An Unholy Redemption Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Aware that he had awoken, Lucifer stalled opening his eyes for as long as he could. He

wondered what nightmare might reveal itself ; he thought that maybe he had

been dreaming whilst asleep on the throne after winning the battle. Yes, that’s

right, I am asleep. I am still the victor and supreme ruler of earth, God failed and I won.

Reluctantly, he opened his eyes. It took a while for him to adjust to a different

light, one that was a little dimmer than that of the Most High’s. Lucifer soon realised

that he had not been dreaming. He found himself floating above a vast array of beds

occupied by sick people and watched as a man assisted by a nurse coughed up blood.

She was comforting him in his pains. Oh I see a hospital where sick people get better,

not my place to be I enjoy death and suffering not places of healing. His attention was

drawn to a man being administered some urgent treatment. Doctors and nurses were

quickly and efficiently trying their best to save this man’s life. One nurse ripped open

the man’s shirt whilst a doctor slid a small piece of metal into his arm. Another doctor

reached out and started to charge the electrodes.

“We’re losing him!” one of the nurses shouted.

“Not when I’m on duty. This one HAS to survive,” a doctor replied.

Lucifer started to sneer at the effort being expended on bringing a human back to

life. Let him die, Lucifer shouted angrily at the deaf ears of the humans below. I cannot

stay here for all eternity.

Lucifer turned to fly away, but noticed he did not have his wings. He was rooted

at the very place he floated and couldn’t turn away from the sight of the man being

resuscitated. A feeling of panic and sickness came over him as he struggled with his

confinement. Why am I able to fly without wings and why am I unable to move?

“This one HAS to survive if it is the last thing I do in this godforsaken world,” the

doctor said. “Clear!” A sudden pulse of electricity suddenly rushed through Lucifer’s being, causing him to recoil in unbearable pain as the doctor operated the paddles.

You have got to be joking. The pain subsided, allowing him to grasp the full extent of what was to become his fate. “I am not going in that body,” he shouted to the heavens.

The doctor moved the paddles to the man’s chest. The Most High’s voice repeated in Lucifer’s head: “Become that which you hate the most.”

“Clear!” the doctor shouted again.

“Arrghhh!” Lucifer screamed as the pulse resonated through him again, slowly pulling him

down to where the human was lying. Waving his arms in the air, he tried to frantically take hold of anything that would halt the awful process to which he was now being subjected. He watched with horror as his feet began to merge with the man lying lifeless on the bed. The process became more intense and painful until just his head t was left to merge. Looking up now at the doctor and nurses working on the body, which was to become his prison, his watched the doctor lift the

paddles above his chest.

 

 

“One more try, give me all you have, nurse,” the doctor said as a nurse turned to the electrical

panel and turned the knob to full power. The doctor rubbed the metal plates together and placed them on his chest. “Please God let him live!” he shouted. “Clear!”

“Nooo!” Lucifer’s cry was to no avail as he now become at one with the human body and took his first human breath. “We’ve got him, doctor. You did it,” the nurse said.

“Thank God, I thought we’d lost him.” The flat line on the screen was now bleeping and moving in a regular rhythm. On opening his now human eyes, Lucifer observed the doctors and nurses all looking down at him. A doctor took hold of a pocket torch and shone it into his eyes. Lucifer turned his head to avoid the intensity of its beam. “Get that thing away from me,” Lucifer protested angrily. “Welcome back, you gave us quite a scare. We thought we were going to lose you. That hole in your head nearly cost your life; those muggers had left you for dead.” Lucifer turned to the sound of the nurse speaking to him. She was bent over him, smiling and rubbing his forehead.

“Get away from me, you disgusting creatures,” Lucifer said as he pushed the nurse away. “Do you not know who I am?”

“Why don’t you tell us?” one of the doctors snapped at Lucifer’s apparent ingratitude.

“I am Lu …” Lucifer attempted to say his name aloud but the words just did not form correctly in his mouth. He tried again, “I am telling you I am Luc …” Still the words did not come, which made him remember God had forbidden him to say his true name.

“Lewis? Leonard? What about Luscious?” the doctor asked. “Can’t you remember? I think he

must be suffering from amnesia.”

“I am the Lord and Prince of Darkness, the most evil angel that can ever enter your dreams. I

have lived for thousands of years and God has decided on this punishment for me, that I should be incarnated in this disgusting body of flesh where I now reside.”

“Okay,” the doctor replied, “I think that bump on your head might be a bit more severe than we originally thought. We had better keep you in for a couple more days for observation. Nurse, will you administer our patient a small sedative to help him relax?”

Lucifer felt the needle enter his arm. “Ouch, that hurt,” Lucifer said. This was the first time he had felt pain on a physical level. He did not like it one bit; it gave him a feeling of such weakness. “Don’t be such a baby, surely the lord of darkness has felt and seen much more pain?” smirked the nurse.

“I don’t like your tone, lady. If I had my powers I would turn you to ash in the very place where you stand.” The nurse gave Lucifer a concerned look.

“You must not keep talking like that. People will start to think you’re crazy and you don’t want to end up in an institution, do you?” Lucifer realised that he was not going to be believed and that he had no powers to prove what he said. The nurse tucked in the blankets of his bed as the sedative started to work. Once again he felt his eyes becoming heavy.

“Can you remember your name now?”

“It’s Luther,” he said reluctantly as he watched the nurse switch the light off in the ward.

“Well, good night Luther. See you in the morning.”

He turned to face the window by his bed, looking out at the sun as it made its way down behind the horizon. He pondered on the memory of sitting on that rock in the rising sun of the desert just before the battle. As the last ray of light vanished into the darkness of night, he could not believe his predicament, confined in a bed as a human in a mortal world.

 

 

 

 

 

The sound of someone on the television news roused Lucifer from his sleep. He watched carefully as the reporter talked about the political struggle in a country in the Far East between Governor Rasheed and General Silas, the first who wanted things to stay as they were and the second who wanted tochange a nation which was full of false prophets and politicians, responsible for corrupting their society. Silas’s spokesperson said that Silas wanted to establish a new political and religious stronghold over nations without interference from established customs and the Western world. The nurse angrily turned off the television with the remote control and the television screen went blank, much to Lucifer’s annoyance.

“That General Silas is a horrible man. He is a butcher and a religious fanatic, hell bent on

genocide, greed and dictatorship. He doesn’t want peace, and if you ask me it marks the beginning of the end.”

“He seems quite a powerful character with admirable qualities, a leader of men.”

“The only thing he is going to lead us to is the end of the world if we aren’t careful. I don’t know how he became so powerful. Please don’t tell me you’re a follower of his? Governor Rasheed is a much more peaceful man.”

“Well, let’s just say I knew someone like him a long time ago. Tell me nurse, what year is this and where the hell am I?”

“I see you are still suffering a little from memory loss. It’s the sixth of June 2006 and you’re in a hospital in London in the United Kingdom.”

“Is it really?”

He couldn’t believe that four thousand years had passed since he’d battled with Michael. It felt strange because the conversation with the Most High seemed like only hours before. So this is the future? I wondered how it would look. Now I see machines working together with humans to save lives in hospitals and people communicating from inside a wooden box with a glass front. The sound of coughing broke his thoughts. He turned to see the man he had seen whilst floating on the ceiling coughing up more blood. The man noticed Lucifer’s intense stare and quickly wiped away a tear, embarrassed. He was frail and in his mid-thirties, with dark, fading eyes, pale skin, and lips that were almost blue.

“What is wrong with that young man?” Lucifer asked the nurse who was making his bed more comfortable. “Oh, that’s poor David. He has terminal cancer. The doctors don’t think he’ll last till the end of the week. I feel so sorry for him, being so young and the cancer being so aggressive. He has so much to live for − a loving wife, a daughter and parents that love him dearly.”

“That is a terrible shame.” Lucifer tried to make himself sound sympathetic, but all he wanted

to do was roar with laughter at the poor man’s fate.

“It is shame God can’t help him,” Lucifer said. “Where is God when you need the Almighty the most?”

“Please don’t blaspheme in front of me,” said the nurse, offended.

Lucifer’s eyes filled up with water as he fought hard not to laugh. The nurse crossed herself.

Lucifer turned to face David who had now stopped coughing and was smiling at him. Lucifer

stared intently back. When the nurse wasn’t looking, he drew his finger under his throat and let his tongue fall out of the side of his mouth. Shocked, David started coughing violently. the nurse rushed to raise the bowl to his mouth. She gently sat on his bed and comforted him as much as she could. After a while the coughing ceased and the nurse lowered David’s head onto the pillow, allowing him to breathe more easily apart from the odd crackle from deep inside his chest. The nurse returned to Lucifer’s bed.

“Is anyone else going to die soon?” The nurse filled his glass with water. “Why do you want to know?”

“Just call it natural curiosity.

 

Tell me nurse, do you enjoy your work saving people? People you don’t even know. What do you get out of it?”

“There is nothing better than the feeling you get when you manage to save somebody’s life, or heal sick people and watch them get better.”

“I can’t see it myself,’ Lucifer said. ‘You are not able to receive thanks from dead people for all the hard work you have put in. What about other sick people, are you ever thanked for your time and effort? Does God thank you when you are lying in bed after saying your prayers?”

“Stop it! I told you before; don’t talk about God in that way. I agree that in the last ten to fifteen years, people’s behaviour has progressively got worse towards my profession. I don’t get thanks at all, even from you. The whole world is going crazy if someone would rather leave someone to die in the streets than help them. I can’t understand how this world has become so selfish to the point of complete arrogance.”

“Exactly, and yet you still choose to do your job faithfully and zealously, why?”

“I guess I’m an eternal optimist. I hope that one day something will change, and there will be a time when the word of God will be known in this world once more. A time when people will again start to believe in their own humanity.”

“Rubbish. Why don’t you just accept human nature as it is and realise nothing will ever change. Look at General Silas. He is becoming more powerful with his religious beliefs.”

“You sound as if you enjoy accepting the fact that nothing will change. But I tell you I feel

something big is very close on the horizon. It’s going to change the way we think forever. God won’t sit back and let these awful things in life carry on. I am sure God has a plan and that plan will soon be revealed.”

“Not if I have anything to do with it!”

“What was that?”

“I just said I don’t want anything to do with it. I gave up on believing in God a long time ago.

When can I get out of this hospital? Having all these people around me is making me feel quite

sick.”

“Oh, we are feeling grumpy today. You should be able to leave tomorrow after the doctor has

inspected your injury and given you the all clear.”

“Good.” Lucifer turned his back on the nurse, indicating he didn’t want or need anymore

attention. The sound of the bedside clock’s second hand ticking seemed progressively louder as Lucifer mused on how time here was so slow. Yet the past four thousand years had seemed to disappear in a blink of an eye. The rest of the day dragged on. Before long, the sun was making its way down in the west. Medication and food had all been distributed and the doctors were leaving the ward after completing their rounds. It fell silent during the darkness of the night. Lucifer was unable to fall asleep due to a patient in the corner snoring. David’s breathing was also getting worse. As an angel, Lucifer didn’t need sleep, but now he was in human form, tiredness and fatigue were setting in. He turned onto his stomach and pulled his pillow over his head to muffle the sounds around him. For a while, Lucifer rested. He was soon awoken by the sound of David’s coughing penetrating through the pillow. Lucifer sat up. David was struggling in the darkness to find his panic button, knocking over a glass of water in the process. Lucifer looked around to see if any of the other patients had woken to see what was going on. All remained silent and asleep. All of a sudden the coughing ceased and Lucifer turned to see David looking right at him. Their staring eyes were held together for what seemed a lifetime before David broke the silence. “Help me please, I am so afraid,” David said. “I don’t want to die and leave my family, please. I feel so alone, I know you can save me.”

 

Tears of sorrow and despair fell from David’s eyes as Lucifer watched him, emotionless.

“I have no desire to save you.” Lucifer knew that David was near to death and now possessed a deeper understanding of who Lucifer was. “Look at you, a real disgrace to the human race. Why don’t you die with some dignity? Or maybe even ask God to come and save you.”

“But God came to me in a vision and told me you have the power to save me. Please think of my family.”

“Well that vision and God are lying to you. There is nothing or no-one that can save you now.

You are most probably better off dead and out of this godless world anyway.”

“Please!” David fell back onto his bed and everything went silent. Lucifer watched in the semi-darkness for a brief time until a small spark of light started appearing from an opening in the ceiling. This light started to grow and expand in brightness, reflecting in Lucifer’s eyes as he watched intently. It was at this point he felt something, something that he had never experienced before: fear. Lucifer cowered as the heavenly light got so bright illuminating the whole ward. He cried out to the other patients but they remained peacefully asleep, totally oblivious to what was happening. Just then David’s soul left his body and floated over to Lucifer’s bed, he looked down at Lucifer with forgiving eyes.

 

“I forgive you and I love you. One day you will know the meaning of this and the word of God and truth.” Lucifer was now feeling sick to the stomach as he watched an angel descending through the light in the ceiling to escort David to the Most High and Heaven above. In that instant Lucifer recognised Raphael from his long golden hair, green eyes and gold crown which sat proudly on his head, “Hello my brother. I see you chose not to help and save this man. Do you not remember the punishment given to you from the Most High and the conditions that come with it? Why prolong your pain?” Lucifer became more defiant.

“Forget it Raphael, you tell the Most High that I will find a way out of this wretched body and return to my former glory. When I do there will be hell to pay.”