The Divorcee Is A Wicked Black Belly

The young girl was more than a little child. Ten years old with a grimy face and the smell of poverty around her. Richard found out that children as young as that girl gave off the sweetest smell in terms of soul quality. Their souls were transparent, very light and exuded a freshness that, when swallowed into his stomach, immediately cleanses every nook and cranny of his mud body.

That kind of soul had the power to peel off layers and layers of dirt on his skin, staunching the decay and rot around him, invigorating his mind with its fresh fragrance. The young girl looked at him without fear, until he broke her neck and he waited for her soul to peek out of her startled mouth.

The soul when he saw it, peered at him with curiosity. It did not shimmer as he was expecting but was solid, still retaining the physical form of the young girl he had just killed. It still carried the faint aura of her curiosity, and yes, her pity. Richard could see it in the girl"s soul, as it peered at him without surprise even when he opened his mouth and filled his stomach with it.

The instant the soul reached his insides, a miracle seemed to happen. Maybe something about the girl"s pity touched off something inside him because the layers of mud that covered his body started peeling off. He started to see skin, clean human skin on his hands, the formerly muddy claws that he used to maul and kill his victims with have acquired the actual shape and hue and color of a normal human. He was still spirit but the human hands looked like the way they were before his fall.

Richard stared at his hands then he slumped down in a corner and sobbed. He suddenly felt lost and frightened and alone. This was punishment he did not feel he deserved. He was not a criminal, a pervert or a destroyer of women. The only curve that really changed his life from its normal straight path had been his infidelity with Valerie. But even then, he felt love and desire. He had made a mistake by marrying a girl he only have feelings for as a friend and didn"t know how to conduct himself once he found the real thing. But after all the heartache and pain and humiliation he had put his wife into, he still had wanted to go back to her, wanted to finally be a husband to her and take care of her and their child.

The thing he had trouble accepting was that he was never given a chance to redeem himself. He was not a bad man or an evil tyrant so why was he not allowed to repent and was even condemned to a life in purgatory and even forgotten? Where was G.o.d when all this was happening? It would have been more acceptable to him if the punishment had been given when he was still alive because then there was still hope, there was still a chance to talk to An Ning and tell her he was sorry and that he loved her.

Richard could feel himself boil with wrath. That was the one thing he could not accept about this...whatever it is. And that was that he died before he and An Ning could be at peace and reconcile their differences. He died with An Ning hating him. He died without her knowing that he knew about their child, and that he loved her. He and she grew up together, their families were friends and she followed him all her life until the day he betrayed her. He had wanted for her to know that he made a mistake because he was really stupid and that he didn"t know his own heart and that mistake cost him her love, cost him their child. But he also knew that given a chance, he could have worked harder to earn her forgiveness, make her love him again, and in the end, maybe they could start again as a family. But that chance was taken away from him with a single snap of horrible fate.

Again, what was his crime? He didn"t know and he didn"t really understand. So, in the end it became clear what he must do. Conscience never really figured into it. He realized that he must do whatever it is to survive. Everything else was secondary to that fight. So he went back in the game, killed a couple of thousands more innocent kids until the mud completely fell off his body and he again retained the shape and aura of his human form. He was still soul but no longer covered in mud; he was still spirit but clean and free and no longer covered in the rank stench of his former decay.

Why should he be guilty? Being separated from his body to crawl as mud was equivalent to him being condemned without a trial to specify his guilt or not. Everything was part of the game when somebody condemned him to that non-existence and yet here"s this a.s.shole from h.e.l.l demanding that he should feel guilty for surviving. Winner is king; loser is thief. Isn"t that how the game is supposed to be played?

He killed a lot of people to rea.s.semble his fragmented soul and after he had done that the first thing he did was look for An Ning.

He was now a soul, still abandoned, still condemned, yet he was not the speck of mud he started as after Han forcibly kicked him out of his physical body. He may be dead and spirit but Richard found he was still a thinking human, still subject to human weaknesses of envy and jealousy, especially jealousy when he saw An Ning and his brother together.

He wasn"t even dead for a year yet An Ning was already living with him, with Han in his physical body. Looking at his brother, there were moments when he wanted to destroy him. Not kill but destroy as he had been destroyed by him.

When did the hatred start? He didn"t know. Perhaps it started to fester as soon as he left his body and regained his consciousness as mud. He hated Han and he hated that he couldn"t kill him. If he were to end his brother"s life then his physical body would be dead and even if that were to happen, he didn"t know if he can insert himself back in again and resume his life like nothing happened.

So, he killed a thousand more while he brooded and his anger festered and grew. He watched An Ning changed, the things that happened to her. She became this warrior witch who he desired the longer he clapped eyes on her. He watched her stomach grew bigger with his child and that was the one thing he could not accept. His spirit was still alive, still in the realm of the living yet he had no way to enforce his ownership of his wife and kid. His child will be born without knowing him even as its own mother hated his father. It was an unacceptable situation to him.

So, he began to haunt An Ning. He began to do it after he had eaten enough souls to make his spirit stronger. Along the way in his journey, he had met other souls that were like him, souls that died and yet could not reconcile with its maker. Souls that were abandoned like trash in the wayside, souls like Hank and Kari and Terri and Indian who suffered their exiles yet accepted their banishment like they earned it. When they met him, all of them were surprised at his own daring. They were not like him though that became fragmented and restarted life as mud. They were dead souls merely forgotten by whoever it was that made them. They were not like him who clawed and murdered and ripped apart and maimed just so he could get back his own form and ident.i.ty.

Perhaps they had an inkling of who and what he had become when he told them about haunting his ex wife. He needed to tell somebody because the ability just came to him naturally. He thought it and it happened. He wanted An Ning to know that he was still around and he showed himself to her. He wanted Han and An Ning"s relationship to bottom out and he transplanted all his memories of Valerie into Han"s mind. All the desire, the attraction and awe he felt that day when he first saw Valerie, all of those memories he breathed into his physical body. Han was helpless. He had loved An Ning yet all of a sudden his dreams were being invaded by thoughts of his dead brother"s former mistress.

Of course, he told An Ning. He was feeling smug and was actually smirking when he told her. Why not? Some part of him still felt aggrieved that she didn"t even fight for him, neglected to inform him she was pregnant with his child and basically erased him from her memory the instant they separated. And she accepted Han, even with memory loss, she readily accepted him. Richard was really p.i.s.sed off.

Maybe he willed himself to hate An Ning because she rejected him. When he was still alive and didn"t know his own heart, she brushed him aside and preferred his own brother to him. But then sanity returned when the twins were born. He felt pain and heartache looking at them. Richard felt resentment and anger. Han was gone but the fact that he couldn"t be with his family filled him with despair. He was there by their side but they couldn"t see him, couldn"t hear him and he again found himself brooding against fate and G.o.d.

When he found traces of the portal that Hippolyta"s time machine left behind he was already numb with anger and resentment. Perhaps he willed himself to finally die, to finally be erased and he subconsciously thought that would happen when he entered the portal. But he didn"t know, didn"t even have an inkling that beyond that was his salvation.

He acquired a body, he pulled An Ning in this same dimension yet when did guilt start eating at him?