Revelations

I remember when the ceiling fell out from the sky, when the world was rent asunder; and when laughter died. As did music…

Great chasms opened beneath the waves, bringing ruin and death, on tides of destiny; with them came great hosts, armies incalculable, inhuman armies, demonic armies. The veil between the world and the spiritual was torn asunder, forever. There were those who celebrated—haled by evil, the lost, and the servile... but evil is ever without compassion or mercy. Demons make the evilest of us seem as little more than playful kittens.

All suffered, and the world wept and cried out to the Heavens for mercy—

Their cries grew louder, even as their lives were winnowed as fields of wheat—

Weeks passed, and then months, cities fell into death, and still the people cried out for God to save them, but silence was their answer.

On the seventh day of the seventh month the silver horn was heard, such was the sound of it that the earth quaked, and the demons trembled. The clarion call of Michael’s great host was heard, again, and again and the legions of heaven flew from its heights to assail the armies of evil.

The people who heard were few, fewer still were those who rejoiced.

Few were left to hear.

Golden were the hosts of Heaven, glorious and impossible save by His word. They were led by the angel Michael, and such was his wrath unleashed that the forces of Hell were scoured from the Earth.

They fled, as rodents back into the abyssal holes that they had torn in the waters. The hosts of the Lord followed, their ranks innumerable, unstoppable, and unflappable – into Hell.

It was a trap.

They realized this too late as the holes that were opened were then closed, with the hosts of Heaven on the wrong side.

All was thought lost…

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Michael son of Michael, as was his father, and his father before him going back for seven generations—was a quiet man. Learned in the ways of the world, but he had forgotten—if he had ever known, the ways of the Lord. He was a man who drank, ate, and lusted to excess; a sinner.

Or… he had been. When the armies of Satan had breached the veil, he had been living on the streets of L.A. Surviving. He had not been living, not truly. He would never forget the sound that was made when the Enemy and his armies had breached the earth’s oceans. It had broken him, and after he could not hear the remnants of his own thoughts. His thoughts ached with the unceasing sounds of the horn of Heaven.

For a time, he was as one maddened, an animal, intent only on surviving from one hour to the next. Impossibly broken, he mumbled disconsolate, incomprehensible things, words, but in a broken tongue that even his shattered mind could not unravel the meaning of.

He crept between the shadows, daring not the light of day, running—hiding at the sight of the enemy’s soldiers. The armies of Hell were indescribable, his nightmares made flesh, roaming the streets where he had been born. Killing. Eating. Not just the flesh of babes, but the souls of those unlucky enough to have survived invasion.

One day they found him, in a city bereft of the living it was inevitable—even he—maddened as he was knew that they would one day find him. He ran.

He ran, as they laughed. They made sport of his panicked movement. Mocking him and jeering.

He would escape only to hear them taunt him from his place of hiding.

He wept, his tears a quaint delicacy to the soldiers of Evil.

He flinched as a gnarled object speared the dumpster in which he hid. Effortlessly the blow tore a hole in his ill-kempt refuge. Laughter, a raucous mockery of true joy, erupted from throats freed of the fires of Hell. They were grey, green, and shades of impossible colors. Evil can never create, but must always imitate His creations, or so he had been taught in Sunday school long ago.

Their jeering increased in intensity, battering his hiding place, and he cowered holding his knees as he had when he was a young boy being ganged up on at school. He felt the bruises, and lashes as they struck him, a death by a thousand cuts. Why spoil the game by ending it prematurely?

Such is the conduct of demons. He willed it to end, even knowing that they would consume him mind, body, and soul. The act would undoubtedly prove excruciating.

He thought only of his son, and the wife that he had left. Their faces giving him some small measure of peace, almost drowning out the hooting, jeering taunts, of the demons.

Minutes passed before he realized that all was quiet, save for a terrible ringing in his ears.

Clarity entered his thoughts for the first time in a long time.

He could not remember where he was, or what he was doing.

He stood on legs grown shaky and weak. His eyes deciphering the alley in which he stood, and in great heaps were the prostrate bodies of demons. Indescribably ugly, evil, embodiments of their twisted desires and purpose. He thought them dead, but he saw their mishappen heads and eyes twisting and scanning the skies. Stunned, not dead.

He turned his head to see what it was that had them frightened—or rather terrified. The ringing in his ears grew in intensity, and he could feel the air blowing around him and debris floating in the streets outside the alley, but he could not hear anything. He was deafened to all but the sound of the horn.

Horn? Was it a horn that was causing his ears to ring? Impossible, and yet… His gut told him it was, but what horn would have such power?

It was a mystery that would not be solved quickly, and he saw that time was growing short… He observed that the demons were stirring, the power of the heavenly horn waning.

He stumbled forward, towards the nearest prostrate demon, grotesque with blood or some other putrid liquid coating its body. He shuddered, best not to dwell on what it was exactly, and the body… he dared not try and process what it was that he saw. With head too large, and arms too tiny it was a macabre fabrication of life, an insult to the Heavenly creator. The demons’ bodies were one and all a mockery of life, just as their jeers and insults had been fundamentally insulting, so much so that it revealed just how much they reviled everything that mortals stood for—and their God.

Amongst their macabre heap, solitary, lay an object, a human bone, and if Michael was not mistaken it was a femur bone. Without gristle, it was a sobering sight obvious to his vision even without the thin slice of light that amplified the horror that was the pile of demons.

He saw their jaws open and gnash at anything near—whether it was themselves, or their kind—or mortals they did so unknowingly and without care. Carefully he navigated their midst intent upon his prize, knowing, even if he could not hear them that they were rousing and would soon be intently punishing him before they again grew bored... He dared not think of how hell spawned creatures such as they, absent any other entertainment, would act when bored. He imagined it would be much as bored teens, angsty teens, the ones who are ‘no good’ and always up to ‘no good.’ Except the level of depravity would be one million-fold.

He smiled in triumph as he tentatively reached underneath, around one particularly grotesquely obese creature, its body the coloring of a deep-sea horror, covered in slick fluids, surrounded by tiny and obsequious demons, mewing much as small creatures do towards their mother; and he was forced to freeze in place as two pallid eyelids fluttered open, and focused upon him.

With a great heave the demon lurched to its feet, nearly succeeding before falling backwards and crushing two imps unlucky enough to be where the obese demon landed. The pathetic sounds of their tiny deaths did not impugn Michael’s ears, but as a result he smelled something horrific, a mix between sewage and tripe that had been left to rot in the sun. He flinched back as the demon, four- or five-feet tall standing, and easily the same size in width tried again. This time it flopped forward as it fell, nearly grabbing Michael between two hands the size of watermelons, the skin of its fingers stretched so much that it appeared as if they could pop open at any moment.

Michael dodged left, grabbing the femur now slick with whatever juices the demons had excreted upon it. Idly, he felt small scratch marks upon one end, ostensibly demon teeth marks. He fought down his fury that this had once belonged to a living and breathing man or woman, thankfully it was too large to be that of a child’s. He hoped.

*Thwack* *Thump* *Thwack*

Michael killed one – two - three of the miniscule demons, and with the third blow he realized that his hearing was back; the heavenly horn had ceased its blowing.

Reddish color mixed forming a dark liquid: a mélange of death sticking sickly to the end of his makeshift club. He attempted to wipe it off on the pavement, nearly being disemboweled by another larger, taller demon, tall it towered over Michael by one or two feet. This demon leapt away, proving crafty and strong as it bent down and threw one of the small demons at him.

It missed, but he realized the threat immediately as the projectile had narrowly avoided attaching itself to his throat. Instead, the unfortunate demon splatted against the alley wall such was the strength behind the throw.

He dodged two more throws before covering the distance between them, crouching now in the entranceway to the alley, brief hints of morning light drifting lazily into the alleyway. Michael imagined then that he was one of the angels and fell upon the demon with all the grace and wrath of God. He bashed the creature upside the head, and worried, seeing a piece of the femur fly high into the air. Despite this he continued hitting the creature, even as it fell to the ground, until its only movement was a twitching motion from the earth.

Still, he pounded the demon into the dirt, ignoring his surroundings. That proved to be a mistake when he felt a sharp pain emanating from his right knee. Another tiny demon clung to his kneecap, its small uninviting teeth chomping viciously into his flesh, he kicked it off in a panic or tried to. The vicious little bastard clung to him with a savage tenacity that would have been admirable under other circumstances, Michael winced as it began rotating. Why? He wondered before realizing that it was stuck on his kneecap and sought more vulnerable flesh, behind, to the sides.

Hastily he brought the bone crashing down upon the stubborn demon, seeking to dislodge it before it caused him permanent harm. He checked behind him, checking for additional demons sneaking up on him, but most were still unconscious. He did eye one, and almost casually he booted this tiny demon, this one having been crafty enough to pretend to already be dead; although it betrayed life when he saw the subtle rise and fall of its chest and the less subtle gnashing of its teeth.

It flew into the wall gracefully and slid down with a wet plonk. Michael raised the club, having missed his other attempts, and brought it down with power and precision causing the little biter demon to fly up and over the chain link fence at the end of the alleyway. A home run!

Michael ran, not caring that his few worldly possessions lay in the alleyway behind him. He never looked back. He did not see the small horde of demons as they continued to writhe awake, forgetting the man that had so recently been their prey, as they then consumed their slain kin.

He ran around the corner, and down the street, his lungs aching at the furious pace that he set himself, until he reached a drab brick building. He thought that it had been a fire station or police station before the end of days, and cautiously he stepped through the doors. It was relatively unscathed from demonic looting and vandalism, a most welcome reprieve, but one that caused him to simply ask: why? Of all the buildings on this block, why was this one unmolested?

Shrugging, he decided that it did not matter.

He climbed the steps, the interior of the building proving to be taller than he had originally imagined. The stained-glass windows, and crucifixes scattered throughout the building escaped his attention at first, so focused was he on catching his breath from his out of shape flight.

His eyes began playing tricks on him, he decided as he climbed the third story. The shadows moved suggestively as he entered rays of light, and then shadow, seemingly each step proving a juxtaposition between worlds. The thought raised the hairs on the nape of his neck.

I’m in a church. He knew the unspoken words were true. Is that why the demons left it alone? Surely, nothing in this world was sacrosanct or worthy of their disregard... They respected nothing. They care for nothing. Not life. Not God. Nothing. They are an abscess upon the living that oozes hatred, and putrefaction of the spirit.

Hate filled his guts at the thought, and he remembered what he had witnessed in his stages of madness. All the death, and suffering, heaped upon those left alive. The sinners and believers both. It was not supposed to happen this way... Was it a blessing or a curse that he now understood now that his madness had been lifted. Lifted miraculously by the heavenly hosts, he hoped for the final battle, the penultimate fight between good and evil: Armageddon.

He continued to climb the stairs until he reached the fifth floor, at which point there was a simple door that read ‘authorized access only: roof.’

He opened the door, cautiously, scanning the roof for demons but it was empty; deserted. The light of day was fully kissing everything in sight, and the war between shadows and light from the stairwell was over. A metaphor for Armageddon? He mused, a wry smile lighting his face.

He stepped carefully to the roof’s edge, his vision catching glimpses on the horizon and the ravaged landscape. Smoke, and ruined buildings scattered as far as the eye could see, and vague shapes prostrated upon the ground that he suspected belonged to corpses. He found it bizarre that the demons ate the corpses of anything and everything that they encountered but they had caused so much death that there was no way for them to keep up the pace. So many had died, that even the incalculable armies of demons would have enough fodder for a year or more; and still they were not done.

Noticing a foldable chair, the kind that often accompanies a campfire or camping trip, he dragged it over to the buildings’ edge and sat down heavily.

What next? He asked the question, but he never expected an answer. He expected to die, to be consumed by the ravenous hosts of Hell, but he deserved it. Didn’t he? The believers were taken, saved. Weren’t they?

A perfect ray of light lanced down from on high, the same path—he reckoned, as the angels had flown from Heaven. No. That is no ray of light... It was a person, he averted his eyes as it grew closer, although it was still some time before it alighted near to him landing on the very roof on which he sat.

Eyes tightly closed, he felt a sting as his eyes leaked tears, and through blurry vision he attempted to focus on the figure before him. Firstly, that was no man. Secondly... It had not landed... so much as it hovered above the air above him. It glowed with an otherworldly, or he corrected himself a heavenly light.

I am His Herald. It spoke, its words echoing through his head, causing uncertainty as to whether he heard them or whether the words were proffered as a gift, directly into his mind.

You are Michael descendant of Michael. It asked, demanded.

“Y-y-yes.” He stammered. “What do you want of me?” Michael asked, almost as terrified of this mighty angel as he had been of the demons.

You are to be his instrument. His weapon.

“I am nothing, no one... an addict, a failure, even my own family disowned me.”

He knows your failings, he shares your sorrows—the angel hesitated, if for just a moment-- still you are his choice.

Different tears fell from Michael’s eyes. His heart feeling lighter than it had been in a long time, perhaps ever. Forgiveness. Atonement. He understood what was being asked. What was being offered...

Michael gave him his answer.

Where a man’s eyes would be the angel grew brighter, and then brighter still. Appearing as if two suns burned with all the fires of creation exactly where a person would see the world. Then the angel nodded, and Michael watched him soar back into the sky—back to Heaven.

He was alone again upon the roof in a world devoid of grace, but it didn’t matter.

He rose to his feet, dusting the blood and dust from his clothes.

If God’s warriors were busy... Michael would find others like himself. Others lost, and alone, and together they would fight. Fight. Fight.

It was the time of revelation: Armageddon.