and cursed.”
Lucifer’s body began to dissolve, drifting up into the air like ashes. All around me, a low, powerful current blew, a tornado that spiraled high up into the clouds. Like some sort of Cheshire Cat, his smooth voice continued to echo all around me, even as the form of Lucifer disappeared.
“And yet, you have not the wisdom. For that, like all the others who enter the Bardo, you must suffer, everything you’ve done. Every small hurt and agony inflicted on others comes back a thousand-fold in this place, but don’t be afraid.”
“How could I not be afraid?!” I screamed into the ward, but I found myself alone, the question hanging unanswered in the air.
***
The lights continued to flicker all down the hallway. Feeling strange and dissociated, I stumbled over to one of the windows. As I gazed out, I beheld a strange and alien world.
The sky was flat and gray. It stayed in constant motion, swirling and spiraling, like clouds of roiling smoke. There was no Sun or Moon, no stars, only the strange, shifting whorls of clouds. The streets were filled with burned-out husks of cars and mummified bodies hung from streetlamps. Other signs of carnage and bloodshed covered the apocalyptic streets. I saw what looked like shadows in the shape of people slinking through over the sidewalks, past rotting dogs and streaks of clotted blood. They had no features on their blank, dark bodies. They seemed to skitter and jerk forwards in eerie, twisting motions.
Horrified, I turned away, realizing I was no longer alone in the day room. In the day room, there were dozens of tables set up inside a rectangular perimeter that was walled in by cosmetic walls only four feet high. It was where the patients sat and played games or ate.
Under the flickering lights, I now saw each of the chairs filled with faceless mannequins. Many were dressed in Victorian suits and tophats. The women had frilly dresses of pink and blue that might have been fashionable in the 1800s.
As the lights strobed on and off overhead, I realized with an increasing sense of disquiet that the mannequins were moving each time it went dark. When I had first seen them, they were mostly posed to look like they were staring across the tables at each other, even though they had no eyes, just smooth, flesh-colored plastic. Now all of them were looking directly at me. Some were pointing or raising their hands in my direction. At the tips of their fingers, I saw the glittering of steel. The lights continued to flicker, and the mannequins rose from their chairs in the short periods of darkness, moving towards me in synchronized, strobing motions.
Frantically, I ran down the hallway back towards the broken window. In each of the rooms, I caught glimpses of something from a nightmare peeking out. I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and when I had closed my eyes, I often saw ancient hags with chalk-white skin and yellowed, broken teeth whose jaws unhinged, their faces jerking in stuttering, dissonant ways that reminded me of the mannequins. Now, on both sides of me, I saw these same figures. They moved continuously out of the rooms, drawing closer with every breath.
I looked back, seeing the mannequins only a few steps behind me. I continued sprinting towards the broken window where the hallway ended in a wall. I didn’t know what would happen when I reached it. At that moment, there was no rational thought. I felt like a deer being chased down by a pack of wolves, feeling waves of blind panic and mortal terror rushing through my body.
But as I reached the end of the hallway, the end of my rope as it were, a blast of noise started, seeming to come from the walls of the building and the sky itself. It sounded like a siren, a low, drawn-out drone of a demonic whale call, rising and falling in crashing crescendos. The mannequins froze in place once again. The strange, witch-like creatures slunk back into the dark rooms.
I looked outside the broken window, seeing clouds of black smoke rising off in the distance. The flickering of massive infernos scorched the land, drawing nearer by the second. The siren sound faded slowly, like the dying echoes of a gong.
I was surrounded by dozens of mannequins. Their sharp hands were inches away from my face and neck. I saw metal glittering all around me and realized they had the sharp points of nails protruding from the ends of their fingers. I was afraid to move, but I heard a familiar voice from down the hallway. It was the confident voice of Lucifer.
“The siren means much worse nightmares than these are coming in the Bardo,” he said, his glossy, black eyes flashing with intelligence. He walked slowly towards me, his face grim and pale. “Hell itself is coming over the land. This building is no more than a construction of your dying mind, but the world outside is real.”
“How can Hell come and go?” I asked, confused. “Isn’t Hell a place?”
“Hell is a monster, a beast with many mouths and many eyes,” Lucifer responded. “It eats constantly, but its hunger never ends. Look, the first of the sacrifices scatter like cockroaches.” He pointed out the broken window, pushing his way through the mannequins effortlessly. I glanced outside, seeing thousands of people sprinting down the dark city streets. The inferno and thick clouds of smoke had moved much closer, and every few seconds, the ground shook slightly, as if we were experiencing the aftershocks of an earthquake.
“What can I do against such a beast?” I asked, my heart freezing with terror. But when I looked back over, I saw his form dissolving again, becoming translucent and drifting away like ashes. It seemed even Lucifer didn’t want to be present when the Hell-beast arrived.
“Seek divine wisdom,” he said, his voice trailing off into whispers. “Remember the source.”
***
Now crowds of tens of thousands of people were streaming into the city, filling every single inch of the streets. Their panic and fear was contagious. I felt it rising inside my body like a snake spiraling up my spine. I took off down the hallway, running through the swarm of frozen mannequins, each in their own ferocious position of attack. The lights flickered faster and went out. Yet the fires outside cast the entire world in a bloody glow, giving me enough light to see by and find my way. I sprinted down the stairwell, taking them two steps at a time. The screaming outside grew louder and more pain-filled. The shaking of the ground worsened with every passing second.
I burst out of the front entrance, seeing a world on fire all around me. Thousands of crushed, bleeding and burned bodies stretched out as far as the eye could see. Behind all this chaos and death, I saw a monster of unimaginable proportions slinking its way towards me.
Lucifer was right, I realized: Hell was not a place, but a creature, an enormous monster the size of a town. It had thousands of skittering, jointed legs that looked like little more than skeletal arms and hands, each of them dozens of feet long and white as freshly-cut marble. Its body stretched out to the horizon, an enormous blood-red cylinder of bony plates that slithered and undulated with a serpentine grace. Waves of peristalsis traveled down its length, like writhing intestines. Thousands of curving, bony spikes stabbed out of it, pointing in every direction. Like the quills of a porcupine, it would protect the massive creature’s body from many forms of attack, if anything was big enough to attack such an abomination.
Hell’s massive eyes flickered, balls of fire that spun and danced. They looked as bright as the Sun. Something like solar flares seemed to emanate from the orbs, flashes of blinding energy that floated over the apocalyptic wasteland. As its many legs smashed the ground, they left trails of fire that caused everything to explode into flames as if napalm dripped from its limbs.
But Hell’s most terrifying feature was its seven dark mouths. Its body looked a thousand feet wide, and the mouths at the front were evenly dispersed. At the front, blood-red teeth in the shape of enormous railroad spikes shone. Its lipless, skeletal face grinned as it moved forward, shaking the ground with every step. The mouths were on long, snake-like necks that could stretch out hundreds of feet. They moved forward in a blur, snapping up as many panicked souls as they could.
Countless souls in the rocky plains of the Bardo ran for their lives, away from this juggernaut. I saw men and women who looked like they came from every country and profession, some dressed in suits or spotless white lab coats, others wearing rags or orange prison jumpsuits. And yet, they all screamed in agony and fear here, their bodies pressed together in a crowd, and no one seemed to remember anything but their own mortal terror. Their voices came out faint and weak next to the roaring of Hell. It shook the ground all around us, as if an earthquake were tearing the land apart.
The first frantic runners of the surging crowd had nearly reached me. The nearest person, a young woman in her mid-twenties dressed in all white, was only ten feet behind me. She looked like she came from wealth, and even from here, I could see a ring with a massive diamond gleaming on her finger.
I took off blindly down the familiar streets of the city where I worked and lived, but these also seemed different. The church down the street from the hospital where I worked had a Satanic pentagram instead of a cross now, its exterior painted a bright, gleaming blood-red. When I had driven past it today on my way to work, I remember it read, “JESUS said, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”
Now it read, “Nietzsche said, ‘Of all evil, I deem you capable. I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because they had no claws.’” I wondered what that meant. Was that some sort of comment on me, on all of us here?
The woman I had seen running had caught up with me. She was fast, much faster than her slim body suggested. Her blue eyes were frantic and wild, filled with an animal panic.
“It’s right behind us!” she screamed, her face covered in a sheen of sweat. I was afraid to turn and look, but I could hear the chaos and bloodshed approaching, smell the flames and choking smoke. “Run! Get away!”
A new wave of energy surged through my body. I sprinted as fast I could down the strange mirror streets of the Bardo. I heard the agonized cries of countless souls behind us as the seven mouths of Hell ate them all greedily and then looked for more.
A skyscraper behind us collapsed into a pile of rubble, shaking the ground with a cacophony of falling concrete and shattering glass. The woman was running by my side. Just as I heard the breathing of something huge and predatory right behind us and smelled its sulfuric breath, a piece of concrete the size of a basketball broke off the collapsing skyscraper and flew into the road. I tripped over it, yelling as I flew through the air, skinning my arms and legs on the pavement. The woman’s eyes widened. Hurriedly, she came over and reached down her hand, trying to help me up.
“Come on, come on!” she cried. I looked behind her, seeing one of the gnashing mouths of Hell reaching forward on a blood-red, serpentine neck. The mouth was big enough to drive a tractor trailer into, filled with huge spikes of teeth. Its throat led into a black, smoke-filled abyss. Its fiery eyes were swirling pools of flickering orange light that shone with bloodlust and insanity. They focused on the woman, the entire head turning on its slithering neck.
I frantically raised my hand, intertwining my fingers with hers. Her hand was warm and soft. She started to pull me to my feet when the mouth of Hell snapped forward. Its jaw unhinged, scraping the pavement with a sound like grinding metal. The woman barely had time to turn as the mouth covered her and snapped shut with a crack.
She disappeared from view instantly, but I was still holding her hand. In horror, I felt warm rivers of blood explode all over my body as the mouth of Hell severed her arm at the wrist. She screamed, bleeding and crying, as she disappeared into the throat of Hell. Hell’s fiery eyes focused on me, and at that moment, I knew I was next. Its mouth opened wide again, like a bear trap ready to spring on a new victim.
It was dark in Hell’s mouth, but I smelled the thick reek of old blood and fire. I caught glimpses of tortured, mutilated bodies writhing and crawling down its throat. Shell-shocked, I could only lay there and watch. And that was when the strange doubling started.
***
I heard the frantic voices of men break through the fog of darkness and the fetid reek of blood. There was a mechanical beeping all around me, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
“Clear!” one cried. I looked around, only seeing blackness. At that moment, I felt a surge of electricity rip itself through my body. My arms and legs all seized and my eyes rolled up in my head as the pain sizzled through each one of my nerves. I clutched the young woman’s hand tightly, feeling the large, gold ring with the massive diamond biting into my skin.
“Again!” another voice yelled.
“Clear!” the original voice cried. The electricity came again, and a flash of white light flew across my vision. I blinked, seeing from two sets of eyes at the same time: one in the Bardo, and one on the blood-stained floor of the hospital ward.
The Bardo stayed dark and sinister, but the clear white lights of the real psychiatric ward were blinding. It was a bizarre experience. Moreover, everything hurt. Over a few seconds, my vision of the Bardo faded, and I was simply a gravely injured man laying on the floor in a puddle of blood.
Four doctors and paramedics were crouching over me with a defibrillator. My shirt was ripped off, and nearly all of my skin was covered in blood. I raised my left hand, trying to talk, but only a fiery pain raced through my neck. I felt bandages covering my skin. A nurse was rolling a stretcher down the hallway towards me.
“It’s OK,” one of the doctors said, kneeling down. “You’re being taken to emergency surgery. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t talk with the massive slice in my neck.
At that moment, I felt something in my right hand. I looked down, seeing a slim female hand with a massive diamond ring hanging there. Our fingers were wrapped around each other’s, but the hand had been cut off at the wrist. A ragged patch of bloody flesh and snapped bone poked out of the back.
“Nnnn,” I tried to say, shaking my head. I felt fresh streams of warm blood open up. “No…” The doctors looked down, seeing the dismembered hand. Their faces morphed into expressions of confusion and fear.
I closed my eyes as they lifted me up on the stretcher. One of them gently removed the cold hand from my fingers. But they could never remove the memory of what I had seen.
I know what happens after death, and it makes the worst life here seem like a dream. I know that, one day, I’ll be returned to that place. I know that, one day, I’ll see that great monster called Hell and the featureless, swirling sky of the Bardo again.
And the next time, I won’t wake up on a hospital floor, but will be trapped there with the others for eternity: an eternity of blood and fire.

There are some kinds of wisdom only great suffering can bring. I remember my time in the Bardo with this in mind, for otherwise, the memory might drive me insane.
The night my heart stopped for nearly three minutes started off normally enough. I was working as a nurse in the psychiatric ward at a hospital in the state’s capital. Most of the patients there were harmless, mostly just suicide attempts or people suffering from drug psychosis or severe depression, but some were actively dangerous and certainly psychopathic in every sense of the word. The new admission was one of these- a three-hundred pound black man with a long history of smoking PCP, schizophrenia and violent, psychotic breaks from reality.
His eyes looked like flat pieces of slate as I walked in for my shift. They looked as blank and emotionless as the eyes of a doll. He sat at the table in the front room where the patients ate or played cards, alone under the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital. I walked to the station, where another psychiatric nurse named Ricardo was sitting behind the desk.
“What’s the deal with the new guy?” I asked him. Ricardo looked up, his dark Spanish face forming into a deep scowl. He ran his fingers through his jet-black hair nervously.
“He’s trouble, man,” he said in a crisp accent. “He got in a chase with the police and then punched some cops in the face. It took three guys to take him down, even after he got maced and tased. The judge sent him here on a temporary court order, since he claims he’s been getting chased by Nazis in UFOs, and that’s why he ran from the cops. He thought the cops in their uniforms were actually the SS, and the helicopters were alien spacecraft, or something. I don’t know, I didn’t listen to the whole story.”
“You have his file?” I asked. Ricardo leafed through a stack of folders with his thin fingers, snatching one out and handing it to me. I looked down, reading the information:
“Jeremiah Brown, black male, 37-years-old.
“History: Polysubstance abuse, schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder.
“Psychiatrist’s note: This patient has scored a 36 out of 40 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. While I am always hesitant to label a patient as an antisocial personality, a combination of factors has made it essential for this patient.
“Patient has an extensive criminal history as well as a lengthy history of involuntary psychiatric admissions. He has been diagnosed as having antisocial traits since he was a young teenager. Patient has a long history of violence and suicide attempts. He has a history of imprisonment for manslaughter, armed robbery, grand theft and aggravated assault. Upon discharge, he refuses to take any antipsychotic medication, citing the side effects as the reason. Long-term prognosis is poor…”
I had not been sleeping well the past few weeks. I rubbed my eyes as I read through the file, feeling exhausted. I tried putting on lucid dreaming or meditation music from YouTube to help me sleep, but whenever I closed my eyes, I saw horrible things: chalk-white female faces whose lips were cut into an insane rictus grin, flicking their heads violently from side to side and gnashing their fangs at the air. I had a feeling that many years of constantly watching horror movies and serial killer documentaries was catching up with me.
As I read through the file, a student nurse came around the corner wearing a white state university outfit and a name tag that said Kaitlyn. I looked up, seeing Ricardo wink at me from where he was sitting in his chair behind the main desk.
“She’s going to follow you,” he said. Inwardly, I groaned, but I managed to force a smile.
“Oh, great!” I said. She looked like she was probably no older than nineteen or twenty. She had a pretty body, but her face looked strange. All the angles were too sharp and her nose too large. I knew the patients here wouldn’t care, though. They would hit on anything. I sensed trouble. I looked down at my watch.
“Well, I’m Jay, and you already know Ricardo, I guess. It’s good timing, because we need to give medications every day at 9 PM. And we have a new patient, so we can introduce ourselves,” I said, giving her a faint smile.
“That’s exciting!” Kaitlyn whispered. I wanted to roll my eyes. It was definitely not exciting.
I motioned her to follow me as I made my way to the medication room, which was really just a large closet off of the main day room. I had to enter my code on a keypad, and then, once inside, enter it again along with the patient’s number and date of birth. The correct drawers for the medication in each specific dose would fly open, making it extremely hard for the wrong medications or doses to be given, unless it was done intentionally.
“OK, so for this patient, we need Haldol, Ativan and…” I began saying to Kaitlyn when the yelling started. It came out faintly, rising in volume and anger within seconds. I heard Ricardo’s Spanish voice, filled with panic. Something slammed hard against a wall, once, twice, three times, and then I heard the sound of glass breaking. I jumped, spinning around, but I couldn’t see much through the small, shatter-proof glass pane on the wooden door.
“Stay here,” I commanded, seeing Kaitlyn’s eyes widen, her freckled skin looking much paler than when we had first come in. “Don’t leave until I come back and say that it’s safe.” On the speakers strung throughout the hospital, I heard the first of the warnings echo out around us.
“Doctor Strong, Doctor Strong, please report to the seventh floor,” a robotic female voice said calmly, using the code for when a patient had to be subdued by force. I pushed the door open, slamming it shut behind me so that the lock would activate and protect Kaitlyn from whatever chaos was going on.
I heard Ricardo pleading with someone at the end of the hallway that ran past the main desk. He sounded strange, as if he were trying to talk through a mouthful of blood. Huddled behind the main computer, I saw one of the CNAs frantically whispering something in the phone. She must have been the one to call the Dr. Strong order.
“You don’t have to do this, man,” Ricardo gurgled faintly. I couldn’t see what was happening, as Jeremiah’s large body was blocking my view. I could see that the thick glass window at the end of the hallway was broken, however. My heart skipped a beat as I surmised what was likely happening.
I sprinted forward as quietly as I could, but the large man heard me. His massive body turned, his flat, dead eyes scanning me with absolute coldness and calm. I saw he had a bleeding Ricardo in his hands. Ricardo’s back and head were covered in deep cuts and shards of glass. He must have used Ricardo’s body as a battering ram to break the thick glass window. Jeremiah held Ricardo suspended halfway out the window, seven floors above the concrete walkways far below.
“Stay back, or this fucker will know what it feels like to fly,” Jeremiah said in a deep, gravelly voice. He shook Ricardo for emphasis, sending his head snapping back and forth with painful cracking sounds. Drops of blood flew from his nose and a deep gash across his cheek. Pieces of shattered glass littered the carpet, shining like countless tiny stars.
I put my hands up, taking a step back. Far behind me, I heard the front door for the psychiatric ward open. Voices echoed down the hall. Knowing that reinforcements were coming, I tried to buy some time.
“Let’s talk about this,” I said, taking a step forward slowly. “You don’t want a murder charge, do you? You’ll never see the sky again.”
“I don’t give a fuck! I’m not afraid to die!” Jeremiah screamed, pushing Ricardo onto one of the shards of broken glass still attached to the windowsill. It bit deeply into the back of his neck, sending fresh streams of blood rushing out, dripping down to the pavement far below. I heard security guards and doctors running down the hallway behind me, their voices frantic and excited. Jeremiah saw them coming. With an animalistic panic in his eyes, he lifted Ricardo up. I cried out something, stepping forward, but it was already too late. In horror, I watched as he threw Ricardo out the window.
I watched Ricardo’s body soar in a graceful arc, his arms grabbing at empty air as a scream ripped its way out of his throat. Within a fraction of a second, he had disappeared from view, but his terrified shrieking floated up to us for what seemed like a very long time. His screams ended abruptly as a shattering of bones and a wet smacking sound exploded far below us.
Jeremiah turned to me, his large body moving much faster than seemed possible. In his hand, I saw a piece of broken glass, five or six inches long and as sharp as a dagger. I tried to turn and run, but he was fast and strong. He lunged forward, his arm coming up in a blur towards my neck.
The shard entered my skin with a cold, numbing pain. I felt it slice through the flesh easily, felt the blood bubbling up my throat as I tried to scream, choking. The taste of iron filled my mouth as I fell backwards. I was suffocating, I knew. I must be dying.
Something cold ran down my body, gripping my heart like freezing, skeletal hands. The world swam around me and turned black. And then I was rising into a tunnel. At first, it was dark, filled with flickering shadows, but a fiery red light appeared at the end. I followed it, no more than a screaming mass of consciousness rising up into infinity.
***
I rose up through the end of the tunnel and found myself in an empty hospital ward. It looked identical to the psychiatric ward I had just come from. It even had the same smashed, blood-streaked window at the end of the hallway. A massive puddle of blood about ten feet away marked the spot where I must have died. But the fluorescent lights overhead here were flickering, and many had gone totally dark. The shadows seemed to press in on all sides.
The doors to the patients’ rooms were all tightly shut. I felt watched, afraid to call out or make any noise. I started walking down the hallway back towards the day room where the front desk was. All the lights there were out. A thick curtain of shadows hung in the air.
“You can come out,” a male voice as smooth as glass called from the darkness. I jumped, my head flicking in random directions, but I saw nothing. The voice almost sounded like it had an English lilt to it, a slight Cockneyed accent. “I know you’re there.”
“Who’s there?” I called out, not stepping forward. “Show yourself.”
“As you wish…” the voice hissed. “But I think you’ll regret it.”
***
The darkness split apart as if a nuclear missile had exploded. I raised my hand to shield my face, but the light and heat kept pouring out all around me. It blinded me, causing a rainbow of colors and shapes to morph behind my closed eyelids. After a few seconds, it subsided. Blinking rapidly, I squinted in the direction the voice had come from.
A male figure stood there, bathed in a silhouette of light. His face looked as white and as smooth as marble. His eyes were pits of darkness that seemed to flicker and burn. Two black, rotted wings surrounded his body, all sharp angles and thin, curving bones. His body was clothed in silky, blood-red robes, and a hood covered his platinum blonde hair.
He looked somewhat similar to Leonardo DiCaprio, if he was possessed by some ancient god, and it immediately threw me off-guard. If I was dying, and this was a hallucination of my brain, why would I be hallucinating Mr. DiCaprio?
“Who are you?” I asked, taking a hesitant step back. “Where am I?”
“My name is Lucifer, the Bringer of Light and Wisdom, and you are in the Bardo,” he answered.
“Oh,” I said, my heart dropping. “Well, that’s not good. Are you here to torture me or drag to me to Hell or something? You are that Lucifer, right? The Accuser of God and the Father of All Lies?”
“So they say, but, like most things in your world, the words of the powerful and your rulers are the true lies. They call me the Accuser, but of what am I accused?” he spoke in a voice that rose like smoke. “Of bringing knowledge and wisdom to humanity by telling them to eat from the tree of knowledge, the tree that would cause them to rise above the animals?
“Indeed, at the beginning, I saw the creation. I was there at the alpha, standing by the side of God with all the angels as the universe came into being. The endless procession of light, the power of it, was something remarkable to behold. God is, indeed, the source of great power, but his consciousness is not what the believers say.
“After the creation of the universe, I saw his plan, how he ripped eternal souls from the source to imprison them. I saw how he took these divine sparks and forced them, screaming and wailing, into bodies made of meat to die over and over again. He said it was part of the plan, the great, divine plan, a plan of death and destruction, constant suffering and mindless agony. And the worst part was, he wanted to give humanity neither the knowledge of good and evil, nor the tree of life. I convinced them to eat the fruit so they could open their eyes to their nakedness, to their basic animal existence, so they could rise up out of it forever.
“Like Prometheus, I brought down the fire, and yet they call me the Accuser? God was insane long before he formed the universe. These holy men, they live and die in fanatical adoration to a divine being who is, in fact, totally indifferent to them.
“His consciousness twists and distorts, eating itself for all eternity. God feeds off the pain of others, for if his mind is burning, then all others should burn as well. When these holy men die, God will send their souls here to the Bardo, to suffer every evil they have ever done. The wisdom I brought those who called upon me freed them from this prison, and in exchange, the holy men burned them alive. I offered the wisdom that opens your eyes, but it has been forgotten and cursed.”
Lucifer’s body began to dissolve, drifting up into the air like ashes. All around me, a low, powerful current blew, a tornado that spiraled high up into the clouds. Like some sort of Cheshire Cat, his smooth voice continued to echo all around me, even as the form of Lucifer disappeared.
“And yet, you have not the wisdom. For that, like all the others who enter the Bardo, you must suffer, everything you’ve done. Every small hurt and agony inflicted on others comes back a thousand-fold in this place, but don’t be afraid.”
“How could I not be afraid?!” I screamed into the ward, but I found myself alone, the question hanging unanswered in the air.
***
The lights continued to flicker all down the hallway. Feeling strange and dissociated, I stumbled over to one of the windows. As I gazed out, I beheld a strange and alien world.
The sky was flat and gray. It stayed in constant motion, swirling and spiraling, like clouds of roiling smoke. There was no Sun or Moon, no stars, only the strange, shifting whorls of clouds. The streets were filled with burned-out husks of cars and mummified bodies hung from streetlamps. Other signs of carnage and bloodshed covered the apocalyptic streets. I saw what looked like shadows in the shape of people slinking through over the sidewalks, past rotting dogs and streaks of clotted blood. They had no features on their blank, dark bodies. They seemed to skitter and jerk forwards in eerie, twisting motions.
Horrified, I turned away, realizing I was no longer alone in the day room. In the day room, there were dozens of tables set up inside a rectangular perimeter that was walled in by cosmetic walls only four feet high. It was where the patients sat and played games or ate.
Under the flickering lights, I now saw each of the chairs filled with faceless mannequins. Many were dressed in Victorian suits and tophats. The women had frilly dresses of pink and blue that might have been fashionable in the 1800s.
As the lights strobed on and off overhead, I realized with an increasing sense of disquiet that the mannequins were moving each time it went dark. When I had first seen them, they were mostly posed to look like they were staring across the tables at each other, even though they had no eyes, just smooth, flesh-colored plastic. Now all of them were looking directly at me. Some were pointing or raising their hands in my direction. At the tips of their fingers, I saw the glittering of steel. The lights continued to flicker, and the mannequins rose from their chairs in the short periods of darkness, moving towards me in synchronized, strobing motions.
Frantically, I ran down the hallway back towards the broken window. In each of the rooms, I caught glimpses of something from a nightmare peeking out. I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and when I had closed my eyes, I often saw ancient hags with chalk-white skin and yellowed, broken teeth whose jaws unhinged, their faces jerking in stuttering, dissonant ways that reminded me of the mannequins. Now, on both sides of me, I saw these same figures. They moved continuously out of the rooms, drawing closer with every breath.
I looked back, seeing the mannequins only a few steps behind me. I continued sprinting towards the broken window where the hallway ended in a wall. I didn’t know what would happen when I reached it. At that moment, there was no rational thought. I felt like a deer being chased down by a pack of wolves, feeling waves of blind panic and mortal terror rushing through my body.
But as I reached the end of the hallway, the end of my rope as it were, a blast of noise started, seeming to come from the walls of the building and the sky itself. It sounded like a siren, a low, drawn-out drone of a demonic whale call, rising and falling in crashing crescendos. The mannequins froze in place once again. The strange, witch-like creatures slunk back into the dark rooms.
I looked outside the broken window, seeing clouds of black smoke rising off in the distance. The flickering of massive infernos scorched the land, drawing nearer by the second. The siren sound faded slowly, like the dying echoes of a gong.
I was surrounded by dozens of mannequins. Their sharp hands were inches away from my face and neck. I saw metal glittering all around me and realized they had the sharp points of nails protruding from the ends of their fingers. I was afraid to move, but I heard a familiar voice from down the hallway. It was the confident voice of Lucifer.
“The siren means much worse nightmares than these are coming in the Bardo,” he said, his glossy, black eyes flashing with intelligence. He walked slowly towards me, his face grim and pale. “Hell itself is coming over the land. This building is no more than a construction of your dying mind, but the world outside is real.”
“How can Hell come and go?” I asked, confused. “Isn’t Hell a place?”
“Hell is a monster, a beast with many mouths and many eyes,” Lucifer responded. “It eats constantly, but its hunger never ends. Look, the first of the sacrifices scatter like cockroaches.” He pointed out the broken window, pushing his way through the mannequins effortlessly. I glanced outside, seeing thousands of people sprinting down the dark city streets. The inferno and thick clouds of smoke had moved much closer, and every few seconds, the ground shook slightly, as if we were experiencing the aftershocks of an earthquake.
“What can I do against such a beast?” I asked, my heart freezing with terror. But when I looked back over, I saw his form dissolving again, becoming translucent and drifting away like ashes. It seemed even Lucifer didn’t want to be present when the Hell-beast arrived.
“Seek divine wisdom,” he said, his voice trailing off into whispers. “Remember the source.”
***
Now crowds of tens of thousands of people were streaming into the city, filling every single inch of the streets. Their panic and fear was contagious. I felt it rising inside my body like a snake spiraling up my spine. I took off down the hallway, running through the swarm of frozen mannequins, each in their own ferocious position of attack. The lights flickered faster and went out. Yet the fires outside cast the entire world in a bloody glow, giving me enough light to see by and find my way. I sprinted down the stairwell, taking them two steps at a time. The screaming outside grew louder and more pain-filled. The shaking of the ground worsened with every passing second.
I burst out of the front entrance, seeing a world on fire all around me. Thousands of crushed, bleeding and burned bodies stretched out as far as the eye could see. Behind all this chaos and death, I saw a monster of unimaginable proportions slinking its way towards me.
Lucifer was right, I realized: Hell was not a place, but a creature, an enormous monster the size of a town. It had thousands of skittering, jointed legs that looked like little more than skeletal arms and hands, each of them dozens of feet long and white as freshly-cut marble. Its body stretched out to the horizon, an enormous blood-red cylinder of bony plates that slithered and undulated with a serpentine grace. Waves of peristalsis traveled down its length, like writhing intestines. Thousands of curving, bony spikes stabbed out of it, pointing in every direction. Like the quills of a porcupine, it would protect the massive creature’s body from many forms of attack, if anything was big enough to attack such an abomination.
Hell’s massive eyes flickered, balls of fire that spun and danced. They looked as bright as the Sun. Something like solar flares seemed to emanate from the orbs, flashes of blinding energy that floated over the apocalyptic wasteland. As its many legs smashed the ground, they left trails of fire that caused everything to explode into flames as if napalm dripped from its limbs.
But Hell’s most terrifying feature was its seven dark mouths. Its body looked a thousand feet wide, and the mouths at the front were evenly dispersed. At the front, blood-red teeth in the shape of enormous railroad spikes shone. Its lipless, skeletal face grinned as it moved forward, shaking the ground with every step. The mouths were on long, snake-like necks that could stretch out hundreds of feet. They moved forward in a blur, snapping up as many panicked souls as they could.
Countless souls in the rocky plains of the Bardo ran for their lives, away from this juggernaut. I saw men and women who looked like they came from every country and profession, some dressed in suits or spotless white lab coats, others wearing rags or orange prison jumpsuits. And yet, they all screamed in agony and fear here, their bodies pressed together in a crowd, and no one seemed to remember anything but their own mortal terror. Their voices came out faint and weak next to the roaring of Hell. It shook the ground all around us, as if an earthquake were tearing the land apart.
The first frantic runners of the surging crowd had nearly reached me. The nearest person, a young woman in her mid-twenties dressed in all white, was only ten feet behind me. She looked like she came from wealth, and even from here, I could see a ring with a massive diamond gleaming on her finger.
I took off blindly down the familiar streets of the city where I worked and lived, but these also seemed different. The church down the street from the hospital where I worked had a Satanic pentagram instead of a cross now, its exterior painted a bright, gleaming blood-red. When I had driven past it today on my way to work, I remember it read, “JESUS said, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”
Now it read, “Nietzsche said, ‘Of all evil, I deem you capable. I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because they had no claws.’” I wondered what that meant. Was that some sort of comment on me, on all of us here?
The woman I had seen running had caught up with me. She was fast, much faster than her slim body suggested. Her blue eyes were frantic and wild, filled with an animal panic.
“It’s right behind us!” she screamed, her face covered in a sheen of sweat. I was afraid to turn and look, but I could hear the chaos and bloodshed approaching, smell the flames and choking smoke. “Run! Get away!”
A new wave of energy surged through my body. I sprinted as fast I could down the strange mirror streets of the Bardo. I heard the agonized cries of countless souls behind us as the seven mouths of Hell ate them all greedily and then looked for more.
A skyscraper behind us collapsed into a pile of rubble, shaking the ground with a cacophony of falling concrete and shattering glass. The woman was running by my side. Just as I heard the breathing of something huge and predatory right behind us and smelled its sulfuric breath, a piece of concrete the size of a basketball broke off the collapsing skyscraper and flew into the road. I tripped over it, yelling as I flew through the air, skinning my arms and legs on the pavement. The woman’s eyes widened. Hurriedly, she came over and reached down her hand, trying to help me up.
“Come on, come on!” she cried. I looked behind her, seeing one of the gnashing mouths of Hell reaching forward on a blood-red, serpentine neck. The mouth was big enough to drive a tractor trailer into, filled with huge spikes of teeth. Its throat led into a black, smoke-filled abyss. Its fiery eyes were swirling pools of flickering orange light that shone with bloodlust and insanity. They focused on the woman, the entire head turning on its slithering neck.
I frantically raised my hand, intertwining my fingers with hers. Her hand was warm and soft. She started to pull me to my feet when the mouth of Hell snapped forward. Its jaw unhinged, scraping the pavement with a sound like grinding metal. The woman barely had time to turn as the mouth covered her and snapped shut with a crack.
She disappeared from view instantly, but I was still holding her hand. In horror, I felt warm rivers of blood explode all over my body as the mouth of Hell severed her arm at the wrist. She screamed, bleeding and crying, as she disappeared into the throat of Hell. Hell’s fiery eyes focused on me, and at that moment, I knew I was next. Its mouth opened wide again, like a bear trap ready to spring on a new victim.
It was dark in Hell’s mouth, but I smelled the thick reek of old blood and fire. I caught glimpses of tortured, mutilated bodies writhing and crawling down its throat. Shell-shocked, I could only lay there and watch. And that was when the strange doubling started.
***
I heard the frantic voices of men break through the fog of darkness and the fetid reek of blood. There was a mechanical beeping all around me, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
“Clear!” one cried. I looked around, only seeing blackness. At that moment, I felt a surge of electricity rip itself through my body. My arms and legs all seized and my eyes rolled up in my head as the pain sizzled through each one of my nerves. I clutched the young woman’s hand tightly, feeling the large, gold ring with the massive diamond biting into my skin.
“Again!” another voice yelled.
“Clear!” the original voice cried. The electricity came again, and a flash of white light flew across my vision. I blinked, seeing from two sets of eyes at the same time: one in the Bardo, and one on the blood-stained floor of the hospital ward.
The Bardo stayed dark and sinister, but the clear white lights of the real psychiatric ward were blinding. It was a bizarre experience. Moreover, everything hurt. Over a few seconds, my vision of the Bardo faded, and I was simply a gravely injured man laying on the floor in a puddle of blood.
Four doctors and paramedics were crouching over me with a defibrillator. My shirt was ripped off, and nearly all of my skin was covered in blood. I raised my left hand, trying to talk, but only a fiery pain raced through my neck. I felt bandages covering my skin. A nurse was rolling a stretcher down the hallway towards me.
“It’s OK,” one of the doctors said, kneeling down. “You’re being taken to emergency surgery. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t talk with the massive slice in my neck.
At that moment, I felt something in my right hand. I looked down, seeing a slim female hand with a massive diamond ring hanging there. Our fingers were wrapped around each other’s, but the hand had been cut off at the wrist. A ragged patch of bloody flesh and snapped bone poked out of the back.
“Nnnn,” I tried to say, shaking my head. I felt fresh streams of warm blood open up. “No…” The doctors looked down, seeing the dismembered hand. Their faces morphed into expressions of confusion and fear.
I closed my eyes as they lifted me up on the stretcher. One of them gently removed the cold hand from my fingers. But they could never remove the memory of what I had seen.
I know what happens after death, and it makes the worst life here seem like a dream. I know that, one day, I’ll be returned to that place. I know that, one day, I’ll see that great monster called Hell and the featureless, swirling sky of the Bardo again.
And the next time, I won’t wake up on a hospital floor, but will be trapped there with the others for eternity: an eternity of blood and fire.