(note: rewrites to Chapter 1, pages 1-3 as of 5/6/11. I considered reposting pp 1-3, but then I'd end up with pp 1-3 posted 15 or so times as I worked out the kinks, and at the moment that's not the way I want to go with that.)
Tuesdays. In Lucia’s experience, Tuesdays were far worse than Mondays, which at least had the advantage, in her childhood, of ending the religious fervor of Sundays. Tuesday explained why, when she found a complete stranger in her kitchen, waiting patiently in the shadows of dusk, she calmly put down her purse, flipped on the light and started coffee. Of course there was a stranger in her kitchen, it was Tuesday.
Southside explained why she didn’t call 911. Lucia had lived in Scranton’s Southside for over 15 years. When she had moved in, Southside had been a haven for the working poor, filled with converted Victorians, big apartments for low rents and many still had touches of the houses’ former glory: 100 year old hardwood floors, intricate woodwork, elaborate tiling. In the winter, Southsiders collectively froze, unable to afford to effectively heat drafty apartments with old windows and twelve foot ceilings, but in the summer, the apartments stayed cool, though few stayed inside. For three months, Southside became a block party, people unable to afford cable and internet amusing themselves by visiting porch to porch, children with few toys playing endless games of tag and catch in the streets.
Lucia loved it all, soaked up the community, the unfamiliar sense of belonging, until the housing boom hit Scranton. Suddenly, minimum wage workers could afford exotic mortgages to buy houses in more desirable neighborhoods, and her neighbors packed up their families and battered furniture and left for Bulls Head, the upper Hill Section, Green Ridge, neighboring cities such as Dunmore and Moosic, and, sometimes even Clarks Summit, the goal of every homeowner in the area.
After the families left, the drug dealers and pimps moved in, bringing with them junkies and prostitutes and the remaining Southsiders quickly learned everything they never wanted to know about crime. The Mayor, obsessed with raising downtown Scranton to its former off Broadway glory, abandoned Southside. They never voted for him anyway, damn Democrats, he was quoted as saying.
So Lucia was in a position to know that this man in her kitchen wasn’t some common criminal. A junkie would have grabbed anything shiny and left immediately, or trashed the place if he noticed that she didn’t have anything worth stealing. A rapist wouldn’t calmly watch her make coffee, thus giving her an opportunity to escape or throw boiling hot water at him. In a movie, he might be the underling of a drug lord, sent to teach her a slow, painful lesson, but Lucia knew from personal experience that pissing off a drug dealer led to immediate violence at his hands, in public, not weird melodramatics in private.
She studied him as the coffee brewed, matching his silence easily. Lucia had never been intimidated by silence. He looked familiar somehow, though Lucia was sure she’d never seen him before. He was pale, with long black hair, black eyes framed by long black lashes and perfectly arched brows. His jaw was strong, his nose Roman, his cheekbones prominent. Even seated, he was tall and slim and everything about him, from his unfashionably long hair to his black jacket to his black loafers bespoke the sort of casual elegance only old money created.
There was something very odd about him though . . .
He interrupted Lucia’s train of thought with exactly the rich baritone she expected. “Coffee’s done.”
“How do you take it?” Lucia supposed it was strange to offer your intruder coffee, but she was sure her grandmother would rise from the grave to slap her if she failed to maintain at least a basic level of courtesy. Hospitality had been grandma’s life. Well, Jesus had been her life, but hospitality had been a close second.
“Black.”
“Of course you do,” replied Lucia, and handed him his coffee. She then added milk and sugar to her own, sighing as she mentally increased her shopping list to include sugar at almost $3.50 a bag.
“So, any particular reason you’re here?” she finally asked as he sipped at his coffee.
“Does a father need a reason to visit his daughter?” he asked.
Lucia didn’t even notice the burning hot coffee that slopped out of her cup onto her hand, raising welts wherever it touched. Of course he looked familiar, looking at him was like looking in the mirror. The only difference was her lighter eyes and hair, and that not by much. People had often commented that Lucia looked nothing like her blonde, blue-eyed mother, an observation that always made Lucia cringe. It was always a lead in to one of her mother’s speeches.
“So, nice to meet my mother’s rapist.”
“What? I never, not ever-“ Surprise and outrage changed him, drew in his eyebrows, did something to his eyes. Lucia was usually immune to anger, inoculated by her mother’s unpredictable rages, but this was something more, this was something so beyond primal, it didn’t need words or fists. For the first time since she had seen him in her kitchen, Lucia was a bit concerned about his presence.
He seemed to pick up on it, visibly tamping down his rage, smoothing out his face. “I did not rape your mother, Lucia. I promise you that.”
Lucia took a sip of coffee and smirked. “Don’t worry. I figured that out for myself by the time I was nine. Why didn’t you try to see me before now? I’m 33 years old. Oh, and what’s your name?”
He seemed truly regretful, sorrowful even. “I am sorry about that. I tried to see you, but your mother wanted nothing to do with me, and a custody battle would have been . . . difficult.” He put down his coffee, stood and executed a courtly bow that should have been ridiculous without capes and swords and nobles at his back. “I have many names, but you may call me Lucifer.”
“Your parents named you after the Devil? That’s just mean.”
“No, I am the Devil. I prefer ‘Lucifer’, however. The Morningstar, you know. And I’m here because I need you to stop the Apocalypse.”
Lucia couldn’t help it. She laughed. He glared at her and she laughed harder. He sat down, a caricature of wounded pride, and Lucia laughed even harder. Of course. Of course she finally met her father and he was delusional. Of course his delusions led him to believe he was Satan. It was simply too perfect, the absolutely perfect foil to her mother’s entire life, to everything that had led Lucia to a lonely existence in a rundown apartment in the worst part of a sad little town in Pennsylvania.
She finally managed to control herself before the laughter turned into tears. Laughter still trying to bubble up she said, “Oh, c’mon, this can’t be the first time you got that reaction. I mean, claiming to be Satan and all.” She hid her face from view by turning to make herself another cup of coffee, afraid that viewing his wounded pride would set her off again.
“I don’t typically manifest purely for the purposes of convincing random humans that I am what I am.”
His voice was so cold, so filled with restrained violence that all the hairs on Lucia’s body stood up at once. She turned to him, cup held in front of her as if she could hide behind it and said exactly what she didn’t intend to say. “Prove it.”
She didn’t know what was wrong with her that she said things like that, the worst things to say, the things she knew better than to say, but it well predated her clearly delusional father. Lucia been doing it for as long as she could remember, provoking her mother instead of placating her, earning herself rants and beatings. She’d done it with bosses, too, and friends and coworkers and lovers. She just couldn’t help herself. Something about being backed into a corner put her into attack mode even though she knew she couldn’t win.
Lucifer- she had to call him something- smiled. Not a mocking, angry smile, not a prelude to a rant or violence, an honestly pleased smile, as if her instinct to go down fighting instead of living to fight another day delighted him.
“What?”
“I was beginning to wonder if you even were a child of mine. So passive, so gracious, so not a nephalim.”
“Nephalim?” That made no sense at all.
“Yes, nephalim, the children of angels and humans? I am an angel, you know.” He had returned his previous urbanity.
His words seemed to trigger a memory of the sound of wings in Lucia’s mind, because she swore she could hear the rustling of massive feathers. “Wait, that can’t be true.”
Lucifer tilted his head slightly, sending silky black hair tumbling over his shoulder. Something about his hair struck Lucia as being odd. She couldn’t imagine what it was, well, other than the fact that man was claiming to be Satan, but it nagged at her nonetheless, like an unfinished chord.
He continued to wait patiently and Lucia explained, “The nephalim were giants. I’m barely over five feet tall. I know people were shorter back then, but they weren’t averaging three feet tall.”
Lucifer waved a perfectly manicured hand languidly. Something about the gesture had that nagging in Lucia’s head screaming at her. What was-
“That was a mistranslation.” He smiled, displaying straight, perfectly white teeth. “The word should have been ‘powerful’.”
“Oh, well that’s not me, either.”
He laughed, a beautiful baritone bell tolling. A wicked grin lit his face. “I’ve been hiding you. I couldn’t very well have you setting schoolyard bullies aflame, now could I.”
Lucia couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop herself from almost wailing, “Not even just once? There were so many of them.” She put her hand over her mouth to keep all those years and their humiliations and pain from pouring out of her mouth. It was all she could do not to run weeping into his arms. Maybe he had drugged her, sprayed something in the room that had her unable to control herself?
“I am sorry about that. It would be inevitable, really. Every human would sense, to some degree, that you are not entirely human, and humans aren’t really that much above beasts.” He shifted in his chair, and suddenly Lucia saw it.
Satan looked like a bad Photoshop. The light in her kitchen came from a ceiling light, yet his hair was shiny at the bottom, not the top. His nose cast a shadow across the left side of his face, but there was no shadowing under his chin. He had neither a shadow nor a reflection in the shiny hardwood floors beneath him.
She backed up into the counter. “You’re, you’re-“
“I’m what?”
“You don’t- I- what-“
He stood up and a shadow wavered against the far wall. Lucia gaped at the wings of Lucifer’s shadow. They rustled slightly as she stared. “You really are an angel!”
