Heaven versus Hell

The Apocali Games

By: Lizzie Bundick

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If there is one thing I remember most about my mortal life, it is my foster mother and her sayings.

“Becca,” She would tell me while rocking slowly back and forth in an old wicker rocking chair, “When you think the world is being mean to ya, be mean right back.” was the one I heard the most from her. She had a million, one for every occasion. Birth, death, wedding or divorce, there was never a situation she encountered that she couldn’t sum up in a sentence or two.

At the moment, though, another one of her favorite sayings was going through my head. “Simple task are never as simple as they seem at first.” Boy, was that woman smart. The wisdom of that statement was now blatantly clear to me as I lay on my back, staring up at the hole I had just fallen through.

My “simple” task was to kill a Demon that was pestering the local church goers. Just now I had stepped right into the trap the aforementioned Demon had set for me. The Demon had weakened part of a stone walkway that, as I just discovered, was over the old crypts where they buried priest. Blatantly clear to me now was that I had been set up. The Demon had weakened the walk way and then herded me here during the battle. Speaking of which, where had that bastard gone to? Shouldn’t he be diving after me with a finishing blow? I rolled onto my knees and looked around at my new surroundings. I could only see what was inside the circle of light that was pouring in from the hole above me. Not much really, just some stone walls, lots of spider webs, rubble and my shepherd’s staff.

“Great, just great,” I muttered to myself as I got to my feet and picked up my staff. “One hell of a way to start off the night.”

“Hunter!” The demon screamed, now coming after me. I held my staff like a baseball bat and swung up as the demon dove down at me. His face made a satisfying CRUNCH as the lead capped top smashed into it. The demon flew backwards, his back hitting the edge of the hole and I side stepped as he fell to the ground at my feet.

“Buddy, you made one big mistake,” I said, pinning him to the floor by pressing the top of the shepherd’s crook into his back, “I don’t like falling.” I reached into one of the breast pockets of my jacket and pulled out a rather macabre key ring. On the gold ring were thin, three inch long strips of bones, each with an inscription. The bones were from different Saints and each served a different purpose.

I had bone pieces for just about everything from cures for illnesses to protection from car accidents. I flipped through the ring until I came to the strip labeled Dymphna. When she was alive, Dymphna had been the daughter of a Irish pagan chieftain named Damon. When he tried to sleep with her, Dymphna ran away. Her father tracked her down eventually and demanded her surrender. When she didn’t, he killed her. The place where she died is well known for healing the insane, epileptics and those possessed by demons. Her bones or relics were the number one choice of killing demons. I unclipped the bone piece from the ring, slipped it into a little cut out on the shepherd’s crook and watched with a certain satisfaction as the demon screamed and vanished into dust. The bone piece had infused the powers of the Saint into the staff, and thus destroyed the demon. Lovely little trick since I could bash in and break the demon’s bones all night and not kill it. The holiness of the Saint eviscerated the demon in seconds flat, which was much easier. I took the bone piece out, re-clipped it to the ring and then cracked my back. That fall did more damage than I expected, but it’s kinda hard to tell when you’re dead. Oh, did I forget to mention that little bit of information? I guess I should explain then.

When I died, twenty-three years next March, I had gone to Assignment Office in Heaven where they tell you what you’ll be doing for the rest of eternity. I was presented with three options on how I could spend my after life. One was always to be reborn and head back to Earth with no memory of Heaven or my previous life. Why anyone took this choice was beyond me. My life had been bad enough the first time; I didn’t need a second go at it.

The other two options varied from person to person. My choices had been Hunter, super strong, Demon butt kicking bounty hunter who got to carry magical charms and holy relic weapons. Or I could have been a Virtue, an angel that watched over the natural world such as the winds and rivers. I’m not, nor have I ever been, a nature fanatic so, I went with Hunter.

Glamorous, right? I mean, those three chicks on Charmed do okay, don’t they? Ha, if only everything was like TV. Hunters are Heaven’s first line of defense against Demons and we pay for it. Regularly I end up with broken bones, internal bleeding and other painful injuries, but since I’m already dead these things mean nothing. I can’t feel pain, and I’ve been dead for so long I don’t really remember what pain feels like. So, if I break a bone while fighting a Demon I can’t tell, unless something stops working, and so I just keep fighting. That’s why I hadn’t noticed I’d damaged my back until I stretched and heard it crack. It probably happened when I landed on top of all the rubble or it could have happened when the demon tackled me from behind. Of course the whenever was irrelevant as I was still alive, the demon was dead and I couldn’t feel pain.

Since my back wasn’t the only injury I had received in this little fight I took a swig from the flask at my hip. Ah, pseudo soul, refreshing. Since my body is now the physical manifestation of my soul every little injury I get damages my soul. I heal the injuries by drinking some kind of pseudo-soul made from some mysterious unknown agent. It tastes a little like vanilla and mint but clings to the throat like really thick oatmeal. One day, probably soon at the rate I incurred injuries, I’ll be all pseudo-soul and ascend to Heaven where I will be absorbed into a giant soul making vat.

Why you ask? Well, it’s because souls just don’t appear every time someone has a baby, nope. New souls are made from left over souls, like what I am slowly becoming. Every time someone is born one Heavenly or Hell-ly being vanishes from the after life, never to be seen again. This is done because The Collective, as the giant soul making vat is called, always needs restoring. It’s a good way to keep the immortal world from becoming over populated and prevents the mortal world from running out of souls. It also means when I get Collected, my personality, my looks, my what makes me, me will be gone forever, never to be seen again. I didn’t like dwelling on what the future held for me so I shoved it to the back of the mind and wallowed in denial.

With the demon dead and my task accomplished could now leave these cheery tombs and go hunt more demons.

“Well, that was fun, as always,” I muttered to myself, getting ready to jump out the hole I had fallen thought. I paused though at an angry shout in flawless French. Oh damn, I thought, glancing over to see who was yelling at me. It was the priest of the church, waving his cane and yelling at me to stop.

“Uh, hi,” I said, wondering if he spoke English, because I certainly didn’t speak French. Just because I was dead and part of the Heavenly Host did not mean all the mysteries of the Universe were explained to me. I couldn’t understand every language in the world, I couldn’t solve complex physics equations and I still didn’t know what hot dogs were made of.

“Que fais-tu ici?” The priest asked in flawless French. I could only stare at him and think about a convenient reason to jump out of the hole I had fallen through.

“He asked what you are doing here,” Said a voice from behind the priest. That startled me even more. Apparently I was about to be graced by the presence of an Angel.

The first thing to suddenly appear was a pair of white feathered wings. From the wings the rest of the Angel materialized slowly into solid form. He, the Angel, was tall, somewhere over six foot five, with long sun blonde hair and piercing blue eyes that shone with an unnatural light. All Angels have glowing eyes; it’s a mark of their rank along with the wings. There are two ways to distinguish one Angel from another besides their individual looks.

First was what style of clothing the Angel was wearing. The one that was standing behind the priest wore a white tunic, fastened at the waste with a big brown belt over a white medieval style shirt and breeches. No shoes and no other decoration. It meant he was a low ranking Guardian Angel. If the clothes hadn’t have been a dead give away, I could have guessed his rank by how many pairs of wings he had. The logic behind that being the more pairs of wings, the higher rank the Angel had. This Angel only had one pair, thus low ranking.

He was rather handsome though, a classic Roman face with a dent in the chin and slightly muscled. Not bad if he wasn’t an Angel.

Angels are usually stuck up, egomaniacal beings as they believe they are better then any other being in Heaven. Especially when it came to us Hunters, the lowest of lows in Heaven and I guessed the reason why he had even bother to materialize was to watch me try to scramble out of this awkward situation.

Too bad I had the advantage. Five minutes from now when I was gone he’d forget I’d ever existed. Just a nifty little power that insures Hunters don’t end up in trouble with the authorities. I had all the time in the world to dick around with this Angel and his priest.

“Great, can you get him out of here?” I asked the Angel, nonchalantly.

“Qui parles-tu?” The priest asked, looking over his shoulder. He was staring right at the Angel, but would never see anything but air. Unless the priest was in mortal danger when he shouldn’t be or he knew for certain that Angels existed he would never see them. While the priest may believe that God was real enough, he obviously didn’t think too highly of Angels. In my mind that made him an okay guy.

“He wants to know who you are talking to,” the Angel said, “And, no, since he is not in danger I can not touch him or prompt him in anyway.”

“Well, then. Guess I better make my exit then.” I returned my attention to the priest, “Look, sir, I’m leaving. Please don’t follow me, got it? Don’t follow me.” I tried to use my hands to get my point across, but I don’t think the priest got it.

“Qu'est-ce qui s'est passé ici?” The priest asked, pointing with one thin, boney hand over my shoulder.

“He wants to know…” The Angel started.

“He could want to know all the mysteries of the Universe, I don’t care,” I snapped at the Angel, “I’m out of here,” I sighed to myself and yelled at the top of my lungs, “Morior!” then clapped my hands together.

In a blast of sound I vanished from sight. The world around me blurred into one giant streak of color, my stomach revolted at the jerking speed at which I moved and when the spell reappeared me I dropped to my knees. Vanishing spells always made me sick to my stomach. Ironically enough, I didn’t eat anymore, so the urge to throw up was completely pointless, but I felt it anyway. I’m sure it’s some sort of sick cosmic joke.

I put my head between my knees, closed me eyes and took deep gulping breaths. This helped fight back the throwing up urge I was wrestling with. Once I had the urge under control I got up from the floor and sighed. The spell had taken me back to what was called a Set Spot. This was my home.

About seven years ago Uriel moved me to this tiny French town. It was a punishment for causing a rather complicated scene in a London square. Basically I had revealed too many secrets about Heaven to some mortals and thus had to be moved to where there were more cows than people.

Uriel dropped me off here, an abandoned, falling apart warehouse at the edge of town. It was the Set Spot and anytime I used the vanishing spell it would transport my ass back to here. So, I had started my night here and now I was back. This, however, did not faze me in the least. I readjusted my jacket around my shoulders, pulled my gloves on tighter and went back out into the night to do my job.