Tag: zombie

1558 06-51 Raise the red flag! NO QUARTER!!!^
1559 06-51 Murder the prisoners. Every. Single. One.^
1560 06-51 My treacherous hand has drawn my own blood!^
1561 06-51 My sword and honor are stained by the blood I have drawn^

She shook her head, horrified and awed by her own evil.  “I did that.”  And then, again:  “I did that.”  There was a long silence, Channah lost in her thoughts, the girls too shocked and appalled and even sympathetic to who she had become now, all at once, to say anything.

Finally, she resumed, still out wherever her thoughts were:  “I’ve done terrible things.”  Then, surprisingly, she laughed fondly, and explained:  “Húanglóng.  It was Húanglóng.  We were allies, considering the more permanent connection between our two Courts that eventually manifested in our marriage, and already nearly as close to one another as I am to my Duchesses and Dukes.  He asked me what it accomplished, and whether it wouldn’t be better to try and teach them better, rather than dispatching them to… wherever they go.  Went.”

They knew these were words she had not spoken to many humans in her entire long life, if any.  And they waited silently, almost breathlessly, so she could continue.  “When I was cut off from Heaven… I think I remember a time I had more…” she frowned, searching for the word.  “Compassion.  Or maybe, kindness… Or…”

“Love?” Penny whispered, and she looked down at him, gratefully and with surprise.

“Yesss…” she hissed, unconsciously imitating his whisper, before she went back to wherever she had been.  “Love,” she nodded wonderingly, mulling it over in her own mind.  “I think I still feel love… some… I love myself.  I love my sisters and brothers.”  She looked down at them.  “And I’m starting to fall in love with you.  I’m sure of it.  There are a few humans I can love, and you… feel that way to me.  It’s one of the reasons I married you.  But there’s definitely something—” she pinched her lips together, hard, sounding hoarse:  “Something I’ve lost.  Something that made me… less vindictive.  Less proud.  Less… abandoned.  I didn’t act this way.  Oh, I acted rashly, and even—even with malice.”  She swallowed.

“Being the Queen… everyone looks to me.  At first, I thought:  Obviously I should be the Queen.  I’m the best!  The most-powerful, the most-beautiful, the most-caring—at least in hell—the most-natural leader; and of course I want to be the Queen.  I should be put first!  I deserve to be put first!  But the others can’t imagine, and I daren’t show them, the burdens.  Any weakness at all.  Either for my own sake, lest they sense vulnerability and try to take advantage of me… or for their sake, lest they panic that their leader has the same doubts they do.”

“Of course, Heaven is a cypher to me.  As is the Lord.  That… soul, that warm connection to knowledge of what is right and good, is gone.  But I can still think, and feel, and breathe.  On Earth, are Queens and Kings not chosen by the Lord?  And is it any different in hell?  Some demons have speculated, even argued before the Conclave, that we were banished to Hell because Heaven lacked the power to destroy us completely.  But most of us who felt—the force, the sheer power,” she gasped at the ancient memory, shaking her head sadly, “of what was done to us that day… have no doubt we could have been extinguished as easily as crushing an ant underfoot.”

Tears came to her eyes again.  “Was it mercy?  Was it supposed to be mercy, or an even-worse punishment than death, to be banished here?!”  She came back to them, to their eyes.  “If I’m right, and we were deliberately spared… then why should I, like a Queen or King among humans, be divinely selected?  If the Lord sought fit to preserve Hell, is it not His?  Along with its hierarchy?” 

The she pursed her lips, and continued more quietly:  “To love humans… is so rare for me.  It feels almost… dirty.  That, most of all, if it happens… you can never tell anyone that I love you.  You cannot tell anyone I’m even thinking I could love you, or talking about it.  Do you understand?”

They nodded breathlessly, responding to her urgency.  “Because we hate humans.  Some of us think that was the reason for our fall—our jealousy at humans, and the love they enjoyed—still enjoy!  You can’t imagine the fury we feel—to see humans are still loved, despite their vile evil!  They’re—you’re—worse than us, you know?  Because you’re capable of better.  You have full access to Heaven—perhaps, to love—if you only want it enough.  Every soul that ends in hell deserves to be there a thousandfold.  Because they had a choice!”

“Didn’t you?” Penny asked, looking as shocked as Chas at the words that had come out of her mouth.

“You’re impossible!”  She managed to look incensed, amused, and rueful all at once, before sinking back into something closer to sad acceptance.  She whispered:  “Maybe.”  She shook her head.  “Once.  I just… can’t… quite remember.  If you can be my apostle and awaken me, by all means—do so, little priest.”

“I’m not a priest,” she blushed.  “I’m ordained.”  Her face fell.  “Was ordained.  But I’m still a student.  I’ve never held an appointment.”

“You’re still ordained, darling,” Channah assured her.  “You think a succubus can’t feel that?  Practically see it?”  She focused in intently on Penny, as if urgently trying to reach him.  “Darling Penny, to return to your earlier question, I’ll never ask you to battle the Catholic Church if your conscience moves you to remain a part of it.  I promise.  I do need educated servants, and I have many of them.  But if I wanted you two,” she admitted Chas back into the discussion with her eyes, “and your sisters, to fight the Church, we would have made sure you understood why you were going to school all of those years.  We let you go to grammar school and you, Penny, to University, because we wanted to let you choose your own path.  Because you can’t serve your purpose to Us if you can’t think and feel for yourself.  You two girls are delicate instruments, useless to us if we try to force you to point, or measure, or report what we want to hear.”

“Why would the Lord allow me—” Penny began.

“You ask me about His purposes?”  She laughed caustically.  “What it means, why you remain sacred and set apart—is a discussion for another day.  Probably with another person.  Maybe with your confessor, if he can really be trusted.  But not with me—” her voice almost broke again “—because I don’t know the why of it.  Only the fact of it.  You have not lost your grace, Penny.  I don’t know why.  But I think it must be because, as I told you—as long as you live, you are free to make your own choices.  There are always choices, and they always have consequences.  But on Earth, it is never too late to change your mind.  And I’m sure—that is, I think—it’s you’re your mind and heart that matter to Heaven, that Heaven judges; not that of Popes or Bishops.  Not in relation to you, anyway.  Yes, there is a church in this Earthly world, with priests, with some influence, maybe even power, if you want to call it that.  But Heaven, not Earth nor anything or anyone in it, gives and withdraws grace.  The human rituals and ceremonies are, at best, an assent, or perhaps a way of communicating with the Lord what His human servants think is in service to Him.”  She shrugged, and finished in a small voice:  “I think.  I just don’t know.”

Literature Section “06-51 Hella Honeymoon VIII”—Part 51 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—Continued from 06-49—1283 words—Accompanying Images:  1558-1561—Published 2025-04-04—©2025 The Remainderman.  This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions.  It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.

1555 06-50 A pain that still sears after 6,000 years^
1556 06-50 Thank you for saving us, Super-Succubus!^
1557 06-50 D.A.R.E.-Dragon saving kids from the scourge of drug-addled zombies!^

“On the other hand, the war among the demons is fought in Hell, and on Earth, and it is a war of genocide.  The Lord may abide abominations like the Devils and Zombies to exist, but I will not.  Any more than they would willingly suffer the Succubae to exist.  We seek to exterminate the Devils and Zombies, as surely as they would exterminate the Succubae and the Vampires—and our allies, the Dragons—if they could.”

“This is a war of survival and preservation!  Dear Chas, dear Penny, we must win our war against the Devils and Zombies, or they will wipe us out.  They would eradicate all my sisters and brothers—and all our human operatives, including you both—in a heartbeat.  They would save me for last, and torture me at their leisure until they were ready to dispose of me.  It’s terribly unfair, but the Abominables—the Devils and Zombies—have made it clear in the past that they will attack and kill the youngest, the most-innocent, the most-vulnerable of my children just to spite me if they can!  Can you imagine?!  Children who will never be operatives, orphans, the unwanted, and the hunted—people I rescue!  Just out of loathing and hate.  They’re… they’re not even animals!  MY children!”  She shook her head, leaving no doubt in the girls’ minds that she was genuinely horrified and enraged by their conduct.  “But it’s even broader than us individually.  We fight for beauty… passion, and love!  Art!  The pleasures and lovely things in this world, and even those few we may find in hell.  The vampires, for the vibrancy of life itself!  And the dragons… well, honestly, they’re a little lazy.  But generally mild-mannered, if you leave them alone; and they really do tend to leave others alone, as long as they can get what they need to survive.”  She laughed, shaking her head.  “My husband—First-Husband to you—Húanglóng, King of the Dragons, the indolent sod, doesn’t have a spiteful bone in his body.”

“Compared to our real war, our unholy war, the contest against Heaven is a distant second front:  we need souls to fill our ranks, and to deprive our enemies.  But it’s less a war, more like… the Border Reivers:  English raiding into Scotland, Scots raiding into England, sometimes Reivers raiding without even bothering to cross the line.  But it’s all about pillaging the border lands—in our case, Earth.  Hell couldn’t breach Heaven if it tried.  And Heaven created the border itself, because it doesn’t want hell.  Or any of its denizens.  I’ve already asked you to puzzle on that.  I cannot possibly give you the answer, because I don’t understand Heaven.  My soul has been banished from it, and all knowledge and feelings of and from it.  When we were cut off—” she shook her head, her voice dropping to a whisper and breaking:  “When we separated…”  She pressed her lips together, actual tears springing into her eyes, unable to continue for a moment, her face tight and passionate.

“Oh, Domina!” her girls cried in unison and squeezed her tightly and warmly, holding her tightly as her lip quivered and, with a shake of her head, she gave up and allowed herself to cry, holding them right back, hearing them sob sympathetically for her.

Channah’s Confession

“I think you’re ready.  I think I’m ready.”  Her face became seriously thoughtful, and she squeezed them both, pulling their heads together on her breasts, each girl straddling one of her legs so she could see both of them easily, her eyes flicking back and forth without straying from them, so they both remained intimately enraptured by her gaze and her words, feeling an intimacy they may never have felt in their lives, and certainly not since their mothers’ presence.  In a second of shared semi-comedy, all the more intimate because it intervened in the midst of such intimacy, both girls winced and tugged up on their little cages so they rested on her thighs instead of pinching and pressing between them all.  Even with that adjustment, the girls were not quite comfortable—they were almost Channah’s size and the position they were put in was not only intimate with her, but cramped and awkward.  And somehow, that was right; a way for them to demonstrate their devotion and subservience, their lesserness and the slightly pathetic quality of the uneven yet affectionate relationship between them, even in her most-intimate moments and embrace.

“I want to tell you—I want to admit to you—who I am.  Something I have not even shared with all my wives.”  She snorted.  “Certainly not with Húanglóng, or any other creature of Hell.  It is—a vulnerability.  A weakness, I dare not show to anyone in hell, or almost anyone on Earth, only those completely loyal and devoted to me.  But it is so hard to carry alone, always alone… can I trust you with this?”

“Yes, Domina,” they gasped, confirming and therefore pledging their loyalty and devotion, lips as wide and relaxed as their eyes, practically hypnotized although she used no magic on them—no magic other than sincerity.  It was too important a matter for any illusion or artifice. 

“I would die before I would tell anyone else,” Penny promised, looking emotional.

“Oh, sweetie,” she kissed her forehead sweetly, then Chas’s as she assured her the same.

She pinkened slightly, and they saw something in her face they had never seen before; something embarrassed.  Something even ashamed.  She started in the faintest whisper, hardly willing to make the thoughts real by speaking them.  “It is essential for the trust between us to blossom and secure us to one another, for you to know the worst truths.  I have done terrible things.”

“I—I can be an evil bitch,” she admitted.  “I just feel such rage at things I know should not be, such desperation to protect my sisters and brothers—I’m a very passionate woman,” she concluded, looking down into both of their eyes in turn, searchingly, intensely, seeming to find the shred of understanding she was hoping for in their wide, open eyes.  “In the heat of the moment, especially under pressure—I try to act calm and stay in control—but I just see red.  It’s so hard.”  She bit her lip, shaking her head slowly and slightly as she stared into space, as far from the girls as they were rooted and locked to her in that moment, completely moved and honored by the vulnerability and mistakes she, who was so much more prominent and older than they, should share with them. “And sometimes the blackness of fear.  And they left me without limits.  I reacted to challenges with…” She considered, before settling on “extreme prejudice, towards all enemies, all challengers, even all obstacles.  I acted, then, as a youngling, the same way the devils act now.”  She waved a hand dismissively.  “The zombies are without limits, without restraint, but they aren’t intentional enough for comparison.  It’s almost like they just do, without thought.  Which doesn’t absolve them of anything, only makes them more despicable.  But the devils and their allies, like us, act with intentionality and awareness.  And there were times, long ago,” her voice becoming hushed, as if she could prevent heaven itself from overhearing her dark thoughts, “when I acted as they did.  I did kill—”  she bit her lip.  “I did kill humans simply for being in the possession of my enemies.”

The girls shuddered, and she felt it and softly wailed, squeezing them even harder, her face vulnerable and scared.  “Please—I’m sorry—I did it—Just for a human being in their consideration, because I viewed them as property.  I did it for the same reason you burn your enemy’s house down, not because you care about the house, or even think about the house, but because you want to take from its owner.”  She made an indignant sound.  “I don’t know!  Maybe it was more!  Because they were worse than property—something hateful, something hated.  Even if they were too young or too defiant to have chosen them.”

Literature Section “06-50 Hella Honeymoon VII”—Part 50 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—Continued from 06-49—1362 words—Accompanying Images:  1555-1557.  Published 2025-04-03—©2025 The Remainderman.  This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions.  It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.

1552 06-49 Devil luring neglected children to the sin of suicide^
1553 06-49 Zombie contaminating the Thames River with plague (edited)^
1554 06-49 Devil releasing rats in London’s winter grain storage (edited)^

“The lesson I’m trying to impart today, is that humans fight organized religions, in the name of organized religions, every day, and have done so since the day the second religion—however you want to define it—arose.  I trust your educations were complete and accurate enough that you are aware of the Papal Schism a hundred years ago, where there were two Popes fighting one another, both in the name of the Lord against one another?!”

“Yes, Domina,” they agreed, concerned and disturbed at the idea.

“And even today—I know you are both English, and doubtless feel loyalty to England.”  She rolled her eyes at the idea of someone caring about something like that.  “Do you consider the French to be Catholics?” 

“Of course,” they agreed.

“Pious Catholics?”

Chas deferred to Penny, who cautiously declared “as pious as most others.” 

“A good answer.  I know you’re aware England, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and, incidentally, the Pope, wearing his other hat as leader of the Papal States, were at war with France and Venice through most of this past decade.  And although not spoken publicly or made officially…”

“No!” Penny cried, in shock, guessing where she was going.  “No!”

“What?!”  Chas demanded, as Channah smiled. 

“It’s nice to see all those school fees and tithes aren’t going completely to waste on orgies and pederasty.”

“DOMINA!” Penny huffed.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she patted Penny’s shoulder.  “Please forgive me for shocking your sensibilities unnecessarily.  And to answer your question, Penny, yes:  Yes, yes, a resounding yes:   Of course the French and the Venetians have spoken with, and cooperated in practice with, the Ottoman Muslim Caliph against the Catholic Pope.  Exactly as the Crusaders themselves aligned with Venice, Pisa, and Genoa to sack Constantinople and dismember and cripple the Byzantine Empire—the most powerful Christian kingdom fighting Islam—in 1204.  Because, as they say in the East, my enemy’s enemy is my friend.”

She had so shocked the girls by connecting the dots that Latin authorities and clergymen allowed to be taught, with the obvious truths they tried to prevent people from seeing, that they were stunned into silence.

She allowed the pause to continue, and the girls to think, for a good minute or more that seemed even longer, before she continued:  “The Succubae are engaged in a contest with the Lord and the Angels.  But the battle between good and evil takes place within each human soul.  Not on Earth, or in Hell.  It is not a war between realms.  It’s a competition for recruits.  And at least Penny will have been formally presented with the question before, why does the Lord allow Hell to tempt humans?  I won’t answer that question for you, I’ll ask you to answer it yourselves.  Think on it a good long while, and discuss it with one another.  I will look forward to hearing what you have concluded when you’re confident.  Obviously I wouldn’t have let the priests have you and train you for so long, if my only preoccupation were human souls.  Or if I wanted to corrupt yours.  Or for you to corrupt others’ souls.  Would I?”  She enjoyed the silence she heard, even Penny too confused and thoughtful to argue.

Unholy War

“No, I trained you to fight our war, our true and unholy war, the war of the Succubae, against our sworn enemies.”

“Who?”  The girls asked breathlessly.

“The Devils,” she practically spat, unable to keep her voice even when she spoke of them.  “Above all others, the vile, disgusting, contemptible Devils. And their allies.  The Zombies—fucking disgusting” she shook her head with an expression of revulsion.  “You can’t imagine how disgusting, and if you’re lucky, you’ll never need to find out.  The exact opposite of Succubaean beauty and love of the erotic.  Nobody likes either of them, or wants to be around them, although the Genies and the Spirits are so unprincipled and vile they usually cooperate with the unbearable ones, against us.”

There was another silence, both girls looking up at their Domina in awe and consternation at what she was saying, trying to make sense of it.  And perhaps even more, trying to reckon with the fact anything could upset Channah enough to interrupt her normal, utterly unflappable and practical demeanor.

Finally, she wrenched herself back to the present, and to them, looking down, almost surprised to see how intently they were looking back at her.  She smiled faintly, touched.  “You’re both so darling.  But that is the war I raised you two to fight.  A war that benefits Heaven, not because I have any affection for Heaven, but purely instrumentally, because it diverts our attention and energies from Heaven.  This the war that matters the most to me, and to the Succubae, and our operatives—to every one of us.”

“How can a war among Demons, possibly matter more than the war between Heaven and Hell?!”  Chas asked with uncalculated candor and genuine curiosity.

“Penny, was that the right question?”

“Not if—” she blushed and corrected what she meant to say.  “Domina, you said it was not a war between heaven and hell, but a contest for human souls.”

“Do you see armies of angels battling devils?  Or saved souls fighting the damned?  No.  Now your turn, Chas.  Matter to who?” she asked.

“What?” they both asked. “The Lord does not consult me, but doubtless you are right, the contest for souls means more to the Lord, and to some humans, than the war among the Seven Hells.  But it is our war with one another that matters the most to the demons.  This will bring you back to the question I already posed you:  Why does the Lord, suffer Hell to exist?  What purpose do we serve to Heaven, that we were banished instead of annihilated, when we rebelled?  Whatever answer you come to, I suspect it will persuade you of what you really need to understand:  That no matter what the reason is, the Lord does suffer Hell to exist, and the only ‘battleground’ between Heaven and Hell is inside humanity.  I am where the Lord put me, doing what the Lord allows me.  My fortunes are subject to the Lord, and the number of servants I have depends in part on what the Lord allows, but my life, and my existence, are not threatened.”

Literature Section “06-49 Hella Honeymoon VI”—Part 49 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—Continued from 06-48—1064 words—Accompanying Images:  1552-1554.  Published 2025-04-02—©2025 The Remainderman.  This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions.  It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.