[In Nomine] Fic!

[pyrephox]

Michael was dying. It was just one of those things you knew…although the blood flowing from the hole in his bowels certainly helped. So did the pain, coming in white waves, pain like the roaring of the surf, occasionally receding to a dim ache, often surging to drown him in the roll and heave of the tide.

It was as he broke through one of those hot waves, into the deceptive clarity on the other side, that Michael noticed Lieutenant Spangler sitting beside him in the mud and garbage of the trench, watching. Spangler had been dead for three days, and looked it, with his skull dented and cracked, and a distant star winking through a hole in his left arm. Despite this, his mobility was greater than Michael's, as the corpse leaned forward. "Ah. I'd wondered if you'd come back."

"...am I dead?"

"Functionally, no," the corpse pouted. Its voice and expression were really nothing like Spangler's, that hideous Midwestern twang completely erased by death. "But I wouldn't worry. It's only a matter of time." It smiled, revealing shattered teeth (Spangler had a gold tooth, Michael remembered. Someone must have relieved him of it between death and now.) and reached out to pat Michael gently on his shoulder. The soldier cried out, not so much from pain as from the horror of the touch. Spangler pulled back quickly, and frowned. "Shhh."

"Are you the devil?"

"No," the corpse smiled. "My name is Saminga. You might call me one of the devil's generals. But I couldn't find a general's corpse, so the single bar will just have to do." Saminga giggled at his own cleverness, and Michael shuddered from the sound.

"Are you going to take me to Hell?"

"Yes. Incidentally, did you know there's an Archangel with your name? For a while, I was collecting humans with those sorts of names. Dress them up in the forms I remembered, talk to them for a while. They were never very good conversationalists, though. They made better pigs."

Michael started to try and wiggle away from the devil, devil general, or whatever it was, but his gut flared into red fire and all he could do was scream, and scream, and…it was gone. He blinked sandpaper eyelids at Saminga, who held one rotting finger next to Michael's abdomen. "…what did you do?"

"Killed the nerves," Saminga replied, sitting back on his haunches. "Don't worry, the pain won't return."

"...thank you."

"Don't mention it." The corpse slanted milky eyes towards Michael's face. "Really. Don't."

Michael looked away. "Why me? I didn't…I believe in God. Aren't I supposed to be saved?"

Saminga laughed. "Saved from what? Was the woman in that little village saved?" He grinned that shattered grin at Michael's involuntary jump. "Oh, yes. I know about that. You took her, and your forced her, and then you killed her, and her little whelp too, so that she could never tell." The demon didn't sound disapproving. Far from it, there was a kind of glee in its fluid-thickened voice. "Who cares, they were only Krauts, right? And you know what's fun? You got her with child, too. You were a daddy! For about a minute, until you cut her throat…" From mid air, Saminga produced a cigar with a blue ribbon wrapped around it at a jaunty angle, and tucked it into Michael's limp hand, seeming oblivious of the soldier's horrified expression. "It was a boy. Congratulations!"

"I...I..."

Saminga waved his hand, cutting off the words. "Don't bother justifying, or apologizing. Nobody who cares can hear you. God has turned his face from you. I am the only mercy left." His smile was slightly wistful. "I thought I'd come up to see you myself. You're not exactly a prolific killer, but there's something about the whole situation that appeals to me. I make Kobal explain 'irony' to me about once every decade. I figured it out centuries ago, but it really pisses him off to have to go over it in monosyllables every time he wants a boon, and keeps him from bugging me too much. Impudites are so terribly /whiny/."

At Michael's blank look, he sighed. "Hey, can I ask you a question?" He didn't wait for an agreement before plowing on, "Do you think Death is stupid?"

"Death?"

"Yes. /Death/. The whole shebang. End of it all, final countdown, kaput. Death. Is it stupid?"

Michael opened his mouth, then closed it again. He actually gave it some thought, considering his own situation, the friends and enemies he'd seen blown to bits, and even that woman, her son, and finally, the child he'd killed without even knowing it had been there. "...I think it's cruel."

"NO!" Saminga slammed a fist down in the mud next to them, the eruption of discharged dirt and blood splattering them both. "That's where they're wrong. That's where /everyone/ was always /wrong/. Lucifer was the only one who understood. Death is a mercy. I am the only thing in this world that is fair. More fair than God, you bet. God gave you bodies that decay from the moment of birth. God gave you pain, gave you a hostile world, he gave you the impulse to war and fuck and hate and betray. And then he gave you just enough of a brain to understand how very screwed you were, but not enough to figure out how to overcome it.

Now, I ask you, Mr. Hole-in-the-gut, does that seem FAIR to you?"

The corpse's face was flushed in mottled patches, those few spots where the blood could still be induced to move. What's left of his teeth ground together and splintered as Saminga's milky eyes fixed Michael with a demanding glare. "...no." Michael said, quietly. "It's not fair."

"You bet," Saminga said, his good cheer returning in an instant. "And yet, some stupid feathered buggers run around, trying to stop the inevitable. And what they don't realize is that they're only prolonging the pain, the frustration. I am not cruel! /They/ are the cruel ones. I just want everyone to rest. I just want everyone to finally lay down, let out that final breath, and just...relax. Wouldn't you like to relax?"

Michael swallowed, and didn't answer. Saminga studied him for a moment, then sighed. "Yeah. Can never get them to admit it. But, I tell you what. You've been a good listener...I don't get a chance to talk to people, I mean really talk, very often. So, a reward. You get a choice."

"...choice?"

"Yep. Choice number one. I can kill you right now. Won't hurt a bit, and I'll take you down to Hell. You won't enjoy it, and eventually you'll probably get eaten, or just chopped up a piece at a time." At Michael's headshake, he continued, "Choice two. I kill you, and I finish the job. No Hell, and everything that was you is just gone. No punishment, and no pain. Ever again. It's the kinder of the three options, I'll tell you."

"...three?" Michael struggled against the creeping cold, the weight that infected his limbs and threatened to drive him down. To Hell, apparently.

Saminga sighed again. "I can change you. You'd be dead, but you'd still be on earth. No aging. You'd work for me. You'd get to kill a lot of people. Hell, if you want to have more women, go for it, as long as you kill them afterwards. You'd be a bad guy...but then, you weren't all that good to start out with. And when some angel or gung-ho do-gooder finally tears you apart, you go back to option two, no second chances."

Michael closed his eyes, and swallowed. The darkness behind the lids seemed heavy, thicker than ever before. "Option three," he rasped, while he could still speak.

"Fine," Saminga said, as the corpse loomed over the soldier. "Consider yourself my newest agent of mercy," he whispered.

And then the darkness rolled in.

Comments

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

That's more Idiot!Belial. Idiot!Saminga tends to be the idiot child who barely understands anything going around, and certainly doesn't care, unless it's dying or dead.

This of the Demon Prince who a) noted that the Egyptians had something the demons didn't, b) discovered how to exploit it, and c) turned it into a central pillar of his rise to power.

He /is/ obsessed. He's not stupid.

[cpip.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I'd believe a Saminga that simply has failed to keep up with the times -- and could therefore still be stupid. He doesn't get how things have changed, he doesn't fully acknowledge how he's losing ground in some places to modern medicine, he still prefers crude methods of death and classifies more modern methods as "unartistic" or what have you -- but the sniggering villain never felt right. The Demon Princes as a whole deserve better than that stereotype, and so many get it.

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

It's a difficult thing for most people to make someone who is smart and evil without being a caricature, or a fluffy-bunny tortured soul who is just waiting to be shown the merits of love, kindess, and charity. So, you end up with either brutal thug DPs, or DPs who are so grey that it's hard to see why Heaven has a problem with them (Nybbas, Andre, and Lilith get that treatment a fair amount), or so forth.

[cpip.livejournal.com]

(Returning after having next to NO free time...)
I shan't argue that. Personally, I detest BOTH ideas: I can't imagine DPs who are so fluffy-grey having REACHED that point; neither can I imagine pure brutal thugs going very far -- which is why Furfur, Magog, and the like are condemned to Minor Prince status forever, IMO.

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

Furfur I'd agree with...he's practically the posterchild for glorification of mindless, brutal violence. Magog I'm less certain of, although I haven't read his writeup. I could see him, after the initial explosion of cruelty, settling down and exploring more refined and sophisticated versions.

And I think Cruelty, like Death, is one of those Words where the sheer /power/ of it can make up for the lack of subtlety of its champion.

[cpip.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'd disagree more on Furfur than Magog: Magog's been locked away for milennia and apparently has no interest in learning better; Furfur, at least, DID come up with the little scheme that won him a Princedom. Whether or not that's the extent of his cleverness (OMG I WILL MANIPULATE THE LIGHTBRINGER HAR HAR HAR) remains to be seen, but I will admit I'm not convinced he's got the potential to be the next Nybbas or Fleurity.

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

Ehhh. Hardcore really isn't a Word I can ever see as a major Princedom, while Cruelty is wider and more versitile. Magog and his Servitors really didn't have an opportunity to learn more, trapped together like starving, rabid dogs for that long.

Hardcore is just...much narrower, and all of its applications are already folded into other Prince's Words, really. Belial handles the destruction, Nybbas handles the music, and Andre handles the 'porn'. And the dissonance condition makes trying to negotiate or do politics /really/ difficult. Furfur has always struck me as one of those Princes that Lucifer created just to make things Interesting in Hell until the bigger Princes get tired of the little maggot and splatter him against a wall.

Now, Furfur, Prince of Rock and Roll might have had more potential, but Nybbas would have crushed him immediately.