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This is a little fic-bit, set in an Interesting Times version, if not the real one. :) It's about my interpretation of Harrishee, Demon of Sensationalism, and ends on a rather depressing note. Vessel-suicide thoughts implication, if you're sensitive to that sort of thing.
When the lights went out, the papers were still there. When the fancy presses died, when the computers that arranged the layout no longer booted, when the radio waves and television screens were silent, the papers were still there. Harrishee was still there, working under candlelight, teaching the old skills with snapped phrases and impatient curses. With hand presses unearthed from the bowels of the archives, those staff who stayed learned to set type and pour ink under her feverish instruction. Not all of them stayed; even with her resonance, she lost over half the humans when the Last Battle spilled like storm clouds across the New York sky, including the editor. But she kept the dedicated ones, the ones for whom nothing mattered but the story, and they worked in the wee hours of the night, churning out copy for dawn edition.
The angels might claim that it was /bad/ copy, but that was narrow-minded. With all the mechanical assistance needed, Harrishee hadn't had anyone to spare for actual /reporting/, but she knew well enough the forces battling in the world, and bits and pieces of the truth came out as she dictated stories to one harried assistant after another. It had all of her Word in it, in every phrase and headline, but for once, there wasn't much she could do to embellish the outrageousness of the Truth. The details of deaths and streetnames might be wrong, but when the paper hit the streets, the citizens of New York knew that Heaven and Hell had come to town.
And, of course, Heaven soon came to the news office. Malakim with black wings spread and swords blazing with holy fire, using their resonance to ferret out the children of Hell. She retreated to a back office with her Servant, a young woman of reasonably similar build, and when the female Malakite burst in, shoved the girl at the angel, screamed with all her resonance behind it, "She's a demon!" and ran, the terrified screams and Disturbance of human death rising behind her. The crack of dissonance on her soul made her stumble in her flight, but not fall. It was better than soul death, after all, and once Hell won and she could talk to the Boss, she could get it cleared away.
She'd reached the bus station, her shoes dangling from her hands and her vintage business suit stained with water from the busted lines, when her Word wrenched inside of her.
Sensationalism, the story's the thing, bigger, better, headlines, HEADLINES, HEADL---
silence. Emptiness.
It was as if Limbo had crawled inside her soul. She had screamed denial at the sky, reaching for Sensationalism, for Media, even for /Factions/, and finding only ashes and dust. There were a lot of people screaming around her, and she had wondered how many were like her, demons who suddenly found their connection to all that they were, shattered beyond recovery.
She might have even simply stood there and screamed until the Malakim came, then begged to follow her beloved Word into death, if not, ironically enough, for the selfless kindness of strangers. A young couple, pausing in their own flight to help the well-dressed woman with the panic attack, seeing that she staggered her way into the station, giving her money for a ticket on the last bus that had a seat.
And now, as the lights came back up, and world moved on, Harrishee knew that Hell had to be defeated. The radio came back, with different voices, no one she knew. The tiny TV at the front of the bus showed faces that never knew the Media, and associates' faces were pasted up for a variety of crimes, quietly caught, and efficiently disappeared. Harrishee moved from one bus to another, her destination random, tickets and reservations being something that happened to other people. She didn't bother trying to contact demons or Hellsworn...it was every man for himself.
Two weeks after the end of the world, she was on another bus, to another nameless town. Her yellow pad rested on the tattered hose covering her knees. Her pen scribbled aimlessly over the paper, occassionally starting a sentence, but never finishing one. On the empty seat beside her rested a Saturday Night Special, a crappy little gun picked out in a layover on a station outside of Chicago. She'd only bought one bullet.
But then, when they found her, she'd only need one.
When the lights went out, the papers were still there. When the fancy presses died, when the computers that arranged the layout no longer booted, when the radio waves and television screens were silent, the papers were still there. Harrishee was still there, working under candlelight, teaching the old skills with snapped phrases and impatient curses. With hand presses unearthed from the bowels of the archives, those staff who stayed learned to set type and pour ink under her feverish instruction. Not all of them stayed; even with her resonance, she lost over half the humans when the Last Battle spilled like storm clouds across the New York sky, including the editor. But she kept the dedicated ones, the ones for whom nothing mattered but the story, and they worked in the wee hours of the night, churning out copy for dawn edition.
The angels might claim that it was /bad/ copy, but that was narrow-minded. With all the mechanical assistance needed, Harrishee hadn't had anyone to spare for actual /reporting/, but she knew well enough the forces battling in the world, and bits and pieces of the truth came out as she dictated stories to one harried assistant after another. It had all of her Word in it, in every phrase and headline, but for once, there wasn't much she could do to embellish the outrageousness of the Truth. The details of deaths and streetnames might be wrong, but when the paper hit the streets, the citizens of New York knew that Heaven and Hell had come to town.
And, of course, Heaven soon came to the news office. Malakim with black wings spread and swords blazing with holy fire, using their resonance to ferret out the children of Hell. She retreated to a back office with her Servant, a young woman of reasonably similar build, and when the female Malakite burst in, shoved the girl at the angel, screamed with all her resonance behind it, "She's a demon!" and ran, the terrified screams and Disturbance of human death rising behind her. The crack of dissonance on her soul made her stumble in her flight, but not fall. It was better than soul death, after all, and once Hell won and she could talk to the Boss, she could get it cleared away.
She'd reached the bus station, her shoes dangling from her hands and her vintage business suit stained with water from the busted lines, when her Word wrenched inside of her.
Sensationalism, the story's the thing, bigger, better, headlines, HEADLINES, HEADL---
silence. Emptiness.
It was as if Limbo had crawled inside her soul. She had screamed denial at the sky, reaching for Sensationalism, for Media, even for /Factions/, and finding only ashes and dust. There were a lot of people screaming around her, and she had wondered how many were like her, demons who suddenly found their connection to all that they were, shattered beyond recovery.
She might have even simply stood there and screamed until the Malakim came, then begged to follow her beloved Word into death, if not, ironically enough, for the selfless kindness of strangers. A young couple, pausing in their own flight to help the well-dressed woman with the panic attack, seeing that she staggered her way into the station, giving her money for a ticket on the last bus that had a seat.
And now, as the lights came back up, and world moved on, Harrishee knew that Hell had to be defeated. The radio came back, with different voices, no one she knew. The tiny TV at the front of the bus showed faces that never knew the Media, and associates' faces were pasted up for a variety of crimes, quietly caught, and efficiently disappeared. Harrishee moved from one bus to another, her destination random, tickets and reservations being something that happened to other people. She didn't bother trying to contact demons or Hellsworn...it was every man for himself.
Two weeks after the end of the world, she was on another bus, to another nameless town. Her yellow pad rested on the tattered hose covering her knees. Her pen scribbled aimlessly over the paper, occassionally starting a sentence, but never finishing one. On the empty seat beside her rested a Saturday Night Special, a crappy little gun picked out in a layover on a station outside of Chicago. She'd only bought one bullet.
But then, when they found her, she'd only need one.
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(Hey, at least Harrishee's only threatning /Vessel/ suicide. >_> <_<)
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(The Nybbas in my head is muttering about "WASTE of a perfectly useful Serpent, blessit". Hee. If Harrishee gets captured instead of killed and he finds out, I suspect he's going to put her on his List of Servitors He Wants Back Enough To Make SURE Effort Is Invested In Them. [scritchies her] Not sure how easy/hard it'd be, or what you'd rather have happen to her, but he's likely to attempt possessiveness if he runs into her. [snickers] ^^)
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And, of course, there's at least /one/ Malakite out there who is probably looking to make boots out of her for resonating her into killing a (mostly) innocent human...
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I recall sideRP of entertainment an /age/ ago, with those two.
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I think they'll have a bit to talk about.
Hmm. *griiiiin*
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Well, Boss, I figured that since she was a Demon's patsy, it's not like the blackwings were sitting birds down for their sob stories, so she'd probably just die anyway. What better way to sacrifice your life than for another? She probably made it to Heaven. Chewing the fat with angels, stuff like that. No harm, no foul, right?
And, let's face it, it was either her /and/ me, or her /or/ me. And I like me. I'm a 'me' fan.
[/Balseraph]
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But, well, I'm in a demonic state of mind at the moment.
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Vry vry cool, hope she makes it, love to hear more from her story.
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