The Fall of Heaven: III. The Death of Faith

General Malquior Lesruth arrived at the Auditorium at 2:15. What was left of God's army was already assembled before some of his inferior officers, standing with dignity in the togas that they had worn to war. They filled the small gymnasium's bleachers, two or three hundred seats in all, in their white linens, which had been stained with the blood of the enemies they'd slain as well as some of their fallen fellows. The other thousands of angels at God's disposal were either dead or had escaped this Heaven before it was sealed off from their once-omnipotent creator.

Most of the angels—mostly Archangels, Thrones, and Seraphim—craned their necks to see who had entered the squeaking front doors of the auditorium, which in its day had been the community playground as well as its theater house. When Malquior came into view, a wave of tenseness settled on the crowd that seemed to emanate all the way to the Auditorium's high skeletal ceiling. Malquior greeted his three comrades who had arrived before him—Sabraton Fareyl, a man he'd known since training; a young demon he knew only as Astrodomas, who had been moved into the general's unit just before the war began; and Larashna Sinrazon, Malquior's lover—and requested a debriefing.

“We didn't start without you, Sir.” Sabraton replied. “They took for-fucking-ever to get lined up, and we needed a break from this shit after that.”

The general nodded. “Alright, then.” Then he turned his attention to the angels:

“Your God was not strong enough to protect you.” He said this experimentally, surveying his words' effect on the crowd. There was no reaction whatsoever; the angels were motionless. So he continued: “Your Heaven has been lost and you are all at the mercy of Satan. You're powerless now, just like the humans you are supposed to protect.

“Renounce your God, and we will welcome you with open arms into the army of the Devil. Pledge him your soul and worship Satan if you wish not to suffer. Suffering is what your Great and Almighty God has abandoned you to: how great can a deity who does this truly be? How is it that a being so Great could lose such a milestone battle—lose a piece of Heaven to his enemy whom you are told is not so Great and Almighty?

“But you all are witnesses to the power of Satan overshadowing that of God. You have all borne witness to the Devil forcing God and His light out of His own domain. When the armies of Satan surge the other Heavens, do you think the outcome will be any different, with God less over two hundred angel warriors?

“Victory lies ahead for those who relinquish God. For those who don't—I leave that to Beelzebub to decide. But you can bet on your mortal soul that whatever fate befalls you will be mighty unpleasant.”

Malquior surveyed the angels again, reading their faces. Their expressions were dazed, some thoughtful; some were twisted into horror masks at the suggestion of surrendering their allegiance to their creator. Some wept, because they saw dismal futures no matter what they chose to do—and some because they believed that Malquior was right, and it hurt their hearts to part with the hope that God would save them.

One man the demon's eyes fell upon had none of these reactions. He was a beautiful angel, with dirty blonde hair, fair skin, and a flawless face. The look upon that face was serene, which no doubt added to its beauty, yet defiant, like a cold fire had settled behind his dazzling blue eyes. This angel would not be cracked with words, no, even if the truth in those words was self-evident. Malquior could see in the man's eyes his rebellion, and his faith in his fallen God—and it displeased him more and more as his eyes lingered on this angel's.

The large man-shape strode before this angel, who stood in the third row with his chin up and unwavering, even as Malquior approached him.

“What is your name, soldier?”

“I am Judas Seraph.”

“Do you not believe that your God has forsaken you and your brethren, Judas Seraph?”

The Seraph's eyes did not move. The man beside him sniveled weakly. “No, of course not. Any man with eyes can see that our Lord has not 'forsaken' us, as you say. It was not He who lost the battle—we, the angels, were on the battlefield: and we are here, and have abandoned no one. We shan't think our small number is God's most important when He has a thousand more Heavens and the Earth to care for—and from where He may gather a thousand more armies. I don't fear that my God has left me, but any man with eyes can see that when the Lord's army rises up to put you in your places, Satan will be nowhere to be found to save you.”

Malquior sneered. “'Any man with eyes can see,'” he muttered. “Your piety will get you nowhere, Judas Seraph. Come.” The general took Judas by the shoulder with a grip firm to the point of painfulness, and led him down the bleachers to the shining wooden floor of the Auditorium. To Sabraton, “Call out your Nurses, Sabre. They have a surgery to perform.”

Sabraton's eyes glinted with the a sadist's humor. He nodded his reply then crossed the gymnasium floor to the doors opposite the entrance/exit. These doors led back into a small room wherein the sports equipment was kept and the check-in/check-out counter stood.

Sabraton emerged moments later, followed by four women in robes. They looked like nuns in dark blue habits. Their skin was wrinkled with age and their eyes were covered with a white film, affecting that they were blind; yet they walked surefootedly behind the thin form of which Sabraton was possessed. The last woman pushed a long metal cart, which appeared to be almost six feet long. Its top shelf was covered with a sheet, the shelf below it home to surgical implements that could have also been torture devices.

As if it were a show, Sabraton's Nurses halted the cart in the middle of the gym floor, so that the length of the table was visible from the bleachers. Malquior brought Judas to the four hags, and two of them took his arms. They grinned greedily, and there were few teeth to be seen in their wrinkled gums, which bled in some places as their mouths split with their expression.

The Nurses were stronger than Judas had imagined. The two grasping his arms dragged him to the cart, forcing him down onto the white sheet that covered the cold metal, while the other two removed their tools: one which looked like eyelash clippers, and one that seemed like a distant cousin to an ice cream scoop, with a sweeping blade that was sharpened exquisitely.

Judas struggled, but the Nurses held him fast. One of the Nurses, the one with the eyelash clippers, held his head down by the forehead with her right hand. With her left hand she maneuvered the clipper-like implement first to the man's left eye.

The clipper forced the eyelid open, and Judas could not draw the lids together without ripping the flesh that was caught in the tool. The other Nurse with the scoop put the thing over Judas's left eye, just below the spot where the clipper-thing held his eyelid. With a press of the little lever, the blade in the scoop swept around in an arc, with such force that it cut through the optical nerve.

Judas shrieked in agony as the world swam before his remaining eye, and where the other would have been there were flashes of red from the alarm and the pain. “God!” he cried, thrashing in the grip of the other Nurses. The clipper tool let go of his eyelid and he closed the empty socket where his eye should have been, even as it filled with blood.

“You must stop the bleeding, sister,” one of the restraining Nurses said, in a high-pitched, grating voice.

“One thing at a time, my dear!” the one with the eyelid holder replied, her words cracking in her mouth as she spoke. Her voice was lower than the first Nurse's, but no less unpleasant. She knelt down to grab the surgical sewing kit on the bottom shelf, and offered the eyelid holder to the Nurse to whom she had spoken.

The other operating Nurse now had Judas's eye in the scoop, like ice cream waiting to be transferred into a bowl for dessert. She unscrewed the cap of a jar on the lower shelf of their operating table and dropped the enucleated eyeball in. With mild interest she watched her sisters sew up the optical nerve and try to stem the bleeding.

The army of angels watched in horror as the Nurses removed their general's right eye as he screamed and writhed and cried and invoked the name of his Lord who could no longer hear him. When the deed was done, and the Nurses disappeared back to their makeshift lair, Malquior Lesruth was satisfied that that defiance was gone, and Judas Seraph no longer looked to God.