Tevun-Krus #73 - Best of '19

Satanitech Part II - @PhonerionBallznevsky - Satanic SF

Satanitech Part II

A Satanic SF story by PhonerionBallznevsky

A/N: Read Satanitech Part I via the external link, or by searching for Tevun-Krus #66: Satanic SF in our back catalogue. 

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1

Sophie Satanson wasn't your average teenage girl. For one, she was the spawn of Satan, the supposed last in a long line of Satanic demigod offspring from before the Dark Lord turned himself into trillions upon trillions of lines of code.

Well that was really it. Other than the big, leathery black wings she kept tucked in her bra ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time (except for that time Rodney Ashwood tried to feel her up under the bleachers and she flipped out on him, ripped out his throat, and flew home in a panic; yeah, that'd been a real ball).

Still, being the spawn of Satan was a pretty big deal, especially with all the crazy dreams she was having about the end of the whole fucking universe.

It wouldn't, like, just be about the universe ending, though. She'd have a dream about something totally, completely different, like, say, being out with the girls, having a good time on a big grassy field, eating pizza and talking shit about other, prettier girls—then the sky opens up and it's like a rope's wrapped around her waist because she's jerked up a thousand fucking feet into the sky, into that sky that's wide-open, all orange and purple and all the colours are smashed together like the whole fucking thing is bleeding, gushing, and she looks down below, thousands of feet below, and everything's on fire, burning, dying, people screaming, children screaming, animals screaming, even the fucking trees screaming—screaming at her—screaming why, and now it all starts going black, like she can't see, like she can't breathe, and now she realizes she can't breathe, and she can't see, and that tightness in her chest is worse and worse, and her body is shaking—she can't see—then her lungs explode and she's free, feels herself being pulled apart, limb by limb, atom by atom, until she and everything else becomes nothing, one with the empty black void.

A man laughs in the distance somewhere out in that vast, unknowable blackness, so far away it's like he's safe from it all.

She hated that damn dream.

Sophie always got anxiety when she thought of it. Jitters. It made her blood flow. She'd see little blue and white dots jump around her vision, and it was like all her senses would be heightened. An awareness of everything would fill her. Other thoughts would make her get like that, too. Thinking about her existence, about God, the Devil, that sort of thing.

This would be when she'd get a hunch. Her dad, Stevie, he got hunches, too. And Granddad.

Sophie got a hunch about the old mine when she went walking down by the river after school one day, thinking about life and how pointless it would all be if the universe was gonna blow up any day now. Why bother studying for tests and all that? She skipped a pebble across the river's surface, those blue-white dots dancing in time with the water being struck. Only when the pebble finally lost momentum and sunk, her whole world sunk with it.

A vision.

Everything around her went swirling down where the pebble sank, like the last bit of water getting sucked down the bathtub drain. It belched out scenes—moments—that would whizz past her face like some sort of 5D movie with a working fan and waterworks. Most were too quick to catch. In one scene: A huge rally of some kind, only people flew around on jetpacks, then the rally became a war. Another scene: The mine entrance, marked with a huge sign reading "Devil's Pit Mine." This scene of the mine seemed to linger, filled her view, and she felt the heat of the day beating down on her, and the heavy, acrid air. Now she walked into the mine, into the darkness.