IX. Dreamscape

When the Big Man made humans, He'd made them all in His image. But the insides...that was where the masterwork went. The brain, especially.

Humans had the wonderful habit of dreaming. The part of the brain that handled dreams also had the wonderful attribute of being totally independent of the part that handled memory. This was something Heaven had taken advantage of from Day 1 ( or Day 6, from a technical standpoint) and Hell had picked up on shortly after.

Part of Darrus' deal with the devil was that he was allowed to speak to his son. Meeting him in person on a regular basis was out of the question--proving the existence of Heaven and Hell to people defeated the purpose of faith, something neither side wanted. Appearing in dreams, however, was acceptable.

Darrus stepped through a door, and came out in a blurry, indistinct landscape. He saw Lucian up ahead, along with a few others. Lucian was the only one who was fully formed and unblurred. The girl standing just behind Lucian had no legs, simply floating above the grass. This was a happy dream; Darrus felt mild regret at disrupting it.

"Lucian!" he called.

Lucian turned. "Who are you?"

Darrus found that the downside to this method of communication was that his son very rarely remembered him. "I'm your father."

The other people vanished, as did the meadow. It was replaced with what Darrus recognised as the apartment Lucian had spent most of his childhood in. By now, Darrus knew that Lucian wasn't even conscious of the change, but somehow all their conversations took place here.

"Oh." said Lucian. "Yeah, I remember now. And you're from Hell, right?"

"You could say that."

"What brings you here, Dad?"

"I need to tell you that this may be the last time I contact you this way." A hint of sadness had crept into Darrus' voice for the first time since he had learned of his wife's death, more than six years earlier.

"What do you mean?" asked Lucian.

"I've been put up against something that could kill me."

"I thought you were already dead?"

"As a human, I am. As a demon, I'm very much alive."

"What happens if you..."

"I don't know. Reincarnation is what I hear, but even the Nexus isn't sure."

"What's the Nexus?"

"Don't worry about it." said Darrus. "Just in case this is the last time we speak, I want you to know how things worked out, that I'm a demon and all."

Lucian looked on without speaking.

Darrus sighed. "Ever since I was a teenager, I'd assumed I'd be going to Hell when I died. Your grandparents were very religious, and I could never meet their standards of virtue. Eventually, I decided it was impossible to meet it. By the time I'd left for college, I decided that, if there was a God, he hated me.

"I met your mother just before I turned thirty. She felt the same way I did. We dated for years, and eventually set a wedding date after you were born.

"Unfortunately, just before the wedding, a man named Lawrence Rehnquist covered most of urban America--that's what this part of the world was called then--with viral agents that devastated the population. Your mother actually got sick; I nearly lost her. That was when I decided I couldn't sit idly by and watch the world fall to Rehnquist.

"I joined the insurgency, but to no avail. We fought long and hard, but we just weren't enough; those damnable chots were so numerous that every time one fell, another replaced it before we could reload.

"At age 38, I was captured. One of Rehnquist's lieutenants, a man named Byron Rass, tortured me under the guise of an interrogation. The last thing I spat to that bastard through what was left of my face was that I'd see him in Hell.

"Then my wounds got the best of me, and I died. I'd spent the past twenty years believing that this was the end; eternal silence and dormancy. I was wrong.

"I arrived, my body restored, in a marble antechamber. Standing before me was a robed being, his features completely covered. The room had two windows, across the room from each other. Outside of one was a lush meadow sitting on clouds. On the other was a burning chasm. I can only assume that that meadow was the only glimpse I ever had of Heaven.

"The figure told me that I had failed for most of my life. But in those last seconds, I had so firmly believed that I would see Rass again that I had qualified for a dubious honor. Heaven was out of the question. However, I could choose whether to suffer the devil's wrath or to work under him. If I chose to serve him, I could negotiate the terms of my servitude.

"I struck a deal with the devil; I would serve him for as long as my descendants survived. Then, after the last one of my line was no more, I would serve him for that much time again. Assuming that Armageddon hadn't arrived yet, I would then reincarnate on Earth and be given another chance. If the end comes before my sentence is complete, I end like the rest of the demons, being cast into the Lake of Fire for a thousand years."

"You gambled with the devil?" Lucian asked, incredulous.

"You could say that. I'll end no worse than I would have."

The room quivered. Darrus sighed. "You're leaving dream state. I have to go."

"Dad..." said Lucian, his form becoming indistinct. "Good luck."

"Thank you, son." The room faded. Darrus was back in Hell.

"You, too." He whispered.