Replicate
by L.J. Blount

    “Do you think it really hurts or it is the uncertainty that makes them so?”

    Branson smirked apathetically, “I do not know, but who cares? They are only sinners after all. They are not divine as we.”

    “Yes, but…” Sydney stopped to wipe a tear from her cheek.

    “You are not crying Sydney, are you?”

    “Of course not,” she said hiding her face from him.

    “Very well, make certain that you do not. He would not agree.” Branson spoke coldly.

    “It is just…” Sydney began, and then stopped as she choked over the words. He knew she had been crying;
knew that she had been spending her days ‘thinking’ about the plight of the sinners. It was wrong of her.
She knew but could not abstain from such emotion, although, she was to feel no emotion.

    “What is it Sydney? What do you wish to convey to me?”

    Sydney knelt silently.

    “Speak to me, say your peace.” He said with little patience.

    “We were once sinners Branson. Can you not remember?” She asked with a tremble in her voice.

    Sydney looked up at Branson just as he turned sharply. “I was never sinner,” he spat. “I am divine, pure in the eyes of my Father.”

    “We are no better, they too will be beheld by our Father.” Sydney looked back down at the sinners who
writhed beneath her.

    “Perhaps, but for now they are only sinners unworthy of our Father’s eye.”

    “Still you cannot feel for them. They, as we were once.”

    Branson spun back around, the impatience raged from him. “Why? Why do you even care?”

    “I was just wondering,” she said, wiping yet another tear from her rose-tinted cheek.

    “Well you need not worry about them. They will all get what is coming to them, that is my divination.”   Sydney watched as Branson removed himself from her company.

    She breathed in deeply, withdrawing the tears that built in her troubled eyes. Covering her ears, she attempted to muffle the laments that spoke to her. She failed and with her failure, the tears streamed down her face.

# # #

    “How you suffer. The pain you must feel.” Sydney reached down to one of the sinners, her delicate hand;
her slender fingers passed right through the ‘soul’ as if it wasn’t there at all.

    She sighed, shoulders drawn forward in a state of sadness. “To feel,” she said. Her appeasing oral
communication was lost in the cries that befell her.

    There, with the tainted she genuflects. Her flowing gown spread over the mass like a waterfall. Through
the sheer fabric, she understood the cries on the lips of a hundred, a thousand. They all cried for Father,
all beg for forgiveness.

“I cannot feel your pain… but I remember, I recall” Sydney shook her head as she caressed the fabric of
her gown.

She shuddered suddenly from the detached voice that scratched at the nape of her neck. Quickly she
withdrew her hand, resting it at her side.

“Feeling? You will feel nothing for these … sinners. They are nothing Sydney, insignificant pulp.”

    It was Branson; she looked back at him. His unfeeling eyes glared through her as he stood a top a
nimbus. “These, these … things are not your concern. We, you are to watch over them as they dwell in
expiation.”

    Sydney rose. She looked at her hand, the same hand she held out to the ‘soul.'

     In fact, she held no feeling aside from empathy. Strange as it was, she should feel considering what
she was. She had for as long as she could recall felt for them, whoever they were. And for as long as she
could recall she felt his anger, though he felt neither.

    She stood before Branson; her tender heart still beat within her, specter. “But…” she began.

    “Never! You will not question me nor will you question the reasons.” Sydney watched with loathing in her heart, Branson who turned to vapor upon his nimbus and departed her sight.

    She rose as she continued to watch. Standing as she did on a mountain of humanity, a mass of souls writhing beneath the touch of her gown. It was atonement and she was the Maker. How she had gotten here, she could not recall. Perhaps this was her atonement for sins in a past life. She did not know. Nor did she understand. Her
heart sank within her each time the sinners came. Each time she stood a top them as they writhed to cleanse their souls.

# # #

    Sydney stroked her crimson tresses; her ivory eyes stared dispassionately before her. A hot breeze roared in from the gates, yet another wave of sinners entered purgare.

    “They must be cleaned of their transgressions.” The unfeeling words of Branson filtered into her thoughts.

    “Temporal punishment…” Sydney whispered.

    “Penance for your venial faults,” she cried above the din of on comers.

    The multitudes of sinners spilled over her and down the mountain beneath her. Flames of purification simmered those at the foot of the mass. “Writhe in your self pain so that our Father may lay his eyes on you. For evil cannot penetrate his pure eyes.”

    Sydney raised her hands over head, clinching them into fist she crumbled to her knees.

    The flames of purification rose to greater heights, incinerating all it engulfed. The cries, moans, the agony-ridden screams showered her. She cringed and prayed silently for their souls.

    “Sleep in peace,” she wept from that position. Her tears flowed over the mountain of fiery souls, lessening the flames of purification.

    “Father, so pure, so forgiving. Can you not forgive them? Allow them into your Kingdom, as they are, frail children of your Grace. Please Father hear me.” She cried up to the Heavens, cried with great emotion.

    Her cries were answered but not as she had hoped. “Sydney,” a thunderous voice called down from the
Heavens and upon his nimbus Branson swooped down upon her.

    She looked up at him, the pain in her colorless eyes evident. “You feel,” he scowled.

    Sydney smiled slowly, her lips spread across her angelic face. “I do.”

    “They pray for forgiveness. The ones who loved them pray for them, pray that Father take them into his own.” Sydney rose from her knees. Her ivory eyes deepened in hue, acorn emanated from the center into a globe amid the emptiness that was once there.

    “Sydney,” Branson’s voice crackled in disappointment.

    “They feel so much pain and so much uncertainty. They are to rest in peace, are they not?” She asked, peering hopefully behind acorn eyes.

     “It is not for us to decide.” Branson lowered himself onto the mass of malefactors.

     “Can you not feel Branson?” She asked.

     Sydney watched curiously as he stepped from his nimbus. The flames of purification roared violently beneath him, engulfing all.

     The cries showered her as she fell back to her knees. “Heavenly Father…” she cried.

     She looked up at Branson as the flames of purification engulfed her. Her hand reached up to him, she felt the smooth fabric of his gown. The flames whipped at her, from her mouth cries of forgiveness rang.

    Her acorn eyes filled with the agony of atonement as she caught a hint of concern from the colorless eyes that peered back at her.

    “You feel now,” Branson said before rising from the mass on his nimbus.

     Sydney reached out one last time, as her body sank into a sea of the writhing. “Can’t you feel for me Branson? For me?” 

     He watched her disappear into the belly of sinners. The flames of purification flicked at him like a thousand tongues of the Serpent himself. Sadness seemed to fill his eyes as he turned on his nimbus, “Yes, for you I do.” He lamented.

©2002 L.J. Blount

L.J. Blount (a.k.a. Myth Spinner) has been writing horror fiction for about two years and has been a fairly regular contributor to The House Of Pain. In that time he has met with much success. His short stories are widely read and published. With over forty-five publications to his credit (including Expiation, which is part of the successful print anthology Cold Storage), he has also had a novel published, Augur of Armageddon. L.J. Blount has also had aother work published with: Blood Covern, Blood Roses: Tales of the Macabre, MuseIt, Death Grip and Shorty, Scary Tales.