Sweet Blasphemy

I try not to cry out as Andy lifts my body up off of the bed. I moan against him, burying my face in his neck, clutching at his arms with all the strength left in my body. He doesn’t say a word, just holds me tighter and lets his blue gaze focus on my bleeding lips. Taking me by surprise, he brushes his thumb across my lips softly and then rubs the blood onto his fingers. Fascinated, I watch as he licks my blood off of his skin. He closes his eyes.
“I thought… you didn’t like filthy mortal blood,” I bite out weakly. “That’s what you said… to Acheron.”
Andy does not respond. He opens his eyes and does not look at me. Instead, he carries me over to the tub in the bathroom. I try not to think about how he is about to bathe me, that he has done it before and that he will do it again. I try not to think that I am naked, and that he is a dark creature. I try not to remember him as a little boy, as a teenager, as my Andy, and I fail.
I try not to think as he pours the water over me, and lets it run down my body, purifying me of all physical traces of Death. He cleanses my body with sweet-smelling soap, and I focus only on the scent. It smells like vanilla and sandalwood. I find the smell comforting; I’d always kept vanilla room spray in my bedroom back at my home. I pretend that I am back home, that I am lounging on my bed with Andy next to me, and we are dreaming up a better world than the one we used to live in. I pretend that I am adamantly trying to do my Trigonometry homework, and that Andy is adamantly trying to distract me from it. I pretend that he pulls me up off of my bed with his arms around my stomach, and that he sets me down and takes my hands and starts dancing with me.
I miss him so much that it hurts.
“Why,” I whisper to him. “Why me? Why does He want me?”
Andy rubs the soap into my back, his hands moving in soothing circles. I whimper in sorrow, sorrow for the man that I had loved who had never really existed. I whimper, but I lean back into him, and he takes this as permission to massage my shoulders. I am confused, but I try to shove my confusion down into the pit of my stomach. If I ask him why he is treating me nicely, he will stop.
I do not want him to stop.
I want to pretend that he is my Andy, and that he is being nice to me because he wants to. I exhale, trying to release my fear from the cage inside of my stomach. I do not want to spend another night with Death. Every night since the night I tried to kill myself, a scaled woman had dressed me and then led me to Death’s chamber, where I would wait- sometimes for hours- for Him to come and have His way with me. He was never gentle. He was never compassionate. But He always touched me with hands so heated and looked at me with an intoxicated glaze in His eye. He always touched me like I was the only thing He had ever wanted in the entire universe.
Death whispered things to me when we slept together. He’d tell me that I belonged to Him, that He wanted me to cry so that He could stop my tears with His tongue. Death told me that I was the only mortal He’d ever wanted. Death told me that I was something different, that I was extraordinary, and I didn’t belong in the Land of the Living. He told me that I was destined to become His bride, that my power was one that craved sovereignty. He told me that I was His lulja, His flower. He would slip into other languages, and I would ask Him what they were, and to my shock, He would tell me. He would call me lulja, which means ‘flower’ in Albanian. He would call me His nevinašce, His ‘innocent,’ in Croatian. He’d called me His virgin, His birjina in Basque, and I had asked Him why. I was no longer a virgin, so why would He call me one?
“Seraphina,” He had said, a smile on His handsome face. For that one moment, He did not look like a monster. Instead, He merely appeared to be a very beautiful boy with something beautiful to say. “Seraphina, you are a virgin to me. No matter how many times you sleep with me, you will always be a virgin. You are afraid every time I enter the room. Your heart stammers and races in fear whenever I touch you. When I make you feel things, things you don’t want to feel, you still cry. You are a virgin, Sera. You scream when I run my hands up your thighs, and you claw into my back when your wants take control over your body. No matter how many times I have sex with you, you are still as scared and as deeply affected as the first time. That is why, Seraphina Blakeley, you are my birjina.” He had kissed my collarbone, His lips light yet somehow taunting. He knew that my body lusted for Him. He knew, and He was teasing me. I had shuddered in pure and utter terror. I was lusting for a monster. I was horrified, and disgusted with myself. “Malaika, don’t be afraid,” Death had said, sounding amused. “It’s just sex, you know. You can’t help what your body likes and doesn’t like. It’s not your fault that you want me.”
“Andy,” I ask, popping back into the present. “Andy, what does malaika mean?”
For the first time since saving me from my suicide attempt, Andy responds to me. “Malaika?” he asks, sounding surprised that I would ask such a question, out of nowhere, nonetheless. “Malaika means ‘angel’ in Swahili.” He is silent for a second, and I can tell that he is wondering where the hell I would’ve heard the word malaika. “Seraphina…” he hesitates. “Where did you hear that word?”
I consider giving him the cold shoulder, like he has been doing to me. But I cannot deny him a response, not while he is combing his fingers through my hair and braiding it like he used to do when we were little. “Death called me that, when we were…” I swallow. “When we were… in bed together.”
Andy is quiet. He finishes my braid and then ties it at the end with a black velvet ribbon. He reaches into the tub and pulls the plug out of the drain. I focus my attention on the soapy water as it swirls down the drain, making a spiral pattern of white bubbles. As the water level lowers, Andy stands me up, even though I am now healed and capable of standing up on my own. He procures a fluffy black towel and wraps it around my body. I can feel the towel soaking up the little droplets of water from my skin. Before I can even move to step out of the tub, Andy lifts me up and sets me back down, my feet now on the black-tiled floor.
“CC will be with you for the rest of the day,” he says abruptly. I blink. Where the fuck had that come from? What did that have to do with angels, or me sleeping with Death? I want to voice my opinions on the random topic-change to Andy, but I know that he won’t care. Andy doesn’t care about me. He is doing all of these things- bathing me and healing me and saving my life- because Death asked him to. I don’t care what he had said the other day, about how he was doing all of this because he wanted to. He was lying. He had to have been. After everything that had conspired between us, I would be a fool to think otherwise.
“I need clothes,” I say in response, keeping my eyes lowered to the ground and my voice as clear of emotion as I can manage.
“Do you really,” Andy says, seemingly annoyed, for no apparent reason. Approximately ten seconds ago he had been borderline nice to me, and now he was back to being a bitch. Yes, a bitch. “I hadn’t even noticed.”
“I’m sorry, do you want me to look away while you change your tampon?” I say snidely.
Andy startles me with a laugh that he attempts to hide by covering his mouth with his hand. He turns away from me, and coughs. I open my mouth, unsure of what I want to say. Before I can even attempt to force words out of my mouth, Andy turns away and leaves me behind in the bathroom. Unsure on how to proceed, I wait. I hear the rustling of fabric and I know that he is retrieving something for me to wear. I brace myself for the worst. I expect a frilly “nightgown” or some form of lingerie, or maybe just even underwear. I expect the worse from Andy- like all the other Hell creatures, I expect him to have no respect for my body, for my privacy. But when he returns, he has a navy blue baby-doll dress draped over his arm and has navy blue heels dangling off of his fingers, with undergarments in his other hand. I eye him suspiciously.
“What’s the catch?” I probe. “You gonna make me blow you or something in order to wear those clothes? You want to fucking play with me? Well let me tell you something, I would rather walk around naked than touch you like that. I just thought I’d tell you that before you got your hopes up,” I sneer.
Andy raises an eyebrow at me.
“I was just gonna give you the clothes, actually,” he says, smirking. “But if you want to prance around naked… well, don’t let me stop you.”
I snatch the clothes out of his arms, scowling. “Pervert,” I mutter. Once I have successfully secured the clothes, I glare up at Andy. “Now get out,” I order.
Andy clenches his jaw. “You really have no sense of self-preservation, do you?” he says, his words short and sharp. “Are you an amnesiac? Have you already forgotten the conversation we had only a few weeks ago?” Without a warning, Andy slams me up against the wall, threading his fingers through my hair, catching them on the snarls and then yanking my hair so that I am forced to look up at him. “I am dangerous, Seraphina,” he breathes. “I could kill you with one little flick of my wrist and trap you down here for the rest of eternity. Is that what you want? Do you really want to piss me off, little girl? Because I can kill you. And I will if you don’t stop annoying me. Do you want to be stuck as Death’s whore forever? Is that really what you want, Seraphina?”
I glare up at him coldly, trying to ignore the quivering in my heart and the way that my entire body quakes with shock and fear. “I am nobody’s whore,” I say, my voice glacial and unimpassioned.
Andy laughs in my face. This laugh is much unlike the one I had managed to pry out of him earlier, the stifled laugh that he’d been ashamed to produce. No, this laugh is dark, and scary, and menacing. “You wait around all day for him to come and fuck you all night long,” he says, smirking, his electric blue eyes a strange mixture of pain and amusement. “You say you don’t want it, but I’ve heard you screaming for him; my room is two away. I can hear you moaning. I can hear that you want him, even if you insist that you don’t. You’re nothing more than a stupid little mortal slut, Seraphina. I have no idea what he sees in you.”
“I would say that your reaction is uncalled for, but I hardly even notice anymore as to every reaction you have given me since taking me here has been disastrously out of proportion,” I remark, struggling to remain calm, my stomach burning with nausea at what my Andy had just said to me. “Even so, every reaction is fueled by some sort of emotion, regardless if it is my reaction, your reaction, or someone else’s. That leaves me to wonder: what emotion spurred that little hissy fit you just threw? As you insist that you don’t care about me- and I think we both can agree that that has been proven countless times to be true- I feel like I can discard the possibility that your anger was fueled by frustration at not being able to help me, or by jealousy of Death. But jealousy, I don’t think it’d be wise to discard that possibility entirely. I highly doubt that you really want to fuck me, so I think the next logical train of thought would be that you’re jealous of me.” I smile up at Andy’s dumbstruck expression. “Let me guess, the little lapdog doesn’t like me playing with its master, now does it?”
For once, I have rendered Andy speechless. As this does not happen very often, I try to savor the moment, but I am interrupted by the feel of fangs sinking into my neck. I scream out. It hurts terribly. Andy’s fangs are not as sharp or effective at slicing through the layers of my skin as the vampires’ were. He is not a vampire; he is a fallen angel. That must be why his fangs aren’t as strong. Andy bites into the softest part of my neck. I feel blood seep down my skin, and with a smile that I can feel against my skin, Andy pulls away just enough so that he can lick the blood up before it falls to the floor. I try to take advantage of this and shove him away, but before I can even position my hands fully against his abdomen, he is on me again, his fangs sinking deeper and deeper into my skin. He draws my blood out from under my pale white skin. The sounds of his lips sucking against my flesh, my whimpers, and his moans of delight fill my ears until I think that I will go deaf.
“Andy, stop,” I find myself begging. I am disgusted at the sound of my scared, helpless voice. Andy laughs against my skin, and he presses his tongue against my wound, making it sting in the most horrible way. “Andy! St-stop it, please!”
“Tell me you’re sorry,” he commands, his lips brushing my skin as he speaks. “Tell me that you’re weak, and that I can break you. Tell me that you’re a whore. Tell me that you’ll do anything I ask of you, because you’re an insignificant little mortal, and I can crush you with a single blink of my eye. Tell me that you loved me, little girl. Tell me that you fell for it, for my stupid little façade, all of those years. Tell me,” his nails dig into my wrist, “that you’re a simple, naïve, and meaningless little whore. Because you are, Seraphina. You are.”
“You’re- you’re hurting me,” I plead. I didn’t even mean physically, although he most certainly was. Andy was inflicting more pain on my insides than on my neck. Andy does not stop. Instead, he sinks his fangs into my neck again, and presses his body into mine, pinning me to the wall. He scoops me up, lifting me up to him. This pushes his fangs even deeper into my neck. “Stop!!” I scream.
“Tell me,” Andy counters. “Tell me what I asked of you, and I’ll stop.”
I don’t want to, and I am about to say that when I feel his thumb brush up the vein in my wrist, contemplating. I remember how badly it hurt when Ezra drank from my wrist, and I cave into Andy’s desires. “I-I’m sorry!” I cry out. “You’re stronger than me, and… and this hurts, a lot! I’m…” I feel tears start running down my face, and I don’t want to continue, but I know that I have to when I hear him growl. “I’m a whore!” I scream out. “I’m your puppet; I’ll do anything! I- I really did love you, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry… I’m worthless, I’m worthless, now please…” Andy doesn’t let me go.
“Tell me, what are you again?” he drawls. “Tell me it again. Scream it to me, louder. Show me what you are. Get down on your fucking knees, and show me.” Andy throws me to the ground, and I clutch the towel to my chest. Pain explodes on the parts of my body that connected with the hard floor- my knees, the palm of my right hand, my shins. I look up at Andy through my tangled, wet hair. I can hardly see him through all of the tears.
“I’m a whore!” I sob. I am shaking. This is breaking me irrevocably. I hadn’t realized that I’d been harboring so much love for Andy inside of me, even after he’d done such horrible things since I’d come to Hell. I hadn’t realized it until he’d screamed it at me, until he’d thrown me to the ground, called me whore, and drank my blood.
“That’s not good enough,” Andy snarls. “That’s not what you want to do, now is it, Seraphina? You’re a whore; you don’t want that fucking towel, now do you?” He bends over so that I only have to look about a foot up at him. “Strip back down, naked, and tell me what you are.”
“I- I don’t want to, to show you my body,” I protest, my words shaking from my fear, my sentence broken from my hiccups. “I-”
“What you want,” Andy says lowly, “doesn’t matter. I didn’t ask you what you wanted, mortal. I told you to show me what you are. So show me.”
Crying, I sit up and let my towel fall away. “I’m a whore, Andy, okay?!? I like the way it feels when He fucks me, and I don’t know why! When He touches me, I like it; and when He’s inside of me, I want Him to stay in there! I’m, I’m a fucking whore, Andy, and I want to die! But- but I can’t!”
I clutch onto his leg. “Please, please don’t hurt me anymore,” I plead. “Please don’t hurt me! Please, please… I’m a whore; I’m His whore. I’m your whore, now please, please don’t hurt me!” I rest my head against his foot. I kiss the ground at his feet, whispering, begging, telling him that I’m a whore, and that I’d do anything if he’d stop hurting me. It’s more painful when Andy hurts me. I loved Andy for so long. He was the first person to ever show me any compassion, even though it was fake. I had cared about him with every fiber in my being, and a love- a devotion- that strong doesn’t develop overnight. It sure as hell doesn’t go away over night. I am stuck with love for a monster, a monster that is content with torturing me. I am stuck loving a monster and lusting for his despicable master. I want to die, and the worst part is, dying will only make it worse.
“What’s going on in here?”
I fly backwards, covering myself with my arms and legs. I lift my gaze and I see that CC is here. The second his brown eyes meet mine, I forget that I am mad at him. I forget that he is as much of a liar and a monster as Andy is, and I scream his name.
“What the hell did you do to her??” CC demands of Andy.
Andy wipes my blood off of his mouth, unremorseful. “She was being annoying,” he shrugs. “I had to teach her a lesson. It was one too many times that she mouthed off to me.”
CC looks back to me. “Sera, come here,” he says softly. He kneels down, offering me the towel again. I crawl over to him and allow him to wrap me in it. I am shaking and bawling my eyes out, and I don’t realize how badly I’ve been needing a hug until CC has wrapped his arms around me and is holding me like Andy used to. “It’s okay,” he says gently. “It’s okay now; it’s all going to be okay.” Andy is silent, and I cannot help but look up at him. He is stoic, looking down on me and CC like he never cared about either of us in the first place. “Sixx, you can leave now,” CC says, his voice the sharpest I’ve ever heard it.
“Finally,” he mumbles. He goes to leave, and is out of the bathroom door but just on the other side of the open doorway when he stops. “CC, if you want anything from her, her wrists and neck are weak. And all you have to do to control her,” he smirks at me, “is to put your dick in her.”
I make a strangled noise, like a wild animal that has been run over, and I bury my face in CC’s chest. I do not look up until CC says, “he’s gone.”
Slowly, I force myself to stop shuddering and wipe the tears from my eyes. Once I feel strong enough to move, I pull away from CC and meet his eyes. “Are you going to hurt me?” I ask. I sound like a small child, scared of the shadows on their bedroom wall, talking to the “monsters” in hopes that they will leave, when they never will. The only difference is that the child’s “monsters” are not real, and mine are.
CC’s eyes soften, and I am shocked to see sympathy and compassion inside of their deep sepia. “No, Ser, I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispers. “Come on, let’s get your neck cleaned up, and get you dressed. We’ll figure out what to do from there, okay? Once you’re all cleaned up, I’ll let you decide what you want to do, I promise. But first we have to wash the blood off your skin.”
Nodding my head and wiping my nose, I obey CC, holding the towel to me and standing up. CC turns on the sink and puts a small black towel under the faucet, allowing it to get wet. He lathers some sandalwood and vanilla soap onto it, and then motions for me to come over. I tilt my head to the side, exposing the damaged skin of my neck. CC inhales.
“Damn, Sixx really got you, didn’t he?” he asks quietly. He gently presses the towel against the wound, and I hiss. “I know,” he says. “I know, but we really should clean this. It’ll only sting for a little bit, then it’ll be clean, and it’ll heal. That’s what this soap does, it’ll rejuvenate you.”
So that’s why I’d always felt healed after Andy bathed me.
“The only problem with the soap is that it’ll take the pain from the person being cleansed, but it’ll give it to the person doing the cleansing. So if you use the soap on yourself, it’ll do nothing. But if I wash your wounds with it, it’ll take your pain and inflict it on me,” CC explains.
I frown. “Then don’t wash it; you didn’t do anything to deserve-”
“Neither did you,” CC cuts me off. “You didn’t do anything to deserve this, Sera. You’re just an extraordinary girl, who caught the attention of an entity.” CC falls silent, and continues to wash the blood from my neck. I exhale, trying to breathe through the pain. I know that in a second, the pain will be gone. I just need to make it until then.
Sure enough, a minute later, all of my pain has vanished. I give a sigh of relief and relax my tense body. When I open my eyes, I see that CC is wincing, and his hand is on his neck, exactly where my wound had been a moment before.
“CC-” I start. He holds up a hand to stop me.
“Don’t,” he says wearily. “Honestly, Sera, when are you going to learn not to argue with monsters?”
“I…” I bite my lip. The last time one of my boys had told me that they were a monster, I had denied it. And he had threatened me. This makes me hesitant to say the same thing to CC, but deep down in my heart, I know that CC and Andy are not the same. They might both be fallen angels, but they are different people, different men. Keeping this in mind to steel my nerves, softly, I say, “You’re not a monster, CC.”
CC lets his hair fall in front of his face. “You don’t know that, Seraphina. I might not be like Andy, but I am still a fallen angel.”
I shake my head, wanting to argue with him, but I do not. Probably because I am afraid that CC is telling the truth. I am afraid that he is a monster as well. “Will you leave as I get dressed?” I ask him timidly, peering up at him through the shield of my blonde hair.
His face softens. “Of course,” he says. “If you bring a brush out, I’ll re-braid your hair for you,” he offers.
I am taken aback. This is bizarre to me, this kindness that CC is showing me. This entire time that I’ve been stuck down here, I’ve been craving to see Andy, so sure that while everyone in Hell was cruel, he was the least cruel of them all. But I can see now how wrong that was- Andy is just as cruel as the rest of them, and it is CC that is showing me kindness. “I- I’d like that,” I stammer. CC smiles sadly down at me and leaves the bathroom, closing the door behind him. I can hear him sit down on my bed, and I wonder yet again how I never awoke while I was being carried from Death’s chambers to mine. Every night after being raped, I woke up in my own bed, still covered by filth, but in my own bed. I do not know why. I am, on one hand, grateful to be out of Death’s room, but on the other hand, I don’t know why someone would bother to move me to my room without cleaning me or clothing me first. Perhaps they want to let me sleep before waking me to be cleaned. Perhaps I’m overthinking it.
Deciding that that’s the most plausible explanation, I start getting dressed. I am pleased to see that I have been giving regular undergarments- nothing lacy, or frilly. And it’s not a corset!!! I allow myself to be pleased by this small thing, and I put my underwear and bra on. Before slipping the dress on, I study it. It is high-necked, with lace trim, the top fabric lace. A couple inches below where one’s collarbone would rest, slightly shiny blue fabric starts. The dress flows out into a cute A-line, stopping at mid-thigh. Curious, I touch the strange blue fabric. It feels like half-melted butter, soft and smooth. It must be some form of leather. I slide into the navy blue dress, and once it is place, I look in the mirror.
The dress is very flattering on my body. I blush when I think that Andy picked this dress out for me, that he must’ve been studying my body quite closely to know exactly what cut and color would look best on me. When I catch sight of my pink cheeks in the mirror, I scowl. Why the fuck am I blushing? He’s a monster, and a pervert if he knows my body that well. Shaking my head, I slip the blue heels onto my feet and tie the ribbons. Strangely eager to sit with CC, I exit the bathroom with a crystal hairbrush and a blue hair ribbon.
When CC sees me, he smiles. “You look beautiful, Seraphina,” he tells me. I do not respond. I am confused by his kindness, and I do not want to fully believe in it because I’m scared that it’s a lie like Andy’s had been. A modest blush creeping into my already-pink cheeks, I sit down next to CC, maybe a foot away. “I’m not going to bi- to, um…. er.”
“To bite me?” I finish, slightly amused by the way he stumbles over his words, trying not to offend me in lieu of what just happened.
“Yeah, um, that,” CC mumbles. He shifts close to me, close enough that I can feel his warmth. A little bit of panic starts burning in my stomach, growing as his hand brushes mine when he retrieves the brush. Flashbacks to my nights with Death fill my mind, and I have to remind myself that I am with CC, not Death.
But how different are they, really? For all I know, CC’s geniality could be a front, just like my friendship with Andy. CC is stronger than me, and we both know that. At any given second, he could grab me and take control of me, and I wouldn’t be able to stop him.
I am hyperventilating. I know that CC hears, but he does not say anything, just trusts me to work it out on my own. I focus on taking deep breaths, and look at things logically. Andy has obviously proven to be cruel, but even he has not raped me, so how could I even worry that CC will? CC still seems to be kind, and- dare I even think it?- my friend.
Once I have managed to calm down, I start wondering about who CC really is. He is a fallen angel, I know that much- but that is about it. And even the words “fallen angel” truly mean nothing to me. I do not know what it means to be an angel, much less a fallen one. Up until being kidnapped, I had been atheist (oh, the fucking irony!). I know nothing of religion, only that Satan, or Lucifer, or my fucking fiancé, was a bad guy and God was fucking fantastic. Or something along those lines. The only thing I knew about angels and their fallen counterparts was that angels were good, and fallen angels were bad.
“CC, you were an angel…” I start, trailing my finger over the creases in the bedspread. “Can you… maybe tell me about them? I don’t really know anything about angels, or fallen angels, or…. about anything, really.”
I can feel CC tense behind me. “Ser, I don’t know,” he says hesitantly. “If Death really wanted you to know about that stuff, He’d have told you already.”
“CC,” I say desperately. I turn around and grab onto his arm, pulling him closer to me so that he has to look into my pleading eyes. I can see that he wants to cave; he wants to tell me. He’s just been brainwashed not to. “CC, please. I’ve been stolen away from my home, my family, and my life. The only things that made me happy were you, Andy, and the rest of them, and suddenly I’m being told that it was all a lie, and that none of you ever cared about me, that it was all an act, a job, a means to an end, something you needed to do in order to get me to your master. Your master, who’s been raping me, letting vampires feed on me, and on top of all of that, Andy- he’s…” I start choking on my words, unable to continue. I can feel the sting of tears in my eyes, but I refuse to give up. “Please, please tell me.”
CC looks away from me, and my heart falls. Of course he’s not going to tell me. That’s too much to ask, right? For someone to let me know even the slightest bit about what’s going on in my fucking life?
“There is no God.”
My head snaps up. My gaze fixates on CC’s turned back. I am shocked. He’s telling me, he’s actually telling me…
“There is no God, we just refer to Death’s opposite as God sometimes,” he says quietly. “He is truly the entity of Life, but unlike Death, he does not go by the name of what he controls. He is known as Phoenix.”
Phoenix?
“A phoenix is a bird in human mythology that is said to burst into flames once it gets old, and is born from its own ashes as a young being. A phoenix is a symbol of life, of immortality. Of defeating Death. That’s why Phoenix took the name,” CC says. He scratches the back of his neck. I can tell that he doesn’t want to be discussing this, not just because he’s not supposed to be, but because Heaven and Phoenix obviously hold a certain amount of emotional baggage for him. Yet, he is still telling me, and that makes me all the more grateful. “Up there, it may be prettier than it is in Hell, but it’s a forced kind of beauty. It’s idyllic, and saccharine, and although you can’t see anything that’s wrong, you have an overwhelming sense that something is. The angels will say that there is freedom in Heaven, but there isn’t. It’s limited freedom, and freedom with limitations is not freedom at all.
“If you think that Death’s a terrorist, a menace, a totalitarian, a fascist- then I have no idea what you’ll even think of Phoenix. He’s worse, far worse than Death. He has rules, certain rules, and if you break them, he forsakes you for all eternity. Sometimes, he makes up rules on the spot just to have an excuse to throw an angel he dislikes out of Heaven. Like, no drinking nectar on Sundays, ridiculous shit like that. The worst part is, everyone acts like he’s so fucking righteous just because they’re terrified of him. Hell, I used to be terrified of him too. We live our whole lives as angels, as these powerful beings that can raze entire countries with a monsoon generated by one flap of our wings, and yet we are scared of everything. Because he makes us that way. I knew nothing of the world until I fell. I thought that man ran around catching monsters and eating them alive. I thought that Hell was eternal agony, that those who fell deserved it, and that Death was a terrifying being that would rip out my beating heart and suffocate me with it. I honestly believed all of this stuff until I fell. I fell recently, only about twenty years ago-”
“How is that recent?!?!” I blurt out before I can stop myself. I clap a hand over my mouth, scared that I’ve angered CC by interrupting him, but he laughs.
“I guess to a mortal, it sounds like a long time, doesn’t it?” he muses. “You have to understand, Sera, that I’ve been alive for centuries. I was born… in the eighth century, I believe? I’m not quite sure if that’s what humans call it…” he trails off, but then shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. What I’m trying to say is that I’ve been alive for so long that you can’t even begin to wrap your head around it. To me, and to the rest of the fallen angels, twenty years is the blink of an eye. I fell only twenty years ago; I have so much more of the world to see. I mean, I’ve figured a lot of stuff out since being cast out of Heaven, but there’s still so much that I don’t know about the mortal world.”
“Why were you cast out of Heaven?” I inquire. “Wait, how long ago did the others fall?”
CC finally turns around. “Sera, I understand that you’re curious, but there are something that are not my business to tell you, and others that are not your business to know. Both of the things you just asked fall under one of those categories.”
I lower my eyes. “Of course,” I say, slightly bitter that I am still surrounded with so much mystery and unknown. But I know that CC has risked a lot by telling me this, and I don’t want to push him too far. So instead of pressing for more information, I cross my legs and run my hand down my braid, feeling the silky ribbon tied on the end and thinking about the information I did have.
Lavinia is an angel. It’s the only logical explanation for why she’d had those white wings, why she’s locked up in Hell. And besides, hadn’t Jinxx called her something? Seraph? I’m pretty sure that means angel, in one language or another. Lavinia’s an angel, and she answers to an entity known as ‘Phoenix.’ Somehow, she had crossed paths with me, and then the fallen angels had probably found out and thrown her into prison to keep her from telling me who they really were. Odds are, if I can somehow find Lavinia and break her out, she’d know how to help me to escape. All I need to do is to figure out where that prison is- I have no idea how I’m going to do that, but I refuse to give up.
Maybe it’s the light that CC’s unexpected kindness brought to me, or maybe
I’m becoming an optimist- but I know, now more than ever, that I can survive this. I can survive being kidnapped by Death. I can survive being raped. I can survive having everything I’ve ever cared about stolen from me in one foul swoop. I can survive because I won’t allow myself not to. I won’t allow myself to give up.
The only downside to talking to CC is that now I am left with a new perspective of Hell. I am no longer looking at it solely as a horrible place where innocence and happiness goes to die. Now, I can see the beauty in it. The beauty in the unrestrained freedom that the Nightshade clan lives in; the escape it offered CC, and probably the rest of the fallen angels as well. As much as I don’t want to, I can see the good in Hell, even in Death. It seems that, except when it comes to me, He allows His people to do as they please.
Damn it. I can’t afford to think like this; I can’t afford to start seeing Death as a good anything, even if Him being a good ruler has nothing to do with my relationship with Him. I try to brush these thoughts away, but they are not so easily dismissed. They stick to my brain like moths in a spiderweb. Now that they’ve been caught in the viscous gossamer, they can’t be removed. More and more moths swarm around the spiderweb in my mind, and they too catch their wings on the deadly strands of spidersilk. I am left with so many intrusive, unwanted thoughts, a silent fallen angel, and nothing to do but think.
As much as I hate to think it, I belong to Hell like I’ve never belonged anywhere before. Even if it is in dark ways, I am wanted here, by almost everyone I have encountered. In the Land of the Living, I am invisible, and when I am seen, I am a freak. But down here, I am coveted not just by Death, but by vampires and fallen angels alike. It is sick, but I can’t help but feel like the Living World is my Heaven and Hell is my freedom.

Notes

Sera's Shoes and Dress:


BIG NEWS FOR YOUUUU GUYS XD !!!!! Hehe, I thought of the greatest idea for a SEQUEL to "Sweet Blasphemy" and I'm really psyched about it. I mean, "Blasphemy" is nowhere near done yet, but now I'm extra motivated to keep going so I can get to the sequel. So, I have a proposition for you: if you guys can guess the title of the sequel, I'll tell
you a bit about it (without spoilers, of course!). The title of the sequel is a Black Veil Brides song (wouldn't it be weird if it was, like, a Fall Out Boy song title XD ?). That's all I'm gonna give youuuu~~~!
Soooo, what did y'all think at the start of the chapter? Didja think something happened between Andy and Sera (you wish, :P)? XD and what do you think of sweet CC? I feel like this chapter has made me want to make CC even more important. He's such a sweetheart, ya know?
Lol, did you guys like that little bit of Andy X Sera I gave you when he drank her blood? Yes, I know that some of you might now qualify that as "Andy X Sera" but I DOOOO! For those of you who hate Andy in the story so far, lemme just tell you you'll understand later. I promise.

So, that was really long, but whatever, ya know??
*chap title cred: "Reprobate Romance" by Blacklisted Me*

BTW, if you wanna bitch to me about how much you hate Lexus Amanda, shove it up yer asshole. Seriously, people need to leave that girl alone. Obviously, she's depressed enough, she dun need buttface haters making her feel worse