Lost Gods

by Brom

“Sometimes you can forget, y’know. Just for a second. That you’re dead. A pretty day like today will do that.” His voice turned sullen. “After all these years you’d think I wouldn’t fall for it. But I get to watching the clouds, listening to them birds, and I think I can just hop up and head on home . . . see Mama . . . see my big brother.”

“He could be so kind at times, Chet. But as the years passed, that part of him seemed to slowly die until only the bad was left.”

Eternal damnation for a moment’s rage?

he almost wished he would, would hear something, someone, so that he’d know he wasn’t trapped in some endless maze within his own crazed mind.

All have hopes that the afterlife will somehow be an orderly place. Death is madness and chaos—a hundred gods fighting over the dead. Sense, reason, fairness . . . they’re all foreigners here.”

“There is ka and there is ba. Ba is you, your true self. Ka is just the clay from which you are made here in the netherworld, the vessel that holds your ba.”

there is no stronger alliance than that of necessity.”

“Heaven is full of sheep. Hell is full of those who actually shaped the world. Men who carved out their own paths, the courageous, the bold, they are the ones that end up damned.

Jahannam

Sekhmet,

“There will never be an end to suffering. You do what you can, only what you can. Peace comes from knowing you helped those that you could.”

“Angel. Demon. What’s the difference? These demon lords, the Fallen, they were all angels once. What does that tell you?”

Their scriptures and verses never illuminate just how one can be in joyous rapture while their mothers, fathers, children burn for all eternity.”