A Fig for Thee, O' Death

A FIG FOR THEE, ‘O DEATH


by
TL Hutton


GENRE: Dark Fiction/ Dark Romance/Supernatural
WORD COUNT: 5342

The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings.
- JOHN BRIGHT
Speech in House of Commons
Feb. 23, 1855

ONE

HOW LONG I FLED through that forest, I cannot say. Why I chose to seek sanctuary in that wood so grim, that, as well, I cannot say. Perhaps I thought Divine salvation from my antagonist in that somberness therein lain?

How foolish of myself to have humored such a notion.

I cowered behind the leprous trunk of a fallen, once mighty oak, my lungs winded so from my flight of such irony of poetic justice that they burned like the infernal den of Lucifer, and so tremendously affrighted that I would have gladly accepted catalepsy. Be that as it might, I knew that deliverance was not to come.

No. This was my fight.

By-the-by, a stratagem I had not.

For how is it that a lowly man, flesh and blood, wage battle against an entity that is neither man nor beast? Neither living nor dead? Neither mortal nor immortal? An entity that simply is. Always was and shall always be.

I expected anything but this day to arrive with such haste; expected the extension granted me to have carried at least a few more joyous years to bask in the warming smile of de mí amada.

My antagonist, such as I have learned demonios tend to welch on their deals, negated to consider such a necessity, however. He – IT – demanded payment for those stygian services rendered all those years ago.

I suspect that I should, at the least, share the tale of how I came to be in such a predicament. If for no other modus operandi than that, you, dear reader, might learn from my lovesick candor…

TWO

IT WAS NOT BUT A MEAGER SCORE of seven years thereafter that my chit to la Diablo came to arrears. A meager score of seven years that, to any hidalgo who hadn't paid the price in advance of his very soul, would have transcended in an eternity of bliss. However, for one such as myself, those years passed with the unerring haste of sands plummeting through the hourglass.

The night was brisk, the last dire efforts of winter refuting to relinquish her icy grasp upon the land and succumb as another passing season. I, for lack of a better sense, have always harbored a weakness for strolls beneath the winter stars. I have always found it most invigorating how the breath of Jack Frost purloined the manacles of cabin fever from a man, lapping at the flesh with his icy tongue, filling the lungs with a frigid vigor, abating the cloudy veil which the heat from hearths bestow upon the mind.

Vivo. It always reminded me that I am very much alive.

My beloved and I were taking a lovers' stroll about the outskirts of town, away from the yellow-orange sheen of the new gas-fueled streetlamps that denied one’s eye the majestic splendor of the Heavens above. The town had long since retired, save for the unfortunate begging waifs and the uninhibited Hija de las Alegrías who cajoled those men untrue with their Succubae’s lure. Ever-so-often, the melancholy dirge of a perra was faint in the distance, enunciating its dejected odes to the platinum visage of the moon who watched over our fair populace in solemn solitude, an expression of the morose upon its luminescent crater-pocked face.

Listless, not a care in the world, we trod in our lovers' gait down the lone stretch of the Avenida Rue, so Christened for the Midian plots of Baroque and Gothic necropolis that adorned its length.

"Why must it be that we have to pass such a place of desperation?" My beloved inquired, her dainty arm entwined about my own, squeezing tighter as we strode past the towering vigils of the departed. "It affrights me so."

"Cómo es eso mi Amor? 'Tis not but a place of slumber for those who grew weary of this life." I gazed across the snow-powdered plots, the immortal portraits of saints and angels looming about like ethereal sentries holding a watchful eye over those lain at their feet.

"What victory is there that lies within the grave, my dear husband?" she questioned. The moon’s crisp silvery luminance cast an aura of Heavenly grandeur about the Seraphim’s symmetry of her face. A face that I have always admired as nothing short of the becoming of one of the Lord's angels.

I halted our gait and turned to my love, the leather of my gloved hand gently tracing her jaw line. I starred deep into the shimmering emeralds of her eyes that had so bewitched me in my youth that I knew I would court this Àngel de señor, and unto her, said: "Death is one of two things. Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or, as we are told, is really change: a migration of the soul from this place to another."

She smiled. Her thin, sensuous lips - crimson as the setting sun in autumn - parted slightly, showing the faultless etiolate of her teeth. "Quoting the Seer, Socrates, are we, Amor? And which of his parables is it that you believe?

"I, my dear wife, believe whole-heartedly in the latter. I have always found a certain solace in these Cities of the Dead." I waved my hand at the spanning snow-encroached God's Acre that loomed behind us, stretching to the western horizon. "The peace that those lain therein so errantly sought in this life of the flesh and could not discern, at the least, betrothed with that fleeting benediction upon being placed back into the earth from which the Good Lord brought them forth."

"Mí marido, el bardo!" She giggled. "Able to romanticize on even such a grim subject as that of death..." She leaned forward and kissed me, her lips cool and smooth as those of Asia's finest silks. She turned with all the lithe grace of a stalking feline and strode to the wrought iron fence that marked the boundary separating the Land of the Living from the City of the Dead. A great marble statue of an angel - clad in its Holy armor of chainmail, a considerable buckler inscribed with the runic glyphs of old Catholicism strapped to its forearm and the vorpal blade of a flaming broad sword wielded in its opposite hand, its wings spread wide as if preparing to take flight - loomed directly over my beloved from just across that somber iron line.

"And lo," my beloved began, reciting the verse from St. Luke inscribed upon the pedestal where the effigy of His Lord was perched, her melodic voice soothing as that of a cool Madrid Spring shower. "The Angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them: and they were sore afraid."

No sooner than she had recounted the verse and begun to turn back to my arms, it happened. Oh, how the harrowing spectacle of such - such unjust cudgel haunts my dreams still!

A crackle, not unlike the deafening shriek of lightning javelins hurled from the heavens, of the stone breaking along an unforeseen fault line coursed through the frigid silence of the night. My beloved wife, startled so by the wail of splitting Sculpture's stone, abated her advance to my suddenly numb arms, turning to see the cause of such a sound. In her moment of hesitation, she discovered therein, both the cause and effect of such noise.

The statue, torpid at first as if unseen specters were attempting to hold it at bay, shifted forward, the two plates of separate stone, like plates within the earth's crust, grinding against one another as they slid in opposite directions. It reached a precarious angle, its hulking shadow creeping out before it, swallowing in one gluttonous swill my wife. I heard, to my dismay, a dreadful shriek of sheer terror erupt from her mouth, but it was cut short and silenced just as quickly as it had formed, the stone monolith crashing down upon her, pummeling her frail body to the frozen earth like that of a carpenter's hammer driving a nail in one fell swoop.

The stomach wrenching sounds of the wrought iron fencing bending and creaking under the angel's immense weight - as if it were screaming in agony - along with the dead THUNK! of the stone meeting with the frost-strewn cobblestone walkway, the pulpous mashing of flesh, cracking of bones and wet spattering of blood as my wife was slain by the rock filled my ears.

I stood rigid with terror, not believing what my eyes had witnessed.

Breaking free of my dread-stricken trance, like a high-spirited steed refuting to succumb to the vaquero’s bit-and-bridle, I ran to the far side of the fallen monolith, as I could espy nothing of my beloved from my current position. Save for a dark pool of crimson death that glistened in the moonlight. It seeped from beneath the statue as if it was the bleeding wounded.

I found there, within the monolith's shadow, the battered visage of my beloved angel. What I beheld caused my blood to run cold as the Ebro River in winter and the dinner a' la carta I'd partook in earlier to attempt at clambering up my throat. Most my beloved's frail body was pinned beneath the marble's immense girth, a pool of blood encircling the fell cataclysm. Her left arm jutted outward, mangled and broken, turned in the opposite direction of which God had created it. The white of splintered bone, like a snapped twig, protruded outward through grisly torn flesh, adorned with the glimmering wet sinews of shredded meat like a vile caricature of tinsel strewn about a pine on la Navidad. Her head lay crooked at an unnatural angle over a mashed shoulder, the onyx mane of her locks matted with fragments of skull and blood alike. Her flawless teeth, now dislodged from her jaw in places, protruded like crags of rock on a mountain ledge through her lips. One of her emerald eyes dangled from its socket by the sinuous umbilical of the optic nerve.

She tried to speak, but where words should have been, along with a melodic voice to rival that of the most prestigious Ópera singer, came not but nauseating gurgles and bleats that sounded as if they had been stolen from the throat of some foul beast spawned with the darkest, molten bowels of Inferno. Blood welled from her battered mouth as she persisted in her efforts to speak, like water boiling over in a kettle.
Taking her hand within mine - cold as the cobblestone upon which I knelt, it was - trembling as Job did when confronted by the Serpent, I pressed my cheek to it, the warm liquid of her fleeting life burning my sullen face, and I, ashamed not to do such, began to weep.

"Dios mio," I sobbed, hoping with all my heart that He who I so devotedly followed throughout the course of my life would hear me out as I plead my case. "Why must You see fit to take my beloved in such an ironic manner of passing? What fell sin has she committed which has angered You so? She is not but the purest of the pure...tan inocente como la bebé recién nacida."

More blood welled and bubbled forth as she again attempted to speak. I could feel the breaking of my heart within its cavity as she suffered so.

"Will You not spare my bride, my Lord? Take me in her place? Take my life of that which You gave me...take the very breath within my chest! I beseech Thee, my Lord! Allow me to fill her place in the Life-hereafter! No soy tan puro como ella! I am not innocent! As tainted as the wolf who steals the lamb am I! I beg of Thee, Dios mio! Spare this child so pure and true!"

I cowered upon my hands and knees, trembling like a beaten canine, on the cold cobblestone walkway of the Avenue Rue, weeping. The Jack Frost breath of winter howled around me, as if laughing with morbid glee at the tragedy that had transpired.

THREE

"HE WHO RESIDES ABOVE hears not thine plea this night, Friend..." a voice - cold and hollow as the maw of the Minotaur’s labyrinth; like that of a reptile - came from behind my position. From the necropolis in which my beloved would soon be lain. "Thy can ease the pain which shrouds thee...bring it to an end."

I rose to my knees, a chill creeping up my spine at the eerie melody of that voice, turning to see who my caller might be. To my astonishment, a cloaked figure stood before me, aroost the very pedestal from whence the statue had toppled, an ominous mist gray as cinder ash roiling about the space where its feet should have been. Like writhing lengths of eels constituted of the very mist from which they spawned, tentacles reached out from that fog, twisting about the stranger's body. His features were unseen to me, the long baggy caftan he wore - like those robes of the Monks of Old Britannia - cloaking all within the pitch of gracious shadows.

"Who," I began to inquire, affrighted to the point of paralysis by this spectral being, but was cut short.

"Thy titles are Legion; such is all thou must need to know. Now, doest thou wish for thy maiden's ailment to be reversed? Or shall Thy take Thine offer and go?" Hissed the figure.

"No! NO!” I brayed like that of a stubborn mule, entranced so by the demonios words. "Do not depart Fallen One! I am curious as to your offer."

"Thy sees... Only once shall thy ask of thee this, and with haste must thou answer, for the grim chance of her soul's departure doest thee risk."

"SI! SI! CUALQUIER COSA! Tell me what it is you require?"

"To bring thou's beloved from this tragedy so unjust, Thou requires that which thee proffered Him above in such dire jest: Grant Thee the very breath within thou’s chest. For the love of thou's life, is such a wager not too much?"

"Very well," I replied without a moment's hesitation, "I give to you the deed to my eternal soul, if only to save my dear wife. When is it that you wish to collect on our pact? Shall I not be permitted a period of grace and have some time more to enjoy with her?"

Had I known at the time what it was I had done, I would have never agreed to such terms of the extreme. By the by, just as the thief is blinded by his greed for the luster of gold, as have I always been for the love of my wife.

"First must we shake in order to make our pact bind...lest thou desire to deceive the eternal likes of Thy and squander Thine time?"

I stood, feeling sick as to what I was about to do, but choked down the swoon and made my way towards the phantasmal presence of the Fallen One. I approached with the repose one would take in confrontation with a poisonous viper, wary to tread into the roiling mist he waded.

As I stepped into that foggy veil, the acrid stench of brimstone and sulfur wafted at my nostrils, scorching the very hair and membranes of sense therein, like when one chokes on healthy swill of Hierbas Ibicenas bourbon. The serpentine limbs of the mist twisted and wound and knotted about my quaking, suddenly weak legs, hissing like that of a pit of serpents as they did so, causing my trepidation to ascend even more so. Within the clouded confines of the writhing, living mist it was sultry, to say the least, the frigid winter breathe completely absent and overruled by a sweltering mugginess like that found in the Iberian hot springs, which broke me out into an immediate sweat.

I proffered my quivering hand, swathed in a film of sweat and sticky blood, holding it in mid-air, the misty tentacles rising and swooning and hissing like those of serpents of India charmed so by the Enticer's flute and twisting about it like the bands of bunting wound about the Maypole. The fell demonio raised its arm, the Caftan's long baggy sleeve slithering back as if of its own volition to reveal a ghoulish wrist and reptilian-like hand of a foul reddish pigmentation, with long yellowed claws. We joined our flesh - that of the earthly corporeal and that of the Hellishly ethereal - and shook, binding our pact of the soul.

Within the shadows of the figure's hood, two embers, like blazing coals, flared where eyes should have been. The visage brought to my mind that of the Ferryman Charon from Dante’s ‘Infierno.’

"In this union of the Flesh is this agreement sealed. Thou shall permit thee a score of seven years to enjoy. Once that time is spent, to thee Thy Collector of Eternal Debts shall be revealed. Should thee welch on thy word and the Devil try to ploy, Thou promises thee this, weak little man: An eternity of torment upon thy soul shall Thou employ.

Such venomous words the demonio spat forth affrighted me so.

"It is done and thy fair maiden once again just. Now take thy leave and speak of this pact never thou must."

And with that, the Fallen One vanished in a swill of dissipating mist, as if of nothing but a fevered hallucination of a sick mind. I stared for some time at the locale whence he'd stood, trying to discern if it had been but a mere dream or had I truly wavered the deed of my eternal soul to la Diablo?

As the mist departed, I saw within its wake the very marble effigy that had befallen my beloved back atop its perch, standing erect and sure. Then, as if from a dream, I partook in the soothing voice of my beloved from near behind where I stood, and I knew at that moment, that yes, I truly had made a bargain with Lucifer.

"Mí Amor, cuál es el problema?" she asked as I turned, finding her standing there in all her earthly grace, the moonlight again etching her in an ethereal radiance. "You act as though you have seen a specter."

“No es nada, mí querida. Merely..." I paused, conceding to myself that I dare not share with her what had just transpired, for surely she would think me of becoming with a fever of the mind or going mad...and as not too cross the stipulations bestowed upon the pact by the Fallen One. "Merely lost within my own thoughts for a spell."

I smiled at my wife, took her in my arms, and in her ear - the scent of her jasmine and honey perfume coursing through my nose - whispered: "I have grown numb to the bone. What do you say we make haste to the heat of the hearth and partake in a cup of Chamomile tea, mi Amor?"

FOUR

I WAS ABLE TO CHEAT LA DIABLO himself out of claiming the soul of my beloved as his own. Had I been the wiser, I would have used my borrowed time of those seven score years to try and find an answer for the enviable query I now asked of myself.

Could I find the wit within myself to trick Lucifer's courier from dragging my soul down to the River Styx?

FIVE

The wood around me was nothing short of desolate. Somber and placid like that of some primordial swamp. The skeletal silhouettes of timber stood like earthen vigils of the necropolis along the Avenida Rue. Vines hung like eviscerated entrails strewn throughout the knotted canopy of the wood as that of macabre streamers for some vile celebration.

I jumped, taken aghast by every little sound - the creaking of a wraithful limb; the snapping of a frozen twig; the evening breath howling over the distant mountains like Hell Hounds; the rustling of dense, tangled scrub.

How long could I possibly cower here? How long could I flee the wrath of Àngel de la Muerte?

A stratagem was the tonic I so desired. For reasons beyond my simple human understanding, I began to think of a hymn that my grandmother schooled me with when I was but a niño. It came to me then, an ideal so clever and sure that I truly feel Socrates himself would have been well pleased! I had to act with haste, however, as the tolling of the bell was drawing nigh.

I took a deep swell of the crisp winter air into my lungs, allowing that uncanny sense of the invigorating to wash through my body, bringing with it a newfound drive to conquer that assailant of the Underworld coursing through my veins. Standing from my obscured position of cowering like a beaten canine, I withdrew my trusty sling from the pocket of my greatcoat.

Loading the leather strap with the missile of a musket ball I thought to carry along before fleeing the city - as not to bring what I had so selfishly wrought upon the lives of those not involved - I began my hunt. Not for the assassin. Oh, no. Wisdom, that I might be lacking, but ignorant, that I am not. I knew that my weapon would pose as no hindrance to such a being as that which stalked me as if I were wild game.
With all the furtiveness. a fox, I crept through the somber, crawling wood, eyes wide and peeled, scouring the winding webs of the canopy for that which I so direly required. I had no choice but to be. erring, precise in my battery. Only one chance did I possess, otherwise I would have no choice but to surrender my soul to the Reaper's sickle keen.

I then, upon traversing not but a few hundred yards, staged upon my prey. The oleander hue of a Snow Owl, like some spectral apparition of the nocturnal Avian, perched about a limb some thirty feet above my head. Its head twisted precariously about, reconnoitering its surroundings. I needed the fowl alive if my stratagem were to prevail. Thus, I conceded that my aim must be true and connect with the wing, rendering the bird unable to take flight and escape my clutches.

As I prepared to position myself for the assault, the sound of great wings beating in the starless air overhead reverberated throughout the otherwise still eve like of those great winged serpents in English lore they call "Dragonas".

My pursuer had found my locale.

SIX

THE OWL STOOD RIGID as the limb upon which it was perched, keen to the arrival of the entity circling overhead like a buzzard awaiting a wounded animal to bleed out. I had not a breath's moment to spare, as the ghastly-pigmented Avian would take to flight in the next instant.
I positioned myself in that stance popularized after the great Olympians of ancient Greece, twirling the sling above my head at a slight degree of angle. The whirling leather emitted an almost silent WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH, not unlike that of the winged beast above.

The owl sucked its rotund head down taut to its body, its span of white and black-speckled wings spreading wide, preparing to take flight. One final revolution overhead and I released the missile, asking the Lord to guide its course. Due to the encroaching darkness, I was unable to view its immediate path. Within a moment I had sound confirmation that it had been guided with unerring accuracy to its mark. A cluster of pallid feathers erupted into the night, plummeting slowly to the forest floor like shed leaves of a maple in autumn. A truly horrid ululation - of most likely both shock and pain alike I can well imagine - spat from the bird's hooked beak. Had I not heard it with my own two ears, I would not believe an animal capable of such a sound. The wing fell limp, crashing to the bulbous fluff of the owl's body, knocking it off its balance and sending it plummeting to the forest floor.

With renewed vigor and haste from the thrill of the hunt, I crashed through the tangled knots of undergrowth to collect my prize, paying no heed whatsoever to the razor's edge bite of scrub, thorns, and thistles that dug deep into my flesh and lacerated my clothing, drawing tepid blood.

As I scooped up the flailing fowl and crammed it into my rucksack, a whirlwind so tremendous set about that forest grim, much to the likes of those brutal funnels that ravage the Southern Plains in the spring, sending a cacophony of malicious gusts hurling about. Lose foliage peeled from the surrounding trees like scabs ripped from slow-healing wounds. Entire timbers crashed to the ground while limbs and twigs were tossed to flight, hurled this way and that with such a force of the brute that I had to take cover behind yet another fell timber to avoid being impaled by the vorpal javelins! I choked upon the rout of dust, leaves, bark, and other dry vegetation that swelled in the enforcing sally.

SEVEN

"PRESENT THYSELF, FELL MORTAL!"

The voice boomed throughout the wood, causing even the wraithlike timbers to quaver within its wake so vile. Only it was not just one mere voice, but a malevolent symphony of thousands combined: men, woman, and children. Both the angelic tones of the young and the harsh dry rasps of the old; the joyous raucous of the gleeful and the woeful laments of the tortured. Not unlike how Dante construed his ascent into the starless air of Hell's Second Circle.

I withdrew from my roost, if not to defy the preset ploy of Fate's hex I had bestowed upon myself a score of seven years previous, then to accept the challenge of foe as well.

Do not be fooled, dear reader, by the biasedly propagated accounts of Muertos being but a mere skeleton clad in a black shroud, for I assure you that such tales are, least of all things, not true.

What I then beheld, what my eyes then fixed upon within the clearing fury of dust and debris, I could not have conjured even in my most rampant of nightmares!

Within the clearing before me stood the Àngel de la Muerte, It’s visage so feral that Lucifer, in comparison, seemed to me no more a threat than that of a young niña at a Sunday morn's Mass. Towering well over thirty-six meters it’s body was somewhat skeletal in constitution; neither that of a man's skeletal structure nor that of a beast's, but rather a horrid fuselage of the two, fused together by some dark necromancy to create one sinister frame. It was much like that of a horrendous bi-pedal lizard, slightly hunched in the back. Membranous wings protruded from that grotesque arc in the spine, great serpentine hindquarters like those of the "Thunder Lizard" Americano scientists discovered entombed within the rocky sediments of Africa mere months ago. Its arms, more like those of a man, but easily ten times the size, tapered out from the broad, spike-covered shoulders. The head of the Angel resembled that of a lizard as well: long, serpentine, ferocious - a beastly snout protruding forth, housing vorpal rows of teeth like sabers jutting over the powerful jowls. Two flames burned in the black pits where pupils should have sat, and two twisting horns spiraled from the beast's crown. Two large clefts flared at the end of the muzzle’s bony peninsula, steam rising like apparitions from the fissures. It was - How should I say? - clothed in rotting flesh while the rest was a combination of decaying muscle tissue, sinews of tendons and ligaments and clearly visible bone. Within its talons so fierce the demonio clutched a great scythe, the arced blade constituted of viral white-blue flames.

Presented with this entity of the Black Void, I had half a mind about me to turn and abscond, once again taking flight into the bowels of that wood so grim. I then thought of mí amada, for who I had accepted this fate, and for fear that, if I welched upon my pact that this Collector of Eternal Debts would seek out her grace, accruing the original fee from that eve of seven score years past.

And I knew that I had, within my rucksack, the means to prevail over the Reaper Grim.

All I liked was the opportune moment...

EIGHT

"'TIS THEE THE LOWLY cur who welched on a pact with the Master of the Eternal Flame?" The Reaper bellowed in those thousand tongues, leering close to permit me to catch hint of His fetid, decaying breath. "From the wrath of Thine blade thou shalt not escape." He reared back, membranous wings opening in span, standing the flaming scythe to a vertical level. "What say thee, fell mortal? Hast thou a final request before Thou take thee down to the infernal pit?"

"Why is it, Maestro de la Muerte, that all of you who have fallen short of the Lord's grace speak in rhyme? Is it that you attempt to hold grasp of the ethereal splendor from which you were so long ago cast?"

I prayed that my ploy would prove effective and roust in the Reaper an anger enough to cause Him to swing His blade.

"Before Thee were no things created, save eternal, and Thy eternal last! Et in Arcadia - Even in Arcadia am Thine present!" The beast roared, taking a pose in preparation to smite me. "Albiit ad plures - Thou shall join the great majority!"

As the Reaper reared his flaming blade, I made with haste for my rucksack, and for all good intention, prayed the fowl would still be alive.

As the sickle was swung, I, with all my worldly might and desire to finish out my days with my beloved, tossed the rucksack into the path of the falling blade, shouting as I jumped from the pendulum's arc, "UN HIGO PARA TI, OH MUERTE!"

The blade sliced through the rucksack with uncanny ease, the sack itself instantly igniting into a ball of flames. A blinding surge of pale azure light emanated from the burning halves as the spectral apparition of a Snow Owl flew forth like the Phoenix emerging from molten lava, vanishing into the chill night.

The demonio wailed in a thousand painful utterances, the calamity toppling trees within its wake, and leered down upon me, infuriated. The embers of Its eyes bellowed like crackling flames. It knew that I, not but a mere mortal, had bested Him and was no longer available as a prospect for the taking.

"A rort, tride and true! Thy repertoire bested by a fell mortal! Again, shall we meet, sometime in the fresh dew...Then and there, thy soul shall thou take, paying no heed to thy sly cajole!"

And with that - what I suspect is the manner a demonio makes a threat - the beast took to the night sky, scattering dust and debris to the wind.

As I made my way through the wood, which seemed to have abated its grim shade, towards my fair town where assuredly mí amada awaited my return, I sang the tune my Grandmother had schooled me in as a niño, which without I would have surely been in the company of those who populated the Woeful City.

"The flesh which the blade of Death's scythe does scathe...Therein lies the soul the
demon must take…"

THE END