Email: jamie.calohan@bigfoot.com or calohan@promethean.demon.co.uk

All Excalibur characters created by Chris Claremont and Alan Davis, owned by Marvel Comics UK

All Archangel Thunderbird characters created and owned by Tony Luke, Bruce Attley, Alan Grant and Yasushi Nirasawa

All other characters owned by Vietnamese Wallflowers

Text (C) Vietnamese Wallflowers 1998

This city corrupts, tainting him like the shadows that congeal beneath his flag.

He is alone here, in isolation – there is no purity but that which he inflicts upon the world, that which his flag brings unto it, cutting through the layers of filth and staining the sinful, unwashed flesh that feeds upon it.

He rises up to his full height, a shroud masking his features, effectively removing him from the rows of cattle that lined the streets of this foul cesspool.

Movement is harder than it used to be, the skin above his left knee is shredded, hanging down in ribbons and staining the purity of his flag, reminding him that he is like them, if only in appearance.

The lamb moves before him, its right arm is stretched out, ending abruptly in a metal stain, protruding from his palm.

The lamb points the weapon towards the shadows but he still has his back to him.

He smiles viciously and then breaks cover, throwing himself forward in a flurry of discarded headlines and human debris.

The lamb turns but it is too late.

The shattering of bones echoes across the horizon, breaking through layers of flesh and pointing erect towards the skyline.

Blood spatters his face and he feels it staining his yellow teeth but it doesn't matter – all that matters is that 'justice' is served, that his flag is avenged and restored to its former glory.

The lamb cries out but the man in the flag hears him not.

Another brutal snap and the lamb stops.

Abruptly.

Then there is nothing but the hollow echo of black coffin-shaped taxis and the bulk of trains moving in the guts of the city.

Brian Braddock smiles to himself. The pain in his leg does not register now.

'Justice' has been served and his place in the pure world order is once again assured.

"Oh, that's bloody marvellous, that is." Rob Cainer announced, holding an empty can of Heineken up as if it were the Holy Grail.

A brief rain of static tainted the row of screens before, screeching out a legacy of disdain and incomprehensible lines of alternating black and white with perhaps the faintest glimmer of grey, perhaps.

Doctor John Churchill looked up, his concentration briefly removed from his study of the Necronomicon.

He smiled thinly, folding the leather-flesh cover over the arcane knowledge that prevailed beneath.

"And what would that be, Mister Cainer?" he asked patiently.

A final gulp of paint-stripper-quality Heineken and Cainer focused his attention.

"Well, first there's that hassle with that daemon thingey.... The Slasher..."

"Cutter." Churchill corrected.

Cainer tipped both the can and his head in a simultaneous bow of understanding.

"Yeah, that's the one." he remarked. "Anyways, first we 'ave this Cutter stomping all over us but that's okay, because Miki sorts all that out, and then right after that Dygon turns up, all fire and brimstone and now...now we lose all our monitors, which means...."

"Which means that we are effectively in the dark, Mister Cainer." Churchill interrupted.

His attention wavering, Cainer briefly debated as to whether Churchill actually enjoyed finishing over people's sentences for them or whether it was some sort of habit he had picked up somewhere, the kind of thing you expected his Mother would have told him off for.

"This is purely my speculation, but I would assume that Baal is drawing power from portholes leading into other dimensions." Churchill mused. "This would give the Anti-God a distinct advantage over us."

Cainer frowned.

"I 'spose that would explain how he was able to provide a new body for Dygon and summon the Cutter so quickly after last time."

John Churchill stretched his legs and finally stood up.

"Indeed," he muttered. "But Baal has overlooked one specifically important thing."

Cainer's frown remained.

"And that would be...?" he asked, twirling the empty Heineken as if this would indicate his desire to understand the vast labyrinthine of Churchill's mind.

Doctor Churchill smiled knowingly.

"Time, Mister Cainer." he said, enigmatically.

Cainer cocked his head in much the same fashion that an obedient dog would.

"Eh?"

Churchill turned his back and waved the Necronomicon in the air.

"As in, it will tell."

Hell has a multitude of layers.

Dante's Divine Comedy, the Bible, the Koran – every single story that has ever been told about Hell and its minions, every fable, every tale – they are all wrong.

On a throne made from the bruised and yellow bones of avatars and troubadours, Baal, the supreme Anti-God, waits...

It smiled and awaited an opening speech from the pathetic mortal that had, like Orpheus, travelled into its dominion.

Only this 'Orpheus' sought the folly of romance, no, 'Orpheus' in the twenty-first century comes bearing gifts of technology.

Baal's horrific smile broke into the vague semblance of a smile, crooked flesh dressing the broken bones of its face, draping loosely down in the same fashion as one who place a discarded suit over a clothes horse.

An eternity passed before Baal opened its twisted mouth.

"Speak, mortal," it announced in a voice that burnt reaction from the soul, searing thought burrowing its way into the flesh in a flurry of doubt and self-recrimination. "I am waiting.

The lamb's body lay beneath him, broken and twisted; a disfigured re-interpretation of human anatomy reconfigured into the shape of a most primeval terror.

His memory was in tatters.

There was a reason why he was here, he was sure, it was just that now he seemed to have lost track of what it once was.

So much time had passed, so much time in which to drown sorrows in half-empty bottles of crap Sainsbury's red wine and anything else that came to hand.

He could feel the loss of blood, from the wounds that now cultivated his body, and the excessive binging on cheap alcohol and narcotics finally taking its toll, seeping through the cracks in his veneer of numbness and insouciance and finally beguiling his line of thought.

The bile rose dangerously in his throat, an hourglass by which to judge his sickness.

Violently he spewed forth a stream of vomit, staining his flag and spattering patterns across the potholed pavement, steam rising up in the pre-dawn light.

He stumbled, falling backwards, his body sprawled across a carpet of corrupted bin bags and the brutalised body of the sacrificial lamb, its organs leaking slowly from its wounds and crawling away into dark corners where they could grow and become the monstrosities that haunt children's dreams.

Braddock closed his eyes, wishing the world away in fading monochrome and masculine inferiority.

A subtle hissing sound caught his attention yet he was too weak to raise his head.

It increased, a rhythmic drone that stained consciousness and blurred reality.

And then...then came the shadows...

Christian Fry (who was at last beginning to see the irony of his name) had felt for some time that his superiors held a grudge against him.

Proof of this paranoia had finally arrived in the shape of his current assignment.

Around him the torments of the damned towered around him, a vast tapestry of phallic and Freudian nightmares.

Christian scratched the back of his head, a nervous habit he acquired from his devout Catholic mother.

In his mind, the speech he had been forced to memorise blurred with the hideous nature of the terrain that surrounded him.

"Greetings, oh great Anti-God," Christian stuttered. "My employers have sent me here, by the third gate of Hell, in order to seek the virtues of your infinite wisdom."

The Anti-God smirked, obviously unimpressed.

"And who would your employers be that they feel themselves worthy of my attention?" It demanded.

Christian coughed nervously and looked around.

To his right the pale, fragile corpse of what had once been a small child leered out at him.

A descending icicle from above and a growing semi-organic phallus from below had skewered the child's body, giving it the appearance of a broken tourniquet – permanently arranged in the most surreal of fashions.

He turned away, placing a hand over his mouth for fear of being sick.

"M – M – My employers?" he finally stuttered.

Baal's expression did not change and Christian became sorely aware that he was trying the Anti-God's patience.

"My employers, er, my employers are the wise and respected Black Air organisation." He finally completed the sentence.

Baal grinned hideously, revealing a row of shattered, nerveless black teeth.

"Is your Black Air so foolish that it believes it can bargain with the supremacy of the Anti-God Baal?" The Prince of Hell questioned, in much the same way that a small child plays with its food.

Christian squirmed.

He wanted to shout, 'No, no it isn't. I'm sorry, I'm pathetic, I'll go now.'

"We...we believe that we can of, er, mutual assistance to one another," he said instead.

"And what is it you wish from me, little man?" Baal smirked hideously.

Beneath his collar, the Black Air operative began to sweat profoundly.

He offered him a weak smile.

"Well, that's the difficult part?" he said, casting his gaze down towards his feet.

Baal's dark black eyes bore into him and Christian began to wonder if being in the presence of such a pestilent creature could drive him insane – or even worse make him sterile, there must have been enough germs to encourage such ailments, he reflected.

Baal raised its disembodied fingers into a prism.

"Continue." It stated and smiled its decrepit smile once again.

There was a place deep within his psyche where the flag overlapped with the person, a symbiotic marriage between the ideal of a nation and the failure of a person.

How long had it been like this?

His mind went blank, a dull void of empty spaces and loneliness.

He had let himself slip again, allowed himself to stare too deep into the abyss and now, now he was beginning to suffer for his sins.

Warm, gentle arms reached out and helped pull him up, halting the disorientation in his head, if only for the briefest of moments.

"Captain Britain, I presume?" A soft voice smiled from beyond his own personal abyss, encouraging familiarity and trust.

With pain burning his consciousness, he twisted his head around to face the source of the voice.

A young girl, her hair matted in dreadlocks and her clothes stained from spending too long lying on the pavement, was helping him up.

Despite her apparently short stature, she seemed able to support him without too much effort.

Beneath his fluid-stained masque, Brian Braddock found himself frowning, a gesture which caused him more pain than he guessed.

"Looks like you've been in the wars, ain't you?" The young girl smirked, propping him up against a wall of refuse and desecrated red brick.

"Who are you?" he asked, his voice weak and his mouth full of blood and broken teeth.

She offered him a warm, feminine smile.

"Just someone who cares," she replied, straightening out her battered attire and lighting the first of many cheap cigarettes.

Captain Britain smiled in what he hoped was an ironic gesture.

"No one cares," he muttered. "This is Britain."

The young woman, who must have been just over twenty he estimated, scowled and folded her arms, one over the other.

"Bollocks." She finally announced. "Don't be so sodding stupid."
She reached into her Parka and produced a single piece of chalk, the kind that looked as if she had been chewing on it in her spare time, and proceeded to sketch a large, encircled pentagram on the wall above him.

"What are you doing?" he asked, shifting his weight onto his good leg and attempting to stand up.

"Bringing you up to speed," she muttered, decorating the wall with several rows of archaic icons all diagonal to the main, central pentagram.

Finally she turned her attention back towards him.

"Right," she announced. "In nineteen eighty-four, both the British public and the military first became aware of your presence among them. The Weird Happenings Organisation, a subdivision of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, was assigned to monitor you. Are you with me so far?"

He nodded mutely.

"Then there's the Dai Thomas incident that everyone seems so keen to keep under wraps. During this time you earned the military's trust, although not the public's, and this led to the formation of Excalibur – a covert British Intelligence group." She paused and held her cigarette between her lips, making her appear older than she actually was. "Another intelligence group, Black Air, had always had it in for you though. So they set WHO up for the big fall, right, so they could get a firm foothold in Excalibur's affairs. Am I still on the right track?"

Britain coughed up a fresh gout of blood.

"Yes," he said, his voice dry and harsh.

"So anyways, once they got their grubby lickle hands over WHO, they set about doing UNIT over as well. Blah, blah, blah, skip forward a few years, Genosha and all that shit and suddenly you're right in the dog house."

She bent down, pivoting on the balls of her heels, and leant closer; so close that he could feel the intoxication of her cigarette smoke slowly stain the retina of his eyes.

In the moments since she had arrived, Brian Braddock had found his costume becoming increasingly uncomfortable, the colours of the flag burning the naked flesh beneath and his hands shaking nervously, as if every part of his body wanted nothing more than to tear it away, prove to himself that he was still a human being, still had an identity, still was an individual.

The chance would not arise.

"Then it all went a bit pear-shaped, didn't it, Brian?"

Her voiced dragged him, kicking and screaming, back to reality – the place where no amount of idealism or nationalism could provide salvation.

She leant closer still, breathing harsh nicotine and solvent sighs in uncomfortable gasps, confronting him, dredging up the darkness that his flag held just out of sight.

"You started fucking up then, didn't you?" She taunted. "It wasn't the first time but it was noticeable now, wasn't it? That faerie lass you kept as the token child of the group, you'd always enjoyed giving the orders, hadn't you, Brian? Oh, you were being the 'big man' all right, Brian, you were really fucking in control of things." Her expression became venomous, dangerous even. "It wasn't as if they really mattered though, I mean, they were all cunts weren't they? What did they do to you, Brian, did they tempt you? Yeah, all women are like that, aren't they? Cunts, all of them."

Britain tried to push himself back, away from the madwoman and her accusations, away from the past yet something about her eyes held him in check, kept him there, ready to take the torment.

"It wasn't like that..." he stuttered weakly.

The girl laughed hysterically.

"Nah, course it wasn't." She spat. "You were acting for the 'good of the team', weren't you, old boy?"

She pushed herself closer, her left hand, the nails shattered yet still remaining unhealthily sharp, pushing down into the nest of his groin.

"What do you want of me?" He mouthed the words but no sound came, he was paralysed, held in check by the girl's dangerous eyes.

There was a sharp burning feeling below his torso and he felt the flag, his flag, opening wide, ready to receive, to accept.

From the briefest of moments his eyes flickered downward to where her free hand was poised over his bollocks.

A glint of silver in the pale autumn moonlight and then it was moving downwards, a slow rhythmic motion causing the faintest ghost of an opening to manifest at the tip of his flaccid and shrinking penis.

He wanted to scream out yet his voice was dry.

"Remember," She hissed. "When I send you out as a lamb amongst the wolves, I want you to remember."

The wolves? His eyes asked the question.

She smiled and drew herself up to her full height, a thin line of crimson liquid running down past Saint George's cross and forming puddles around her bare feet.

"There are wolves in England," she said cryptically. "Wolves so big that in the dead of night they come out from underneath the hospitals and steal away all the aborted foetuses for their banquet."

What shall I do now? His eyes whimpered through the masque.

"Bring the others together once more," she said, though not with any human voice. "Bind them in your flag and offer them unification." She paused and looked up towards the Heavens. "But remember that you are here by my grace and that you are here to do my bidding. The wolves are strong but not as strong as me. This is my fight and you, Mister Braddock, are the ace up my sleeve."

She turned her back and made for the mouth of the alleyway, a place where carrion birds hung limp from their pedestals.

In the most pathetic of voices he cried out after her, the searing agonies in his groin climaxing towards orgasm.

"Who are you?" he cried desperately.

She did not turn her back.

"My name is Konstantinova," she replied. "Remember me, Mister Braddock."

The shadows were smiling...

From within her cage of wires, Miki Manson looked up, a knowing expression contorting her face in undue seriousness.

The Anti-God had been drawing his forces together for some time now, twisting reality, moulding it in its own image, corrupting celestials in the most perverted of fashions.

"John..." She whispered. "Something's coming, John...I can feel it."

Churchill cast his glance around the room, his attention now distracted from his study of the Necronomicon.

He rose up from the shadows he had perched upon and instantly felt the tense air swelling in erratic patterns around him.

"We must be prepared for any such eventualities," he announced, repeating it several times beneath his breath as if it were some kind of sacred mantra.

Miki's deep eyes faded in colour, changing with the inevitability of confrontation.

"I'm scared, John," she whispered. "I'm scared of getting so far into it that I won't be able to come back."

Churchill looked through her, past her being and deep into her essence.

"We're all scared, Miki," he whispered.

She swayed her head as if to illustrate the point.

"Where's Rob gone?" she whimpered. "I want Rob to be here."

Churchill nodded grimly.

"He'll be here." Doctor Churchill said, his voice quiet and subdued. "Trust me."

It had been a long time since John Churchill had asked anyone to trust him, a long time since he felt himself worthy of trust but now...these were different circumstances, and different circumstances called for different measures.

Finally he turned to look at her, and she found some comfort in this.

"You know what to do, Miki," he said, his voice remaining nothing more than a whisper.

She nodded her understanding and then came the moment of truth...

Baal sneered.

"Perhaps," It announced. "We may yet come to some agreement."

Christian sighed in relief.

"Black Air will make your enemies ours," he said, without thinking.

"That is good," the Anti-God replied. "My homunculettes have diminished in number over these past aeons. It shall be..." It paused, as if searching for the right word. "Refreshing."

Layer over layer, the dead flesh seethed with capitulate illnesses, insects that nested within the groin of its being, hatching their young within the moist pit of its redundant sexual organs.

Since Faustus had it waited, anticipating the future and knowing that one day it would be released.

Now, in the beginning of the arse end of the new millennium, that time had come.

The messenger arrived swiftly, beckoning haste with its urgent messages and demands but Mephistopheles had waited so long for this moment that it would not be pressured into hurry by some contemptuous inferior.

The creature squirmed with impatience, just like all creatures of such a low caste.

"Patience." The large creature warned, its voice dangerously low.

The icons leered out at him, dull chalk patterns scratched across the walls of Blake's dark Satanic mills.

Patterns of insecurity imbedded on the surface of humanity's failure.

Several seconds after having moved into an upright position, he began falling again, his costume stained by a congealing mixture of vomit and blood.

His sins had finally uncovered him, crawling up through the nation's broken evolutionary ladder and pulling him back into the darkness where they could dissect his weaknesses and spawn their parasites within his innards.

His entire body shattered against the broken asphalt world, bones snapping and bursting through the membrane of skin in a symphony of agony and lavender bruises.

The pavement around him creased in a dangerous sigh and something began to surface.

The woman's voice echoed through out his memories and it seemed she had been there at every junction of his life.

Every time he fell back into his alcoholism, every time he 'allowed' himself to enter a woman he didn't give two shits about and every time he had forced himself between the legs of the faerie child.

The temptation was stronger but the ghosts were ever-present.

He could see everything clearly, her soft innocent flesh pushed beneath his brutal masculine hands and his penis shattering her virginity, pushing himself further into her intimate regions and violating the most sacred places of womanhood.

But she was still there, her violent attack on his past mutilating his awareness.

Suddenly he was back in the present, the corrupted pavement around him and shattering his mind and then it was facing him.

The hideous deformed scar tissue of sentience waiting in front of him, its arms spread wide open, beckoning him to submit his life to the bleak array of filth that covered its bleeding and exposed rib cage.

He smiled weakly and submitted without a second thought.

Miki frowned.

"I can't get a fix on it." she protested, her mind's eye casting shadows over all her lives. "It's almost as if this thing is not corporeal."

Cainer cast a worried glance around the desiccated interior of Saint Paul's cathedral.

"This is bad, right?" he said, voicing his fears.

Churchill nodded grimly.

"Yes, Mister Cainer, this is bad." He flicked the Necronomicon wide open. "It means that Baal is already employing his ultradimensional technology."

There was a dark, lengthy silence.

"If this is so bad then why do I get the feeling that all this isn't directed at us for once?" he asked.

Churchill smiled cynically.

"You mean Baal might be developing a social life?" he asked in a tone that was not suited to his usual serious scientific approach.

"I've found it, I've found it." Miki squealed with joy.

Both Churchill and Cainer moved forwards, dangerously close to her.

"Where is it?" Cainer asked nervously.

Miki laughed deliriously.

"It's gone now. I think it was here to collect something," she offered. "But I don't know what it wanted."

John Churchill allowed himself a brief moment of relaxation.

"I'm sure we'll find out," he said quietly. "Though I'm not sure I'm looking forward to it."

The hordes of Hell snickered loudly, serving only to increase Christian's anxiety.

Baal looked from the quivering lump of meat that stained the ground below his throne towards the Black Air agent.

"This is your greatest threat?" It shouted, his tone tinged by a twisted mirth.

Christian nodded dumbly.

"How the man reflects the nation." The Arch-Prince of Darkness mused. "Still, I believe we can find a use for him."

Christian Fry nodded again.

"Would you like my employers to deliver the rest of the goods?" he asked.

Baal twisted his head in what Fry assumed was a 'shake' of the 'head'.

"No," It stated. "No, I enjoy these little games." The non-dimensional Lord of Hell paused. "But be sure to fulfill your side of the bargain, my Black Air friend. I don't think I need warn you of what will happen if I find your people late in their payment."

Christian nodded eagerly.

"Is it okay if I go now?" he whimpered, quiet as a child.

Baal's hideous grin broadened.

"Oh my dear, Mister Fry, I'm afraid I never let the messengers leave this most holy of places."

Christian Fry gulped and desperately searched for a method of exit and then without warning his ribcage burst open, a scared and malformed phallus protruding from it, the semen glimmering in the sickening flesh burnt light.

Baal grinned to itself and picked the remnants of lesser beings from between its extensive rows of teeth.

Now was the beginning of a new putrid dawn of desecration and Baal had seen how abundant the corpses would come flowing down the river Styx.

Every thing was perfect, a beautiful blossoming of flesh coloured flowers.

He reached down and snatched the impaled corpse from the dust-coloured ground beneath him.

"Welcome to the future, Mister Fry," It beamed. "We do so hope you enjoy your stay."

The sacred caverns of Hades echoed with the Anti-God's laughter and then the future began...

In earnest...