Venom Messiah

Within his castle of dark hearts, the Devil seated himself on a rosewood throne. Two rotted angels entered, a Sinner clutched between them. They forced the Sinner to kneel, then stepped back and folded their tattered wings tightly across their faces so that they could neither see nor hear what passed.

Alone with the Sinner, the Devil took a deep breath. “Give me your plea,” he demanded.

“Guilty,” the Sinner replied.

The Devil nodded his head vigorously. “Yes! Guilty! As no one before you has ever been.”

The Sinner showed no movement, made no sound.

“And yet,” the Devil sighed after a long moment. “Perhaps there are circumstances that might explain your actions, that might…justify your sin. Tell me.”

“There are none,” the Sinner said.

The Devil’s teeth ground together. He leaned forward, taloned hands closing on the armrests of his chair, squeezing the wood so hard that it splintered and blood began to run from beneath his nails like black pearls. He spat words like sleet at the Sinner.

“Give me something, some reason to grant you mercy.”

“If there is a reason, it’s already inside of you.”

“I do not wish to punish you,” the Devil said. “Not you!”

For the first time, the Sinner looked up. Her eyes danced with the shine of bullets and sabers.

“What would you have me say?”

“Why?”

“Do you want a lie? Or the truth?”

“Are they any different?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

“Give me one or the other. I must have something.”

The Sinner nodded. She rose to her feet, and did not look away from the Devil as she spoke.

“I hated you from the first moment I saw you. Your arrogance. And yes, your terrible beauty. But also, I sensed your weakness, your desire for me. I toyed with you. I manipulated you. How I laughed as you danced to my strings. The Devil. Such a grand fool!”

The Sinner shrugged then, before continuing. “But such games become tiring. My last bit of joy from you came when I pushed you away, to milk your confusion and hurt. Though, to see you now, so desperate to find a reason to forgive me, some reason to believe that I felt more than I did…well, that is perhaps worth a final and fatal chuckle.”

The Devil listened, and nodded. He leaned back and made a gesture. The rotted angels lowered their wings, took hold of the Sinner and pulled her from the room. The Devil remained alone in his fortress of broken souls, on a throne wet with blood and tears.

∼ Charles Gramlich