Leaving Las Vegas

Sin City is a place like no other.

People come here for fun and to have a good time and they keep returning every year. Some people come here for their final good time, choosing this as their final destination. They either go out with a bang, spending their last money on a spree, trying to get into as much drama as possible, or they quietly blow their head off in a hotel room with a beautiful view. Others move here to retire, to spend their last days in warmth and with sparkles.

My story is different. I keep trying to leave this place, but I cannot. The Spiritual Battle of Las Vegas is not over yet. I am stuck in a beautiful nightmare – I must dance with the devil until there are no songs left.

I have a gnawing suspicion that what the Angels of Hell told me earlier this year before I came here, it was not some enigmatic riddle or a prophetic warning about a possible future. They didn’t speak about the future when they explained to me the fate of suiciders. They spoke about the past. My past. I am one of the suiciders. I am one of the Lost Souls of Las Vegas.

Like Rosemary of Rosemary’s Baby, I am stuck in a time loop. Bound to always come back to the city until the original plot gets resolved. ‘This is where your story circles the drain,’ the Angels said. ‘You either drain that which brought you here in the first place, or you drain your luck.’ Belial who is known as the Punisher Angel told me the same – ‘Maybe they want you to fix things rather than creating new problems.’

And so here I am again. Shivering. Shaking. I didn’t want to be here. I moved all my stuff, made arrangements to move to South Dakota, far away from here, to live with and marry a man I was in love with.

Darling, why are you always trying to leave me?

But it was a cheat, I had summoned him using a Demonic Pact. This was never guaranteed, that we would be allowed to live together, or that it would be with him who fulfills the Pact.

You know that you could stay.

Since all Pacts are, essentially, mere negotiations over Conditions of one’s Premature Release from Hell, I am being shown my deeds that led me here.

It’s all Free Will, after all.

Lost Souls of Las Vegas. This was the name of a show I saw here. First, in May, accompanied by the physical manifestation of the Prince of Darkness himself. I felt a tremendous desire to stay here with H.I.M. He didn’t want me to leave, but I had to. I had made a promise. It went to hell… I should have taken the hint when the Devil’s Carriage dropped me at the Arrivals hall of the airport, instead of Departures.

I saw the same show, the Lost Spirits Seance, with a host of Belial on the last night before moving to South Dakota on Halloween. Things unraveled so fast there that we broke up under the eclipsed full moon, and in less than a week, I came back. In shock.

Staring at the colored mirage of Red Rock, wondering what exactly is this place. Where am I.

Am I in Hell?

That was a rhetorical question. I know that I am in Hell, I have seen endless proof of it. Now I know why. In a past that actually happened, I killed myself here. I did not technically kill myself here, but this is where I decided not to live, where I made my choices which I knew would lead to my untimely departure. I had moved here in 2019 for love, and he rented out an apartment in the Turnberry Towers, which were yellow then. The colors changed, because of time travel magic. I died in the vast deserts of Utah, alone via an accidental overdose. He shot himself dead three months later, out of loneliness and guilt. Another tale of Romeo and Juliet replayed itself on the silver screen that is life. Somebody went back to the past and altered it so that the initial connection never happened.

When Lucifer told me that I earned my Right to Leave, he did not speak of the future. As I thought, that should I at some point lose my will to live completely, I was granted permission to kill myself here in Las Vegas. It was a mercy granted over what already happened. It’s obvious. It’s why I felt suicidal last summer, and this summer again after I returned to the city. I am reliving the past that exists somewhere. I am in hell, reliving my own decisions.

There is something special about this place, some redeeming quality. A neutral place that is governed by a treaty, a truce between Heaven and Hell that allows for the redemption of those like me who are stuck between the timelines, and impossible duties they’ve taken upon themselves via Pacts.

If you stay here long enough, timelines will realign.

This is what He said. All of my surroundings seem to be made out of elements of every single place that I have lived since my fatal visit to the city four years ago. The floor, comes from Eugene Oregon. The fridge, looking exactly like the one I had in Upstate New York. There are even the brown tiles in the shower that were taken straight from Mexico, where I lived on the Riviera after I emigrated, the front door and the backyard, recounting every single step of the way just like the Catholic devotion of the Calvary, the Via Dolorosa.

Meaning.

Lucifer speaks in short sentences, even single words.

This is the meaning. There lies the treasure.

The meaning of my whole pilgrimage. It’s dawning on me.

Do not leave the game until you’re down to your very last card. Don’t walk away too soon, without the payout. Stay at the table. Stay with me. Stay with me!

Lucifer