Good and Evil

Part 1: The Awakening

 “Keep walking!” The cold voice sent chills up his spine.

It was most likely that this voice would be the last he would ever hear. It was a cold starry night, and there was no one within miles but Peter and Victor. The only sign of civilization was the road where Peter’s pickup had been stopped. Victor had been on his trail for a while, and had finally been able to overtake him, block his path, and point a shotgun at him. Peter had pretty much done whatever he was told since then, “do as the man with the gun says” he had told himself repeatedly during the long walk away from the road into the wilderness.

Victor was walking behind him with his gun constantly pointed at the back of his head. He was also making Peter carry a shovel. They walked for about 30 minutes before Victor started talking, “Did you think you could get away with it?”

“Get away with what?” Peter’s voice was shaky.

“With what you said in the shop, asshole” Peter could not see Victor’s face but he was sure he made a sour expression, and spat shortly after he said asshole.

“I apologize if I have offended you, but please let me go, I have a family.” Usually, Peter was a proud man, but these were not usual circumstances.

“Keep walking!” The cold voice sent chills up his spine.

“Think, think.” He tried to force his mind out of its sorry, frightened state. His brain decided to start from the morning. He had awoken early, had his morning coffee, kissed his wife goodbye and left the house, nothing out of the ordinary.

The odd thing about that day was that his boss wanted him to go to the adjacent town to pick up a delivery of fresh fruit and vegetables. For some insane reason, the truckers charged way too much to drive all the way to Peter’s town. It was cheaper to go out there and collect the shipment, and drive it all the way back to his town in his pickup.

While he was in the market, he decided to get a haircut. Victor’s hair saloon was the nearest he knew, so he went there. He still couldn’t think of what the hell it was he said to Victor to piss him off. The guy had done nothing when he was in town, but had chased him down and was making him walk to the middle of nowhere, most probably to kill him.

“Could you at least tell me what I said?” For some reason, most probably because his brain had gone into overdrive, he forgot the gravity of the situation and spoke in a loud frustrated voice.

“Stop!” Victor ordered and Peter did exactly that.

“Start digging,” Seeing that he had no other choice, Peter started digging.

“I am sorry, I apologize, I take back whatever it was I said” Peter was too scared to notice, but tears had started running down his cheeks. He did not want to die, he had too much to live for, and he most certainly didn’t want to die at the hands of some maniac, without knowing why. He decided to ask again.

“What did I say to you? Why are you doing this?” His voice was shaky again, this time due to the fact that he was crying while speaking.

“You look down on us all, just because you’re from a bigger town doesn’t mean you can look down on us. Very soon, I will be looking down on you.” Victor hadn’t bothered to answer Peter’s question yet, and it looked like he wasn’t about to start.

Peter kept digging, he was used to manual labor but for some reason his hands were full of blisters. The hole he was digging was now big enough to be a shallow grave. He usually loved silence, but this silence was getting to him. He knew he had to do something quickly or his end was inevitable.

“There is something here,” His shovel hit something metallic, and made that noise when metal strikes metal.

“Keep digging!” Victor wasn’t at all curios about what it could be, in the middle of nowhere, exactly at the random spot he had picked to be Peter’s grave.

Peter struck the ground again, and the sound of metal striking metal was much louder now. He looked at Victor, and this time Victor did not have to bark an order at him. He struck the ground again, and there it was, that sound again. Only this time he dropped the shovel as a result of the impact.

When he bent down to pick it up, he finally saw the object. It was a partially exposed metal surface with strange carvings on it. Maybe those were random designs, maybe some foreign language, Peter neither knew nor cared. What he cared about was Victor’s gun touching the back of his head.

Victor had come really close, and was standing just a foot away from him, just at the edge of the hole, so he could touch Peter’s head with his gun, and remind him of who was in charge of the situation.

Peter picked up the shovel again. As he got back up something strange happened. The carvings on the metal surface seemed to glow. In one final attempt to save his life he whirled and smashed his shovel as hard as he could where he thought Victor’s head would be.

The sound of the shovel cracking open Victor’s head like a water melon was not as loud as that of his shotgun going off. The side of Peter’s head was blown right off, he first dropped to his knees and then to the side, the blood from his wound filling in all the markings carved into the partially exposed metal surface.

Victor was on the ground, twitching uncontrollably until he too fell in the shallow grave. His death was not as quick as Peter’s, but the shovel to the head did its job.

As their blood mixed together to form a thin layer on top of the metal surface, something woke underneath. After thousands of years of forced slumber in the middle of nowhere, the prophecy had come true. Only fresh blood of a victim and perpetrator, mixed together from their fresh corpses, could break the ancient seal, and it did. 

Some may call it destiny, some coincidence, but the seal had been broken and the two fallen angels, who had dared teach magic to earthlings, were now free.