Writing For G.O.T

She’s So Glad She Did! --For House of Black & White

                   Dark Story #95
                   Word Count: 2172
----------------------------------------------



“Did you, or didn’t you?” Weber’s phlegmatic question hung over Judith as if its words were produced by an engine of atrocity. He had asked her that while he had leaned back in his old walnut chair and glanced coldly at her, then at her feet.

It was true that with each step she took, destruction had followed in her wake. Why was it that she couldn’t kill time without committing what he considered a crime?

“It was like a bad dream,” she answered. “I’m no angel!”

“You are the devil itself, Judith,” he said softly. “In the least, a tortured ouroboros.”

It is just an ad hominem attack. He didn’t really mean it, Judith thought.


But that was two nights ago. Tonight, pressing several forlorn sighs from her lungs, she walked to the edge of the water and sat on the wooden bench with the paint scraping off its slats. She took a deep breath clutching her purse in one hand, the cell phone in the other, her props of a mortal’s image.

Then, she looked up and searched for the stars, but it was a dark, starless night. Yet, even a darker shape than the night zigzagged over her head, in a complex pattern. She stared at the large creature steadily until it vanished over the land. Just a bat! But she realized that her hands were trembling. Bats were usually afraid of her. Why didn’t this one?

She tilted her head to glance at the horizon. The island had hunkered down into the blackness of the night, taking no notice of her clandestine surveillance. She did not rage against the heavens nor did she long to die. She couldn’t anyway, even though she constantly wound her way around the coils of the abyss.

Not realizing she was being watched, she had fallen in love with a mortal and committed an obvious weakness. Again! And for the second time after being chastised...And her mortal waited for Judith, still, coming to her as a dream every now and then. But dreams could be doorways. I mustn’t give in to dreams!

Yet, she couldn’t find the strength to stand up against those dreams. Definitely not against her mortal who still waited for her on that island far out on the sea. The mortal body she had grabbed in a hurry needed sleep, and with sleep, came the dreams with all the stops pulled out.

There were some things about mortal bodies she hated like peeing and pooping and other gross things. Yet, making love was an exception. It was when the spirits united, too. This time, that union had been powerful, far too powerful. And now, whenever her mortal yearned for her, his yearning turned into a dream, and she couldn’t resist rejoicing in their mortal memories.

“You can’t be thinking what I think you’re thinking!” Weber materialized before Judith. “Yours are futile fantasies. What can be more outlandish than your anomalous insouciance!”

“Weber, stop using big words to impress. I can’t help this, and I am trying to stay awake, so I do not dream forbidden dreams.”

“And you are doing it by observing the island and pining after that idiot from far away? You can’t even attend to yourself, let alone return to your duties! You know what will happen, don’t you!”

Yes, something was going to happen. She had sensed it.

Up to this point, though, nothing had happened, except the bat that didn’t fear her and this darkness of the stars. She had struggled, and struggled hard, too, to keep her end of the deal with the establishment, but self-destruction had always been her potential, and now she was being considered as disposal material.

“There is one way out,” Weber continued. “You are being put on a mission, and you must complete it with honors.”

Flabbergasted, she stared at him. That couldn’t be right. Weber was the one who was sent on missions, not her. She wasn’t mission material. She was only Weber’s helper, only his prop like the purse and the cell phone she was holding, like this useless human body she occupied.

This mission had to be vitally significant. Her existence on this plane, most certainly, was depending on it. That whole island’s existence, too, probably depended on it since the establishment erased everything that had to do with their operatives’ crimes, at times including entire planets and solar systems. She couldn’t let that happen to her mortal.

If she could just work through this mission and complete it…The idea felt good. Hers and her mortal’s whole world depended on it. She promised herself inwardly that she’d perform to the best of her ability.

“Yes, I’ll do it,” she said. “What is the mission?”

“You’ll have to kill someone, but not kindly. You’ll have to slash him into pieces as he sees you in your true form.”

She had never done a killing before. She had aided several of them, each with a good reason. She hesitated. That island world where her mortal lived or this damned, loathsome mission. She didn’t have much of a choice, did she?

“All right,” she blinked, “Tell me the particulars.”

“First, you have to swear to it. You know particulars aren’t given until the worker commits to the mission.”

“I swear on my trivial existence that I will bring this mission to completion, which the establishment has ordered to preserve the grand scheme of things!” Done! She took a deep breath.

“All right, then,” Weber frowned, staring at her. His eyes were pools of pity. “The man is Jonah. Your mortal. He has to know what you really are before he is done away with. Here is the sword for the slashing. Tuck it away. It’ll turn invisible until you use it. You have to do it now. Tonight. Immediately.”

Judith drew herself up into a fetal position on the bench while an unvoiced cry caught in her throat. The sword was in her hands, and her props--the purse and the cell phone—were gone. This was beyond endurance. This wasn’t a mission; it was a punishment. All the horror of her existence and the cruelty of the establishment boiled down to this one devastating mission; this was, in truth, a vicious torment from which she could never recover.

“The point of this mission, this hardship, is a personal thing. Its misery can be acute.” Weber reached for Judith’s hand and squeezed it.

She looked up at Weber. “You are empathizing! Don’t tell me, you, too…”

“Yes, me, too. But I am a survivor, although my full recovery seems to be somewhat impossible. I still can’t erase from my consciousness the look on her face before she turned into a corpse and her essence took flight.”

“Thank you for telling me that. But it won’t help, will it?”

Weber shook his head fiercely as if saying no. Then, he disappeared.

She didn’t have a choice. Whatever she did or could do, Jonah would come at the short end. She looked toward the island again, frightened for him.


Eight bats were grouping up, flying overhead, chirping and clicking rhythmically, circling now almost at the top of her. She arose, fearing her human legs wouldn’t support her, but that didn’t matter. She might get rid of the human body now, but what had Weber said? “He has to know what you really are before he is done away with.” So, she had to carry the body with her whether she liked it or not.

She took a step and dove into the water. Pulling and pushing the body’s weight wasn’t a problem, but to stop it from drowning took all her life-force's energies, as the body had not belonged to an athlete but a wimp of a woman.

The bats had flown circling above her during the first mile or so, but they had suddenly disappeared. A very good sign. It meant she was regaining her old fear-inducing persona. Yet, she realized the absence of their sounds had become more disturbing as she neared the island since the enormity of the job she was destined to do became more real and better-defined.

She pulled the body to the sandy beach, but when she was just about to dry her, someone approached.

“Lady! What happened to you? Did you fall in the water?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said sweetly. “I love the water. Couldn’t help myself.”

“In this weather? A storm’s coming this way.” He was one of the fishermen she’d met earlier, a friend of Jonah.

She shrugged. “It is fine. Storms don’t scare me.”

“Let me help you out. Out yonder is my home. My wife will dry you up by the fire in no time. Say, I know you!”

“Yes, you do.”

“You’re Jonah’s girl! When you disappeared and we told him to get on with life, he said you’d come back. Blimey, he was right!”

“Yes, I had to go, and now I’m back, but I don’t want to lose more time without him. Now, if you forgive me…”

She arose, pulling up her straggly body to its feet.

He snickered. “I guess Jonah’s gonna dry you up, now. He'll love it, too!“

She couldn’t rush while the man’s eyes were on her. So she walked and turned the corner. Then she saw another man, the fisherman who had taken her and Jonah on his boat.

“Hey, Jude! You’re back! Jonah will be in high Heaven when he sees you!”

“That he will be,” said Judith. ”That’s for sure.” Then, she gave him a send-off wave.

The man moved toward the beach, but she wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t be following her. So she went after him and stood at the corner in the shadows…long enough to hear his exchange with the first man.

“Hey Abe, Jude is back. Jonah knew.”

“Yeah, weird girl, if you ask me. She was dripping. Went in the ocean in the middle of the night.”

“No, she wasn’t. She didn’t have a drop on her. Say, did you start drinking again?”

She would have chuckled if she could, but instead, she felt like sobbing, but she couldn’t afford that either. She couldn’t afford to have Jonah catch her crying.

At the next step, she was at his door. Jonah opened the door in his pajamas, looking more like a child and making her dread her task even more. “You came!” He pulled her inside, into his arms in one motion. She closed her eyes to gather strength. When she opened them, she opted to stare at the stairs to avoid his gaze. He took it the wrong way.

“Okay, let’s go up. I was going to ask you if you were hungry, but what the heck!”

“Yes, what the heck!”

Maybe one last time?

No, she couldn’t. Her mission had to be immediate.

“Jonah,” she pulled away. “There is something about me you don’t know. I ran into you while I was on a job…I wasn’t really after you or….” she gulped her next breath. “or into you...”

“But you are now. So, what? You’re here, aren’t you! I don’t need to hear any confessions. Past is past.”

Oh, he was making it so difficult.

“Jonah! I am not human.”

And she changed.

Jonah’s eyes grew. He wiped one shaky hand down his chiseled face. Judith knew he was overcome with her vision, her hairy tufts, spikes, scales, spicules, and her dorsal snake-like scales.

“What is this? Who are you? Jude, where are you? What did you do with Jude?”

“I am Jude, Jonah!” whispered Jude, drawing out the sword. “And I have to do that to you!”

She tried to bring down the sword, but her arm felt frozen.

“No, Judith, I won’t let you do it!” Weber swallowed hard, his fist tight like a vise around Judith’s hand holding the sword.

Jonah stared, unmoving. Then he shifted his gaze to Judith. “There’s two of you?”

“No,” whimpered Judith. “Weber is my boss.”

“Why?”

“Don’t ask. Don’t argue. There’s no time.” Weber yanked the sword from Judith’s hand and brought it down on her head. Then, he turned to Jonah. When he was done slashing them both, he brought it into his heart.

The rustle of wings filled the room and silken feathers dropped on the two corpses, taking their essences higher up toward Heaven.

“Guess what?” said Judith to Jonah.”I am not that thing anymore. I like these wings much better. But…Oh, poor Weber!” He had to have fallen into the abyss while saving her.

“I’m right behind you,” came Weber’s voice.

The angels around them kept singing in chorus. Then, melodiously, one of them said, “There is a much higher administration than the establishment. When necessary, it directs us to interfere in the establishment’s business.”

Another angel took Weber by the hand. “Someone is waiting for you in the Father’s garden,” she said.

Judith felt indescribably happy.

The bats were still circling way down and far beyond them, descending and squealing demonically.