My Soul to Keep - By Sean Hayden Page 0,14
at school, so I couldn’t say. “Where are we going?”
“I know a small field outside of town, perfect for what we need. Nobody ever goes there.”
“What if my mom calls to check on me?”
“I already planted it in her head you need your rest and if you need anything you’ll call. I have everything covered.” She unlocked the sub-subcompact car with a push of a button and the engine roared (okay, maybe purred) to life. She hopped in the driver’s seat and I walked around the back of the car to the passenger’s door. I opened it and slid in, praying to whomever that nobody saw me in the pink monstrosity.
She backed out of the driveway without looking and took off out of my neighborhood. We passed the mall and hit the highway heading for God knows where. For all I knew, Clarisse planned on driving me out to the middle of nowhere to kill me and hide my body. She didn’t seem to like me very much. I thought about everything that happened over the past day. I sort of felt homesick. I still lived at home with my parents and my evil sister, but everything had changed. I wanted everything to be like it was. Since I'd already sold my soul, I didn’t have much to bargain with.
“What are the Fallen?” I said it quietly, but Clarisse heard me.
“What do you think we are?” I didn’t like how she said, “We are.” I would have preferred, “I am."
“Some sort of demons?”
“It depends on who you ask. I’ll say this. Forget everything you’ve ever learned about heaven and hell. Most of it is just propaganda spread by the church to make humans behave. Basically you have this reality and the otherworld. Human beings have souls, and when their bodies cease to function their souls move on. Sometimes they find a place there, and sometimes they come back to this reality in a different body. Humans call it reincarnation and it’s real. We Otherworlders used to be one big happy family. We were enamored with the humans when they first came to be. Then the Time of Troubles came.”
“What’s the Time of Troubles?”
“When the Chosen and the Fallen split. We used to be one race of beings and now we are two. Our compassion for the humans forced us to take sides in the war. Our side got the shit end of the stick and received the title Fallen Ones.”
“You’re not going to tell me you’re an angel?”
“Angels are what the humans called us, but not what we called ourselves. The others have white feathery wings, but they refer to themselves as the Chosen.”
“That seems a little pompous. Couldn’t they have thought of something cooler?”
“If you ever meet one, and pray you don’t, you’ll understand why. Snooty doesn’t begin to describe them. Basically they believe in the utopian theory. If they come across anything that goes against their harmony, they have a tendency to destroy it. The Fallen are major benefactors of ‘free will’ while the Chosen only believe in ‘do what you’re told’”.
“What about God? What does he have to say about all this?”
“The Creator? He created both worlds and gave everyone free will. The Creator loves all his children but holds to the tenant most parents follow. You give life and you guide. If you try to control your children they have a tendency to do the exact opposite. The Fallen believe the same thing. Free will is more important than anything else. The Chosen believe The Creator wants them to control everyone and everything, to make it perfect.”
“They sound like a bunch of arrogant dicks.”
“Yes, they are. It’s why we left. We live among the mortals now, seeking souls to join us against them. It’s why we do what we do. We still have several small kingdoms in the otherworld and the souls we enlist live there or even sometimes here. Somebody who sells us their soul to fulfill their desires gets a choice. Their souls can live in our otherworld kingdoms, spreading our word, or they can come back to earth in another body, but the spark giving them life belongs to our side. The Chosen have used mortals of considerable power to portray us as the bad guys, but really we’re not. Even you used the word demon. When we lost the first war, they stripped us of our feathers to mock us. We were just severely outnumbered. Now we wear our wings with pride.”
“So