Death Angel

Chapter 10: Epic Battle

When I was young, I used to watch a lot of monster movies. I don’t know why, but I tended to gravitate toward the classics. Dracula. Frankenstein. The Creature from the Black Lagoon. I guess I had Dad to blame for that. We’d sit beside each other on that outlandishly red couch, a big bowl of popcorn on hand, and watch movie after movie.

The monsters never scared me. It was never about fear for me, with these movies. It was more a morbid fascination with things that weren’t entirely of this world.

And then I discovered Godzilla. My favorite match of all time was between Godzilla and King Ghidora, a flying three-headed dragon. I watched with rapt attention as bolts of lightning would shoot out from King Ghidora’s three heads. It was exciting for a six-year old to see something like that. In hindsight,  I should have been watching Pokemon and the Power Rangers like the rest of my generation, but Dad had an old soul, and so did I.

I found myself recalling all those monster movies now, as I found myself a spectator to something that could only be described as otherworldly. And lest I kid myself here as well, there was no other way, quite frankly, to describe the two beings in front of me as anything other than monsters.

Monster Number One was the archdemon Azazel. Taken right out of the stuff of nightmares. The boogeyman was a label far too kind.

I remembered an episode of the Ghostbusters I saw on a re-run. Not the legendary movies, I’m afraid, but the cartoon variety. Egon Spengler - that’s the guy with the glasses, played in the movies by Harold Ramis, recounts his very first encounter with a frightening being called the Boogeyman. The first time I saw that episode, I cried. And Dad apologized profusely. It was one of those things he’d seen a while ago that he thought I’d find interesting.

But I didn’t. For some reason, that strange episode taught me fear instead. It taught me to worry about things that went bump in the night. None of the other monster movies made me feel the fear, but this cartoon did.

The demon I faced this time was much like the Boogeyman. But unlike the Boogeyman, Azazel was real. My worst nightmares realized in the flesh. Here, in front of me was a being I had only read about in ponderous tomes at the local library. And even then, reading about demons, vampires, and the occult was strictly a pastime; a rather morbid way for a teenager to while away boredom while waiting for the clock to strike six on a saturday night.

“Ah, cherie,” said Death, addressing Azazel. It was his turn to speak, after all. “I did not think you would be so coy after all this.”

Death was Monster Number Two. More universally recognized, perhaps, but not any less terrifying. In fact, the numerous stories about him just made him appear to be worse than he was. At least he was on my side, I argued. Or so it seemed.

In any case, I wasn’t about to forget Monster Number Three. That was me. A small fly caught in an epic battle between two legendary beings from the Netherworld. Fly or no fly, I was, nonetheless, an aberration myself.

Silly Vanessa, should have just gone on to Heaven like a normal dead person.

“Fine,” said Death. “Looks like black starts off first.”

He swung his massive scythe, and, with blinding speed, let it fly from his hands as it spun frantically, but steadily toward Azazel. But the demon was unimpressed. Azazel deftly avoided the scythe and moved out of harm’s way. The scythe flew right back to Death’s hands like a boomerang.

“You bore me, Reaper,” said Azazel. She flexed her black wings, and I could feel the air around us disturbed. The force of the air from her wings cut into us, a constant pressure that pushed in, hemming us both in from all sides.