Follow the Devil / Follow the Light

This is part three of Follow the Devil/Follow the Light. Read parts one and two here.

The Weltschmerz

After the funeral, mother hid herself in the bedroom and took meals only when Joe’s father left them by the door. The rosary she had prayed her entire adult life remained on the hook where she kept the keys, and Joe learned how to grieve the loss of a sister and mother simultaneously. In the evenings, Joe and his father fell into prime-time oblivion: the TV ministering show upon show like a priest with his host.

“Another?” Paul would ask, and Joe would nod, eager to receive the sacrament. A click of the remote, and the elixir, pill, celebrity, vice, vacation, sedan, sport, news, weather litany would appear before their eyes. There were hundreds of channels, each with its own prescription, but it didn’t matter how many hours they watched. No remedy was offered for a twin sister’s broken neck or a mother’s grieving heart.

During the next month, Wendy emerged from the bedroom. She wandered the house as though searching for her daughter’s ghost. Her silence was accompanied by erratic behavior. Little things. She neglected the weeds in her garden, unheard of for a consummate gardener. She would forget and set the table for four. When she did go out, she would sometimes put the backpack Nora had worn the day of the accident in the car with her. “It just makes me feel close to her,” she would say when Paul inquired. Pie Jesu and passages from the Offertory were on her lips.^[1] Fr. Rowling of St. Mary’s had offered counsel, but Wendy Muggeridge would have none of it. It wasn’t until the first Christmas without Nora, two months and ten days after her death, that she even spoke to Joe directly.

He was sitting beneath the Christmas tree when it happened. A PlayStation game, clothes, and a model airplane from a battle he’d never heard of rested at his feet. There hadn’t been much to open that year. Bing Crosby sang on the CD stereo. The living room smelled of coffee and burnt toast. Joe had just opened the last present under the tree: a football that he didn’t want from his grandparents. The ones from Arizona.

“Does part of you feel missing?” she had asked him. “Being twins I mean.” The question came out of nowhere. Joe’s father was sitting next to her on the couch. It was so quiet Joe could hear his heart.

“Sometimes,” he said. He picked clumsily at the plastic wrap containing the P-51 Mustang.

“It’s hard to look at you sometimes,” she said.

“Wendy?” Joe’s father started, spilling black coffee onto his bathrobe.

“They have the same eyes … ”

“It’s Christmas!” Paul yelled, as though the day itself might assuage a mother’s cruelty. Wendy got up from the couch, stared blankly out the window at the falling rain, and headed upstairs as Bing crooned his way through the last line of I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas. Joe looked up at his father, a wad of plastic wrap clenched in his fist. The tree hovered over him like a spacecraft. The ceramic nativity scene on the mantle went strangely dim.

Without a word, Paul got down on his knees and hobbled over to where Joe was sitting. He attempted a smile, parted the bangs from Joe’s eyes, and placed a hand on the forehead a demon would scar nineteen years later.

“Your eyes are your own,” he said, as though trying to counteract a mother’s curse.

“I miss her.” Joe dared not speak her name. The smell of coffee on his father’s robe filled the air.

“Me too.”

And Joe’s father began to cry.

* * *

At first, there was only an intimation of light. Then the light quickened, gathered until the cave entrance stood before them. Despite the arduous climb, Joe had kept pace with the demon the entire way. The entrance had an archway, elegant as a Roman aqueduct. Frescos along the inner walls depicted Lucifer’s banishment from heaven’s halcyon. Six stations in all. Their horrors betrayed the excess of a Rococo master. According to this reportage, fallen angels licked their wounds as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob chewed scenery. A plaque fastened to the wall offered summation in verse:

To the last, I grapple with Thee;

From Hell’s heart, I stab at Thee!^[2]

The murals and inscription had the subtlety of propaganda, and it was no accident that Yahweh, God of the “Axis” powers, bore an uncanny resemblance to the Führer.

As he reached the third painting in the sequence, Joe recognized a familiar face: Morte Magari. What name had he known in Paradise? The demon was locked in stout combat with Raphael himself. Claws fierce. Mouth protestant. Its left wing was still intact, a marvel of dynamism, even as its body showed the first lamentable signs of damnation — the blessed light, fractured, white scales gone to ash. Raphael the Healer, whose hands would anoint the waters of Bethesda, used these same hands now to unravel glory after glory from the demon’s unwilling body.

“You were there!” Joe exclaimed.

“Of course I was there,” the demon said. “We all were. Angels and Archangels. Cherubim and Seraphim.” It spoke the angelic names by rote. “Prodigiously exiled all. From His triune cloister, the Nazarene watched our Father fall like lightning … and us with him.”^[3]

“So, it’s true then.”

“Yes. No. It does not matter. Our expulsion has been relegated to the annals of myth. This is advantageous. As you mortals forget, our enterprise expands.”

“Do you wish you could go back?”

“This is my Heaven,” Magari said reflexively, “and Heaven my only Hell.” It began to rub its hands along both flanks to remove the sand that had accumulated during their ascent. The demon then gave a tremendous sigh. “Which reminds me. Home past an hour and not a bite to eat.”

Joe recoiled until his back was up against the cave wall. The demon laughed.

“Don’t worry,” it said. “I require something a little more substantial than the likes of you. Besides, Hell’s ambrosia grows just outside this cave.”

The demon now began a series of aberrant contortions. Arms dislocated. Knee joints bent double. The rib-bare torso turned by degree, quivered with seizure. Even the spine appeared to fold in two. This continued until the demon resembled an arachnid on the floor. The inevitable snap of bones never came.

“Curious?” the demon asked. Its left hand wobbled on sinew like gelatin.

“A little … ” Joe feigned indifference and failed.

“Taking a break is all. Imago Dei is harder than it looks. You have no idea how much you bear His likeness, how uncontested humans are in the hierarchy, how resplendent the bodies of Mother Eve and Father Adam truly are. You made them a little lower than the angels,”^[4] the demon sang off tune. ” … stop gaping like a fish.”

“Sorry,” Joe replied, disgusted by the spasm of the demon’s calves, the map of black vessels that wove across its back. “It’s just, you’re not exactly normal.”

“A pity you are,” the demon said reproachfully. “You who inhabit the mien of your Creator and the manner of a dog.”

A CLOSED FOR REPAIR sign hung from a chain stretching the length of the cave entrance. The demon scuttled beneath it on all fours and out into the open air. As Joe followed, the cross on his forehead began to ache. He could feel his pulse emanate from the bellicose scar.

Joe emerged from the cave, and it took several moments for his eyes to adjust to the light. The landscape before them was as wide as the roads that led to it; its horrors chastened by improbable vistas. It was carnival in dystopia. Vanity Fair on steroids. To believe in such a reality was to court the anxiety of a head cage or the madness of a straitjacket.

“Nora’s here?” he managed.

“You were expecting Elysium?” the demon asked. Soot-covered plants towered near the cave mouth. Vines shot their tendrils into the undergrowth. Branches wove themselves around the abrasive stalks like weeds. A transparent cocoon filled with boiling liquid formed the apex of each plant seven feet off the ground. The demon’s revised anatomy allowed it to climb with ease onto one such plant where it perched like a flesh-born idol. It punctured the cocoon with its mouth and drank from the reservoir until great dregs fell to the ground. Joe watched the earth drink its portion.

“I don’t believe you. Not anymore. Not after that …,” Joe looked back into the cave. He could still hear the screams.

“First you deny the reality of Hell,” the demon said, coming up for air, face blemished with black nectar, “now you deny its accommodation? Really, Joe, we demons have never understood the hubris that falls so fallibly from the mouths of men.” The demon licked the excess juice from its mouth with sumptuous delight. “The opium dens I frequented with Lord Byron pale in comparison. Care to try some?”^[5]

“Nora doesn’t deserve this. No one does.”

“On what basis do you make this judgment?”

“Common sense.”

“So you deny the human race tasted the fruit, knowing good from evil?”

“I don’t need a fairy story to know evil when I see it.”

“Precisely. You know evil by instinct. It is your default setting, your involuntary reflex. Contrary to the ramblings of Rousseau, children are taught virtue, but are born knowing vice. Deny Nora’s fate all you want, but she is here, and I will take you to her. I promised, didn’t I? Common sense, as you call it, has no currency in Hell.”

“If that’s true,” Joe said, staring up at the demon, “if following you is the only way to see Nora, then what now? This isn’t some game for me.”

“Joe Muggeridge,” the demon replied with a weary lilt. “From the look of your apartment, I thought your entire life was a game.”

The demon’s appraisal cut deep. Joe had been a video game devotee from the day his parents had bought him a PS1. He reveled in the digital bloodsport, imbibed its lore and virtual architecture the way an art historian toured The Met, or a food critic delighted in a swank vegan bistro. He was a connoisseur of the “pre-order” at his local gaming store, a 16-bit retro aesthete. He was an apologist for lesser-known titles on Reddit, and a troll when people besmirched his researched opinion. When he wasn’t playing console games, he built a PC rig to rival the best hackers in the world. In life, Joe Muggeridge was just another lonely urbanite, an evolved primate, so much animated carbon. Online, he was a record setting completionist, a trophy achievement obsessive, a head-shot assassin god.

“I’m not a bad person,” Joe said in defense.

“Now there’s a high bar for virtue.”

“You told me I would see Nora, not scuttle about through a haunted labyrinth.”

“It’s only what you make of it,” the demon interrupted.

“What I make of it?” Joe continued. “Should I abduct a few virgins for one of your dark rituals? Perform a séance? Dust off the Ouija board from the closet? How much blood do you require Magari? How many rams are required for sacrifice?”

“By Gorgon,” the demon started, “there’s a poet in you yet Joe Muggeridge. Necromancy is a subtle art. To find Nora, you must endure a series of labors known as The Weltschmerz.^[6] There are three of them. Your requisite penance. A catechism to call your own. I have never seen a descendant of Adam survive the third, but who knows, luck comes equally to us all.”

“You said nothing about this at my apartment,” Joe protested.

“It wouldn’t be Hell if it wasn’t more than one bargained for.”

The demon returned to its meal.

“And what if I refuse? What if everything I’ve seen can be rationalized as hallucination, the onset of psychosis, a bit of undigested meat?”

“Then I indulge your skepticism with a few more miracles.” Dinner consumed, the demon waved one of its limbs like a jaded magician, and a sea of fog rolled back to reveal more of the landscape before them.

Nothing sylvan here. The cave entrance ran parallel with the top of a cliff face steep enough for any suicide. Panoramic views of a valley greeted them, an arena of volcanic upheaval and industrial waste. Eviscerated grain elevators rose to decay at their topmost as rat-like quadrupeds darted between their frames. Derelict warehouses foreshadowed every Big-box store in America a century from now. Abandoned semis dissolved to rust. Tattered sails billowed from a Galleon ship sunk vertically into the soil – its bowsprit a steeple against the sky. Dead cornstalks rose sporadically from the ground like splintered bone. In the center of it all, a marquee fit for Vegas towered neon electric.

The sign had a Fred Astaire knockoff sporting a used-car salesman grin. A top hat balanced precariously on his head, as lights arranged in a circle gave the baton in his right hand the illusion of spinning. The neon that composed two of the words had burned out, but Joe could still read the message:

HEAVEN KNOWS

ANYTHING GOES ^[7]

A series of roads leading into the valley were occupied by human caravans. They carried bundles of bric-a-brac: pots, shovels, spare tires, lawn chairs, plastic toys, electronics, appliances — one poor soul had even been tasked with the tarnished frame of an ornate pedal harp. Joe watched them lumber along, a procession of angry tortoises.

Each caravan was coaxed along by several titans, fallen angels, Nephilim progenitors by another name.^[8] They had bodies like cut magma. Porcupine quills sprouted from their backs as calloused tails proved as coercive as the whips they carried. Blasphemies carved onto metal plates were welded to their heads where God had intended eyes. Misshapen limbs stamped the earth. Acidic bellows etched the sky. The titans’ features, fiction to the modern imagination, were no fiction here.

Chains were bound to the wrists and ankles. The restraints grew up from the ground, forcing the titans to drag them along like ploughshares through the insipid earth. There was no impediment to their movement, but the chains provoked them anyway, constrained as they were by such fetters.

“Bound, quite literally, to Tartarus you see,” the demon explained. “This is recess for the wretches. A mild diversion as they await the final judgment.”^[9]

“And when will that be?” Joe asked.

“Wouldn’t we all like to know,” the demon snarked. “Pitiful creatures. Whenever I feel inclined to lament my own lack of autonomy, I need only regard the life of a titan. And no sense getting your moral conscience in a bluster Joe Muggeridge. It’s all consensual “adult” down here.”

Joe watched the pilgrim bands make their way into the valley. They moved at a glacial pace to congregate beneath the marquee. The titans voiced their impatience with intermittent cracks from their whips, savored the torment of their day labor. Beneath the sign, the humans unburdened their wares in a state of relief and adoration. They drew items from their packs, placed them in offertory at the foot of the marquee. They raised hands in supplication. They fell prostrate to the ground. They appeared to be in prayer, though April’s Canterbury — with hise shoures soote^[10] — this was not.

Beyond the marquee and valley, beyond the grain elevators and pilgrim souls, a mountain range belched columns of white ash. It fell like snow onto the caravans, burned nostrils like ammonia. Joe’s knees knocked beneath him as he took in the view – so articulate this display of sin and error. Seeking respite for his senses, Joe scanned the heavens for a demure wisp of cumulus, a banal shade of blue. He found no such comfort in the heavenlies.

High above, a black star of impossible dimension blazed with the same radiance as the Light Bearer himself. A ring of white light formed the star’s outer rim to burn into the center of a black pupil. It was as Joe shielded his eyes from this darkness visible that he saw them.

Bodies. Falling from the sky. He could barely watch as each one reenacted the fall of Icarus: that feathered miscalculation of wings. There were too many to count as new arrivals appeared like rain from the atmosphere. Joe followed the descent of one such soul all the way to the ground. Upon impact, the body dissolved like a dandelion, a thousand white achene carried off by the wind.

Joe gasped loud enough for the demon to notice.

“Oh, don’t worry. We have facilities three miles east to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Reanimation awaits the daily casualties of Hell.”

“So grim,” Joe replied.

“Would you like to know why they suffer?”

“Not really.”

“But you deem it unjust?”

“Of course.”

“By whose authority?”

“My own.”

“And do you believe you could administer proper justice and judgment?”

“Anyone could do better than this,” Joe said, looking out over the valley.

“You’re not wrong, and yet the human race reliably chooses such ends each and every day.”

The demon unseated itself from the cocoon and fell to the earth with ease. “Follow me,” it said, “The Weltschmerz awaits.” Joe then watched the demon resume its original form. Lego was never the same as the demon’s limbs and joints snapped into place.

“I am your inconstant pole,” the demon said as a final twist aligned the kneecaps.

“In mind as well as body?” Joe asked.

“I wonder,” the demon mocked.

At that moment an imp, no bigger than a toddler, emerged from the cave. A tweed jacket covered its mangy hide as a pair of spectacles balanced precariously on the tip of its snout. An assortment of instruments (telescope, pliers, sextant, shotgun) were strapped to its body by means of various belts and carabiners. It carried a wooden ladder with considerable difficulty. The imp moved swiftly toward one of the paths that led down into the valley before stopping mid-stride. It stared at Magari and Joe, seemingly bemused by the nectar-stained demon and accomplice.

“Magari!” the imp exclaimed. “Didn’t recognize you covered in breakfast. On another crusade I see.”

“Move along, Pynchon.” The demon raised itself to full stature.

“Calm down. No need to get prickly pear,” Pynchon replied. “On assignment from CODA as you might expect. Marquee this time. Apparently has a few bulbs out. Not that it matters. And no budget for replacement of course. I’m supposed to manage with metal filament and a spool of electrical tape. Imagine that. My plan is to climb, tinker, and be home by nightfall. Quota be damned.”

“A faithful lackey to the end.”

“Expect better luck with this one?” the imp retorted looking over at Joe. “Heard rumor of what happened to your last bit of meat at The Saleté over the weekend. News spreads fast. All over the docks it was.” The animosity was thick.

“Silence,” the demon seethed.

“Keep an eye on this one lad,” Pynchon said to Joe, “more ambitious than the rest of us.”

“So I’ve gathered,” Joe replied meekly.

“Always seeking visas to teleport, always appearing before CODA for work and disability exemptions, roaming this way and that with another human in tow. The last one … German? He put up a mean fight. Won the day and his soul if I’m not mistaken.”

“Fake news,” Magari said, shaken by Pynchon’s revelations.

“I’m guessing you’ve paid a visit with The Worm King, made your ascent, and now find yourself valley bound. Not quite what Plato had in mind, now is it?”^[11] The imp gave a chuckle, glanced up at the black star overhead until his eyes could bear the vision no longer.

“I gave up knowing what to expect a long time ago,” Joe replied.

“And right you are to do so,” Pynchon replied. He placed the ladder down for a moment to rest his arms before hoisting it back up onto his left shoulder. “Well, I’ve outstayed my welcome. Off to the marquee. Be good to this one Magari,” he said with a glance at Joe. “I’ve yet to meet a mortal what don’t confound first impression. It doesn’t matter their station. A dangerous business consorting with humans. You’re liable to get more than you bargained for.”

“Duly noted,” the demon replied. “And do be careful with that ladder, Pynchon. Workplace accidents are all too common.”

“Go to Hell,” the imp said with a laugh, and disappeared down the path.

Joe stood for some time trying to make sense of the encounter. Pynchon and Magari’s interaction was no different than the jeers that carried Joe and his coworkers through an average work day. Scion Digital was a bastion for the colorful metaphor, the satiric dig. If a peer offered compliment, it was in the ready company of contempt. “Nice graphic design,” was met with a fun-loving, “Fuck you.” New hires not from the Pacific Northwest often struggled in a work culture committed to the tenets of post-grunge irony, and the intelligent (albeit acerbic) wordplay that passed for collegiality.

“What was he talking about?” Joe inquired. “What others?”

“Pay no mind. Pynchon is a malcontent.”

“I liked him,” Joe replied. “In fact, he did me a service cutting you down to size.”

“I wouldn’t … ” the demon cautioned.

“So, you’ve done this before? Dabbled in a bit of cross-dimensional abduction? What’s in it for you anyway? Joe found his nerve. “Take me to Nora,” he insisted. “Now! Or I’ll … ”

“You’ll what?” the demon asked like a dare. There was a long pregnant pause. “Listen … can you hear her screams?”

“Nora?” Joe asked. There was the sound of a little girl crying far in the distance. “What have you done to her?”

“Nothing permanent.”

“Bastard.”

“Keep talking and I remove fingernails.”

Joe relented. This was new territory. What possible agency could he inhabit in the face of such an adversary? What retort could he formulate against such a foe? The crying ceased like a phantom departed.

“I just want to see Nora,” he said.

“Don’t we all. Play by the rules, Joe Muggeridge. Son of a corpse. Heir of a ruined Republic. And you shall.”

Dominion restored, the demon moved toward the same path Pynchon had used to descend into the valley. Joe took a final glance at the marquee far in the distance. They would meet him there. The Worm King. By the marquee, the demon had said at the Tours. Standard transport. Corpse included. Whatever that meant.

Joe began his descent down the mountain, but for all he had witnessed, for all the revelations he might relay to family and friends back home, he could not have imagined the demon’s plot. Could not have guessed the savage station his guide, Morte Magari, was all too eager to inhabit just a few miles from their present location. Could not have known the demon’s plan for Joe and Nora Muggeridge was unraveling perfectly. A plan far more insidious than a mere holiday in Hell.

Plot Device

From the entrance of The Tours, The Worm King had watched Joe and the demon make their way up and out of the cave. Thirty-seven minutes ago, to be exact. Eyes burned as the organ that passed for a heart thrummed about in his chest. He resented the nuisance, chewed on the obligation like a wad of fat between his teeth. Another corpse delivery for one of Magari’s schemes. Another inventory of demands without so much as a by your leave. There are rules, The Worm King thought to himself. A passage from the Comedia came to him suddenly:

Expect no more of me in word or deed:

Here your will is upright, free, and whole,

And you would be in error not to heed

 

Whatever your own impulse prompts you to:

 Lord of yourself I crown and mitre you.^[12]

He had memorized Virgil’s lie years ago. It may have been true for Dante, but it offered no solace for The Worm King or his comrades. Not for the degenerate third who had chosen otherwise. For them, “lord of yourself” had only led to an amputation of limbs, cut off from the godhead of their birth. And was such love even possible? Grafted to the will? Upright? Free? Or was this, once again, the province of Adam’s race only? The Worm King vaguely remembered his first estate among the Valkyrie: the light that brought the warmth of mercy only. How impossible such a world appeared to him now. Alone. Among his books. Besides, there were more pressing matters at hand. Magari would pay for the crimes he so routinely visited upon his solitude.

The Tours. Therein lay his secret.

For the past few months, The Worm King had created a weapon far from the watchful eye of CODA. The idea had come to him in the enormous baptismal fount where he would sometimes bathe. Beneath the arches, he had drawn schematics. Behind the nave, he had hidden supplies. Among the candelabra, he had taught himself the illegal art, tested the formula, devised the prototype, bided his time for a moment such as this.

Give Magari a taste of his own blood and vinegar, he promised himself. Unhitch the dread grasp for good!

Innovation was anathema in Hell. There was no Hephaestus here. No Tesla ahead of his time. There was only the Promethean impulse to steal as much “fire” from humanity as possible. CODA sent an elite squad of clandestine smugglers to Earth every year to hijack whatever patents they could find, but the technology of Hell was reliably obsolete. The devils and demons still used film in their cameras and cinemas. Cars were manual transmission. Most radios still had tubes. Phones had cords. The Internet: 56k dialup. Snugblatt had secured an iPhone last year but hadn’t thought to steal a charging cable as well. Rank amateur. How glorious the eight-hour access to the dark web had been before the battery decided to give up the ghost. A citizen of the Twentieth Century would be at home among Hell’s amenities. A Millennial would feel like a time traveler.

The biggest challenge had been secrecy. The Worm King well knew the sanctions CODA would enact if they discovered his budding interest in explosives. Why just last week, during an unexpected visit, Mordecai had been mere feet from the hidden cache of ammonium nitrate. The Worm King had signaled his wodewoos to distract the Minister of Compliance away from the compartment just in time.

“Are they usually this loud?” Mordecai had asked as the creatures howled from their cages.

“Only when hungry,” The Worm King had replied with a grin. “And never around people they like.”

Mordecai had shot daggers and then exited the Tours without a word. The Feast of Squalor was days away, and ministers like him were reliably distractible this time of year: workaholics the lot. The two had been mild acquaintances during the Aftermath, “conversation buddies” in that perfect dark while the engineers had figured out how to turn on the lights. Nothing more. The Worm King was grateful Mordecai’s visit hadn’t been a CODA sanctioned sweep, and he dared not guess what would have happened if his science project had been discovered. In truth, he didn’t care one iota about Mordecai or his ambitions. The bureaucrat’s cunning was legendary, but easily pacified. Besides, only vengeance mattered now. Morte Magari. Head on a platter. Dead as the damned could be.

Their feud had blazed for years, Magari heaping insults into the fire like so much coal. His visits became more frequent, his provocations the stuff of betrayers and backstabbers. The private humiliations here in the Tours had been bearable, but it was Magari’s slander at the bi-annual Symposium of Sophists, two months, one week, three days, seven hours ago that had driven The Worm King to his dark purpose.

Little Cherub.

Magari had called him Little Cherub. There was no insult as calculated, no greater affront to a demon’s ontology than to be associated with the faithful host who had turned tail during the rebel hour, cowered like bitches for the table scraps of absolution. For Magari to align this choice title with The Worm King, and in public, was beyond the pale.

Though untutored in explosives, The Worm King’s penchant for numbers proved a reliable asset. He had acquired Roberval and Pendulum scales from The Sisters a few months ago, consulted a “recipe” in The Anarchist Cookbook, and purchased the wheelbarrow for transport from Vendor 04951. The urchin had charged him more than it was worth, but The Worm King didn’t have time to negotiate a better price. Magari’s arrival with Joe Muggeridge had persuaded him to accelerate the timetable.

The body was the least of his troubles. He had an abundance to choose from just outside the Tours. Noise from their shadow game rarely breached the walls of the cathedral, and they were ready nourishment for his pets. In fact, The Worm King was all but a licensed purveyor of corpses in the region, and he relished the fact that Magari had personally asked him to fulfill the stipulations of the contract. It endowed his plot with irony fit for a play.

The Worm King looked at the stack of books that remained. Four volumes, on average, per trip. Fifty-two volumes per day. Three hundred twelve books per week given the six-day Crowlian calendar. Several thousand books … damn the inconvenience. Had the order not arrived with such urgent credentials, he’d have finished the bomb last week. He’d have to pull double duty to prepare the corpse along with CODA’s requisite labor. It would be worth it though. The Worm King was certain of this.

He hobbled over to his laboratory where an assortment of colored wires, screws, and wireless detonators were hidden in drawers. He would toil for an hour (fifty-three minutes to be exact) before returning to his books. The codices loomed above him like solemn towers. Screwdriver in hand, The Worm King attached one of the wires to a metal receiver. His hand grazed against a Book of Common Petulance that had found its way to his workstation. Strange, he had no memory of putting it there. Sixth edition: with errata from the Venerable Nergal. It had always been The Worm King’s preferred edition for the grandeur of its poetry and the insolence of its prose. Returning to his work, The Worm King recited one of the prayers from memory:

Lucifer, you have now sent your enemies to despair as you have promised. For these eyes of mine have seen the Abomination you have prepared for the world to see. A darkness to devour nations, and the glory of your people: Pandemonium. Glory to the Father, and in Sin, and for the pleasure of Death the Spirit. Amen.^[13]

* * *

What are the limits of hate? Does its boundless variation have boundary at all? What instinct allows the stone of Cain to crush the skull of Abel? The knife of Brutus to bury itself into the back of Caesar? What breach of conscience compels the photographer to click the shutter as a black man is lynched above a white mob? What nerve says “Now!” within the terrorist to detonate the schoolyard plastique? What synapse must fire to massage the “shalt not” to “ought”? What will enables the dark materials of this impulse? And why, dear reader, has the removal of “sin” from our lexicon done nothing to lessen its poison from our lives?