Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #11 February 2015 | Page 53

Marqus let out a gargling groan, bright red foam
popped and bubbled out of his mouth. Abdiel wanted
so desperately to finish off the filthy creature with a
final strike to his jugular, a strike that would send a
tsunami-like wave of blood to his brain.
No, not yet, he restrained himself once more, taking a
step back as he controlled his breathing.
Marqus felt like someone had inserted a red hot poker
into his brain. Coughing and spluttering, every breath
he drew now caused his shattered and jagged ribs to
rip further into his lungs. Afraid to move, he could do
little else but lay on the floor paralysed with pain.
“Please… don’t kill me. I’m sorry,” he pleaded as he
tried to avoid breathing as much as he could.
Abdiel leaned toward him. “Look at me,” he roared, his
voice shook the floor beneath them.
“I’m going to offer you a choice you never offered your
victims. By exercising your vile urges you condemned
them to a life of hell, yet the Lord has seen fit to offer
you a choice. I can give you what you never gave your
victims, a merciful death, right here, right now, by my
hand. Or, you can choose to live, seeing out the remainder of your putrid existence in Hell itself.”
Marqus’s eyes widened, his jerky shallow breaths
quickening as he struggled to control his panic.

Most of the human colonies had folklore or religious
narratives describing a place where the wicked were
punished in the Afterlife. In fact the stories of Hell had
been spread by the Angels themselves thousands of
years ago during the Third Age of Mankind as a means
of controlling the masses. Clearly the fables had done
little to deter humanity’s decline.
“Please… let me go,” Marqus begged, the tears
streamed down his cheeks mixing with the blood
frothing from his mouth.
Abdiel didn’t reply, choosing instead to scowl down at
Marqus in silence, satisfied in the knowledge that every
moment his prisoner delayed was filled with pure
agony. In all of his years of service, of the thousands of
men and women Abdiel had dispatched, only one had
ever chosen to die by his hand over taking their chances in Hell.
“Please, jus Ё