Birth

      The severed arm sat on Vincent’s desk, losing its color, and taking up space. Precious space that could be used for paperwork. The resume of dead souls entering hell and requests to curse people in the living world. Every paper Vincent signed with a hoof stamp ten more would appear.

           The sheep man sighed, putting his head onto the desk while the souls took their new shapes around him. Their bleats and cries to be sent to heaven falling on his deaf ears.

           Just because I’m ‘Satan’s Secretary’ doesn’t mean they can bitch their petty complaints to me, he thought bitterly.

           One of the forming souls grabbed a stack of papers off the secretary’s desk and pulled them to the ground. The papers combusting upon the floors of hell. “Piss off!” He bleated.

           The souls scampered away, only to be eaten by bigger, more demonic sheep. Vincent managed to reach down and save one paper from the burning stack and blew the flame out. “Mr. Sal, died at twenty-nine… screw it.” He dropped the paper back on the ground and watched as it burnt down to ash.

           He got up from his seat, the chair falling backwards and catching fire. Vincent took the arm from the desk and left his desk. With his bottom hoof he stomped the ground twice and a crack in the ground opened up. Chains spurt out grabbing any new damned soul they could find. But Vincent ignored the rattling of chains and jumped into the crack, the bright fire soon going dim as he went down, down, down.

           Landing on his bottom hooves, Satan’s Secretary didn’t look around. He already knew, from the banging of cages and the mix of bleats and screams, where he was. Satan’s personal torcher chamber, where the screams of the most cruel bring joy to anyone who hears it. He roamed the corridor, looking from side to side. He didn’t get much of a kick out of watching sheep getting tortured as much as his employer. But the sounds of their anguish made him happy, deep within his gut.

           He stopped at one cage where a sheep fresh plucked from the living world was curled up in a corner of its cage. It cried and Vincent was almost convinced it was still human. He looked at the sign that said what the creature had done. Oh dear, thought the secretary, who let you in here?

           With a click of his hooves the cage door opened, but the sheep inside did not run. It only continued to cry as Vincent stepped inside. He unceremoniously dropped the arm onto the ground and pulled out two pens from his wool. The first was a nice ballpoint pen, very thick and had a little bit of rubber so the fingers don’t lose their grip. A little sheep man placed at the top of the pen, looking like he was crawling towards it. The other was a feather, as many used before ballpoint pens.

As he approached, the damned sheep turned to see Vincent looming over it, its tears continuing to flow.

           “Don’t,” warned Vincent, “just… don’t.”

           The sheep sighed and rolled back over. Vincent looked down at the sheep, paused for a second, before stabbing the sheep in the neck with the ballpoint pen, clicking it to life. And he watched as the life drained from the sheep’s eyes and flow into the pen, giving it a blue glow. But all that was left was a corpse.

           This will not do!

           With the feather he carefully traced it up and down the corpse’s body, red lines were left in its wake. The feather grew and turned into a blood red whilst the body slowly faded away into a skeleton and then dust.

           Most souls do not deserve torment for the rest of their existence. But what I am about to do to you is something no soul deserves.

           Sticking the pens back into his wool and reclaiming the arm, Vincent hopped out of the cage and stomped on the ground again. Another crack appeared and he jumped in, the pleads of damned sheep fading into nothingness.

           Nothingness. The best way to describe the true depths of hell. Besides all the hellfire and the chains and the sheep, in the end there is nothing. A nothing Vincent is all too comfortable with.

           Is it really nothing if I’m here? Right now? Will it continue to be nothing when I leave? Or will it change forever with my actions?

           He let the arm go, watching it float in the void. It wiggled in suspended animation, but only because he nudged it.

           Enough of this.

           Taking out the feathered pen, Vincent gripped the arm with his hoof. Carefully bringing the tip to the palm he pressed down, breaking the skin. Slowly, the arm regained its color, the fingers began to stretch, and the joins cracked. Bones appeared out of the end of the arm and grew into a human skeleton.

A horrifying sight. A horrifying sound. The bones growing and clicking in place. The nerves surrounding the bones. Organs growing out of the nerves like ripened fruits ready to be picked. Muscles covering the sensitive parts. And finally, skin, blooming in patches like grass, with black hair sprouting like a plant.

A body born from an arm. Vincent stared at it, floating in the air. Curled up like a child and naked as a newborn. The feather pen returned to its original state, so Vincent tucked it away and swapped it out for the fancy ballpoint pen. He held it in his hooves feeling the weight of the item.

If I left now would this place be the same? If this body has no soul, is it alive? If not, this place would be no different from before. If a body has no soul, then it is not alive, it’s just taking up space. If I left now…

Without a second thought he stabbed the pen into the neck of the body and clicked it to life. The body beginning to twitch and squirm as if it were having a bad dream. Long horns formed through the black hair, bursting up like mountains. Long and majestic, and very obviously not belonging to a sheep.

Vincent took a quick profile of the body before whispering, “My boy.”

The male body did not awaken, for it continued to float in the emptiness. It jerked a bit when Vincent ripped the pen out of its neck, a few droplets of blood spilling out. They floated around in perfect little balls around their host.

The sheep man placed the ballpoint pen into the hands of the newborn body, who clutched it with such vigor it caused Vincent to stumble. Without another word, Vincent swam up towards where he descended earlier. He made no double take towards the body. No saying goodbye. No acts of kindness.

Vincent made something out of nothing. And if that something became a menace upon the living world? Then so be it.