by rainbowgirlx

Created on: December 17, 2009

Heaven and Hellfire

I was still a small child when the demon first came to me. He terrified me then; the stories* I had been told of their fall from grace echoed in my mind as I took in his crippled form. I was engulfed in the hate radiating from him - drowning in it - and, though it was for but a moment that I saw him, from that day my nightmares always held his face.

He haunted me; never coming close, but always there. I saw him and trembled: for who can stand brave in the face of what they believe to be pure, unadulterated evil? Even so, I pitied the battered, scarred, twisted remains of a being once so beautiful. It seemed to my very much human mind that he – ancient of ancients that he was – looked unutterably weary; but angels cannot sleep, for to sleep you must have a soul, and they have none. Perhaps that is why the demons send us nightmares; they envy us the oblivions of sleep and death, as we envy them their eternity.

I did not know, then, why he watched me; but slowly, slowly I came to realize that although he hated me – and hate me he did – with a passion, he did not loathe me any more than he loathed every other human under the sun (and the sun itself – it was Heaven he wanted, and there is no sun in heaven). In the end it was I that approached him. The stench of sulphur was overwhelming; the instinct screaming at me to run, run, run in the other direction even more so, but I kept going. I crept right up to him, until I could reach out and touch the haggard, twisted remains of the face that had once been so exquisitely beautiful. In all this time he had not so much as breathed; he simply observed my approach as one might that of an insect you haven’t yet decided to crush under your heel.  It was difficult – almost impossible – to look upon him, but I did, and in his one remaining eye I could see nothing but unutterable weariness and hate. Up until that very moment I had not believed the tales that demons hated us, but now I do. As another of the wiser humans once said: seeing is believing.

How can a human child comprehend such knowledge? In doing absolutely nothing the demon had shown me everything humans were not meant to see, should not have to see. Having seen inside his eye the faintest glimmer of Heaven, this world’s food turned to dust in my mouth. I could not eat, could not sleep, could hardly bear to inhale every tainted breath. He hated me, and his hate was a glorious madness:

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