Chapter Thirty Six: The Demonstration

Tommy slowly drifted out of sleep, luxuriating in the comfort of his own bed. It was pleasantly warm, and his pillows were cool to the touch. His blankets wrapped around him like a sea of down. He intertwined his arms above his head and stretched them out while yawning. Feeling spent after this burst of early-morning activity, Tommy allowed himself to settle back into his bed, feeling as if he would float away or sink down into it. Both prospects seemed equally relaxing.

Tommy blindly grabbed for his alarm clock, reading the time as 7:16. Still too early to get up, Tommy thought. He placed his alarm clock on the night table next to his bed and closed his eyes again, finding a new comfortable position. He reflected on today; he had nothing planned, and it was only a quarter after seven. Surely he could sleep in a few hours more in his own comfortable bed in his own familiar room, with the color being drained out of it. . .

Tommy’s eyes pried themselves open as he attempted to work out what he had just thought. Yes, the mental image he had of his room just now when he was putting his alarm clock back was indeed losing its color. An entire section of his wall had been drained of its hue, and all that was left was an extreme bleached white and several inky black lines. In curiosity, Tommy sat up in bed and gasped. Standing in the corner of his room was Michael; not the human Michael that everybody knew, but the unholy angel, his translucent insect-like wings extended behind him, his swollen and raw hands clasped together, his disturbingly beautiful face staring at him with an untraceable expression. The color around him seemed to have drained into his body and been purged into nothingness.

“Get up Tom, we have work to do,” Michael commanded through a voice that could best be described as reptilian; cold, scaly, and squirming within his own throat. Michael took a step towards him, and the large bubble of colorlessness moved with him. It seemed that everything within three feet of Michael lost its color and was transformed into the stark black and white of Michael’s own body.

“Michael? What’s up?” Even Tommy was disgusted with the dumbness he found himself afflicted with in Michael’s presence.

“I’m sorry it had to come to this Tom,” Michael said coldly as he advanced upon him. With every step, the color drained away. Tommy looked in amazement as Michael walked next to him, and his own arm began to turn the deathly shade of white. “But you have given me no other choice than to do this.”

Michael’s left arm grabbed Tommy by the throat, and before he knew what had happened, he crashed against the opposite wall of his bedroom and fallen flat on his face. He looked up in fear at Michael, and immediately retreated against the wall, trying to present as small a target as he could. He knew it would be no use; Michael’s right arm was outstretched and his index finger was pointing directly to Tommy’s chest, and a small white energy ball was growing every second. Tommy knew that this was it; Michael had finally turned against him, and for what he didn’t even know. Tommy’s eyes grew wide and his pupils shrunk with fear, waiting for the inevitable.

Out of nowhere, Michael’s form was cut off from his vision, and everything in front of him was black. For a second, Tommy wondered if this was what death was like. Then Tommy noticed a woolen texture to the black, and saw it delicately ripple. Tommy looked up and saw the same man that he had seen over a week ago when he had crashed his car.

“Did it really take this much effort to track me down?” Another asked Michael confidently.

The shock of seeing Another stunned Michael for only a split second, but in that time Michael’s ball of energy surged in power and he lost control of it. The blast made its way to Another in three tenths of a second, but it sharply veered to the left a foot before it would hit him. There was a large explosion that shook the entire apartment complex, and when Tommy managed to lift his head from the ground, he noticed that his entire bedroom wall, as well as several apartments on the other side of the hallway had been decimated. The realization slowly dawned on him that he was looking through a gaping hole in his apartment complex at the outside world. The snow of the early December morning mixed with ash and bits of plaster and glass and bone as they all flitted to the ground peacefully.

“We both know what needs to happen. Get on with it,” Another said sadly, just before fading from view.

Tommy looked at Michael in disbelief; Michael was staring straight ahead in terror and confusion. He had never seen Michael so stunned by anything. Seeing him at a loss for what to do sent chills down Tommy’s spine.

“Michael?” Tommy asked hesitantly.

Outside of his demolished apartment, people were gathering, looking on in horror and shock. They pointed to the gaping hole in the building that covered an area from the fifth to the seventh floor and had destroyed or partially destroyed nearly thirteen apartments. Surely, someone would see the pale figure of a fallen angel. In the distance, sirens could be made out.

“Tom,” Michael said in a great effort to remain calm, although his shoulders were shaking in rage and anticipation. “You need to see something, and it’s happens right now.”

What happened next could only be compared to Tommy’s current existence being quickly peeled away from a separate existence. In one moment, he was on his hands and knees, cowering in his destroyed apartment before Michael, and in the next he was walking behind Michael through a dimly lit tunnel and struggling to keep up with his long strides.

“Michael, where are we?”

“Somewhere just below Israel,” Michael said with a twinge in his voice.

“What are we here for?”

As if in answer to Tommy’s question, a brief shout resounded through the hallway, which was cut short with a wave of Michael’s left hand. A shower of blood splattered against the wall, a thick, dark crimson liquid that oozed its way down the rocky wall of the cavern. As Tommy passed by the bloodied section of the wall, he glanced downwards and gasped. There was a human body slumped on the ground, but there was too much blood pouring from the chest, neck and head to identify what had happened to him.

The central chamber for the underground complex housed a multitude of ancient televisions and computers used to monitor any actions Michael had chosen to go public with. Currently, there were several satellite feeds of Tommy’s demolished apartment complex on the screens. A number of hallways fed into the chamber from the different areas underground; the mess hall, the training facilities, the sleeping areas and other, miscellaneous rooms. There typically stood two armed guards at the mouth of each hallway, usually bored or idly chatting.

At the moment that Michael strode from one of the halls and into the central chamber with a barely-dressed Tommy scurrying close behind him, every guard snapped to terrified attention, guns drawn and pointed at the ghostly white androgynous fallen angel before them. From a table in the center of a room, an Israeli man sitting in discussion with other seniors who had been with this project as long as they could remember stood up and shouted “In the name of God, spirit, be gone!”

“God?” Michael chuckled as he walked up to the table and climbed onto it in one graceful step. Tommy awkwardly climbed onto the table after him as the men who had been sitting at the table stood up and removed guns from their clothes.

“Does your hypocritical God greet me with weapons, worm?” With a flip of Michael’s right arm, the man who had just commanded him to leave flew across the room and crashed into a wall of monitors, with a shower of sparks spurting out from around his body.

As if this was their cue, every man in the room began to fire at Michael. Their bullets traced their way through the air towards him, but stopped three feet away from his body. The multitude of small brass objects began to form a sphere around Michael and Tommy’s bodies. As more and more men ran into the room and added their firepower, the sphere enlarged, growing by inches. The roar of the guns filled the room like a rattling hurricane.

Within the sphere of bullets, Tommy was hunched over on the table in fear and confusion. Above him was the Antichrist, all around him were hundreds, even thousands of bullets, the color was still drained from Michael’s surroundings, and the gunfire reminded him of the time Michael and the gang had acquired a huge string of fifteen thousand Black Cat fireworks and set them off. The bangs and pops were deafening and never-ending, time seemed to have stopped passing. Tommy tugged at his hair to make sure that he was not trapped within a dream. He wasn’t sure if he was fortunate to discover that this was all real.

Gradually, the gunfire died away. The sphere of bullets around Michael and Tommy was huge. To the troops in the room, it looked like someone had dropped a huge brass marble in the middle of their command. Slowly, the bullets began to rotate, mesmerizing the roomful of men. Even the reinforcements found themselves unable to fire, it seemed pointless now. The sphere of bullets began to spin faster, until it became a goldenrod blur.

Without warning, the sphere exploded, sending bullets in every direction. They sped through the air so fast that their targets were thrown violently backwards into walls or tables, oftentimes landing before blood could even spurt from their wounds. Men, tables, chairs, computers, televisions and weapons were all thrown violently into the air as the bullets burrowed several inches deep into the rock walls.

To make sure there were no survivors, Michael looked around the room and pointed to various points amidst the destruction. Walls, bodies and machinery mixed together in the violent explosions that erupted from where Michael had pointed. The room filled with rancid thick, black smoke and the rumble of debris being violently shifted about. Michael raised his hands above his head and the smoke rushed to a small point between his palms, condensing into a pure black orb. Michael sent violent fiery blast from the orb down each hallway; they filled with a wall of flame that moved rapidly throughout each passageway, destroying everything and everyone in its wake.

When he was sure that everyone was dead, Michael turned to Tommy and smiled. It would be a beautiful smile on any face except for his, full of warmth and happiness. “Do you understand?” he asked.

“He does, Abaddon,” a female voice called out. Michael turned around in fear and fury and found himself looking at Madeleine Kohl, her handbag slung from her right shoulder and a deck of cards being shuffled around angrily in her hands.

With the shriek of a banshee, Michael’s wings shot out violently from his back and he pointed at Madeleine with the cracked and sore index and middle fingers of his right hand. A small, brilliantly bright dot of red light shot from his fingertips and flew towards her. With reflexes that surprised even Michael, she pulled a card from the deck and held it in front of her.

The dot of red collided with the bleeding King of Spades, and everything shook and went black.

Tommy felt a rhythmic pounding on his chest. He opened his eyes and coughed, a horrible, hacking attack on his throat that spewed a mouthful of blood over the face of a paramedic.

“Thank God we got to him in time!” one of the men standing over him said as he handed a handkerchief to the recently-bloodied man.

“What happened?” Tommy managed to groan.

“Son, you’re whole God damned apartment complex just collapsed. You’re lucky to be alive. Are you hurt anywhere?”

Numbly, Tommy raised his head from the backboard he was on, then his shoulders, and then his arms.

“Now don’t strain yourself,” one of the EMTs advised him.

Tommy sat up, then raised himself to his feet. He coughed out a mouthful of soot and scratched his head.

“Can I get a glass of water?” he croaked.