I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story Read Online Free PDF
Author: Glen Duncan
fingerprints - that was forward planning, that, fIni'erprints) let's not
forget that I, Lucifer, was still in the first agonizing age of
pain. Imagine having all your skin flayed off. Whilst having
all your teeth drilled. Whilst having your knackers or vadge
nailed to a fridge. LnaL'ine your head heinq on fire all the time.
That's the tip of my iceberg of my pain.
With the pain, curiously, had come the conviction that I
could bear it. Later (much later) by degrees (a lot of degrees)
the conviction proved justified; I found I could shear off a
wafer of myself, the thinnest, tlinuiest wafer (not unlike the
sliced ginger accompanying sushi) and lift it above and
beyond the infernal pain. I've seen exceptional humans do it under torture. Enormously irritating to me and my torturers
of course, but, you know, credit where credit's due and all
that.
So I was, let me repeat, in terrible pain. But I couldn't
keep away. Lying there on my bough watching the shadows
crawling over Adam's loins, I had an intimation of the rage
and loneliness I'd be signing on for from these beginnings, a
glimpse of the appalling waste and destruction, a first gutgrowl of what would be an eternally unsatisfied hunger - a
moment, all in all, of doubt.
Night had crept into the garden. Crocuses and snowdrops were throbbing quills and pearly stars in the dark
grass. The rustle of water and the sibilance of the wakeful
trees. Ink-shadowed stones and the moon a chalky hoof
print. The whole place attended to me with a Lawrentian
intensity. My head sank forward on to my paws and I felt
my breath moist in my nostrils. The bones in my body
were heavy, and for the briefest moment - looking down at
sleeping Adam's brand new limbs and unopened face - for
the briefest moment I must confess ... I must confess ... I
did wonder, despite all that had gone before, despite rebellion, despite expulsion, despite the battlements and cesspits
of Hell, despite my legion cohorts and their chorus of rage,
despite everything, whether there might not be a chance
to -
`Lucifer.'
From which shameful reverie His voice woke me. The
sound of it annihilated all the time between the last time I'd
heard it (consigning me to ... to ...) and now. Then was
now and now was then and there was no going back, no
punishment disguised as forgiveness, no shamble back into
the fetters of obedience. Wondering if I could escape the
pain was worse than knowing I couldn't. He knew that. The whole speculation had been a plant. Jimmeny's idea.
Well fuck the Pair - sorry, the Trio of Them.
So, incarnation. The angelic drug of choice. Unlike cocaine,
not to be sniffed at. I look back on my first hours here much
as the mature artist looks back at his youthful creations: with
a teary mixture of embarrassment and nostalgia. I was, I'm
afraid (is this the admission of an Archangel consumed by
pride?) in a shocking state of hypersensitivity and gaucheness.
You've got to laugh, really. (Which, incidentally, is how I'd
thought of opening what turned out to he my `Hail horrors'
speech, until a more scrupulous examination of the chances
of actually getting a laugh changed my mind.) I do laugh, in
hindsight, at the rattlebag of schizophrenia, Tourette's and
satyriasis I must have seemed during those debut hours.
I have, as I said, tried it before, but never with licence.
(Adolescents and pre-menstruals are useful. The mentally
ill. Anyone stricken with grief or love. Your ideal possession
candidate's a thirteen-year-old recently orphaned schizophrenic girl three days away from her period on her way to
see the shrink with whom she's romantically besotted.)
Former takeovers, then, have left me dressed in a set of
clothes and shoes two sizes too small in a room the dimensions of which forbid ever standing or lying unbent, with
laryngitis, heat rash, mumps, scrofula, gonorrhoea - you get
the picture. This, on the other hand, this taking of a body
without force or
forget that I, Lucifer, was still in the first agonizing age of
pain. Imagine having all your skin flayed off. Whilst having
all your teeth drilled. Whilst having your knackers or vadge
nailed to a fridge. LnaL'ine your head heinq on fire all the time.
That's the tip of my iceberg of my pain.
With the pain, curiously, had come the conviction that I
could bear it. Later (much later) by degrees (a lot of degrees)
the conviction proved justified; I found I could shear off a
wafer of myself, the thinnest, tlinuiest wafer (not unlike the
sliced ginger accompanying sushi) and lift it above and
beyond the infernal pain. I've seen exceptional humans do it under torture. Enormously irritating to me and my torturers
of course, but, you know, credit where credit's due and all
that.
So I was, let me repeat, in terrible pain. But I couldn't
keep away. Lying there on my bough watching the shadows
crawling over Adam's loins, I had an intimation of the rage
and loneliness I'd be signing on for from these beginnings, a
glimpse of the appalling waste and destruction, a first gutgrowl of what would be an eternally unsatisfied hunger - a
moment, all in all, of doubt.
Night had crept into the garden. Crocuses and snowdrops were throbbing quills and pearly stars in the dark
grass. The rustle of water and the sibilance of the wakeful
trees. Ink-shadowed stones and the moon a chalky hoof
print. The whole place attended to me with a Lawrentian
intensity. My head sank forward on to my paws and I felt
my breath moist in my nostrils. The bones in my body
were heavy, and for the briefest moment - looking down at
sleeping Adam's brand new limbs and unopened face - for
the briefest moment I must confess ... I must confess ... I
did wonder, despite all that had gone before, despite rebellion, despite expulsion, despite the battlements and cesspits
of Hell, despite my legion cohorts and their chorus of rage,
despite everything, whether there might not be a chance
to -
`Lucifer.'
From which shameful reverie His voice woke me. The
sound of it annihilated all the time between the last time I'd
heard it (consigning me to ... to ...) and now. Then was
now and now was then and there was no going back, no
punishment disguised as forgiveness, no shamble back into
the fetters of obedience. Wondering if I could escape the
pain was worse than knowing I couldn't. He knew that. The whole speculation had been a plant. Jimmeny's idea.
Well fuck the Pair - sorry, the Trio of Them.
So, incarnation. The angelic drug of choice. Unlike cocaine,
not to be sniffed at. I look back on my first hours here much
as the mature artist looks back at his youthful creations: with
a teary mixture of embarrassment and nostalgia. I was, I'm
afraid (is this the admission of an Archangel consumed by
pride?) in a shocking state of hypersensitivity and gaucheness.
You've got to laugh, really. (Which, incidentally, is how I'd
thought of opening what turned out to he my `Hail horrors'
speech, until a more scrupulous examination of the chances
of actually getting a laugh changed my mind.) I do laugh, in
hindsight, at the rattlebag of schizophrenia, Tourette's and
satyriasis I must have seemed during those debut hours.
I have, as I said, tried it before, but never with licence.
(Adolescents and pre-menstruals are useful. The mentally
ill. Anyone stricken with grief or love. Your ideal possession
candidate's a thirteen-year-old recently orphaned schizophrenic girl three days away from her period on her way to
see the shrink with whom she's romantically besotted.)
Former takeovers, then, have left me dressed in a set of
clothes and shoes two sizes too small in a room the dimensions of which forbid ever standing or lying unbent, with
laryngitis, heat rash, mumps, scrofula, gonorrhoea - you get
the picture. This, on the other hand, this taking of a body
without force or