(("Loverboy" Vinnie Lane has checked into his hotel room in Phoenix, Arizona, early, as he always does. Having stashed his bags in the small closet and pulled off his black motorcycle boots, he drops backward onto the twin sized bed and reaches for the remote control and the hotel phone. Through the window, clouds begin to roll over the sky and a fine mist of rain spatters against the glass pane. Lifting the phone to his ear, Loverboy dials a few numbers he reads from an info card on the table next to him.))

Loverboy: Hey, yeah... room service, right? This is Lane in room 504. I need one of those ridiculously long submarine sandwiches, you know, like they have in cartoons? Also a whole chocolate cake and a 12-pack of Yuengling beer. What do you mean you don't have Yuengling? What do you have? Pabst!?!? Fine, fine, that'll be fine. Jesus.

((Loverboy rubs his temples with a frown before checking his Nokia cell phone and switching on the hotel room television.))

TV: Troy and Abed in a rooooooooooooooooooooooleplay!

((Loverboy presses the buttons on his derelict flip phone, viewing his text messages and missed calls. He stops with a quizzical look on his face as he reads one of the messages, then flips the phone shut.))

Loverboy: Looks like LH Harrison is having some strange reactions to our encounter with Cain last week. A guy with the kind of spiritual faith LH has is kinda susceptible to those sorts of things, I guess. Exorcisms, possessions, glossolalia... that sort of stuff is easy to believe in if you already buy into the fairy tale of an invisible man, you know? Cain is a frightening guy, sure, but... he's no demon. There's no such thing.

((Loverboy settles in and begins watching the TV show, but his eyes are soon growing heavy. Eventually, long blinks evolve into shut eyes, and the soft sound of a buzzing snore emanates from the mouth of the rock n' roll megastar.))

The maelstrom intensifies.
Loverboy's bed
rises on a swell
, turning and lifting the sheets and blankets into a cyclone
of fabric.
The window opens
and the curtains gust
inward in a second cone
of whirlpool air.
Loverboy is adrift on a sea of black and purple, silent tendrils
of lightning dance
across in arcs
while he looks from side to side,
watching the fabrics transform into gaping maws of teeth and tongues.
Scylla and Charybdis.
The siren's song of
wind tearing through
the air intensifies.

There is a black figure, impossibly tall. A titan above the cosmic storm. Loverboy screams into the void, but the abyss swallows his voice. His mouth is left an impotent gesture on a frightened face as his wild eyes dart around, trying to focus as the sea becomes black, and pinpoints of light begin to grow into galaxies. The whole of creation is unfurled like a flag on a battlefield. The shadow moves, and Loverboy once again screams - this time, the universe freezes in place and goes silent, other than his wavering, impassioned plea.

Cain? Cain is that you?

The words do not echo, they are simply absorbed. Once screams, now gone. No answer. No movement. Only the shadow darkening and growing, until it is no longer a man, no longer anything, but everything. The body of "Loverboy" Vinnie Lane hangs, crucified on nothing, dangling above an endless ocean of black. Slowly, Lane starts to tremble. He hangs his head, waiting for his inevitable deconstruction.

Open your eyes, Vinnie.

The voice is everywhere at once. Soft, but powerful, like a distant roll of thunder or the vibration of an impending earthquake. Loverboy snaps his head up, looking for the source.

Open your mind.

Cain? I beat you! I won!

If only you were so lucky, Loverboy... I am not Cain.

In an instant, the blackness solidifies into obsidian scales, shining from a light reflected far away. Loverboy is prostrate against an undulating serpent which fills eternity. A backdrop of space and stars made of an ouroboros, and infinite snake.

Above Loverboy, two suns nova in the black. Red. Infernal. Spirals of ruby fire orbiting onyx black centers. Eyes.

Who... ?

Don't you know already, Loverboy?

I... I don't understand...

Of course you don't. Your mind can't comprehend the limits of space and time. You struggle with visuals to find one that fits.

What am I to you now, Vinnie?

A dragon?

A golem?

A virus?

What do you see?




Loverboy's eyes widen to impossible size, his pupils glowing from within.

Starfire.

The entire world is white. Snowblind, Loverboy stumbles in the shadowless room of pure energy. Rubbing at his eyes and crawling, until a hand reaches down to him and takes him by the hand.

You?

The hand in the exquisitely cut suit has alabaster skin nearly the same tone as the whitewashed backdrop, though rivers of iridescent stars flow through its veins. Loverboy takes the hand and stands, looking into the eyes of forever.

Azrael?

The one and only.

You're just a man. What is this?

None of us are just anything. Look again into my eyes.

Teeth. Where there once were irises and pupils are now rows of gnashing teeth, mimicking those filling the stretching mouth below them. The teeth grow and spread, and Loverboy spirals into them, swallowed by the fires burning below creation.








Hey! Hey, man, wake up! Christ!

((Loverboy snaps awake, blood leaking from his bitten tongue spilling over his lips. The hotel employee is standing over him, shaking him viciously.

Employee: You were having a seizure or something man, you were screaming. I think we should call you an ambulance.


((The employee stands and moves toward the phone, but Loverboy jumps to his feet behind him and drops him through the room service cart with a sudden reverse DDT. The employee is unconscious, lying among a pile of twisted metal and broken glass. Beer and food scattered everywhere. Loverboy finds his boots and pulls them back on, retrieving his bags and walking out the door to find a new place to stay.))





((Outside, through the window, the sun shines through the clouds.))