Belial

At some point you have to realize that I did not intend to write this nor did I ever intend to commit the acts I did. Somewhere in my life everything went terribly wrong; specifically when I realized they were speaking to me and watching me. These things, these spirits, destroyed my soul and have higher ambitions than that; the destruction of all humankind. How can a creature, a being, be so hateful as to want the destruction of everything we know today? Let me tell you.
As a child I was swept up in the euphoria of the Great War and began to meticulously sort through picture books and first hand accounts of the great battles. It was not just a matter of nationalism that enticed me so, although that is what brought me to it, but what ensnared me was the voice. Every moment studying the Great War a voice, a sweet soothing comfortable voice, would speak to me. It would tell me things about the war, about the death and how beautiful it was. “Look at the glory and honor death brings!!” it would say when I looked at the medals of my favorite war heroes. At first, I would argue with the voice and say things like, “It is not death for which they are being honored, but their sacrifice and duty to country.” At which it would respond, “Does not sacrifice and duty to country entail the vanquishing of said country’s enemies, which can only be done by the destruction of it’s people?” Slowly, it began to sway my opinion towards death and I came to view it as a beautiful and necessary condition which I was obligated to take part in.
Now you must remember that my loving mother was deeply religious, and my father was in such love that she could do know wrong. So when I told them about the voice, specifically my mother, she nearly leapt out of her chair to beat the evil clean out of me. She cried and prayed, yelling in tongues at odd hours of the night, for almost a month before she spoke to me again. When she finally felt as if God reached down and whispered in her ear, she came out of her room of prayer, wearing sackcloth covered in ashes and smelling of urine with a deranged look on her face and began to repeatedly strike me with a crucifix speaking in no intelligible language. Ironically, her daily beatings and incomprehensible language only made the voice louder, more frequent, and more powerful. It would say, “Surely no just god would let this continue, for you are but a young boy.” I would have to agree for I was merely an eight year old boy who sought comfort and companionship in his mother and father but instead was greeted by violence and coldness in the name of the holy spirit. As a result an immense hatred for my mother and her religion began forming and the very thought of either would send me into a frenzied anger. Of course, I did not show or speak of it to anyone, or anything, other than the voice and as a result the beatings began to subside and I was allowed to accompany my mother to weekly sermons at a church just outside of town.
Pastor Green was a mean man who had been ousted from his once flourishing church, Hebron Baptist, because of his increasingly radicalized teachings. So he started New Golgotha Church in order to continue to “spread his word” and called it such to signify the enormous burden he was willing to shoulder for the goodness of mankind. But in truth he just didn’t have anything else to do besides play pool and take shots of McCormick’s vodka at Stubb’s Southern Bar. Sometimes he’d even preach when he’d been drinking but nobody seemed to care. Some would even say his best sermons happened when he was drunk without actually saying he was drunk. They would say the Lord overfilled him with zealousness, which was why he was stumbling around the pulpit. Whatever it was, he was as crazy as they come.
Anyways, New Golgotha was built out of pine and stuck in the back left corner of an old cow pasture. Everyone this side of the Mississippi, knows pine rots quickly so he was either poor or didn’t plan on staying around for very long. It was painted a ghastly white and three black crosses were hung across the front, with the middle cross just a little higher than the other two. It was the creepiest building I had ever seen and wanted nothing to do with it but my mother absolutely loved it.
Now, Pastor Green’s sermons were mostly taught out of the Old Testament because it aligned with his views the most. He believed that the world was being overrun with evil, as proved by The Great War, and surely this signified the beginning of the end as taught in Revelations. He would get on the pulpit and scream and shout his drunken warnings of the end and destruction for all if we did not repent. Which I felt as odd because he and my mother would not allow me to pray for myself, and I always tried to please her, so I was not able to repent and thus if I died at that instant would be damned forever. She would meet in private with Pastor Green nearly every week to discuss the voice I had heard and the progress she had made in driving the evil out. After about two and a half months she took me into his office, and at this point I hadn’t heard the voice in quite some time, and Pastor Green snatched me up, forced my head in a basin of holy water blessed by him, and began to shake and yell in tongues. The initial surprise of it caused me to put up a fight but as my vision began to fade and I started to think that I would die at the mercy of a purported disciple of Christ, the voice came back.
I’m not certain how long I had passed out for but I woke up in my own bed so it must have been quite some time. As soon as I became somewhat coherent again, I recalled what the voice said:
“Look at how they treat you! Putting your head under water ‘til you nearly drown to cleanse you of some imagined evil. Your own mother stands idly by, praying to a god who hears no one and is certainly not present here. Remember The Great War! Remember the death! Remember its beauty! Remember your obligation!”
I began to think of the near drowning, all the beatings, all the looks of disgust, all the days gone hungry because she wanted to “starve the evil out of me,” and decided that not only did she need to die but New Golgotha Church needed to die with her.
Please keep in mind this was rural Georgia in the nineteen-twenty’s, and the nearest neighbor was a little over a mile from our house, so my mother did not have to be afraid of some unwary pedestrian hearing my screams or even see me if I happened to be in the yard so if she was in a particularly cheerful mood I was permitted to go outside. I would use these opportunities to plan and play bows and arrows with the unsuspecting pine trees. I had not heard the voice in quite some time and it was during one of these excursions when I met a boy my age who called himself Belial. It’s an odd name I know but I didn’t care, I was just happy to finally have a friend. We soon became great friends and not only did I see him in the woods but he actually came to live with me. The strangest thing was that my mother never saw him. When she would come to pray and beat me with her crucifix it would be as if he just melted into the walls. Even though she couldn’t see him, Belial saw every monstrous act committed by my mother. When she would finish, he would reappear to tend to my wounds and would ask me things like, “Why is she still breathing?” or “Death would be merciful for such an animal” and “Where is your father to defend you? Does he not see what she is doing to his innocent son?” I decided to tell him of my plan and see if he wanted to join me. Oh he was so joyous to hear I was certain he knew of my plan but how I did not know because I never spoke of it to anyone and I had not heard the voice in months. Suddenly, my chest tightened and my eyes widened with fear as I turned to Belial and asked, “Are you not the voice that spoke to me of the beauty of death?” To which he said he was.
I was scared out of my mind and relieved all at once. Scared because the voice in my head had manifested into a real being and had been living with me for months, and relieved to know that the voice was not something I had concocted in my mind. But then a calm peacefulness overtook me and I felt at ease; hate turned to love and pain turned to joy. It was there in that moment when I decided that this coming Sunday my mother and Golgotha would meet their version of god.
It was a beautiful Sunday. The sun was out, the birds were singing, and the smell of wheat fields were invigorating. The night before, Belial and I put so many leaves and kindling underneath the church that it could have burnt all of Atlanta down. The plan was for Belial to stay underneath the church until the service started at which point he would lite the kindling underneath the pulpit. It would take approximately ten minutes for the the entire church to be on fire and at some point before that I was to sneak outside and chain up the front door (which was the only door). Just like every Sunday we arrived early and as I watched the pews fill up with the wretched members of Golgotha who were too stupid and too backwards to realize that what they were doing was wrong, I smiled and though about the look on each of their faces when they realized they were about to die. Pastor Green stumbled up into the pulpit, I think he was drunk but if he was no one said a word, and began telling us this was our promise land and how we had to drive out the non-believers before they corrupted us all and damned everyone to Hell. I couldn’t help but laugh, for how could any god promise these hateful wretched people anything but boils and misery? I was convinced that if there was a god, he was not their who they imagined him to be. At any rate, they would regret their beliefs in a few minutes.
At four minutes I saw smoke rising outside of the window and took that as my cue to chain the door. I began to get up but my ever observant mother saw me, pulled me back in and didn’t let go. At this point, the smoke outside the window was growing and began to seep through the floorboards and I started to get nervous. I knew something drastic had to be done to free myself from my mother’s grip. I leapt at her face and bit a chunk of her ear clean off. Her screams were so intense it even curled my blood. Before anyone could comprehend what had happened, I ran towards the door, put my shoulder down and threw my entire body weight towards it. Imagine my surprise when it didn’t open. I tried it again and when it didn’t open again a deep panic began to set in. I slowly turned to face my fate and was astonished to see Belial standing in the middle of the church but no one seemed to notice him. He transformed from a young boy to the most hideous, monstrous thing I have ever seen with giant wings, hooved feet, and fire in its eyes. As it came closer, I truly prayed for the first time in my life and realized my mistake. As the flames rose higher and the screams grew louder, everything but Belial’s laugh grew quite. I felt the flames touch my shoes and then work through my pants until it pulled me to the floor. With my last breath I asked for forgiveness from God but was instead greeted with a cold burning sensation as Belial grabbed my arm and dragged me to hell.