The Hell We Made

A person’s last words are haunting. They follow you, eventually grab you by the hand, and take you somewhere you never intended to go.

“They come from a barren world where all that was good had perished and all that was left was the strong, desperate, and cunning. They come for our achievements. Our dreams. We did everything better in this time line.” Theodore Thomas told me as the last remnants of life fled his doe brown eyes. “Everything...”

Most people in Houston knew him as a representative on the city council. I knew him as my youth minister. If another man as selfless as him ever existed, I would never know them. It pains me to say I felt little empathy for this wingless angel as his body stiffened on the corner of Bissonnet and Wilcrest. He had been humming the melody to his own funeral dirge for as long as I knew him. True martyrs never live long enough to see the change they sought.

In the months following his death, the paradigm of our world shifted. Immigrants came to America all the time. Nothing wrong with that. My parent’s parent’s were immigrants. What made these folks from the country of Grigori any different? Despite everything, I chose to ignore it all in order to focus on the things immediately around me. My wife, my son, and my career.

The Grigori started accumulating influence by criticizing our lightning rods. A single bolt of lightning caught on one of those metallic behemoths could power even our largest cities for months. To them, drilling into the earth for oil was more sensible. More lucrative. Soon, people stopped praying for lightning to strike down and started praying for oil to strike up on their land. No one wanted mass transportation anymore. Everyone wanted personal transportation. A place where they could pick the jams and adjust the temperature. God heeded their prayers and now the subways creak like rotten decking.

People all around me protested. The only thing I protested those years were my property taxes. Gentrification became the new crack epidemic and my ignorant bliss pulled the lighter to my lips.

My resolve remained resolute. What made the Grigori any different from the Mexicans, the Guatemalans, or the Indians? We were all just trying to make a living.

“Abel! Did you see the news today?” Samantha asked me, brunette hair in a messy bun. My rambunctious toddler in her lap as she sat crossed leg on our worn leather sofa. A heart-shaped locket swinging back and forth like a pendulum between the spaghetti straps of her shirt. I’ve never known a moment when I didn’t find her beautiful.

“You know I pay no mind to that stuff. I don’t need that negativity in my life.” I responded, pulling off the polo they forced me to wear at the car rental place and tossing it into the hamper. It didn’t reek like my shirts from the days spent detailing vehicles beneath the Texas sun did, but it did reek of an unfulfilling career.

“Errol Samyaza, The queen of Grigori said that if the United States didn’t relinquish a third of the Senate’s seats to folks of Grigori descent, that she would make Hell rain down upon us.” She said, clearly disturbed.

“Well that would be a sight to behold.” I responded cheekily as I sat down beside them and started tickling my son.

“What do you mean?” Samantha asked, jerking her head back as if to get a better look at me.

“Hell is below. That would be pretty impressive if they could literally pick it up and make it rain down upon us.” I let out a smile that caused Samantha to swat my arm.

“Be serious!” She sighed. Frustration evident in her voice as she handed AJ over to me. Hands on hips, she loomed over me like a thunderstorm. “Do you even know where Grigori is?”

“The desert.” I replied absent minded. My son had started acting like a puppy and nipping at my undershirt.

“Which desert on which continent?” Her thin eyebrows arched as if to say “I got you now.” The look a spider must give the flies it ensnares on it’s web.

Truth was, that’s exactly where she had me. I had to shrug.

“I know you don’t care about much besides me, AJ, and pier fishing. It’s flattering, but you got to admit Reverend Theo was right.” Samantha responded, concern clear in her voice. Icy blue eyes wide and awaiting contact from mine.

“He got crazy there at the end, babe.” I responded, turning my head towards the window of our living room. “I loved him just as much as anyone, but seriously, he did. He kept talking about everyone having an evil twin, for mercy’s sake!”

“I know! I was right there beside you when he got ran over, Abel!” Samantha exclaimed, fists clinched by her side. “Do you remember the last thing he said to you?”

“We did everything better in this time line.” I said quieter, looking down at AJ, hoping that reminding her that our son was in the room would end the conversation.

“Everything!” She shrieked and the conversation did end as a violent roar rendered our voices useless and my vision went red and eventually black.

They come from a barren world where all that was good had perished and all that was left was the strong, desperate, and cunning.

That’s the first sentence that runs through my head every morning I wake to this new world. The first images that flash through my head are Samantha with her fists clinched by her side and AJ in my lap. Her last concern had become my life calling. All of us that survived The Convergence work together to simultaneously survive and eradicate the twisted oppression of our new rulers.

“You had water three hours ago!” Kokabiel sneered from behind me. The summer sun was brutal and people were on the verge of falling out inside the excavation we found ourselves in. Was it summer? There were no seasons in this new world.

Could humans truly be this wicked? No. The Grigori were not humans as you and I are. They were slaves to their own hatred and self interests to a degree that sucked any and all humanity out of them. Still, we were slaves beneath them. Animals that had to earn their keep to stay on the farm.

I did not stop feeding the boring machine drill stems to look behind me to see who was being scolded. It was all part of a plan several weeks in the making. A plot to cut the head off the snake that constricted us.

“Devin! I’ll have you know that Queen Samyaza is on her way here right now! Perhaps, you’d like to tell her yourself why you feel the need to slow our progress?” Kokabiel screeched at the top of his lungs.

“You know what? I will!” He responded. Just as quickly, Kokabiel’s whip was out of it’s holster. He reared back, but the next sound wasn’t the sound of a cracking whip. It was a cacophony of tired voices saying “We will too!”

Sheer panic over took Kokabiel’s face as workers all around, myself included, dropped their burdens and began to form a circle around him. Kokabiel took a hard gulp as he seen his end before his yellow eyes. The eyes of a viper. With a single flick of his wrist, Devin’s face twisted around like an owl and life left his dirty face. As I said before, true martyrs never live to see the change they wrought.

A herd of downtrodden folks pounced on him like hyenas working together to bring down a wayward gazelle before the whip ever recoiled. I wish I could say I partook, but I didn’t. Memories of the world before flooded my mind.

You see, I knew Kokabiel before The Convergence. He worked at the tire shop my company used to put new tires on our rental cars. Always smiling and ready with a clever quip. I remembered being slightly disappointed on days when I came in and he working road calls. He was one of us. Just another person trying to make a living in this world. What changed? Was it always a con? Perhaps, he always knew what was coming and was waiting for the day. The day the roof collapsed upon my wife and son. I pushed the thoughts away. None of it mattered right now. All three were dead.

“What is going on here?” A feminine voice demanded from above the trench we were in. It sounded so familiar and foreign at the same time.

I looked away from the brutality before me and found the head of this snake. Errol Samyaza, queen of this splintered reality. The woman whom took so much from each and every one of us. With her brown hair in a tight bun and slender frame, I always thought she bore a strong resemblance to my dear Samantha. The only difference were those yellows eyes. The eyes of a vulture who wouldn’t wait for you to give up the ghost before feasting.

The guards in the queen’s retinue already had guns drawn when my comrades started running for cover. I did not see her raise her bejeweled hand to postpone the massacre. I was already climbing up the walls of the excavation, using splayed roots as hand and footholds. I pulled myself up to the top, leapt up, arm fully extended, and latch on to something that felt all too familiar as I drug that vulture down into the trench with me.

We fell backwards. A moment that felt like an eternity now that all their guns were drawn on me. I was not fearful for my life in this moment. I was too confused to be. Why did a woman of such pedigree have such a simple heart shaped locket around her neck?

Within an instant, all the guns were facing the opposite direction as a trackhoe plowed through the guards. Some were ran over while some died from well timed swings of the excavator’s bucket.

Death loomed all around me, but the most disturbing sight hung directly above me. Samyaza smiled and looked eager as I clung to the locket around her neck. I yanked it to the side, causing her to roll and positioned myself on top of her. I sunk my knees deep into her tiny shoulders, the way we did things on the streets when it was time to pummel someone’s face in. The locket popped open in the motion.

The queen’s toothy smile widened as I reached for the locket around my neck. It was almost the same picture. Me and AJ sitting on a couch, but the couch looked more eloquent in her picture.

“Oh, Abel. You could never do the things that needed to be done in our world.” Samyaza said condescendingly. “What makes you think you can do them now?”

“You knew a different Abel.”

“How can you be so sure?” She asked, raising a thin eyebrow.

“Because I knew a different Sam.” I growled wolfishly. Samyaza broke eye contact to look around at the chaos unfurling around us.

“What’s done is done.” She attempted to shrug. My knee caused her shoulder to dislocate. “I’m okay dying with the knowledge that I did everything in my power to save my people from the Hell we made.”

A person’s last words are haunting. Some of the most vulnerable and honest you might ever get out of them. They fall off their tongues slow and breathy. As if they weren’t even talking to you anymore, but the reaper itself. Sometimes, they’re good enough to make your own.

I’m okay dying with the knowledge that I did everything in my power to save my people from the Hell we made.