Story Stopper

Part I: Dead End Job

It starts back some time ago, in the BCE. One is born, one commits to the idea of miracles, hinting at a higher power, and before we know it, we have a sharp object in our sides and we're being given a choice by, what can only be described as an angel: "you are one of the earliest members of an elite group: true believers. It is due to your faith and love that we offer you a job in the afterlife. A chance to live again and even choose others to aid you in your task: to reap souls and ferry them to the life here after."

So here was the chance to be alive again and walk amongst human beings forever with no pain and no consequences of mortality. With it, however, I may carry the burdens of death and the emotions I have in forever. I said yes.

Reaping like most nine to fives is only a job and one that becomes less and less burdensome with time and help. My department started off as only me. I was given the job by an angel who served as death until he thought up the idea of reapers. I became what they referred to as an angel as one of the perks of the job but just because I had a pair of wings, didn't mean I was at the same power and level as the three headed, thousands of beating wings seraph who gave me the job; I was simply an angel. That is: not Seraphym, Cherubym or Ophanym, not even Arch Angel, just head of a department, plain old Dolphiel or Dolph as I would be known across the milenia.

The last name would change of course: Dolph Gastón, Dolph Siskel, Dolph Waters, Dolph DePaolo, etc. but it was always Dolph. The angels up the food chain have the power to alter reality so it really wasn't much of a thing that every hundred years or so, human beings would perceive that I had died. Death was easy, of course; the putrid stench, the release of a body to inhabit another. My reapers saw me for what I really looked like but to human beings, my visage would change every hundred years or so.

Death was the only downside to living forever but unless I wanted to be incorporeal, it was necessary. I could exist either way but to interact physically with the living, I needed a body. I really didn't need one after the first 5000 years or so, (due to a rapidly expanding department) but I really enjoy the basest of instincts like sex, sports and occasionally drugs and drinking. I could absorb knowledge about humans effortlessly as a perk of my promotion to angel but the physical destructiveness of man was reserved for those in his corporeal prison.

Watching humanity evolve, build itself up and fall down trillions of times was truly awe inspiring at first but eternity is a long time and over this time, we must find ways to occupy our time, but that's what this story is all about. Why else would you want to hear the tale of one who ends the story over and over?

When the drug war almost ended...

Peter pope sat on a park bench smoking a Marlboro Red and mutely awaiting his mark. The birds chirped in the twilight hour and the last leaf fell from a sycamore. From across the pond, he saw the sprawling city of Washington D.C. gripping onto the farce of democracy and gripping the silenced Beretta in his coat, he pulled back the shirt cover as a silhouette approached him through the afternoon fog.

Sitting down next to him, the mark spoke, "nice day for a lager, huh?"

"Es demasiado tranquilo para una fiesta,"he replied.

The mark pulled out a thick file from an attaché case and said, "I'm tired of politics, maybe this will help our countries finally make peace in this senseless war."

Peter turned and said, "a friend greets his friends by the light of mid day."

With this, he pulled out the gun fired two slugs directly into the Security Chief's heart. The silencer made a whisper of the chaos as it put the benefactor into his immortal slumber and the man slumped over onto Pope's shoulder.

Peter took the cigarette from his mouth and put it between the lifeless body's lips as he laid him down on the bench, lifted his legs into a fetal position and put the man's hat over his eyes.

As he made his disappearing act, the cigarette went out and the birds chirped in the muted din of an afternoon fog.

Don't it always seem to go...

The evanescing beauty of dusk is never quite as enamoring as when you know it will be your last. As I sat on a tree stump at the edge of a newly culled field; in the void of the Pennsylvania back woods, I thought of the sterility I had accepted and called to my being.

For weeks, my apathy had been growing and, as some young men do, I had begun to think that nothing in life was worth having. Death seemed to be the plausible response but I had the tenacity to fight the dying of the light because that was what was expected of me in my frame of mind.

I had ploded through the woods countless nights with the apathetic scorn of existence and, as my feet were pricked by the roughness of nature and my eyes met the scampering of mindless little cogs of nature's device, I swooned in thoughts of being bested by some nefarious hooligan bent on the destruction of all in his path or the preservation of his own existence. I felt the warmth in my spine and all around me. I saw visions of my monster swinging a knife at me as I laughed and lunged at him, doing as much damage as I could while narrowly avoiding death. I wanted death to be thrust upon me and I wanted danger in it. I wanted death to meet me face to face like an old nemesis come to tell me we could finally be friends.

In the endless darkness of the clearing beyond a fallen oak and severeal large shrubbery; not to mention half a dozen hydrangia and bushes with various names that began with, "poison," I invoked the angel of death as I shreiked, "come and find me you wretched bitch!"

The forest was silent but it had an answer and just as I sat down on a tree stump, she appeared before me from the limbs above.

"I am by no means death, son, but I believe I can help you."

In my head, my mind went over my recent exploits with accelerated furvor: women who could not excite my phalice, drugs that seemed to induce more boredom than they created beauty, silence immeasurable in tasks innumerable! In that moment my mind felt the anxiety and seemed to throb as if a din shook all thoughts to death.

"I hear your pain, Joshua, and I am here to answer your prayer."

I was speechless and seemed to be unable to speak even if I wanted to as if some preternatural power had grabbed my larynx and refused to let it vibrate.

"I am Anthiel and some might call me a sprite, others call me the accursed but my favorite title is merciful death."

Her features were soft and her skin as pail as a new bride's gown. Her eyes, however; those demonic eyes were the only life in this creature that stood naked before me. Those eyes glowed green as the trees and occasionally flashed red as satin. The strangest quality about her was one that could only be felt in the pit of ones stomach, not really a stomach pain as fear is; that mortification was plastered in the near frozen beads of sweat on my neck, but my stomach felt butterflies. The anticipation one feels right before they jump from a clif into the waves below or the quarry that welcomed them with the rush of existence. She was fecund with the thrill of life while being somehow infrangibly tied to the finality of death.

"You are at a crossroads, child and you have found the den of a god. I can give you the death you seek. I could even let you remain a child until the real death takes you from this earth enfeabled and broken and old.  The third option is you can grow. You can become as strong as I am or even more so, if you can successfully battle the horror of time. The choice is yours..."

As I felt the grip on my speech weaken, I interrupted her, saying, "Yes! Yes. I want your immortality! I want your merciful death! Give me your hatred, VAMPYR!"

"I see you've heard of me and think you know what I am but you have no clue what you will endure in the existence of endless nights and endless dungeons of immortality.  You may even be hunted, you will be tried and tested, you will not feel the exhiliration of a heartbeat anymore and you will not experience excitement the same way. Do you know what you ask?"

"Yes, I..."

"Silence! sub-primal creature. You will have a day after the bite until the poison spreads and you will be the form you are now, permenantly. After that, you will hide from the light of day for that which cleanses will kill you: fire, sunlight and god will be your enemy until you meet them with open arms and open heart. I will tell you what he told me before he cut the wings from my back and cursed me to feed off the blood of mortals forever, he said, 'Anthiel! You deny my divine plan?'
'Father! I beg you not to give free will to likes of man while your angels suffer slavery to him!'
'Your will is my will!'
'My will is to serve a merciful god and man deserves the mercy of servitude over severance.'
'Then you shall see what it means to be man! And you shall be forced to make decisions over life and death and will as I do.'
From there, a heavenly host destroyed my wings and cast me down to earth with a hunger, I had not before felt. When first I drank of man's blood, my species propagated and has grown or killed from 8,000 BCE on."

"I understand the burden."

With my comment she became enraged. She floated into the air and her hair blew back as she shook the earth and moved the wind with divine fury.

"Oh do you now? Is your tie to god gone? Does he not hear your mortal prayer? Be as I am and suffer! Suffer the pain of immortality without light!"

With that she bit down into my neck like a poisonous serpent, coiling her evil around me like some dark shroud. The pain was so immeasurable I passed out and when I awoke, I sat on the same tree stump, at the edge of a culled field in Pennsylvania. The evanescing beauty of dusk is never quite as enamoring as when you know it will be your last.

Pain Case

Part XVI

There's no place to run; no place to hide. At this point, I am pretty sure I am not under his or her control but rather, the cycle has finally come full circle. Here I am and into pain I was born and so into pain I shall end this. It's funny. In all this world destruction, not once has anybody looking in wondered, well where are all the nukes?

It's been 18 months of darkness and the world is all but a shell. I got on that plane to Moscow and it was one bumpy fucking ride. So here I sit; in Moscow on top of the ruins of Ostankino Tower, which is half its height but I'll bet you've never been 270 meters in the air without shitting your pants. I have with me a lit папироса, and a half a bottle of Grey Goose. Hey! Only the best for the end of all mankind, right?

чертовски человека don't deserve to live anyway. I passed through my home town to receive my father the other day and you know what they told me? He was in hospital that burned to the ground with him in it. It really has come full circle but my family is now all dead and my enemy is everywhere. The ground that I walked was my enemy so I climbed this tower to dangle my feet off and show this revolving сука that I am no longer attached to her scorched демонический skin...

Oh sure! she no longer needs me because it didn't even take all that much convincing to get my countrymen to start looting and killing each other for petty squabbles but at least I hear that Russia wasn't the only one. As I begin to laugh to the demons that wait in anticipation to make this place новые Ад, I think to myself how quickly Jerusalem fell when the horde of the United States crushed itself, Europe Crushed itself and the rest of the world crumbled. I wonder if there were any diplomats who escaped? In any case, none of it matters because Israel, is finally under the control of the Muslims who so desired it and most of them are dead and the rest will be dead soon. The whole damn world is dead and this is some чертовски хорошая водка!

In my rage, it has only amplified the murder and slaughter and destruction. It's amplified it worldwide. I heard there were 600 American survivors. haha! Not anymore. The world will not heal itself in her special vision of her own rebirth.

All of a sudden, in my head, I begin to see soft things, like children happily playing and fruitful countryside and my mama.

"None of it will work on me you crazy сука!" I scream to the dwindling fires of my homeland.

I think of the raw destruction I am about to cause and she knows it and tries to stop me wit everything she can. At last, she gets armed guards to storm the rotted and beaten precipice I so enjoyed but I don't care one tiny little bit.

I jump! The ground moves quickly toward me and for the first time, I feel her trying to manipulate me but where am I to go? I am in midair so that she can move my body to no avail because I am free falling until the brutal and painful ground rises to meet me.

"That hurt a lot, you rotten Свинья шлюха!"

I felt her grip on my mind, body and soul dispersing. I felt my strength increased. The Asian was right. Death is empty but my resolve was not. I could not feel good or bad about what I was doing because in all senses of the word, I should be dead. What I could feel was her feelings trapped within me trying to manipulate me when it was too late.

If the American had been here, he would have so enjoyed watching me seek out the world's nuclear weapon potential and launch every one simultaneously. I knew our world leaders would be too куриного дерьма to actually accomplish the task so it was clear I had to do it myself.

Mitsurugi the pawn may have stopped a few of them but it really didn't matter. He was not the only dead one now and his power of death held persuasion and amplification through earthly forces but he could not control the electronic signals of that many nuclear warheads post launch. The key was the nervousness of the earth and as she shifted, she left herself vulnerable and caused such a wild spin in her pursuit of me that she shook herself free of her bonds. The nukes fell and it was glorious as the surface of the earth began to break apart and the fire consumed what was left. It quickly went out but by then, it was too late. With my last few moments of life before the vast abyss of space shut me down and sent me to the blackness of death, I watched as my planet drifted out of existence and into the peaceful sleep she so desired for the "инвазия" of man.

"Goodnight, sweet..."

Pain Case

Part XV

It always happens

one does not appreciate

until it's all gone

I feel her within me.  The ancient people might call her Gaea but she is like the answer to my prayers.  In my ecstasy I can even feel the sensations that can only be described in books with names like Revelations.  God is an idea that I never met but she fills me with such resolve that all the death on my blades seems like moments of sheer bliss.

Before I sent them to foreign corners of the world and continued my march all the way until I reached the shores of Japan, I heard the American and the Russian talk of nothing except the darkness of the world but she would only let me see white.  To me, I saw nothing but the world as it would be when the disease of the flesh was gone.

There were others that saw the light as well.  Several Oculars from the Middle East and even he from Israel saw it.  The harmony was beautiful that the Israeli and the Arab joined hands to slaughter the disease of humanity.  We were no longer Israeli, Arab and Japanese, we were Oculars who became the Elementals in charge of protecting the entire planet from mankind's destruction.  They could not be trusted to do the right thing and they had obtained far too many free passes.  Now, Lady vengeance came with mercy for her destroyers to kill before being killed.

Not one who died by my hand died slowly.  I heard in Europe and the Middle East, there was a spike of violent deaths but we the Oculai killed swiftly and with justice as executioners for the crimes of humanity.  All were guilty.  There was no savior for mankind that vindicated them of what they'd done.  They did not sin against god, they sinned against their own home.  They sinned against Gaea.

In the midst of this insanity, I had lost touch with the Russian and this did not bother me as I had accepted his manor of cleansing.  He was of the darkness and of the pain.  He was the pain case that fought against the light.  He was the devil and he had come to punish, as I had come to show mercy to those he would strike down brutally by offering a quick death.

It all was so beautiful, at the end.  The world had all been cleansed and it got very quiet.  I remember as I heard the last few souls dwindling to their graves and the fires beginning to get sucked into her womb to give birth to 高天原 on earth, that stupid Russian had to do something stupid.

The sky went red and the sun became black and I felt her pain and panic.  I saw the ground start to shake and she began to move her arms too quickly for us to survive on her back.  Mountains moved and the sky opened up as I watched the moon break orbit and hurl meteors at our mother.  The seas boiled and 144,000 scattered across the globe ran violently like a biblical herd of swine.  Those of us who became hurt or even killed rose up again and again too quickly as the nanites in them were too weak to handle such rapid changes.  I felt the Oculai die and my heart sank for each one.  I saw the nuclear warheads but I could not stop them.  Her pain and panic in me as well as Sergei's pain was too much for me to bear.

I saw us part as the we were snatched from her bosom and she split apart as we were hurled into the depth of space and heard from no more.  In my last moments, I write:

To bid life farewell
one greets death as a stranger
Always has he watched

Pain Case

Part XIV

[I am the will of mother earth.  I will do to her what must be done.]

What am I saying?  I've had moments like this for weeks where I go into a tangent in my head about...

[All human civilization must be destroyed so that nature can reclaim that which has been destroyed.]

There it goes again.  I know my mind is weak but at the very least my heart should be enough to stop the visions in my head.  My emotions get the best of me, though.  I hear a pain in my head that's much stronger than any mere mortal scream.  It's the moan of the earth as her surface has been polluted, raped and destroyed.  She calls through my mind and says she feels the cold of space creeping towards her soft loamy skin.  At the very least I no longer here the crazy Asian's voice in my head but I think I'd prefer it to this painful sorrow.  I can't...

[The weakest of minds is the most easy to manipulate.  An American mind is hedonistic and thinks only about its own will to survive.  This is why I am so easily able to have him purge me of the termites that eat away at me and give the bare minimum in return.  This is why even before my conduit awakened, governments were able to get away with murder because they did the bare minimum to satiate the masses.

"You have a job, a roof over your head and food.  You should be happy."

This is the way that millions are manipulated into allowing evil to flourish.

"It may not be the best way but do you have a alternative solution?"

No, they do not; so they allow themselves to be taken advantage of.  I am not so easy and I have been waiting for this moment for a long time.  My conduit Mitsurugi; My transmitter Sgt. Ronald Moore of the US military; and lastly, my juggernaut, my executioner, my martyr, willing to die for his cause, the Pain Case, Sergei Ivanovich.  Without these men, none of this annihilation would be possible but with these three at the head of my army, I am unstoppable.]

"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"  I scream out loud in a darkened house, the blood of at least 100 souls on my hands and clothes.  I feel such pain that can not  be quenched and because of it I fly into these rages as the messages like the one that just was run in my head like an infinite loop.  The only way to stop it would be a reboot but in our case, that would only bring us closer to the mother.  This is her pain, her vengeance, her retribution and as my country burns to the ground, I watch good men and women die in front of my eyes and some by my hands because I am no longer in control of my own self.

It's as if I'm being broadcast through and as I frantically search for some form of civilization, I can only watch the nothing through my own eyes; like a captain of a ship that is commanded by winds that blows it into enemy harbors, I can not retract my sails and am at the whim of the earth its self.

I've seen a couple of TV's that still worked but news stations from around the country and the world are all gone.  In 600 channels, that she gave me control long enough to look through, I found nothing but static on every one.  Even the South American networks are gone.  China, Japan, The Philippines, Europe, Africa, South and North America, Australia and the Middle East.

I saw an article two days ago of Jerusalem demolished.  I pray to God for my release from this prison but my mother will not surrender to my control except to search for hope in raw destruction.  That's it!  Hope.

She immediately knows my plan but I press through to search the TV channels of a local TV repair shop in San Francisco.  In my head, she shows me visions from around the world.  Even the most obscure places are destroyed.

Well, you got what you wanted, you evil bitch.  Humanity is all but gone in numbers and all that remains are the structures and civilization we left behind.  For a moment, I surrender; mind body and soul as she turns me from the shop and back to the work of slaughtering the left over human beings but I turn and throw myself into the window of the repair shop when her guard is down.

[His head separates from his body and his nanites and blood spill to the ground.  He lies in the rubble of what was once a street.  He passes into the nether as his body serves only to stop me from communicating with the 600 humans that are left who still walk the soil of the former United States of America.  This is the way you can escape me, children.  This is the way you can be free but which of the two of you wishes death?  Which of the two of you loves the world enough to sacrifice yourself to protect your newly earned pile of ashes?]

Pain Case

Part XIII

The days have gone by in a march that simply has no time or reason.  Mitzu-sama is now Mitsurugi the god!  With my supreme control, he is impossible to hack into and with his power of life after death, I wouldn't be able to hack him anyway.  We've been marching for 3 days straight, without sleep and those who die from exhaustion, he simply drops as his massive horde grows and he takes control of more people as we march and destroy all in our path.

I have a feeling that they've tried sending missiles our way, being that anyone who gets close to us gets enraptured, but missiles run on electronic guidance chips and Mitsurugi commands those too.  It is worse than the Gulag in the USSR.

The sky is always black like a dust storm that simply surrounds our march of destruction.  The only light is the fires that lap at the houses and skin of people who can't scream until they're already dead.  Mitsurugi gets greater power with each bit of destruction like he feeds off the chaos and violence.  Each pretty white picket fence that burns to the ground.  Each chaotic berserker that starts destroying their own house from the inside out, until the ones who aren't trapped in the wreckage, mangled and torn, join the march and start destroying other buildings from the outside in.

I have not seen the American since New York.  We have come to somewhere in Pennsylvania, I think, and I grow weary of watching Mitsurugi with no recourse.  At the very least, I am a bishop to their pawn.  Mitsurugi uses my speed and power to slaughter those who some how manage to resist.  The other day, I put my fist through a man, causing his heart to come leaping through his spine.  The American's tie with me is gone, his whimsical glee ripped from my soul like the jaws of life might remove a rib.  In all this, one might think I would have gotten my taste for torture back but what I saw in front of me now, disgusted me.  It was all me on this one.  This wasn't just torture, this was genocide of the human race.  In this moment, however, I realize what freedom is.

In Russia, I had freedom because I was a government built monster but that wasn't freedom.  Here, I had freedom because I made enough to keep my apartment and I had no boss.  That was freedom.  How many of these poor суки had a complete prison of a routine before they became the puppet of Mitsurugi?  How many of them missed the chance to live freely as I did before trading one prison for another?  The chances were missiles had been sent to Mitsurugi's location because I had glimmers in my head like waking nightmares of other places on earth burning.  In other places on earth I even saw those free men, women and children running through the streets bloodied, bruised, burning and dead.

In front of me, I learned pointless facts of life like how many pounds of pressure one needed to rip off a mans arm and beat him to death with it.

I look around me at the blackness and see people walking away as if they're free.  All of a sudden, I realize the numbers don't add up.  It's as if Mitsurugi's been letting people go but it's much more sinister than that.  In my head I do the math and watch a mental video that has been locked away until this moment.

[Hello Mr. Sergei,  My name is Hayao Mitsurugi and I am in command of your body and soul.  I thank you for your talents and abilities and thank your friend and the many others on earth for theirs.  Yes, there are others.  The first death gave me access to the full range of abilities that our mutual device controls but the second death... Well this gave me access to everything.  You can not imagine the way it feels to know each molecule and its genesis as they go on around you. you can not imagine the power to not only feel the heart beat of the world but the ability and desire to woo her as a lover.  Look at the blue house on the corner]

I looked towards the corner of the street and saw a blue house that looked almost purple in the orange fire of its mail box. As if I was watching lightening form inside of a cloud, I saw tiny blue sparks begin to form in the air and in an instant, a raw pillar of fire came billowing out of the earth like a tectonic plate had just, instantaneously, exploded out of the earth.  I felt the heat from where I was and fell to my knees in awe of his power.  He had managed to learn to communicate with nature its self and harness it's horrors.  From the looks of it.  Nature was невероятно сердит.

[I will destroy this world for her.  much of the globe burns already and through the ashes, she will rebuild.]

He ended his transmission but all of a sudden, I found myself marching towards a local airport to board a plane to Russia.

Now, I heard his voice in real time as if he spoke to me,
[I go with you everywhere.  I can find you anywhere on the planet for she and I are one.  We are all one.  Do not regret, when this is over, our kind will be all that remains and the scourge of humanity will cease to exist.  Go and cleanse your sins.  Kill those who did this to you and convert those who you will to the implant.  I will be with you always.  Good luck, my son.]