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Fyodor had lost count how many blasphemies he had been called in his lifetime. The most frequent ones he could remember were things like demon, belzebuth, Lucifer, Fiend. Not that it really affected him, after all, someone’s last words are the last luxury they will ever have, and therefor can’t be taken to heart. And in most cases, if someone had the courage to call him that, he’d make sure it was the last thing they’d ever say.
It was still ironic, the clear misconception they had of him, always associating him with the devil when he was so clearly making gods work. If anything, the clear misjudgment of gods personality was an implicit sign that the purge he had been tasked with was necessary.
God is love? God is war. No matter what version of him someone believes, what scriptures they decide to idolatrize and which ones they decide to ridicule, all of them have a few things in common. Laws that humans ignore, and purging wars that happen consequently. God has been playing favorites since the beginning on times, and the using those same favorites to bring carnage to the unworthy.
Fyodor had simply been one of the lucky ones in charge of continuing the divine cycle. It wasn’t like God had ever talked to him. No bush had spontaneously combusted in front of him, nor had he climbed Mount Sinai to receive the 10 commandments. He had merely been blessed at a very young age with the understanding that gifted people had received their skills from God as tools to do his merciless bidding.
So, he did. Years of his life dedicated to the creation of yet another doomsday, killing everyone who could potentially be in his way without a shred of hesitation.
Almost everyone. Occasionally his mission could be more than a just a purpose. With the right opponent challenging him, it became such a marvelous game of chess, that killing became sidelined by the wish to win. Still, besides a handful of worthy enemies, there was only one person who had ever touched him and lived to tell the tale.
Even his closest associates knew that if a single strand of their hair ever briskly nudged him, they were as good as dead. That was the implicit sentence to all of them, with a singularity in the shape of a clown who had never respected personal space. And Fyodor, that for some reason kept allowing that insubordination.
Fyodor himself didn’t have a reasonable answer. Most people would jump to a fallacious belief like love. It was closer to madness. None of that crazy in love bullshit. He would kill Nikolai without hesitation the moment he gave him the slightest motive. There just never seemed to be one, even when there were so many. Loyal accomplices that would die for his purpose were killed for less.
Nikolai didn’t even believe in God. He was unpredictable and his unwavering loyalty to him was completely fueled by impulsivity. If what he saw in Fyodor today bored him tomorrow, he’d simply kill him with small remorse. Those were all things Fyodor was acutely aware of.
He still couldn’t help but find solace in Nikolai. There was comfort in the mutual understanding that they’d see the world collapse by their own doing side by side, if they didn’t dispose of each other before that. He would go as far as to say he admired Nikolai. Not a lot of people were aware of how meaningless life really is, and the few that were lived with an unfunded hope that things like love, money, drugs or kindness could make it be worth it.
From the outside, Nikolai’s search for freedom would be compared to those foolish beliefs. Maybe in its principle it was. But there was one big difference. He was aware it was a pointless search.
Fyodor believed a big part of humanity had been doomed, and that it was his purpose to bring that doom into fruition. Nikolai believed humanity as a whole had been doomed from the moment the concept of freewill was presented. He wasn’t particularly invested in their demise, but he seemed to enjoy creating chaos by Fyodor’s side. And Fyodor enjoyed having him around, even as an unreliable partner.
Their relationship couldn’t be more linear, even if 10 months ago a few lines became blurry. The clown had decided to steal a kiss after they finished acquiring a military base to use as headquarters. Thousands of corpses displayed wherever eyes could lay on, each one outdoing each other in grisliness. 13 people had been lied to, promised to be spared if they cleaned the crime scene. 13 people who would have bloodless deaths the minute they finished cleaning.
The mere fact Fyodor didn’t dismember Nikolai the moment his hand touched his cheek, even for a reasonable reason, like helping his dear friend clean a bloodstain that had stayed as aftermath on his cheek, was already a case for awe. Fyodor continuously allowing him to keep breathing after he replaced his hand for his lips felt like a miracle of biblical proportions, and when said lips adventured to Fyodor’s mouth, no one who had ever crossed paths with Fyodor could have predicted the demon kissing Nikolai back. But he did.
Several kisses on several occasions were traded after that. They weren’t together. People like them would never be in what simpletons considered relationships. They were free to kiss and fuck whoever they felt like. They were also free to brutally murder whoever the other one decided to kiss and fuck after. A really simple arrangement, always built on top of as much toxicity as freedom could allow.
Nikolai had fallen in love with a sign on the central command room ever since the day they overtook the base. He had transformed the classical “Safety is a team effort, we have worked 31 days without an accident ” sign into “safety is a team effort, we have worked 00 days without a team”.
It was dry humor at best, but it seemed to be a ritual that gave him immense satisfaction, as he changed the number on the sign first thing in the morning when they arrived and giggled every single time. That number didn’t only correspond to the amount of time that had passed since they had taken control of the base, but also to the amount of time that had passed since Nikolai had first kissed him.
Such an irrelevant piece of information Fyodor never thought would ever occupy his mind, and yet he found himself almost smirking on day 304, realizing it had been 10 months since their relationship had shifted.
He couldn’t help the sudden urge to show to Nikolai how much he meant to him. In less than 4 milliseconds, he had already created a plan that would achieve just that.
Freedom is such a funny illusion. A concept that can only be grasped in his veracity by people who can never obtain it. The moment you realize it’s importance, you’ll never be able to have it back.
Nikolai was aware of the cost of freedom since he was aware of life. He had been looking for it since before he could even talk. Running away from home in a tricycle every afternoon was enough, until it wasn’t. Killing the people who had brought him up to this world to break free of any blood chains that were imposed on him, had been enough until it wasn’t.
Drugs were enough, until they weren’t. They worked yes, but he was still a slave to them. Searching for that freedom lucid, searching for that freedom sober, was the hard task. True freedom had to be reached by himself, not some substance he would owe any good moments to.
Violence was the closest to it he could ever reach. Taking a life to feel in control of your own seemed perfectly logical, even if cruel and morbid. On the end he was still surrounded by rotting corpses and a prison of his own mind.
He envied, narrowed mind people, who obeyed traffic laws and didn’t lie when they did their taxes. People who grew up in small towns and never had the minimal urge to get out of there, people who went to work in the family business without questioning if they had dreams of their own, people who married the kid they had married in play pretend when they were merely 6 years old. People who never realized how plain and boring and pointless their existence was. Those were the happiest people there could ever be. The ones that are too busy following an invisible script society has concocted to realize how fucking miserable they all are.
Even their thoughts and concerns and insecurities seemed to be different variations of the same fucking thing. Awareness was a lonely prison, one he thought could only be a solitary confinement, until he met Fyodor. Even if he had an agenda, a purpose he had bestowed upon himself, he still understood Nikolai in a way no one ever could.
That was something worth supporting. He couldn’t give less of a shit about divinity, but he did find some holiness in Fyodor’s destruction. He wasn’t a psychopath. He had empathy, and he was perfectly aware how many lives the continuous bloodshed was ruining. But that feeling seemed to be dulled whenever Fyodor was involved.
He could still remember the euphoric rush when they took over a military base that they wanted to turn into their headquarters. How Fyodor, someone he had never felt the slightest attraction to, someone he had never even perceived as beautiful, seemed to look ethereal with blood tainting his pale face. What was an impulsive gesture turned into the first of many kisses Nikolai loved to lose himself on.
If he had to choose a moment where freedom felt reachable, almost in the palm of his hand, would be the nights after a mission, when he cooked for Fyodor, and they ate together still reeking of mischief. Food that was always contaminated by a scary mix of drugs. Fyodor was always perfectly aware of the fact he was being drugged, he knew Nikolai, he knew the specific glint in his eyes, like he was already feeling the relief before he even took them. Red velvet cake had never been just red velvet cake, yet another potentially lethal trip they were about to share.
He never really understood that part of Fyodor. He didn’t seem like the type of person who would ever enjoy contaminating himself. He also didn’t seem like the type of person to let himself be influenced by anyone. Maybe he indulged Nikolai in these moments because Nikolai indulged him in his purge. Maybe it had nothing to do with him at all. Maybe Fyodor simply was some godly entity and was immune to substances, and the reason he never said anything was because he never even felt them. Nikolai didn’t think he would ever know his true motives. Maybe motives weren’t that important.
He still remembered the genuine surprise he felt when Fyodor gave him a slice of red velvet identical to the one he used to make. The surprise in itself was better than the gift itself, because he missed that feeling. Everything was so heavily charged with a chock factor within society, that everyone has grown accustomed to it, and so being truly surprised by something became one of the rarest emotions people can experience.
He then took him to the basement of the headquarters. They stopped in front of a red door, and in his head three possibilities were presented to what he would encounter on the other side. Two very opposite kinds of torture chambers to continue the rare streak of generosity Fyodor seemed to be having, or something that would seal his own death. Before he had time to process if he would even oppose to the latter, Fedya opened it, and they were greeted by something he would have never imagined.
“Velnon 108. An ancient multiverse simulator capable of perfectly converting sim-space into world space.”
Fyodor’s declaration did little to explain the plant that sat on the corner of the room. A plant with a psychedelic appearance that was connected to a computer of some sorts by thick blue cables. The unplugged side of the plant, that was shaped almost like a giant multicolored pear, had an opening, like a portal. On the screen of the computer, an infinite list of weird looking planets seemed to keep passing at incredible speed.
“Close your eyes and pick one and put your head there.”
He didn’t retort. He didn’t ask further. He closed his eyes and let chance pick for him. He was delighted to notice the one he had chosen seemed to be a glass version of the earth, cracking beautifully, with continents shaped as shards. He put his head inside of the weird plant like Fyodor had instructed and wondered, if he was about to be decapitated. Inside a plant. Not a bad way to go. Certainly, more creative than most people had. Closed his eyes again and let himself go.
It would be abhorrently easy to kill him right now. The idea crossed his him as quick as it left. He hadn’t gone trough all the trouble to find him the last multiverse simulator that had survived the soviet war to kill him before he even tried it. What first had been built as a portal to extract lethal advanced technology from other countries to destroy the Afghans had quicky been shut down since the Velnon seeds were hard to harvest, and after being turned into simulators, even harder to maintain. When they noticed these machines were creating more casualties than the weapons they were bringing from them, the leader of the project had ordered all of them to be destroyed. But Fyodor knew how those destructions actually went and after a few torturous interrogations that ended in executions, Velnon 108 was in his possession.
7 trillion planets, you could travel into. Fyodor’s lifetimes wouldn’t be enough to visit them all. Several methods of immersion, putting your head directly inside the plant being the strongest yet most dangerous. An immersion so strong, that if you were to get hurt inside the simulator, your life is at risk in the real world.
Planet N-1304. An entire sphere built of fragile glass, where its habitants were formed out of porcelain. That’s the planet Nikolai had landed on. Little cameras had been programmed to follow the user, so the leaders could track the progress without ever being at risk. Fyodor sat down and watched the screen with morbid pleasure. He was expecting a more violent planet, something where Nikolai could really shine, but this would do. High on a mix of LSD, Ketamine and Peyote, a disturbing grin was plastered on his face. He couldn’t wait to see how porcelain bled.
Nikolai’s maniacal laughter filled the entire room. What had once been a boring crystal-clear planet Fyodor had attentively been watching through the small computer screen, was now covered in the most interesting metallic red, leaking from millions of fragments of porcelain Russian dolls. The irony had not been lost on him, and Nikolai’s message to target his home country was almost like a tribute, a message, to remind him he was very aware who had sent him there. Fyodor was beyond ecstatic.
In the midst of the unusual bloodshed and the hallucinogens clogging his brain he wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Maybe a few hours, maybe a week, maybe just a couple of minutes. All he knew is that he had rarely felt this fulfilled.
He wasn’t naïve. He knew Nikolai better than Nikolai knew himself. 7 trillion planets would seem interesting for 3 days before the boredom and the conclusion of it all being just another pointless distraction for the lack of freedom humans felt was reached, and the simulator would be left to rot in the basement, like any other attempts of happiness he had tried in his lifetime.
It still felt good to know he was responsible for those 3 days. Even if he would never dwell on why it felt good, he was still grateful that in the midst of fulfilling his purpose, he had the chance to meet the person who would eventually end him.
What felt like a lifetime inside the simulator, ended up being merely around a day. He noticed, because the first thing he decided to do when he exited, was go to the rooftop, hoping Fedya would follow him. Once again, he envied Fyodor. The way his eyes glinted whenever he looked at the horizon like he was foreseeing the chaos he was adamant to bring. The only thing Nikolai ever saw whenever he was face to face with the big picture, was a wave of emptiness, a depressive sight of a pointless existence no matter how far you look.
Still, after such a thoughtful yet unexpected and seemingly random gift, Nikolai wanted to do something for him. He did somewhat enjoy the rooftops at night. Sharing a joint made of purposefully laced weed while watching the sky liquify in shapes and colors wasn’t a bad way to finish a good day.
Ending days next to Fyodor never was. He almost felt freedom in that other planet. Like whatever laws he still felt confined to on earth didn’t exist there. Somehow It still didn’t feel quite right, and he realized almost bitterly, that maybe there was something in someone he valued more than freedom.
Looking at Fyodor’s distorted face between the waves of sound that kept materializing in front of him, he found himself thinking, even if only in a transient moment, that maybe living in metaphorical shackles could be a blessing, if one was chained next to the person they hold most dear.