Eve of the Gods--NaNo 2011-12 Prep

October 9th: Antagonist Story (Contest Round)

Lest anyone believe that I am but your average maniac, seeking vengeance upon the world for nothing more than existing or, perhaps, being merely offensive to my senses, I have but one opinion and one maxim by which I live my life.

I am fully owed my revenge.

The grievances visited upon me throughout history, since God placed his curse upon my brow and I set forth on this world, mortal and yet undying, have torn asunder my soul, my very existence. I have been forced to live life after life, never forgetting, always feeling the weight of my imagined sin upon my ever-living mind. It is a stain upon my spirit, darkening my flesh and my bone to the very firmament of my being. And yet it is undeserved; it is all undeserved.

Long has humanity suffered under the delusions that I have created for them, whittling away at true history and replacing it with a tale far more suited to my needs. It was a feeble attempt at removing my curse by placing it on the shoulders of others more deserving of punishment than I. And yet I could not rid myself of my burden. Atlas I remained, borne down by too great a weight for any, especially a mortal, to balance upon his fleshed shoulders and in his ever-decaying mind.

For centuries I worked, diligent and unrelenting, toward this goal, this endgame of ridding myself of the castigation of God, the stain of divine injustice given to me to hold in perpetuity. But, though I succeeded in bringing another to share in my misery (my true enemy, my counterpart in this deified farce, was spared my machinations), my misery was not lessened. I was not freed or forgotten, but remained in the forefront of God's long memory. Even he who betrayed the Son had diminished and died and yet I remained, withering and yet not dying, dying and yet not forgetting.

And so I realized that I must change my plan. I must create a new stratagem, a new design with the same goal in mind: freedom. Freedom to live and die as humans do, to escape my ever-circling pattern of misery and suffering. No longer could I merely avenge myself upon my persecutors, now I must act and take a stand for myself. I must fight and earn the freedom so long overdue. And if I managed to scorn God in the process, all the better.

It has not been easy to find such a plan, to find such a gambit, but I have done it. I shall finally have whatever justice I may steal for myself. And it shall be sweet.

"Mr. Amitage?" The woman, like every other of his female employees, was fresh and ready for the taking. He hadn't slept with this one yet, he thought, but it wouldn't be longer. She was practically wet as April for him, he could see, as they all got after a week or so of working for the company.

This one was young, fresh out of grad school, and oh-so-very eager to begin running tours into the mountains of South America. She had red hair, though not so fiery as the woman who haunted his dreams, and nor was she as beautiful, but she would do in a pinch. A woman, after all, was good for not much else than to satiate his needs and to, occasionally, help him propagate as was proper. The Father had told him to multiply, as He had told all of humanity, and it would not do to undermine God's decree unwittingly. Not when he was working so hard to do it on purpose. "Yes?"

Her eyes were all wrong, Conrad noticed. They were not brown. She had brown eyes, intoxicating in their depth, infuriating for their naivete. She had not been forced to remember, no; she had been granted the solace of forgetfulness. She had sipped from Lethe's waters and washed away the memory of her sin. And Conrad had been forced to understand and to acknowledge his own role in that terrible event.

He would find her. In his dreams, she laughed and she whispered to him the whispers of sensual ecstasy. Find me, my love. Fill me, release me. Find me. And he would awaken, hard and flush with pleasure, with an arousal so strong it transformed into paroxysms of mindless rage. He yearned for her, to have her, to love her, to crush the air from her lungs and rip the heart from her body. She belonged with him, she belonged to him, and yet somehow she had escaped.

Somehow, he could only find her in his dreams.

Conrad Amitage knew that she was safe from him as long as she could not remember who she was. Her boon, her dose of divine compassion, shone like a curtain of bright light in his awareness, blinding him to her location. It was similar magic that kept him safe from Them, but it annoyed Conrad that it should be used against him. He did not like obstacles standing in his way.

"I was just checking in to see if you needed anything?" Her voice was wrong. It was not light and yet surprisingly rich and deep; the voice of a woman, the voice of a spirit older than civilization trapped in a body of flesh with no memory of its soul's long understanding. And her body was not so full, which was unfortunate. Women had maintained such unhealthy thinness in these last decades, not even maintaining enough weight to support childbirth in most cases. But at least this one had some flesh on her. The last of the interns had been all bone, with nothing but skin to prevent her organs from spilling onto the sidewalk.

A memory flashed before his eyes, of Her, of his beloved enemy before the Curse. Naked and willing, lying beneath him as he pressed into her, spilling the seed that would become his son into her belly. It inflamed him, and the dream suffused his limbs. "Yes," he whispered, voice thick with arousal and pent rage, as he stood and crossed the room. Conrad made himself refrain from hurting this girl--he must control his urges lest all be lost--and instead caressed her face. "I do believe there is something I need."