Demons Sit Around Campfires Telling Scavenger Stories

Disclaimer: This was originally suppose to be part of the Ladies of the Night story arc (which you can read here for the full story: https://theprose.com/post/156984/ladies-of-the-night-complete), but I felt that the story was already long enough and so ended up cutting it out all together.

And I know that there are folks still reading the Heaven is for Real story arc, so just to make sure that there are no confusions in continuity, this story is still set during the events Ladies of the Night story, which takes place before the events of Heaven is for Real story. Alright, now that is cleared up, enjoy this read!

It was late in the night, but the parties at the Gravely house kept rolling. Slowly but surely the activities started to settle down as the children grew tired while the adults remained awake. Regan placed Slinky back inside his fish tank and skipped up to her bedroom for bedtime. Rosie and her friends played endless video games through the late night before Krystal's chauffeur arrived to escort some of the friends back to their homes. Rosie shortly made her way to her bedroom and got ready for bed too. She gave Dominic the living room couch to sleep on while he waited for his father Moloch to finish drinking with the guys. Meanwhile Lu, Mike, Scrugs, Balthazar, Ghuul, and Moloch all sat outside on the patio deck as they gathered around a lit fire pit. They watched the sparks pop in the burning kindle and the black smoke rise up into the cool night air.

"Yo, there's still plenty of beer left," Balthazar called out, carrying all the beer he could in his arms. "I say we keep drinking until we pass out. Then we wake up and drink some more. Ha ah!"

The demon tossed each bottle to each of his friends, including his new angelic friend Mike. "Cheers!" they all cried to the night before sucking down that delicious brew. They could feel their beverages already toying with their heads.

"You said you're married?" Mike asked the hulking demon next to him.

"Yup," Moloch answered in his usual manner.

"Happy marriage?"

"Oh yeah."

"And Dominic's one of your kids?"

"Number 13, out of 23."

"Busy and lucky guy."

The giant then chuckled. "Yup."

"I always wanted to get married, have kids of my own," Mike contemplated. "Sadly being an archangel consumes much of your dating life."

"Not to mention you didn't have much luck with the ladies." his brother Lu teased.

Mike fired back. "Still had better luck than you ever did."

"Tell that to the wedding ring on my finger." the devil jokingly retorted, waving around his ring hand. The demons and the one angel all laughed at each other.

Mike then spotted a rhombus shaped mark on Moloch's shoulder. "What's that on your shoulder?" he asked the demon again, pointing at the mark. "That mark there?"

Moloch glanced at his shoulder and smiled. "Old war injury."

"You were in the War too, huh?" Mike said.

The giant nodded. "Angel javelin skewered me through. Returned the favor by snapping him like a toothpick."

"Ah yeah," Mike threw off his jacket and rolled up his right shirt sleeve, exposing a long gash on his bicep. "See that? One of your kind try to get me with a dagger. I got lucky. He didn't."

"That's nothing, flyboy," Balthazar boasted. He stood up and turned around, lifting the back of his shirt up. Everyone stared at rows of healed punctures that stacked across his back. "See those? Landed on some spikes. Now that's what you call acupunture." the hooded demon laughed again.

Scrugs downed his drink quickly. He then stuck his gnarled pinky before the group. "See this?" the bat-like demon screeched.

"Your finger," Mike muttered.

"No on the finger." Scrugs insisted. Everyone inspected the finger and noticed a cut along the print. "Papercut! From this morning!" The group laughed some more. They laughed again when Scrugs accidently slipped his drink on Moloch's foot, which the giant responded by slugging his fist onto Scrugs' round head.

"You fellas want to talk scars, I got the best one," Lu sneered. He unbuttoned his shirt and showed them all a perfectly healed gash on his abdomen. "This beauty's from Baracrus. He tried to get me, but I got him first."

Lu's demonic friends laugh and applauded. They raised their bottles to their king, to which even Michael joined in on the praise. "I got you all beat." Ghuul drunkly said. He pulled apart his shirt to reveal his chest, pointing at his heart. "Vivian. She broke my heart!"

The night was filled with their loud laughter. Everyone felt like their guts were going to burst from laughing. They raised their drinks to Ghuul, declaring him the winner of this show and tell game.

Balthazar peered over at the Archangel of Justice and spotted something on his wrist. It looked like another scar which was partially covered by his sleeve. "Hey what's this one on your wrist?" he pointed it out.

Mike rolled up the other sleeve and looked at it. It was definitely another scar. This one was shaped like the crescent moon but there were rows of what looked like teeth marks that went along his wrist to a bit of his arm. Mike smiled but shook his head. "Ah, I don't like to talk about that one."

"Don't tell me," Scrugs popped up, clinging on the archangel's knee and chair arm. "Lemme guess. It was a tattoo. It said... mother!"

The four demons bursted out laughing. Even Lucifer couldn't help but chuckle along with them. Mike kept smiling but kept his laughter bottled inside. He reached out and gently scratched the stubby demon's ears like he was petting a dog. "Actually I received that one at Sodom." he calmly said.

The laughter from the demons slowly died. Their smirks faded. Mouths gaped open in utter shock. Scrugs' long, pointy ears drooped down, feeling ashamed and like a jacksass after his comment. Luckily the archangel didn't seem offended. There was only silence and all eyes were directed at the sole angel in the group. "You were at Sodom?" Balthazar said, almost dropping his bottle. Michael nodded. His gaze now focused on the fire pit.

"Whoa, this is the first time I've heard of it," Lu interjected.

"I heard there weren't any survivors left after that mess!" Ghuuls commented.

"What happened?" Moloch asked.

Mike took a deep breath and exhale. It wasn't a story that we shared often, nor one he wanted to recall. But they did ask him. "There were reports of Baracrus' army marching south on this world, along what was to be known as the Jordan River. I took a small scouting party to investigate. We found them alright. They ambushed us and used some sort of spell to disable our wings. We couldn't fly or teleport outta there. We were stuck with the only thing we could do: fight for our survival. Most of the party was wiped, save me and this other soldier. We ran as far as we could to recharge our energy. Ran for days without sleep. Demons and their hounds were not far behind.

"After so much running we come across this city, Sodom. Figured it would be a perfect place to blend in. I mean we angels look no different than humans. Nobody would've told us apart. We go in there, begging the locals for shelter and aid. Thing was they're very untrusting to outsiders. They didn't want anything to do with us. All but this one man, this one man, who offered up his home to us. We stepped in, met his family: wife and two daughers. They gave us food and water, stitched up our wounds, let us stay in their homes for a while. What was odd at the time was this man, I forget the name, seemed to know exactly who we were, and didn't seem to mind at all. He just wanted to do what was right.

"Wasn't long before Baracrus showed up. He ordered the people that if they didn't surrender us within an hour, he'd burn the city to ashes. Shortly there after a mob was pounding outside the door, demanding that the man and his family turned us over to the demons. The man stepped outside and told them no. To this day I still have no idea why he chose to defend us. He didn't know us, didn't owe us anything, we were complete strangers to him. I'm sure he was scared too. Scared for his family, scared for himself; yet he stood out before that crowd and told them that he would not allow us to become prisoners to that tyrant. My admiration and respect for humanity grew that day.

"Unfortunately that red-eyed bastard Baracrus wasn't good on his word. Guess he didn't want to take any chances of us escaping. This giant obelisk appeared out of nowhere, right in city square. So big and tall it blocked out the sun. Doors on its lower base opened up, and that's when they popped right out. Scavengers. Hundreds of them."

"Wait I remember that," Lu spoke out. "I remember that Baracrus took prisoners and tortured them for weeks on end. He wanted to see what Hell's influence could do, resulting in the creation of these monsters. I remember how badly he wanted to field test them to see how destructive they could be, but Legion always rejected that idea."

Mike's gazes shifted up at his youngest sibling. "Well I guess he tested them anyway," he pressed his bottle to his lips and sipped it down. "Did you know that was my first time I'd ever seen a scavenger? Before that day I heard rumors Baracrus had some sort of creature he was developing, yet nothing to cofirm it... until that day.

"You've all heard that old saying that the eyes were the windows to the soul I'm sure. I always saw it as a metaphor for the purity of the soul. That's why humans and mortals have colored pupils, it just meant that their souls were pure. Used to think that the reason demons had dark eyes or barely any pupils because their souls were corrupted or something. You look at a scavenger, there's nothing. There's no eyes. Nothing but empty sockets where eyes should be, or layers of skin covering where the eyes would be. A pure, soulless monster, like that sonuvabitch who created them. I'm sure y'all know plenty about them. You've been fighting them off for the longest time, since they ran loose in the Inferno and more souls are converted into them. You never forget their high-pitched screams. They were screaming. People in the streets and in their homes were screaming. Men... women... children... ripped to pieces. The city was painted red. The worst thing I ever saw that day, still haunts me to this day, was this one scavenger on top of this pregnant woman, ripped her belly wide open. She was still alive, crying and screaming, while that thing pulled out her unborn child with its teeth. Took at least a half hour until the whole city finally stopped screaming. All you could hear then was meat and bone being chewed up."

Michael exhaled another breathe. His hand wiped away the water forming in his eyes as he continued to remember that haunting time. Lu and the other demons noticed a small tremor in the angel's hand, which rattled his beer bottle too.

"Then I saw something else that day. Nobody believed me when I reported this, but I swear I saw something bigger slither out of that damned obelisk. It was like some kind of super scavenger. Three, maybe four, times the size of the rest. It crawled through the blood soaked streets, planting its teeth into few of the bodies. Then those same bodies started crawling and hissing like they were scavengers themselves.

"Once our energy was restored and our wings were working, I told the other angel to notify the Council about this, have them obliterate whole damn city. I was going to stay, repay my debt to the stranger that helped us. I escorted him and his family outside the city, hacking at whatever scavenger crossed our path. We made it outside where we watched as my brethren bombarded Sodom with lightning and cannon fire, wiping out all scavengers there. It was the only way to be sure.

"Later I heard that a horde of those freaks had already made their way to a nearby city called Gomorrah. The Council did the same thing they did at Sodom, and wiped it out too. There were still a number of human survivors still left in that city, but they didn't stand a chance. They never found any trace of that so-called super scavenger. They didn't even bother to look thoroughly."

Lucifer and his demons never said a word, continuing to stare at the angel. Pure expressions of shock and horror were glued to each of their faces. "What happened to the other angel that was with you then?" Moloch worked up the courage to ask.

Mike shrugged. "It was too much for him. He suffered a mental breakdown some time after the war and got sent off to a psychiatric hospital somewhere in Olympus (one of Heaven's nine districts) for treatment. It didn't help. The orderlies found him in his room the next month. He slit his wrists and throat open with a glass shard.

"Wanna hear some irony? Turned out that Baracrus was already leading his forces south regardless. They intended to sack Sodom, and unleash those scavengers on the population. We just showed him where it was at.

"You guys probably knew Baracrus better than I did. You've probably witnessed first hand some of the atrocities he's committed during the War. But this... I consider what happened at Sodom and Gomorrah the worst he's ever done. Even worse than when he manipulated my brother to turn against us." Mike pressed his bottle to his lips again, drinking the last of its contents. "Anyway, I did manage to get that stranger and his family out of the city safely. Guess that's a victory all on its own."

From there they all decided to finally call it a night.

#sinsofthefather #fiction #comedy #fantasy #horror #angels #demons