Potato Peels had awakened from his metamorphosis. A faint scent of lotus blossom still clung to him, nothing more.

Like someone emerging from a hypnosis show, he felt himself turning ultramarine blue with anger and helplessness. Furious at Toutrec’s disappearance and startled by Marilyn’s as well, he realized he had been duped. Not once did the thought of a kidnapping cross his mind. He anticipated possible reprimands. Laughing three times while on duty, leaving the gates of paradise open, and allowing a future damned soul to escape would certainly earn him a very long lecture. He knew it. Worse still, he would be forced to wear a cap of little gray clouds for quite some time.

— Pull yourself together! We are not going to let ourselves be plucked! If I catch Toutrec, he’ll become an emergency matchstick in Hell! he shouted, beside himself with rage.

Immediately, the angel entered paradise with his wings fully spread. Were the gates still open behind him? He did not care in the slightest, convinced it would take only a moment to find the little mayor. In any case, as guardian, he had special privileges. So they remained wide open.

When he swore that Henri would see the devil… he had no idea he was in fact becoming a prophet of doom.

A few moments of eternity earlier, at the angel’s third laugh, a particularly sneaky and cunning little figure had quietly drawn near. No one noticed. Small in stature and lazy by nature, Minus Cule was a mischievous little red demon. He loved spying near the entrance to paradise. He adored the thrill of peeking and peering beneath the robes of the gatekeeping angels. It was almost his guilty pleasure.

Minus had just seen the forbidden. He felt like a hunter who had bagged the greatest prey of his career. He had witnessed what he was never meant to see: a sleeping angel, the panic of his awakening, a deserted entrance to paradise, and—unbelievable to the horned voyeur—gates left wide open.

Forgetting that he could have feasted his eyes on the sight, he rushed off to inform his superior of a rare opportunity: a clear path.

What a dreadful boss! Say what you will… his real name is Rose des Vents.

Upon hearing that name, many men would puff themselves up with pride, claiming they had always suspected this monster was a woman. Yet although he bears a feminine name, his body appears male. Caution, ladies—do not jump to conclusions or laugh too quickly. Ladies and gentlemen, Rose des Vents is an asexual being. The result: a horrible frustration. His favorite weapon for releasing his tormented libido? Using other people’s sexuality through twisted fantasies.

Rose thus resembles a tall horned man. Bald, he proudly—of course—sports a teenage-style goatee. His feet are not hooves but four large toes that seem to sulk at one another. His eyes are red from unhealthy fatigue and excessive consumption of bootleg alcohol. His skin is shockingly white, whiter even than an albino’s. A lack of happiness in the sun, they say. The name Rose des Vents suits him perfectly, for he is notoriously flatulent. Have we not heard it said before: “It smells like the devil”?

For hundreds of centuries, Rose had shown an unrelenting desire to invade paradise. Perhaps a long-lost dream from childhood? Less occupied at the dawn of time, he had drafted a simple and precise plan of invasion: “Attack!” And now the right moment had come to wipe out all joy and spread paralysis across paradise. Rose and his little snitch of a sidekick could think of only one word…: Attack!

Emerging from the darkness, General Rose hurled himself, pitchfork first, into his destructive undertaking. Following the leader in this savage invasion came the little devils, demons, winged droppings, devilries, and other sorrowful inventions. Only a few tail-pointed jailers remained below to guard the damned.

That immense, fairy-like library in Eden’s vestibule was the first place to be desecrated. Pillaging! Ransacking! Vandalism! Without restraint, the gang stripped every book, mixing up their pages. Directories, registries, inscriptions, universal lists of the living and the dead, and every holy book of every kind and religion found on site were gleefully defiled. The entire library, along with all its contents, became corrupted.

Thus, in an ancient holy book several thousand years old, one could now find passages praising the sexual freedom advocated by modern-day cults. Likewise, devils attributed to saints miracles performed by others. All the prophets now parted the waters horizontally. A new reference emerged: Civa was crucified—hence the problem of using a star-shaped cross with seven branches. Even the false prophets received a dose of Potato Peels’s medicine: they finally began to say intelligent things.

These actions caused great turmoil among the living. On Earth, it was as though Henri had been the last man to die.

Despite sophisticated planning nearly as old as the millennia, the scheme contained a major flaw—a backlash. The distortion of time had the unpredictable consequence of preventing human beings from dying. Thus, in the world of the living, executions never ended. Accidents that should have been fatal produced no corpses; murders failed; the dying simply refused to die. It is not easy to eat breakfast with bullets in your belly!

Hard, after an accident, to return home completely drunk with one leg tucked under your arm! Funeral homes were going bankrupt. Faith healers found themselves unemployed. Gravediggers were recycling cheap coffins… into soapboxes.

The zealous preachers could no longer thunder in their sermons. Their usual arguments and threats became meaningless. They babbled nonsense without end. They crafted gems that made uncultured jewelers laugh their heads off. — You’ll go straight to hell if our profits do not rise by next week. — Repent, you poor in spirit! — Let the meek be proud…

Rose touched, with his pale fingers, a tree with silver leaves. Its colors changed, like a cruel and unnatural autumn. The blushing leaves fell at once. The General of the Winds would have loved to have angels within earshot, just to hear them blaspheme at the sight of the havoc.

But where was God? Did He still exist?

After wreaking havoc at the gates of paradise, the first infernal invaders pushed onward. They entered triumphantly through those doors, staining the threshold with their unwelcome passage. Yet they advanced without noise or shouting, confident in their ability to surprise and establish their dominion.

Cruelties, sadism. Every angel encountered in their path was lavishly drenched in the stickiest molasses. Any attempt to fly off in search of help… neutralized! The little devils poured pink liquid soap into the halos of the saints. Their attempts at prayer drifted away in soap bubbles that never burst.

The little demons drew on several tricks from their bags. As on Halloween, they offered special chewing gum to the souls—chewed willingly or by force. A product of satanic confectionery, it tasted like old mint candies, but beneath the flavor lay a dreadful amnesia-inducing agent. No one remembered their own name anymore.

Consider the following conversation…
— Hello, my name is… My name is?… Uh… Tell me yours first…
— Of course! I don’t remember it. No, you first!
— All right, my name is…
— Do we know each other?
— Apparently! I don’t remember you.
— Me neither! I don’t even remember myself!
— Do we remember us?
— I only remember that we do not remember.
— That’s something! Now, what were we saying?… But who are you?

From one faction to the next, this widespread state of amnesia fostered an unprecedented déjà-vu phenomenon. Unprecedented indeed! Then came the powder they threw into everyone’s eyes. Everything—or every soul—touched by it took on the appearance of a mirror. This magical talcum powder gave them plenty to think about.

One of the many calamities… Through an irritating enchantment, in strange megaphones, they allowed themselves to broadcast the latest sound recordings of Rose des Vents. Like sewer grates from which emerged music even more pallid than what one hears in old elevators.

Let us not dwell on it…!
But where was God?… A question the devil himself did not seem to ask.

His army advanced through paradise with unimaginable speed. A counteroffensive by the forces of good seemed unthinkable, null, impossible. Rose knew full well that he would amuse himself for a long time, for he also knew he would never invade paradise completely. It is a principle of eternity to be… infinite.

No angel, no saint, no soul in paradise could ever have believed in such a catastrophe. No defense existed, because no one could imagine such an upheaval possible.

To believe one knows everything is to ignore what is necessary. The earthly paradise, where Marilyn and Henri were hiding, had not yet been touched by the invasion. A result of divine magic?… No devil had entered it. Not yet.