I had been unemployed and penniless for two weeks when the letter slipped under my door. It flashed as if it were made of polished silver. On the front, in flowing cursive engraved into the envelope in sharp, red letters, read two words: To Michael.
“What the hell?” I thought, going over to the door and peeking through the peephole. No one stood outside. I quickly flung the door open, looking down both sides of the apartment hallway. The flickering fluorescent lights overhead cast the pale, yellow wallpaper in a dim light. Everything looked faded and lifeless, as if I were stuck in some sort of Purgatory.
Sometimes, I felt like Sisyphus, constantly rolling a rock up a mountain for all eternity despite the hopelessness of it. Except, in my case, I sometimes hoped the rock might just crush me to death. Everything had been going downhill for months by this point, and I knew if it got much worse, I would end up homeless again soon within a few days.
I knelt down, examining the letter closely. I wondered if perhaps one of my neighbors in the apartment complex had gotten some of my mail by mistake and slipped it under the threshold. But the letter had no stamp and no return address. Someone had clearly just written it and slipped it under my door.
Nervously, I touched one of my fingers to it. I felt a sizzling current run from the envelope into my skin, almost like a powerful sense of static electricity. It didn’t hurt, but it caused my muscles to tighten involuntarily. All the colors in the world seemed to brighten and sparkle as I picked up the sleek, silver thing. It looked like a letter from an alien, I thought to myself with a smile.
It felt tremendously cold under my grip, as if I were holding something that just fell out of the darkness of infinite space. I could feel it sucking my body heat as if it were a living thing, like some sort of vampire. My hand went cold and numb instantly, and the smile fell off my face as a rising sense of anxiety took over. After a few seconds, the sensation started to pass.
Hesitantly, I flipped open the envelope’s cover. Hundred dollar bills fell out, scattering over the floor like dead leaves. The little green pieces of paper slowly descended through the air. It seemed as if the envelope were spitting out impossible amounts of material. More and more money fell out in clumps within the space of a few moments, followed by a piece of paper as glossy and black as obsidian. I stood in amazement around the pile. The amount of money that fell out of this slim envelope wouldn’t have fit into a man’s leather wallet, less likely this paper-thin metal envelope. I thought of how Bugs Bunny and other cartoon characters could hide their bodies behind flagpoles or other impossibly narrow hiding spots. I didn’t know if I wanted to laugh or run away. For a few moments, I was overwhelmed by emotion, my mind racing ahead in a stream-of-consciousness garble.
My first rational thought was that it was all counterfeit, and that this was some sort of prank. The envelope could probably be sealed and have all the air sucked out of it to make it seem like it was holding much less than it was. That’s probably why it was metal, since flimsy paper wouldn’t make an airtight seal. I scoffed as I thought about it, not sure what I should feel at that moment. I wondered if someone was secretly videotaping me somewhere. If it was a prank, I bet all of those bills were counterfeit as well.
Then the silver envelope started to dissolve in my fingers. It looked like it was being eaten by a corrosive acid as it turned into ashes. Circular spots of gray dust settled on my hand, so light and smooth that they felt like mere air. Within seconds, the envelope had disappeared completely.
“Neat trick,” I muttered to myself. I had no idea who was behind this. My curiosity was piqued, however. Kneeling down, I picked up the black piece of paper. It felt like it was made of some sort of plasticky, unbreakable material. Its glossy surface felt as smooth and warm as a living creature under my fingers. I started reading the blood-red ink scrawled across its front in a beautiful, flowing cursive script. This is what it said:
“Dear Michael,
“I’m sure you are very confused right now. I know of your struggles, your hardships, your triumphs and failures. I know all of your thoughts and feelings, even at this very moment. Indeed, I am closer to you than your own jugular vein, your own heart.
“For I am GOD, the Creator of the Universe, the Source of Life, the Eternal. People call me many different names, as you well know, but my Archons call me the Pleroma, the Fullness, just as the ancient seers used to call me.
“For I fill all things. My consciousness spans all of the universe and beyond. It spreads forever outwards like an endless wasteland. It is within the hearts of all beings, smaller than the thumb. It is eternity. I have always existed and always will- like the snake eating its own tail.”
I was sweating heavily by this point. I felt an insane urge to laugh at the ridiculous letter. God sending a letter? Didn’t he have email? This image made me descend into a fit of giggling that bordered on madness. It threatened to smash through my mind like the waters of a collapsing dam.
My heart was pounding and palpitating at the same time. Something in the letter had a sense of power, after all. I could feel its subtle energy vibrating under my grasp as it trickled into my hands, almost like the heat of a tropical sun. Inhaling deeply, I continued reading.
“I know what you’re thinking. GOD sending a letter? Doesn’t he have email?” I gasped, falling back and letting the letter drop from my numb fingers. It descended slowly to the ground, drifting in lazy arcs. As it landed on the kitchen floor, though, something strange happened.
The blood-red ink began to emanate a blinding, crimson light. Its bloody glow radiated out of every single letter on the page. The glossy paper curled and writhed, lengthening and twisting into a long cylinder.
In a few seconds, eyes appeared along with sharp teeth and a grinning mouth. I looked down into the face of a viper. The crimson glow now came from its two reptilian eyes. Its jaw unhinged as it slithered toward me. From its mouth, I heard words that shook the ground like bomb blasts. I quickly realized this monstrous talking snake was reading the rest of the letter. This is what it spoke:
“I know you well, Michael. You will not believe unless you see miracles. But I have miracles for you, more than you will ever know.
“I have existed in eternity for so long that my consciousness is warping, twisting, becoming insane, forming back in on itself. I don’t know how to stop it.
“However, I enjoy my stories, and I know you are a writer who is down on his luck. You are special in a way you don’t understand. Within a few rare people, there is an essence, a divine spark of something ancient, some microcosm of the fullness, some piece of the primordial Sophia who I lost at the beginning. When I find these people, when they have progressed to a high enough level, I give them the choice, as you now have. For narrow is the path that leads to Heaven, but wide and deep are the paths to Hell. Not all who are called will ascend, but I believe in you, and I believe you will make the right choice.
“Contained within this envelope is $20,000. Every Sunday morning, a silver envelope will appear under your door with more money. I want you to write the most interesting stories you can and put them in there for me. The Archons with the faces of men and beasts enjoy singing them to me.
“If you refuse, the money is yours, but you will never hear from me again in this life.”
The snake gave a hissing shriek, a sound that slowed down and turned mechanical, like the grinding of many gears and the tearing of metal. Then, like the envelope, its body began to fade away into ashes, dissolving in growing circles. Soon, it was no more than gray dust on the linoleum floor, just like the envelope itself.
***
The rest of the week passed in a blur. I didn’t sleep much. Every time I did, I would see pieces of paper morphing, turning into talking snakes. Sometimes I dreamed of great singing winged beasts with four faces on their alien heads: a lion, an eagle, an ox and a man. Each of the faces faced in a different direction, like the four points of a compass. Were these the Archons the snake had mentioned?
I tried writing, but nothing worthy of an infinite God would come to my mind. The entire thing seemed absurd. Did God actually enjoy stories? Well, I thought to myself, if he created the universe, perhaps he did. Perhaps he only created the universe to watch the stories of each individual life passing through in its various stages of birth, suffering, aging and death.
Late on Saturday night, I found myself sitting at the kitchen table, drinking cup after cup of coffee. My laptop was open in front of me, the blank, white page staring back at me with a mocking glee. What kind of story was worthy of a divine being, after all?
After many hours of writer’s block, the answer hit me like a bolt of lightning: a horror story. After all, if the Old Testament was right, God was jealous and infantile. He got mad like a spurned lover when he saw people worshiping other gods. He drowned the entire world because he was somewhat disappointed in the first result. I figured a being of such a mind would certainly appreciate some more horror, as I did myself. After all, if I was made in his image, then I assume we should have similar tastes.
***
The envelope came sliding under the door at the exact moment the Sun started to rise on Sunday morning. With the finished product tucked into my nervous, sweating hands, I reached down and opened the cover. Enormous amounts of money came tumbling out. I didn’t even see all the bills, though. Feeling weak and anxious, I closed my eyes and slipped the folded pages of my story into the silver envelope. The currents of electricity from it seemed to sizzle my skin as I closed the cover.
I wondered if I would ever find out how much God liked my story. Would he send another talking snake with a voice like rushing water?
By the end of the day, I would know exactly how much God liked it. He liked it so much, in fact, that he decided to make it come true.
***
I fell asleep for a few hours, totally exhausted from working through the night. But when I awoke, I felt a surge of confidence and bliss I hadn’t known for many years. I was now financially stable- hell, more than that. With the $40,000 I had now received, I could pay off all my debts and still have at least $10,000 to spare.
I opened my eyes, looking around, feeling dazed. The horrific dream I had been having about sailing on an endless ocean surrounded by a thick blanket of shadows seemed to merge with the brightness of the real world for a few moments. I blinked rapidly, wondering if I was still dreaming. For some reason, I wasn’t on my bed anymore. I wasn’t even in my apartment.
I found myself laying on a cold, blood-stained steel table in a small concrete room. A bare incandescent bulb flickered overhead. The darkness of the claustrophobic chamber seemed to swallow its dim light like a hungry mouth.
“Holy shit,” I said, my heart dropping. I saw the door to my room standing wide open. It was a hospital door with a small observation window built into the top. The glass looked cracked and yellowed with age. Spatters of what looked like ancient blood covered the front of it. I felt a shock of fear course through my body like lightning as I recognized the setting from my story.
Past the door, I saw a dark hallway filled with overturned gurneys and debris. I got up, walking slowly out of my prison-like cell. Strewn across the hallway lay bloody scalpels, syringes filled with some strange, sparkling black fluid, bandages spattered with pus and gore, and even a dried human finger. The finger had curved in its dessicated state. As it lay on the filthy floor, it seemed to beckon me forward.
I tried to calm myself and remember the story. I had written it fast, and under the influence of too many weed gummies. Now I felt very sober indeed.
I walked down the hallway, feeling sticky fluids crunching under my feet. Something like pus seemed to glisten from the cracks in the floor, as if the hospital itself were a living thing and we were all just bacteria in its giant body. The walls seemed to breathe, slowly inhaling and exhaling as a slight breeze blew past me, constantly reversing directions with every cycle of it.
With no better ideas, I knelt down and carefully scooped up a needle with the wicked-looking black stuff swirling inside. It looked like someone had put glitter in some filthy car’s waste oil. I carefully wrapped the tip in cloth and put it in my pocket. Perhaps it would come in useful somehow, I thought. I had no better ideas, and my hope that there would be a way out and a happy ending to this had almost completely faded to nothing.
***
In the story I had written for God, the building was a decrepit, hellish mental asylum in the center of the universe. God was kept as a patient in the basement, insane and rambling like a syphilis patient in his final days. I imagined God as a kind of massive Nietzsche in Nietzsche’s last days of life: a man with the same prominent Germanic mustache, his eyes crossed and a straitjacket hugging his body, sitting in a wheelchair and staring at the ocean as he slowly loses the last fragile splinters of his sanity.
The staff of the hospital were his Archons, the archangels with the faces of men and beasts. They read to God all day, read him books, music, poetry or anything else to help him pass eternity and relieve the incessant boredom. But God was so far gone, they didn’t even know if he could hear them most of the time.
I had no idea how to get out of here, or whether there was a way out. I hadn’t put any in the story. As I wandered down the halls, a horrified, painful wailing began beneath my feet. The floor started to tremble with the power of it. It sounded like a man shrieking as his body burns alive combined with the tortured squealing of tearing metal. It passed through the air like thunder. Dust fell from the ceiling. The many cracks in the walls opened and lengthened.
I shook, my heart trembling in my chest. My legs felt weak. I walked forward like a sleepwalker. In front of me, I saw a sign with a staircase pointing at the end of the hall. There I saw an old bunker door, thick and sturdy. On the front, barely legible, a sign lay reading: “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.” Underneath, a smaller one read: “Psychosis Unit.”
After taking a deep breath, I opened the rusted door and started to descend.
***
The walls breathed all around me as a fiery, glowing light shone far at the bottom. It felt as if I were descending into the bowels of Hell itself. For all I knew, perhaps I was.
The stairs dropped down a steel tunnel for what looked like thousands of feet. The steps had strange gold and silver filaments woven together in long, curving strands that made the entire construct look like an enormous spiderweb. It had no handrail, and the steep, narrow steps fell down like the slope of a mountain. Vertigo twisted through me as I focused on my breathing, slowly making my way down, intent on not tripping. I had gone for about five minutes when I nearly died.
That roaring, shrieking, tearing wail started up again. As the stairs started to tremble and the walls rippled like contracting flesh all around me, I felt myself thrown forward. I screamed with terror, windmilling my arms. Hundreds of steep steps loomed below me, a very long, bone-shattering fall. I had visions of my bloody, broken body being returned to my family, the splintered bones all poking out of the skin..
I slipped, trying to brace myself, but my foot came down on empty air. I started to fall, knowing I had lost. The absolute animal panic of that moment made everything slow down and grow bright At that moment, though, something grabbed me from behind. I felt myself lifted off my feet as a smell like lavender and rotting bodies filled the area. Two skeletal hands held me under the shoulders with a grip like iron.
I turned my head, seeing something monstrous, the decaying body of an angel. It had two massive, black wings extending on both sides of its body like the wings of a bat. Countless pale, squirming maggots fell from those wings every moment, dripping like raindrops in a heavy storm.
Its head was spun around backward, so that I couldn’t see its face, but growing from the back of its scalp, I saw many strange, black, snake-like creatures writhing and twisting. They stared at me with their pale, white eyes. Their reptilian faces split into a grin as we reached the bottom of the stairway and the creature set me down gently on the ground. Those snake tentacles had far too many teeth.
It turned its body so that its face was looking at me. This thing had a face like a skull, pieces of necrotic flesh still clinging tightly to the bones. Two dead, cataract eyes stared out. Its teeth looked as sharp as needles. On its body, it wore softly glowing silver armor. It even had a sword sheathed around its waist.
I backpedaled away from this abomination, but it put its hands up.
“I am the Angel of Death,” it said. “I am not here to hurt you. We are to bring you to the center, to see for yourself the truth of all things.”
“We?” I asked, looking around. Behind me, I saw more angels, massive creatures standing twenty feet tall with four faces on their heads. As they turned, I realized these were the Archons. The faces of oxen, men, eagles and lions all looked dispassionately down at me, some with hunger in their eyes and others with hatred. They all had on glowing armor and swords, like the Angel of Death.
I realized I was no longer in the building. Its breathing walls loomed behind me. Trickles of pus and blood dripped from cracks in the walls. Its exterior seemed to shiver with excitement.
I looked up, seeing a sky as dark as an abyss stretching overhead. In front of me lay a wasteland of rocks and fine, black sand. Shadows pressed in on all sides, but far off, there was the flashing of fire.
I squinted, seeing a massive door of finely-spun gold and silver thread a few hundred feet away across the wasteland. It opened onto something like a volcano. Torrents of lava splashed and bubbled deep inside, sending thick, choking black smoke into the air.
Around the door was a wall rising hundreds of feet of air. It looked like smooth, polished obsidian. It gleamed mockingly, cutting off my view of what horrors lay behind it.
“Time to go,” the Angel of Death whispered in a voice like smoke. It came up behind me, its tentacle creatures snapping and biting at each other like rabid dogs. A cold, rotted hand was placed gently on my shoulder. I shuddered.
The Archons towered over me on all sides, their silver armor glowing with a soft blue light. They said nothing as they accompanied me toward the fiery door, surrounding me like guards accompanying an inmate to the electric chair.
***
Around the door, hundreds more Archons stood in a semi-circle. They all murmured and chanted in different languages, creating a low, constant susurration. Their eyes looked cold and dead, as lifeless as those of corpses.
I felt immense fear. My heart palpitated wildly in my chest. I knew I was looking death in the face. Whatever was through that door, I did not want to see it.
I heard someone whispering, a soothing female voice that came across so softly that I didn’t know at first if I was imagining it. I looked at the Angel of Death, wondering if it was talking, but its skeletal, bone-white mouth stayed firmly shut. I listened to the words as a sense of light and peace filled my chest, suddenly feeling as if I was not alone in this.
“Through that gate is the Demiurge, he who imprisoned our immortal souls into these dying bodies at the beginning of time. He is evil, as cold and black as the endless void between stars…”
I felt a warm, calming presence for a few moments as the words faded away. No one else seemed to be able to hear them. The Archons hadn’t reacted. And then the terror and anxiety returned.
“See your master,” one of the Archons standing next to me hissed as they pushed me toward the door. His human face contorted into a sneer as he looked down on me with contempt. “He created you from dust. You’re no more than a Golem wrapped in skin. Just dust! But we, the holy ones, were created from light.” He spat with his human face. The lion face roared, its deadly eyes glittering with hatred. The ox head showed only contempt as the eagle gave a predatory glare.
I stepped forward and entered the sacred gate.
***
Through its threshold, I saw a face of infinite light soaring hundreds of feet in the air, blinding and radiant. Its eyes seemed like two spinning black holes. Its visage constantly shimmered and morphed, extending into other dimensions. Its geometry shifted in ways far beyond Euclidean spacetime. Underneath it loomed fields of lava and fire. Strange, bone-white tentacles writhed from the mass of light surrounding the face of God, slithering and undulating like snakes. It floated high above the hellish wasteland underneath it.
Then it seemed to focus on me. A presence outside of time and space invaded my consciousness. I heard a whispering start in the back of my mind.
“We are one. Feel the fullness of God…”
Something black and empty pierced my heart as that horrid voice twisted through my body. At that moment, I saw horrible things. The cold reptilian presence ran through my mind like an eternal scream. It felt like skeletal hands were gripping my heart, squeezing it into a pulp. Death flashed through my body, jarring and dissonant. Visions ran through my mind. Mountains of corpses and worlds of screaming beings sucked into black holes suffocated my senses. I heard an insane laugh, a sound like a bomb blast, full of sadism and mirth.
The Archons had come behind me through the gate. One of them turned to me, looking down on me like an ant.
“You will be fed to the mouth of God,” he said calmly, “so that your essences can become one. God wishes to have you with him for all eternity, talespinner.” A sense of panic gripped me at that point. They started to close in around me, trying to force me forward. I knew I needed to act, to escape this insane trap.
I grabbed the needle full of sparkling black fluid I had picked up in the hospital, hoping it was some sort of eldritch poison. Only one Archon stood between me and the gate with the rest at my sides. Spinning around, I ran at the one in my way with the needle pointed out. The angel had a look of surprise as I brought the tip of it down into his exposed calf and pushed the plunger. It brought a clawed hand down and swiped at me, sending me flying back through the gate. I landed hard on the black sand, gasping and sore. But the scream of agony coming from the Archon told me it had worked.
The effect was nearly instantaneous. The angel’s skin blackened and turned necrotic in spreading patches, rising up from his leg to the rest of his body in the space of a few heartbeats. All four faces began to drip blood and gnash at the air. He began going insane, smashing his human face into the obsidian wall over and over.
The other Archons started to run forward to grab me, but the insane, transformed creature took his sword and started blindly slashing at the air. All of his faces were crying and spitting blood now, and even his eyes had started to rot and liquefy in their sockets. The sword crashed into another Archon, decapitating its strange, four-faced head and sending it flying into the lava that bubbled only feet away. The rest turned their attention back to this new threat. I pushed myself up and ran for my life.
There was that horrific wailing again, the predatory roaring that shook the ground like an earthquake. It was the same shrieking that nearly killed me on those endless stairs. I realized with horror that the scream came from God. His face had contorted into unbridled fury. The radiant, spiraling light started moving forward, its thousands of chalk-white tentacles writhing faster, whipping everything in their path. They began to blindly grab Archons and tear them into pieces or throw them into the fire.
God crashed through the gate, splitting the obsidian wall into fragments that flew like bullets through the air. I sprinted as fast as I could back toward the mental asylum, the only source of potential safety I could see. I had little hope that it would help, however. Then that voice came into my mind again, the soothing voice that sounded almost like a loving mother.
“This is a place of shadows,” the whisper said in my mind again, a soft, female voice whose tone was as cooling as balm on a wound. “This is a mirage, one of the emanations above the source. You have the divine spark within you. You can change the emanations with your mind if you concentrate. Use the divine spark. Focus on that door…”
The decrepit hospital building seemed to be shivering and trying to pull itself back from the chaos and mayhem drawing near. Behind me, God moved forward like a creeping lava flow, destroying everything in his path. His cold, reptilian eyes looked down with contempt and a strange emptiness as he came forward.
“You must be one with me. Let me taste your bones. Let me drink your blood. Let your essence enter into me, the infinite, the divine,” God shrieked in a voice like thunder.
That enormous face radiating light and insanity continued to sweep toward me. I knew it would catch me in seconds if I didn’t get out.
The door to the hospital breathed and dripped rancid, yellow pus from the top of its threshold. Beyond it, the strange silver stairs rose thousands of feet, like the building itself. I blinked fast, imagining my apartment as I got within a few steps of the door. The ground ripped itself apart behind me, cracking and falling down into an endless abyss as I jumped forward.
I felt a rising sense of energy in my chest, a spinning around my heart and a high-pitched whining in my ears as the door rippled in front of me like a mirage. Suddenly, the image changed, and I saw my apartment through it.
A tentacle as cold as liquid nitrogen snatched my ankle as I flew through the door. My apartment stood in front of me, normal and clean. The tentacles from the mass of light whipped out crazily in all directions, smashing everything within reach.
“You cannot leave!” God screamed as I felt myself being dragged back. Panicking, I thought of the only thing that might work. Focusing again on the door, I imagined it slamming shut. The swirling vortex of light filled my heart, and for a moment, I felt whole.
The door slammed closed with a sound like a gunshot, cutting off the tentacle like a scalpel. The dismembered tentacle still whipped crazily after the door sliced it off. It stayed locked around my ankle, even after it stopped moving. I ended up going to the kitchen and cutting it off with a knife.
The entire time, it dripped a strange kind of blood: silvery and filled with rainbows, like liquid opal.