Santos knew there was a catch.
This was easy, too easy. Nothing in life is ever easy.
His brother had promised him safe passage, and his family, and all he needed to do was bring him a body and break him out of Hell.
Easy peasy.
Santos followed his brother past the garden, through thickets and bundles of bushes which soon turned into dense rainforests. The sounds of whooping monkeys replaced those of buzzing bees, and the screeches of toucans took the place of the twittering cardinals. The trek was easy because all they had to do was follow the river upstream.
After some time, they came upon a large stone temple carved out of a stone cliff.
The river split the stone temple in half, and several small stone bridges crisscrossed it to connect the two halves. Hanging moss draped itself like a shawl from various windowsills, and oddly enough, people could be seen peeking through them from far away. Santos noticed the eternal sunset on the horizon, a parallel to the constant sunrise in the garden.
Santos' awe was quickly replaced with regret as his brother again decided to bully him.
His older brother was pestering him again, finding small, inane ways to bother him. Whenever he blinked, his eyelids closed vertically instead of horizontally, and they changed color and shape every time.
The upper half of his head was visible from inside one of the various ponds inside his temple, and his reptilian eyes followed Santos around as he paced around the ridge of the pond. Inside the old temple littered with leaves and oil lamps, was Santos's first wife, and unknown to him, his second who always pretended to be his first.
Particular souls that were the best to torture were the ones He loved to keep inside his temple, making Santos irate.
It worked.
“Give me my wife."
Little bubbles popped up in the pond, and the walls giggled.
From the pond pushed out a human face, attached to a newt, big and red, with orange bumps, and its sticky pads clung to the side of the walls as his brother found many ways to taunt him.
I said I would bring you to her one day, not that I would let her roam free.
Santos’s patience had worn thin. He had trapped Naomi inside again, and he wanted more time with her. He calculated the many ways he could pop his head like a pimple, his blood spurting out like the infestation he was.
Santos opened his mouth.
Something thin dug into his neck, from the inside out, and he scratched at his neck, clawed at his face and chest, as it pushed against the inside of his throat. It cut and cut, tiny little things. They were so unnoticeable at first, but their strength increased over time, harsher, their points of an attack planned.
It was precision-like, timed, giving him enough time to heal, and then start over again, never giving his body time to rest. Choking on his own blood, Santos fell to the ground and started to tear at his own neck, the pain unbearable.
He easily tore right through, but the pain continued, and he laid there, in defeat, when he didn’t want to tear his entire head off from his body, and took his beating until his brother was satisfied.
Sweaty and heaving, Santos twitched on the floor as his brother glared down at him.
Don’t try that again.
With a few soft clicks imitating the sound of an old clock, everything was all right.
Santos held himself, shivering and shaking, crying, his body healed, and he had learned his lesson. That there was no getting out of the deal and he would have to find out how to break his brother out some way or another.
The human-faced reptile wrapped its slimy tail around his body, and Santos screamed as it scaled the temple walls and descended into the forest. It laughed, and Santos didn’t understand what was so funny as it pushed down palm trees, crushed animals, and left a trail of indistinguishable slime in its path.
At the edge of the forest, it flung him, right into a grassy field, and Santos grunted as he rolled down a hill, his body pressing over rocks, and came to a stop against a tree, a very surprised and emotional tree.
He looked up and saw that it was not a tree, but his twin brother.
Gio was more fervent in finding his twin now that he had proof that his soul was still on some plane of existence, and again he wiggled his way into purgatory, this time hitchhiking on the back of an old woman that died, hit at an intersection while crossing the same street Gio was on.
Gio stood in the open field, the lightning bugs flashing while he touched his mouth. Sometimes thinking about how Carlos had torn it right out, how delicately he had done it, as to not tear his entire head off and kill him, sparing his life.
Spared by a savage.
Gio was afraid to speak, rubbing his neck, afraid that his voice was ruined. Logically he knew that was impossible, his body long healed. Santos lay in the grass and seemed afraid as well if it was another trick.
They spoke at once, saying, Hello.
Together their perfect harmony match, yin and yang, their universe in balance, and everything fits in place.
Gio sat down in the grass next to him, and Santos sat up, grinning and rubbing each other’s faces, wondering if it was all real.
“What have you done to our face,” Santos asked.
He pushed the edges of Gio’s face, readjusting it, making it snap back into place.
“I couldn’t look at it without you here,” Gio replied.
“You’re getting too touchy, this is only for my wife now!"
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“You make it sound like we were committed or something."
They snickered and poked each other prodding each other, and then, Santos remembered.
“I need you to find me a new body, Musico. Please. For my wife, for the others.”
“What new body? Isn’t yours fine?”
Santos shook his head.
“I need a new one for Him.”
"I...highly advise against that..."
Santos explained how every time he left, he was quickly brought back for no one to ever notice, but for some reason, his children had not done anything this time or didn't know how. Santos was now worried that he also had nobody to return to, forever stuck in a place where he could not finish the deal.
“No wonder you haven’t returned. You would never just leave your idiots to roam and terrorize the world.”
“Musico, what have they done? ”
“They have the entire country of Norway and-”
“That’s nothing new.”
“Oh Heavens, no.”
Santos had an uncanny valley effect, his face staring back at him, perplexed, not the face of any of his sons, this one paler and yet somehow more disgruntled and slightly grumpier.
“What if I gave you mine?"
“That can’t work,” Santos replied.
“Why not? Don’t you miss me? I miss you. I should have never let you leave…. No… I should have gone with you. ”
Santos gripped his brother’s hand and they stared into each other’s eyes; no words were needed.
Loneliness was the sort of thing that crawled in slowly, so slow that one did not notice until it was too late, and it was the same for both of them. It was easy to forget with little things to distract one's day, but eventually, it would creep back in and scare them, and they would remember that something was always missing.
Now nothing would be missing ever again.
They hugged, their souls and minds becoming one, in front of the eternal sunrise.
----------------------------------------
A warm afternoon called for a quick summer storm, the kind that left you in shock if you left your umbrella at home, drenched to the bone, socks uncomfortable, and shoes ruined, making the little squick-squeaks when one flooded their shoes.
During this quick summer storm, a truck had skidded, and hit an old lady, smashing her brittle bones, and a friendly young priest had gone to aid her. Now he lay on the pavement, body still, no pulse found.
Onlookers surrounded the scene, police officers and ambulances arrived, and caution tape was put around the area, trying to preserve as much of the crime scene before it was washed away by the rain.
The emergency responders surrounded the young man’s body, pulsating and glowing, the water not touching his body, and they grumbled, another astral, more paperwork, more strange abilities to regulate.
The light became brighter, and brighter, the light spread, and the people fled, slipping on the cement, crashing into the curbs, and driving away faster. A few stood and accepted their fate, the light consuming them all.
A few towns over, the rain poured down on them as well, and the people saw the blast, the debris pushed into the air, rattling their windows, setting off their car alarms, and disturbing their dogs.
They observed from rooftops, live web feeds, and their front porches, and windows.
The bright white glow grew and grew, shot upwards into the sky, and a final push of energy flew out, stronger than the first, frying all electronics. Cars on the hyper-way ceased to function, and they fell out of the sky, dropping like rocks, corpses sliding out or ejecting out windows, none surviving from the height of the fall.
Asphalt and pain lingered in the air, people wandered the streets, blood streaking their faces, looking at the sky, nowhere safe, nowhere to hide. Everyone stared at the sky, they waited, and once the authorities confirmed that no one was allowed to fly until further notice, then tension became a bit slack, and a collective sigh of relief exuded by the town.
Then the bodies came.
All the people, all flown up into the air, several miles over, were spread out into a circular radius, their limbs cascading down onto the sky, landing on cars, buildings, light poles, pets, and people, killing them instantly.
Exploding on impact once they struck the ground, or exploding in midair if they struck each other, red rain poured down on them, an entire town’s worth of blood leaving a thin cover in the blast zone.
Smacking skulls, splicing bodies in two, pilling up in front of roads and jamming traffic, rolling down hills and over people, death fell from the sky, mixed with rain, spreading the blood out even farther, the gusts of wind pushing the limbs out to more towns further out.
At the epicenter of the blast stood one body, two souls, and four wings with one mind, and it was all so exhilarating.
“ I don’t remember the last time I felt my heartbeat,” Santos whispered.
Welcome back, Gio whispered. I’ve missed you.
Tilting his head back, opening his mouth wide, the slush of people fell into his mouth, and Santos moaned, the good stuff, sadly not as good as Beelzebub’s. The downpour of people and the occasional broken bones was a buffet, and danced in the rain, spinning, singing, as people in the surrounding towns watched from inside their houses.
The blood pouring down was like a car wash, it would splatter down in waves, and then the rain would come, pushing it off. Another wave of blood and limbs, bones clattering in pieces, imitating the sound of hail, and then more rain, mixing together.
All love was lost for the people, now they were meatsuits to him, talking food that answered back. Years of wanting to be alive, jealous of their choices, jealous of their escape towards death, and his confusion of never wanting to leave, he was done with them.
Standing in a fine mixture of A- and O+, Santos came to a logical conclusion.
“Musico, my children would never abandon me. The meatsuits took my body. They destroyed it. ”
They did. It’s the only way you wouldn’t have returned so fast. Who do you think did it, Gio replied.
“Someone who I should have killed a really long time ago. I love his father, but he is not him. ”
Kill him.
“Maximillian will die once he gives me what I need. Pure bodies. ”
Piloting his brother’s meatsuit, Santos ran, leaped, and flew off into the air, surveying the chaos down below, and he did not feel guilt, because those who swore to protect him did not feel guilty when they did not.