Jack's Back ((Ascension: Book 2)) (3 page)

Cult Leader

Lucifer looked over his rapt followers. He was preaching about the apocalypse again
to all that would hear him. It was their favorite subject, but only because he'd convinced them that it was coming very soon and he could save them from the tortures of hell.

He remembered an old saying that went something like,
the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing man he doesn't exist
. But Lucifer knew better.

T
echnically, the Devil did not exist. Not yet anyway.

Becoming the ruler of hell was tempting to him, as it always had been, but he worried that it might be a death sentence. The ruler of hell had better be an equal to God or God would quickly make things right with the universe. Whoever took that throne should be very fucking prepared to defend it.
The throne was his birthright, but he had to be careful about when he accepted it or it would be a death sentence too. That was his belief. That's why he was doing all of this. He needed to be ready when the war broke out.

He said in his
clear, booming voice, "The apocalypse is cresting the horizon as I speak these words to you and it is more terrible than anything you can possibly imagine. Hell's army is eager to rip and rape."

The crowd was quiet, like kindergarteners hearing Green Eggs and Ham for the first time.

"The Devil knows you all by name. He wants to shake each of your hands and kiss you on the forehead right before he lets his demons have their fun with your meat and your souls. He cums all over himself as he imagines what he'll do to you; all of you."

Lucifer
knew that you had to be crude to get through to some people. With TV and the internet and books readily available, people had heard and seen just about everything, so he decided he had to kick it up a notch to get noticed.

"You might be wondering, what will the demons do exactly?

"They will sodomize you until you get used to it, and then they'll get creative. Your flesh is their play thing and they've had millennia to come up with various ways of rending and manipulating it to cause you the most severe pains and them the most serene pleasures possible. Then, when they're done, the fires of hell will cleanse your memory. You'll forget what being ass raped felt like and how long it takes to pass out from being skinned alive. You'll forget all the tortures because that means they all become new and fresh, over and over and over again, throughout eternity."

An old lady left through the back doors but that was alright, Lucifer always lost a few as he gained dozens
more. Plus, if he'd disgusted her enough, she'd go and complain to others and some people would show up simply out of a morbid curiosity.

In the end, Lucifer
would get all the followers he needed. His message needed to be spread for the lies to reach the right ears.

He needed an angel to hear him and believe him and he couldn't get that unless one actually showed up for one of his sermons.

Jessie the Dream weaver

Melanie made a grilled cheese for Jessie. He wouldn't eat it but she still had to try.

The boy was skin and bones and yet he possessed such amazing power
within that frail body; power granted to him from hell through the sacred rite that took place when he was conceived.

She wondered why he still had the power.

After Lucifer was denied entrance to the earth realm, she'd assumed Jessie's strange powers would go away. Lucifer was trapped forever on the other side so what use were the dream powers to Lucifer anymore? With the doorway bricked up, what use was there for a key?

Then again,
Jessie's dream creatures and objects materialized less and less nowadays so maybe it would just take time to go away. She hoped that was it.

Jessie was playing video games in his room
as was usual, when she came in with his sandwich. He glanced at her quickly, then back to the screen, then at her again. He was intense when he played. It seemed like the only time he was ever really in the moment was when he was playing.

When she put the plate on the dresser beside his bed h
e turned off the game and said, "Thanks Melanie. Thank you for everything. I know this must be hard for you."

She was proud of him the way a mother should be. He was smart as hell and calm
in a Zen-like way, which was especially impressive since he was an eleven year old boy, cooped up at home all day, every day with no friends and a father who spent more and more time away from home.

She smiled and said, "Read a book while you eat."

He nodded but she knew he wouldn't. He was a boy after all.

Then she closed the door and went to take a nap on the sofa.

Jack's ugly as Sin

Jack looked himself over in the bathroom mirror. He looked hideous but at least he looked like a hideously disfigured human being and not a freshly escaped damned soul.

People probably wouldn't scream and run away from him anymore.
Something about that made him sad.

He'd tried the tanning lotion but it wasn't enough to hide his deep red skin tone. The spider got him some make-up putty that people use on Halloween
to add scars and such and Jack applied it liberally to his face. He smoothed over the deep musculature with it, like spackling a wall. His face looked fatter but also much less demonic.

He then cut his talons down with a pair of garden sheers
(when the scissors broke from too much resistance) and the spider found him a pair of gloves large enough to fit even his oversized hands.

He wore a tan overcoat now and he'd traded his baseball cap out for a ten gallon cowboy hat
that better covered his nubs.

He looked ridiculous but that was intentional, to draw the eye away from his Satanic features.

He wasn't entirely satisfied, but it would have to do. He felt like he had little time before God discovered his prisoners missing and came looking.

Jack wanted to deal with Lucifer himself and if God wanted a piece of him afterwards, then so be it.

He'd take on God too, no problem. The idea thrilled him. He didn't expect to beat God or kill him, just to inflict a little damage on the bastard. After all, God had allowed all of this to happen to him. God made the rules, Lucifer had only manipulated them.

A memory came to him like a bolt of lightning: During his time in hell he'd realized one thing; he deserved to be there.

He'd accidentally caused the death of his only friend. He had killed a bunch of military personnel to free his son from the facility they kept him in. Then he killed two angels, although the word kill might be a stretch. Maybe he'd just vanquished them or something. But his intention was to kill them and God judged intentions equal to acts.

Then he'd went against God
's will and freed Lucifer from hell.

If anyone deserved to go to hell, it was him.

He pulled the red metallic ball from his coat pocket. It was eager to kill. When he used it to help his son escape from the facility, it had been a mystery to him, but now that he'd spent some time in hell, he understood its purpose more than ever; it was a soul collector. It was a glutton though because even though it was bursting with souls, it was greedy for more.

But there was more to the death ball that he couldn't put his finger on just yet. He didn't let the absence of information bother him though. He knew the answers would come to him in time. His memories grew by the hour, so it wouldn't be much longer before the mysteries of the ball were remembered.

He willed it to float before him and it did so obediently. He moved it around the room with the power of his mind. It brought back old feelings, feelings of wonderment and joy; feelings he'd long ago given up on as silly and baseless.

With a full year in hell under his belt, h
e now knew there was no hope. Lucifer would know that soon enough too.

Angel Rape

Shelly
Collins ran her skinny ass off. Some angels had found her and they were trying to rape her.

She didn't know why God had chosen her to bring forth the new messiah,
but she didn't agree with his decision one little bit.

Her life had gone to shit a month ago.

That was when the voice came to her. She'd heard that clear voice within her head, plain as day as it recited some sort of prophecy.

It was God
speaking.

It said she would give birth to a holy being, part human and part angel.

Shelly had been drinking that night so it was easy enough to shrug it off as a trick of the imagination, that is, until a fucking angel burst through her window the following morning and tried to grab at her.

It was fast but she got lucky. It was so worked up that it ran right into the
edge of the door frame as she made her escape. Several more attempts were made on her virginity, and so far she'd evaded them all. None of it seemed real, even though she was given almost daily reminders that her virginity was some kind of beacon to sex starved angels.

But
could she keep this up forever?

She even considered letting a random dude deflower her just to taint the goods, but she didn't know for sure if being a virgin was even important. She couldn't bring herself to do it anyway, so it was a moot point.

She did not want to be the twenty first century version of the Virgin Mary and it wasn't right that no one had even bothered to ask her for permission.

God really did work in mysterious ways.
Mysterious and disgusting ways. He was a sociopath.

The angels were mauling one another as they chased her. Apparently she was a hot ticket and they weren't comfortable with gang rape so they were trying to take out the competition. It worked in Shelly's favor because their in-fighting slowed them down and she was able to lose them in the dark.

God, she hated the fucking angels.

The First Lead

Jack's horns were growing back at an alarming rate. He could already see them peeking over the top of his forehead, curling down in front of his eyes. Rather than use a wood saw again for a temporary fix, he opted for permanence. He reached up with both hands and pulled at them with all of his might. It didn't hurt, he just felt a strong pressure on his forehead. His arm muscles bulged from the exertion.

There
were crackling noises followed by two wet pops, and the horns came loose in his hands, one after the other. His vision turned red as blood streamed into his eyes.

It still didn't hurt.

Maybe nothing would hurt him anymore, ever since he'd endured the tortures of hell.

But when he felt a mild headache coming on, he knew that wasn't
quite true. He could be hurt, it would just take a lot to do any damage.

He tossed the under-
grown horns against the far wall and then he tightly wrapped a towel around his forehead. It soaked through with his blood in an instant.

He thought about breaking off his hooves to see if there were feet hidden inside of them but he thought better of it. If there
weren't, he'd feel like a dumbass and he'd have to hobble along on stumps; not exactly an ideal situation considering all that he needed to accomplish.

Dick-eyes came scuttling into the room. It had a magazine clutched between two of its legs.

Jack bent down to retrieve it. It was a National Enquirer. He looked at the spider like it was an idiot with shit for brains but then the spider scurried up his leg, across his abdomen and chest, and then down his arm that held the magazine. It tapped the front cover impatiently with one of its large, hairy spider legs.

The cover story was titled, "Why do angels keep trying to rape me?"

Jack read it through.

Apparently
some young lady from Chicago believed that she had been chosen the same way the virgin Mary had been chosen, but instead of receiving God's seed, she was to receive the seed of an angel...and apparently she was not on board with that. She claimed to have fought off half a dozen angels already but they kept coming back for her. She said her future child was supposed to be the new messiah or something along those lines. At the end of the piece, the reporter said that the delusional girl was unavailable for a follow-up interview.

Did that mean she was in hiding?

Jack had no leads on Lucifer so he figured he'd go see what this insane girl was up to. Lucifer was an angel, despite what he'd morphed into outside of God's grace, so maybe Lucifer had tried to rape the girl too, if of course, her story checked out and she didn't turn out to be a crack pot. If so then maybe she'd know where Lucifer was hiding.

It was worth a shot, and the spider liked the idea so it would probably bear fruit.

Jack placed dick-eyes on the floor and then rewrapped his head. The blood streamed less now so he put the cowboy hat on to hold the towel in place. He draped his windbreaker over his shoulders and said to Dick-eyes, "Get the gang together and debrief them. We need a vehicle too. Hurry now."

He glanced one last time at the magazine in his hand and his eyes fell upon a headline at the bottom of the front page. It read, "Satan Comes to
Wisconsin, page 8."

He flipped to page eight out of curiosity but the story was small, lacking any truth or details. No one had snapped a photo of him but someone had drawn a rendition. It made him appear cartoonish, with huge horns and reptilian eyes, but at least they drew his tail with as little accuracy. The tail looked powerful and it had spikes up and down it. If only that part were true, he thought.

He snickered and tossed the magazine down at his hooves.

He had to do a better job of flying under the social radar. He didn't think God read the National Enquirer. He could only hope people regarded the magazine the way he remembered: As a bullshit rag for hillbillies and weirdoes.