49 Maxed Out on Weird

Lily

Made in God’s image, my ass.

Lily was used to the paradoxical, dreamlike quality of certain things in the Afterlife, but every so often, something still struck her as especially odd.

Despite apparently being made almost entirely out of light, God was obviously human-shaped and incredibly tall, almost Bel’s height. He had a face—eyes, nose, mouth—but the shape and color and other qualities of them were hard to discern through the steady white light emanating from his skin. Lily sensed more than saw his smile and gaze.

Not for mere mortals to see.

She scowled and stared harder. It was like looking directly into a light bulb, but features jumped out at her. His face had a shifting quality; one moment his nose was aquiline, then a few seconds later it was a pert button, then perfectly straight, the same with his jawline, cheekbones, and eyes.

God had all the markers to be unsettling as shit. The effect would have been much more potent if she’d encountered him before beheading the creepy whateverthefuck that still twitched on the floor. As it was, she’d maxed out on her ability to process weird, so if God was hoping to get some kind of reaction, he was shit out of luck.

Almost two decades of her life she’d spent living in fear and conditioned awe of this being. Trying to please him. Begging him for protection. For support. For love. Seeking those things in the community formed in his name and finding out exactly how conditional that protection, support, and love was. It was a lesson she’d carried the emotional scars of into death.

In many ways, God, as she’d been taught about him, reminded her of the worst parts of her father. There, but not there for her . Her father had watched TV in the living room, and God had watched TV in Heaven, both loving her but not being particularly loving in the way that mattered. Except God had never read her a bedtime story or checked her closet for monsters to soften that fact.

“All-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good,” Lily said in a measured, neutral tone, gripping the hilt of her sword like a lifeline in a storm. “Which one or ones are a lie?”

God blinked.

Lily didn’t.

“If you are all-knowing without being all-powerful, then watching the humans suffer and knowing that you can’t change it is a nightmare of its own. If you are all-powerful but not all-knowing, then it’s less your fault, but honestly, I’ve been in the Afterlife long enough to know that even a cursory glance through MortalTube will show you what’s going on in the mortal world, so that excuse isn’t valid.”

She inhaled sharply. “And if you are both of those things, but not all-good, and you abandoned those who love you—the innocents who suffer in your name—then you are every bit the fucking monster I, and too many others, came to realize you might be.”

The leather wrapping the sword hilt creaked in her grip, loud in the silence.

“So, God. Which. One. Is. It.”

“I’m sorry.” His words were soft.

“Answer me!” Lily snarled, temper fraying dangerously, eyes stinging. “I’ll bet you’re sorry, but that’s not what I asked you. I was lucky . I didn’t suffer nearly as much as some people did, not at all as much as my daughter did, but I still suffered . It might not have been directly at your hand, but it was absolutely at the hands of people who claim to follow you, who have caused untold harm in your fucking name, and you weren’t there.”

The surge of fury burned away in a flash, leaving her with a lifetime of hurt and shame. “We were alone when we needed you. I was alone when I needed you. Where were you? And don’t”—she held up her free hand, not bothering to hide how much it shook—“say you were there in the ‘still small voice,’ or that I didn’t listen hard enough to hear you, because that’s horseshit. You’re a fucking deity, and I was a child who was crying too hard to hear much of anything. So, because the answer to this question will help me determine how to process all this, I want to know: Which of those three traits is a lie?”

The silence following her outburst was so complete, Lily felt its presence like another person as she and God stared at each other. Little sounds began to filter in. The sizzle of blood against the invisible barrier. The faint echo of confused, scared voices all along the Hallway. The whisper of her loose hair sliding over her shoulder. A distant clang of something metal, and an eerie, gurgling snarl.

“None of us are truly all-powerful, though we have incredible and inexcusable power,” God said quietly, his voice layers of tones and pitches, as if multiple people spoke in unison. “And kindness, or goodness, is a choice that is easy for us to make. I am aware of all relevant information in the mortal world and in mortal lives, like an expanded version of MortalTube, though I do not use that ability to, as some mortals call it, snoop, without cause. Like all deities, my ability to influence the mortal world is limited. More limited than religions would have you believe.”

The sorrow on his face, in every line of his glowing body, made her chest ache. She ignored it.

He continued. “We were supposed to help and inspire, but now? Now too many are subject to fear and shame and pain that never should have been theirs.”

“And you can’t do anything to change that?” Lily asked, skepticism dripping from every syllable.

“You remind me of my son.”

“I’m sure he’ll be flattered.”

God’s smile was weary. “He will. As I said, your reputation is well-known and well-deserved. While I can’t make the spectacular change that you and I both wish I could, please know that I am doing all that I can to make amends.”

“Explain.”

“I work closely with Hell on the reeducation of those souls who claimed to live in my ideals, but either twisted them, or blindly followed twisted teachings. They are educated on what faith should be, and taught to think critically, especially about the teachings of church leaders. The hope is that, if enough of those souls reincarnate, the lessons they learned will echo through the mortal world and inspire change.” He paused. “I recognize that the churches, especially the ones formed in my name but not my ideals, have turned into something that no longer truly helps humanity, but causes harm and provides a refuge for the harmful. And for that—”

God did something that at first made no sense, but then shocked her down to her toes.

He lowered his head, bent at the waist, and bowed to her.

“I am sorry. I am sorry that I was not there when you or others needed me. I am sorry for the harm and pain caused to you and your daughter by the followers of my name. And I am sorry for not being able to rectify the mistakes made in my name so that they will never harm another.”

God, who’d ended up looking like a human-shaped light bulb, was bowing to Lily, sincerely apologizing for his shitty followers, while a monster from another universe that she’d decapitated in a fit of motherly and territorial rage lay dead only a few feet away.

“This is not how I expected this day to go,” she heard herself mutter, unable to look away from the bowing deity, who smiled up at her with understanding.

“I offer only an apology, Lily, I do not seek forgiveness. My apology is not conditional.”

That’s a first. Lily bit her tongue to keep from saying it out loud. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it sure as shit hadn’t been an apology. It didn’t make her or Sharkie’s pain and experiences any less valid, but…she almost pitied God.

It was hard enough for her to see things on MortalTube in passing and not be able to do anything. But to constantly see more? To be charged with the care of mortals and have a limited capacity to do so? More than that, to watch pain and atrocities be committed in his name? Agony.

Lucifer flashed through her mind and clarity struck like a lightning bolt. He and God were two sides of the same coin. Though they had been cast in very different roles in the mortal world, both had been warped to fit a narrative, used as the carrot-and-stick of morality. Both had had their character and name used as a method of control.

She’d been wrong about Lucifer and Hell. And, though it was even more uncomfortable to admit, it seemed she’d been wrong about God and Heaven too.

“I accept your apology,” Lily said, offering him her hand.

He took it, sending a scorching fizz through her body, and straightened.

“I can’t… genuinely forgive you just yet”— maybe not for a good long while —“but I accept your apology.”

The vestiges of her decades-long anger were still too searing for her to offer forgiveness, but she could recognize that God had never meant or desired for any of her suffering to happen.

“That is more than enough,” God said quietly, releasing her hand.

Lily shook the impulse to scrub her hand on her leggings, instead wiping the blood off her sword with a sleeve. She still hated the conditioned feeling of smallness and impurity and whatever other icky garbage bullshit feelings the pearlescent arch and gleaming golden floor inspired in her. But the fear was gone, and there was a sense of grudging acceptance that the God she’d been raised to know was not the real God.

No, the real God had bowed and apologized.

Bowed.

She’d be tripping over that fact for a while. Possibly eternity.

Eternity…Bel. Sharkie.

“I have to go. I need to get back to Sharkie,” Lily said, leaning through the arch to glance around, primed to leap back at the first hint of something wrong . Other than the thoroughly dead corpse, nothing seemed out of place. The prickle of intuition that something was off had faded, leaving behind the overwhelming drive to get home and make sure Sharkie was alright, then hunt down anyone who might have information about Bel.

“Of course. I can ask one of the angels to escort you, if you’d like?”

The instinctive “ fuck no” sat on the tip of her tongue. A lifetime of independence urged her to brush off the offer of help with her typical bluntness, because she certainly didn’t need it. The newfound peace and groundedness she’d found in the Afterlife kept her mouth shut while she considered how to respond with a bit more tact than she otherwise might have.

“I appreciate the offer, but no. I’ll be fine,” Lily said, stepping through the arch and pointedly ignoring the resulting squelch.

“Yes, I believe you will,” God said.

Lily looked at him. Really looked.

For a moment, eternity paused. They might as well have been statues frozen in time, the tapestry of the Afterlife a fixed backdrop behind them. A deity and a soul, seeing and understanding each other, recognizing the pain and the promise of all that had and could happen.

The weight of who she had been and who she was becoming seemed to hang in the balance before tipping…

“Thank you,” she said plainly.

God inclined his head.

Lily adjusted her grip on her sword, the leather beneath her palm solid and comforting, then pushed herself into a jog.

She wove through the few brave souls and denizens who had left the safety of the realms, dodging debris from tables and carts that had been knocked over outside of shops, and goods that people had dropped in the rush to safety.

At the sound of her running footsteps, people either froze or dove for the nearest cover, the ripple of fear passing from person to person like a virus as they frantically looked for what she was running from.

So, even though every scrap of her soul screamed at the delay, Lily dropped into a purposeful walk.

The sounds of people crying echoed out the various arches, mingling with clipped orders from unseen authority figures and the rumble of the more creature-like denizens of the Afterlife. High above, near the sky-like ceiling, a horde of wisps in various sizes and colors hovered out of harm’s way. What was the collective term for the wisps? A covey? A flock? A host? A folly? A poof? Until she found something more accurate, she’d call them a poof. It was ridiculous enough to keep the situation from feeling overwhelming.

Numerous footsteps drew her attention away from the poof of wisps and towards a distant juncture in the Hall. Bel wouldn’t be among them—as a general he’d be one of the last to leave—but maybe someone knew something—

She made it all of one step towards them and froze. Fear like she’d never known, not even when facing down the thing outside of Heaven, scribed itself onto her soul.

The soldiers were barely recognizable as living beings. They shuffled more than walked, every inch of them covered in filth and Universe knew what else. Some of the ones in better shape dragged the now-familiar carts filled with those too wounded to move under their own power. A shredded wing, recognizable as a wing only because she’d spent so much time studying Bel’s, nearly dragged on the floor beside one cart, leaving a trail of blood. The membrane almost completely gone and the supporting bones jutting out through tears in the skin.

She managed a breath that felt like shards of glass and lurched forward, following the line of the ruined wing to the equally battered body it was attached to. I don’t care if he’s in pieces, as long as he’s alive. I don’t care if he’s in pieces, as long as he comes back.

The female demon wept with the eye that wasn’t covered by gauze, her other wing a bloody mass of hastily applied bandages.

Not Bel.

None of the walking wounded moved like him, were built like him, had his horns. From what she could see, none of the ones on the carts bore him either, though there was a stump of a tail dripping blood from soaked wrappings that was about the right skin color.

Too purple. It’s too purple-purple. Bel is gray-purple, and if he’d lost blood, he’d be more gray. Not purple. Right?

A few of the soldiers glanced at her as they passed, but if any of them recognized her, they didn’t show it. Whatever mortals thought Hell was, whatever incomprehensible evil and suffering and struggle they expected, these soldiers had seen it. Lived it.

Mortal Hell was in their eyes.

Lily watched them go, watched denizens from other realms run up to take the weight of the carts, to offer water. A Roman woman sprinted out of an arch with an armful of stola and a knife, then began cutting them into strips as she strode alongside a cart.

Fuck walking. Lily bolted .

She skidded around a corner and hurtled toward the massive Paradise arch, breath sawing in her throat. A group of souls milled about behind the safety of the invisible barrier. Standing apart from them, next to a leg of the arch, was a tiny figure with a distinctive shark fin sticking up crookedly from the top of their hood.

Relief hit Lily so hard she half tripped and slowed to a jog. Sharkie made to run to her but stopped, blue eyes wide and worried. Max scurried back and forth along the invisible barrier with an urgency he usually reserved for begging for tuna, his tail puffed up to twice its usual size.

“Mom!” Sharkie launched herself at her just as Lily swooped down to scoop her up.

Sharkie was almost too big to pick up, and their bodies collided almost painfully hard, but Lily didn’t care. She held Sharkie tight, swaying to soothe Sharkie’s shaking and her own jittery nerves. Max screeched at her feet, front paws braced on her thigh, claws none-too-gently digging through her leggings. Lily hushed him, blindly patting at his fuzzy head and placating him enough to stop yowling. The small crowd of souls murmured to each other, and a few called out questions, but she ignored them. For now.

“What are you doing here?” Lily tried to ask, but the adrenaline of decapitating a monster and confronting God, along with the horror of seeing what might have happened to Bel, her Bel, had the question coming out as more of a demand. “I told you to stay inside!”

Sharkie remained plastered to Lily, arms tight around her neck, speaking so fast her words slammed together. “You told me to stay in Paradise, not stay home ! I was worried about you because of your weird feeling thing and so were Max and Carl, but Carl couldn’t come because it’s a house, so I thought I’d wait here, but then there was this noise and this scary thing— two things ! Mom, there were two different things! A bunch of people ran into Paradise, and we all saw the things and they saw us, but they ignored us and kept going towards where you were, and then there was screaming and—and—”

“Okay, I’m okay, you’re okay, we’re okay. They’re gone, they’re dead. It’s safe.”

“It’s safe?” one of the souls called. “Is that what she said?”

Lily leveled a look at the concerned crowd, guessing that the significantly more frazzled people were the ones who had run to safety.

“Both of them are dead, yes, and the weird feeling is gone too, so I’m pretty sure that means it’s safe.” For now, she added mentally.

The expressions were a mix of relief and confusion.

“What weird feeling?” someone asked.

Lily frowned. It confirmed what she’d noticed before—not all souls had been unsettled, but all denizens had been. What it meant, she didn’t know. Perhaps it was because she worked at the Hellp Desk? Like an employee-only alert? She’d have to ask someone later.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Weird,” Sharkie said, frowning.

Word of the day apparently.

“Well,” Lily said to everyone, setting Sharkie down and tucking her under an arm. “As far as I know, it’s safe. Paradise is the original stronghold of the Afterlife, so if you’re worried about it, don’t leave, but if you do leave, just know that you can dive into any realm for safety. It might not be as good as this, but it’s better than nothing.”

“How do you know?” someone yelled from the back.

“She’s the Hell lady, dude. She knows stuff,” someone else called back.

Lily pointed at the responder with confidence she didn’t feel, but was flattered nonetheless. “That.”

“What are we going to do?” Sharkie asked as the crowd broke apart.

“What I want to do is go home, pack up some stuff, and get us both down to Hell. We can stay in Bel’s house while we wait for”— information, something, anything —“him.”

“Bel’s coming home?” Sharkie asked.

“I don’t know, bug, but maybe. It looked like a lot of soldiers are. But we’ll be practically as safe that deep in Hell as we would be here, and we’ll be in the best place to stay informed.”

“Bel’s fine though, right?”

Sick. She felt fucking sick. She’d been worried about Sharkie, but deep down she’d known that as long as Sharkie had stayed in Paradise, she’d be fine.

She had no such reassurance about Bel.

“I don’t know.” She managed to say it calmly, honestly, but it ravaged her. Fear could be useful. Fear could be informative. Panic was nothing but a fast track to freezing up, being useless, being reckless, and making mistakes. She might be scared out of her mind, but she refused to fucking panic. She was Lily, of Paradise, of Hell, of whatever she fucking felt like, and she was going to handle this.

Because that’s what princesses did. Handled shit.

* * *

“Carlton,” Lily said into the quiet of the entryway, the thumps and bumps of Sharkie quickly packing in her room the only sound other than the birds singing outside. Max had laid himself directly across her feet and seemed to have no intention of moving. The house didn’t groan, but she felt its awareness.

Not all Paradises were so sentient, she’d learned. It depended on the preference of the soul, which was why Carlton had only gotten more… communicative when Sharkie arrived. Now she couldn’t imagine wanting to have anything other than their quirky, personality-packed home anymore.

“This isn’t an indictment of you, buddy; I know you would keep us safe and comfortable and as happy as possible. But if anything happens to Bel—shit, even if something doesn’t happen to Bel—the first place he is going to go is Hell. And Hell is the best place for us to stay close to the action and in the know, so we’re going to leave for a little bit.” Her nose stung. Why did her nose always sting right before she got emotional? She rested her hand on the nearest wall. “I’m really going to miss you, miss being here, but I’d just be worried sick about Bel the whole time. We’ll come back no matter what, I promise.”

Carlton groaned sadly, the pictures rattling on the wall. The closet door swung open, and Bel’s “casual sword” floated free as if carried by invisible hands, hovering in front of her until she grabbed it, dipping with the weight. Movement on the wall drew her attention. The paint finish shifting to form matte letters.

Be safe

Stay together

Defend all

Stay happy

Come home

Find peace

The to-do list presentation was a little weird, but she got the message. It was the same sentiment she’d sent Bel off with.

“Will do, buddy. We’ll see what kind of shape Bel is in, but we’ll do what we can to be happy and at peace again.”

A pair of books zoomed out of the library and plopped onto her bag. One was a sci-fi fantasy series she’d been meaning to suggest to Bel. The other she hadn’t read yet, but the blurb on the back promised a deliciously filthy read, with a male love interest who had a tail that, according to one of the reviews, was used very creatively.

Lily snorted. “I’m not sure if that will be quite what the doctor calls for, but I’m— Ack!”

The wad of fabric smacked her directly in the face with extreme speed and an incredible amount of sass. She barely managed to catch it before it hit the ground. Lily registered what it was and quickly shoved it into her bag along with the books, just in time for Sharkie to pop around the corner.

From there, they proceeded in silence. Lily shouldered her bag and took Sharkie’s hand, patting farewell to Carlton on their way out the door. The house groaned its own goodbye, sending a blue scarf to drape over Sharkie’s shoulders. Max trotted beside them until they reached the arch to the Hall, then begged to be picked up. Lily cradled him against her shoulder.

The Hall remained quiet, despite the fact that midmorning was one of the busiest times. Almost no souls were out and about, and the few denizens that they saw kept a sharp eye on their surroundings and were quick to look over their shoulders. Lily followed a path close to the wall, acutely aware of their proximity to each arch.

Clawlike gouges in the stone of the floor by the well-guarded arch to Hell were the only remainders of the monster that had sounded like a chorus of agonized children. The newly posted guards were unfamiliar and grim-faced, but nodded politely as they went by. One of them returned Sharkie’s little wave.

Things at the gate were business as usual, except for the demons’ tight expressions and the lack of usual tolerance for souls and their bullshit.

Lily tucked that away in her mind, hurrying Sharkie to the elevator.

Bel’s house shouldn’t have felt any emptier than it usually did. After all, it was a big fucking house, and the trio of housekeepers were tending to it with care and pride just like they did every other day, but Bel wasn’t there filling the house with his steady, mischievous, loving energy. Without him, the house felt like a furnished Grand Canyon.

The head housekeeper, Lecti, clucked over both of them upon their arrival, making a batch of colorful, delicious cookies that were apparently a common treat in demonic households. She soothed Sharkie with an entire plate of them while Lily perched on a nearby stool, wondering exactly how much of her bullshit Lucifer would tolerate before turning her into goo.

One way to find out.