The Trumpet

If you find this, it means you are investigating the end and my part in it. I swear I am just a normal guy. Really there isn’t anything special about me. I mean, except for the possibility that I am the soul of a ten-thousand-year-old warrior of Hell, and I might have caused the apocalypse. Maybe I should back up a little bit because that makes me sound like the bad guy in this story. Not that I am the good guy, but I only did what I had to in order to protect my family. What would you have done? You don’t realize it but, you would have made the choice like I did. To kill you all.

2018 –

I found out that I was going to be a father. A little girl was on her way, and I couldn’t be happier. I had a great job, a new house, a beautiful wife, three dogs and money in the bank. Things could not get better for me, and they didn’t.

It wasn’t long before the nightmares started. My child who I had not met yet was constantly being taken from me. She was disappearing around corners while I frantically chase to find her. I brushed this off as normal anxiety of becoming a new parent. But some dreams became disturbing, such as her being the center point of dark rituals. Not like she was being sacrificed, but she was being worshiped. Okay, weird… but why think anything of it, it’s just a dream.

2019 –

After she was born the strange visions started. They were not visions that could be seen with physical eyes, but with your mind’s eye… and then overlayed on to your vision. I was lying in bed, my daughter in the bassinet beside me, and I look to the doorway. With my eyes I saw an empty doorway, but with my mind I saw him standing there leaning on the door jamb with a crooked-eyebrow-asshole look on his face. This is the first time I saw him, and it was the strangest sensation. The human form is not meant to see onto the plain of existence that he lives on, so it was processed in my brain on two fronts. Needing to look in the direction where he was and needing my mind to interpret what he was and display the image in my mind. I was not surprised to see him, more annoyed that he showed his stupid face in my home.

The strangest part of all this is how I already know every celestial I come in contact with. Typically, I think they are all pieces of shit, I don’t know why really… it just comes naturally. Malek was him name and he was just the most ridiculous ass you had ever seen. He was wearing medieval dress that was gold and red, puffy shoulders and all. He had one of those big round collars that makes it look like your head is on a platter. My instinct tells me that wouldn’t be a bad place for his head. He was humanoid; his face was a cross between the demon from Hellraiser and Darth Maul from Star Wars but pure clean white.

“She will be mine, and you will give her to me.” Laughed Malek. I ignored this because at this point I still thought this was just weird anxiety of being a new parent. But this guy didn’t give up. I would open a door and he would be in my face telling me again, “One way or another she will be mine.” This went on for weeks until my anger started. Malek put an image in my mind of him holding my daughter upside down by her ankle and licking her torso while keeping eye contact with me. I felt real white-hot anger and rage start to come out of every pour. My physical body became still while my mind’s eye created an interaction with Malek. Wings grew off of my back that were dripping with fire. The flames created an inferno that consumed the entire room. Malek and I looked deep into each other’s eyes, and there I saw it. Fear. In a split second I found myself standing in an empty room and Malek did not return.

2020 –

I hadn’t seen Malek for some time now, but celestials constantly visited my home over the next year. Good ones, bad ones and in between are just a celestial to me. I don’t care if you are an angel or a demon, if you come near my family, I destroy you. I got pretty good at training myself to use my mind’s eye to interact with the celestials. Most of the time I just break them down to nothing but molecules and explode them to the furthest corners of the universe. Until Jared came along.

All attempts to kill Jared have failed. I have stopped really trying at this point; mostly just murder attempts out of frustration. I did manage to destroy his body, but the most annoying part of him is still around… his head. Jared isn’t actually anyone, he is just a conduit or in other words a celestial cell phone. He never told me his name, but I call him Jared because that sounds like a stupid douche bag name which suits him. For whatever reason they made him to look like the bunny from Donnie Darko. Have I mentioned how cliché these people are?

He was the one that told me about how the world will be under siege for a while. A month or so later a virus came around that shut down the world. He told me that was only the beginning, the softening blow before the knock out punch. That I am Hell’s greatest fighter and I have been in hiding for multiple millennia. Jumping from human to human on a sort of dormant auto-pilot keeping a low profile.

“Why is all of this happening to me now?” I asked Jared. “It’s time for us to make our move, and when the time comes to fight, will you fight?”

Good God, I couldn’t stand his stupid voice. I tried to kill him one more time. I melted him down to a charred puddle of tar, blinked, and there he was again. “Fine, I’ll fight when it’s time to fight. Now will you go away?”

The joy of this news was apparently too much for Jared to handle, so he started dancing. He never. stopped. dancing. I was annoyed by this obviously, but I asked him anyway. “When will I know the time to fight?” Jared didn’t miss a step while he responded, “You’ll know when it’s time.”

Oh, how cliché! It was at this point I decapitated Jared and threw his body into the sun. His body hasn’t returned. Thank God.

2021 –

Jared loves to spit little useless fact in my ear about why I am here and who I actually am. But recently he told me a story involving Malek. Apparently my human selves, which is really strange to say, have never had children before. Nine thousand years hiding in human existence, yet I never knocked someone up. It was intentional since Malek is really into kids. Which is probably why I naturally wanted to skin him alive when I first met him. My kid, being a spawn of hell, made his little demon dick tickle which blew my cover.

A few weeks later I was driving to work, with my everlasting sidekick in my passenger seat. “Malek has been distracting you with his little creatures and you didn’t even notice he took you daughter.” Jared belted out followed by an awkwardly long and breathy laugh. I had noticed that celestials were making more appearances, but how would that have distracted me? Before I responded to him I stuck a Ka-Bar throw his skull. Worth a try.

“The fuck are you on about now, Jared?” Then where Jared was, I saw Malek instead. His collar was gone; in its place was a gawdy heart shaped locket. It’s chain was big bulky gold ornaments, and the heart itself was the size of a softball. He had that same dumbass look on his face with the cliché pointy raised up eyebrow. “Sorry, old friend, about the use of the golem. Jared, do you call him? I just couldn’t risk you getting all Rachelle on me until I had what I needed.” Rachelle? I haven’t heard that name before… but it sounds so familiar… like it’s my name.

I paused but shook it off, “What’s with the jewelry? And what do you want?”

“Oh this? Well, you can call her Sofia. I made it out of her aft...ehh” Malek couldn’t finish his sentence before I wrapped my hands around his throat. I could actually feel him in my hands, even though this was still a mind’s eye interaction. “What did you do with my daughter?!”

My phone rang, it was my wife. I tried to answer but lost service. How? There’s always service here.

Malek laughed as my grip no longer affected him. “The seals must be opened, and since you are the Trumpet, you must open the seals to release our armies from hell.” Malek handed me the locket and it was like a key opening a door in my mind, suddenly I knew everything. I am Rachelle.

I am not just a warrior of Hell. I am a General… The General. Or in Hell’s terms, the Trumpet. The Trumpet is the only one in Hell who can procreate with human women. Malek needs a being of Hell that was completely innocent to make the key. So, it was my purpose to bring about the end of humanity and begin the reign of hell. The catch was the child had to be born of love, so I was made to have human emotion. This is why the end had not come for so long. What caring human sets out to make a sacrificial child? He has been watching waiting with his little kid radar going for thousands of years waiting for me to make a mistake.

Cars started pulling off the road, and doing quick U-turns trying to get to their families. The sky turned red and the clouds billowed in like a sand storm in the sky. In an instant, the world was chaos.

I hadn’t noticed until now, I looked down and the locket was in my hand, for real. Malek took my daughters essence and placed her in this locket, and now it is the key to opening Hell’s gates.

Like hell am I going to let them sacrifice this baby that I love so fiercely. I used my mind’s eye to spread my wings but this time they opened for real. I put the locket on and flew. I don’t know how I got there but I was in Hell. Armies of demons were spilling over each other trying to get to the gates. They were about to be free.

Wearing the necklace made me incredibly powerful, I could feel my blood running through me like battery acid. I came upon the seals and with one blow I opened six of them. The rush of power was so great that my body began to change. My eyes were like deep holes into space and my body was three times larger. I began to glow white as I was turning more into energy than anything else.

In that moment I heard my daughter giggle. Everything else became quiet. “I love you daddy.” She said to me in the sweetest voice I ever heard. I looked to heaven and talked to God. “Take her. I will stop them, but only if you take her. Keep her safe, make her happy. Let her live a full life with you in heaven.”

“I will have her.” God replied.

I could only break the locket if I opened the final seal. Opening the seal would result in the instant turning of most humans to demons. The demons of Hell will be released into the world. I have one chance to keep my daughter safe in all this. I took the locket and smashed the final seal and immediately threw it to heaven.

I took a moment to calm my mind and center my concentration. I opened my mind’s eye to the world and felt every celestial’s existence individually and all at once. I was, after all, their general. I opened my eyes to see Malek looking at me with that same stupid look. He was smug at the fact that he manipulated me into bringing on the apocalypse. He didn’t know how powerful it made me. I felt that same white-hot rage as I did years before. Like a Tsunami the size of the Sun, I released an energy blast from my soul. In a moment every celestial outside of heaven was vaporized.

So, there you have it. That is the story of my existence. The story of how I emptied out Hell. The story of how I caused the death of 90% of humans on Earth… but she is safe.

When you rebuild Earth, do not just replace Hell.