Notes:
Hello everyone! Some of you may know about this story because you follow me on Tumblr, or because you read my other story Serendipity and the Things Between. For those who are new to my writing, welcome, and to those who are not, welcome back!
This is it! The project that threw off my scheduling for Serendipity and has wound me up a cluttered mess. But it was worth it! Participating in Big Bang has been hugely rewarding, as I was paired up with two marvelous artists who I am absolutely honored to have worked with. You'll be seeing the first piece of art at the end on the second chapter!
This story will have six chapters, but will not follow a set posting schedule. The third chapter is likely to come out in the next two or three weeks, with the next one coming ? Who knows when. It will be finished, however!
I would like to reiterate a warning before you continue; This story contains explicit scenes of violence as well as the questioning of religion, religious figures, and religious beliefs. Please be aware of this before continuing.
Without further ado, please enjoy To Play the Devil's Advocate!
The funeral was held on a pleasant day in August. Not a single cloud obscured the sun as it hung burning in the summer sky, birds sung in the distance and a faint breeze brushed playfully against the skin. It carried the promise of a cool evening and the scent of apricots rotting in the orchard across from the cemetery.
The procession of mourners had borne the weight of the coffin all the way from the church to the open grave, their feet dragging as if they could stall the finality of death. Each step seemed to grow more difficult, until the effort of lifting their feet from the molasses of melancholy was nearly impossible. Yet through the graveyard gates they had passed, heavy footfalls carrying them to the newest stone.
Each member of the gathering touched their hands to the coffin as they passed, begging for a miracle that would not come. The smallest set of hands lingered, praying harder than all the rest, until his father pulled him away to join the semi-circle of onlookers. Across from them, the minister's wizened hands cracked open the bible, and he began to read.
No one cried, no one seemed to even breathe. The minister's voice carried over the crowd like waves over broken stones, wearing them all to formless sand. The stillness seemed almost dreamlike, for so thick was the air of sorrow that the rest of the world had gone quiet.
It was suffocating.
As soon as the rites had begun, they seemed to come to their end. The gathered mourners held their breath as the minister faltered, staring down at his bible as if he were trying to will another verse to appear. No words of God appeared to him, no miracle struck the earth beneath their feet. The inevitable could not be prolonged.
With visages all somber, those charged with bearing the coffin stepped forward, all except the father, who stood at his youngest son's shoulder and looked on.
"Remember this, Spartos, and let it be a warning to you." he said. "For this was the Devil's work."
The coffin was lifted on satin ropes and positioned over the open grave. With each man holding a rope, run through a pulley, they began to lower the casket slowly down into the earth. It went sluggishly, polished cedar wood soaking up the last rays of sun it would ever see. Spartos tore his eyes from the sight and looked up at his father.
"I don't understand, father…" he said softly.
Darius Leoxses did not look down at his son, merely tightened his hand around his small shoulder, ignoring how the boy flinched.
"Your brother allowed the Devil to tempt him from the path of God. Had he never strayed, this would not have happened."
It had been a car crash.
Mystras Leoxses had been driving in the rain, and when his headlights caught a doe and her fawn, he swerved to avoid them without a single thought for his own safety. The rain made the road slick, his tires spun, and when he crashed his life ended painlessly with a clean snap of the neck. Both deer were unscathed, and had stood vigilant beside the wreck until the police arrived, then disappeared into the night.
A terrible, but mundane accident.
Spartos did not know very much about the crash that had taken his brother's life. No one seemed willing to do more than reassure him that Mystras' passing had been quick and without suffering, as if that would console him in some way. It may have, he supposed, if he were older and knew more about death, but it didn't now.
It seemed to him that such a passing was just as likely to belong to a sinner as it was to a pious man, and that it had very little to do with God or the devil. When one made a mistake, it was their own wrongdoing that was to be blamed, not some outside force that had affected them. Accidents happened, even to the best of men.
For the first time in his young life, his unwavering faith in his father's words was tinged with doubt.
"The Devil and his demons," his father went on. "Feed on the weak of heart, tempting them from God's light and into the darkness. They lead men to become baseless, damnable creatures; insults to God and all He created."
When the casket reached the end of its journey, each man released one end of their rope and began to pull them back up.
"Remember your brother as the virtuous man he once was, and not what he became when he was led astray."
A reply caught in Spartos' throat, lodging itself where he was most likely to choke on it. Very suddenly, he felt helplessly alone. When he looked around at the crowd of mourners he saw only a sea of black, undisturbed by the breeze, or the sun as it traveled across the open sky. Their faces became the foam atop the waves, and the grave a gaping chasm at their center.
Faceless men lifted shovels, and they became mountains moving over centuries before his eyes. He knew these people, had known many of them since he was too young to recall their first meeting, but he knew them. And yet now they were indistinguishable to him, as incomprehensible as a child's drawing.
There had not been a single day for as long as Spartos could remember when Mystras Leoxses had been the son their father wanted. He had skipped classes and questioned his teachers, snuck out after dark and made friends with the kind of people their congregation sneered at. His virtues had been numerous: charity, diligence, and most certainly kindness, but so had his vices.
To be led astray implied that once his brother had been on another path. If he had been, Spartos had never seen him on it. This path, the one that led here, to this funeral on this perfect day in August, was the only one Mystras Leoxses had ever been on.
"Father," Spartos asked, his voice barely more than a whisper. "If the Devil and his demons are condemnable simply because they exist… Then why did God create them?"
His father's fingers dug into his shoulder, pushing painful bruises through cloth and onto skin.
"Do not ask foolish questions."