Heaven Freezes, Hell Closes
by Dejah Thoris
Prologue
It's a harsh life, the life I've lived. But it's been my life from the beginning, no matter the circumstances.
Circumstances. A fucked up reality that can bring you to your knees or make you a god. Maybe I'm some cross of both. Trash brat, convict several times over, escapee, anti-hero. Hero?
Long story short? I did something I didn't really want to do. Something I can be proud of. Who knew I had it in me? I didn't. They didn't. She did. In the end, she really believed.
But back to the circumstances. The truths, the lies. The half-truths. Yeah, they're in there, too.
Maybe I should start from the beginning. Maybe you'd find that interesting. Maybe you wouldn't.
Here's a beginning. I was found in a liquor store trash bin, umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. Probably to kill me. Some back-street abortion, lots of blood on the ground. It started bad, but maybe it won't have to end that way.
A new lease on life from where I sit now. Three survivors from a civilian transport craft. Forty passengers, three crew, and one bad ass. The survivors… Shit, but what would you know the bad ass is one of them? And a kid, suffering from an identity crisis. Holy man, on his way to New Mecca. Did his god see this coming?
Back, before the crash, things were different. Something has shifted drastically since then, something serious, something frightening. Damn, did I just say frightening? What the hell?
Death, I'm used to it. Familiar with it. Friends with it. I'm intimate with death. I've been death. No conscience had stirred in this soul for some fifteen, sixteen years, but once. Maybe longer. Maybe not.
Then death woke up that conscience. Didn't just wake it up, jolted it back to life. Forced a desire to be human to surface and reveal itself because some fool woman had a bad judgment call and came back for my worthless ass.
But the real story starts before that. Before the conscience and the humanity. Before the crash and the sacrifice. Before the waking.
Richard B. Riddick stood at the threshold of Hell, refused at the gates of Heaven. Fuck it. Heaven freezes, Hell closes. I still stand on the outside.