This Number Speaks Page 6

PART IV THE AFTERLIFE

  THE STORY ENDS

  The body twitched until it died. Thirty-Seven stood there over the corpse, watching the wet red blood fade into a brownish spot in the sand. Several months had passed since the Sons of May had picked him up at the Station on his first day in Hell.

  Now he stood alone with a gun, earning the final Class the brotherhood had to offer. It required that the aspirant kill another member of the order who had betrayed some secret to an outsider. The dead man in the sand had been fool enough to get involved with a woman from The Citadel, and in the heat of passion she had extracted knowledge of the whereabouts of one of the brotherhood's underground troves of untold wonders. Undercover operatives at The Citadel had discovered all this and informed the Sons. Soon afterward, the woman turned up dead at the bottom of a canyon, apparently the unlucky victim of a nasty drunken fall; and the man of loose lips and morals now lay dead, with vacant eyes locked on the spot in the sky where he had last seen the sun.

  Thirty-Seven's time in Hell had been hard, but he had learned many things quickly and was a different person now. He was colder, smarter, and a ruthless killer in situations requiring nothing less.

  His gun was loaded with tazer-rounds which not only ripped flesh like an ordinary bullet but contained a small circuit that once the bullet was fired, delivered a fierce 11,000 Volts to whatever it hit, usually vital organs, which would thusly be caused to explode within the victim.

  The dead man lying in the sand was named Scrap, and Thirty-Seven kneeled over him to collect proof of his death. Proof that the score had been settled.

  The Sons of May had an interesting system comprised of 27 degrees or "Classes". These were earned by accomplishing certain tasks and mastering different abilities. The lower Classes ranged from 'A' to 'Zed' and then there was the highest, known as 'Consolatrix'. When each Class was attained, the man attaining it would receive a new tattoo - known as a 'Grade' - on his neck. Each Class had a corresponding Grade, so the highest-ranking brothers had a complete ring around their necks that read as follows:

  ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

  The 'Triple-Cross' was the sign of a Consolatrix and very few had earned it, but Thirty-Seven would have it. He laid his pistol in the sand and unsheathed his hunting razor then went to work.

  To earn his title as Consolatrix, he had to present the severed Grades of the dissenter to the Great Council of the Sons of May. His hands were sure and his cuts quick. He made short work of removing a thin rectangular strip of tattooed skin from Scrap's throat, leaving the illusion that the corpse wore a bleeding crimson choker.

  Thirty-Seven held the dripping flap of flesh aloft, presenting it to the hot and blinding sun. Thin scarlet streaks ran down his arm and he closed his eyes to the wind.

  VOICE OF THE PIT

  "You people are so busy changing your names, trying to become someone else, and so obsessed with what everyone else is thinking and doing that you never think or do anything yourselves! My thoughts and words and actions are mine and mine alone!" Thirty-Seven was drunk and screaming into a canyon. He had received his Consolatrix Grade earlier that night and now stood at the edge of the precipice, glorifying in the ecstasy of his own consciousness. He hoped that no one could hear these words. He wanted to keep them to himself, as his own secret treasure, but he needed to hear them here – in this place and at this volume. Echoing into the eternity of the past.

  He was a Consolatrix now; he was untouchable. No one dared confront him, let alone kill him. Doing so would bring the wrath of the brotherhood. They were by far the largest group in Hell, but one uninitiated would never know that. The Sons spent much of their time underground and often wore masks when traveling above ground, seldom betraying their true identities. In truth, they outnumbered The Zealots and The Sinners combined.

  Thirty-Seven had refused every name anyone had tried to give him since his first day in Hell when the cyclops had called him 'Bug'. Thirty-Seven thought of himself as an anomaly. He would keep the name, which had been given to him in his old life. He would make an example of it. He would prove that someone given a name as weak and meaningless as a number could rise above those expectations imposed upon him by those supposing themselves his superiors. People laughed at him and called his name mockingly at first, "Hey, Thirty-Seven! Ha ha ha!" But as time passed and he quickly ascended through the ranks of the order, the sarcasm suitably became reverence. The others began to understand his stubbornness against taking a new name and began to regret the abandonment of their own identities, which they began to realize was the true nature of the name changing tradition that all in Hell seemed to embrace. Thirty-Seven had become a self-made individual and would now surrender his will to no one and no thing. He was real, complete and happy - happier than anyone else in all Hell.

  THE WALK

  Suicide laughed. The Civil War had broken out the night of the last rains, six months ago and there seemed no end to it. The war had started with the death of Maximus Agrippa. Several became aware that Satan had lost a powerful ally and all connections within Eternalife. He no longer held as much sway over life and death as he once had.

  The death of Ping had not helped either. Ping had been well-known and liked by many people and Stainface wasted no time explaining that Ping's torture and execution had been Satan's orders and he had had no choice. And though Stainface met his end at the hands of Ping's closest friends, those friends nonetheless knew that he had been telling the truth: that Satan had indeed ordered the hit, and they began to plot against him, finally.

  Several servants and residents of The Citadel whose duties included cleaning, cooking, guarding, and maintenance suddenly walked out one day, leaving Satan, Suicide, Alpha Centauri and a handful of loyal Sinners behind. Every person who had abandoned The Citadel that day bore a red crescent-shaped tattoo on the back of his or her left hand. Life at The Citadel ground to a halt. Suicide laughed.

  UNDERLINE

  So far, Alpha and Satan's pitiful army had managed to keep The Citadel from being overrun and conquered by the swarming Zealots, defecting Sinners, and wandering rogues. The Red Pyramid had been constructed ingeniously enough, with only one obvious entrance and one secret exit. The latter luckily, none of the dissenters were aware of. It required only a small force to hold off even moderately numerous invaders.

  For the most part, the Sons of May had stayed out of the whole affair. But occasionally, emissaries from both sides of the war would come to them asking for help, always to be met with threats of the Son's immediately joining whatever side opposed that of the messenger's. This technique effectively kept the Son's actual involvement to a minimum, however one among them did not agree with this policy of neutrality.

  Thirty-Seven had developed an ego, which urged him to intervene. And now as a Consolatrix he had considerable sway in the order, especially with those brothers of the lower Classes. If he asked them to join him in fighting on either side of the battle, he knew that many of them would. He had become well respected. Everyone could see how he had changed – learned to adapt and thereby conquered the harsh realities of life in Hell – and they found themselves wanting to change as well.

  IN THE END

  In the end, several Sinners returned to side with Satan, because they knew who had buttered their bread for so long. Their loyalty to Ping had been bought and sold by the inevitable rumblings of their little bellies. Satan welcomed them back on the condition that they would all cut the red crescents from their hands, and they knew that if they refused, they would be as good as dead, for as you may recall, no one ever said no to Satan, ever.

  Alpha Centauri remained vigilant at The Citadel constantly venturing out only to accompany Satan on his increasingly frequent visits to The Garden of Lost Souls. Suicide never left the pyramid and slowly she began to lose her mind. The bodies were piling up: first Ping and then her only friend, Mercy Screamsback - who had been found in the bottom of a canyon, apparently the victim of a nasty drunken fall. She had
shoved her dreams of murdering Satan and leaving Hell into the back of her mind and they sat there, rotting and abandoned, fading.

  News from the daily and nightly battles filtered into her little world and she began to hear stories of a new faction rising in the west. People were calling it the Army of The Sons of May, and they were said to be increasing in strength at an alarming rate. They were said to be winning recruits from Sinners and Zealots alike. Even loners from the deep desert were said to be coming out of their holes to fight alongside these mysterious masked warriors.

  Their leader, she was told, was fierce and brooding. He was an unpitying killer who savagely led his men and women into countless battles, slaying by the score. He was even said to murder his own men if they had been seriously wounded, by implanting tiny bombs into their bodies and leaving them behind to be discovered by the enemy. But when the usurpers were close enough, a tiny proximity detector in the bomb would trigger a massive explosion, utterly destroying the wounded man and killing anyone within ten meters of the blast.

  Yet they flocked to join this crazed executioner who killed on all three sides of the war. The 'Triple-Crosser' had become his nickname, the man known to those under his command as Thirty-Seven.

  THE TOLLING OF THE IRON BELL

  Satan hated Suicide. He knew she could never be the woman he remembered, and he hated himself for his years of self-deception. Every day he took his dead friends to the cemetery, and every day he would return alone with Alpha Centauri trailing far behind, respectfully watching his back.

  Secretly, Satan had begun to feel as though his time had come. He had shattered the world around him and this time, things did not seem to be falling neatly back into place. He did not know whom he could trust, and Suicide had become as cold a love as could ever be imagined.

  It seemed the only friend he had left was Alpha Centauri. They had known each other almost 40 years now and much of that time had been spent assuring one another's survival. Now he wondered if either of them would be able to save the other from what he had started. He heard the answer in his mind, and it rang in his ears like the tolling of an iron bell.

  THIRTY-SEVEN'S SPEECH

  Thirty-Seven was planning his final assault on The Citadel. He had not been able to cope with the oppression he had witnessed during his first few months in Hell. This intolerance had been his motivation for taking up arms. He could not sit by and watch this tyrant, this man who fancied himself the king of Hell, have his way. He saw the misery sewn by that pathetic little man in the pyramid. He watched as his armies burned and looted. He had grown furious and sought a release through the spilling of blood.

  Thirty-Seven's army stood on a mesa on the Son's side of the ash-line. The Citadel was visible, about a kilometer off into the northeastern sands. They had gathered here for one final stand against Satan. This was to be it. This was to be the raid that ended the war. Thirty-Seven looked out over the warm bodies gathered before him and he removed his mask.

  “I was born into captivity. All my life I have moved from cage to cage. Everyone I have known has been my jailer, wanting something, trying to acquire for themselves some part of me. But this I cannot tolerate any longer! I am not a servant! I will not bend my will to fill your needs. If I act, then it shall be on my behalf, NOT yours! You say some are meant to follow and some are meant to lead? I say that ninety-nine percent of all who have called themselves human beings have been blind! I say life is an unbelievable amazement not meant to be wasted on the wishes of our would-be masters! If you join this cause, let it be for your own reasons not for mine! Let it be for the glory of your own selves, the only being one can ever truly trust or know in any way is themselves! Pledge no allegiance, make no promise, and take no oath. These things are the chains we wrap around ourselves to bind our souls! Who wrote those laws that have condemned us all? They were written by men who are strangers, and they were written for them and for their own ends. Time cannot right the wrongs that have befallen us. It can only make the old scars seem to slightly fade. But even in their paleness they remain - in our hearts and minds. I say in our lives we must somehow decide to seize upon this Earth, in this time we have, to justify our own existence. Not to those we look on every day - not to those in the highest of unreachable heavens - no. We must prove ourselves - to ourselves. If by now, you do not know why this must be done, then turn away, for the eyes through which I see the world do not wish to look upon you. You are not welcome here, and if you value the air you breathe, and the blood which flows within your veins, then walk away - and do not look back, for that look would be an invitation, and a prelude - to death.”

  The explosions of rifles, whose barrels were raised to the sky, accompanied the roaring of his army and the thundering of engines as hundreds of dirt bikes and choppers bellowed their guttural coughing into the night.

  Thirty-Seven threw his mask onto the ground and sped off towards the pyramid, followed by a massive pack of fierce disciples.

  HEARTBREAKER, DREAM MAKER

  Satan,

  I am leaving you.

  S

  Suicide put the note in a red envelope and tucked it under her pillow. She picked up her bag of guns, knives, and supplies and walked out, not smiling.

  “NO, SATAN.”

  Satan was standing guard with Alpha Centauri at the gate. They had not had any visitors for a while and it made them apprehensive. He was thinking to himself about what he was going to do regarding Suicide when he saw the lights approaching.

  There seemed to be hundreds of them coming out of the west. Alpha saw them too and was drawing a bead with his rifle before Satan could say a thing. This assemblage was much, much larger than the previous groups that had attempted to overrun the pyramid. Satan paled. He knew they could not withstand this assault. His own men had died in such number and were so thinned out now that they could not hold off a force even half as strong as the one now approaching.

  Alpha said coldly out of the corner of his mouth, "You'd better get out of here, this could be a little difficult." Understatement of the year, thought Satan then said, "You know that black sphere in the throne room?" "Yeah, what about it?"

  D.C. AL FINE'

  Sue was coming down through the side door into the throne room just as Satan was coming through the big double doors. They saw each other simultaneously and he could tell she was on her way out. He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, the look on her face stopped him – it seemed to say, "Nothing you have ever said to me has mattered in the slightest," so he shut his mouth and watched her slip behind the throne and listened as she opened the trap door and then slammed it shut behind her.

  She went through Alpha's room and into the secret corridor leading out the back. She climbed onto one of the black bikes there and shot out towards the cemetery. There was only one thing left for her to do in this world, and she wanted to be with her friends when it happened.

  THE OTHER SIDE

  Satan watched Suicide disappear and then he went up to the glass room, where just as he was reading the letter she had left him, an impossible sight greeted him: a man was standing outside the window, looking right at him.

  The man outside lifted a rifle and to Satan's disbelief fired a shot which shattered the huge triangle of glass between them, sending huge shards flying all over the room. Satan shielded his eyes instinctively, receiving the cuts on his arms instead, and far below, a falling motorcycle killed Alpha Centauri as it crushed his head after skidding and sliding down the side of the pyramid.

  Satan ran from the room and this was exactly what Thirty-Seven had wanted and counted on. His men were crushing Satan's army in the rooms below and would be sacking the place by the time Satan made it to the bottom floor.

  Thirty-Seven's men were sacking the pyramid by the time Satan made it to the bottom floor, but they had not however made it into the throne room yet. He was running for his life, and he hated himself for being such a coward but he knew his time had come and
all he could do now was prolong the inevitable, which was precisely what he was going to do. He shimmied down the ladder and slammed the door behind him. He ran to the tunnel and jumped on one of the bikes. He noticed that one of them was missing and suddenly he remembered Suicide's note and his emotions exploded into an inconceivable hurricane of terrible sensations.

  He rode off into the north, following the tracks in the sand that Sue had left behind.

  Up in the shattered remains of the glass room, Thirty-Seven was reading the note and he almost laughed to himself as he realized just how bad it must be for Satan right now. He tossed the note carelessly aside and marched towards the stairs in the center of the room and casually descended into what he now thought of as his pyramid.

  When he got to the bottom of the stairs his men greeted him and informed him that they had taken The Citadel and that Satan had not been found on the premises. He thanked them and asked them if they had found anything significant. They told him they had found the secret chamber and a motorcycle down there with a fresh pair of tracks leading away from the spot, off into the north. Thirty-Seven knew what must have happened and what he now must do.

  DIAMOND DUST

  Suicide threw her bag of guns and knives into the sand and leaped off the bike and rolled while the bike crashed into the cemetery's wall, hardly scratching it - the wall that is.

  She could already hear Satan’s bike in the distance, pursuing her so she hastily crawled to her feet. Rolling in the sand had scratched up the side of her face and she smiled, having finally made a dent in her own cursed beauty.

  She picked up her bag and ran to the cemetery gates. She dug into her stash and chose a knife and jammed the end of it into the lock. It opened instantly and she twisted the long blade before wrenching it from the door, ruining the lock for good.

  She did not look back. She kicked the gate open and started running. She ran past freshly dug graves and freshly filled ones. She saw the names flying by, a memoir of the dead: Ping, Stainface, Mercy. They were all just like her. They had trusted someone who could not be trusted. Perhaps they had somehow loved him too, he who could not be loved.

  The moonlight was perfect and she could see the massive angel up ahead, Scar’s angel.

  She had a plan: she would wait in the shadows of that statue and ambush the fuck out of Satan. He would never see it coming. She would prolong his death. He had to know who had done the killing. He had to know that he died by the hand of the one person he had never bothered to distance himself from. He had to know what he had done to her.

  She reached the angel and threw her bag down in the grass at its feet. She ripped the zipper open and pulled out a long strap attached to a black box – a bomb. She fished around and found the remote then set it down next to the bag. She strapped the bomb-belt around her arm and started to climb the statue. When she was high enough, she unlatched the belt from herself and wrapped it around the wrist of the angelic hand, which held that aged sword. She leaped down to the ground and grabbed the remote then ran behind a large monument and keyed in the detonation code. An explosion rocked the cemetery as Scar's arm was ripped apart and the sword freed from its stone grip. The sword fell right behind the angel, beneath the wings. Sue ran over and snatched it up, went and scooped up her stash and ran into the shadows amidst a few large tombstones, where she crouched down and proceeded to wait.

  TRUST

  Satan saw the wrecked cycle and the open gates. He pulled up slowly and inspected the scene. He concluded that she had gone inside and was waiting inside to kill him. He figured she would wait in the shadows somewhere to ambush him, but he would see it coming. He would be ready.

  He parked his bike at the wall and checked his weapons. He had his sword, his machine-pistol and his boot-knife. If he had to do this, he wanted to do it right. It would take three wounds from three different weapons. Anything else and he just wouldn’t feel right about it in the morning.

  Cautiously, he walked up to the cemetery gates and crept inside. Just as he set foot within those gates, he heard an explosion and he hesitated for an instant before proceeding. What was she up to? He had to be careful. There was trouble ahead, trouble behind. A terrible notion occurred to him, he was seriously doomed, not just kind of, sort of doomed, but actually headed for The End. Realizing this did something to him. Some part of him gave up and accepted this as the final chapter of his life. He decided to face it with dignity and marched on, his head held high. If that head was going to roll, he wanted it to be with a look of satisfaction on its face.

  He passed the many graves, old and new, and all those ghosts seemed to be staring out at him and beckoning him to join them, finally. He looked at the headstones and did not see the names; instead he saw the faces belonging to each and every one, the faces which had rotted away into the moldering earth beneath his feet. He saw the skulls smiling in their little boxes underground and wondered how long it had been since he had first buried someone here. His mind could not seem to reach back through the years of his own life.

  When he saw the angel he stopped. He saw the broken arm and fear ripped his confidence to shreds. She had the sword, which meant she meant to kill him with it. He drew his own sword and did not move. He would call her out. She must be near. She would want to do this here; in the midst of this memorial to the person she believed to be her sister.

  "Suicide! Come out! Let's finish this!" his voice fell on silence and he expected a cold blade to slice through him from behind, yet none did, and all remained unsettlingly still.

  "Sue? Why are you hiding? Do you want me to die or don't you? You have never been such a coward before!" She ran at him from the left, her sword held high in the air, ready to slice him in two. He raised his own blade just in time to save his face from becoming two half-faces. She was in a rage and hacked away at his blade, pushing him back over a giant stone fox. He went sprawling into the grass and yelled, "Scar! Wait!"

  She held the sword with both hands, like a baseball bat, ready to send his head rolling into a nearby open grave. "What? Coward! Scar was my sister's name! And you killed her!" She raised the blade to strike.

  "No! You're wrong! You have to listen to me! You have to know the truth! Scar was not your sister!" She was starting to flinch as his words came in a rush, "Scar was you!" Her eyes were horrified by this last phrase and her blade fell. It sliced deeply into his leg as it lay over the fox's tail, Satan howled and his hands flew to the wound and blood instantly ran over his fingers in crooked dark red streaks that seemed to flow unnaturally fast. "What are you talking about? SPEAK!" she kicked his wounded leg.

  His breathing was labored as he told her who she was, "Scar was my first wife. The only woman I've ever loved. We were growing old and I had connections to Eternalife through one of my family's old clients, Maximus Agrippa." Suicide was listening now, her face becoming apathetic. "We were going to have ourselves reincarnated, as a favor from Max. Scar and I had the machines brought in by special arrangement and I went in first and the procedure was flawless, I came out young, as I am now. Scar was not so lucky. When her turn came, she went into the machines as I had but in the midst of the process, something went wrong and she died, but not before her new body had been created. That new body was you Suicide! The machines were damaged and could not be repaired! We couldn't finish the aging process and Scar's memories had been lost in the accident! I could not let you go! You were all I had left and so I raised you as my own. But as you grew, you began to resemble her so perfectly that I began to fall in love with you, or rather the memory of Scar, which I saw in your face! That is why I had to have you! I could not let go of the past, of the only person I had ever allowed myself to care about at all."

  Sue was standing with her back to him. She was staring into the face of the angel. She raised her sword in a slow movement and let its handle fall to the ground. She held the tip of the blade with one hand and stepped back one slow pace. Without a word, she leaned forward and let the blade slide into
her body. Her blood slid down the cold edge of the blade and she went down on her knees as a thin metal strip poked through the skin of her back and out into the air. Tears came from her eyes and blood from her mouth, but she made no sound, she called no name. She only died, the only way she ever could: for and by herself.

  BIRD'S EYE

  Thirty-Seven parked next to the open gate. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver eagle's head ring he had found at The Citadel, which he placed on the ring finger of his left hand.

  He walked through the gates and into the Garden. He gave pause to several names and thought of what their stories must be. Several meters up ahead he saw a one-armed angel in the midst of a clearing. He slowed his pace, yet sharpened his resolve. He drew his gun.

  Satan lay still by the stone fox and Suicide lay dead in the grass. Thirty-Seven approached the wounded man and looked into his eyes. "Time's up, old man. It's my turn now."

  Satan looked up at the man with the gun and whispered, "Why does it have to be this way? Why do we all have to die?"

  Thirty-Seven looked over at the deceased woman crumpled in the red grass and said, "That's why. Because some of us have to die, all of us have to die. It would not be right any other way. It is fair."

  Satan wept.*

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  This Number Speaks is my first book. I started writing it when I was 27 years old, and I did what a lot of writers do when writing their first book: I created a thinly veiled autobiographical adventure, based on my life and my own hopes and dreams. This is the 10th anniversary of both This Number Speaks and of me beginning my life as a writer.

  The central metaphor of this book is the transformation and liberation of an individual from a naive and servile life to a life of wisdom and independence. That's what I really want for my own life, so it translated well into the story.

  If you enjoyed the story, please leave a brief review for the book. It does wonders. Thank you for reading This Number Speaks!

  Jason P Doherty

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Indie author Jason P Doherty loves what he does and does what he loves. His books meet at the intersection of his life passions and the evolving tastes of readers. Since 2007, Jason has written several interesting books, including A.I. Civil Rights, the seminal text on the subject.

  Notable collaborations include Industrial Records founder and musical pioneer Genesis P-Orridge, Invisible Records founder Martin Atkins, actor Thomas W. Ashworth, (L.A. Law, Criminal Minds) and avant gard artist Steven Johnson Leyba. Jason is also a sometime musician, and enjoys playing Stratocasters.

  Jason lives in rural Oklahoma with his wife and several loved ones.

  For more of Jason's work, visit jpdBooks.com