Ultimatum

[aneighthdomain]

I wander what you would do in my place? What choice would you make when it came to a choice between everything you know, and being told that all of it was wrong. Would you choose the same as me? Heh. Maybe I should tell you how I came to this predicament before you answer, hmm? I’m sure you're dying to know how I ended up in the damned basket?

Forgive me for an overrated beginning, but it all started one dark and stormy night. I am notorious for finding myself in very, very bad situations. I'm not so notorious for the reasons that I find myself in those situations. I'm something of a demon hunter. I fight Hell on a regular basis. Eyah, you laugh now, but it's true.

I’m not some hero from the movies, or the books you’ve read. I’m not here to save the world and everyone living in it. This thing that I do isn’t something I ever chose for myself. It wasn’t some family thing that fell into or was passed down to me. I don’t go charging headlong into danger out of some sense of duty. There wasn’t some sword that came into my possession that placed some sort of geas on me. I do this because someone found out that I can see things that most people can’t see and they said they’d pay me to do it and keep me from going to jail. I didn’t see any harm in it and hell if they were going to pay me. Well, that's how it started.

Now, you can't tell a demon from a human. You think a demon would be dumb enough to go around a let the human race know it existed? That's when you do get the heros. No. No one can tell but us chosen few. We are born with the ability to do it. Doesn't matter what gender, or how the stars were aligned when we were born. It's in our genetics. Just like it's in some peoples genetics to have a talent for singing or drawing. There is something in our genetic make-up that allows us to see a something like an aura, but not quite. Humans have a specific color that their body is wrapped in, blue, and various shades thereof. Demons have a faint purple.

Depending on the kind of person you are, if you are human, your aura colors range from a kind, selfless person of a deep sapphire blue, to a devious, murderous person of lavender. Demons have a lilac aura. Most people sit in the sky blue area for they are neither all selfish, nor all selfless. Whatever I am, I can see this. This is how I can fight demons and send them home to where they belong...on one condition, I go with them when I die.
When a demon is on Earth, they are in the body of a human. They are born, just as everyone else, but with the knowledge of what they are. Therefore, in order to kill the demon, I kill a human body. I commit a sin, thereby, banning me from Heaven. This is usually dealt with, I'm told, on the deathbed in a Catholic ritual called the Anointing of the Sick, which is why most of us become "devout Catholics." More like we tell the priest what we are, and keep a sort of wire created by the Vatican that will alert a priest to our possible demise and send him running to save our souls. Heh. I guess mine didn't get to me in time...

So that damn dark, stormy night. The wind howled around me, whipping at my long crimson hair and the black duster I wore that evening. The rain came in sheets and could hardly be seen through. The moonless sky was covered by a blanket of thick thunderstorm clouds. Lightning flashed here and there, but nothing compared to the aura I had been following all night. The aura that now stood ten feet away from me. An aura that was most odd for it was the color of deep purple. I'd never encountered an aura of that color, but I knew it was evil. The evil feeling swirled about the owner was a sickly green-purple. This was something new, or perhaps something old...I didn't know...but I had to find out what it was...

:I wander what you'll do...: a beautiful voice assaulted my mind with contempt and I almost took a step back from the blow.

"What?" I shouted. What had the voice been? Why did it say what it did? What was it talking about?

:What will you do when you see me,: it "said" again. The voice sounded familiar...but who was that...?

The aura flared and the lightning flashed and I lost my heart somewhere in the vicinity of my throat. The lightning faded, but the aura did not. It cast enough light to see by in an eerie purple shade. It cast just enough light to see the face of the only person I ever truly cared about. The only person I ever loved.

"...Jaysen..." was the only word that would leave my mouth.

A sneer crossed his face and he stalked up to me. He was Jaysen. This was not dream...was it? I bit my lip and tasted blood. Spitting out the sweet, metallic taste, I stared as Jaysen stood just in front of me. The light of his aura assaulted my eyes just as his mind voice did, making my eyes feel jolted as my mind. I never thought that Jaysen could be a demon...why hadn't I ever seen this aura? How had he deceived me?

"What will you do," he asked me, "when you find out that you have never been fighting demons all this time?" he somehow whispered over the raging thunder.

I furrowed my brow in confusion. “What?” I said again, ingeniously.

“You know this it is a sin to take human life, yes?” Jaysen asked, crossing him arms over his chest.

“I’m Catholic,” I replied.

Jaysen shook his head. “That doesn’t mean anything. Catholic, Budist, Pagan, it doesn’t matter what you are. Do you know that taking a human’s life is a sin?”

I shook my head. “Of course, I do. Jaysen, what is going on?”

Nodding, Jaysen stalked closer to me. My finger twitched next the trigger, my instincts almost forcing me to bring the gun in my hand up and take the shot at point blank range. “So you know it’s a sin, and yet you do it anyway?”

“It’s the way things are done.”

“Oh, it’s the way things are done. I see.” He nodded again, still moving closer. “So that makes it alright. You’ve got a handy indulgence just lying around waiting to be used before you die and that makes it okay?”

He was within touching distance now and I was trembling. I didn’t know what was going on, and I had no idea how to react. “I…I don’t understand, Jay…what’s going on?”

“Did you know,” he said softly, “that there is no such thing as a biblical demon? Demons as you know them don’t exist, Satan as you’ve been taught doesn’t exist. There are only bad people who do bad things. People who are sick and don’t understand the difference between right and wrong. There is nothing that goes bump in the night and kills without regard because they aren’t human.

“Did you know that what you considered justified just makes you another bad person who does very bad things?” He brought a hand up, and I almost jerked my gun hand up in response. Jaysen smiled, unamused, at the nervous twitch as he brushed a finger down my jaw before abruptly and pulled his hand away and smacked my cheek.

Quickly, he grabbed my hair and tilted my head back to look him in the eyes. Unthinkingly, and brought the gun up and touched it to his temple, my finger hovering over the trigger. “You see? You’ve trained yourself to kill.” He pressed his head more fully into the barrel. “Do it.”

I dropped the gun quickly, trying to shake my head, but his hand in my hair kept me from moving it. I reached up with my other hand and tried to pull his grip away. “I’m not going to kill you,” I said. “You’re not a demon, and I don’t kill innocents.”

“No? Really? You just kill people so that they don’t get to make choice?” There was a bitter edge to his laugh. “That makes so much more sense.”

“What are you talking about?” I winced when his gripped tightened in my hair. “You know exactly what I am talking about. Even according to whatever you think justifies your killing that those are still human, even if you think they are demons. So you kill them before they get the chance to make that choice for themselves. You take their free will from them.”

“They’re demons!” I cried. “What choice do they have?”

Abruptly I was on the ground where he flung me by the hair. “There are no demons they way you perceive them,” he ground out again. “Do you want to know why you could never see my aura, or why when you see it now, it’s not a normal color?”

I blinked up at him, my grip on my gun loosening. I had never told him any of this, how did he know that? I watched in awe as his aura flared again and this time, it flared in such a way that I saw the impression of wings flowing from his back.

“There are three tribes of man,” he said softly. “The tribe Seth, the tribe of Abel, and the tribe of Cain. The tribe of Seth was given a gift from the Supreme God and His Court to see what others could not. He gave them Sight so that they could find the ones who needed to be helped into seeing the Way that the tribe of Seth already knew.

“And so the tribe of Seth was given the task of leading the way to the God of Love and away from the imperfect god. And so they did until one of the tribe of Abel, not understanding the message created an entirely new message and led the three tribes away from the path they were on. In His love and mercy, the Supreme God let man choose their own path, knowing that as long as they loved one another, the name they called Him didn’t matter.

“Then the imperfect god saw what his mother had never allowed before. He saw the Light and the Glory of the Supreme God and his Court and became jelous. He saw what it was the tribe of Seth had done to his work and he cursed it. He turned hearts of love to hearts of fear and hate, and he let the tribes of man destroy themselves. And you,” Jaysen stared hard at me. “You and the rest of your tribe have turned away from your work and have helped the imperfect god do his.”

I shook my head. “What are you?”

“I suppose you would call me a demon,” he said after a long pause. “We were cast out of the imperfect god’s court for our radical ideas on the nature of the universe.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” I said finally. “None of this makes any sense.”

Jaysen sighed. “The only thing you have to do right now is make a choice. You can choose to continue the work that you are already doing on behalf of the imperfect god, or you can stop and do the work you were meant to do. The next target you will be given will be a child who will be the difference between the continued existence of the world as you know it and the coming of the Rapture. If you choose to take that target, you will die and the Rapture will begin.”

With that he turned and walked away into the night, leaving me with the choice to make.

So now you've got the whole story. I was the world's last hope. I knew the stakes, and I made the wrong choice.