Introduction: Back Into Hell

In the fall of 2004, I walked into the Campus Center of Allegheny College (where I was a newly-minted Freshman) with a notebook, my CD players, and a burned copy of Bad Religion's "No Control." An hour or so later, I had produced a two-page short story called "The Interrogation," a gruesome little tale about a scoundrel getting what he deserves. I typed it up and it sat in my Documents folder for a few months.

As I was finishing writing Adventures in Real Life, I started thinking about Darrus, the vengeful creature who had willingly entered the service of the Devil. The character was only a few lines of dialogue and a name, but he had a certain amount of history to him--his death and the name he bore in life were explicitly stated, as had the notion that he'd been a martyr who'd had the unpleasant fate of seeing the cause he sacrificed himself for ultimately fail. I developed him a bit and began writing From Here to Hereafter, which used "The Interrogation" as its first chapter. There were enough loose threads that I was able to write a sequel, Where Demons Dare.

The following summer, I read an article about a church (I believe in south Florida, but I'm not certain) that had been defiled by the man who was supposed to be its preacher, turning what had been a booming congregation of over a thousand Protestants (I believe they were either Methodists or Baptists) into a dozen or so worshipers of the Devil, performing ritualistic sexual abuses in what was once a holy site. I spent a week or so mulling over the situation, what it must have been like for those involved even tangentially, and of course Darrus, the agent of hell, crept back into my mind. I adapted the story to Darrus' dystopian version of the 23rd century, and had intended it to focus largely around the fall of Pastor Carter and his imbibing a vial of blood from a fallen angel (hence the title, taken from the old saying that blood is thicker than water, taken literally). Instead, it became a prequel describing how a normal human becomes a demon, turning him into Dahl, a doppelganger that had a bit part in Where Demons Dare.

The three stories formed a nice conglomerate, for the most part. I had started developing a story arch in Where Demons Dare that was an extension of an arc that more or less concluded in From Here to Hereafter, involving Darrus' son Lucian and the prophet Ross Gibson. Unfortunately, Lucian's half of the plot didn't go very far, and I got complaints that his chapters didn't fit with Darrus'. The feedback was negative enough that I left Lucian out of Thicker Than Water entirely (being a prequel, this was logical; Lucian would have been about eight years old during the events of Thicker Than Water). With the exception of Lucian's arc, Darrus' stories seemed finished, requiring no more input on my part.

Darrus, however, was a difficult character to forget. In the summer of 2006, after a year's hiatus, I wrote a new Darrus story, much shorter than the others. I posted it in Six Shooter, where I don't think anyone noticed it. It was titled simply "Good VS Evil." Since I don't think most of you reading this have noticed its presence, I've reposted it here. Good VS Evil brings up a few interesting points in Darrus' history; he used the (fictional) AK-98 rifle during the brief World War IV (as a side note, AK-98 stands from Automatic Kalashnikov 2198, so named as its design is directly descended from the AK-47 and AK-74. Yes, it fires bullets; in Darrus' world, all guns fire bullets. I dislike the notion that any setting that takes place more than ten years in the future uses non-projectile weaponry. Also not noted before was that World War IV's actual combat operations lasted roughly six weeks. As stated in From Here to Hereafter, the world fell to Rehnquist not with a roar, but a whispter), and is also the first story to note the color of Darrus' eyes.

At the beginning of summer 2007, I was itching to write a new Darrus story, but didn't have a plotline for it. As it happened, about a month later I got my hands on a copy of the newest Bad Religion disk, "New Maps of Hell," and happened to hear a news story about what was possibly the most heinous crime I've ever heard of. Sharing its parentage with the methods that brought Where Demons Dare and Thicker Than Water into being, I present Subjectivity, the latest story in this line. I hope to tie up Lucian's threads a bit this time around, and also give him a stronger presence overall. Other than that, I make no promises for Subjectivity, but I hope you enjoy it. At least, as much as one can enjoy a piece of dystopian fiction focusing Hell itself.