AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Shouldn’t you be on your way somewhere?”
Rizoel is horrified at seeing an Abomination in the garden. One step. Two steps. He doesn’t move. I think he was expecting me to turn into a pillar of salt. I turn, and when he doesn’t move, I drag my Gladius through the rosebushes. They burst into flame.
He takes a couple of steps back, shaking his head. “You are such an asshole.”
“Don’t forget our deal. By the way, how do I get to Hell in here?”
The look of disgust fades as his lips draw up into a big Cheshire-cat smile.
“It’s easy. Exactly the way the human part of you did it the first time.”
Before I get a word out, Rizoel spreads his wings and throws himself into the ridiculously bright blue sky.
I take a look around the garden. It’s just a fucking garden. Rizoel was too gleeful to just be mocking me. He was giving me a clue. Hell is in here somewhere.
I stroll around the garden like a tourist in the kind of flower prison that florists dream about. After a while all the plants look the same to me. Leaves. Got it. Stems and flowers. Got it. Bark and fruit. Got it. I’m Steve McQueen and the Blob is after me, only it’s made of dandelions and begonias.
Where is Hell in here? I stomp through the rosebushes and under pine trees. Climb up snaky vines and dig up screaming mandrakes. That was a bad idea. I thought they might be carrots. I’m getting hungry.
There’s nothing here. No doors. No rabbit holes. No hoodoo portals or sci-fi transporters. I’m stuck in a feed-store calendar and I’m getting just a little pissed off.
Fuck you, angel, and everyone who’s been spewing cryptic crap at me. The way you did the first time. “Be a rock.” “Click your heels three times and think of flying monkeys.” The next thing that quotes me a fortune cookie gets turned into a novelty paperweight.
Time is passing. Tick tock. Tick tock.
There’s nothing left to do. Hey, Heaven. I let your angel live, but you don’t understand the concept of cutting someone slack, huh? Fine by me. When this is over, just remember that you set the rules. Not me.
There’s only one thing to do with a garden if it won’t give you what you want. Get rid of it.
I drag the flaming Gladius along the ground as I stroll through the winding path that curves from the entrance through the orchards, the redwoods, the pines, the thorny jungle foliage, and the crayon-colored flower beds, cutting a flaming red scar behind me. God must have yanked all the animals out of here when he gave Adam and Eve the boot. Good. The life of one flea-bitten squirrel means more than one inch of this pussy-willow paradise.
Fuck this place and fuck your games. This is where you first failed us. You gave us minds and told us not to think. You gave us curiosity and put a booby-trapped tree right in front of us. You gave us sex and told us not to do it. You played three-c">
Whatever your reasons, you won’t have Paisley Park much longer. All you gave us here was daisies and fairy tales and you acted like that was enough. How were we supposed to resist evil when you didn’t even tell us about it? You wanted us innocent. But when Lucifer found a way around your rules and we weren’t innocent anymore, you blamed us and tossed us out into the wasteland like garbage.
You lounge upstairs on your golden throne like you’re the greatest thing since “Johnny Be Good,” but to me you’re just another deadbeat dad.
I hope you can smell Eden burning. I hope you choke on it.
Alice wasn’t a spy. She wasn’t part of the big lie. She was real and she was mine.
Eden is an inferno. Some of it went up so fast the foliage is already gone. I kick through the cinders, looking for a way Downtown, but I don’t find anything. Stay calm. This is important. It’s worth waiting for.
I follow the course of the fire as it eats up the plants. I kick through the dirt behind every burned hedge and blackened bush. I don’t find anything. There’s nothing here.
I go to the big tree at the center of the garden. The one that started all the trouble. It’s the only thing that hasn’t burned. I’ve been saving it for last. I reach up to the lowest branch and snap off an apple. Shine it against my coat and bite into it.
It’s good. It’s sweet and juicy, but it’s not worth losing paradise over. For that, you’d think the man upstairs would make the fruit taste like the greatest thing ever. Your tongue should have an orgasm and drunk-dial old girlfriends to tell them about it. Still, the juice is refreshing. It clears the smoke and sand from my throat. I toss the core into the fire and reach for another apple but can’t reach one. They’re all on the higher branches. I swing up the Gladius and slice off a limb. The wood collapses when I pull off the apple. I push at the cracked bark with the toe of my boot. The branch is hollow. I cut another branch. It’s hollow, too. I hack off more. They’re all the same. The branches are like props in a high school play. The tree is a fake.
I concentrate and it calms the angel in my head. He’s been quiet since we entered Eden, and now that he’s seen what I’ve seen, for once he’s on my side.
I swing up the Gladius, concentrating. It burns bigger and hotter than it’s ever burned. The tree trunk is big. I have to start the cut way back, like I’m batting in the World Series. I swing the blade and it goes through the tree like a bullet through a chocolate sundae. The tree creaks, cracks, and falls over.
I was right. Just like the branches, the tree is hollow. Inside, the two halves of the tree are different. Inside the top d side thehalf is a winding silver staircase that winds up to Heaven. In the stump is what looks like a grimy diamond-plate-metal staircase going into an industrial subbasement.
The angel told the truth. I get to Hell the way we did the first time. At the tree. You could have just said that, Tweety Bird. Then I wouldn’t have had to burn Dad’s prize marigolds. But I probably would have anyway.
I climb into the stump and walk down the rusty stairs.
