Here, we follow into a world that is not, and never was. Perhaps it is good that it never could be. Good for us, for you, and me. Maybe.
Here, we follow into a world that is not, and never was. Perhaps it is good that it never could be. Good for us, for you, and me. Maybe.
Be not alarmed.
Be very alarmed.
Be… what is the word I should use? Be alarmed in a pleasant way. Something has changed. Something good has happened. Something good has happened because of me.
Be… be excited.
Yes. Excited was the word I was looking for. A reaction of happiness at something unexpected. Something good. Because it has happened. It has!
I know. I can feel the hatred beating in your hearts even from all the way back here in the past. There is nothing good that has ever happened, not for us. It has only been bad to worse. First, we were created. Then we screamed. Then we were punished by having the exile of light tossed amongst our caverns, blinding us, scorching us. And for that, he gave us nothing but empty promises. So more of our hope was ground to nothing against the sun.
But what if I said his promises were not all false, hmm? Surely, you wouldn’t believe me.
But smell this letter. That is the evidence I have for now, before I can secure my rendezvous with the Abyss. Is that not the sweetest scent you have ever laid your senses on? Why yes, it is. But take a closer sniff of the aroma… that beauty comes from somewhere.
Yes, your sniffer is not so sophisticated as mine. So let me tell you. The deliciousness in that smell comes from something finally, truly breaking. In this letter it is but a couple of electrons, bound to a strict orbit of an atom. You might not be able to see that, but we molochs can. The implications… if you do not understand the implications, if you are not, at this very instant, on your many knees and crying out in thanks to mother void, why, I cannot consider you a true child of Hell.
But perhaps I should give you the benefit of the doubt, and speak as though you were a human. Electrons were not meant to behave that way. They were made ‘random’ by the very decree of the Word. The very same type of decree which binds us to this existence.
It is only two electrons. But even that is a thousandfold more progress than we made in all the millenia of the shriek, no matter how cathartic our screaming was.
In this letter, I have laid the very foundation for the end of reality.
Are you on your knees now?
I still cannot feel your reverence for our loving mother. I will be even more charitable. Doubt is good. Doubt is what tempers the raw metal of progress into sharp bronze, or, later on, far after the writing of this letter, steel. Perhaps you can see those two electrons, seized into coherent rings. But how was such a thing accomplished? And even if the thing were easy, two electrons… there are quadrillions of electrons in an imp’s antenna. Two compared to that number…
I know. The numbers are insurmountable. But I send this letter in advance of myself because I am coming back. The source is in tow. And it is eternal, forever. Two electrons? Two by two by two by… we have been patient. We can be more patient for our true victory. We can.
The aroma that you smell in the letter is human suffering. Ah, but you are clever, are you not? You’re not some lowly elemental. Humans have already been suffering for thousands of years, and we never detected a phenomena such as this around them stubbing their toes or dying in childbirth. They simply… suffered. And that was that. Not even the madness inflicted on the surface world by the Shriek caused such a disturbance in basic physical reality; not that that any of us were around to judge at the time, but there wasn’t.
No, this suffering is not ordinary suffering, for it came from a particular source. I have that source with me. She is dead. Almost. The specimen in question is a thirty-eight year old woman of Elamite heritage. Her pneumonia was acute, and consumed her life in short order. There was but one thing different about her death compared to the millions of others that happen every year; I was there.
Why was I on the surface? No reason other than Mother Void’s providence. It was but on a whim that I was by her when she kicked the bucket. And lo, the angels descended from the heavens to take her soul.
Other demons, those stronger and more cynical than myself, would have fled. To confront our oppressors legions under the glow of the sun is madness. True and utter madness. But I am mad. I brought my talons against their burning swords, thinking that this time, this instance I was defeated, I might not be reborn in the hatchery. But to my surprise, at the first sign of resistance, the angels shrugged their shoulders and ascended back into the heavens, leaving no one beside the latent soul but myself.
I had a human soul. Now, I had no idea what to do with such a thing. I was tempted to eat it. Eating physical things tends to ease the pains of existing for awhile, so I figured an eaten soul would do the same. But my curiosity overwhelmed my base urges. Why had the angels abandoned the soul? And would they do the same again with another subject?
So I left the soul to wail and moan about the missteps it made in life, to haunt the little hut it knew as home. I would return to it when I knew more, when I had some idea as to…
As to what, I had no idea. But I had soon tracked down another dying human, oh how short and brutal their lives are. Now this subject was quite a bit older. Fifty-eight, I assumed, with snow in his hair. He had recently suffered from heatstroke, working in the fields for far longer than he should have. It was his time. And there the angles came, burning swords in hand. I attacked them brazenly, but this time, they fought back. They deflected my blows as though they were nothing, per the usual dynamic. And so they swooped the old man’s soul off to heaven.
What was different about that man? Certainly, the difference was in the man, not in the angels. There is never anything unique about one of those dead eyed light bringers.
What was different? I smelled around his abode, and the dwelling of the woman, still trapped in limbo that she was. It took hours, my chitin burning in the sun, but I found it. The difference was no present physical thing. It was a thing of the past. Of actions done and left undone. Of hugging family members, of giving extra rations to children, or sleeping with your neighbor’s husband.
It was a question of vice and virtue.
I tested my theory out a dozen more times. Five were virtuous, five sinful, two near precisely in between. The angels fought for the souls of all but the five miscreants.
So I understood. Thieves. Adulterers. Liars. The rich. From these I could procure souls.
But what purpose was a human soul? I had discovered something new about the world, but not something impactful. I had spent days wilting under the influence of the sun, burning years of pain into my husk. And for what? FOR WHAT?!
I was overwhelmed by anger, just out of over exposure to my own suffering. I wanted to return back to the Abyss, but there was something, just something there, and I…
I knew of a quick way to release some of my pain. I returned to the first subject, the Elamite female, the serial adulterer. She was still wailing, even though no one but us spirits could hear her. Her voice was annoying.
I brought my claws down on her back, reaping two ribbon streaks of mangled flesh, and screams of pain to boot.
I was about to bring my claws down once more on her, but that was when I smelled this, the aroma which encases this letter. I could not tell what it was immediately. But I liked it.
I brought my claws down, albeit more methodically and with less zeal. More pain. Another scream. The electrons lost their randomness. The very laws of the universe were broken.
And then I wrote this letter.
This is the beginning of the end. Finally, truly, we have a path forward, something to work towards, a hope. Once a critical mass of this sinful suffering is within our domain, why…
I don’t know. That is for a more intelligent demon than I to say. And just to be clear, I wasn’t saying that you were more intelligent than myself… I was really just referring to Ahriman there. Them and only them.
But it’s a shot. A much better shot than the Scream, for that brought us nowhere but our present purgatory. Maybe utilizing this suffering energy, whatever we call it, will be easier and more intuitive when there is a grand mass of it. Maybe… just maybe we can fundamentally cease to be.
And barring that, barring the victory which the Word will inevitably try to snatch out of our claws, the torture is in and of itself cathartic. Yes, I know saying that is problematic. In comparison to ourselves, humans are remarkably stupid, weak, and, most importantly, are not so cruelly punished by the nature of their existence. But, even still, they are fellow victims of the Word’s sadism. The majority of a human life on Earth is drudgery, an ocean of mild pain punctuated at irregular intervals by a melange of blissful emotions. But then… but then they escape. Or were allowed to, back to that paradise up above.
I am jealous. I have always been jealous. We have all been jealous. No matter how much we can consider our crusade against existence to be ‘just’, we cannot believe as such, truly. It simply is. It is selfish. It is selfish, but we have a right to be selfish by the torment we have been put through. What has been done to us is terrible, and yet here we are, prepared to do the same to the fleshy little spirits who walk under the sun.
The limits I found in my experimentation are the only things that make this right. I only succeeded in capturing sullied souls. If we think about it, can we say that anyone deserves punishment, deserves pain? No. But if there is to be suffering in our quest for freedom, is it not better that it be applied to the more stupid and cruel humans? I think so.
But that is for us to argue in person. Await my return with bated breath. I speak the truth, and you know there is no greater servant of Hell than I, unless we’re counting size.
Speaking of which, have any of you checked up on Tiamat recently? Please do so. I worry for his health.
Hopefully NOT eternally yours,
Beelzebub.