Azazel:9/11/25:Key West
It’s late. I’m drunk.
I should start when the fireball landed. She’s the most beautifully strange of all Mal’s daughters. Looks the most like him, pale with that blue-black hair. Not a fireball in personality, no in that regard she’s more like Mal as well: always watching, absorbing, analyzing.
When she stepped out of the cab in front of the trailer it was like a bolt hit me. Nay, a harpoon, for I feel like we’re fated. I don’t know what I mean. Only that we’re bound and she’ll be leading me in a chase for a very long time.
The instant she and Iahel met was fascinating.
I introduced them as half sisters.
“Oh sweeeetieeeee, it’s so good to meet you. You know there are five of us? You’re the baby though.” Iahel smoothed her sleek black hair.
Mariam brushed her hand away, brow furrowed. “I hate you. I feel you in my mind. Like sticky fingers picking through my thoughts. Take them out. Or I’ll cut them off.”
I maybe swooned. Iahel called her a “fussy child” and stormed out.
“Miriam, you’re her guest,” Rebecca, the Writer… I’ve never seen a woman so lost. Already she was a bit of pretty flotsam on life’s torrents, now she’s even less moored, less stable, she’ll go where she’s pushed. We need to keep pushing her in our shared direction.
The crowd gathered around the visitors then parted, and Mal walked through, black silk top hat, his wine-dark coat-tails flapping in the wind.
“Papa?”
She’s his spitting image. It’s really remarkable. In this, too, Rebecca stood aside. There’s nothing of her in the girl. Mal wrapped his arms around her. Somewhere Iahel sobbed.
“My girl!”
“I have to show you something.” She stood back and held out her hand, with the palm cupped, but empty. As we watched a rolling ball of flame grew in the little void space. Like a tiny sun, cradled in her soft pale flesh. She tossed the little ball up and caught it with her other hand, where it melted back into her. “I started getting these terrible fevers. Mom took me to the ER, they said I should be dead. But one night, I was lying in bed. I burned so bad. I thought I was going to like, spontaneously combust, you know? I got out of bed and stood in the middle of the room. I held my arms out in front of me and I thought of a flame thrower.” She grinned, “It worked! I’m a human flame thrower now!”
“We call talents like you woefires, my sweet,” Mal said, taking her hands in his. “I’m very proud of you. And I’m very glad you’re here. We’ll need you. Angels are particularly flammable.”
“I love that about them,” Miriam smiled, with all the malice.
“Darling, go with Azazel, get acquainted with the crew and with the plans for tomorrow’s storm. I’ve got to fill your mother in on all the excitement.”
She nodded, and wrapped her arms around his neck. “It’s so good to know you exist.”
“Ah, before I go. Do have a celly? I like to have all my girls in my phone.”
“Of course, papa.”
To be honest it was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.
I swear she was glowing as off we went, her arm linked in mine. She said she liked my beard and my eyes looked scary as fuck.
Harpooned.
She met the crew. We filled her in on our plan for the storm.
And then we all got blitzed. Except Miriam and Angor Animi, they did fire stunts, lighting up the pre-storm dark with flashes of orange blaze. She’s Hell personified. And she fell asleep curled up within the stone ring of the fire pit. I carried to her bed just as the wind picked up and the rain started to fall.
Rebecca:9/11/25:Key West
So many thoughts, so many emotions. Seeing Mal again was hard. I’m married now, but in my reality I never chose that. Circumstances are what they are. But I can’t help but wonder what would have been if we’d never done that ritual… Not that it matters I guess. I don’t know how to unravel time.
Iahel’s a pill. One of Mal’s other daughters. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that an immortal demon has other children. By other women… probably quite a few throughout time…
I hate time.
But Iahel, she called me “one of those perpetual victims.”
I wasn’t until I bought August.
I used to know exactly what I wanted out of life. Out of my future. Then all that changed and all I wanted was to get to the next day.
Perpetual victim…
I DID get help. I DID try to get rid of August. I’m not- that.
But if I were to want something, what would that even be?
I’ve been assigned to mom duty tomorrow. I’ll be with Dolphina keeping the little ones safe and hopefully not too scared. I can’t fight and I don’t have any powers. Mal said the storm is really angels.
I want to be not useless.
August:Heaven:House Arrest
House arrest! Unconscionable! It is literally impossible to hurt anyone here and yet we’re being treated like we have done. My beloved paces, her liberated spirit thrashing against this prison. Her eyes are wild and lunatic. Her fists clenched. Buttocks flexing in synch with my heart.
We’ve stopped wearing clothes. There’s really no point. We can’t leave the house, and our passion is inflamed so frequently that repeatedly lacing and unlacing a corset became particularly vexing.
My love’s insides are like the warmest, softest waters.
She says copulation is better in Hell.
She says I must stop calling it copulation.
Sex
Sex
Sex
Her scent immolates me. Her hair brushes across my naked flesh and I’m laid bare to the sky, awaiting the vultures.
We tried to open a portal today. We sat, sweaty and panting in the pentagram, Evelyn lit candles and I painted the outlines in my blood. In the center we sat, bare knees touching, palm to palm, heads bowed.
“Infernal spirits, be thou lurking?” Heaven is a cold place, I tried think heat into my body. A candle sat between Evelyn and I, heated air twisted up into our faces, I breathed it in deeply.
“Infernal spirits, be thou present?”
We heard a scurrying sound and a faint “We cannot reach you.”
The candles went out.
“August, you were so close.” Evelyn smiled at me, she cupped my face in her soft hands. There is nothing I can compare to being looked at with admiration by the woman you love.
I will free her from this prison.
