Chapter 3: Death's Peaceful Sleep
Misty seemed to be asleep for weeks – aside from feeling her soul travelling down to its rightful place, no other sensation came to her. All of her muscles were completely lax and still as her head and back rest upon a bed that felt like a firm cloud. She was still clad in the same nightgown she gave birth in, but it was free of heavy blood stains. She slowly and gradually opened her eyes and looked around, noticing she was not longer at the academy with her Supreme and sister witches – this was the dark, yet cozy part of hell that was claimed by Michael as his domain. A fire crackled in the background, and before she could blink, she saw Michael walking around the bed, looking down at her with a strangely sincere smile.
"I'm seeing you again so soon," he said softly with happiness. Her bright blue eyes looked over and saw that he had a small bunch of flowers. As she tried to slowly sit up, her golden curls framed her diamond-shaped ethereal face, and when she was sitting, she said her first words since waking.
"I know I'm dead," Misty stated emotionlessly.
"I'm so sorry, Misty," he said sincerely, sitting down on the edge of the bed with her and staring into her eyes deeply. "I did not want to cause you pain. Tell me, how do you feel?"
"I… feel better," she said slowly, her deep Southern accent lulling him. "My God, I was in so much pain, I was prayin' for swift death."
He looked at her, putting the small bunch of flowers in her hands; she noticed they were white lilies with a single pink rose in the middle. "She's beautiful, Misty."
"The baby?"
"Yes."
"Cordelia said it was a girl," the swamp witch said, her eyes fixed on the impeccable, lively petals of the flowers Michael gifted her.
"She has your eyes," he said with a smile, caressing her cheek softly and leaning in to kiss the corner of her mouth. "She is quite calm. She doesn't cry very much. She seems very happy."
Misty smiled at the thought of her baby girl, looking genuinely happy despite her soul's condition. She gently touched him on the sleeve of his black dinner jacket and began to speak; "d-do you have her with you? Can I see her?"
He sighed sadly and shook his head; "no."
She was taken aback by this – "why?"
"She is too young to travel down here," he said. "She was just born two weeks ago, after all."
"But… she is half of what you are, Michael," she challenged. "Why can't she? I wanna see my baby."
"You will see her," her husband said, touching her soft blonde curls. "Don't worry."
She couldn't believe it – her baby, half-human and half-demon, couldn't accompany her father to the underworld just yet. Had she survived such a brutal ordeal of giving birth to her daughter, she would have seen her and maybe even raised her up on earth with Michael. She even speculated that maybe being contained in the underworld half the year would be null and void had she survived and was able to raise the baby with him. Alas, she didn't. She was stuck in this nether realm for all eternity. She wouldn't be able to see her daughter grow, nor hold and cuddle her. She wouldn't be there to mentor and guide her, nor teach her how to use her powers, whatever of which she was to develop. She wouldn't be able to pass on her love of Stevie Nicks and teach her how to twirl with a shawl. It was depressing.
"Is there a way I can come back?" Misty asked.
"I am not bringing you back up to the mortal coil with me," he said to her frankly, but still sensitive to the fact it could potentially upset her. It did – her face turned into a squirm as if to let a cry out.
"I want to go back," she cried. "I'm better, I promise… I don't wanna be here! I wanna see my baby! Please let me! I know you can!"
"Misty," he cooed, holding her close and letting her cry on his shoulder. He rocked with her in his arms slowly, shushing her softly to spare her emotional sensitivity. "I have never told you this, but… I have plans for this world."
She kept crying softly, her whines turning to sobs as he continued to speak to her.
"The world we know now will be…obsolete," he said. "I was brought to this earth to create radical change. In the meantime," he let her go and looked into her eyes as he procured a handkerchief and wiped her tears, "I need you to be in the safety of the underworld."
Misty continued to whine, and thought for a minute: "wouldn't I be safe with you instead?"
"You are safe with me, my love. That is why you are down here," he said to her. "Don't you trust me?"
She was silent, which prompted him to say something.
"I don't want anything to happen to you," he said. "With what I plan, it's likely that could happen if you were to come with me to the mortal coil at this moment."
She sighed – "do you promise?"
"On my soul, Misty," he replied with a smile.
She nodded, a nonverbal symbol of her putting her trust in him and his promise: "what is her name?"
"Melanie Macaria," he replied.
"Melanie," Misty repeated with a nod of approval. "I like the sound of that. Who has her right now?"
"Oh… Mrs. Mead does," Michael said.
"Your…"
"Yes. She is like a mother to me, one of the only people I never stopped trusting," he clarified.
"I won't be replaced, will I?" Misty asked Michael.
"Absolutely not," he replied. "You will always be her mother, and when I retrieve your soul to unite our family, it will still be that way."
"Will Melanie remember me?"
"Oh yes," Michael said. "She will know you're her mother."
"That… makes me feel a bit better."
"I need to go for now, my love, but I will visit with you down here soon. Please, rest…" He put his hand over her abdomen and patted gently. "You've been through so much."
Michael burst awake as his soul reentered his body on the floor of the living room. He was staying in an apartment provided to him by a local Satanic church as tribute. They discovered him to be the Antichrist and were literally kissing his feet. One particular unassuming member, an older woman in her late fifties to early sixties, even provided connections with Kineros Robotics in Silicon Valley to create a true-to-life AI replica of Miriam Mead, who was still in her place, rocking baby Melanie in her arms while she waited for Michael to return from the underworld. She saw him fully conscious and smiled.
"Ah, you're back!" she said. "Melanie's been such a good baby."
It's so hard to believe she's an android, he thought. She was an exact likeness of the woman who took him in as her own son just a year or two before when he was still physically a teenager. A former cardinal of the Church of Satan alongside founder Anton Lavey, she discovered him living alone in a hallowed house in Los Angeles amongst spirits, even those of his biological family; the father who rejected him to his face, and the mother who tried to kill him. There also dwelled the spirits of his half-sister, who never interacted with him, and the baby twin brother he devoured in utero. Miriam was the one that fateful night who offered him the heart of a virgin to consume; one that she herself kidnapped and found trusting enough to accept a ride from her. Michael looked at her features, remembering Satanic grace at the dinner table and bedtime prayers to the Prince of Darkness – she was short in stature, heavy-set, and eternally in her late-fifties with a black, slick pixie cut, deep blue eyes, and overall rough around the edges. She was not the kind of person anyone wanted to encounter in a dark alleyway and expect to escape unscathed, or alive for that matter.
"Thank you for taking care of her while I was gone," he said with a heavy breath, sitting on his knees and looking up at her and the cooing baby girl.
"I could have sworn she got her eyes from you," Miriam said happily.
"She gets them from my wife," Michael said with a chuckle as he stood up.
Miriam stood up from the rocking chair and kissed Melanie's forehead, following him subserviently into the bedroom she shared with the baby's bassinet, which was generously donated from a Satanic congregation member who killed her own baby as commitment to the church. Baby Melanie was put in and covered with a dark red silk blanket, and she went fast asleep, out like a light. Michael blew a kiss to his sleeping daughter before coming back out to the living room with Miriam, who sat across from the sofa in the rocking chair she was in before.
"So… you have a wife," she said.
"Yes."
"What is her name?"
"Misty."
"Where did you get married? When did you get married?" She sounded systematic, but then he remembered she was an android who needed to be told the event, so it could be stored in her memory.
"We married last October in the underworld," he replied.
"The underworld? How did she get down there, and did you go there by what you did just now?"
"Yes," Michael said. "I…had to take her down with me, but it wasn't without a selling point. I remember I lured her to the old cabin she lived in. I even fixed her old boombox she treasured so much."
"That is so special and kind of you," she replied.
"She loves Stevie Nicks," Michael mused, staring off into space. "She has… long, blonde curly hair… beautiful blue eyes, she is a little tall, slender… though when she was with child, she was really big."
"Is she wicked?" Miriam asked. "Did she devote her life to Satan?"
Michael giggled and shook his head: "no, actually. She is quite the opposite."
"Why did you want to be with someone who didn't sell their soul?"
"Because she is my balance," he replied. "She is the greatest light I have ever met… well, you aside. I hate to keep her in the underworld, and I did not want for her to die so painfully, but she needs to be protected from what I plan to do."
"It is time that you do what you were put on this earth for," Miriam said encouragingly, leaning forward to meet Michael's gaze.
"Oh yes," he said. "I told those bitches that hurt you, that if they gave me Melanie, I wouldn't harm them, but I never let a wrong go unpunished. They will all suffer immensely."
"The world is yours," Miriam said with a nod.
"Not quite," he said with a nod, "but I do appreciate your encouragement." He sighed. "To think, those bitches would deprive me of my own flesh and blood… and Cordelia has the gall to say I have no humanity. What about her? She was keeping Melanie from me, purposely. She already had a death wish for getting in my way, and she only has made it worse for her and her witches." He paused, and Miriam's full attention was on the man she called her son.
His voice cracked, and the anger just seethed right through to the surface. Everything he tried to hold in, just erupted like a volcano; "My biological mother tried to kill me, and my father abandoned and outright rejected me. To my face. My grandmother killed herself because of me. She died, and her spirit wanted nothing…NOTHING to do with me!" He paused for a minute, gulping to suppress a sob. "I wanted to be like my father, Tate. I remember what he said like it was a few seconds ago. Dr. Harmon was there. He believed in me and wanted to help me change and become good… he said to me, 'you didn't spring from my nutsack,'" Michael hissed tearfully. "He said, 'even I couldn't create something as monstrous or as evil as you.' I'll be FUCKING DAMNED my daughter EVER has to go through what I went through…"
He broke down sobbing, whining softly. Miriam was not programmed to feel complex emotions, yet sympathy loaded into her internal drive. She switched seats from the rocking chair to the sofa where he was sitting and patted his shoulder to try and console him.
"To think that bitch would have allowed that to happen," he finished. "I'm going to fucking set this world on fire, and they will all go down in ashes along with it."
Meanwhile, in Michael's realm of the underworld, Misty remained on the bed her body transported to upon her death. She was turned on her side, facing the crackling fireplace in the dark room that she would share with him when they spent those first six months together. This was the very same room and setting her baby girl was conceived; dark, dim, warm, cozy, yet depressing. She would not be able to actually meet her baby until Michael kept up with his promise to return her to the mortal coil. She hoped that deep down, the deal regarding her binding to the underworld would be null and void with what his plans entailed.
Then, she had an idea – the black mirror, she thought.
She slowly rose to her feet from the bed, working toward sitting off the side edge where Michael had sat and left flowers for her before taking her time to stand up. When her back and stance was erect, she took a deep breath and walked out of the bedroom, making her way down the hallway, past the large square fire pit in the middle of the main foyer. She reached the dining room, and before making her way toward the broken wall with the black mirror exposed, she turned the dial on the stereo so that it was on, and the first few notes of Leather and Lace began to play. When Stevie began to sing, Misty felt more at ease:
"Is love so fragile
And the heart so hollow
Shatter with words
Impossible to follow
You're saying I'm fragile, I try not to be
I search only for something, I can't see…"
She closed her eyes, standing in front of the mirror and using the same motion Michael taught her; it was akin to lifting a window shade to let light in. Once she did that, she leaned in to peer into the glass, trying to get a glimpse of anything that would stick out to her. She tried to focus, whispering to herself.
"Lemme see my baby girl," she muttered. "Please. A-And make it so she sees me, too."
The mirror obeyed her command and started to distort before her, formulating a crystal-clear image of a baby girl of two weeks old in a dark silk red blanket nestled comfortably in a bassinet. She was clearly asleep, and Misty's heart nearly melted with how cute she was. Suddenly, she saw baby Melanie stir and gurgle before opening her big blue eyes, almost as if Misty were actually there for her to look up at.
"Hey, Melanie," the hell-bound mother told her baby through the mirror. "I'm your momma."
Melanie seemed to smile even more, as if she knew full well who Misty was without having ever met her. Her giggling and cheerful babbling only grew louder. The swamp witch noticed through the mirror that she was even clapping, and her babbling sounded more like she was trying to speak.
"Yes, baby girl," she said, getting tears in her eyes. "I'm here. I'm not actually with you, but I can see you." Her pitch raised itself a bit to pure baby talk; "ain't you the sweetest thing I ever seen! You're so 'dorable! You're happier than a dead pig in the sunshine, ain't you?!"
Melanie's laughing grew louder and deeper, squealing enough to wake Miriam out of her bed and move toward the bassinet to pick her up. Misty watched through the black mirror at the pixie-haired older woman who picked the laughing baby up and kissed her cheek. Then, she saw Michael come into the picture, it seemed like he was asking Miriam something, so Misty tried to make it out.
"What is she laughing for? She was sleeping," he asked.
"I don't know," Miriam said. "Want to try and quiet her down? I don't mind that she is happy, but it is time to sleep."
Misty watched through the mirror as Michael was handed Melanie, who went from hysterical happiness to the exact opposite, crying so loud it pierced her own ears down in the nether realms. She watched him, taken aback by his daughter's extreme screaming and crying, possibly denoting her displeasure at being taken away from the peaceful vision of her deceased mother. He even tried to cuddle her close to him, but her screaming only got louder. It was like a banshee, shrill and unforgiving. Misty intuited that baby Melanie was in fact angry now.
"Sh… quiet…" he ordered. "Please, be a good girl and sleep, like you always do."
The baby's volume silenced for a moment, before the banshee screams started up again full force. Miriam blocked her ears.
"I can't take it! Do something!" she begged.
Misty watched Michael hold her and support her neck with one arm as he raised his hand over Melanie's face. Hearing him clearly, he said "Mors est in somno pacis."
With that, baby Melanie was once again out like a light. Yet it haunted Misty to see. It appeared like she was in the very sleep of death, and she teared up, feeling her heart start to shatter. She could even sense Miriam's worry as she struggled to watch.
"What did you just do?" she asked. "You didn't kill her, did you?"
"No," he replied calmly. "She is just in a very deep sleep."
"She'll wake up though, right?" Miriam questioned.
"Yes, she will. She just will be in this deep sleep for the night. I did not hurt her. This deep sleep may be like that which you find in death, but she is very much alive," he explained, handing back Miriam a deeply-sleeping Melanie. "Put her in the bassinet. I will see you in the morning."
As Misty collapsed to the floor in tears, the mirror went back to the image of a blank, ebony, shiny surface so she was unable to see anymore. She knew that one day she would meet her baby, but Michael damn near gave her a heart attack with that charm he used to make her sleep. One day, I'm gonna meet you, she thought, I'll never let go.
A/N:
Third chapter is up! I hope you guys enjoy where it is going. I apologize for the slow start but again, depending on where inspirations take me (from the show and my own ideas as well), I hope to get the ball rolling. Be patient!
Also, some trivia! The charm Michael uses translates in English to "death is the dream of peace" from Latin. It was the only translation I could get when creating the chapter's namesake spell.
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