Judah

            “And behold, the fires went out and the smoke rose above the city and became an ever present fog. For eternity we are cursed to look no longer upon the lights of God and His creations. For eternity we are abandoned to this Hell.” Judah cried out to the small crowd in The Junkyard.

            The Junkyard had been a great chapel when the skies were blue and demons did not walk in the form of man, but now it was filled with refuse and the damned. The crowd that Judah was speaking to was the last remaining humans in the Rome Sector. The sectors were what the humans had called cities before Armageddon. These sectors were controlled by demons and they allowed the humans to continue to live because they loved to see them react to the world they were now in.

            The demons loved seeing the humans fight, pray, beg, cry, devour, suffer, and do all those human things that humans did. The one thing the demons did not see, was sex and love. The humans that were left behind had abandoned love and didn’t see the point in sex when they had no way of preventing pregnancy. Not that rape wasn’t a possibility, but even those left behind didn’t want to leave a child in their damned dimension.

            In the Rome Sector, The Junkyard was the place where the humans slept and rested. The Junkyard was the place where they were safe from the demons knocking on the doors and scraping against the walls. To leave meant to become a plaything for however long the demons desired. Some demons killed their toys, some demons traded their toys, some demons were actually not that bad and only wanted to live peacefully with a mountain of books to read and someone to teach.

            “I have a plan! A plan that will set us free of this damned realm and send us to Heaven,” Judah raised his arms in the air, his withered and pale arms making him look like a matchstick puppet.

            “We do not need to hear your plan! We have survived these past ten years under Lord Epsik, we can thrive for the rest of our lives,” a man in brown rags from the crowd shouted back.

            “You say this because you are his pet. Have you forgotten that there are other demons out there who are not as kind?” A woman with silver and yellow hair hissed.

            “We should continue with the tunnels! Once we are finished building them, with Lady Cor’s help, we will not need to fear any other demons,” a middle aged man pleaded from the center of the crowd.

            “No! We must break this curse upon us,” Judah howled. “We must drink the sacred wine left to us by God and his servants! It is our only hope of redemption! To trust in him and his magnificence!”

            The crowd murmured and a few nodded in assent while others shook their heads and walked away. They had not heard, nor remembered, the old warning to not drink the kool-aid, and thus fell to Judah’s plot. Judah, who was a demon in a man’s skin, who loved to damn men more than he loved to torture them, and who treasured seeing how many people he could damn in a day.