It was yet another day, on the crisp of midnight. My eyes darted to the sky where several different planes were. “Otto! Get down! Come here!” mother yelled, pulling my hand as we tried to outrun the British bombers in the distance, with a small crowd of others who didn’t get in the bomb shelter in time. Her hair was ginger with waves and curls from the bobby pins and had a lime-green floral print dress with a collar, and a pearl necklace, until the bombs came out of the ships. I held the hand of my baby sister, Anneliese who looked like a younger version of Mother.
The last few sounds that I heard were of screams, the bombs going off, and the sounds of glass shattering. I awoke, not being able to see anything, feeling as if I was buried. “Hey! Help! Ich brauche Hilfe!" I shouted, being asphyxiated. There wasn’t enough air or oxygen. Where was Mother? Where was Anneliese?
My arms were flailing as I could feel the sense of losing consciousness. My arms didn’t stop moving as I tried to will myself to somehow crawl out, but that was no use. I continued and continued, until I gave up, certain that I was going to die.
When I opened my eyes, I was in the arms of a humanoid creature, with what seemed to be red skin and two red wings, flying through the air. It felt as if I was dreaming, potentially still near death. “What is your name?” A sensation in me told me that there was something wrong with that man. Humans couldn’t possibly have red skin.. It had to be a demon. “Let me fucking go! My name is none of your business, Satan!” The creature’s pupils became red, as it smacked me in the face. “You don’t say that to stronger entities than you, boy. Do you know why I saved you?” As his hands increased his grip, I felt the sensation of being squeezed. “Because.. You aren’t going to heaven. That’s a fact.” His hands were around my throat now. “Tell me your name, and I’ll spare you, boy!” This time, I knew I couldn’t lie. “Otto! Otto Schulz!” I blinked for what felt like only a dozen seconds. I could feel the burning fire around me, and the sounds of petrified screaming. When I opened my eyes, the scene of several people in the river of fire scared me. However, I wasn’t in the river of fire. My wings kept me at least twenty meters above, if not more.
My skin was red, unlike the tan color. The ashen blonde hair that I had was turned into a shade that resembled the midnight sky. I turned my head and saw other demons and demonic entities watching the scene unfold. Unlike the others, I was dressed in a loincloth, and a sword in my left hand.
One of the demons approached me, his far larger wings flapping. “This is the first addition of warriors against heaven. A thin, lanky boy?” They looked at each other in confusion. Until their lord, Satan, emerged from the darkness. “No. He is a gladiator, intended to fight for entertainment.”
This began the bickering of the demons. “What is he going to do? Most of those sinners are skeletons, yes, but they do regenerate after mere minutes. Those souls that were down here for generations could beat him easily. We can’t lose our entertainment of that useless demon, that’d be a waste of the Lord’s power.” The one with the long, black hair that cascaded down his back with blue irises said. A different one, colored mostly white with small wings then retorted. “Even a lanky twig like ‘im gotta die at some point, and what’s more fun than to see suffering down here?”. Blue Irises then said “You like to see a creature as embarrassing as that to die suddenly? Jesus.. That’s a waste of black magic..”
After several minutes of demonic bickering, the demons decided. “Otto, you are going to fight against…” Three of the demons carried a skeleton over to me in the air. “This sinner. Her name is Asami. A female Japanese warrior.”
Blue Irises and two other demons carried Asami to a secluded part of Hell, two hundred meters away from the burning river of fire. Despite literally being a demon, the heat of the rocks slightly burnt my foot as I began to walk.
The skeleton held a katana in her left hand, my longsword in my right hand. I swung at it, but it kicked me in the shins, and I instinctively took another jab at it and managed to cut off its right wrist. Before my very eyes, Asami’s body began to regenerate. A small section of the right-sided part of her skull began to grow skin.
I took another stab, and another, but failed before she jabbed me in the shoulder. It hurt like hell and I dropped on my knees. “That boy sure is fucking weak, he can’t even kill a woman!” Blue Irises shouted.
In that moment of anguish, I could feel the lingering pain from the wound. I closed my eyes and began to scream. The only sensation other than the wound and the feeling of blood dripping down was some sort of shock within the palms and fingers of my hand. My wings left the ground and I felt like I had grabbed onto some sort of skeleton, before I heard the screams “Nante koto da! Yamete! Nantekotta! Kanden shi teru!”
When I opened my eyes, I was holding Asami’s wrists tightly as the electricity from my palms and fingers went inside her body. Her eyes were wide open and she was screaming a foreign language in pain.
Once I let go of her wrists, she collapsed on the floor from exhaustion. She curled into a ball as tears streamed down her face, wetting her cheeks. Her right-sided portion of her body began to regenerate as her left was being melted by the burning heat of the rocks.
Blue Irises, along with two other demons, flew to Asami to carry her back to the Lake of Fire. “Next round for gladiator boy Otto!” My body tensed, the anticipation drowning me as I still felt the lingering effects of the Asian woman's blade in my shoulder. The bleeding has stopped as the electricity through my veins slowly patched it up.
The demons stopped as shouts of angelic Latin filled the depths. “Wait here, Otto.” They commanded, and I followed suit. Time began to pass as the other demons began to fight the angels.
For some unknown reason, I blended in well with the crowd at the Lake of Fire. I watched as the battle between the angels and the demons commenced. Screams from both sides as both sides stabbed each other in the guts and pulled out their own intestines, as both sides used their magic. What truly amazed me was that in mere seconds, the fighting was over as even Jesus Christ, the Lord himself, and all the angels died. Most of the demons had died and the few that were left were bleeding on the floor in Hell.
Even I would’ve never believed the corpse of the Lord himself, along with his son Jesus Christ would look so majestic. Their clothes had an amazing grace of white, purity, and innocence. Three traits that’ll fade away from this world soon.
I closed my eyes, and used the strength of my electricity that flows through my veins to shock the corpses of three different Ophanim angels. Their souls combined with my powers, establishing new abilities.
As I began to writhe on the burning floors of hell, I felt a shock wave surge of energy before I got up on the dirt floor somewhere within the depths of the Sihlwald Forest in Switzerland. Around me wasn;’t the dreary sight of burning, skeletons, regeneration of flesh and downright torture.
“Hey! You demon! I command you to perish in the name of Jesus Christ!” The priest yelled, before I flew at him. “What are you-” My electricity flowed through him, as his eyes widened and mouth agape. His body began to writhe as he screamed in agony, and I didn’t stop the flow of electricity until he stopped moving completely. He held out a crucifix, yet I remained unscathed.
The angelic power I felt surged. I teleported myself back to Dresden to search amongst the piles of rubble from the buildings. I searched for hours to no avail for my mother Gerda and younger sister. None of the corpses I’ve seen had their signature ginger hair.
My skin wasn’t a deep red like I originally thought, but rather a shade of ashen gray as the broken mirror, shattered in pieces, reflects my appearance. The pupils were as dark as my soul at that point. I continued to search, and then finally made it.
As I walked on the roads, avoiding the badly damaged sidewalks and the sight of destruction, I finally saw it. Days, maybe even weeks have passed since I saw that moment. They were asleep in some attic. Through the window, I could make out black silhouettes of Mother and several Russian officers from one or two lit candles. Instead of being horrified or shocked, I was merely expressionless upon seeing that.
I merely walked inside the attic, and the only thing I could visibly see was red for several minutes before the Russian soldiers were dead. Mother was crying, visibly bruised. There were shards of brick and glass poking from her skin and her left eye.. “Get away, you demon!” I did as she commanded and left the room, as I heard a loud bang. My younger sister, Anne, had bruised skin. Her nose was bleeding, and I had to pull out some shards of glass from her back. The rubble got both of them good.
I went back inside the room. “Don’t open your eyes,” I said to Anneliese. The wall where Mother had stood against was covered in blood. I held her hand as we exited the factory. A young girl of five shouldn’t witness her mother killing herself.
“You’ll be safe.” I whispered into her ears, never letting go of her hand until we reached a small house. The house that uncle Hans lived in. We’ll live there for a while until things settle down. I managed to calm down Anneliese by telling her bedtime stories of bunnies until she fell asleep in the bed.
However, I haven’t felt tired ever since I awoke in the depths of Hell with this appearance. And as I walked out, I knew that I needed to protect Anneliese from the allies. Just myself? They’ll probably begin investigating who killed those Russian officers in the room with Mother. Add reinforcements, investigators, all that Jazz…
Two weeks passed before they sent another group to investigate the house we were squatting in. As one of the Russian officers went at me with a knife, I used my electricity to shock him, before being shot repeatedly. Not even that stopped me as I slaughtered the Russians to death. I looked in the mirror, my skin with that tone of dark ashen gray with splats of blood. Sister was in a different room, asleep this time. Thank god.
One of the Russians was on the floor before I used my telepathic and mind control abilities. “Prevent those Russians from finding this residence,” I commanded him. His mind was forever under my control as a proxy. I’ll need more of them if I wish to protect my sister, but for now we’ll be alright.