Reign

They say the greatest trick I ever performed was convincing the world that I don’t exist. I’m convinced that the greatest trick the world ever played was convincing me that I do.
Do you know what the biggest advantage of being Lucipher is? I mean the true perks of the job of being the Lord of Darkness? It’s that no matter what happens, the politics of heaven and hell, the strife, the dismay, the pleading for souls, it’s that at the end of the day you're still Lucifer.
You know who you are.
You know your role, no mater what may come.
Never did I sit and think what could I have been. What my life would be like if I turned left instead of right. You have no idea how freeing it is to truly know what you are. I get angry, I never want, I never need to need. Come rain or shine I’m still Lucipher.
I vividly remember feeling this way. So, at any rate I know that it was once real. And quite frankly, I got off on it. But then one night, gazing into the fire place, watching flames dance in a color spectrum no human eye could ever perceive, burning so bright it would incinerate any mortal, the thought struck me.
And struck me hard.
Why in all the millennia I’ve been here have I never before questioned my existence?
I think, therefore I am.
Oh, if only it were that simple.
The politics of heaven and hell run solely on the power of human belief. With out them, we would cease to matter. What difference would it make to the cosmos where their soles went after death? If all the inner workings of the divine exist for this sole purpose, what existed before the belief?
“What you hold true on Earth, I’ll hold true in Heaven”, HE said that. If so, does that mean I’m here in my basement solely on the basis of belief? And what of my choir of daemons? Christianity wasn’t the first religion by a long shot. Marduk, Unicron, Ishtar, were Babylonian Gods. Beelzebub: Lord of the Flies, was Baal the Prince: God of the Canaanite Pantheon before history was rewritten by the powerful. If heaven and hell is truly eternal what are they doing here?
For that matter what am I doing here?
Lord of Darkness? How did it come to this? My name means Light Giver. The Morning Star, The first light of dawn, The Bearer of Light. How could a symbol of all that is fresh and new be condemned to be the poster child of evil? Or is the truth that it’s always darkest before morning,?
If I am all that is evil why have I still been unable define exactly what evil is? Is an act evil when there’s justifiable intent? Is an evil act good when it rights a wrong? Is evil simply a point of view. After all, there really is no light or dark, just varying degrees of shade.
I’ve been portrayed so many different ways. Devil as seducer, as politician, as trickster, but the Devil as philosopher? It was a new one to me.
If we were made in his image, what use does it serve me? What use are arms and legs in the realm of the insubstantial? Why have a face with wrinkles about my eyes when time is not linear? If time is not linear then why is there a today. Is today just tomorrow’s memory?
Questions propagated more questions, till everything seemed to unravel.
The veneer dropped. Like a hologram in a computer simulation, Hell ceased to be lakes of fire and chains of ice. It was just a place. And I...
...What was I?
Not knowing.
If there’s a Hell, that’s it.
I wonder if God feels the same way. Has the same thoughts. Or is he too ignorant to consider the possibilities?
To my knowledge I’ve never spoken to him. I remember it of course. The Love. The Idea. The Argument. The Fall. But I can’t say it ever took place for certain.
And Lilith. Poor Lilith, Cast out of Eden in place of Eve for she did not heed Adam. What way was that to create a race? For simply asking “why?“, one is cast out. For thinking differently they are banished. Lilith and I will always share an unbreakable bond, for we were the first critical thinkers, and yet, why hadn’t all this occurred to us earlier. Why now after all this time
In hindsight I regret ever mentioning it to her.
The thought was terrifying to her.
Lilith now stairs for all eternity into her mirror. Touching herself, tasting herself. Her throat is swollen and raw from constantly humming to herself. She says the pain is reassuring. Wired fish hooks pierce her eye lids and pull them back. Forever staring. Terrified that if she should blink, even for a second, she would cease to exist. If she didn’t hear her voice, she would go mute.
This is Hell.
You don’t know what it’s like to ponder things in the physical flesh. One morning I was walking by a lake, recalling what it felt like to see true love for the first time, how it felt to have my heart skip a beat. Suddenly , through no conscious act of my own, I was throwing a child’s heart across the lake, watching it skip several times before taking the plunge. I stood there for several moments, unemotionally staring at my hand and wondering why through brief word association that I was destined to do such a horrible act. Was it of some personal daemon lying with in my subconscious, or was it because that was what was expected of me? “How can the Devil think of love, no, no that wont do“, right?
We’re the tortures of man more effective than mine because I am incapable of forming ones of my own? Or is the very word “existentialism” synonymous with “hell”?
I had to know.
The truth.
I sat. Pondered for days about it. What could possibly ease my fear. Give me hope that destiny wasn’t written and I was my own being. Able to make my own decisions.
Day turned to weeks. Weeks to months. Months to centuries.
Finally, I emerged from my solitude. Weary but filled with resolve.
I knew what I had to do. What I had always promised to do.
I called forth a council and drew up the plans. I went to my fortress and drew forth my shinning armor and sword of flame.
I would fulfill a promise I made all those ages ago. I would do that which was always threatened I would. On my own terms.
I would raise heaven to the ground.
The ranks were assembled. The generals rode forth on beasts so foul. And at it’s head my winged serpent carried us through purgatory. We feasted on the Lost to enhance our strength. The taste of fresh blood filled us with the ecstasy to do what we knew needed to be done.
A trail of shattered souls flowed behind us all the way up to the Gates of Salvation.
Saint Peter posed no threat.
I dismounted my beast, pulled close my cloak, and gazed up the walls of the capital city of Heaven.
I looked up past the battlements. Past The Angels holding the wall. Past The Archangels with their shields held tight. Past The Principalities with their hammers of war. Past The Powers with their bows drawn tight. Past the Virtues with their healing tools. Past the Dominions with their volumes of strategy. Past The Thrones with their wheels of fire. Past The Cherubim atop their sphinx. Past the Seraphim with their flaming swords held high. It was past all these that I saw HIM. Sitting there on his throne.
I took one long, hard, look.
And I understood.
Unceremoniously I threw down my sword, turned, and walked away.
When I had looked into his eyes it was not the creator of all things, the knowing, benevolent and reassuring stare I had expected. It was my own. I read it in his face, the wrinkles, the weariness. I saw that the same fears that plagued me were all too familiar to him.
The curtain had been pulled back, and there was no wizard.
Head, dropped low, hands in my pockets, I walked home. Behind me I heard my daemons charge in their berserker frenzy. Any moment The Angels will clash with them and Armageddon will unfold, but to what purpose. If my brother’s fears are the same as mine than this is only happening because there are those that believe it so. If that's the case then the ending has already been written.
A breeze grows around me and I pull my cloak tighter. I feel cold. A True chill that I’ve never felt before. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end for the first time.
I know It’s time.
But there is a flipside to this. A grain of hope that is the only thing left to me.
I am able to take some comfort in the fact that, you there, reading this, may just be a delusion of my belief., and if so, I do not envy your Hell.