His eyes opened. they looked down into the murky depths of blackness. The rocking motion made him realize a sensation, wet. He contemplated how he came to this place. his memory was as dark as the inky deep below. Nothing before this gaze into the nighttime sea, floating face down in the ocean, slowly drifting to shore. He then became aware of a new sensation, suffocation.
With a gasping breath he flopped onto his back on the sand of a beach. The waves crashed mercilessly against him, threatening to pull him back into the water he just came out of. Still gulping for air, he made his way out of the water and lay down on the nocturnal beach. Catching his breath, which in itself was an unusual sensation, he stood to look around. The city was quiet. A broad metropolitan cityscape filled his view as he looked around. He was under a pier, though the concept was almost lost upon him. In the shadow of the moonless underside, a shadow moved.
An old man, with a grizzled appearance was walking toward him. he studied the man, the details clear in the almost black under the quay. His head was bald, with a sad comb-over that did nothing to hide his shiny pate. The little hair that tenaciously clung to the side of his head was a wispy gray, looking like nothing so much as gathered cobwebs. the stubble that graced his chin could have given sandpaper a run for its money. He was filthy. He wore a random assortment of clothing that looked little more then a sad collection of rags sown into clothing. the only odd fact was the clerical collar around his neck.
As he approached he said, “I've been waiting for you.” The old man chuckled at the look upon the confused face of the castaway. “Lets get you somewhere warm and get you some clothes.” Suddenly he realized that he was naked, with that discovery came more newness, cold.
The old man quietly lead him down the beach to a fire he had going in a barrel. While he rubbed his hands together over the fire, the old man rummaged through a box of old bottles and paper leavings. He came back with a respectable looking outfit of jeans, t-shirt, and a coat. “I think these will fit you, but i don't have any underwear. You'll have to get that yourself.”
He quickly got dressed, and felt decidedly warmer, “Thank you ...” he left silence to fill.
“at, just call me Pat.” The old man laughed. “I've been waiting for so long, I was beginning to wonder if you would even come at all.”
He looked at Pat, “How do you know me?”
Pat looked him right in the eye, “I know things, fella me lad, and that,” He pointed up to the sky, “was a downright nasty piece of business.” He placed his own hands over the fire. “Now which one are you.”
“Michael.” The name came out without conscious thought. It was like a forgotten memory that spoke of its own volition.
Pat seemed taken aback, he looked Michael up and down as if seeing him in a new light. “I never thought that you would come here.”
Confused, Michael asked. “Where is here, exactly?”
“Here is Deamopolis, or more generally, Earth.”
“Deamopolis? a city?”
“Well, thats not its real name, but so overrun with these damned demons, thats what I've taken to calling it.” He gave out a nasty chuckle. “Besides, where and when aren't important, how and why, now those are.”
Tiring of standing over the fire Michael sat down near the standing Pat. “So do you know how and why?”
“Of course I do, I wouldn't be much of a seer if i didn't” Pat sat down. “You are a part of the second purging.”
“The second purging of what exactly?”
With a sigh and a stare upward, “Heaven.”
“I am a part of the second purging of Heaven.” Michael shook his head in disbelief. With no memory, he couldn't say no, but doubt was easy knowing the concepts.
“Thats right.” Pat said with an insular grin, “To understand the second, you have to understand the first. So lets start at the beginning.” Pat leaned back to get comfortable for a long telling. “The first purging was done right after the rise and fall of the Morning Star, or Lucifer if you will. He was cast from Heaven, and all of those who followed him were rounded up as well. These then were taken and cast out as well. This we call the Purging. Those angels then became demons, their fault, following Lucifer in that idiotic plan of his and turning from God.
“There are some that say that this was all done in accordance with the plan of God and with his knowledge for the sake of demonstration of divine will and that Lucifer's actions were necessary to balance that of good and evil so that the demonstration would be there for all of God's creatures. Some say, its just the way it was. But either way, the purging of Heaven commenced. But it left a lot of hard feelings all around.
“There were those that felt that they may have been a part of the rebellion if they were played upon and weren't too happy to think that. They then began to doubt themselves and their actions, until a mass hysteria flooded over all the Angels. They sought to distance themselves from anything that could possibly make them turn against God and sought to remove those bad things. Those things deemed immoral, crooked, evil, and bad, were then forcefully removed from inside the angels.
“But it came with an unexpected side effect.” He pointed a stubby finger at Michael, “You.”
Michael looked poleaxed. “Me? you mean to say that I'm the cast off bad things of these angels?”
“Yes and no.” He smirked, “You are the cast off portions of the believed bad things of one angel.”
“If I'm cast off, and split, how can I be alive?”
Pat sat up to get comfortable, “you are alive because the question is, 'how do you kill a memory?'”