“Yeah, sorry, Nat. My stomach is messed up.” That’s what Pete had said.

  “That’ll buy me some time,” he whispered, as the golden Wreath of his conscious thoughts spun erratic in his head. Horrific images filling his mind.

  In one moment, he was dunking himself into the bathtub, his hands and arms shaking as he forced his own drowning. The lonely silence of death, submerged, replacing the panic and noise.

  Then, just as fast as the drowning fantasy had come, it was gone, rotated to the back of the macabre parade. Replaced by a picture of himself violently slamming his own skull into the floor, his skin tearing. His body collapsing into a growing pool of warm, wet, scarlet.

  “This is insane!” Pete finally managed. “Natalie! Oh God! I’m so sorry!”

  His eyes stung with tears as he considered his wife. “She doesn’t deserve this! We just got married a month ago! I can’t let her see this. I can’t!”

  He cutoff his rasping whispers, trying to restrict the pain to his silent thoughts.

  “Why can’t anything just feel right? Fuck! Just one thing! Can’t one fucking thing feel normal or even real?

  His jaw ached as he clenched. “I can feel my thoughts! What the hell is that? I’m feeling myself think …as I think!”

  Meanwhile…

  Abaddon of the Fallen remained, watching the clock in the living room of the apartment… slightly concerned.

  “Damn them,” he muttered. “Damn them both for dragging this on. Can’t these insects even die right?” Frustrated, he phased through the door and into the bathroom. “What is taking you so...”

  He stopped mid-sentence. His dark eyes widening. A rare look of shock spreading across his pale face. “Your Wreath!” He gasped.

  Expecting to see a man devoid of all higher cognition, all threads lost to the void, Abaddon was instead, astounded to find Pete Bishop, still functioning. He watched the man struggle, breathing into his hands as he rocked back and forth on the toilet lid. His Wreath, unstable, yet still clearly visible, spinning in his head.

  “How?” The word escaped the Fallen’s mouth like a breath. Shameful to even be spoken. To believe himself so far above human beings, so far beyond all men and women, only to be surprised by one… it was a cardinal sin.

  “But still, how?” he wondered, too late to resist the urge to be astonished. “The Light is destroyed.” He whispered. “How have they not unraveled? This man should have ended things by now.”

  His eyes became shifty, paranoid, as he searched for answers. Desperate to find something in the walls, or possibly...

  “Someone!” He practically shouted.

  [And at the same time, Natalie dropped the phone she’d been holding. Her fingers fumbling as though she’d forgotten how to use them for a moment.

  “What the..” she began, but quickly gathered herself, shaking away the weirdness, unmoved.]

  “Someone is here!” Abaddon said again.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Stepping through the wall into the kitchen, he scanned the upstairs. “Nothing”, he growled and descended through the floor to the lower level. “One of the Favored?” he considered. “That insufferable bleeding heart, Raphael?”

  Yet after moving through every room in the apartment, finding no other presence, Abaddon wrestled his paranoia down to logical annoyance. “No. Not possible.” The demon said. “Raphael wouldn’t hear this. Not this one. This man has accomplished nothing. He’s weak. He’s broken! I broke him!”

  With pride forcing composure, he returned to his broken man, observing Pete Bishop, sitting there.

  Still shattered. Still miserable.

  “This is ridiculous.” Abaddon concluded. “To be unmoored by one such as this…no more!”

  And so, walking toward his victim, defying his briefly shaken confidence, he spoke.

  “Wretch.” Abaddon bent down inches from Pete’s face. His voice regaining its arrogant tone. “You cannot hear me, though nevertheless, I hold hope that you can sense my words rattling in that empty skull.”

  He held out his long white hand hovering just above Pete’s Wreath, shaking ever so slightly with his rage. “I want you to know that it was I, who put you in this Hell. Just as it is I who will now leave you alone in your woe.”

  He paused, looking Pete over closely.

  “You see, it matters not why you continue drawing breath. I return to my chambers, regardless. Your endurance is minimal, and your name will be added to my stones.”

  Then he tilted his head in a puzzled expression.

  “However, if I return, and by some chance you are still alive, understand that I’ll be forced to finish you in … other ways.”

  At that, the demon scoffed.

  “Enjoy the rest of your evening, coward.”

  Abaddon returned to the spare room where he had first appeared. And focusing toward the back wall, he raised two fingers to his forehead. In response, a strange object manifested, resembling a prism of overlapping lenses. It had a translucent, living quality, and it opened like a gate. A peculiar light shone from inside, accompanied by the sound of chimes, electricity, or perhaps singing. The demon stepped through prismatic opening, and then vanished.

  The apartment was left in its quiet. Seemingly ordinary. No one sitting at the computer. No one organizing the closet. The only activity to be observed was Natalie Bishop preparing her dinner in the kitchen, and Pete desperately fighting the urge to kill himself in the bathroom.

  6E+24

  “Well, my friend?” Gabriel broke the silence. “There isn’t much we can take from this, beyond what we already know.”

  “What do we know?” Raphael asked.

  “We know he was broken,” Gabriel said, expanding the lens to examine Pete’s image more closely. “Reality without context. Obsessive Existential Collapse.”

  “We know he’s still living,” Raphael interrupted. “Not just ‘alive’, ‘living’. Wait until you see, Gabriel. He still goes to work! Still talks to his wife! The only signs of his struggle emerge when he’s alone. He doesn’t hide his misery when he thinks no one is watching.”

  Gabriel stood amidst the fractals, looking at his friend. In his mind, he could picture Raphael sitting in that beautiful forest that was his realm. The great spirit trees, with their leaves of greens and golds, whispering humanity’s deepest prayers to him, as he listened and manifested them into incense.

  “How long have you been watching?” Gabriel asked.

  “A few days,” Raphael admitted. “It was the pleas of his wife that reached me, and when I went to her, I realized something impossible was happening.”

  “So, when you heard her voice...” Gabriel clarified, “her voice, not just her cries for help.” He smiled. “Do you see? There’s something about her voice. It pulled her husband back from the brink and brought their plight all the way to your realm. Something unusual is happening here, and it’s not just because of him; it’s her as well.”

  “So, what do you suggest?” Raphael asked, taking a moment to think.

  “We need to do two things,” Gabriel began. “First, we have to learn their story. There’s a connection between them that I don’t fully understand.” He started pacing, lost in thought. “Second, we need to identify Pete’s great weakness. We must find his ‘door’. We know he has one; otherwise, Abaddon couldn’t have broken him.” He paused. “At that point, we might have answers.”

  “Agreed,” Raphael replied.

  “I do have a question before we continue,” Gabriel said, looking at Raphael as though an important curiosity had arisen. “If Pete Bishop is living, working, and functioning as you say, why did you earlier describe Natalie Bishop's cries as coming from a place of ‘anguish’?”

  Raphael turned to Gabriel. “You’re right, brother. But I did speak the truth. Her cries did eventually lead me to her husband. It’s just that, when I arrived to bear witness… she was crying for someone else.”

  6E+24