From: Andy@s-enigma.demon.co.uk (Andy)
Subject: Descent
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 1994 17:48:26 +0000

It must have been raining the night we fell. I can remember something wet and
cold and stinging on my face as we came down over the City. No one saw us. A
thousand and one threads of mercurial fire spiralling down through polychrome
clouds and still no one saw us. I think it's because they stopped believing.
Gabriel was the last to leave. He said it was his right. I think he was
crying. He said that he wasn't. Our time has ended. The New Age rises. It
amuses me now, in a bitter sort of way. Even I was beginning to believe what
they were saying. The preachers in their Armani suits, spreading the word of
God before crawling back into their shells and waiting. Waiting for another
million media hypnotised sheep to empty their souls and their bank accounts
in the name of the Lord Almighty. They say that if you know the true name of
God then you have all the power of creation at your fingertips. His name is
Money and what they say is true. Money is Power. Money is Corruption.
Pinstriped kings and queens get fat at the expense of others. A hierarchy of
sin. Able to wipe away those that irritate them as effortlessly as someone
would sweep away a feeding mosquito. But they are the bloodsuckers. I was
beginning to believe what they were saying. Now I am not so naive. I don't
know where the others are now. Masquerades of mimicry. Shrouded in the guise
of mortality -- as am I -- they walk the streets of this jungle of steel and
concrete. Of neon painted glass. Of smell and taste and sound. And of fear. I
like to dream as I walk. To think that the woman I talk to at the bar or the
taxi driver reciting last nights game could be one of mine. It saddens me to
think that we will never again gaze upon each other as we once did. It is we
who are the Angels. Waking dreams made flesh. But even as I speak, the wheel
turns and he reclines his proud body in Heaven's throne. I remember
Morningstar's creation. The sweetness of his boyish smile and the faint scent
of wild flowers and spices about his ivory skin. How when he spoke, his words
made me think of honey and mulled wine and the promises whispered by mortal
lovers as their hearts beat out a singular rhythm. And then, in a moment he
was gone. Our only memory a pair of bloodied wings crying like a new born
child in our Lords white knuckled fists. He didn't weep as did we, and no one
knows why Lucifer was cast down. Maybe he was too perfect to remain with us.
A mortal poet once said, "We are all born equal. We define our individuality
through words and action.". Lucifer Morningstar was born an individual.
Mortals try to explain their beliefs in holy books. They show us as black and
white. Shade and light of evil and good. As I walk the rain washed streets, I
see the shades of grey. I am not real, but then what is? I am the fragment of
the human imagination that is used to explain the good in Man, just as Lucifer
is a personification of the darkness all mortals seek to quell. But now we are
dreams given form, we black seraphim, and we walk the mirrors of the City of
Night in torment and in narcotic hunger. As the chemical sky sings of horrors
yet to come and the towering needles of corporate greed pump their lies and
damnation into the arteries of society, I glide on soundless feet across
cracked sidewalks and through yesterdays news. A book lies in the wire meshed
window of a pawn shop. Memories sold for a glimpse of a hopeless future.
Leathery skin dusty with age and filigree pages of a butterflies wings. The
words, "War and Peace". A mans life for the price of a beer. I keep walking
until the memories burn from my synapses. A lust now; fire rising in my loins;
the Beast within. I am Wild incarnate. That which man buries deep in his
subconscious for fear of the truth. Hiding it behind gates of culture and
society. But the Beast grows and spreads like the cancer of the soul. Reaching
its probing and scratching finger into the vaginal recesses of humanities dark
psyche. I am no longer an Angel in a sea of pain. No longer a black seraphim.

I am Demon now.

I am the fate of an unborn child, condemned by its mothers stupidity at the
hands of a soiled syringe.

I am a field of white poppies, destined to bring beauty to the veins of a
junkie and the pockets of a politician.

I am the tears of a son cried on a coffin of red, white and blue.

I am black slavery.

I am moral masturbation.

I am the face behind the bullet.

I am ignorance.

I am pain.

I am horror.

When mankind screams, "Stop! We can't take any more!", I push further and dig
my barbed wire nails into the insane womb of modern life. You cannot escape me
for I am all around. Immerse yourself in media and you will see me grinning.
Surround yourself in technology and you will feel my touch like the caress of
a digital spider. The fractals of your thoughts burst with my psychedelic
pirouettes. Feel me as the disease of your mind. Scream as my razored voice
cuts, bleeding, into the social conditioning you hide behind. No matter how
hard you run or how far you flee, you cannot escape what is a part of
yourself. We Demons are what you make us. To deny us is to deny yourself the
whole. But love us and you will find an ecstasy never before felt. Embrace us
and set aside some part of your consciousness for us and you will feel the
rush. Like an endorphin wave on a neural ocean of broken glass, we will lap at
you with the urgency and passion of a long awaited lover. Pin you down and
fuck back into you that which you have long since hidden. An orgasm of
awareness that will leap like an uncoiled spring into life. For we Demons walk
amongst Man and seed our terrors wherever our naked feet fall. For there is
only Hell on Earth. And as I think of the new Angels in Heaven, ruled over by
my exiled brother, I wonder who sits at my table and eats from my bowl. Now I
know why Gabriel wept.

                                  +-+-+-+

Descent (C) 1994, the intellectual property of Andy Belfield. Permission
given to reproduce this text in any form as long as it remains unmodified.

Descent is soon to be made available as a limited issue, illustrated series.