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Copyright © 2002 Gaie Sebold.
All rights reserved and reproduction without written permission expressly prohibited.
A Pleasing Shape
The Prince of Darkness cupped his chin in his hand and glared, redly, across
the smouldering gloom. The howls of the damned were beginning to sound like
a once-loved album overplayed to the point of nausea. He shifted on the
throne. He ached. Not the flaring torment of the early centuries, but a
dull, low, arthritic sensation. Could he, after all this time, be getting
old?
No. It was surely only tedium. Scrabbling about among the chewed remnants
of humanity's moral structure. There was a time when everyone knew what sin
was, no messing about, transgress and be damned. Condemned in the depths of
their own hearts, they plunged onto the tines of the waiting pitchforks with
the horrified relief of those who have proved themselves totally right.
Straightforward for all parties.
Now, there was so little to get one's claws into. The tyrant who has
persuaded even himself of good reasons for genocide? The terrified teenage
soldier or drugged no-hoper killing someone for a pair of shoes? The
merchant banker, the pornographer and wanker? Please. Shrivelled, grey
little souls, the lot of them, with barely a decent sense of guilt to be
had. It was the crushing of mountains that satisfied, not panning the
flattened dirt for fragments. Finding the fissure in a saint's conscience,
inserting, ever so delicately, the appropriate wedge...there's nothing more
satisfying than watching someone fall from a height. As he knew better than
most.
"I'm BORED!" He roared. Sulphurous fumes trailed from his lips. But that
was it. The lakes of brimstone barely rippled. A thousand terrified demons
failed to appear trembling to do their master's bidding. Only one, a
greyish little mess of a thing, barely horrible enough to frighten a small
and nervous child, wriggled towards him. "Majesty?"
"Look at this place. Look at you. Look at Me. It's time something was
done."
"Er...we could play chess, Majesty."
"I have played chess with some of the greatest of masters, you repulsive
little creature, I have had the commanders of empires sweating over a
misplaced pawn, why in the name of all that's unholy would I want to play
chess with you? Get Me a saint. A proper one."
"A saint, Majesty?" The demon waggled a few limbs with a bewildered air.
"Oh, never mind. If you want anything done around here, you have to do it
yourself. Go away and torture something." The Satanic One raised his head
and sniffed. His sense of smell wasn't what it was, but surely, somewhere,
there was someone. Someone of flawless virtue, someone with a strong sense
of moral values, someone who would really be worth the effort.
Time had little meaning in Hell, but it seemed to him that a very long
section of it passed before he got a whiff. The lily-smell of an unsullied
soul, vaporous and transient, sweet with promise. "Oh, you're Mine," he
whispered, rubbing his hands together, pleased to notice that that, at
least, produced a few reasonable flames and a trembling in the ground.
Eager and drooling, he traced the scent through the veils between the
worlds, to its source.
[End of this extract. The full story was
a winner in the Writers Brew Press competition.]
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