Authors’ Commentary on “The Dark Arts”

Hell, from what I have read thus far, is a strange and wondrous place, filled with immediate tortures reserved for the blackest of souls and yet I found it to be more. Hell is a vicious cycle involving repeated pasts with a shred of possible change all the while knowing that there is no hope.

That was one of the reasons why I used Clarence Darrow in my story; to me, I wanted someone who would be the least likely to wound up in Hell and yet sadly resign himself to his present eternal state knowing that there was no chance of ever leaving. I also used Darrow because he was an agnostic; what better place to send him than to a place that he once thought did not exist? What better torture and revelation of the dark side than to inject him into a plane where everyone has a place and everything has a fatal price?

Penemue, the fallen angel who introduced ink and paper to Mankind and cured their “stupidity”, was used primarily as a counterpoint to Darrow’s stoic nature. I wanted to use someone who thought of his station as advancement, a setting himself apart from the rest because he is worthy and arrogant enough to do so.

Penemue, then, is Darrow’s dark side, a shadow of the shred of dignity Darrow still holds in Lost Angeles. The idea of suing the fallen angel of ink and paper on the grounds of plagiarism seemed to be both a joke in everyone else’s eyes except for the one bringing the suit forward and yet a spoke in the vicious cycle of Hellish life. D

arrow knows that his client is innocent and yet there is a shred of wonder; this is Hell after all, a place where one can get away with anything . . . and still pay a horrible price for it.