A Beginning

Humanity: a word often flecked across the soft tongues of patriots and watery-eyed politicians. The Human Race: a fatty, sedentary species of globulous flesh that propels itself using lightly muscled appendages, whose individuals convince themselves of their dominance through religious holidays, excessive gluttony, and the slaughtering of those animals under their power. Of course, as in every species on every planet, a small percentage of humans attempt to improve themselves and make a mark on their world, but the Human Race as a whole felt that minimizing their consumption and increasing their product was unnecessary. When this small minority spoke out in favor of solving problems that didn’t directly affect the human race, the ones in power waggled their fingers at dusty books written by senile, dehydrated men thousands of years ago to prove that such problems were beneath their attention. How ironic, then, that in reality their problems were never under their control.
Philosophers from other worlds had often questioned the purpose of this world with a mean distance of 149.6 million kilometers from their sun, one satellite, a period of revolution of 365.26 days, an equatorial diameter of 12,755 kilometers, and the name of Earth. It seemed like a frivolous expense by the gods. A toy, larger and shinier than most, but still a toy. Foreigners, and occasionally earthlings themselves, would wonder about the origins of a society created to be destroyed; scientists speculated, by the sun that (supposedly) brings life to the planet named Earth, through a process of expansion and explosion that would engulf the planet. Or the universe would continue its teetering expansion and the distance between atoms would become too large, pulling apart every substance in the galaxy and dissipating every brain. Or maybe a nuclear holocaust would bomb the planet into a permanent winter and humanity would die slowly and painfully, eventually resorting to predation and cannibalism before starving off all together. But then, at least the foreign philosophers would remember that the gods created Earth with a specific death in mind, and that it would be something to remember.
The scientists on Earth would simply shrug and forget death’s existence.
Another bad decision on part of the scientists living on the toy planet was denying the existence of any sort of higher power. Human beings are simply biological time clocks, they said. Their hearts beat only because the chemicals in their body encourage them too. Their bodies only function the way they do because of the “Darwinian Theory” and their consciousness comes from chemicals released from connections between special cells called neurons in their brains. Human beings have used science to convince themselves that they have always had control over their own lives. Science had contradicted the only workings which might have saved them and the system had created their warm, wasting bodies and the metallic core of the earth. They forgot how to communicate with the demigods asked to monitor the metallic Earth.
Instead, they believe that deep inside the earth, made of only dirt, a hot core burns lonely, by itself. Because a fire that burns when no one can see it is more romantic.

Sybl, the demigod of Illusion, stood in front of the glass-like ball in her Domain. She loved this part, with every inch of her blue body stretched across her limbs. Every fiber of her clothes Loved it. She was so…clever, so full, and so free when she could leak her creativity in some way that showed. She imagined it pink, with little viscosity, tumbling from the pores in her blue skin.
She had to find a way to win this. And she would.
Fazo was not the smartest demigod. While he was the demigod of Vices, she controlled fear, courage, hunger, lust, or deprivation. All he could do was conjure chocolate, mind-altering substances and naked nameless women by his bedside, none of which need too much intelligence to use. She knew how to use strategy, how to kill without the help of a god. She knew how to kill by starting with the inside and moving outward.
She was going to win this bet.
Whoever killed the other army first would win the bet. If Sybl won, Fazo would be forced to work down in the Drenches, for the gods, for years, without any frolicking down on Earth with his mafia buddies. If Fazo managed to kill her army sooner, he would win, and Sybl would have to be his lackey as he socialized with dirty, smudged men on bloodied and rotten soil. The only problem would be the limit of power- they were only allowed to manipulate one thing: one, small, thing.
Normally she wouldn’t have initiated anything. It’s better to hide in the corner than to show everyone the cards in your hand, as well as the cards in your deck. But hatred overcame her intelligence and she decided, just once, to do something for herself.
A little, selfish thing.
So she poured herself and her pink liquid over and under and around the crystal ball that would bring her the satisfaction that she would like to deserve. The tapping of her fingernails on diamond-crystal would bring everything to life, and then she would act. And it would rain.

War had crushed mountains, families, homes, plains, and finally it spit its bullets and fire into the city. It swam upstream from the Caspian Sea, and from there crept through windows and open doors to invade the trembling soul of Stalingrad. It infected everyone with a strange feeling whose first symptoms were trembling fingers, then clenching of the throat, and then a completely changed state of mind. This strange feeling was Nationalism, but all Nationalism fled when bombs were being dropped on your head, and the men to your left, your right, ahead and behind of you were dead, dying, or screaming bloody murder.
The homes which had been previously inundated with the pride of war were now flooded with Germans and guns. And, just like the enthusiasm, Germans spilled out the windows and infected the next house and the next, an electrical, crackling fire.
If any Soviets at that time had been asked the question, they would’ve said, yes, this is the end of the world, as they gently prodded fallen comrades with the edges of their guns. But this was a war, and everyone must fight for the country, even if leaded by an idiot.
One man looked straight ahead, through the fires and corpses. His fingers, cold, licked the edges of his gun. Holding the Nagant M1895 Revolver slightly increased his confidence, as did the knowledge that there were seven bullets already loaded and the fact that the relatively newly-developed gas-seal system would give the bullet an extra boost in speed. So they wouldn’t be able to dodge. His mind overlooked the fact that the gap between the cylinder and the barrel leads to less accuracy, in order to maintain at least a semi-diplomatic relationship with the rest of his body, which, if slighted, would always find a way to get back at his mind.
Opened eyes showed corpses, while closed ones gave the solitude and privacy of the back of innocent eyelids. This was his first war, first battle. He wondered if he would be dreaming of someone’s women, children, or relatives, or just the dead eyes. One of his friends told him once that, once you kill someone, you’re only safe when your eyes are open and you’re facing your own life, when you fill yourself with your own life so there isn’t space for anyone else’s. Even when your eyes are closed, and the lives you’ve stolen float back up to the surface, you don’t remember the face, or what color the skin was, or where you shot him. But the minute you close your eyes, the second you blink, you see their eyes. You see the color; the flecks and the percolating mix of fear and excitement as the faced the borderline of death. These eyes haunt you. This friend of his, said he’s killed tens of people, and every time he closes his eyes tens are staring back at him. Clear, dead eyes.
This man’s mind faintly grazed the simple question every man going to war eventually faces in one way or another. Will one of those pairs of dead eyes, haunting some stranger’s dreams be mine? Will I have to spend eternity looking at the veins in that stranger’s eyelid, waiting for a portal to swallow me hole?
This was a war. The stated reason for the death in a war is always the same; he or she died in battle. But the real “because” is never told; this one was drafted, this one needed money, this one wanted a better way to commit suicide than making a mess on their father’s, or mother’s, or daughter’s, or brother’s rug with a bullet, or if true patriotism pushed them, or if they believed in the cause. One blind army facing another blind army. Blind men holding plastic semi-automatics. Blind men who see blue, clear eyes plastered to their skull.
This man shuffled from one foot to the other.
This man pointed the barrel and pulled the trigger.
This was 1942.

Sybl caressed the crystal globe whose light waned, waxed, wavered. The fact that she and Fazo caused a whole new war neither bothered nor probed her interest. Children, who will be grown up to feed the machine, will replace the dead. The machine that they had made, out of the steel of their own souls.
So preparing in advance, Sybl created a box to transfer and sustain the life on the planet Earth. She spoke her command into the machine, focusing her mind into one tight ball of glowing light, and forced her palms against the crystal. She moved it into the box of jade made specifically for this life, and this life would live, alone but not alone, until Sybl needed him no longer. She would win this bet; Fazo would destroy himself before finding Jade. She would put the human in a place that Fazo would never suspect. It would be hidden in plain sight. Sybl grinned at her cleverness, and bared her teeth.

Dominic was killing. His first kill was pure instinct. A German’s knotted hands grabbed at his shoulder and Dom turned, forgetting not to look into the soldiers eyes, and shot him. The body did not fall in slow motion, nor twirled dramatically. The sound of the bullet caused a ripple to progress through the air, as if an invisible raindrop hit a vertical puddle that encompassed this half of the world. Dominic did not remember his face, but noted the color of the dead blind man’s eyes.
The next one was harder, not because death had shown it’s face and Dominic had realized how terrible it looked, but because Dom had chosen the bullet it’s new home. There were three Germans outside one of the houses. Dominic did not know who lived in that house, but didn’t dwell on it. It didn’t matter if the Soviets he saved was a pervert and dissected young boys in his basement, draining their lives away like water in a tub, and if the German he chose to kill first was an academic scholar, and intended to retire after this battle and live life teaching his children love and peace and acceptance.
There were three Germans, and Dominic scanned their faces. One looked important, but the standards of importance were different between the Germans and the Soviets. Then, Dom searched them for an age. One was young, but the other two were about the same age. But what does age mean? Killing an older one would mean, technically, taking less life, but then the younger one has more life left to kill Jews and blacks and gypsies. For a minute, Dominic stood in fear of making the wrong decision, but then, realizing the absurdity and irony of the situation, relied on an child’s game he heard his little sister singing, before the war began. Now nobody sang.
“Eenie meanie, miney moe.” The tears began, pushed out from the clockwork behind his eyes. He wiped them away. No matter how sad it was to leave someone’s life to a choosing game, and how sad it was to corrupt his little sister’s song, it would be worse to make noise and have the Germans look over to see a Soviet crying because he couldn’t pull the trigger.
People have done worse, and they will continue to do worse.
“Very best one, and you are it.”
Dom pulled the trigger with the barrel aimed at the young one, tightening his eyes as the recoil jumped him back, forgetting that in the darkness of his eyelids the Eyes would be there to stop him from keeping them closed. When his eyes opened, he noticed, with a strange mix of emotions, that he missed.
Instead, he shot a bullet into the window and caused a scream and crying.
Dominic refused to resist. He just stood there, a limp noodle manipulated and stirred around a metal fork, gently shoved between gnashing teeth. Dominic Rasalov fainted.
Bodies flew and fell, but when the war was over, no one missed a man named Dominic Rascalov. Just because a corpse could not be found doesn’t mean Dominic didn’t die; he was torn apart by a grenade, and letters were sent apologizing and condoling for his death. A funeral was held with a casket but without a body, but this was common in the days of the war. The few people who would’ve mourned Dominic Rascalov had much more on their minds, and reasoned that he died with poisonous patriotism in his heart, and therefore either didn’t want to be mourned, or wasn’t worth mourning.
In the eyes of his fellow blind soldiers and slightly less blind neighbors, Dominic Rascalov was dead.



The Chapel and the Woman

Dominic was no longer Dom. Just a man, staring at a chapel in a foreign town that seemed real, tangible and his: three adjectives that have rarely come together to describe anything in Dom’ life. And now, that his life as Dominic Rascalov was over, he could touch the things that belong to him.
This chapel was white, but not really white. White is the absence of color, black the presence of all colors. But this white chapel had color. The bell, dangling from the dip, was golden and had a presence like no one this man had ever met, or seen. It brightened and sparkled, unfazed and untouched by the dusk. It reflected sunlight, yet there was no sun to create that light. It seemed to fade everything that happened in his life thus far into a final blackness, letting this man relax past the point of really existing. This chapel could be Jesus, it could be hope, it could be a mirage or a dream, it could be a symbol of some pinnacle point in Dominic’s life that had been forgotten a long time ago, or it could be the End. Whatever it was, this chapel was not white; this man knew at least that much.
Even so, the man sat down and thought, allowing his behind to be dirtied by the ever-increasingly dusty environment. He wondered about young men and old men, and the feeling of steel and flesh. But soon he waded into different areas of daily life. He dreamed of salvation, maidens clothed in white and harps. He examined the lives of men who were born fools and men who simply became them through enjoyment or necessity. He wondered whether the apples that grow on trees had decided to grow on trees and then after thousands of years simply forgot how to decide, or whether they regretted their initial decision and therefore pledged to never speak again. Wistfully, this man realized that if he had witnessed the things that occurred in front of apples, simply due to the apples’ inability to speak, his quest for knowledge would be allowed to end. The not-white chapel beckoned, but Dominic was not finished searching his limits.
He came to the conclusion that the not-white chapel was the portal to Heaven, and that God would be waiting for him on the other side. Dominic was a God-fearing man, even though God should be loved. He wanted to purify himself through his thought, before kneeling under His light.
When this man had pursued his life and decided he was sterilized enough to tremble at His feet, he forced his feet to wade through the dusty fog and he looked at the town around him. The town filled with empty buildings, an incredibly not-white chapel and a house so alive was strangely familiar; and old woman creaking her life and the varnish on her rocking chair away, a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of booze in the other, the wheezing of air between yellow teeth matching the inflation of her wrinkled, tired cheeks. A pistol lay across her lap as a letter crunched underneath the lip of the wooden extension of her body. The house didn’t match the way her body epitomized the nearness of death; every inch and corner of color breathed life and, therefore, futility into an abandoned town.
This man’s feet and kneed interlocked and began the tedious work of standing up on two legs. One foot, and then another, drudged through the dust toward the dead woman and the strange house. The chapel could wait; the man had decided long ago that the only way to purify his soul was with acid, so that layers of the black sludge could be peeled off from the lopsided, ferociously clenching heart. This man had spent years walking in the same direction, waiting for something to stop him when nothing would. His feet were more passionate than his heart, so when his feet smelt the possibility of fate on the woman’s rough, un-pampered elbows, the man knew that if he found nothing, it wouldn’t be because of his inability to look but the impossibility of the future being found. And he couldn’t control the stopping of these feet. The pulling of muscles on tendons, daddy long legs jerked along to control the movement of human legs, knees, thighs, and torsos, all which are moved for the ultimate object of moving the feet. This man’s feet were like other people’s love, something that can’t be stopped just because of rain or sleet. The stopping of these feet was due to the inability to continue. And yet, the bright and cheerful, alive and dusty and impure house with the old, crusty woman creaking, wheezing and dying on its front step romanced his feet into stopping without the man’s intelligence attempting to intervene. His feet stopped at the base of the stairs to the woman who knew nothing but the important things.
For a long time there was silence due mainly to an inability to begin. Then this man decided he was either talking to a saint or God Himself, so he decided to begin the way most people with prestige or money begin; with a polite introduction.
“Good day, ma’am. I am a lost citizen of the Soviet Union. It would be very good if I could know the time, because I am either dead or very, very late for dinner.” The laughter emerging from beneath his epiglottis paralleled the subtle suspicion laced in the man’s eyes, as splotched fingers moved towards metal. Eyes pointed downwards, the woman’s gray, long, curly hair curled down to cover her knees. Briefly the man doubted his sound reasoning and wondered if the woman had eyes at all, but this question was quickly countered by another, and was soundly embarrassed. Why would a blind woman be holding a pistol? And, if this is the gateway to Heaven, she must be either a saint waiting to administer some test, or God waiting and monitoring those lingering outside the Golden Gate. He stood his ground. Either way, each person can only have one death, and this man’s death was already used up.
The lady’s fingers never quite reached the gun. Instead, the landed on the woman’s bare knee, inches from a green, faded skirt. “Eight o’clock, nighttime.”
“Where are we? There don’t seem to be anyone else around here. It’s a deserted town, this place I woke up. Medical shops with prescriptions unfilled, baby carriages in the middle of the street, and no cars anywhere. Is anybody still left in this town?”
The woman resumed her creaking and wheezing, except this time the man was close enough to hear the crackling of the envelope beneath her chair. “Excuse me, miss. I believe you dropped your letter.”
“That isn’t mine and never will be. Maybe the letter’s waiting for something to happen or someone to come along and have the courage to read it. Maybe it’s for you.” She extended an elongated, spidery finger towards Dom and jabbed him briskly in the gut.
“I’ve never been here before, how could it be for me? Who could know I’m talking to you right this instant. Not a year ago, not a year from now, but right this instant. How do I know you’re not trying to trick me or something?”
The woman grumbled, a tad provoked by the young man’s flippant behavior. “Either it’s been waiting for you or it’s waiting for someone else or it’s waiting for nobody. All I know is that it isn’t for me. Sure, you’ve realized by now that nothing here’s what it seems.”
Dom was convinced, now, that this woman was a saint testing him for his entrance into Heaven. He had heard about Gabriel being a woman, maybe. He couldn’t quite remember if it was that Gabriel was a woman or pretended to be one once. The voice which had told him so weaved in and out between his neurons, switching genders when it decided to feel like it. So he guessed, and pushed his fear away. A letter couldn’t do much, could it? It’s just a bunch of words scrambled up together.
The lady picked it up from underneath the wood, and slid one long, stained fingernail underneath the opening. The parchment it was written on was faded and rosy. She handed the new, perfume-scented gift to her new company, only lifting her clear, blue eyes the moment she handed the letter away.
These eyes shocked Dom; blue and clear, they were young, as if they had never truly seen any terrible things. It was the final thing that convinced him that he had met a saint and he would do anything she asked him to do.
Dom’s eyes adjusted to read the inked words. His lips parted, the edges slightly sticking together due to the moisture. He cleared his throat. He began;
“Dear resident,”
The terrible and animalistic screech coming from the human-seeming woman stopped him. But, when he looked up, instead of seeing a face and a mouth from where the noise was coming from, he saw a flash of white skin, a brown shirt, and green embroidered skirts flee behind a wall. She was running, as her pistol dropped from her lap and skidded across the paneled floor towards a man who looked quite surprised. She screamed and thrashed and ran out of his sight. The man was too surprised to do anything but kneel down, pick up the gun and finger the cursive gold plating on the side, in handwriting that matched the handwriting on the letter in his hand. He groaned and his eyes closed, not wanting to look at the name, written in cursive, on the side of the Nagant M1895 Revolver. It said “Dominic Rascalov. July 19th, 1942.” Not only was he terrified of this Dominic Rascalov, frightened away by a secret he felt he should never know, he couldn’t quite piece it together. Why did this woman have a gun that belonged to a nameless man, whose name carried the scent of blindness?
This man shook his head. This nameless blind man couldn’t be more important than his salvation, which he had just scared away with the opening of a silly letter. However, a corner of his heart attached to the idea of reading something that made an old woman scream like a rabbit. Maybe this attachment was curiosity. He unfolded the rest of the letter.

Sybl was elated. Her army was dying, but she was winning. Her plan was working, and working well, because having ninety percent, or ninety-nine percent of your army destroyed didn’t make a difference. The number of the dead didn’t matter; what mattered in demigod wars was that every single person died one way or another. Generally humans favor surrender to a massacre due to the lack of ability destroy people who might, in a couple tens of years, be their only allies. This preservation of life works against them, leaving a small percentage of the dissenting faction alive to prorogate their ideas and limiting the winner’s power.
Demigods settle disputes a different way, using their one easily replenished resource in order to avoid their own bloodshed. Civility was always present in these games; everyone obeyed the few laws of the game. A war was created, and the war was followed until a specific battle was reached. The number of demigods and the number of sides in the battle must be equal. Each demigod takes the side of one of the warring factions and strategically alters one small aspect of their army. The demigod who wins is the demigod who removes every trace of the other side; every human being is killed or removed from the war due to dissatisfaction or injury. In human history, these have been recorded as the worst battles, and the small number of these bloody wars was due to two main factors. Number one: demigods, in general, get along. Secondly, the subtle nature of the meaning of “kill,” includes destroying the cohesion of the army, the sanity of the army, or the physical beating of the human heart inside every soldier in the army. Mostly demigods are sympathetic to humans, and therefore try to discourage the other army’s beliefs. Sybl believed in the common human phrase: if a job is worth doing, it should be done well.
Sybl’s strategy depended on Fazo taking the traditional route and attempting to win through brute force; encouraging his men to be more ferocious, bloodthirsty, or well-equipped than the Soviets. This was Fazo’s usual course of action, and by now he was quite good at what he did.
So Sybl tried something different this time. She created the illusion of Dominic Rascalov being kidnapped by unhappy German soldiers to hide the transfer from both her enemy and Dominic’s. Then a ‘stray bullet’ shot the illusion. Due to the original meaning of the word “kill,” Dominic Rascalov’s morality, sanity, and the beating of his heart would be preserved for years and years, as Fazo’s anger, the senility in his men’s hearts and the defects in his men’s hearts would increase exponentially. Sybl grinned.
Why Dominic Rascalov? Why does one person win at Russian roulette, how can one human out of thousands be picked to win the lottery? Pure, dumb luck. Sybl considered him lucky; although Rascalov would be found dead she was saving him from dying.
The best part would be when Fazo finds out he loses the bet, realizing that Dominic was hid inside the Jade Box. Boxes are the containers for assignments, and it just so happened that Fazo’s was jade. Sybl knew this was merely a risky demonstration of pride, but it was worth it. She was allowed to indulge once in a while, when everyone else gorged themselves on humanity. She giggled as hundreds of toy soldiers were violently murdered. This was going to be fun.
All of Sybl’s Soviets were destroyed. Dead. Body parts lay with no torso, no head. And silence remained, only broken by weeping and screams as men find eyes pasted on the back of their eyelids. And more silence. No robotic voice declaring the end of the bet, no display of the other demigod’s actions during the battle. Silence. Fazo leaned onto his display made of rock. He banged it, threw what he could conjure at it, and screamed obscenities. Raging, he teleported into Sybl’s room and found her smiling, leaning back and enjoying the sight.
As usual, they had a conversation without having one. He examined her smiling blue skin and hated it. She used her eyes to shrug, leaning back into an armchair she created, from atoms she had collected into her room specifically for events like these. And, suddenly, the room was transformed into a battlefield, a scene of a terrified teenager cornered by Germans. He had black hair and a pale face, an expression of nothing played across his face. He closed his eyes and shook, as Germans led him behind a building. They shot him in the head, and Fazo knew what happened. He was so close. Half the army dead, and the rest deserting the army, and one. Man. Would stop him. The blue demigod was laughing at him, and he couldn’t stand it. He left.
But this man had a plan.
And reappeared in the Soviet Union, clothing himself thoroughly with furs and luscious pants. He strolled, clutching onto his walking cane so hard his fingers were turning colors. Several women would look at him and his face and, although attracted to him, would scurry off in the other direction. They didn’t want to face this rage; they knew this rage. The rage of men and their fetishes, the faces which are composed of people who have been dead for a long time. The hands which have been crafted out of stepped-on mud, the eyes made out of marbles. This kind of rage controls the senses and dulls the connections between muscle and bone; this anger that makes a man forget his mortality. These women want a man who will stay alive past the night, one who has a face made of flesh and blood and bone and muscle, which all work together for the same purpose, which is not to bloody or rip. This was fine by him. He had a mission, and he was going to get it done.
He was going to send out every human who owes him favors to search for a man who seems out of place, one who is from an army. Sybl, in her pride and ignorance, had shown him a picture of a black-haired, white-teethed, white-skinned Soviet man. And this is what Fazo would have found, and killed slowly and painfully, having Sybl watch. He would use every facet available to his grasping hands.
Dominic Rascalov was going to be found.

The letter spoke mysteriously,

Dear Resident,
Look behind the closet door. You may find what you are looking for, although this depends on both what you will find and what you are looking for. Perhaps you will only find more questions, but, I promise you, the Chapel will only open if this door opens first. I cannot stress how important this is. Importance has more than three dimensions and cannot be stretched like a rubber band, so you will have to simply imagine the importance of this event. It is a vast ocean.
Trust me. I may be only a letter, but like everything else in this place, more than what I am. You may just be a human, but more than a human. You need to get into the Chapel- more than just you will depend on this.
This letter is only for you. If you are reading it, it is for you. No one else will be able to comprehend these words, so you have to reason to fear it falling into the wrong hands. Whoever attempts to do so would be overcome by a terrible fear, incomprehensible for you to understand.
Keep this letter by your side at all time, it may become useful.
Love and more,
Me.

Dom sighed. This was only a puzzle, but it was suspiciously easy. Dominic Rascalov had spent his life believing God was the ultimate, all-powerful being, but He creates a puzzle this simple? Dom was thinking blasphemy; God is a pansy. Something he wouldn’t exactly expect. Slightly less elated and excited to prove his worth, Dominic pushed his blood through his veins and bounded off, searching for the woman with eyes innocent enough to guard God’s gates for him. This woman would be the key to his salvation.
He started by leaping up the creaky, unstable stairs and running into the house. Once he was in, he had to pause yet again, for there was nowhere to hide, as there were no walls, or doors, or windows. The original image the arose in Dom’s mind, of him dramatically leaping onto the chest of a woman who would, immediately, hand him over some bright golden key and burst into song, quickly and resentfully jabbed this man in the stomach.
Another strange thing was that the walls were all painted as if they were in a real house. There was the bathroom; there was a toilet painted on the wall, a sink painted on the wall, and oh—look!—a cabinet. Over there was a kitchen, with the dinner table and the food piled up on plates as if it were about to be some sort of a meal. A closer look would reveal that the food was not quite the traditional food eaten by Soviets; here, an arm, here a leg, but Dom did not realize or care to realize this.
At first he was convinced that he’d never find the woman. It was as if she had risen from the dust to give him the letter and, once this remarkable feat was accomplished, faded into the substance she had been birthed from. Exhausted, Dom gave up his pride to failure, sure now that he would never get past the Chapel’s not-white gates through his personality. He leaned his back against a painted door, on the wall.
And he tumbled through. Which, now that he thought about it, made perfect sense- “Look behind the closet door.”
Before he could congratulate himself on his cleverness, he looked down to see a mess of a grown-up woman. Her hair was split, bits and pieces torn out by her still-clutching, callused hands. She was muttering strange, unknown words, and again Dom wondered the purpose of this test. But, when the woman, with one hand and a fingernail with a strand of hair entwined, reached out to Dom’s leg, looked up with clearly blue eyes, and said, “help me,” wondering was the last thing Dominic’s body would let his mind do. No God could ever exist in a babbling, hopeless species.
He yelled, “You are not one of God’s creatures,” and suddenly he was leaving. He kicked the door shut and, almost on their own, his feet made their way across the field of dust and stood, staring at the chapel that would’ve defined his life if he hadn’t messed everything up.
After the dust from his feet had settled down, one clean, untainted thing remained. Dominic Rascalov (for now he knew the gun was meant for him and not the mewing, shivering animal in the closet) neatly unfolded his letter, pressing the edge against his fingertip as he read it for guidance. Saying nothing, he walked away into the dust, which had risen up into a thundercloud.
Dominic Rascalov had decided: he was going to break into Heaven and show the world the fake idea of God.
A faint blue pair of eyes, slightly glided out of existence, and a slight breeze would be apparent to anyone paying attention.
But the blue faded away and the breeze floated and neither was noticed by the wrinkly casing of a woman or the young, uninformed man-had the eyes to notice.





The City of Love

This was no longer a war to be played with casually from above, impartial and uninvolved. This was a dirty war, and in order to be fought, the soldiers must be dirtied with mud and crime and sex. This was not a child’s war. Fazo was prepared to rub the mud on his hands and his lips, ready to mix the poison into his own blood. He had the taste of revenge on his sharpened, scaly, tongue, and both the Gods and their lackeys knew it.
The only space that was left blank and uncounted for was the space that no one really knew existed. In the hundreds of years since Sybl was dropped on the God’s figurative doorstep swathed in unidentifiable cloth, her ancestry remained draped in shadow. This was partly due to an inadequacy of the Mysteries, partly due to a lack of care, but mostly because Sybl’s species didn’t want to be found. They were blue, but they were also pink and black and green and purple and white, all colors and none. Banished from their home world long ago, they would now play an important role in Earth’s unwritten history.
As a whole, they were a species of assassins and have culled the human race to the point to where they could survive without noticing or harming Sybl’s species. The assassins could hide back in the shadows and simply pull the strings to make the puppets dance.
They have no name, but the few which know of their existence call them the S. Maybe this should stand for secret, for silent, for serene or solitary, but mostly because the names for all of their talented individuals start with an S.
Saleen was a S, timid and cloaked by the rejection of her own species. She was wandering the streets of San Francisco, barefoot against the wet pavement. She had felt the change coming for years, but told no one. Most of the time, Saleen sat on the edge of that bridge and watched the steamboats sail in and out, the steam puffing terrible evils into the world, but today she was walking, the pads of her feet smoothing the wet sidewalk. A “broken wurld” scratched into this particular sidewalk, inside a heart, or the smoking of a woman under an umbrella. There, a man scratched his moustache surreptitiously, here a woman leaned over and pecked her son on the cheek. She loved watching the breath of this city. She loved these people, living through their actions.
Saleen was a shape shifting, invisible, chronic smoker whose love for nicotine was only slightly out-done by her love for a human woman who wore brown converses and stared at them as she walked. Her name was Emily, but she liked to be called Emmy, and she managed a hotel restaurant where, when she was cooking, it didn’t smell like onions or beef or cilantro but love, with a quarter-cup addition of joy, and just a pinch of manipulating words, and about three stalks of tension.
Technically Saleen could not be considered a lesbian, because S’s have no gender in their natural form, but when she is visible she makes herself a female. She can’t help it; she’s attracted to bright lights, interesting women, and hips.
But the thing she loves most about Emmy is Emmy’s fascination with broken, or strange things. Room upon room is filled with artifacts whose beauty can only be known by those who have felt it’s nature, and although she’s never talked about it, Saleen is convinced that deep inside herself Emmy has been broken and, at least on a subconscious level, feels some sort of kinship with these broken, unusual toys. Maybe that’s why she feels so comfortable around Emmy; Emmy knows her way around the underappreciated and under enjoyed.
This is why when Saleen turned the corner into the alleyway and saw a crying, bloodied man, she carried him into the lighted alley-ways of The Cozy; into Emmy’s lighted corridors and rooms.

Dominic lunged at the door. When the not-white chapel refused to open at the nervous stabbing of his fists, Dom searched through the empty town for something sharp, possibly heavy, to break his way into unyielding Heaven. He found something both sharp and heavy: a mace, hidden in a back room. Dom hacked and hacked, incorporating the life he didn’t have and the soul he didn’t deserve into his hacking. At first, the terrible noise came softly, but increased with intensity each time the steel bit into the wood. The door began to swell, pushing outwards toward Dominic like a scab about to explode into pus. This did not deter Dom. The final hack, the final bite, released a quiet and calm Dominic had never believed could exist, and then the noise from the entire world during that time was all released at once, blasting Dominic with screams and laughs and police sirens and bad punk rock bands.
This did not deter Dom, or at least only stopped him for a second. But his feet pushed him ahead, his hate more powerful than his respect or his fear. He pushed past the world and reached a terrible blackness.
The first thing Dominic thought was this definitely isn’t Heaven. The second thing he thought was this room disgusts me in every sense of the word.
There was no noise. The feet, even when stomping, made no sound on the floor, and the door slamming shut could not be heard. The walls were covered with black silk, hanging from windowsills that had no windows, the only light coming from torches along the sides of the wall. The ceiling was drenched in darkness. Red carpets lined the pews like a net of spider webs, every carpet leading to one mirror in front of the room. Dominic was walking towards this mirror when he happened to look behind him and lift his gaze.
One stained-glass window, on the side of the wall with the door, stared vehemently at him with red eyes. It took Dom a while of staring to realize that the red eyes belonged to a man that cured the blind and their sicknesses. Jesus was staring down at him, from high above, with red eyes of judgment and hands covered with rubber gloves, the sunlight cresting his bare feet, loincloth, and surgical mask. This did deter Dom to the point of madness. Jesus looked down on him, ready to pull apart the coils of his intestines and the layers of his skin. This was not the judgment he was looking for.
His feet made him rip out a torch from the wall, and with eyes made of fire he threw them at the pews. They did not burn. He pulled another one from the wall but anger made him clumsy and he dropped it and it touched his pant legs, which was neither consumed by the fire nor felt hot. This only set his sights higher. Instead of blowing up the pews, Dominic wanted to destroy this not-white chapel, to show whoever left in this deserted town that there was nothing to fear; this chapel was just a chapel, these windowsills without windows just windowsills. Here the mortal found nothing holy.
So instead he picked up his mace once again, the metal sides reassuring and powerful, enhancing his only mortal abilities. He ran by the sides, ripping down the black silk, but he could only rip off so much, and the black tails trailing into darkness remained intact. This still felt like a success, so Dom continued by tipping over the pews, so at least if they couldn’t burn they could be disorganized. These were just pews, made by a poor carpenter who was probably cheated out of his money by atheists, out of his best wood because he wanted to make a name for himself. He probably did get a good name, but when more and more men draped in black, with scars in suspicious symbols across the bridges of their noses, came to his store, he left. Demon-worshipers were nothing to be terrified of. In fact, they were usually pansies that had to resort to dramatics to get the way they want, with the flowing of capes and the lowering of voices and the glowering of eyes.
Dominic was not scared of demons. He was a Son of God. They would not be able to hurt him, even if conjured out of the ceiling’s dark mists.
So he continued to he mirror. Mirrors, always used in horror movies, never seemed all that horrific to Dom. When you look into the glass, you see yourself and whatever’s behind you. Sure, the space doesn’t exist where you’re seeing, but look, guys, it’s a piece of glass. Not all that original or holy in any way, sitting in the front of a chapel?
He flexed his thighs and his hamstrings as he ran towards the mirror, skeleton weapon and arrogance in hand. As he got closer, he could see the eyes of Jesus looking down at him in the mirror. Along the way Dom grabbed a torch in one hand to make sure he knew where he was going, and anyway, trick torches are pretty darn cool.
When the metal hit the glass, something strange that Dominic only partly expected happened. The trembling part of Dom had whispered, what if the mirror is something special, the prop of this chapel? But the booming Dominic Rascalov had declared triumphantly, such nonsense! Even if this is important, it will only show the demon-worshipers the power of a Son of God. Imagine that-worshipping a piece of glass. Ha!
But then his sight was spinning in a whirlwind. The sides of the chapel were all bending inward this time, as if reaching toward the mortal whose willpower attempted the willpower of the Not-White Chapel. It threw, puked, belched, and jumped to get the man out, fading in and out of sight as the cracks between two pieces of glass let little droplets of blood soak Dominic’s skeleton weapon, crawl up the handle and his skin. The face on Jesus had changed so radically that if Dominic had looked up he would’ve let go of the mace, which had been holding him in, and he would have gone flying out of the Non-White Chapel and turned his heels, trudging sadly into the miles of dust. But Dominic neither saw nor knew what was happening; his mind had closed his eyes in order to maintain that diplomatic relationship.
From the outside, the walls of the Non-White Chapel were billowing and screaming while fading in and out of existence. The power was too great for something to both exist in the real world and force its atoms to move without a controlling willpower. This was not will; this was a survival instinct, a motionless object taught to move by the destruction of its base. It’s existence wavered.
The blood made its way up the body of Dominic, whose eyes were shut tighter than it had ever shut them before. This was no time for diplomacy but the time of fear. Fear masked the feeling of blood rushing up his spine, to the back of his neck, as more blood came pouring from the mirror, and down his handle, and onto his fingers, and down his legs, finding it’s way under his clothes. He was bathed in the murdered blood. And then, with no where left to go, the blood seeped between his eyelids and into his eyes, beneath his pores and into his skin. Dom’s blood was confused with the blood of an inanimate object, but Dominic would not let himself know this; he stared at the one pair of eyes on the back of his eyelids that would never be masked by any sort of blood. He was back in his mother’s swimming pool again, the liquid feeling like salvation over his coarse, old 34-year-old body; but in this case he never reached the top again, but this didn’t matter, because he didn’t feel the pressure to breathe. The only real, solid object that brought him back to the present was the tightening of his knuckles on a blood-covered mace. When the blood rushed in between Dom’s fingers, at first the feeling of slipping was more than friction; it was the slipping of life, morality, or sanity.

Sybl checked in on her captive for the first time since the snare was set. She dipped her hand into the crystal ball and waved her hand in the designed manner. The inside of the Jade Box appeared. It had been months since Fazo had disappeared into Earth’s abyss to search for Dominic Rascalov, who had assumed that Sybl didn’t have the gall to break, or rather, bend the first law of the gods. But as of this moment, Sybl hadn’t been called down to the Hall of the Gods, the beautiful female robotic voice which declares the ending of bets remained silent, and the less powerful demigod of communication hadn’t warned Sybl yet. So she remained unconcerned. Her first and final fear that Fazo would look inside the Jade Box and find a strange world and a Russian human remained un-jostled.
She had given Dominic Rascalov the hardest planet to get in trouble on. She removed the weapons, and every non-essential company. The exit was sealed up, tight, past the mortal’s ability. She picked a man she was sure would concede the point due to fear, or interest in preservation of life, but perhaps she underestimated either him or his pride.
The man would not concede, even if he would cling on in a disgraceful, horrendous position. He had gotten in with a…mace. A. Mace. Something mortal and metal? No spell casting? No. She had removed every weapon and every wizard. With a flick of her fingertips she brought up the history and background of Dominic Rascalov.
Born Caine Rascalov, this man had gotten tired of his father eight months before he had been born. The two were like fire and ice; whenever the father touched the mother’s stomach, the baby kicked like hell. However much he hated his father he loved his mother, and more; the love of two parents expanded and stuffed itself into the love that was only meant for one. But, his mother was killed in a mysterious accident, in which a car appeared out of nowhere, ran her over, and disappeared. Witnesses descried the vehicle as a mix between a trailer truck and a tank, but accounts varied, as did written down license plate numbers. The only detail that had remained the same through every account was that the vehicle seemed to appear out of a flash of blue light, and that it had no driver. However, the vehicle itself was blue, which might’ve accounted for the flash of light, and the witnesses had been distracted by the bleeding, again-pregnant mother.
When this happened, Caine Rascalov yelled obscenely explicit words at his gentle-spoken, high-minded father and stormed out the front door, eventually landing in the house of another woman. Her name was Rose, she doted on him and so they dated. In the midst of strange feelings about his mother, even more complicated feeling about his father, Caine Rascalov had his first sexual experience with a woman. Days later he changed his name legally to Dominic, because it had nothing to do with his father, or his mother. He could leave his past behind.
One day, while Dom and Rose were fooling around, Dom found himself thinking about his mother. That night he left the house with a bad taste in his mouth, realizing that Rose was simply her replacement. He had no where to go and nothing to see in the country that had long ago failed him by producing blue cars that could disappear without a driver, a license plate, or a crime written to a name. During a depressive fit he decided to join the army to hopefully get himself killed. This seemed to work, and Dominic Rascalov died on July 9, 1942, on position in a town that he hated, in a war he couldn’t care less about.
This was a sad story, but it explained how one piece of steel could smash through her illusion of a holy chapel and the even holier mirror. It explained how a man without a father could have an exchange blood with something that didn’t exist. It explained the force following his life like a dog, touching the thin strands that touched the sides of his life. But this biography did not explain why, or what it meant.
A weapon had been placed there for this man, after Sybl had removed every weapon in her illusion. This means that the individual was still in the Jade Box. And now that she looked closer, Sybl could see a letter dangling off the belt loop of this human man, in a handwriting she swore she could recognize. She slowly rewound the situation by dipping her fingers into to one side. She had barely noticed the soft laughter behind her when she had received the first glimpse of the eyes of an immortal she had seen years and years ago, and still remembered.
She turned, and found herself looking into yellow eyes with slits for pupils. She dashed back to the crystal ball and slapped it off, but the demigod simply grinned and dissipated away. Sybl and Fazo’s war had gotten to the gods, and now one of the demigods seeking Fazo’s favor had glimpsed Dominic Rascalov’s true destination. Sybl set herself into fast action, and was in the process of teleporting to the Jade Cube when a voice, clear, demanded her presence in the Hall of Gods. Sybl kissed her crystal with a determined snap, and teleported to face something she knew hated.

The Gods, collectively, sighed. Although the demigods were usually the demagogues of various species sent to gain favor and power for the represented, the Gods themselves belonged to no race. They existed as the seven forms of energy that existed universally throughout the universe, of which humans only knew three; kinetic energy, potential energy, chemical energy, cubic energy, collidic energy, hidden energy, and physical energy. Their appearances always followed the meaning of their name. For example, Kinetic consisted of a constant whirlwind, flinging certain objects in a dangerous cycle, and Collidic was a bright light that stopped the objects nearby if they got too close. Together, the Gods controlled the laws of the universe through compromise and discussion, the fate of all life in their metaphorical hands. However, they are rarely found all in the same place; four, a relatively large number, floated at their podiums located at the seven corners of the hall. Sybl was transported onto a green symbol in the center of the Hall, and faced the energies sent to reprimand Sybl for bringing a human into the god’s realm for the sake of a useless rivalry. you two, they explained through the flashing of images through Sybl’s mind, are leaders the demigods, must be example. if humans shown the world we live, they will no longer remain servants and allow us to test governments or political strategies. they become prideful, ridiculous creatures. we created them this way. if you do, others will do, and you must show good example.
Sybl responded with a thoughtful, decipherable illusion, due to her distrust of human words so many demigods had accepted as their language. A man was shown, inside a cube. The cube was lined with stores and one religious chapel. Nowhere was the trace of the Gods shown- the scene was one of Earth, and nothing more. The Gods still disapproved, disliking the situation but decided to simply remove her from the using of the demigod’s slaves, which had powers of their own and we waiting to move up the ranks. Sybl quickly agreed and disappeared into Fazo’s domain, seeking the Jade Box.
She had forgotten the magic mace and the mirror, and the fact that the woman who raised her was behind all of this, and instead faced the problem of Fazo and the alligator-looking demigod. She could still handle this; nothing so far was out of her control.
She was fine. She could handle the two even if all she had were her illusions.

Dominic could feel himself slipping. His deep liquid-red knuckles rubbing against the leather handle were losing the battle, but as soon as he had let go of the idea of disproving Satan, he felt very cool hands on his back pushing him forwards, toward the solid glass of the mirror which had opened up into the mouth and gleaming teeth which were about to consume him. He opened his eyes for the first time after the whirlwind started, and saw, even though from the outside his eyes were covered in blood. He wanted to convince himself he wasn’t about to move into a solid object. He was, but it was either accepting a paradox in physical terms or releasing every claim Dominic Rascalov had to being a man.
Everything but the ever-closer proximity of the mirror seemed the same—Dominic could only make out blurred images of a drawing in which a child scratched outside of the lines, the house was vehemently throwing itself and wavering in and out of sight—but the mace was being pulled inwards, and the two sides of the mirror had pulled apart like lips, ominously resembling a predatory mouth. There was no way out from being consumed by steel except letting go of the mace, but that was unthinkable. He had to show that at least one human being could look death in his grey eyes and not back down. Dominic Rascalov had joined the army to die, although once he completed this he felt no different. He figured that his first death was quick and melted in his mouth before he could complete himself with it; during this death he could examine and dissect the tastes with his tongue. Maybe one day he could feel like a man again, and if he ever sees Rose he could explain that he needed his mother, and that she was filling the part too well. Dominic was going through the rebirth of the phoenix.
And maybe, when Dominic could belong with this happy death, his mother could rest in peace, and Dominic could choose a new name.
It was this thought, and this thought only, that kept the thin strand of stubborn-ness strong. And little by little the thin rubber band thickened.
It seemed as if Dominic was strangled by the air’s force for days, his feet dangling and the metal sinking deeper and deeper inside the mirror. The black silk was flapping in the wind and pews were being flipped over, and the Jesus still snarled at the image of a man’s feet forcing him to cling onto an image, an idea, which would most likely kill him before giving him a true reason to die. Jesus looked upon this waste of a life he had died to save, and the stained-glass statue frowned.
When Dominic’s slightly scratched out eyes searched the walls, he realized that the Not-white Chapel truly wasn’t white, it was yellow. The bell ringed at the top of the tower, a dull, repetitive sound.
And as if the blood of the murdered was magnetic only to the blood of the murderer, the metallic blood never touched anything but Dominic. Not one drip stained the white chapel floor. Later Dominic would stand in the doorway embraced in golden light and wonder at the mirror and how its blood never touched his clothes but covered his entire body. This moment alone would make Dominic a true believer, not the kind that just believes in manipulative tools such as God and the Afterlife, but the kind that really believed, and poured their belief into the way they lived life. After this, Dominic vowed, he would fight both others and himself for freedom and equality. But here Dominic stood sideways to the rest of the world, blood covering him and the mace pushing him through the lips of a doorway head first. This was Dominic’s second birth- the first gave his heart the ability to pump but the second gave his heart a reason, even if it was small. So as Dominic was sucked in by the broken mirror, he held his breath and waited, because no atheist God would let him die when his life had just begun.
He had no fear. Not anymore; not of this. It was strange that his life began just as he died the second time, but the birth itself was strange. His more evolved self was a mewing baby on the pavement, covered in blood that was partly swept away by the rain.

What Sybl almost couldn’t handle was the glowing light from the Jade Box, and the lunging forces of Fazo and his friend.
Slowly, inch by inch, a head ripped the flesh of the Jade Box and was pushed into gleaming, excited claws. Fazo turned at the noise of Sybl’s teleportation, and conjured a shield. Sybl couldn’t move. Her eyes were pasted to the scene. Fazo grinned, feeling the satisfaction that comes when a hunger for revenge is finally filled. Hands gaping and gasping for air squeezed through the lines of light at the corners of the box, which Fazo’s henchman grabbed and pulled at. They were freer than Dominic Rascalov had ever imagined them feeling, groping the teeth that had killed any before him. Born into the jaws of a killer, Rascalov was unconvinced. He looked up, his clear irises glaring against the glaring color of the room. God had given his life back; Dom did not mistake this room for the afterlife.
He pulled the rest of his body, painfully and uncomfortably out of the make-shift vagina. He ripped at the sides with his fingernails and tore away flesh. The three demigods stood there, looking down at the unaware human. They had no need to rush their work. He would be dead in time, but at least they would give him a chance to feel accomplished. Fazo considered himself generous, but soon Dominic Rascalov would only see the bad side of him, as so many people did. He would forget the moments of pure elation and power Fazo had given him and only remember his third and final death.
Even the expression on Dominic’s face was filled with arrogance, as he surveyed his masters. He would pay for these moments, in which the air still, deathly, merely glistened on their faces in anxious surprise. Fazo would make him pay for Fazo’s patience. Exhausted and unaware, Dominic Rascalov had collapsed on the floor when a claw, long extended and bony, stabbed him through the heart. Sybl cried out; tears on her face morning not the man but the punishment she would have to go through. The metallic female voice said in a calming, soothing voice, “Fazo, winner. Sybl must concede with the agreement.” Her voice jarred the inside of Sybl’s brain. The henchman tilted his head at the dead body on the edge of his finger that slid back when the hand was lifted. Blood gushed at an obscene rate, and Fazo relished in it. But he wanted retribution. This was not retribution. With one finger he flicked the henchman across the room and held him there. Violence did count as a vice; vengeance was a vice. If Fazo could not find revenge in the act of winning this war, he would find his vengeance in his reward. Sybl would have to take part in terrible, terrible things.
Sybl gasped. She had…lost. The wars, the pride, the dominance, the pleasurable fear and hate on Fazo’s face. She had lost it all, dropped everything she worked for drip by drip into a deep, irreversible chasm. But she refused. The half-human woman who had inherited the best of the two world knew how to lie.
So she split the world in half, a rift that took everything she had. A bright light, too fast for anyone to see, engulfed the world.


Fazo gleamed at his possession of the woman and the man. They were his. Completely and absolutely his- there were no questions and no challenges to his authority. The voice had said it. He owned her and her little human pet. She was trembling and he owned her trembles, and he felt them. They were his. He walked, slowly, towards the woman clenched by the biting shield, something that he personally had made for this occasion. He relished this. He bathed in her calamity, and he finally felt clean and justified. Fazo took one hand and lifted Sybl and said in a very strangely human voice, “You are mine now.” The next moment she was dead, killed by the god Collidic, who had stopped her heart.




Sybl refused to give in. She clenched the dangling ends of pride in her palm and squished the solid into a liquid paint. She turned