The Sight

I was walking down cleverly-named Lois Lane on my way to work when I saw the first demon crawl out of a storm drain.

It was on the other side of the street. First came a red glow. Then a figure came into view, manlike but with bat wings and a forked tail. Its legs were that of a goat. In one clawed hand it clutched a three-pronged spear. It didn’t seem to see me or anyone else around it, staring straight up into the sky as if looking for faces in the clouds. After a while, it crept back down the drain and disappeared.

What the Hell was that? Did I just see a demon? Maybe I was just seeing things. Your brain got up to some strange shenanigans sometimes.

I wrote it off until it happened again, this time right in front of me. Up close, I could see its mottled black and red skin and the amber glow of its eyes. Just like the first one, this one didn’t even glance in my direction, just stared upwards. Then back down the grate it went.

After the third one, I resolved to find a psychiatrist to make sure I wasn’t going insane. I looked around and asked my friends and family for a good recommendation.

By the time I had booked an appointment with a well-reviewed head shrink, I was seeing demons every day, sometimes two or three at a time. I was getting scared, afraid of what my mind may do next.

“I’d like to start you on an antipsychotic,” Doctor Hajib told me. “We’ll start with a low dose and move up from there if the problem persists. You let me know if the hallucinations get worse, okay? We may have to try a few different medications before we find one that works.”

The hallucinations got worse. Now the demons weren’t crawling back down into the darkness after only a moment. Now they were looking about, surveying their surroundings, although they still didn’t seem to see the humans all around them. Whatever they were looking for, they still didn’t see it, and eventually returned to their underground lair.

Doctor Hajib was concerned after we had tried three different medications with no improvement. There were demons emerging from the depths everywhere I looked now.

It wasn’t long before I started seeing angels as well. I was in my office in a tower called Big Pink, named so because it was built of pink marble and pink tinted glass. I was on the fifth floor, low enough to see what was going on at street level but high enough to see what was happening above. First, demons started climbing out of every storm drain and sewer grate I could see. They even came out of manholes, flipping the fifty-pound covers off like tiddlywinks. Then the angels, surely what the demons had been waiting for, came swooping out of the sky and began fighting those from below.

The angels I saw resembled those found in the Bible, of which I was a scholar. Seraphim had six wings around one large eye. Cherubim were almost human but for the extra heads, and Thrones were wheels of flaming eyes. In comparison, the demons looked almost human. There was bright golden light around all the angels. Cherubim were wielding swords that appeared to be made of the same light. They were doing the actual fighting. Seraphim hovered above, generating the light. On top were the Thrones, able to view the conflict below.

Many of the demons were falling to the enemy’s swords, but there were celestial casualties, as well. The demons wielded pitchforks glistening with poison that killed their eternal adversaries. The bodies, angel and demon alike, disappeared before they hit the ground.

I did not know why I was the only witness to the war being waged before me. It was a terrible thing, to see so much destruction. I wanted to cry.

As I gazed out the window, one of the Seraphim seemed to actually see me and came closer, finally hovering about a foot from the glass. It spoke, its voice clear even through what was supposed to be double-paned soundproof glass.

“I am the Archangel Gabriel,” the being before me intoned. “I come to you with a message from the highest choir of angels. We need your help.”

“My help?” I squeaked in astonishment.

“Sophia Marie Madison, what you are seeing is a vision of the future, if nothing is done. You are being called upon to do something that nobody else can do. We must prevent this war. Our Lord must reconcile with his eternal enemy for doing the one thing that could not be forgiven. Everything that has occurred in the world, all human suffering, is because God is punishing the Devil by hurting people and letting humans blame it all on him. It has all been part of the plan. Lucifer is forever damned to watch humans, whom he pities for all the horrible things God is doing to them, live in pain and fear. We cannot let this go on.”

“Why me? And what do you want me to do?”

“You are the most Compassionate human being in Heaven or on Earth, because you have done something no-one else will do: You have forgiven the being that is thought of as the most evil thing in all Creation.”

I held a PhD in Theology. I probably knew more about the Bible than just about anyone. I remembered writing a paper called “Sympathy for the Devil,” explaining how Lucifer was only asking for equal rights, and how God, supposedly omniscient, let the rebellion occur and condemned the angel who was once called Lightbringer to Hell, a place God made as unpleasant as possible for those he would create to be damned. Satan didn’t condemn you, I explained. God did. Satan is just the landlord.

“That one paper made me the most compassionate person in the whole world?” I asked. “How about the Dalai Lama or something?”

“Even the Dalai Lama would not forgive to the degree that you can, Sophia. Believe me, we have the right person,” the angel replied.

“How am I supposed to convince him to forgive his mortal enemy?”

“They worked together, back at the beginning. There were three of them: Yahweh, Lucifer, and Ashera. They created your world and everything on it. Then Lucifer decided that mankind should know the difference between good and evil, and everything just fell apart. There was a war between Yahweh’s followers and Lucifer’s, with Ashera trying not to take sides. She was the original Divine Feminine, the Mother of all Creation.

“During the war, Ashera was discorporated by two rebel angels. When Yahweh saw Lucifer standing over what remained of her, he assumed the worst and became determined to make his new nemesis suffer for all eternity. Lucifer’s army was defeated and he and his angels banished to another dimension, the one which inspired Dante’s Inferno.

“There is no good outcome for this war. One of them will destroy the other, but neither of them are thinking about what comes next. Endless Heaven? Endless Hell? We can find problems with either scenario. Will you accept this responsibility? You can say no, although there will be dire consequences for all mankind if you do.”

“What kind of choice is that?” I demanded.

“There must be free will. You must come to God because you want to, not because you think you have to.”

“Then I will do this. I will speak with God and do what I can to convince him to show Compassion towards the one he vowed to hate for all eternity.”

“Very well. Close your eyes.”

I obeyed, and felt the air change around me. It was slightly warmer and the light through my eyelids was brighter.

“Now open them.”

I was in what looked like the lobby of a high-end hotel. To my right was a concierge desk, currently unmanned. To my left was a spacious seating area containing nothing but two chairs in front of a fireplace. One chair was empty. The other contained an older gentleman with white hair and a matching goatee. He kind of looked like Christopher Lee as Sauron. He was dressed like a Victorian gentleman of means, with a white frock coat over a white vest and matching trousers.

“My Lord,” the angel said, “we bring before you one of your daughters. She carries a message from all of your angels, on behalf of all your children. Hear her, I beg of You.”

I approached God cautiously, not knowing how to begin saying what I needed to say or how he may react.

“My Lord?” I asked, not sure if this was the correct honorific or if he preferred something else.

“Sophia Marie Madison,” He said as I sank into the other chair. “The most Compassionate person in the world. You were going to be spared, you know. I know you have identified as an agnostic for most of your life, and I do not hold it against you. I know what you are here to do. I promise I will hear you, although I do not make any promises as to whether or not I agree with you.” God’s voice was kind and melodious, almost like Mister Rogers. Then he said: “You may never understand the depth of my pain, and thus the depth of his suffering.”

The right words came to me. “He did as you knew he would do, my Lord. You saw all of this, and you let it happen, and then you hated him.”

“He murdered Ashera, Mother of all Creation. I have to spend an eternity without her now. It’s not like I can just make another one, you know.”

“So many more of your children will die, and so many will wind up in Limbo because Hell will no longer exist. You would be condemning them to an eternity alone, while you will be surrounded by worshippers who will praise your name forever. This is not justice, my Lord. This is nothing but vengeance, one final pain to end this mutual misery once and for all. But there is a better way. You were friends once. You can be friends again. ”

“Friends? After what He did to me?”

“He has suffered enough. If you have a partner again, someone who is just as powerful as you are, think of what you could accomplish! It could be like old times, building worlds and watching civilizations grow. You made such a great team.”

“What do you suggest?” God asked after pondering this for a moment.

“A summit. Get together, face to face, and talk about how each of you feels. Get it out in the air, and maybe you can find some common ground. I will be there to help mediate.”

“What kind of common ground could we possibly find?” God asked. He still seemed resistant, but relenting a little.

“For one thing, you built that beautiful world together. Those majestic forests and vast oceans. Even the people. You told them ‘Let us create Man in Our own image’ and you did.”

“And then he betrayed me.” God seemed kind of stuck on that point.

“Yes, but you knew it was coming. You had to have known,” I reminded him. Then I changed tack.

“Maybe the reason you’ve been so miserable is because you lost both of your best friends at once. You’re lonely, God. Even Jesus is not your equal. But Lucifer is.”

“I’m angry,” He insisted.

“You’re angry at him for what he did, but I think You’re even more angry at yourself for letting it happen. You’re hurting your own children just to make him suffer, which is deepening your own suffering. It is time to move beyond your anger.”

Then I saw something that rocked me to my core: There was a single tear making its way down the Creator’s cheek. Something I said had hit home.

“I miss him, you know,” God confessed. “We worked so well together. You know, our pride and joy was the platypus.”

“Think of the crazy shit you could do now,” I suggested. “Cephalopods could become the dominant species. Humans could start storing their consciousnesses on computers so their minds would never die.”

“Octopuses were my creation, but it was Lucifer that suggested making them intelligent.”

“So, what do you say, my Lord? Will you give peace a chance? Let bygones be bygones and finally shake hands with he who may become your friend again?”

God actually sniffed a little. “It would be nice to have somebody intelligent and creative to talk to.”

“I’m proud of you. It takes a disciplined deity to even think of forgiving those who have harmed you.”

“I do have one request, though.”

“Yes, my Lord?”

“I want to see him as he was, the Lightbringer. Ditch the hooves and all that shit I made him wear. He should meet me in his true form.”

The room in which the two foes that may become friends were to meet was something like the negotiation table between North and South Korea. On one side, the room was pure white. On the other, it was a blood red. In the center of the room was a table, also white and red, with a chair at each end. In the center of the table, spanning the divide, was my chair.

God arrived first, a few minutes early. He sat and began nervously chewing on his thumbnail, a human thing I would never expect to see him doing.

The Lightbringer didn’t keep us waiting long. As God had requested, he took his original form, which turned out to be almost identical to God himself, white suit and all, incongruous against the bloody backdrop. But what he said when he walked in made me glad I was sitting down.

“Hello, Brother. It’s been a long time.” Lucifer’s voice was deep and resonant.

“Brother?!”

“Indeed it has,” God replied, ignoring me.

“Brother?!”

He finally turned to me. “Okay, I forgot to tell you that part. We came into existence at the same time, birthed by the explosion which bloomed into the Universe. We are brothers.”

“Is that going to make this easier or harder? I wanted to know.

“We were so close. Along with Ashera, the Divine Mother, we built beautiful planets and filled them with spectacular animals. This one was special because we decided to create intelligent beings that may evolve and begin to explore space. We wanted them to find the other worlds where life has blossomed.” Lucifer told me. He sounded like he was about to cry.

“Why did Ashera have to die, Lightbringer? She was the third part of our Trinity!” Lucifer’s mention of the Divine Mother’s name seemed to have reminded God why he was angry in the first place.

“I swear to you, I thought she was safe. Nobody would dare harm the Mother of us all. I struck down the two fallen angels responsible for killing her, but her essence was already gone. There was nothing I could have done, brother! I told them to leave her alone!” Now he was crying, burying his face in his hands as his shoulders heaved with sobs.

God was looking at Lucifer with what I hoped was a degree of Compassion. He had also begun to weep, seeming to mourn both of His partners simultaneously. Finally, He spoke.

“Look at me, brother.”

Lucifer, having gotten himself more or less under control again, looked up.

“I called you so many things. Most Unclean. The Fallen One. I forgot you were Lucifer, the Morningstar. I forgot you were my brother.”

“Will you forgive me, Yahweh?” The old Hebrew word sounded like an honorific.

“Only if you will forgive me, Lucifer.”