Angels Born of Hell and Fire

[Chapter Eight]

[Jasper’s point of view]

My lungs burned, my body ached, my face was hot, but it didn’t matter. Nothing did. An emptiness consumed me. Fatigue weighed down my body. A splitting headache had accompanied the compulsive crying that had replaced sleeping. I was aware that my body was in a downward slope of self-destruction, but I didn’t care.

I didn’t care that I was sitting in a cold mixture of mud and snow. I didn’t care that my fingers had gone numb from the wind. I didn’t care that my tears were replaced by a thin layer of ice on my cheeks.

Although my knees complained from their position under me, I ignored them. The sky was growing dark, meaning it had been hours since the ushers had buried him. I knew I should move to my room, but I just wanted to sit there; in front of the freshly dug grave that cradled the body of my first love.

I wanted to wait there until my Peter had returned to me. I wanted to remain motionless until death had embraced me as well. I wanted to bask in his sunny smile once more as he held me close and called me his. If I lay down on this bed of churned soil would it pull me in? Would it consume me and take me down to where he was?

Fresh tears rolled down my face once more. I looked down at Peter’s jacket that pooled in my lap. Snow had collected on it. I clutched it to my chest and buried my face into it. I inhaled the faint sent of my beloved. His distinct smell of manliness comforted my soul, but did not replace my anguish. One day even that scent would fade, and be gone forever, just like he was…

I felt a hand lightly grasp my shoulder. I turned to see a red-nosed Gabriel. In my sorrow, I hadn’t realized that the boy had remained with me during my mourning. I had made him suffer the elements with me as I mourned. How selfish I was being.

I was truly a selfish girl, moping around like a ghost. There were people waiting for me weren’t there?

Yet what did I care for the opinions of other people? No one else mattered, nothing else mattered. My field of vision had been filled with the sun, and now I was blinded, stumbling around in darkness. How could I possibly look ahead of me when all that was worthwhile, all that I loved, was already in the past? If I looked away then they would disappear. He would be gone from the last sanctuary in which I held him.

“Jasper… it’s time to go inside,” Gabriel’s voice was rough and cracked from its neglect.

Taking a calming breath, I steadied myself. It felt like inhaling flaming glass. Before continuing on wobbly feet, I folded and placed Peter’s jacket under his gravestone. Gabriel’s hand on my arm did little to warm my frozen skin.

I was an idiot. How naïve I was to think that I could have a normal love life like any other girl?

I wasn’t normal. I wasn’t any girl. Maybe at one point I was, or at least I thought I was. But everything was different now wasn’t it? I had a job to do, I had a mission. I had eyes looking towards me for direction, I couldn’t indulge like this for forever could I? Already I had spent far too much time spirally out of control. It was unacceptable really. I was letting people down already.
But I didn’t even care.

I should care. It should matter.

Maybe I couldn’t even care anymore. Surely I was broken.

Yes I am broken. I could no longer function properly.

My heart had been crushed. How could I ever care about anything ever again without a heart? No, impossible. Never again. Everything I cared about had been taken away. Gone.

It wasn’t necessary for my heart to be whole, so world had broken it. No one cared. The men who had ordered those soldiers into our valley did not care that Peter was gone. They didn’t even know his name; to them he had been just another body.

A fire of rage begun to boil in my belly. White hot heat seeped into limbs that had not felt warmth in days, not since the last time I had felt his arms around me.

In my mind I painted vivid images of men with crooked smiles and evil eyes. It was their fault that Peter was gone. It was them who had done this to me. They had destroyed me, leaving this hollow shell that was unable to feel anything beyond sorrow and rage. This form, this body, this mind, was all the creation of those evil men. For I was born to destroy them.

The soft warmth of my living quarters enveloped me. In the full length mirror along the wall I stared at my black clad form- the image of mourning. I tore the veil from my head, the pins yanking out hair as they left.

Just who was I?

Was I this? Was I this thin wisp of a girl who stared at me with dead eyes?

Dead. A fitting image.

I might as well be dead, for all that was left. A walking corpse.

Fingers touched the cold image reflected at me. This was what I was now? Could that be possible? This person was far too whole to be me, for I was broken.

Pushing through a thin layer of resistance until it shatters, fragments cracked under my knuckles, thousands of knives tore into the flesh of my hand hand, millions of glittering pieces fell to the floor like stars. I stared down at the hundreds of tiny me’s, broken and incomplete. Blood slithered down my fingers from cuts that I didn’t even feel. Droplets of vermillion painted the reflective shards at my feet, covering the images of my form in their hue. The macabre face watching me from the floor held no emotion, no light nor darkness. Even the sorrow, that all-consuming abyss, had dulled, becoming an ache in my chest.

Now the glass showed my true form. It no longer lied to me. I was a bloody piece of something that was once whole.

Who was I?

I was Empress Calamity.

I was destined to rule over the world and its inhabitants. I was destined for greatness. I was who they made me to be. I was the aftermath of a terrible death.

I was the monster that rose from their greed too slaughter them all.

[End: Part Two Chapter Eight]