Baphomet's Requiem

Two Bursts of hot white break the silent dark with a thunderclap that echoes out in all directions, like a ripple in a still pond of thick black.

The bright haze quivers into form and Christian drops from a six inch hover to the undefined earth. Half on feet he shuffles to the left. Hunched hard with eyes buried deep into the recess of his forehead he falls face first, no energy or orientation to hold his disoriented frame against the gravity.

“Jes…”

Less a word into his articulation Christian vomits violent as he makes to lift himself from the common surface.

Again he tries, between labored breaths, to push forth a phrase that might do justice his current frame of mind.

“Jesus motherfucking cock suck… ahhkk…”

Again like an open faucet it pours out of him. Energy spent he gives up, loses himself in the unbearable exhaustion of now. He curls on a side, takes the fetal.

“What the fuck?”

No more than a whisper. His eyes close.

“Dreams are a luxury we cannot afford. Get up.”

Constantine passes on patience. He grabs Christian by the scruff of his this and that, pulls him to his feet in a quick rush.

Back and forth like a marionette on stilts, Christian corrects himself by Constantine’s direction.

“Gather!”

Constantine shakes the last of the lost from Christian’s conscious. Christian acclimates himself to the new terrain, or lack of…

“Where are we?”

“That depends on who you ask. I don’t suppose home would be an adequate response?”

“I don’t suppose.”

Christian spins a slow three sixty, arms outstretched to the hidden world that surrounds him.

“I don’t… I can’t see a damn thing.”

“Adjust.”

Realization. Different eyes for different work... he changes.

“Is that better?”

Around them the heavy dark gives way to form, a terrain details itself on all sides. Still too dim for a clear discernment, even with the heightened vision. A scene best described as what the inside might look like if it were the outside.

“Honestly, I don’t know. What is this place? It looks like that movies THX except with the color scheme inverted.”

Constantine works to hold the hint of a chuckle.

“Not a terribly inaccurate interpretation.”

“But seriously, two minutes ago I was on the waste plains about to be firebombed, an hour before that… just please, Constantine, no more riddles.”

A deep breath and a long second’s contemplation.

“This is the world between worlds.”

“I said no more God damned riddles.”

“I’m not finished. As best I can describe it to you, this place is a something more than a somewhere. It exists between the world you know and the one where we have come from. This landscape is more a construct of the mind, or minds, of the people who occupy it at any given moment. It holds claim to no true form of its own, it simply is.”

Christian’s brow furrows in a perplexed disturbance begging for deeper explanation.

“You see this place is not actually meant to exist at all, it is made up of the fragmented matter that has bled out of the fissures between our two realities to form this base occupation of time and space. I couldn’t say when it came to be because here when is a relative term. You won’t age here, put simply time does not exist. However if you fall asleep here you will cease to be. Again I do not have all the details but it has something to do with the stability of the matter here and the static state of being we find ourselves in while we sleep. If you pass out the land will take you.”

“So I guess a power nap is out of the question?”

Constantine ignores the quip moving forward with his lesson.

“Currently our two realities are pushing against one another like tectonic plates on a fault line and not unlike the example if they keep on this course much longer there will be a tremendous quake that will lay ruin to both of our worlds.”

“And this is why your people wanted to destroy our world, to save themselves?”

“Something like that yes. You see the focal point of all of this misdirected energy rests at the center of your planet earth, as well the center of our own, in order for one to survive the other must be eliminated.”

Christian turns his back to Constantine bringing an end to the weighty speech. Head in palm he sits slow; information disorientation makes difficult a level foot.

“But… if that’s all true, then why did you help us before? Why did you stop Moloch and the rest of them from completing their mission?”

Constantine steps to Christian’s side.

“That, my friend, is a more complex explanation than you might think.”

“More complex than that?”

Constantine takes a seat next to Christian on the nondescript surface.

“Who’s to say which is worth more than the other? Left or right, they’re both the same in a spiral, even more so in a downward one.”

“So now what?”

“Now we have a decision to make, before Set makes if for us.”

“Set?”

“How do you suppose you came to find yourself on a battlefield in the Mid East some three years our prior? The machine that Set is trying to repair, with my blueprints, is a gateway device. It was what we used the first time to travel back to your ancient Egypt or Sumer and take your species before it understood the difference between science and God. Now Set plans to use the device to once again turn your kind to dust by going back and retrieving Moloch so that they can finish what he started so long ago.”

Christian picks himself up off the ground, brushes the hint of hesitation from his visage.

“Then why are we still sitting here telling stories? Let’s go.”