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Initiation 8by Darren Ryding |
It’s only an illusion, Damiel told himself, knowing
that his feet were still firmly planted on the rock. Even so, he felt his own blood freeze as the
mouth of the Queen expanded around him.
The throat-rings were so much closer now, the nearest wrapping around
his vision like a mountain valley. He
could now observe the chaotic motions on its surface with unnerving
clarity. Each and every one of the tiny
“bristles” on the surface was a living being, and each and every one was
flailing in agony. Damiel could hear
their chorus of cries and pleas like the crashings of countless overlapping
waves. Damiel wanted to close his eyes
and cover his ears, but he could not. He
wanted to step back from the edge of Hell’s chasm, but he could not. He could only stand and whisper a silent prayer
for the Damned.
Further and further down his vision sank, past hundreds of
flying demons, past throat-rings ever more chaotic than those that preceded
them. One Blood Angel grew in his
vision, until Damiel could discern a tiny, struggling human figure being
carried in its tentacles. Damiel closely
followed the demon and its passenger against his will, until it approached one
of the middle throat-rings. Evidently,
the immense donut-shaped landscape the demon soared over was the middle
throat-ring - the fifth from the top -, and its surface rippled with a more
colourful chaos than the ones above. Far
below, amidst horrid writhing shapes like a dancing orgy of internal organs, a
crater opened up in the surface. The
crater deepened into a pit, and the demon slowed to a halt over its opening,
then let go of its human passenger to let him fall into its glistening red
depths. As the demon swerved and flew
away, Damiel’s vision approached the wretched human at the bottom of the pit
within the Pit …
As the smaller pit filled Damiel’s view, Damiel recognised
Hell’s new victim. Lean, solid, his
facial features harsh and chiselled, his silver hair clipped into a flat-topped
crew cut, his tattoos depicting serpents and chains and thorns. It was Milon Takvid. The man who had threatened to torture
him. The man who had murdered his
friends before his eyes. The man who had
murdered his parents.
Damiel recalled how much he had once feared this man, how
much others had feared him. He recalled
how fearless and ruthless this underworld icon had seemed to all he ever
encountered. And now, here he was,
stripped of all clothes and dignity, huddled as if freezing yet glistening with
sweat, glistening like the walls of meat that surrounded him. He was shivering, not with cold, but with
terror.
“Please!” he shouted, his voice uncharacteristically high
and wavering. “Please give me another
chance! I will make a good servant! I have experience! I could be so valuable to you!” He slipped on the red meat floor, falling
over with a sickening squelch. His limbs
flailed and scrambled as he desperately tried to lift himself, revolted by his
contact with the Queen’s own flesh.
Somewhere deep inside him, Damiel felt an emotion he never
thought he would ever feel for this sadistic, mass-murdering monster. He felt the slightest twinge of pity.
You are no doubt familiar with
this new denizen of Hell. Milon Takvid,
a man who revelled in torture, rape and murder.
How dearly he begged and pleaded for release! There was no way he could have conceived of
the peaks and riches of pain I had prepared for him! I looked deep into his mind, and saw the
object of his horror. Oh, what a
wonderful surprise he would have when confronted with his greatest phobia! To not just see it, but to be embraced by
it! To have it smear its slippery lust
all over every millimetre of his skin!
To feel it wriggling within every cavity of his body, burrowing through every
single organ! To alleviate his doubt, to
reassure him of my dedication to his absolute horror and unending agony, I told
him the story of “The Little Worm who Led.”
Takvid’s face convulsed, as if hearing the last sentence
that Damiel had heard, as if terrified by the mere mention of worms.
Once upon a time, deep inside
my body, there lived a kingdom of a million worms. They were all very hungry, but could find no
living sinners to feast upon. One day,
a Little Worm had an idea. He turned to
his brothers and sisters and said: “Let us explore the tunnels and caverns of
the Queen’s body. Soon, we should be
able to reach the part of Her where She keeps the new sinners. Then we could find a new, fresh sinner all to
ourselves, and feast upon his flesh for ever and ever!”
A faint whimper rose from Takvid’s quivering lips. “Please, oh please! I’ll do anything for you! Anything!”
“What a wonderful idea!” said
the other worms. “Will you lead us,
Little Worm? Will you lead us to this
luscious, delectable sinner, whose quivering flesh awaits our million ravenous
little mouths?”
Takvid burst into tears, wailing like a child. He dropped to his knees as he wrapped his
arms more tightly around his chest.
It was only now that Damiel felt the tears streaming down
his cheeks. For years he had imagined
how Milon Takvid would react when he finally found himself in Hell. He had imagined, many times, how he would
whimper and beg and plead for mercy, for release; and, more than a few times,
Damiel derived a secret pleasure from imagining his torment.
Now, seeing Takvid huddled pathetically before him,
convulsing and whining as he listened to the Queen’s mocking story, Damiel felt
no pleasure. None at all. All he felt was a sickness, deep in the pit
of his stomach. He felt sick that he had
ever wished such a fate upon another living creature.
“I will!” said the Little
Worm. “I will lead you to the place
under the Red Sky! Follow me, and we
shall all follow the sound of the sinner’s weeping and pleading! We should be able to hear him from far away,
for he is most terribly afraid, and he knows that we are going to do everything
to him that he has ever imagined in his deepest, darkest nightmares, and far
far more besides!”
“OH GOD!” screamed Takvid.
“PLEASE HELP MEEEEEEEE!!” He
keeled over, retching and sobbing.
“Do you hear that?” said the
Little Worm. “The sinner is not far
away! And he is filled with such
delicious fear! Who shall follow me to
our Eternal Feast! Who shall join me in
the Everlasting Orgy inside and all around the sinner’s body?”
“We shall!” said the Red Worms.
“We shall!” said the Purple
Worms.
And so, all as one, the worms
followed their new leader. They squirmed
and slithered and slipped over one another as they all followed the sinner’s
plaintive weeping and pleading. Their
million little mouths gasped and gaped with delight, as they smelled the sweet
scent of the sinner’s intense and absolute horror of the countless eons he was
going to spend with them when they finally found him!
Takvid rocked back and forth as a pitiful keening rose from
his throat.
“Enough!” shouted Damiel.
“You’ve scared him enough! Just
let him rest. He’s imprisoned. He can’t escape. Let that be his punishment. That’s all the punishment he will ever
need. You don’t have to do anything
else. Just leave him alone.”
Yet the Queen continued her story, heedless of the pleas of
either victim or observer.
“Look!” cried the Little
Worm. “Do you see the red light up
ahead?”
All around Takvid, in the walls of meat that towered far
above him, huge orifices stretched open.
Takvid raised his head to view this new development. His voice trembled as he whined wordlessly.
“We can!” the million worms
cried as one. “The sinner is near! Our feast is near!”
“Please, Your Majesty,” said Damiel, trying to suppress his
sobs. “Please don’t do it. He doesn’t deserve this. Not this.
It won’t serve any purpose.
Surely you can understand that?
You are so wise and powerful!
Surely you understand that this punishment does not suit his crime?”
Up toward the red light the
worms wriggled. The windows into the
outer world grew larger and larger, and the cries of the terrified sinner echoed
throughout the ever-shortening tunnel.
After much gleeful wriggling and squirming, the Little Worm turned to
his brothers and sisters.
“Stop!” said the Little Worm.
Damiel held his breath.
Was the Queen finally heeding his pleas for mercy?
So the brave Little Worm
wriggled on ahead to the end of the tunnel, to see what lay under the red light
beyond.
Suddenly, the tiniest of movements caught Damiel’s eye. He turned to one of the gaping orifices in
the walls of the pit. Sitting in the
entrance, its tiny head raised toward the wretched man huddled in the centre of
the pit, was a glowing red worm, as long as a man’s shoe and as thick as a
man’s thumb.
Takvid screamed.
“Your Majesty,” sobbed Damiel, “I’m not angry at him any
more. I forgive him. Please let him go. Please Your Majesty. I beg you.”
“He’s here!” the Little Worm
shouted with glee. “Milon Takvid is
here! Let us all gush forth and feast
upon his flesh, and revel forever in his horror and revulsion and agony!”
And all as one, the million
worms cheered a joyful cheer, and sprang forward, slipping and sliding and
slithering towards the red light, where the sinner Milon Takvid sat screaming.
From every orifice in the red wall came a sound like
slurping, squelching mud, mixed with the inane gibbering of a million tiny
voices.
Then, the worms gushed out.
“No!” screamed Damiel, but his cry was drowned out by the
hysterical, unintelligible noises issuing from Takvid’s throat. The criminal’s body spasmed, every muscle
trying to escape, every muscle flinching away in the opposite direction as the
worms gushed forth and squirmed towards him in their phosphorescent reds and
purples, piled atop one another as high as a man’s knees, gibbering and
twittering their gleeful hunger.
“Stop them!” Damiel screamed. “Stop them!”
The first wave of worms finally reached their trembling
victim. They slipped and squirmed and
crawled all over him, dancing on his contorted face, then proceeded to enter
every single orifice on his body.
Damiel screamed wordlessly.
Far away, he felt his own body retch and heave and vomit, and still he
screamed and screamed and screamed.
Takvid’s moans and whimpers were muffled around the thick
knots of worms that pushed and shoved their way into his mouth and nostrils.
More waves of hungry, lustful, gibbering worms converged upon their writhing victim,
smothering him from head to toe, creating new orifices as they burrowed their
way into every part of his flesh. The
writhing, bloating human wretch sank beneath the surface of the sea of worms;
yet they all continued to slip and slide towards him, creating a great mound in
the centre of the pit as they converged upon the object of their lust.
And the Little Worm, and all
his brothers and sisters, red and purple alike, all enjoyed every little bit of
their tasty new meal; the sinner who would never die, never run out of meat,
never run out of horror and revulsion.
And they all lived happily ever
after. The end.
“STOP!” Damiel screamed.
“STOP THIS ABOMINATION!”
Why, Damiel, even your tiny
little brain should be able to work out what is happening here! All this happened five years ago. We are much further along the line now! Would you like to see what the worms are
doing to him now? Would you? You would not even recognize him as your own
species! Oh, the millions and billions
and trillions of years they have at their disposal to play with his flesh and
bone! Such a wonderful work of art he
has become! Such beautiful
symmetry! Writhing in a pit within a
Pit, squirming deep inside me as the worms squirm inside him! Even the gods will smile upon my genius!
“You’re SICK!” Damiel screamed. “You’re EVIL!
You are nothing but a continent of filth! You are a vile stain on God’s Creation! You’re not even fit to be Satan’s vomit! I hope the archailects find you! I hope they fry you like an ant under a
magnifying glass! You and your entire
stinking world should be expunged from existence! You, your planet, your sun, every planet in
your entire fucking system! Every single
atom, every single particle! And your
sick and heartless Master that lets you get away with all this shit should be
torn to pieces with a million black holes!
I want to live to see it! I want
to be there to watch it, you vile disgusting BITCH!!!”
So say they all. They all scream and curse me at first. Who could blame them? They do not share the Language of Pain. They don’t need to. They all serve me in the end.
“I will NEVER serve you!
I would rather be damned and tortured forever than serve you!”
You have always believed in
Hell, Damiel. Yet if the reality of Hell
is so repulsive to you, what does that say about your beliefs? Whatever the case, your beliefs are of no
consequence to me. Your place is not to
be tortured. Your place is to serve
me. And you WILL serve me, whether you
like it or not.
“I will not be a slave to a coward. You’ve had it too easy. You have no idea what it is like to be so
small and helpless.”
YES I DO!
The Queen’s roar was deafening; her pain unmistakeable.
Your personal opinions are
nothing to me, but do NOT make assumptions about my past! You know NOTHING!
Damiel could sense a desperate new gravitas in the Queen’s
tone. It cut him deeper than any mere
actor’s forgery; yet Damiel remembered that he was arguing with a transapient,
who could toy with mortal minds the way he could with wet sand. That did not change the fact that the Queen
herself was just another speck in this universe. Damiel answered only to a much higher
authority.
“Heavenly Father, please take pity upon these, Your
children, who suffer in this place of darkness.
May You deliver them unto Your Court of True Justice to see Your
Heavenly Glory, and vanquish this evil place and all the false angels that rule
here.”
Your “Heavenly Father” has not
delivered a single sinner from my embrace!
Not in five thousand years! Do
you think He will bother to intervene in another five thousand years? Five million?
Five billion? These sinners
belong to ME! All of them; the
torturers, the tyrants, the rapists, the molesters, they ALL belong to ME! They are MINE to toy with! MINE to cherish! MINE to hold FOREVER!!
“No living creature belongs to you. You deserve nothing. You are nothing.”
Your beliefs are nothing to
me. The beliefs of mortals are flimsy
things that shrivel and burn like tissue paper before the blaze of
Reality. I am Reality. These sinners belong to me. They always have belonged to me. They always will belong to me. No prayers, no spells, no fairytale magic
wishes are ever going to change that.
And you, Damiel, my Lamb of Justice, you too belong to me. You WILL serve me. You WILL love me. I will make sure of that.
“Never.”
Through his tears, Damiel saw the Queen’s raw red interior
fade from view, to be replaced by an endless starlit void. Towering before him, silhouetted against the
glorious backdrop of the Milky Way galaxy, was a colossal cat. Dozens of eyes opened up on her dark,
world-sized head, all burning with wisdom and cruelty and madness.
I will show you my
secrets. I will show you what is in my
mind. My history, my thoughts, my
dreams. I will show you my art, my
poetry, my music. You will learn. You will understand. You will remember. Not all the time, for your conscious mind
will not contain it; but in dreams, you will remember everything.
Damiel’s very soul began to sink with exhaustion. He had read about Perfect Art, the art of
transapients. Through its true art, a
transapient could make a lesser being feel exactly what it wants one to
feel. One glimpse of a transapient’s
true artwork, and there was no turning back.
Even now, there was nowhere to run.
He was already inside the Queen’s sick mind, utterly at her mercy.
In the midst of his anguish, Damiel recalled just one more
obscure legend, clutching for it as if for a tiny talisman of hope. It was said that the Queen had a Secret Name,
and on the day a mortal told it to her, she would die. As instantly as the thought had surfaced,
Damiel once again sunk into despair.
Even if this legend was true, such a heroic task was not for him, nor
for any mortal. The Queen was a high
transapient, and her “Secret Name” - if there was such a thing - could not
possibly be guessed at by a mere human, let alone pronounced.
The power of words, of images, of ideas, was something the
transapients would always have over lesser beings. Mortals had nothing but prayer.
“Heavenly Father,” Damiel whispered weakly, “please don’t
let this beast brand my soul.”
You have already sold your soul
to me. I am merely granting what you
have freely chosen. Do not fight. Do not resist. A glorious new life awaits you. Accept it with gratitude. Accept it with love.
Everything darkened.
Even the stars winked out, followed by the constellation of burning
eyes.
In the midst of oblivion, a new reality bloomed, writhing,
screaming, rejoicing.
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