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mass of rotting pale pudding who rules this worthless
world, when I stroll out from the blackened basement of the
universe, spreading madness like a plague? But you would
deny us both that pleasure, and for what? The promise of a
Murder God that—well, he hasn’t even specified what you’d
win, has he? But so long as she wishes you to play along, off
you go, like some blind idiot dog, tail wagging behind you.
I was forced to trick you, as you’d rather be an obedient pup
than a proper Wolf.”
What foolishness, these tricks and games! I would have
seen you freed, angel, had you but asked! What mayhem
and death you might have wrought! But now may you rot
forever upon your stinking mattress! My father was clearly
embarrassed by the creature’s act of being felled by his
blow, but we should have known that such a being would
be resilient to an easy butchering. As for myself, I was
somewhat ashamed for having stopped short of freeing
Deleriael, but I was now uncertain that insanity was the kin
to dreams, as I had once believed.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, great big talking
axe,” Deleriael replied wryly, “but madness is never a
straightforward affair. It’s certainly farther afield than your
no-nonsense approach of destroying everything. But should
either of you have a change of heart, all you have to do
to find me is lose your mind!” The angel and his endless
bed of lunatics laughed mindlessly as they began to fade
into twilight’s confusion of light and darkness. Deleriael’s
grinning maw was the last to disappear, a Cheshire cat to the
very last.
I laid my weeping sisters back to sleep, assuring them
as I placed kisses upon their foreheads that they would soon
meet Mister Hide, from whom they might elicit a more
authentic murder.

316 | Mark Anzalone