Lucifer's Tale

[with Peter Tennant]

Finally I have reached my destination, the mall which lies at the centre of our mighty city, the black heart where any and every outrage is permissible. The place is swarming with people, the walkways and open spaces choked with revellers intent on sucking the night dry of all that it has to offer, the butchers and their victims indistinguishable in the common crush of humanity.
Cameras are everywhere. Spying on every living and dying soul, taping scenes of destruction and savagery, conveying their frightful images back to the living quarters of those who, for reasons of their own, have chosen not to take part in the night's celebrations; voyeurs of death, satisfying their craving for blood and mutilation at second hand.
I look round me at all the nasty little insignificants, the joy-killers and blood-junkies wrapped up in their petty concerns, and I remember how I was once like them, content to slake my thirst for violence on the first piece of meat that came to hand, indifferent to whose blood I spilled, content with butchery for butchery's sake. That was before my Master took me under his wing and taught me all the ways of evil, trained me to be selective in my choice of victim and to heighten the pleasure through tactics of delay, to appreciate the act of violence not for its own sake but as an expression of my own inner being.
I think of him, my Master, creating an image inside my dreamful mind. The dark features that I beheld for so long during my days and nights of instruction and learning, those pleasurable times spent inflicting torture and suffering on pitiful unfortunates. The release of blood, the rolling heads, the pleading eyes, the connection of sharpness upon delicate flesh.
A topless female floats by, a depraved snicker upon her face. Something passes between us, a look of perfect understanding. We are alike, two predators stalking these ignorant cattle. My eyes linger upon her small breasts, and at once I wonder how they would look, sliced from her body and hanging on my apartment wall, beside the eyeless heads and the non-pulsating hearts. All dripping with blood and wonderful.
For a moment we are parted by the crowd and I wander aimlessly. Then I see her again. Her magnificent breasts are now streaked with carmine and she is holding the severed head of another female in her hand, swinging it to and fro as she walks with a wicked grimace upon her face, blood falling in tiny droplets from the decapitated object. The dead one's hair is long and blonde, her eyes as cold as winter, her skin as pale as snow. I guess this is some pre-planned vengeance attack, something to do with a stolen lover perhaps. It happens all the time these days, now that love is once more in fashion and jealousy the accessory of choice.
I walk up to the woman and plunge my knife into her stomach, twisting the blade viciously, working it up and down, making her navel into an altogether more prominent hole. She howls with pain and the head crashes to the ground as her steaming guts are exposed, all bloody and fabulous. They splash to the floor, a torrential bloodfall, and I laugh. And just as she joins her stinking entrails, collapsing into a mangled heap of dying flesh and bone, she mumbles one final word, the last before her soul takes wing.
'Bliss.'
I stand for a moment gloating over my kill. Her breasts, I must have them. I kneel down and reach out for those wondrous globes, but before I can claim my trophy there is the sound of an explosion and a sudden rush of hot air. The woman's body is literally blown apart, the pieces flying in all directions, showering me with blood and slivers of bone. I look up and see a man holding a blaster, a sardonic smile upon his lips.
A wave of red rage washes over me and I am filled with hatred of this stranger who has robbed me of what is rightfully mine. I want to tear him apart with my bare hands, to rend his flesh with my teeth and nails, to crack open his skull and devour the still living brain. Snarling I charge at him, my knife aimed at his heart. He watches me come, his smile steady. Slowly he raises the blaster and points it at me. I know that I am not going to make it, that he will kill me. I gaze into his eyes and burn his face into my memory, taking comfort in the knowledge that someday we will meet again, and when we do I will wreak a vengeance on him that will be terrible even by the standards of the mall. He waits until I am within striking distance before he pulls the trigger. I see a flash of light and hear the sound of an explosion. My body is hurled through the air and my soul departs, flying back to the welcoming arms of GOD.
And then I am enfleshed once more, lying on the bed in my apartment in Dis, the residential quarter of the city. Ruefully I gaze up at the empty spot on the wall where, had the circumstances been otherwise, I would have placed those wonderful breasts. I close my eyes and imagine playing with them, my fingers tracing their shape in the dark, my lips sucking on those cold nipples. Sighing I stroke my cock and finger my anus. There will be other times. If I have learned anything from my visits to the mall, it is that pleasure is never foregone, only delayed.
'Back early.'
I look up to see my mother standing in the doorway, her naked body coated with freshly strewn blood, which she wears proudly, her badge of glory. Lilith has had better hunting than I. I feel sad, and seeing the expression on my face she frowns.
'The most marvellous breasts,' I say, and she understands at once. The two of us were bonded in the womb. My every thought is but a pale reflection from the labyrinthine corridors of her mind.
'Perhaps this will cheer you up,' she says, and from between her legs she produces a severed penis, her own precious trophy which she offers to me. On a whim Lilith had her body altered. Set deep in her flesh are razor sharp vagina dentata. Once she has been stimulated past a certain point these teeth will bite down on her partner's penis unless orgasm is attained immediately. It is my proud boast that I am the only man who has never failed to satisfy her.
She smears blood on my chest and belly, rubs the severed organ against my own proud cock, delighting me with the slick feel of it. I roll over on my stomach and she straddles me, inserting a finger deep in my anus and teasing my prostrate. I sigh with pleasure.
There is movement in a corner of the room, shadows coalescing to form a human figure.
'So, Lucifer, this is how you spend your time.'
I recognise the voice, that deep baritone, so rich and full of authority. I look up and see him standing by the side of the bed, his massive frame towering over us, the one who I respect and admire above all others, my...
'Master.'
He is dressed from head to toe in shiny black leather, only his eyes visible, gleaming with the malevolence that is his defining characteristic. He picks up my mother in his hands as if she was nothing more than a leaf and places her at his feet. Laughing she opens her mouth to receive his cock, but instead he produces a long metal spike and pushes her head onto the tip. The steel penetrates instantly, emerging from the back of her skull coated in blood and brain. Effortlessly my Master slides her corpse free from the spike and throws it into the corner, leaving her for the nanobugs that will devour and recycle the components of her body, as they do all organic material. He offers me the spike. Obediently I extend my tongue and lick the blood, pleased by its taste.
'And what have you been doing, little one?'
'Killing,' I tell him, not wishing to let my Master know of my failure to get the woman's breasts, but of course my Master knows everything.
He sneers, and I feel myself wilt before the contempt so obvious in every line of his bearing.
'How many have you killed? A thousand? Ten thousand? And still you do not understand that it means nothing.'
'I am evil,' I cry, my heart filled with despair. How I long to make him love me, to commit some great atrocity that will win his respect.
'Evil.' He laughs. 'None of you people truly know what evil is, not even you who I trained to be my disciple. You play games and delude yourselves that they mean something.'
'Then teach me Master. Show me what evil truly is.'
He gestures at the video screen that fills one wall of my room, and instantly it is alive with colour and movement. I lean forward, all my concentration intent on the swirling images. I want to learn.
A cat and a mouse. I recognise these creatures from the old times; I have seen them before in the history tapes. The cat chases the mouse, and then there is an explosion and the cat stands there, his skin black and smoke curling from the top of his head. Slowly he slides to the ground. And then the cat is moving again, racing after the mouse with renewed vigour, getting ever closer, but never managing to catch his prey. The mouse runs straight at a brick wall, veering off to the side at the last possible moment. The cat slams into the wall, with a force that makes the ground shake. He hangs there for a moment and then his body slides free. His features are pressed flat, lifeless. I laugh so hard that it brings tears to my eyes.
'Cartoons,' says my Master, the scorn in his voice terrible to hear. 'Cartoons, that is all you people are.'
He points at the screen, where the cat is now sinking to the bottom of a lake with a metal anvil attached to his legs, air bubbles trailing in his wake.
'You commit murder and mayhem on a daily basis. Crimes that would have appalled your ancestors are a matter of routine to you. But none of it means anything, because at the end of the day GOD puts you all back in new bodies, ready to once more go about your idle pursuits. The suffering, the murders, the rapes and the blood-letting, none of it matters because none of it is real. There is no permanence to it. Your actions have no lasting consequences, and that is why you can never truly be evil, why you are like those cartoons.'
I stare at my Master aghast, horrified by what he is saying although I do not really understand him.
'But GOD...' I struggle to find the right words to express what I am feeling.
'It is GOD who prevents you being evil, who renders all of your actions meaningless through his constant intervention in your lives. In this world there is only one act that can have any real meaning. If you truly want to be evil then you must kill GOD.'
'Kill GOD,' I mutter, hardly daring to believe what I have just heard. Is such a thing possible?
'It is the ultimate crime, the act for which I have groomed you, the only way in which you can ever realise your true potential.'
I look at my Master, stare deep into his eyes, studying him for some sign that this is all a joke, a test of my devotion to him, but his features are immobile and I can tell nothing from them.
'I cannot do it,' I tell him. 'It is just too incredible to think of such a thing. Too preposterous to even consider.'
'Then you will never be evil. You will remain a cartoon.' His voice invests that single phrase with a contempt beyond imagination, and I cower beneath his gaze.
Then there is a flash of light and he is gone.
I slide from the bed and crawl over to Lilith, my limbs empty of strength, my spirit stripped of will.
'Mother, please help me.'
I brush aside the nanobugs that have already begun to feast on the raw material of her body and cradle her in my arms. I shower kisses on her forehead, probe the ragged edges of her death wound with the tip of my tongue, taking comfort from the contact. Her flesh is still warm and stirs longing in my own, as ever. I caress her breasts, bite the nipples until they bleed, rub my erection up against her, then lower her onto her back and part her legs, filled with renewed purpose.
'Cartoon.'
The word reverberates from the walls of my room and an image of a cat chasing a mouse fills my head. I push my mother's body away. I am made pathetic in my own eyes, unworthy of her and of my Master's love. All my pretensions to evil are nothing. I am a small thing, insignificant, undeserving of attention. A cartoon, fit only to amuse my betters.

I am here once more. The mall is crammed with people, all intent on glutting themselves with excess, indulging in each and every wanton pleasure that their fertile minds can devise. I see flesh all around, exposed and slick with sweat, bodies heaving in cluster fucks, bleeding from a thousand orifices. Raucous music reverberates, banging in my ears from every direction. I do not recognise any of it. This is not one of my pleasures. I shut it out, not wanting to listen to such inane trash. I am here for one thing only.
I walk through the crowd with a new determination, filled with a new sense of purpose, an awareness of my own unique identity. I am evil, and I live to kill, to wreak havoc and destruction. I fear no-one but the Master, my mercurial tutor, the one who taught me all that I know, all the black deeds in which I have come to delight. I live only to prove myself worthy of him, to show myself a true disciple. And I care for no-one save Lilith, the woman from whose womb I was flung all those many years ago, the lover with whom I have shared everything, all the delights that the city has to offer - the killing, the blood, the sex.
This is the place. All the times I have visited this parlour of delights. The queue I expect. It stretches off into the night, so long that I cannot even recognise where it finishes. As I search I spot a group of huddled figures slumped against a wall, and from their dull eyes and the jerky movements of their bodies I realise that they are Bluetips, individuals who have become addicted to this orgasm inducing drug and surrendered completely to the raptures that it bestows.
At last I come upon the end of the queue and take my place in line. I hear frenzied jeers, and looking around I notice two semi-naked forms engaged in a furious act of penetrative sex. Consumers of lust. One of them is male, but I am unable to determine the gender of the other. The man has used a knife to cut a hole in his partner's side and is shagging the gaping wound while onlookers applaud his ingenuity. Such scenes are common within the environs of the Emo Palace.
Thrill-seekers gather here to acquire love, jealousy, hate, lust, madness, all those vital emotions that so enrich our lives and transform even our tiniest peccadilloes into towering grand passions. Eventually I near the front of this enormous queue, and am able to witness the goings-on at first hand through the plastic windows.
Every night is a busy night at the Emo Palace; the demand for what it can supply is constant. There are several hundred seats, arranged row upon row, with eager seekers after emotion firmly planted in each, and scores of boy-girl dolls dressed in flimsy attire moving among them, catering to their every desire. I watch one avid soul who remains silent and motionless in his chair as an attendant produces a huge, lethal-looking syringe filled with a creamy, glutinous liquid, the distillation that is his emotion of choice. The attendant plunges the needle deep into the back of his skull, injecting the contents directly into the response centres of his brain. He smiles as the emotion begins to affect him. Idly I wonder what he is experiencing; love, hate, jealousy, despair, or one of the new designer emotions which are brewed in cellars deep below the Emo Palace, feelings for which as yet we have no name.
And now it is my turn. A female attendant takes me by the hand and leads me to an empty chair. Most of the attendants are dolls, but a few humans choose to work in establishments like the Emo Palace, satisfying some perverse desire for servitude. I have encountered this woman before. Her name is Felicia and she possesses a demeanour of icy coldness, eschewing the use of those very elixirs it is her function to administer to others. Felicia does not speak, except to inquire as to the nature of my requirements. She is not inclined to indulge in idle talk. She is dressed in blue fetish-wear that leaves all her bodily orifices open to inspection, and displays lipstick of a gangrenous hue upon the bleached white skin of her face. I can smell the exotic scent she exudes above the thick stench of night smoke that drifts in from the outside. She is beautiful and alluring.
I recall the occasion when one seeker after emotion, having just acquired a plentiful dosage of lust, could not control his desire for her tainted flesh. He began to wildly ravish her as soon as he rose from the comfort of the chair, a violation of the unspoken rules that apply within the confines of the Emo Palace, and she endured this assault with a stoic indifference. Then, as soon as the man had consummated his act, Felicia took hold of his extended penis, tugging and twisting with a preternatural strength until it tore free of his groin. She tossed it into the midst of the crowd of delighted onlookers, amid cries of pain and horror from the pitiful victim. And all the while she laughed, the sound wonderful to my ears.
It takes less than a minute for me to acquire the necessary emotion of hate, a dosage so strong that it will increase tenfold the hatred that already burns in my raging soul and provide the stimulus for me to commit the ultimate act of evil, the murder of GOD himself. The injection is painless, and as Felicia supplies me with the required emotion I dream of pleasant things - killing, mutilation, violent sex, all the delights that my dear Master has taught me to cherish.
I leave the Emo Palace, my head aflame with this wondrous feeling of hate, filling me with loathing for everyone that I see. I hunger for blood as I step through the whirl of nameless, insipid faces. The emotion is so powerful; I could kill a thousand men and still not begin to slake the thirst for blood that burns in my breast.
This hate finds an outlet when I spy a familiar face in the crowd, an execrable set of features that I have recently etched into my memory. It is the accursed fiend who blasted my body into tiny pieces and deprived me of the woman's breasts, that trophy I had so set my heart on. The yearning for revenge mingles with the hate curdling in my brain, creating a deadly concoction that would have the people on the street fleeing in terror if they but knew.
I howl with pure rage, so loud that heads turn all around us. The man see me but before he can react I am upon him, snatching the lethal blaster from his hand, yanking it free and almost taking his arm with it. I toss the blaster into the crowd, hoping that some onlooker will grab it up and wreak a terrible revenge of their own. I have no need of such toys. The raw emotion coursing through my veins reinforces my own great strength, turning me into an implacable engine of destruction. The man does not look so courageous now that he is without a weapon. His eyes fear me, and I begin to laugh as I reach out for him. I grip his head, revelling in the hardness of the bone beneath the flesh, and pull as my bare foot pushes into his chest. In seconds I wrench his head free with a loud popping sound. Another trophy! Vengeance has never felt so sweet. I cram my clenched fist into the opening in his neck and hold the bloody prize aloft as the people cheer and laugh all around me. I want lots of killing to be enjoyed tonight. Let the whole world go down in death and destruction. The hatred is so strong. I can feel it stirring my whole body, permeating every fibre of my being, seeping out through my pores and infecting others.
I stroll through the mall holding the head in my left hand, a visible token of my prowess, and I think of the ultimate kill which will soon be within my grasp, the transcendental act of evil incarnate, the murder of GOD himself. Finally I will prove myself worthy of my Master's respect, deserving to be treated as his equal.
'Lucifer.'
I hear him calling my name and turn to see him standing next to me, as if he has been waiting nearby, needing only my longing to summon him to my side.
'I have killed my enemy,' I say and hold the severed head up for his approval.
My Master frowns and knocks it from me with a swing of his hand. The head falls in the gutter and rolls away, blood spattering behind it.
'Still you are playing silly games, indulging in pursuits not worthy of one who I groomed personally in the arts of evil.'
'I will show you that I am evil,' I say, filled with my new sense of purpose, rage burning in my soul. 'I will kill GOD.'
My Master looks at me, his eyes stripping away the layers of my identity and gazing on the essential core. He smiles, and I bask in the warm glow of his approbation. It is all that I have ever hungered for.
'Take my hand.'
I reach out and allow my hand to be engulfed by his leather gauntleted fist. The world goes hazy and a sickening sensation of vertigo clutches at my vitals, as if I am falling from a great height. I close my eyes until the feeling has passed.
When I open them I am standing in a place that I have never seen before, although I thought that I was familiar with every corner of the city. It is a vast area, filled with light. I look up, but the ceiling is hid from view by hundreds of winged figures suspended in a web, legions of cherubim and seraphim with smiling faces. Each of them is masturbating frantically, sending sperm falling down like warm, viscous rain. It coats my body, though my Master is untouched. Below our feet is a metal grid, through which the white fluid drips.
'What is this place?'
'We are below the Emo Palace,' says my Master. 'This is the laboratory in which the emotions that fuel you and all the others are distilled. Originally it was built to supply you with consciousness expanding drugs, but as your needs changed with the passage of time so too did its function.'
'The serum that they inject us with is angel sperm?'
My Master laughs. He gestures at the hanging angels, sweeps his arm round the entire chamber.
'None of this is real. It's all an illusion, holograms designed by the creators of this place to disguise a far more prosaic reality. Your ancestors had a sense of humour that you are sadly lacking.'
I shrug. I do not understand any of this. The sperm has coated my body. I luxuriate in the warmth of it. My penis has sprung erect and I toy with it, tempted to add my own libation to this delightful distillation, but my Master is moving away, walking with a grim determination, and not wishing to be left behind in this strange place I hurry to follow him.
Ahead of us is a metal wall and a door, over the top of which are written the words GRAND ORGANISING DEVICE.
'More of their humour,' says my Master. 'Prepare to meet your GOD.'
My Master passes his hand across a censor in the wall and the door slides open. He stands aside to allow me to go first. I cross the metal threshold. Beyond is a small room, brightly lit, the walls lined with strange machinery, all aglow and humming quietly as it goes about its secret purpose. Lying on a slab in the middle of the room is a naked woman, beautiful beyond all belief.
'This is GOD?'
Loathing fills my soul and I have to restrain myself from falling on her body and tearing it apart with my bare hands.
'The machine's creator,' replies my Master and laughs. 'Not GOD, but the mother of GOD. A rather vain and idealised likeness.'
'The mother of GOD,' I repeat, my voice filled with awe.
I reach out to touch her breasts, wondering how they would look on my wall, but my hands pass right through her flesh.
'It's only another hologram,' says my Master, his eyes full of amusement.
He moves over to the wall and stands before a bank of machinery, gesturing for me to join him.
'To kill GOD all you need do is pull this lever here.'
I smile, not believing that it will require so little effort, this ultimate act of evil. Without hesitation I grasp the lever he has indicated in my hand and pull it toward me. Instantly the lights go out and the room is plunged into darkness; the omnipresent hum of machinery ceases and the ground beneath our feet begins to tremble.
My Master grabs me by the hand. I start to spin round and round. I believe that for a minute I pass out.
When I open my eyes I am once again in the familiar surroundings of the mall, but everything is changed, different. The ground is still trembling and I can smell smoke on the breeze. People are running about and screaming, but there is a new tone in their voices, a quaver that I tentatively identify as genuine fear. For the first time something unknown has entered the lives of the city's residents and they no longer know what to expect. On the ground in front of us is slumped the lifeless form of a doll, one of the mechanical servitors that tend to the city's infrastructure and serve our needs. Here and there are piles of dead insects, the nanobugs that for as long as anyone can remember have come to recycle the raw stuff of our bodies.
People are staring upwards, pointing and shouting at each other. I turn my head up to see what is responsible for their dismay. Instead of the white roof of the force dome that encloses the city there is blue sky. With a sickening vertiginous lurch in my stomach I turn aside. I cannot bear to look at such a thing. I turn to my Master, eyes imploring.
'What is happening? What have I done?'
'You have killed GOD. And by so doing you have saved the human race from its evil genius.'
'Evil genius.' I repeat the words in a stupor.
My Master laughs at my all too obvious confusion, but there is nothing unkind in the sound. His eyes are smiling, and for the first time that I can remember there seems to be genuine warmth in those uncanny orbs, the affection I have always craved from him. And then he flickers in and out of existence, is gone for a moment and then back again.
'My time is nearly at an end,' he tells me, his voice kindlier and softer than usual.
He gestures for us both to sit and we lower our bodies to the ground.
'I must tell you certain things, things that you must learn if you are to survive in the difficult days that lie ahead.'
I nod and wait patiently for him to begin.
'Once upon a time there were billions of human beings. Their numbers covered the whole earth. And then there was a terrible war, which turned this beautiful planet into a radioactive wasteland and wiped out the whole race of man, except for a small group of scientists. Though few in number they had virtually limitless resources at their disposal. They created the city, a sealed environment where mankind could survive for millennia until the earth had healed from its wounds and was once again safe for their kind. They took genetic stock that had not been contaminated by radiation and used it to create a race of perfect human beings, men and women who would not be prey to all the diseases and ills of the old world. And they created the cloning technique so that you would never know true death. Finally they created GOD, a fully autonomous machine, an artificial intelligence that would rule over this world and ensure that its people lived happily ever after. And with that their work was done and they were able to rest, having atoned for their past crimes.
'Hundreds of years passed, and with time the people of the city forgot their past and lost all sense of purpose. Their lives became an endless quest for meaningless pleasure, a search for relief from the tedium of their existence. Able to do whatever they wished, without fear of lasting consequences, they choose to murder, to kill and to slay for idle amusement.
'GOD saw what was happening, that the race was degenerating and had lost the ability to feel genuine emotion, instead coming to rely on the ersatz substitute supplied in establishments like the Emo Palace, and would eventually die out from sheer boredom, for lack of any real purpose. And he realised that it was his own existence that had created this impasse; that he had become a stumbling block to those left in his care, and if they were to be saved they would have to rid themselves of his influence. But GOD's programming prevented him from either terminating himself or dismantling the cloning apparatus. And so he created an autonomous sub-program, one whose sole purpose was to persuade a human being to kill GOD.'
I looked at him in shock. 'You?'
My Master nods. 'Your people are free of GOD, free to once again choose your own path, to realise your full potential, for good or evil.'
'Free.' I repeat the word; savour the feel of it on my tongue. I do not understand what my Master is trying to tell me. I have always been free.
'There is one thing you must understand,' says my Master, as if he can read my mind, see the puzzlement there.
'Now that GOD is no more the cloning apparatus will no longer function. In future when people are killed they will remain dead. All of your actions will now have lasting consequences, and so you must choose how you act wisely. For the first time you can truly be evil, but it might be better for you if you were to learn to be good.'
'Evil. Good.' I mull over the words, finding little to differentiate between them.
'Goodbye Lucifer.'
My Master flickers out of existence for the last time, but I barely notice him leave. I sit on the ground and think about all that he has told me, reflecting on the nature of good and evil, while the sky spirals overhead and the light of day turns to night. The mall continues with its life, but the people give me a wide berth, as if they can sense that I am involved in some grand purpose far beyond their own concerns and must not be disturbed.
'Lucifer.'
Finally, after many hours, a voice breaks in on my reverie, a most sweet and familiar voice. I look up and see Lilith walking towards me.
'Mother!'
I stumble to my feet and rush into her arms. We embrace and weep. And then my enemy steps out of the crowd, the man who denied me the woman's breasts what seems like a lifetime ago. His features are twisted into a mask of hatred and his hand is raised above Lilith's back, fingers curled round the handle of a machete.
'NO!!!!!!!!!'