The Last Order | Requiem 2

Overdose, Mercy and Vengeance, and Pan's Eleven Thousand Years of Suffering

Danny awoke on yet another morning when his wife wasn't home. Seemingly unbothered by her disappearance, he had his morning piss and ate breakfast.

He took the time to fry two packs of bacon and ate it all before returning to the bathroom where he removed his shirt and stood in front of the mirror revealing the sigil carved into his chest.

Danny traced the gashes with a finger, then opened the cabinet over the sink and took out the straight razor. He cut a line down the center of his chest, then curved back up, making identical cuts on either side of the center line.

While his face remained blank, his eyes were full of tears and pain. He put the razor down and stood there, glaring at his butchered chest with a wicked grin.

"Now let's go see if Michael knows where your wife is."

* * * *

"Yo, Mike! It smells like shit out there. Yo! Mike! Where you at?"

Danny opened the door and walked inside his old childhood home.

"This place needs to be demolished. Holy shit. Mike! Where you at? Mikey?"

He rushed into the bedroom to Jerico's side who was laying on the floor. Danny rolled him over to his back and an empty bottle of pills rolled out from under him. Then Danny hoisted his brother over his shoulder and carried him to the car.

"Don't you fucking die on me!"

Danny peeled out of the yard and broke every speed limit on the way to the hospital.

* * * *

Jerico opened his eyes and sat up in the hospital bed.

"Hey." Jerico cleared his throat. "Hey."

Danny was sitting in the chair across the room, swiping on his phone, but he never looked up.

"Why the fuck are you ignoring me?" Jerico got out of bed and smacked his brother across the head.

"What the—," Jerico glared at his hand.

He touched Danny with just a finger this time, and he watched as it disappeared into his skull.

Jerico stumbled backwards, crashing into the bed—and that's when he saw himself still laying there.

"What the hell's going on? Danny! Can you hear me? Danny! Fucking look at me!"

Jerico grabbed his brother by the shoulders but fell all the way through him, landing on the floor behind the chair.

Instinctively, he reached for the doorknob nearby to help him get up, but his hand actually gripped the handle, then he opened the door and walked into the corridor, or so he thought.

From inside the room, it looked as if he were walking into the hospital corridor. Through the window on the door, he saw nurses and doctors going about their jobs as they should, but when he crossed through the doorway, the only thing there was darkness. No nurses, no doctors, no sounds. Just an empty, dead, black void.

Jerico looked into his room and saw his body was still lying in the bed and Danny was still scrolling on his phone. But something was different. There was the door frame and the door, but everything beyond that point looked like it was fifty feet away.

A voice from somewhere in the darkness called for him. "Michael Benjamin Jerico." The voice boomed.

"What is this?"

"You stand at Nether's Edge. I am Azrael, the angel of mercy and vengeance. A light that lives between the eternal darkness and providence. I hold your soul here so that we might speak without other's knowing. The universe is bleeding, Michael Jerico, and God needs your help."