FALLEN in THE WORST HELL?

Clover hugged her knees, still shivering.

"Midnight. Just great. There's no clocks in these bloody rooms. They do that on purpose, you know. To make us sweat and jump at every footstep outside the door."

I shook my head. "Not this time. When you dared to be my champion uninvited, your terror became my province."

She went pale. "Wh-What I did was a bad thing?"

"The very worst, human."

She nodded wearily. "Figures. The times I caught the worst hell were always when I tried to do the right thing."

I felt my heart harden. "The worst hell? Human, you simply have no idea."

I breathed upon her, murmuring, "Sleep."

The room filled with the perfume of jasmine and lilac. Clover stiffened like a deer caught under the bow of a hunter. Eyes rolling up, she slumped backwards across the mattress in a most ungainly position. I arose and walked to her bed.

Sighing, I picked her up. She was light as if filled with straw. I laid her gently upon her hard mattress, nestling her head upon the pillow. I brushed the hair from her eyes, haunted even in sleep.

A whimsey of Tennyson came to me as I stood watching her in troubled slumber, and I whispered,

"She breathed in sleep a low moan,

And murmuring , as at each night and morn,

She thought, 'My spirit is here alone,

Walks forgotten and forlorn."

"Never forgotten, little field mouse. Never forgotten. Not for all eternity. My nature may well be the death of thee, but forgotten thou wilt never be."

Holding her right hand, I stood watch over her as the heartbeats drummed into minutes and the minutes flowed into hours. No clock did I need. My race knew well the chiming of the midnight hour when Hell's gate swung open the easier.

A chime of brass vibrated in the hollow that was my soul. The hour had come. I bent and lightly kissed her troubled forehead, quoting from the Bard this time, "The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve. It is almost fairy time."

Clover's eyelids fluttered as her mind struggled to surface above the heavy waves of sleep. I turned slightly. The odd doorstop of a human was just turning the far end of the long hallway outside.

For me there was no silence, only the sigh of spiders breathing, the shudder of the dying leaves as their tree held back its sap, the wet clicking of stretching scales as the snake slithered upon a rock.

And speaking of snakes, our very own two-legged one was walking its odd gait to us. I smiled wide. Death was on the air like the taste of ashes on the wind.

Clover shot straight up, clutching her breast. "Oh, god, it's midnight already?"

I took back her right hand. "No harm comes to you unless it comes from me."

"Gee, I feel ever so much better."

I smiled coldly. "I thought you would."

She looked pleadingly at me. "Oh, please, Fallen, I don't think I can go through another session of group therapy. Could you --"

"No. I am here for a reason."

"What reason?"

"At the moment it still eludes me. But it will come to me."

She pouted. "Before or after I am driven mad or killed?"

I showed her all my needle teeth. "Why I think that depends upon how firm a grip you have on life and sanity."

She reclaimed her hand from mine. "I think I understand why you want me to call you Fallen."

I have known driftwood to burst into flames under the gaze I gave her. "You have no idea. But you will. You will."
***
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