Bat out of hell (S)

Adam began to share his exile from Eden with his wife Eve and with her he conceived their first child, Cain. Eve had both received and gained a man with the help of her lord and in due time she bore another son, Abel. In their growth they became close. Their brotherhood knew no rivals, no contempt or hate and their childhood years were happy and peaceful. When they became old enough to rear the animals and tend the land Abel became a keeper of sheep where Cain became the tiller of the ground.

Their parents did not falter to teach them about the ways of their lord and maker so they knew that an offering was demanded from both of them to their creator.  Cain brought the lord an offering of fruit of the ground and his brother the first born of his flock. The lord looked upon Abel with respect and regard for his offering but looked upon the offering of Cain with only contempt and disregard.

The lord felt a rising tide of darkness within Cain and spoke to him ‘my child, you bear a terrible sin within your heart. It crouches at your door; you must be its master.  Your brother is more natured in this act and has resisted the urge to sin more so than you. Truly he is more pious and it is this reason I have chosen him’

Within Cain boiled the rage of seven hells and the dark winter of depression. He fathered resentment to his favoured brother. Why should he, a man of more youthful beauty and untemprered heart be favoured by their lord? Had Cain not already suffered enough and done more than his fair share of work whilst his brother as nursed on his mother’s breast?

That night under a shroud of darkness and unplanned and brash desires he led his brother to the field. As they tilled Abel turned to his brother and spoke ‘my dearest Cain, you have said hardly a word to me since the offering and I have been told by our father you talked to god, tell me what did he say about me?’

Cain looked at his brother, bitter bile rised in his throat. ‘He said nothing about you. He talked to me and me alone!’  He snarled, his brother was taken aback by his brother’s countenance and his jealousy became clear. ‘Cain, do not be moved by the sins of jealousy and hate. Resist them and I am sure god will find favour with you as he has with me’

The words twisted in his mind, his rage took on motion and he struck at Abel with his tool. ‘My fist will find favour with your head and my lord will find favour with your death!’ he struck at his brother’s head thrice and stopped. He was dead and crimson blood lay in a pool at Cain’s feet. As a final act of sacrilege upon gods lamb he tore out his brother’s heart with his knife and devoured the still beating flesh. He looked up at the thundering night sky and roared ‘I have killed and devoured that which pleases you, it is now a part of me as it was a part of him, his heart that resisted temptation and sin now resides within me, O lord, do I find favour with you now?’

Upon hearing Cain’s declaration the sky boomed with fury and the voice of god roared across the earth ‘What have you done? The Voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground! You are now cursed by the earth that has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand! When you till the ground it shall no longer yield to you its bounty. You shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, a degraded outcast to be in perpetual exile.

Cain cried to the lord in defiance ‘Behold, you have driven me out this day from the face of the land, and from your face I shall be hidden and I shall be a wanderer on the earth. I am a savage but you have made me forever in your image, you are the same as me!’

‘You are not of my image you are of the devils and I now mark you as such. Your very skin will burn with hellfire upon the mere utterance of my name and I forever forbid you to enter a domain of my presence. No food will save your hunger and no drink will satiate your thirst other than the very blood you have spilt this day. I send my dogs of vengeance to hunt you to the ends of the earth and rip the flesh from your bones for infinity. You will walk among man for eternity, not as a kinsman but as a scourge and they will curse your name. In time so will you as you shall act as a harbinger for peril and doom to all you meet. Now begone from this place and cease defiling your brother’s remembrance with your very presence!’

Thus Cain felt pain for an eternity. Indeed no drink could quench his thirsts and no foods satiate his glutton but the lifeblood of the creatures of the land. No home could welcome him and none of the lord’s houses could provide for him a room. His father and mother wept not for their elder son but for the dear sweet Abel, who now lay cold and blue with the hue of death upon his face.

Cain was set upon by hounds in human form, with eyes of wild rage and coats of black fur. They made his travels only possible at day where the very sun burned his flesh unless he consumed the blood of man. At night the wolves come out to hunt him, hungry for his flesh. And always able to find him for his hair was scarlet, his eyes crimson and his skin of the palest marble hue. Thus was the origin of the vampire.

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Cain’s curse entailed that he should be functionally immortal. No man could harm him and no beast could feast upon him. He evaded death at every turn and devoured the blood of his would be assailants to keep him mobile. This undying immortality was the only power that god gave him; he was still doomed to a misshapen mortal body. He tired from hunting, tired from walking and tired of the beasts at his back, baying for his blood, the eternal hunt. As quick as those next eighty years went by spent traversing the vast and lonely deserts of the lands to him an eternity was hell to suffer with only the powers of a human.


Eventually Cain came to a halt. He had resigned to his fate of either being devoured by the beasts in pursuit (though far off in the distance now, he could feel them still trailing his scent) or simply letting himself drop there, immobile but conscious and buried by the sand to become as much a part of the desert as the rocks and dunes that littered it.

Then a shadow stood behind him, blotting out the sun. Cain turned to find a human figure with skin stained  an unearthly cobalt black  with two massive feathery wings adorning his back, each jet black and quivering with power, extended so far as to reach the very end of the horizon itself. The figure stared at Cain with wonder and amusement wit blazing amber eyes that left trails of embers wherever they went.  ‘Stay back, I warn you that I am cursed so that no-man or beast may harm me’ the creature laughed and it echoed past the mountains and silenced the carrion birds above ‘Oh poor lost lamb, forsaken son of Adam and punished child of God. It is true no man can harm you but you know well that I am no mere man’ his voice was beautiful and well-toned, like an angels chorus but it had a hollow and cruel resonance within that growled slightly beneath his speech. ‘Know that you now look upon your equal in God’s eyes, a forsaken soul, a vagabond of life and a victim of his cruel machinations! I am Lucifer the enlightened, betrayer and traitor to the heavens and like you I am cast down from his grace!’ He declared, the setting sun cast an unearthly scarlet halo behind his head and made his fiery eyes all the more startling from beneath his shadowed face.






‘However, unlike me you are so much more than you once were; you think this new-found immortality a curse? You are untouchable by blade or blunt, immune to disease and capable of single handedly winning wars. God is a fool to give you such power’ he praised. Cain’s respite was obvious; he dropped the stick he used to support himself on the weary days. ‘Damnable being, it is not only mere immortality that makes up my living damnation, I am spurned by the light of the sun, it’s very touch right now burns me so that in my waking hours I am subjected to agony and pain, my nights are spent running in fear from the hounds of god who wish to rip at me and extend my suffering.  To propagate this I must feed off of the blood of the living to have the strength to continue this unending farce! I bring suffering and misery to all I meet and those who know me know only pain. You would have me win wars? I would wager a war against god himself by now if that was true but I am still only a man, I have a man’s strength and a man’s stamina. ‘


Lucifer smiled once more, wicked silver teeth behind sinister black lips ‘Yes, but I offer you a gift of truth’ he said while producing a small scarlet apple. ‘I have the last remaining Fruit of the forbidden tree of knowledge, after the eviction of the custodians of Eden, your progenitors, the garden withered and paradise died, the fruit of knowledge rotted and decayed so that no man may taste its honest flesh. However I managed to salvage one last seedling and kept it alive with my own soul and craft.  Come, partake in the sin of your father so that you may know the truths behind the world’ he extended his arm, the fruit glittering in the dim light.  Cain was hesitant to believe him; indeed would any sane man believe the fallen angel? ‘You trick me, surely you must trick me, and you would not give away knowledge if you wouldn’t gain. Tell me what dark truth lies beneath your generosity’ Cain asked accusingly. 


‘There is no trickery here Cain, this fruit symbolises true knowledge, were I to even attempt to mislead you or betray your trust it would be revealed to you by this. I offer you this fruit in all honesty for what it is, the key to the powers behind the soul and the world. This is access to the dark arts and gifts I am blessed with, god may have made you immortal but it shall be I who shall truly create you.’ Lucifer’s voice was indeed truthful and honest and Cain was tempted by this promise of power. Night was soon to fall and the hounds would be upon him again ‘I shall not have to run any more if I accept, men will fear me and power will be mine, is all of this true’ asked Cain once more, clearly and slowly. ‘Take this and let the power of the ethereal world fill your mind and become like a god’ Lucifer answered, Cain took the fruit from his extended hand and had taken only one bite before the wealth of knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, life and death rushed at his mind, barraging him and burning inside his mind. He could hear Lucifer’s joyous laughter as he blacked out.


When Cain regained consciousness he found himself alone in the desert, the setting crimson sun replaced by a velvet sheet of darkness.  Cain’s mind and body burned with power unimaginable by man. Far off in the distance he heard the hellish barking of the hounds. Wasting no more time he took off at the speed of a desert wind in their direction, eager to end the pursuit once and for all.


He advanced upon them quickly; it was a pack of three, Blue eyes glittering in the moonlight, each as big as a man on all fours. The pack circled the unflinching Cain; he could smell the blood in their veins and hear their heartbeats. One growled and threw itself at him, snarling and roaring with fury. Cain was however able to grab the beast by the throat and tear it from its body, he flung the corpse at another advancing wolf and heard the bines in its skull crack as it hit the floor.


The last to attack was the largest, the alpha of the group. It reared at him and went for his throat, tearing out chunks of flesh from his chest, Cain’s own innards spread out in a sinister plethora upon the sand, sending blackened blood flying and covering the both. Yet still he fought on. He ripped and tore at the beast, ripping eyes and chunks from its bulk. He was so consumed by bloodlust and rages that he scarcely noticed the beast changing into a humanoid form, it grabbed him with clawed arms and threw him against a nearby boulder.


Cain would waste no more time, he was bleeding profusely and the pain from the wound in his torso was too great to bear. He leapt at the beast and with all the strength he could muster he tore the head off of the neck, sinew and bone cracked in an insidious chorus. Wasting not a drop of blood he drank from the wound, as he drank his torso healed, organs regrown from nothing and flesh replacing flesh. Cain understood the true knowledge Lucifer’s fruit had given him and as he stood in the midst of blood and death he truly understood what he had meant. He was now a god among mortals.