One more Fall

The blood was fresh on her skin; fresh enough that it glistened in the light when she shifted her fingers; fresh enough that skin brushed skin with a thick, wet slip; fresh enough that its sharp, metallic tang drifted up into her nose.

The blood on her skin was fresh enough that she should have felt some guilt for what she had just done.

But the place in her heart where guilt should have festered like a wound was empty. The only emotion she seemed capable of feeling was a detached resignment, as if she had simply lost her job, rather than murdered her only son in cold blood.

“Vanessa?”

She looked up at the sound of her name, towards the throne and the figure atop it.

The Devil looked particularly devilish today, she noticed. A crown of jagged black spikes and wicked sparkling rubies perched between two twisted red horns that reached up for the glinting lanterns overhead. A black cape, torn artfully in places, draped over his broad shoulders and hung over the side of the chair to match the black armor that he wore beneath. Its edges were stained a curious garnet that a new addition to his hellish kingdom would automatically assume were blood, but Vanessa had resided within his realm long enough to know that it was just rust. Hell hadn’t seen war in several decades. She doubted the Devil even knew what blood looked like anymore.

And her bloody hands, she supposed, were just a pleasant reminder.

“Yes?” Vanessa replied. She crossed her arms over her chest, smearing the dark substance on her fingers along her sleeves as well. Audible gasps and murmurs rose from the watching court as she felt countless sets of eyes land on her bloodied digits and hurriedly take flight. It had been a while since they had beheld a sight so violent as well, Vanessa was sure.

She almost snorted at that. There had been a time where this entire throne room was coated in blood from top to bottom. There had been a time when the Devil had been a symbol of fear and terror, rather than an example of a perfect king. There had been a time when coming to hell was the ultimate sentence, and that time was not now.

“Why did you- Why would you do that?” The Devil looked almost hurt.

“Why did I do what?” Vanessa said.

“Oh, for gods sake,” the Devil said. “Your son, Vanessa. Why did you kill your son?”

“I’d forgotten I had a son,” Vanessa said, all false bravado and phony nonchalance. She glanced down at her hands, just for show, and pretended to be surprised when she noticed the red caught beneath her fingernails. “Oh dear.”

The Devil rubbed his forehead with a clawed black hand. “Oh dear indeed. Have you forgotten the principles of our kingdom? Have you forgotten your own morals?”

“Perhaps-”

The Devil cut her off, “We haven’t had problems in fifty years, Vanessa. We’ve been civilized. We’ve been good. Why now?”

Vanessa shrugged. “Why not now?”

“Because- because-” The Devil spluttered, “Because it’s illegal!”

“So what you’re saying is that I broke the law and I need to be trialled.”

“That is- oh my lord help me- that is exactly what I’m saying.”

“Fine. Then I plead guilty.”

It played out like a badly written soap opera: the disbelieving gasps from the crowd, the silence that followed like a swarm of unforgiving wasps, the betrayal etched into the Devil’s stone-sharp features. Vanessa almost laughed. Oh, if the angels could see the citizens of hell now: more perfect a kingdom than heaven itself.

“You plead guilty?”

“I do. I plead guilty to the murder of my son.”

The Devil hung his head, as if her admittance were his own. As if he bore all the guilt that she did not. As if he had more of conscience than she did.

“Then you know what that means,” he said finally, and when he lifted his hand to conjure the portal beneath her feet, something inside of Vanessa loosened like a knot coming free.

When someone falls from heaven, they wind up in hell. When someone falls from hell, no one ever sees them again.

And that was exactly what Vanessa needed. She needed to vanish, to disappear into the world, to never leave a trace behind. She needed to silence herself completely so that the truth of what she had done would end with her, so that the truth of who her son was would be buried alongside her.

The Oracle of Hell had not had a vision in over fifty years. And over time, as her silence continued, the kingdom had forgotten about who she once was. She’d almost forgotten about who she once was. She’d dared to try her hand at a family and a normal life, despite knowing the magic that ran rampant in her veins.

Then, the visions returned. The images had seared her mind at night, then remained with her in the day like thick puffs of smoke, hanging about. In the near future, her visions told her, the violence would return. The bloodshed would have its corpses. Hell would be as it once was. And all of this, her visions told her, would start with the baby boy she’d sung lullabies to.