Tower of Brahma. 62h. Hell is for children

I pry myself from inside the egg, peel electron layers free from the warm embrace of an alternate reality. The digital dream of my older self was now over, his spirit in the hands of the Prince of Lies, finally at his mercy.

I snap back to my body, the scorched park wide open and tangible all around me. The eggs still sit stacked in an open bit, vulnerable flesh and blood bobbing inside. They lie there, cut off from fantasy, their heartbeats thundering through them as never before.

The devil gives me a vision.

Anthropological devolving, mankind disappearing before my eyes, from meta-post-post-modern (MP2M) to neanderthal, primate/lizard division, amphibious single cell organisms, entwined tails, penis to anus, testes within womb. The balance is restored.

The atom spins wild, rollercoaster centrifuge, colliding on magnetic force field pulls. A vibrational superstring wobbling in the spaces between neutrons, eleven dimensions rippling in the cosmic wind. A freshly laundered sheet, flapping on a clothesline, spring in full bloom as the sun sets.

The end.

Sixty three lives simultaneously...suddenly, cease to exist as each body within each pod ignites with hellfire, scorching the individual inside into ashes in the blink of an eye. I hear a dull screech as the internet dies. The electronic age has become extinct.

I return to my body just as the devil draws me down into his realm.

A void of ash, wind scattered remnants of entire species whipping about us. Every sinner left is gone. All traces of human anatomy has been torched, all souls converted back into bio-electricity, siphoned back out into the fourth dimension.

He scoops up a handful of cinder, remains spilling over the sides of his long slender fingers, and raises his open palm to me. I know that this is me. What I become. My death, or rather the moment just beyond. My final judgment.

And I am to be the judge.

Tower of Brahma. 62G. God's Not Home

"So, now you know why I've got to end it. All of it. Before it goes any further."

I was convincing. Years of running a mass(multi)media empire refined my charisma to a fine edge, capable of stabbing right into your brain like a needle.

But his success has made him weak, out of practice, having bent the remaining humans to his will, their very survival dependent on his vision.

And I'm not him.

Not yet. But I know how he thinks. I know it's not an act of altruism, a heroic deed, like he's trying to pitch it to me. This is a way out. A way not to deal with the consequences of his actions. Even at sixty I still can't own up to responsibility.

"Bullshit. It's all about you. Just tell me the truth."

What does it matter? At this point, the last scene between two living human beings, dialogue zipping between our neurons like electronic telepathy. Our chat room simulation was that of the villain's lair, complete with viewscreen, dome, and throne. A place he could think. Somewhere this desperate future version of myself could hide and scheme to save his soul.

"You know the deal then. It's what landed you here. Forced to handle me. Yourself." His shoulders went slack, he tried to let go, be himself once again, but I saw the tension cling to his muscles.

"You're the one who brought me here, to the future, to the end of all things." I fought to muster up righteous anger, where was wrath when I needed it?

"Yes. At great expense." Turning towards the background, he produced a thumbcontrol from his pocket.

Click. The walls flickered and vanished. The secret headquarters of the man who kept the devil at bay just ceased to be. In the dark of imagined space, we stood there, not looking at each other.

"Then why do it if you knew I'd come here to stop you? You must have done this when you were me...", my voice was oddly confident, a rumble in my chest like a proud lion.

He spun around, pivot on heeled boots, a whip-crack of an arm, extended finger pointed at me, aimed directly at my brain. He held it as the spotlight popped on, then slid his shadows at me as the beam dropped. Glancing upwards in a snap, sunglasses popped on his face.

"I never succeeded when I was young..." the stabbing tip of his piercing obsidian fingertips darted into my peripheral vision.

My hand whipped up, slapping aside his shadow, spinning his body sideways, he was ready with a cocked back southpaw. I finally make eye contact, and take a good long look at who I really am, what I eventually become.

An old man with a sack full of theatrics. Playing the streetfighting action hero, past his prime, shades of supercool wannabe in every step. Afraid of people so finds a way to be alone. Afraid of not being the most important person in history.

So secure in the idea that he's Jesus, unwilling to believe himself to be Judas. Fame makes strange bedfellows with faith. Not a young man, but still a kid. Damaged goods. He tried and failed to stop the end of all that ever was. I will try and fail.

Therefore I will destroy the universe.

His fist slaps into my palm. FWAPP! I pause the scene just long enough to crack him into pieces. The crinkled bits littered the floor. The burning embers of his remains howled as the digital dirt digested him.

"See you in Hell."

Tower of Brahma. 62f. Over & Over

I dove deeper into the system. The web of illusion that these overgrown unborn babies all pretended was reality. They changed the channels on each other, watching private lives that were lies, wish-fulfillment imaginings of personal experience...no more than dramatic reenactments.

There was a heirarchy. A tower to climb. Each flabby sleeping slob brought me closer to the reason this humanity holdout was able to even exist. How could it keep going? What held it together? Solar powered panels, interconnectivity, hive mindless entertainment machine.

Why not just let go?

There were scientists, mixed among philosophers, those of us that had answers, or at least a study guide, a rulebook, that made sense of the chaotic cauldron we were birthed in. A step by step reason formula that formed structure around the formless void. They were plugged in a meditative state, pumping knowledge into recording devices, free to ponder and pontificate.

There were theologians. No actual men or women of faith, but historians and scholars, briefed on the great beyond. They too processed bits of data, translated from ancient alphabets, the musings of early mankind. The bold truths that came over told them everything that they already felt.

Fictioneers, fictionauts, falsehood mythmakers, the greatest living writers, story structure specialists, all hammering out a plot that was so precise, they believed it could puncture the essence of all dimensions. This was the armory, letters lined in rows, grouped in paragraphs, given power and purpose.

Destroy the entire thing. Everything. The reality of Earth. The concept of reality. The idea of Heaven and Hell, the Devil, and God itself: these would all die, stuck and bleeding across the higher realm. And if we were lucky, that too would burst apart and be obliterated, and beyond.

Devout disciples drilling into the ether, whipping together adventures, played out before them, for them by them. Self-satisfying action, the dramas each sprouting a new direction, inspiring each creator to fine tune and edit. There had to be one last story to tell. A final epic where each word died as you read it, a book that evaporates upon asorbtion of even just one reader.

It must be at the end of this race. For infinity was merely a word for the endless unknown, a word and idea created by man, so therefore irrevocably flawed. There was a cliff, know reality was flat, an edge to carry what was left towards, to jump off of. The bliss of non-existence.

Surely that was better than suffering eternally.

Tower of Brahma. 62e. White Lie Like the Devil pt.1

I got inside. Networked my self into one of the oval coccoons sitting in post-apocalyptic Prospect Park. Connected with one of the last sixty four people left alive, if you could call this living.

Naked, encased in gelatinous electrolyte rich ectoplasm, asleep and surfing the world wide web (now no more than a sad server no larger than a message board). They lived digital dreams, recharging and recycling their energies, feeding their personal re-wombs. Safe from Satan.

Or so they thought. I psychically slipped into one, a developer for the wonder material that comprised the skin of these lifesaving eggs. He was granted passage as one of the creators of their salvation. In return for his genius, he plugged in and tuned out. I patched into his video feed.

Brushing his teeth. Shower scene masturbation. Dress for success and off to work. A coffee and bagel as he passes thousands of artificial simulations of the rush hour masses. None of them real, but for the illusion of a real life, a mundane routine, boring living 9 to 5 workweek humdrum. This is what he wanted.

I rode his signal to the next pasty person floating in goop. This one wired the globules for audio/video, was integral to the development of the interface, and was otherwise completely and utterly a drone. His feed fed him sex in a non-stop loop, penetrating and pontificating upon every manner of persona.

I skipped along a few more technicians and mechanical misanthropes. They all sought some singular simulcra of happiness. Drugs, endless streams of pixellated heroin seeping up into veins. Pain, straps of leather slapping and cracking against electrical inputs that served as skin. There was nothing but self-destruction spread among the saved.

Until I came to a poet. A garden. A gifted lad, living renaissance simplicity, dining in decadent halls, gliding along in suits with maidens at balls, lounging with feather quill pen and parchment, scribbling along for days on end. He sought to uncover the mystery of love eternal, while alone in a bubble.

Next to the poet was the artist, swiping across landscapes, thinking outside the canvass, breaking physics down and reshaping all that was around him. The cosmos came into being as he tipped his finger into the dark infinite, rasterized edges sawing into the endless monitor display. He swapped paintbrushes, hit the airbush tool, added a gradient.

I thought about what art would be with only the artist to gaze upon it, what poetry would sound like with only your own voice to speak it. There would be no audience, no outside force to create meaning or be communicated to. No one there to place a label upon your creation, no pressure to please anyone but yourself.

Most likely a Hell disguised as Heaven.

Tower of Brahma. 62 D. This is a novel.

Art does not exist in a vacuum. That was the last lucid thought I had running through my brain as I scrambled to put down the information that was growing in my mind.

This book is something important. I'm thinking of something, devising a plan, scoping the pattern of everything that is and ever will be. The meaning of life, if possible, but exploring every mystery between here and there.

It doesn't matter if this work matters in any way with any piece of writing that has ever been created. Whatever came before was of its time, crafted by its influences, bending an idea through a symbolic pattern of letters from something called an alphabet.

And in English no less. By an American. From a historical aspect, what could be more removed from anything ancient and physcial, a battle of survival, wits and strength, tempered with wisdom and experience. The language was new, the country was new, it's people such a diverse genetic, culturally and socially enmeshed mankind, the likes the Earth had never seen.

We dwelled mired in the daily occurences of pop stars, celebrity corpses, and mad branded icons of fame. We hungered for reality, senses sharpening, pulsrate quickening, visceral moments. Some of us wrote those down, painted them, screamed them out with notes. We made Art. Abstract thought brought humans out of the darkness of their being.

Stumbling towards the bright light, the pretty flame, rationalizing with logic our hearts desires. We wanted more of whatever was beyond our grasp. Were two opposing forces spun into motion, still spiraling outwards from the Big Bang? An atomic birth, a quantum fusion, energy reacting, exploding into infinity.

Everything gets bigger as things get smaller. The possibilites are greater as our souls and bodies are battered and run down, kept occupied with a weekday task that allows us just enough life left in us to drink our cares away. Our gadgets shrink in our very hands, digital landscapes opening up in our palms. You gaze down into the app that will become your personality.

A metal/plastic all-purpose personality storage device. Digital images, handheld video, mp3 soundtrack to score our descent. We simulataneously drop into Hell as our consciousness transcends to Nirvana. Our bodies rot, our awareness expands. Those left alive live comfortably, gelantenous sacks filled with nutrient goo, wired for Blue-Ray, Plasma HD, 3D, stereo surround-sound, Hi-Def, Bluetooth Wireless Connectivity to the Central Router.

The last bastion of humanity. The 64 blobs that lie on the horizon, sitting in bunches sometimes, swatted into a ditch of scorched earth by some wandering demonic beast, I counted them out and checked them off. The devil wanted an exact count. Who's left?

And I was the errand boy. A younger self of one of these sad sack, re-wombed, pathetic examples of the last people on earth. In one of these bobbing water balloon eggs was me at sixty years old. Having become successful enough to afford my very own Armaggedon-life rafts, I apparently somehow pluck my 33 year old self, me, and plop him here after God's Reckoning.

A New York City picked clean by rotted, gnarled bits of bone that these monsters call teeth. Large stabbing, piercing, eviscerating tusks of mustard colored fangs. Bits of human carnage wedged in its gums, a discernable body part popping from a back molar as it screeches the deadening shriek of eternal damnation.

This moment is your last.

But its not. The devil has a deal. Live. Walk. Experience what's left of my race. Then sign the contract, get whatever I want, do a favor for him, and eternal bliss. Wait, what's the favor? I don't remember offering up my services in any sort of post-apocalyptic janitor, sweeping torsos and limbs into bins, clearing streets of bodies.

"That's not what I want." It really wasn't a big deal.

"Alright, well I signed...", I said. "What now?"

That's when he left me in decayed Brooklyn, shattered brownstones, a ring of rubble circling Prospect Park. The temple that was the Brooklyn Museum still stood, despite savage anger delivered to its columns by all manner of mishapen beasts. I had a free pass. All but invisible to their animalistic senses, their bloodlust.

It was here, besides a lake of hellfire, I found a stash of the orbs. Giant old pantyhose containers, the oversized Easter eggs, and inside every one was a blob of white chocolate. A rich executive of a company, the designer of the orb technology, the president perhaps. But each one had something in there that I needed.

I tapped one with my foot to watch it warble like a water snake, but it held firm, not quite the kiddie pool inflatable I imagined. Flexible but secure. It looked like something found in nature from another planet or dimension, totally acceptable sitting like a giant nest as massive leathery wings flapped all about me, their shadows dipping over me, as if to keep me on task.

From my pocket I pull out the handheld that the devil gave me. It was clunky, old school, had heft and weight to it. Dark wood panelling, vinyl grooves, and a chrome finish. The screen came to life, flickering from Apple IIe green dot matrix, to 16-bit, NTSC to PAL, VCR quality. It snapped with my brain and I began to interface.

I went inside myself first. Realizing that the lump of plastic and metal was just a formality. Something that resembles what I knew in my life, the tech of my era, to represent an idea. Connecting electronically, which triggered the psychic link. And from there, I took aim, dead center of the oval before me, and fired.

9600k baud modem squelch.

Tower of Brahma - Christ, This is Easy - 62.c (of 64)

Buy a drink, blend in, slip between the cracks. You're a normal human being enjoying an alcoholic beverage. At a bar where people gather to consume and forget, a place where your past and hand shakes should be forgotten.

Confidence is hard, carrying a deflated ego across the world, hefting the bloated carcass of my entire life along the powerlines of my life. After Jesus was ressurected he assumed a false identity, scouring the land for all that he could fix and realign.

Now it's my time. I'm here, in his name, reborn in his image, sweeping over all that I see to enlighten and brighten against all odds. I know you hate me, envy me, and it's quite alright. I really don't mind.

I have a job to do. I am hefting the weight of everything else with me. So display your discomfort, explain your dilemmas, and know that I'm listening. I may not seem like I care, but I totally do. I want us all to be happy and fulfilled.

A few drinks makes it better. A smoke outside, a beverage in hand, the night's coolness set upon us all. Abuse of alcohol makes it easier to interact. Makes our fallible human nature that much easier to consume. It's better than being revealed stark sober.

I don't judge you, even though I do, but I love you all nonetheless. I know how hard it is. I've experienced it first hand as one of you. Talk about it all like it matters, dancing among the discourse, taking in the pain and beauty of every day living.

I will swallow it all and make of it what I can, I promise you that. It's my pleasure to be of service, my disrupted youth, my flock of helpless servants to oblivion. I put words down and make this all a bit easier to consume. It may not be to your liking but it's all I can do to take in and digest the everything that surrounds me.

I creep out of the crypt, dancing before your eyes, breathing in the dischord in your discourse. I shave my beard into a fierce goatee and slide into society. You don't see me here but I know that you appreciate my efforts.

You're welcome.

Tower of Brahma - U.R.B. - Chapter 62b. (of 64)

The beast rose from over a knoll, all snarling and slobber, hungry for flesh, the natural malevolence shone in its eyes. I froze in my tracks, silencing my body as it trembled.

"Bitches!", he screamed across the subways tracks, followed by incoherent mumbling, punctuated by, "Whores!"

The draft down the tunnel wafted the aroma of urine and a bar floor combo alcohol stench. A train barrelled down the tracks, perhaps just a station away, shoving the air currents along the platform, carrying the man towards me.

His boots shuffled across the tiles, smearing Saturday Night vomit along like a slug. Drool slipped from the corner of his mouth, snot dripped from both nostrils, and I think he shit his pants.

Passing the row of empty benches between us, he shambled up in my peripheral vision. The words I was running my eyes over disappeared altogether, my concentration long ago broken by his outburst. He was nearly upon me.

The train light erupted from the dark mouth of the tunnel, propelling the metal mass towards my direction, the wind whipping up, sweeping over my body, the air curling below my nostrils. My eyes closed for an extended blink and I could sense the madman's hand as it reached out for me.

He stepped out of nowhere and thrust his arm forward, open palming the bum, ripped off his feet like crumpled notebook paper, tossed aside without a thought. I watched as the force left the arm extending from behind me, into the frail and elderly body, the sick, weak flesh that was covered beneath dirty rags, soaked in filth.

The bum mouthed the words "Burn." Or so I thought. Just before the B train shredded and splintered his person, obliterating his skeleton, pulping his limbs, grinding his organs into paste. It splashed up the front of the train as the driver shrieked in horror and slammed the breaks.

The train screeched, metal shearing metal, twisted whine of polished friction. The wind dropped instantly as the doors 'DING'ed open. A hand appeared on my left shoulder as a face drifted in on the right. It was him. Me. The last one. Smiling.

"Come on Charles. Time to do this thing." His left arm gently pushed me in the suway car, like a piece of meat shuffled along a conveyer belt.

"What the fuck do you want?" Bastard.

"We gotta wrap this apocalypse up."

I knew he was right. Just as I knew that the derelict that was just slaughtered didn't matter. I didn't need to ask why, or proclaim the inhumanity of it all. No one was left to care. The human race was down to bare bones.

"Stand clear of the closing door." Automated conveinence.

I dropped onto the bench. The doors slid closed. The man came into full view as he held onto the pole. It was me in my sixties, maybe after I worked out for a few years and hired a stylist. Looks like I got my teeth done too. A rune tattoo behind the ear.

Bastard. A shimmer formed around him as the train chugged forward. The car lurched forward and the space inside began to warble. All around me became fluid. It condensed, drawing me in, sucked down the drain. We built up speed and the bubble shrunk, pulled me up onto my feet, standing before the elder Charles Crown.

I pulled back, arched away from him, wasn't there an issue with two beings of similar matter touching each other? A personal paradox that'll bash time and space apart?

He saw the look on my face and smirked. We curled up in an oval lounge space, intimate and cozy, practically sitting on top of one another. And with a faint BOOOM, we banish ourselves from the material plane.

"Where are we going?" It was the only question I had on hand.

"Beyond."

Tower of Brahma - I Saw A Mountain - 62a (of 64)

Valhalla. The point where two opposing forces begin to seperate, water vapor eradication of eternity, one drop at a time, a shimmering sphere wall, ever expanding.

Charles Crown stands before the crack of all reality. A dividing of houses, life crumbles all about him, shifting rifts tearing itself apart.

Fuck, he sighs.

That's what it all meant. He's the one who first sees the bubble begin to burst. Nothing special, just happens to be him. No great destiny other than being first in line at the dotted line, the parting of two parallel dimensions, Strange savage arayan norweigan wolfgod, and myself.

The Spider sheds its skin, leaving behind a venomous grin, seeping with sinister lies. The weapon with which to kill the serpent. But first, escape.

Run for your lives boys, this chapter is at an end.

The Tower of Brahma - Chapter 61 - Inferno

I sit in the NorthWest corner of the park, just past the scorched bars of the kid's playground, but before the massive burning ember, the eternally blazing, giant tree trunk by the exit. Where homeless men battled West Village kids with their Kings, Queens, and Knights. Strategy and conquest are long lost concepts here, mere scuffmarks across a blackened chessboard.

"The portals of Darkness are open and the shadows of the dead hunt over the earth..."

More like linger and stare at the human, sunglasses and cap, cigarette and paperback in hand, as he rests his feet on the battered, melted plastic table with a chargrilled quilt upon it, a banged up typewriter, and a small stack of black and white photographs. The human takes a drag of smoke, exhales into the smokey, brimstone day, and writes this sentence in his head.

I put down the paperback, can't read on a day like today, I've a mad on for writing and I must force it out, destroy this section of time and space once and for all. The demonic forms all hustled by me, ignoring the last remnant of the Twentieth Century that isn't bound up in his very own bubble world.

The rest of the world is floating out at sea, or in an underground bunker, tucked in a secure room of giant, gelantenous coccoons, floating inside their own private, inflatible web; "in-case-of-armaggedon" your reality becomes a floatation device. They all sleep, log-online, go about their day in a total delusion of business as usual humdrum.

But not me, I never grew up with one of them fancy realities. Seems a future version of me brought me through time to save himself from something, and I bursted out of my little bubble, spilling out into the world. So, here I am. Selling thoughts and memories to the tourists from Hell in a Nightmare Futuristic Dystopia.

Cybernetic monsters, wailing banshees giving birth, child-like creatures of disgusting evil, they all stroll by and throw their disapproving looks my way, or refuse to acknowledge my existence, and even sometimes, sometimes they run past in fear. God only knows what they think, how they see me.

Occasionally though, one will happen by, intrigued by my small setup, and ask what it is I'm doing.

"I'm selling my wares, to make a wage, so as to live another day."

This usually leaves them stumped and an easy mark, so I give them the spiel about winding up in the Inferno, rat-a-tat-tat down a paragraph or three on the back of a worn photograph, and then see their reaction. They read it there, but it doesn't register. They toss a piece of hellfire into my bucket, and go about their day. I slip on the shades, kick back in my kicks, and read another page.

They go home their night to their perch in a blown out highrise uptown, place the photo on their coffee table, devour whatever scraps of flesh they have about, and secretly think about my poem. The words jingle through oddly wired meat, stimulating electrical impulses to begin firing, forging connections never made, producing desires and longing for something pure and beautiful. Their head then explodes.

It's a cruel trick, but they're fucking demons, and they've got guns and claws and an utter lack of respect for humans. Not that I blame them. They've just come in as the supernatural immigrants to the Promised Land, shoving aside the fat, complacent indigineous people.

The humans now live virtual lives, alone in a bubble, interactions between individuals now just projections on a screen, as interchangeable as a click on a remote. See the world however you'd like, absorb nutrients through the gel you swim in, let the skin of the bubble suck in the dying gasps of oxygen and rays of sunshine, letting you live to connect another day.

The Divine still twinkles in me as a ray of light beams down between clouds of filth and soulless skies, God's taillights as he drives off. Most pure evil beings can't even see pure goodness, so most of the time I'm safe, but the madmen can still see. Demented x-ray vision of my disguise, so they were the immediate threat.

I'd usually just knock them unconcious straight away. Letting them speak for more than a moment could be disasterous. And granted, some are more "with it" than others to be sure, but no one stays sane long standing in the path of the beasts of the apocalypse.

I live on a fourth floor walk up in Greenwich Village, just off Washington Square Park. The fourth floor I find is just high enough that the more lazy, mindless mutants don't climb that high, and low enough that the skyreapers can't spot you from their skyskraper perches.

I drag my bucket and sling the typewriter over my shoulder, leaving the table downstairs, probably be beaten up, but not worth the effort to bring it up the stairs. I toss the hellfire into the pit in the center of the room, tighten the pentagram around it, and fired it up.

I stared long and hard into the flame, the fire, fundamental force of nature, erratic molecules, essence, idea, word, sound. All self swirls upwards in a backdraft breeze. The crossroads clashed, an X branded beyond my mind, unicorn socket insert, click connect. Twist, turn.

The engine started in my mind. It rocked on the hydraulics and rumbled teetering on the ti of my spine. My circle grew, ignition of the sigil, unlocked reality cheat code transports you to the Darkness.

He lifts you up and acknowledges you, appearing as an equal so as to make you underestimate him. Take him for a man. His great joke.

The devil takes off his hat and stays awhile. He's got a sound system he carries with him, tessaract tucked into his breast pocket. As he sits a plush chair appears beneath him, and the decor flickers to one of his fancy in that moment.

"Take your head out of the fire already." He clicks disapprovingly. He's tired of my games.

"Aaahhhh." I throw back my head and brush back my hair, wet from the flame.

"Hey."

"What's up?" He was pretending he had something else to do.

"Let watch Faust again." I settled into his version of the room's reality. I knew he'd want to smoke, so he'd definitely have snacks appear. Probably some beer, and God willing, some Whiskey.

"You want to sign or not?" All business today I see. Well, fine, maybe it was time.

I took the devil's offer for a test drive awhile back. I didn't really love it. I kept getting it confused with the human virtual reality, and well, milling about besides demons in post-apocalyptic future Manhattan? That sounded awesome at first.

Over time, he'd pop up, offer to send me back to my reality, to give me power, fortune, glory. Meh, in a way this was a blessing. A vacation from the burden of responsibility, some time for the devil and I to just hang out, watch some movies, sometimes talk. Although I'm sure he denies it.

At some point I realized that I was that last one. The very last soul he could tempt, unable to pierce the holy coating of mankind's deliverance. All he can do now is choke out the life of the planet's ecosystem and the humans will all have to pop out of their little pods or else drown in their embryonic filth.

So we usually just chill, I dig up some of my past, hock it in the park, get enough flame to invite him over to hook my ass up on freebies. He seems all sour so I try and get him talking.

"Remember when you let me have superpowers and we shot across the planet? It was like a boneyard obstacle course.

"And that demonic King you introduced me to...Beedazzle, when we drank ourselves stupid and wound up destroying his army? Oh, man, I tell ya..."

I let my words trail off, sensing that he wasn't in the mood. I guess I don't know what to do now. I may as well sign. I work out the angles and wonder how it could be a bad deal.

I figure he gives me enough rope to hang myself, I take it and then can't go back to how life was before. A private reality that I have ultimate control of. But the humans over the hill offered me the same thing and I refused. My every desire is taken care of.

Of course, he'll lead me down a path that rises and falls. But that's not pre-ordained, he can't be master of all time and space, he's just hedging his bets on our penchant for destiny. I look over at him and imagine a great winged beast, a concept of absolute horrific and terrible evil, squeezed into a human shape sitting across from me.

He smiles.

"Fine. Let's do it. I was getting tired of looking at your creepy-ass face."

I drew blood across a gothic barcode, bleached into the DNA smart papyrus, and suddenly I felt better. I saw virgins defiled on altars, an all seeing eye penetrating their dignity. My back didn't hurt, I could breathe, my mind was clear. War, Famine, and Plague seeped from my pores.

I was aflame and adrift all at once. Spinning round, throwing earth into the air with wreckless abandon, I was scattershot chaos shattering the darkness. I stood my ground, and lifted myself up, surging with replenished strength.

I smashed the devil's face, shattering his fragile humanity with a single blow. I think I surprised even him, for in an instant I saw that flinch, and knew he wasn't all-knowing, cause he didn't see that coming.

His reality crumbled away with his person in the vile crossbreeze of ember and ash. The flame flickered and died down. The devil has left the building, and left behind something interesting. I fished through my pockets and found the seven deadly sins.

That son-of-a-bitch. He needed one last human to carry them for him. But I think I know why he was so nice to me. He knows I'll get rid of these for him. For him and everyone else. I'll face down the evil that's so big that not even he can see it fully.

I draw the first card, see my first sin, and and face myself.