The Accursed

The Accursed

By Sevvie 

Garrett sat at the edge of his couch, its cushion stretched from the frame sagging under his weight.  He buried his eyes in the palm of his hands, “Damn it,” he mumbled to himself.

     He looked up from his palms.  The walls that enclosed him were dingy; ash covered reminders at best.  Most of the once dawn-tinted carpet was covered in a thin layer of colorless cinder.

     The couch and him, his life hanging feebly by hallow heartbeats, was all that remained of his world.  Now he sat alone in the empty confines of what has become his prison.  Lonely, starving for company, praying for salvation.

     He is one of the forgotten.

     He sobbed to himself as he has for several days.  His tears rolling down his tired, swollen face.  Laments falling on deaf ears, on ears that were no longer there to listen.

     Garrett sat alone, tired, and scared.  It was the dawning of the new millennium, the real millennium. It was a new millennium and the apocalypse didn’t arrive like so many predicted.

     Garrett had forsaken God, put him off.  He thought about it.  He worried, “What if he does exist and the end of the world comes?” but he worried not nearly enough.

     All through his days, he tried to convince himself that he wasn’t such a bad person.  He tried to make it to church, but only passed through her doors once or twice.

     He ignored all the jabbering about the true End of Days.  He ignored them all.

     Now he lives, for the moment, with that regret.

     Garrett lowered his head again, rubbing his hands through his hair he cursed, “God damn you, how could you do this to me?”

     He stood.

     Garrett paced across the same stretch of carpet he has paced near ceaselessly, from the couch to the window.  It was the only portion of the carpet that remained the bright dawn-tinted color that had delighted his small apartment.

     The color was Tawny’s pride.  She fell in love with it the moment they entered the apartment, during the leasing agents showing.

     Garrett smiled for a moment; the thought of her warmed a small piece of his blackened heart.  Of course, God took her away.  He remembered when they came for her, the Angels.

     Tawny didn’t want to leave him, “I want to stay with you Garrett, I love you.”  She said, as the Angels cradled her in their ivory wings.

     He watched Heaven open up for her and millions of others.  They all rode in a bassinet of downy wings cradled warmly in the open arms of Heaven.

     “They’ll be back for you Garrett.  I’ll be waiting.”  He recalled her words as she vanished in the blinding frosty light.

     They never came back.  Those Angels never returned.  New Angels did though.  As the sounds of trumpets blared, echoing through the vast sky like thunder, the Angels poured the sour blood of sin over the soil of the earth.

     Garrett hid in his apartment as the earth shook and erupted.  He hid, waiting for Tawny to retrieve him in her beautiful Angel wings.

     He still waited.  Alone.

     Garrett scoffed at the memory of the Angels.

     But he really yearned for their return.  He really yearned for God’s forgiveness.

     Although, God is forgiving, there are limits to even what he will indulge.  Garrett didn’t feel remorse, didn’t call on God to forgive his pathetic soul.  He never opened his heart to the grace of God, now he reaps what he has brought on himself.

     Even now he shames himself and spites God.

     Damnation is his, as he has embraced it.

     Memories of Tawny faded as he returned to the window he has paced to, how many times? 

     It mattered none.

     Garrett reached for the curtain; he ripped it away angrily.

     The amber world invaded his apartment.  The acrid air penetrated the walls and window, singing his nostrils.

     He looked out from his fourth floor window.  He saw the same sorrowful scene, for as far as his weary eyes would take him.

     The soil bled molten blood; it was everywhere leaving destruction in its wake.  The ten million, no hundred million fingers of Lucifer flicked out over the land.  Serpent like flames devouring everything.

The uneven earth dropped into an unfathomable abyss, then to towering creation that reached for Heaven.  The amber tinted everything, the sky, and the man made structures that crumbled beneath the opening lap of Hell. 

What remained of the earth, the true earth, stained as well.  And the demons that marched the souls of the infernal, their bodies roasted in the amber that engulfed all sight.

     Garrett looked down at the row of the damned marching single file to giant cauldrons that boiled with Lucifer’s blood.

     The screams, the cries, the hands reaching for God filled his ears, as the definite pain wet his eyes.  He watched from his fourth floor window as he has since Tawny’s departure.

     He watched the demons as they poked and impaled the damned.  Breaking down the flesh until nothing remained but the stripped souls of the forgotten.  He watched the demons torment them with longing and hope, where there was none.

     How cruel it was, awakening.

     Soon they would come for him.  Soon the demons would march him into a cauldron and rip his flesh from his bones.  Soon his soul would rest in his never yielding Hell.

     Soon.

     There was no rush.  He was all ready in the mitts of hell, in time he would know their rancor.

     Soon.

     Until then he would pace the floor from his couch to the window, stopping only to relive his regret as the accursed.