Jailbreak

I trudged down the basement hallway, my wrists bound tight together with a light, golden thread. Sure, it was stone walls and marble pillars with burning torches set every ten feet or so, but the damp, musty, unused smell gave away what this place really was - forgotten and unvisited. I just stared straight ahead at the angel walking in front of me, golden armor and wings of pure white. Compared to my naked self draped in a borrowed blanket, he looked magnificent.

Every fifty feet or so we passed a doorway on one side or the other. And from behind most, if not all, came a knock. Some just a light tapping, others a heavy, two (or twenty or two hundred) handed pounding. "So, what's behind all the doors?" I asked, still staring at the wings in front of me.

"Exactly what you think is behind the doors," the angel replied.

"More of us. Humans. Trapped for all eternity."

"Heaven isn't a prison."

"A gilded cage," I said, "Besides this isn't really even Heaven, is it?"

"No, but your kind will be comfortable here. Until the end."

"Until the end of time, you mean."

"Yes, until the end."

We walked in silence for a little while more, the only sound in the hall being our footsteps or the constant pounding coming from the other side of the doors. But no one can really stay silent walking with the divine, or semi-divine, or whatever the angel was. Not with so many questions to ask, and so many secrets to tell.

"Why do you keep them all locked behind the doors? Why not let them in? Or, if not, why not just destroy them altogether?"

The angel continued to walk. "God is very ... attached. Yes, attached is the right word ... attached to his projects. Maybe He can't stand to see another mass of you destroyed. Maybe He still desperately hopes one of you were not complete failures and show yourselves worthy of his companionship. And companionship with the divine requires perfection." The angel motioned to the locked doors. "And none of you have shown the kind of perfection required."

"Well, we are only human," I said, stopping in front of one of the doors. From the other side, instead of the pounding sound I'd been hearing, this one had a scrapping sound, like claws or knives.

"A saying every one of your iterations has managed to come up with to excuse your failings." Sensing I was no longer following, the angel stopped and turned to me. He gestured at the door next to me. "Through that door, He tried to give you the tools to survive, dominate your world. Claws and fangs, tougher skin, better senses. You would be the Alphas of your realm, above everything." The angel smiled as if recalling a memory from long ago. "If I remember correctly, that version didn't last a century before ripping each other apart."

The angel turned and started walking again and I hurried to follow, marking the doorway with the scratch, scratch, scratch. My feet and legs ached with every hurried step. I couldn't remember how long we'd been walking for. Not only from the trek through this corridor to the prison cell, but from the journey here as well. Lined with scars and possibly with a thorn or barb still stuck in them.

My guide continued talking. "He tweaked with your physical attributes until deciding that perhaps another change was needed." The angel nodded to another door but continued to walk without pause. "He tweaked your mental capabilities, made you smarter, more intelligent. Another failure as you attempted to disprove His existence. A very entertaining conclusion when they ended up here."

We passed more pounding, some sounding more like explosions than fists. Then we came across a noticeably quiet door. I stopped, drawn to the silence. A light emitted from the cracks around the door and instantly my feet felt restored, not just rested from the strain of walking but the scars healed too. "Empty?"

The angel stopped, then walked quickly, putting himself between me and the door. He banged on the door once and the light died. "If only. In a desperate attempt, He decided to give these ones a touch of the divine. Power to almost rival His own. They attempted to overthrow Him before they were ready to inherit the responsibility that comes with perfection. He locked them away." He grabbed my shoulders and turned me away. "We will continue walking now."

We walked for another twenty or thirty minutes, or maybe a day or two. Time just didn't seem to work how I expected here. We passed door after door until I thought that maybe the pounding was actually just coming from inside my own head.

"So, that was the point of it all? To find a friend?" It came out with more scorn than I intended.

"Life was a failure. He tried to raise you to perfection, to learn and grow through lifetimes until eventually reaching your own collective divinity, to one day become caretakers of your own universes, or maybe even this one. You failed." Then he stopped and pointed at a door. It was a plain, wooden one with a gold-plated keyhole. "We're here."

The angel turned to me and grabbed a key ring from his belt. "Now, before you rejoin with your compatriots perhaps you would like to explain how you escaped your room?"

I smiled, a big, wide, toothy, fuck-you grin. "Oh, I didn't break out of the cell. I came in through the other way."

The angel tilted his head, puzzled. "The other way?"

"The other way. The long way."

Then the angel straightened, stiff as a board as he finally understood. "The other way," he repeated.

I nodded. "You really shouldn't have let Dante publish his trilogy." I leaned until I could see around the angel and his massive wings. "Take him now."

The angel was fast. Before I could stand-up again, his sword was already in his hand. It was too bad, really. If only he knew he was already dead. There was a flash of light and the smell of sulfur, and a blade coated in Hellfire sliced across the angels throat. He dropped to the ground, silvery liquid flowing from the wound. Perhaps if he realized how close death was, maybe he would have reached for his horn instead and called for reinforcements. At least his death would've been a sacrifice instead of a waste.

"Did you get the answers you wanted?" said a voice behind me before cutting through the thread holding my wrists together.

A scarred man in front of me extinguished the Hellfire, though I assumed that the rest of Heaven was already alerted to its presence and would be sending its horde against us. With him were a half-dozen others dressed in rags if clothed at all, every one of them also holding angel-steel swords, some coated with blood already. "I got the answer I knew I would get." I turned to one that had cut my bonds. "How many do we have?"

Her long black hair hung partially in front of her face, an attempt to hide the burns. "The ones you see here, plus another two dozen or so on the way. I spread the word amongst our people still trapped Below of our rebellion. If they manage to escape, either down through the Last Circle or, if possible, Redemption, they'll come to join our fight here."

I nodded, brushing the hair back behind her ear. We suffered for a God that didn't want us. We shouldn't be ashamed to hide what He did to us. I bent over and picked up the key ring and tossed it to her. "Let's let our kin out from the cage. Then maybe we will look into the nature of these other ones, if they should be allowed to join us in Paradise."

Taken from Reddit Writing Prompts: "God tells you life is a mistake and that he was attempting to create perfection." This is a prime example of why you don't throw anything away, or why you should throw things away. At least now I can get rid of it. Originally I had written most of this to a prompt about finding different versions of humanity. Since I didn't use it, I just let it sit in a notebook until tge notebook filled up, then put the notebook aside. When this prompt came up, I immediately went hunting for it and the writing I already had. Sure, I can tell that the story doesn't quite fit the prompt, but I think I did an okay job of trying to make it work. If I had more time (if it wasn't already 11:30pm and I needed to go to work tomorrow) I would've tried to think harder about a better ending, and middle, and beginning, and title. I need to stop trying to do a full ... I don't like it enough to call it a story ... a full thing in one night even if some of it was just copying. Or been smarter and just worked on something else. Note: After finally re-reading this over several times and making little tweaks, and getting a nights rest, yes I do realize (during our current crisis) I wrote a story which the protagonists are a bunch of jackasses who just couldn't stay in their room until it was over.