Souls - XLIV

We don’t get to Kansas City until right after the third trumpet, Mary is moving fast. 

“Whelp, their goes the rest of the water supply. You people are fucked.” 

Jesus sounds almost pleased, in a sleepy, resigned sort of way, but still pleased. 

When we arrive at the skyscraper, the driver stops, exits, and opens the doors for us.

“Let’s all go up and enjoy the last bit of time we have. What do you say, drinks, food, merriment?”

I follow along mostly out of a lack of a better option. My mind is busy building a solution for my problem. It’s not everyday you have to try and come to terms with the fact that you are the devil all while trying to stop the end of existence.

In the elevator, that same eery muzak piping through the speakers, I can’t help but turn to Lucifer, Jesus, and Emily. All of the smiling, all of them calm. This must have been what drinking kool-aid from Jim Jones must have looked like. Every religion has to have its doomsday. And we are sitting front-row.

When we get to the top, it is empty. The cubicles house no one, the secretary absent from her ornamental desk.

“I have to thank you dear, this has been quite a treat. My son here despises your chaotic approach to an imaginary order, but I must say it has been quite entertaining. A real page turner.”

Lucifer opens the door to his office for us and ushers us in.

“Why would she have had to die?”

Jesus rolls his eyes, “Just when I think you're done you pop up with another question to a discussion held hours ago. She’d have to do the whole crucifixion thing, she’d have to be the sacrifice to restore order. She’s the anti to my Christ. Yin and Yang or some such bullshit.”

“Why her?”

“Listen, I wanna get some fuckin’ champagne, kick my feet up and slip into nothingness okay?”

I just stare back at him.

He sighs, “A few millennia ago, Satan tried to settle down. Tried to be one of you. Said he retired, didn’t need all the bullshit. I mean, he made some good points. Anyway, he had kids, moved into a retirement home, died. Yada, yada, yada. His kids had kids, they had kids, so fuckin’ on. Then you. Then you had a kid. The youngest of the line is the antichrist. It’s the power of the blood. Or whatever.”

Lucifer flips on the television and it is filled with religious experts looking maniacally giddy as things are finally happening as they are supposed to, as it was written. They are happy and gloating that the world is ending. Taunting atheists as they proclaim their readings of the gospel. 

It is all quite mature.

I walk to the full size window and look down on the city. Fire, looting, screaming, fills the street. Humanity proving to be utterly human right up to the end.

Then the fourth trumpet sounds. 

And it all goes black. 

The purply, skyless sky is gone.

“Almost there now, anyone need a refill?”

Lucifer holds up his glass of champagne as an indicator of what he is talking about.

I move to sit on the floor, my legs crossing over each other. I put my hand on the glass, feeling its cold smoothness.

“Mary, don’t. It’s not worth this.”

I don’t hear a response, and I don’t expect to.

I close my eyes, I reach down within me. I am looking for the heat. After a few moments in darkness, I feel it. It’s hiding, but it’s still in there. I coax it out. I feel it build up in me.

I hear Jesus, he sounds miles away, though I know he’s in the office with me.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Then I flash outwards, I see the light explode from within me. 

And then nothing.

I open my eyes, it’s nothing. Blackness. 

Then, there is a light. It is tiny and in the distance but it is a light. It moves closer and closer, seeming to glide across the nothingness. 

When the light is near enough that I could reach out and touch it, a hand reaches out from within it. I move to take it. It is smooth, warm, and loving.

Suddenly, I hear her voice.

“Hey mom, I wondered when you’d show up.”