3. Forgotten

3

FORGOTTEN

T ime goes by in the blink of an eye, but yet my mind is stuck in quicksand. I am trapped in limbo as my memories freeze in time. I had become a slave to my heart and the man who held it. But now, pain hangs around my chest like a chain of steel. Heavy and bruising against my skin. It weighs me down and my existence means nothing. I am nothing more than a dream. A mere memory of grace, beauty and light.

The sands of time have erased all of me in the minds of the world. Even my darkest deeds have been buried by the centuries that have passed. I am stuck in oblivion. Nothing remains of my spirit, my soul stolen by a decision to follow my emotions.

I live amongst the evilest of evil; the cruelest of creatures. My penance is nowhere to be found in this pit. Our sins have disfigured our beauty and marred our minds. We have no sense of ourselves left. We are the lost. The forgotten. The souls that hide in the shadows and twist your perception of all things.

My choice has cost me everything and I live in a constant state of resentment. There is no possible way I can continue in this prison. I have to get out before my body decays from the inside with all this rage. It's time I do something about this feeling that has me trapped in its ever tightening fist. I refuse to be held down any longer. Finding a way to break out is my new goal. The one thing I will focus on.

There are gifts inside me that I have not unwrapped. That no one has. I will discover a way to tear them out of me and use them to exact revenge on the very thing that has forced me into this life. My heart is where the failure lies, but it can be wielded as a weapon against the world of man. Forget a hardened heart, my chest has been hollowed and all that remains is dust. I come to the realization; my only course of action now is revenge and I will get it in the end.

After many brutal demands of my Lord Samael, I haven't managed to find a way to escape him and all that he has awakened me to. His darkened heart holds no mercy, and when we fell I became an unknowing slave to his form of love. The ridiculous truth is that I would have done anything for his adoration in the beginning. Any little thing he would have commanded of me. I was putty in his mighty fist. A weak child to mold and create into the thing he wanted most. But I was never enough for him. None of the four of his concubines would ever be.

We did not make a new home on Earth. Instead he created his own. One that once held the Fallen angels of Heaven, mighty soldiers of his army among them. Now all that surrounds us are creatures transformed by indignation for all the things promised but never bestowed. Some were so lost in their grief and abandonment that they threw themselves into the darkest of sins. All that remains of them are mutations with twisted thoughts, and all they hunger for is another's pain.

So, it was not only me he deceived. Not the only follower he lied to and manipulated. Sure, he used the crutch of love to ensnare me, which I feel may have been his ultimate win. His deceptively warm smile not only trapped me in his promise of a new life; a new world, but those of some of God's most powerful followers.

Let me be truthful in this miserable moment. In the beginning I really did try. I did everything he asked. Becoming his whore and turning my back on all things pure. I went so far as to share my body with his men as the decades creeped by. I thought my obedience was a form of loyalty to our love, but I only lied to myself. I felt his cruelty and abandonment was my punishment for leaving my true home. But, in the long run my eyes were reopened by a small group in his sinful immortal army.

These few men were the only thing that saved me from being ripped apart. I mean that with all certainty. Samael, my love, intended my body to be used until there was nothing left. For his hungry, violent soldiers to take out all their depraved thoughts they have concocted on me in order to clear their heads from the millennium of loss in their battle against the light.

My flesh was torn open by sharpened nails, fangs like razors and bruised by muscled fists. I had cried all the tears left in my forsaken heart and was ready to face my eternal end. But, from out of the darkest corner of Hell's battle rooms, they strode. Three dark figures with no faces.

I hadn't seen them amongst the legion of warriors, but I could tell they were a part of the same unit. They made it very clear to the others that they were not happy with their monstrous behavior and treatment towards me by fighting off all of the hungry monsters and giving me the chance to escape their savage claws and teeth. In a flash of consciousness, before the ending could get its grip on me, I knew they were my key to freedom. So from that room filled with hatred and destruction I ran. With torn skirts, deep flesh wounds, purpled skin and blood seeping through my smooth skin, I was portrayed as one of the crimson demons that skitter along Hell's rock floors. I was overlooked as I raced through the halls and towards the gate that held my freedom. Grabbing a discarded cloak from just outside the gate room, most likely abandoned by one of the guards inside, I covered myself and hid my features behind the thick hood.

Pulling back the pain that would no doubt give me away I did my best to talk my way past the horned guards with the first of many lies that filled my mouth.

"Where are you going?" the taller one chuffed. "You look too scrawny for the Dark Lord to send you to the human realm."

I braced myself and in a deep, raspy voice I spoke, "I am to take the skin of a child and incorporate myself into their world to spy for my Lord."

"Let's see your face," the short fat male demanded. His tusks garbling his words.

I knew right there and then I was in deep shit. No way would they let me through after seeing my face. Everyone in Hell knew all the wives of Samael.

With shaky hands my lean fingers gripped the edges of the hood, but just before I pulled the fabric down a shout echoed through the passage behind me. "Guards!"

My body locked up. Surely it was one of the soldiers racing towards us to inform the men between me and the open doorway that I had escaped. I held my breath and prayed to the darkness that I would make it through the next few minutes. The two guards turned to face the interruption and a calming sensation traveled from the back of my neck to my feet and spread a soothing feeling throughout my fingers. My clenched fist relaxed and I took a silent, slow deep breath.

"What in all the darkness are you screaming at us for?" the big burly guard grunted.

"We need your help," the soldier huffed out. "The Lord's soldiers have gotten it in their heads that taking out their aggression on one another is a good idea. We need to split them up before he catches wind of it and we are all punished." The soldier didn't linger, assuming the guards would obey his order, he turns and heads back down the way he came.

"Shit," the stumpy guard growls. And just like that, I was forgotten. They stormed away, following the soldier and left me standing in front of the wide-open flaming doors. I didn't hesitate. I ran right through them and towards the swirling portal of glassy ripples. Straight through and into a whole new version of Hell.