Infernal Revelation : Collected Episodes 1-4 (9781311980007)

Profane Apotheosis: Infernal Revelation

Collected Episodes 1-4

Michael Coorlim

© 2014 Michael Coorlim

Pomoconsumption Press

This book is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All characters and
events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to
real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or
parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without
permission.

Smashwords Edition

Big thanks to my beta-readers:

Kat O'Connor

Nikki M. Pill

Pol Subanajouy

Synopsis:

High-school senior Lily Baker thought that
the car accident that had claimed her best friends had changed her
life forever, but that tragedy was only the first thunderous
rumblings of the coming storm. The track star finds herself hurled
into a world where demons walk the earth, monsters stalk the night,
and the adults in her small town conspire to keep from her the
truth of who - and what - she really is.

Her only hope rests in solidarity with the
town's outsiders, each of whom have their own demons to wrestle
with - internally and external. The track star, the bully, the
anarchist, the prodigy, the faithful - can these five orphans see
through their elders' lies and solve the mystery of their shared
heritage?

EPISODE 1

CHAPTER ONE

Lily woke from an
apprehensive nightmare, gradually coming to the realization that
this wasn't her bed, that she wasn't in her pajamas, that something
was very wrong. Her eyelids felt heavy, like they'd been glued
shut, but she was comfortable, so she was content to lie in a
half-sleep twilight and just listen until she could get her
bearings.

Voices murmuring. Quiet conversation, close
by, though she was too disoriented to pick out any meaning. A
steady noise, an electronic chirp. Other sounds from further off,
machine sounds, industrial sounds. Where was she?

The linens were crisper and slightly rougher
than her own bedding. The air had a faint antiseptic tinge to
it.

Someone moved alongside her bed. Lily
managed to open her eyes, letting in far too much light. Everything
was blurry, but she managed to make out a woman in white.

"Mom?" she tried to say, producing little
more than a croaking groan.

There was a flurry of activity and someone
was leaning over her, not the woman in white, a familiar scent,
that of Mother, half-weeping, half-talking. She couldn't understand
a word.

Father's bass rumbled over Mother's fear,
soothing, and drawing her away, leaving behind hot tears on her
shoulders.

Mother was crying.

Mother never cried.

A note of worry crept into Lily's confused
stupor, and she tried to focus, tried to draw the world into
cohesion.

The woman in white displaced her mother,
gloved fingers prying open Lily's eyelids, and she was unable to
look away from the bright light shining into each of her eyes.

"Lily?" the woman said. "Can you hear me? Do
you know where you are?"

"Nneh," Lily managed, turning away from the
brightness.

As her vision adjusted she could see more of
her surroundings. An unknown room, sparse and white-walled, in a
tall metal-framed bed. The woman in white had moved to the foot of
her bed, slipping a thin silver flashlight into her breast
pocket.

A doctor. Doctor Janssen. Not her doctor,
not the one Lily had been seeing since she was a girl, but Laton
General wasn't as big as the medical center in Odessa, and she did,
dimly, know the woman's name.

"Hospital?" she said, though some of the
vowels got lost along the way.

"That's right honey." Her mother was still
there, gripping the side of the bed. "You were in an accident."

The turquoise of her mother's shirt had a
surreal clarity to it, popping out from the almost monochromatic
blur of her vision.

"Give her space, Lisa." Daddy.

Lily hadn't noticed her father. He was
dressed in his church clothes, a black jacket with a crisp white
dress shirt and tie that befitted a deacon.

Was it Sunday? Was yesterday Saturday? What
was she doing last night?

"Accident?" Lily asked, more clearly.

"Disorientation is normal," Doctor Janssen
was telling her parents. "A severe concussion sometimes includes a
period of amnesia, but her memory may return within the next
twenty-four hours."

Her parents were paying rapt attention to
the woman, but to Lily it all seemed distant. Something she was
watching, rather than something that was happening to her.

"But other than that, she's fine?" Unlike
her father, her mother was dressed more casually. Well. Casual for
her mother.

"She's very lucky."

Lily spoke up. "What happened?"

To her frustration, Doctor Janssen continued
to address her parents, not even glancing in her direction. "We'd
like to keep her here for observation for another few hours. Just
to make sure she's recovering."

"Whatever you think is best," her father
said. "We'll wait here with her."

"Of course," Doctor Janssen said. "I'll send
a nurse along to run some tests. Try to keep her awake."

"What happened?" Lily repeated, apprehension
growing.

The doctor patted her leg and offered a
sympathetic smile. "You just focus on feeling better. You can worry
about the rest later."

Lily looked from the
doctor's smiling face to her parents'. If this fog in her head
would just lift, if she could just
concentrate
and
remember
what had happened, how she'd
gotten here, everything would make sense.

"What accident?" she asked, hands curling
into the hospital bedding. "Mom? Dad?"

The doctor hesitated, looking to her
father.

He sighed and sat down in the chair
alongside her bed. Her mother moved to stand beside him, worry
crossing her face. They didn't look much like Lily, her foster
parents, even if you discounted the contrast between their tan
northern European features with their adopted daughter's own
African heritage. Where Lily's build was slender and athletic, Tom
and Lisa Baker were broadly built, stout folk from a stout people,
strong but soft from good living. Despite these dissimilarities,
there was little doubt in the minds of those who saw them together
that they were a loving family.

Her father opened his mouth and stalled. His
wife put a hand on his.

"You were in a car accident, dear," Lily's
mother said, patting her father's hand. "Along with Ashley and
Lauren."

"Oh my Lord," Lily said, fingertips flying
to her lips, her stomach taking a sudden twist. "Are they
alright?"

"You're fine," her father said. "You took a
bump on the head, but the doctors say that it isn't anything
serious."

"No, Ashley and Lauren," she said, her gaze
darting from her father's face to her mother's. "Are they
okay?"

"You need to try and relax, Lily." Doctor
Janssen whetted her pale lips and picked up the chart at the end of
the bed. "You've been through a traumatic experience."

Lily locked eyes with her father. "Are
Ashley and Lauren okay?"

Her father looked away, and that churning in
Lily's stomach turned into a gnawing dread.

"Sweetheart." Her mother leaned forward, a
hand on her arm. "Ashley was hurt badly. She's in intensive care.
And Lauren..."

"Miss Clark was killed on impact," Doctor
Janssen said.

Lily's father was saying something, but
words had lost their meaning. The girl let out a choked moaning sob
and curled up, her shoulders hunching forward, drawing her knees up
to her chest. She cried for her friends, crying to God, to Jesus,
to anyone that would listen, barely acknowledging the soothing
voices and soft hands trying to comfort her. Compared to the icy
blackness welling up from the pit of her chest, they just weren't
enough.

Lauren dead. Ashley injured.

And she was okay. Unhurt. Unharmed. Was that
God's justice? Was that His will?

She had faith. No matter
what happened to her -- to
her --
she could maintain her composure with an iron
faith in God's plan. She could endure. He had given her a beautiful
life with a foster family who loved and cared for her as if she
were their own, and for that she would be ever grateful to
Him.

But this? To spare her when her best friends
in the world were taken, were hurt, to leave her untouched... it
was a miracle.

That's what her father was calling it. A
miracle.

And he was right. But did she deserve it?
She was no more righteous than her peers. She had her sinful
thoughts. Why would God punish them, take Lauren, and leave her
unharmed?

Was it a test?

It had to be a test.

All her life, her father, a deacon in the
International Church of Christ Everlasting, had told her stories
about God and his tests. Tests of virtue, of faith, of compassion.
It was only through tests and temptations, her father said, that we
could be sure of cleaving to the Christian values of compassion and
tolerance. It was easy, her church taught, to rely on weaknesses
like hate and fear to unite a community, but these were not the
ways that Jesus taught.

As she lay there, in the hospital bed, eyes
focused past her anxious parents towards the small shelf holding
cards and flowers -- lavender, her favorite -- from well-wishers,
Lily realized that she'd never really been tested. She was lucky.
Very lucky. Her family was close and well placed within the
community, she was athletic, pretty (so they said), and popular at
school. She had been given so many blessings, and now this
miraculous survival?

Did she deserve it?

She didn't know.

She couldn't remember what had happened.

***

After Lily had stopped
weeping, a nurse with her hair in a bun came by with the release
forms and a wheelchair. Her father signed the papers, and the nurse
started to help her into the chair.

"I think I can stand," Lily said in a small
voice, sliding with stiff limbs to the side of the bed.

"It's for insurance reasons," the nurse
said.

Lily nodded and allowed the nurse and her
father to help her into the chair, falling silent, her thoughts
drifting as they wheeled her through the hospital's corridors. She
wanted, desperately, to ask her parents about the accident, but her
earlier attempts had been rebuffed. They wanted her to rest. How
could she rest with that question hanging overhead?

As bright as the hospital's fluorescent
lights had been, the Texas sun burned all the more furiously
overhead. The heat of the late morning blasted Lily's skin as her
family left the cool hospital to where the family minivan was
parked near the entrance. Her mother gazed off towards the horizon
as her father crossed around to the driver's seat.

Lily barely noticed the heat, lost in
thought as she was. "It's Sunday?"

Her father glanced back over his shoulder.
"Deacon Ross took over for me today. It's more important that I be
with my family."

"When did I..."

"You've been in the hospital since late last
Saturday," her mother said.

A week? She'd been unconscious for a week?
Sudden fears of brain damage filled Lily's thoughts, and she
panicked when she realized she couldn't remember what she'd been
doing last Saturday night. Where had she have been going? What had
she been up to?

A sudden spark of fear bloomed in her chest.
"Was Derek hurt?"