附原文：
Prologue
Stage Fright
Why am I here?
I'm standing in an alleyway staring at this door with "Backstage" stenciled across the top, and I ask myself that same question again. Here I am, Melbogathra, newly emerged into me world and eager to undo Creation, yet the first thing I felt when I got here was love... unrequited, fucking love.
Becky.
I can't shake it loose, no matter how many times I stir myself to try. I try spreading my wings, like my primordial self who once dwarfed mountains, but my proverbial wings slam into my ribs. I’m lodged here good, and it makes my head hurt. I grab for the door handle and enter backstage, still wondering.
She finishes applying makeup to someone else in our troupe with a flourish of the brush before waving me into the chair, and I find myself staring at her frail imperfections, I sit wondering what Max saw in her, all the while being enamored by her every inch. So mortal, I love the wild strands of blond hair escaping her red bandana. I love the fatigue creases at the comers of her eyes, and I love her pale strawberry lips. I know her because Max knows her, I love her because Max loves her, Max and I are that dose.
Actually Max loved her enough to thread a rope through the ceiling timbers to hang himself when he couldn't win her. Max loved Becky and now, by default, so do I. That's what hits me the hardest.
She catches me staring and dabs my makeup even harder to matte me blink and look away. Thanks to my costume's high collar, she can't see me bums on my neck from the rope that all but strangled Max to death, but I still make her uncomfortable. A small frown makes a furrow between her eyebrows.
"I wish you wouldn't do that," she says. I can hear the exasperation in her voice, but I'm too captivated by the bead of sweat racing down her lily-white neck, down past the lip of her loose tank top. I'm too enthralled by the force of her stroke across my cheeks. I marvel at being touched.
Nobody's ever touched me physically before. Not even God.
I reach out to touch her face, and I touch beauty. I don't remember anything so sublime as the warmth of flesh. Compared to being trapped in a hellish Abyss where your skin is jagged rage, this moment is … heaven.
Her frown deepens, and she looks away
"Jesus, Max," she says, "I don't have time for this." She shoots me one last withering look before she grabs her makeup kit and moves onto the next actor. She never makes eye contact. Part of me wishes she had, so she could see the new intensity burning in my eyes.
But, no, I just would have frightened her away. I know that. My eyes are still too intense. I don't have the mortal skill of subtle duplicity in nuance. I've never had a body before.
I follow Becky with my eyes, ignorant of everybody else's stares. There's a hush in the dressing room. In theater, we call that o pregnant pause.
I catch myself thinking. Just turn around Becky. Look at me. Believe in me.
Charles, the stage manager, pops his head in the door, distracting everyone from the tense moment.
"Curtain in fifteen."
There's a quiet scramble to ad just costumes and apply that last dab of makeup. Becky vanishes behind a pair of actors getting their costumes fixed.
"Hey, Max," Charles rays, breaking the moment, "Feeling better?"
I say I am. I leave out the bit where I — Max … whatever — gave up all hope, tied a rope around his neck and made himself a host to a demon.
Yeah, I leave that part out.
"Todd did a great job covering for you," Charles says,
I smile at Todd who's sitting with a book in his lap, all dressed up with nowhere to go.
He gives me an alligator's smile. He wanted my role — a mediocre dream for a mediocre man.
I figure he can probably have my part after tonight.
* * * *
Everyone's quiet, from actors to the audience. All the actors are staring at me with wide eyes. The audience seems to be holding its breath. No one moves.
I've just improvised a scene before our typically small house, screwing up everybody's lifeless flow of blocking and dialogue. Even the audience can tell this wasn't in the script, and that's got them excited. They're more interested in this unexpected development than in what I was just saying a minute ago.
Don't get me wrong, Caryl Churchill is a fine playwright and dramatist, She's Max's favorite, in fact, so that makes her mine as well, Light shining in Buckinghamshire is also among the finest plays she s penned, but it just doesn't sit right with me.
It deals, after a fashion, with Christ's impending return. I play the wealthy com merchant, star, recruiting young men for Christ's army, and my line reads, "If you join in the army now, you will be one of the saints. You will rule with Jesus a thousand years."
Only I didn't say that line because it's bullshit. I know it is. I fell for a lie just like that once, to instead I ask, "But what if we're all Christ?"
That's the bitch of it. We "demons" were the first messiahs, the first saviors. We were three-million-plus martyrs trying to save humanity, but we still failed. Yet one man thought he had a hope of swinging God's mercy. Why? Did he think he had a better chance because he was God's son? We're all His sons and daughters. If God did listen to Christ's pleas over anyone else's, you know what that makes mortals? Christ's pet. I don't buy it to I ask what if Christ was like every other mortal, crying on their personal Mount of Olives, trying desperately to attract God to their plight... and what if Christ's death on the cross was all just a sham to keep people from discovering that God didn't care?
So everybody’s looking at me, actors and audience alike, shocked. Half the actors ignore what I said while the other half tries incorporating my diatribe into the scene. Some of them even start to argue about it in character. For a moment, they're all reacting like real people instead of like fictional characters, and it's all because of me.
That's when I feel it. A kemel of faith ignited by my statement. Someone wants to believe. Someone out there wants to cross that threshold between passive spectator and active participant. Someone wants to be involved and believe again.
* * * *
They kicked me out — big surprise.
I ranted on stage for an hour like DeNiro playing a preacher on smack and salvation, and I don't think anyone even blinked. For that one hour. I was God in the round. No exit stage left for me.
That's the problem. Our director was more a prima donna than the actors, and he couldn't tolerate another God in the company. Queen bee syndrome. I’ll have to get used to that.
Well, my exile from stage didn't last the week. More people heard about my performance and more flocked to see a mediocre rendition of the Churchill classic hoping I'd be there. My company wanted me back, but then, others wanted me more.
"We do improvised mummer plays" Jesse of Holy Works told me. Mummer plays were throwbacks to the middle Ages when a traveling troupe with no props, costuming and sets, stood around in horseshoe formation. They enacted morality plays by stepping into the center and performing their lines and actions.
"This way, you can ad-lib to your heart's content," Jesse said with a smile.
He knew what I wanted.
Becky followed me home after that last show. She was the spark of faith I'd felt. Hard to believe that behind that hard exterior was a desperate soul in need of direction. She and I weren't so different after all.
I said yes to Holy Works. If Becky could see her way to believe in me, there must be others I can reach.
* * * *
That guy in the third row, me one wearing a weather-beaten tan trench coat and looking like he can't remember the last time he'd eaten or slept. He's stalking me.
He shows up to all my performances, and I've even seen him around my block a couple of times.
There's a malevolent air about this guy, like perpetual anger. There's also faith, but he keeps that bottled deep inside. It's his dirty secret. His alone, or so he thinks.
So he's showed up to every performance, no matter where we played, for the last month. He's about as devoted as Becky and the five souls who’ve found me since. They shower me with their faith, and I offer them hope in return. It’s that simple.
Oh, I could have bargained with them and forced them into pacts for wealth or power, but I'm not that kind of demon. At least, not often, I give them what they need, not want they think they want. That's not my style, thanks to Max. His thoughts and memories changed everything.
But I'm sure this guy isn't like the others — he's stalking me. What really bothers me is he also recognizes some of my new friends. He watches them almost as intently as he watches me. He's probably even seen a couple of them float in and out of my apartment. I'm not so much worried about myself as I am for Becky.
I resolve to confront the guy and have a few choice words. In the end, though, he comes to me.
We're performing at a community center that evening. It's a packed house, but then that's been the case this past month wherever we go. People want to see the gifted actor who improvises holy people with a controversial flair. I do them all: Christ, Moses, the Archangel Michael, Saint Peter. Lazarus...
Actually, it’s not the acting they’re here to watch, though they may not know it. They want to believe these saints and prophets actually existed. For that moment I'm in the mummers’ circle in my black jumpsuit, I reinvigorate their faith. They believe. If only a little, that Jesus was sweating blood on the Mount of Olives because he knew the truth, and that Michael betrayed Lucifer.
So when we finish the performance, a large crowd of admirers and groupies besets me. I can't say I mind, except this time, my stalker shoulders through the crowd and stands right in my face.
He's a week late in shaving and changing clothes. The smell of old cigarettes and hooch hangs off his trench coat. The sunglasses hide his bloodshot eyes, but I'm ready for whatever he's about to do.
He leans in so only I can hear him.
"I know what you are," he says. "I'm going to kill you."
Then he vanishes back into the crowd.
* * * *
Now don't get me wrong. I appreciate the fair warning, but don't killers generally whack you without these little courtesies?
I'm just curious.
I could have killed him right there — smote him Old Testament style — but the staying of my vengeful hand is Max. Otherwise, the demon in me would have quartered the stalker with my bare hands and speared his heart with my tongue. With Max though, I find my previous inductions horrifying... mostly because they're a little too comfortable.
It's in those absolutely human moments when the differences between Max and me become painfully apparent. It's in those seconds I remember I now exist on the humblest of scales.
I still catch myself staring at a star-filled night and, for the briefest minute, holding my breath in awe.
I forget I was once up there myself. That I was once one of those stars.
* * * *
I'm standing outside my apartment. The door is ajar, but it's dark inside. Back-lit by the hallway lights I can just see a hand on the floor peeking out from behind the overturned couch. It's Becky.
I rush inside, through the wreckage of my living room, dazed by the avalanche of emotions roaring inside of me. I can sense someone else hiding in the shadows of the room, and the cold certainty that I'm going to tear the fucker to pieces is the only thing that keeps me focused on the here and now.
I clasp Becky's hand in mine and putt it to my lips. I taste its icy smoothness. I love her more than Max ever could, and all the pain I've felt for the last few aeons explodes up to the surface. Becky's faith in me enabled me to dean her blood
of the drugs she'd poisoned it with, Max's love for her reminded me what made humanity worth all our pain. And it was all for shit. God wanted her dead, so she dies.
Max wants to cry and lie next to her body, but the Melboqathra in me is howling pissed. My wings are slamming against my ribs like a hummingbird in a small cage, and I want to bellow with that same voice that once spawned tomatoes. Problem is, I can't anymore. So I focus on all that seething anger and hatred instead — the same storm of misery that bore me through God's torment — and I drown Max out.
Someone moves in the darkness. I turn toward the noise.
My stalker swings a tire iron. I barely dodge it, and it whistles past my ear. I draw upon my strength and conviction, that same strength and conviction that Becky and the rest have given me. I feel my muscles surge with power, and I direct that energy into a punch. I catch the stalker square in the shoulder and feel something crack. He screams in pain but swings wild with the other hand, nicking my jaw with the tire iron. I barely feel the pain.
I bring my strength up to the surface of my skin. I'm manifesting, and my chest shines like a furnace of light. Being with Becky had stemmed much of my anguish, but I'm caught between states now. I manifest in hellish blaze and regalia, but I'm still an angel's lingering shadow. My crooked wings are dust motes, my spiral horns shred my temples, and my 100-watt nimbus burns red.
I may be mood lighting compared to the Burning Bush, but I'm still a fucking angel,
My stalker trips and scrambles backward, clutching his arm, and I follow him. His eyes are wide and wild like he's trying to scream but he can't remember how. I stride forward until he hits a wall, then wrap my fingers around his bird neck I inhale, breathing in his terror like a hurricane sucking air from his lungs. He sobs, his pathetic will turning to ash, and I stop for the coup de grace.
"I'm sorry," he moans, "I don't want to..."
I glare at him, my fury brimming. Power crackles around my body and I want to slaughter him. I want his entrails draped around my neck. I want to crack his bones into messy splinters. I want to tear his tongue out with my own teeth. But...
I can't. Not without losing everything.
I still love Becky, and I don't want to lose that love to hatred. I've done it before, and it tooth thousands of years to gain it back.
I let him go and dose the curtain over my essence. The dust mote wings drift to the ground, and my horns retreat back into my skull. I look like Max again, but my stalker knows better. He lies at my feet, wracked by sobs, heaving in anguish. As I sense people's faith, I also sense his misery. He doesn't cry out of fear, but out of a spiritual desolation that Max and me both understand all too well.
"Why?' he cries. "Why can't I kill you? I know what you are. I saw it on stage."
I stare at him, angry and still debating whether he lives or dies. I was a fool for thinking nobody would notice me. I was getting careless with my certainties, allowing my divinity to slip through. Somebody finally saw me for what I was, and Becky paid the price.
"Every time I came to your play," he says between sobs, "I thought, today I'll kill you. Today for sure."
"Why didn't you?" I ask through clenched teeth.
"I couldn't. I watched you perform. Each time I... believed, and I didn't want to. Each... each time, I chickened out. Tomorrow... I'd tell myself. You’d die tomorrow.”
I can hear the anger in his voice and the venom for his own faith.
"Why?"
"Because I didn't want to believe in God!" he cries out, "But you made me!"
"What?"
My stalker sniffs, regaining some of his composure, I've awoken something within him, a faith he doesn't want, but it can't have been a complete surprise to him.
"I always thought that if God was real, then He was a bastard for creating this shit-hole. My parents were killed. Cancer's killing my wife. My whole life's been ruined. But shit happens, right?” He says, getting up. There is no God. So it can't be His fault. It's just shit, right?' My stalker shuffles to a chair and sits. He looks at me with saucer eyes drowning in water and cradles his ruined arm.
"Then you come along, and you make me believe," he says, Suddenly, I believe in God, only now I see He doesn't care. He doesn't fucking care about anybody."
Silence falls in the room, and I Kneel down next to Becky.
"I didn't mean to hurt her," the stalker says. "I was waiting for you, and she surprised me. Is she..."
"She'll be fine," I say, and the lie bums like fire. "But you'd better leave."
"What?" he says.
"Get the fuck out of here."
"But I tried to kill you," he says, getting up slowly. "Why would—
"Because you're right," I say. "God doesn't care about you, and He never did. Knowing that's punishment enough."
My stalker is stunned. He shuffles for the door, only looking back once, but he's not escaping that easily. I still want vengeance.
"There's a condition, though," I say.
My stalker looks fearfully at me. I already hit him hard enough with my glory to leave him mentally weak and pliable.
"A condition," he says.
'Yeah. You see, God may not care, but I do, I care for my friends, and I want to make sure you never come after them or me again."
"Oh, I won't," he says, promising a little too eagerly for my tastes.
"Not good enough." I get up and walk right up to his grizzled, tear-stained face. He tries backing up, but I grab him by the collar and hold him in place. You have to promise — on your soul — that you’ll never come after me.
"On my soul..." he says. He's nervous, as well he should be, but he's also gullible right now.
"And in exchange, I'll make you forget you ever met me or saw me act."
"You can do that?"
He's desperate enough to believe me. Desperation and a weak will are my allies here. Otherwise, he'd realize I could just as easily make him forget without him having to promise me anything and my friends and I would be just as safe.
But what he doesn't realize is that even after he forgets I exist, he'll always be connected to me because he made me a promise on his soul. And because of that connection, I’ll be able to drain his life away, slowly and from a distance for as long as I want. He'll stay weak and tortured for the rest of his existence, never knowing why he's dying in small servings. It'll just be another float in his parade of misery. He'll go right on blaming God for it, too, because even though he won't remember me specifically, he'll always have his unquestioning belief in a cruel, heartless creator who doesn't give a shit for him.
No, I'm not about to make this guy forget that, because while there's a lot of Max tempering Melboqathra, there's also a lot of Melboqathra in Max. Max and me are that fucking dose now, and we both want this guy to suffer for what he's done.
Really, though, even my love for Becky can't change aeons worth of spite overnight. I'm still a demon, and this may set me back, but I’ve got a long road ahead.
So I nod. Yeah, I can do that. I can take away this pain I've caused.
That's why I'm here.
