maleficentmoi

I threw myself into the river, to drown myself with my sins. It seemed foolish at the time, but the sound of my body breaking the plane of the water's surface reassured me. It acted like a slap to my senses, flushing out any lingering doubt from my hesitant resolve. The water was cold and behind me Lucifer sat, perplexed. I had never seen him before, or, at least, that's what I would've said before I'd seen him. Through the liquid pane of glass he looked like someone I'd seen many times in my life. He looked like me, but whereas I was exhaling all of the oxygen from my lungs, tickling my scalp with the millions of bubbles containing my last breath, he sat at the water's edge, only scowling. I hit the river's bed and a bloom of drowned dirt enveloped me. It looked like I'd shit myself. I lost sight of the devil, through the thick gauze of the river's dirt and the cascading bubbles. When I could see him again, he had clearly moved. The devil tentatively tested the water with a toe covered in a Converse shoe; black and nearly mint in condition. Whatever he felt through the rubber toe of the shoe didn't please him and the devil seemed flustered beyond his body language's ability to restrain. He stomped his feet and kicked rocks. His fists were balled up little white nests of energy. Soon, my chest burned. I knew that I was due an inhalation, but I resisted. The devil flung himself into the river. The explosion he caused was interesting to see from below and I liked it enough to smile. Most explosions, of course, were destructive, wiping out things and leaving pain in its wake, but this Lucifer-born explosion was absolutely beautiful. I realized that it would be equivalent to God, or somebody, dropping a giant blob of water into a clear blue summer sky, leaving a cotton poof of space where the color had just been, just like painting with watercolors. Lucifer's explosion, of course, was more interesting because he frantically fought against the water as if in a life-or-death situation. Lucifer couldn't die, naturally. At least, not by a river's embrace. Surely, it couldn't be that simple. Air bubbles swirled all around him like a hive of killer bees. Soon, he gave up, and languidly he swam to the river's edge and slowly pulled himself free of the cold water. I inhaled and the cold water shocked my lungs, constricting them. Then an angel was beside me. I smiled at him and he simply nodded. Another appeared. Then another. A school of angels gathered about me. Realization struck me and I asked, "Why are you here?" The angels only smiled. "I drowned myself..." I added. I was full of water at this point; there was no going back. The angels seemed glad for this as they seemed to draw closer and closer to me. They swam, I decided, like sharks. "I killed myself," I repeated. "Yes," one angel sung to me, "but, as soon as you fell into the river, your sins were absolved." Baffled, I frowned and shook my head. "Yes," another angel joined the previous in song, "for you see, he is up there while you are down here, and where Lucifer is, so is your sins." I considered this, noting absently that I seemed to have been swept up in some gentle tide; I was flowing downstream. "I don't understand," I said. "It is simple," a third angel brought the song to a near chorus. "With Lucifer rests your sins, and Lucifer, it seems, cannot forget how to swim. So here you are, and there he is, and until he can follow, absolved are your sins." I gave up trying to follow the song the angels sang. I no longer cared. Lucifer was gone from my sight. The river's bed had become my own, but I moved along it with the angels to a path Lucifer, apparently, could never know.