Thomas Sniegoski - A Hundred Words for Hate

“I need to smell it.”

She raised her finger toward Remy’s nose. He closed his eyes and inhaled, taking the scent of her magickally tainted blood into his nose.

Images exploded in his mind, pictures so vivid it was as if he were already there.

“Got it?” Izzy asked.

He opened his eyes and nodded, then spread his wings wide.

“Come closer,” he told them. They shuffled toward him, and his wings began to close around them as if in a hug.

“This isn’t gonna hurt, is it?” Izzy asked.

“When was the last time that you ate?” Jon asked, as their reality began to shift.

And they were gone.

Gregson Paul had been raised a good Catholic boy.

Church every Sunday for most of his life, followed by an hour of Sunday school, where he’d learned the wonders of the Holy Bible.

He’d always thought of the stories inside the Good Book as that—just stories, parables that sought to teach the reader something about how to live life as a good Christian.

He never thought of any of it as true: Noah’s ark, Lot, Sodom and Gomorrah, Moses and his commandments.

But here—at the North Pole—right before his eyes, one of those stories had come to life.

“It’s Eden,” he said to Marjorie Halt as he gazed through the metal of the gate at the thick greenery beyond.

“You’re fucking crazy,” she said, hands on an impressive hip as she studied the gated jungle that had appeared amid the ice and snow.

“Then explain it,” he said. “Look at us.”

They were in their T-shirts and underwear, the heat from the mysterious jungle overwhelmingly tropical.

“There has to be an answer,” she said, pacing back and forth in front of the gate.

Daniel Hiratsu knelt silently in the grass, his scientific instruments scattered uselessly about him. All he could do was stare. Terrance Long stayed back on the ice and snow, clothed in his heavy gear. He was attempting to communicate with anyone who would listen, but was met with a wall of interference. It appeared that Eden would not let him.

Gregson knew that it was Eden before them, as crazy as that sounded. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind. It was as if the jungle were broadcasting something directly into his mind, telling him that this was true.

“I want to go in,” Marjorie said as she wiped trickles of sweat from her brow. She was standing before the gate, a look of determination on her pretty face.

An uncomfortable feeling suddenly twisted in Gregson’s gut.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.

“Why?” she asked. “Why isn’t it?”

“Because we’re not allowed,” he said, having no idea where his answer had come from but knowing it to be true.

“Yeah, right,” Marjorie said. She turned, rushing the gate and grabbing hold of its metal bars.

She didn’t even have a chance to scream.

The lightning arced from the sky, striking the top of her pretty head, disintegrating her in a flash of brilliance that caused small, colorful blobs to dance before Gregson’s rapidly blinking eyes.

All he could do was stare at where the girl whose remarkable ass had brought him to the North Pole had been standing, now nothing more than a smoldering mark upon the ground before the gate.

After a moment, the sound of sobbing distracted him and he turned to see Hiratsu rocking back and forth, his face stained with tears. Long was standing nearby, having ventured onto the grass, the hissing walkie-talkie he’d been using resting by his boot, where he had dropped it.

“I told her,” Gregson said, his voice cracking. He could feel his sanity slip just a little bit more. “I told her not to do it.”

“We should go,” Long said, his voice cold and emotionless. “We should get out of here before . . .”

Before we’re all struck down by lightning . . . by the wrath of God? Gregson wondered.

He slowly turned from the Garden on wobbly legs and caught sight of figures in the distance near their tent. He hadn’t noticed their approach; they just suddenly seemed to be there.

“Who . . . ?” Gregson began.

The others turned to follow his gaze; then almost as one they began to move toward the strangers.

But the closer they got, the more wrong they appeared.

The lead figure was dressed in long, tattered robes, like some sort of twisted monk. The other appeared naked, his flesh as white as the snow they trod across, but covered in strange, angular black markings. An even odder observation was that he appeared to be carrying two people beneath his arms, an older black woman, and . . .

A mummified body.

Alarms went off in Gregson’s brain and he felt the grip of madness embrace him that much closer; first the Garden of Eden, and now this.

Gregson called out to warn Terrance, well in the lead, but he was too late. Terrance had stopped before the robed figure. Gregson could just about make out the scientist’s excited voice as he spoke to them.

The pale-skinned man—if he was a man at all—seemed to lose his shape, dropping the two figures that he carried and lunging at Terrance Long.

What happened next was indescribable.

The monster—there was no doubt in Gregson’s mind as to what he was now—pounced upon the scientist and, in a display of preternatural strength, began to rip the man to pieces, eating the body parts as if starving, as the leader of their expedition’s blood stained the snow.

Hiratsu screamed and started to run, but the white-fleshed monster simply reached out with an arm that grew incredibly long to coil around the Asian-American’s ankle and draw him toward the beast.

Gregson couldn’t move, watching as Hiratsu struggled to halt his progress, digging his fingers first into the grass, and then into the ice, but to no effect.

Finished with Long, the white-skinned thing pounced upon Hiratsu, its protean form flowing over the man as his screams intensified.

Gregson finally looked away as Hiratsu’s pathetic cries died away, to be replaced by the sounds of something hungrily eating.

He did not hear the approach of the robed man, but found him standing before him.

Gregson knew, could feel, that he was in the presence of someone—some thing —unearthly. He was going to speak, but could think of nothing to say.

The robed figure turned his attention toward the gate and the lush, steamy jungle behind it. “Your kind had its chance,” he said, his voice low and melodious. “But you tossed it all away.”

He looked back at Gregson, his eyes cold and mesmerizing in their intensity. “I could never understand His fascination,” he said. “I could have given Him something so much more . . . worthy.”

Gregson had no idea what the robed man was talking about, but continued to listen.

“And now it’s come to this.”

He stepped forward and leaned close to Gregson’s face. “Do you have even the slightest idea what I’m talking about, monkey?” he asked.

“No,” Gregson croaked, and began to cry.

The man’s intensity softened, and he put his arms around Gregson’s shoulders, drawing him into an embrace.

“It’s all right,” he whispered. “It’s not your fault; it’s as if He wanted you to fail. Engineered it to be so.”

Gregson was sobbing now, his face buried in the collar of the filthy fabric of the man’s robes. It smelled strongly of blood, and of the air just before a storm.

“But I believe I can do better,” the robed figure said, suddenly pushing Gregson away. “I must do better if reality is to survive the coming cataclysm.”

Gregson’s brain was on fire, trying desperately to hold on to what little sanity he had left. “Who . . . who are you?” he managed to ask.

The robed man seemed genuinely pleased by the question, and his posture straightened as he spoke.