When Angels Fall

by Stephanie Jackson

  “Great,” Dani said dryly. “Angel lawyers.”

  Gabriel laughed, “I’ve never thought of them in that way, but I guess it fits.”

  “So you testify in God’s court?” she asked.

  “No, not me personally,” he said. “The people I watch over are the ones that have the capacity to cross over into true evil. If they do I smite them, and send their souls to Tartarus or to God for immediate judgment.”

  “Who’s doing your job while you’re with me?” she asked.

  Gabriel looked at her, “Other angels, I would imagine. They can’t smite a human as I can, but they can surely kill them. They also can’t send a soul straight to Judgment. All the souls they collect will go to Tartarus, where they will remain until Judgment Day, when life on this world is at its end.

  Dani glanced down at her wrist where she normally wore her watch, but it wasn’t there. She’d forgotten to put it on before they’d left her home for the last time.

  Gabriel smiled, “It’s 5:47 a.m. Is there somewhere you need to be?”

  “I’m just getting hungry, but the Pancake House doesn’t open until 6:00,” she said. “If we start walking now we should get there right when they open. But you can’t go in without a shirt and shoes.”

  “I think I can get away with it,” he said and held his hand out to her. “Lead the way.”

  5.

  Gabriel was a little surprised when they walked into the small diner a few minutes later.

  “Are you really hungry or did you just need an excuse to come see your friend?” Gabriel asked Dani when he saw Donna taking the order of an older couple sitting in the corner booth of the restaurant.

  “I could eat,” Dani said with a smile. “And since we were so close to the diner anyway, I figured we might as well eat here. Donna working here is just a bonus.”

  “Where in the hell have you been?” Donna asked after she’d handed the couples order to the cook. “I’ve been calling you for two days! I even called the salon thinking that you must of gone back early, but nobody there had heard from you, either.”

  “Sorry about that,” Dani said. “We’ve been visiting some friends of Gabriel’s.”

  Donna led them over to a table on the other side of the restaurant. Gabriel sat beside Dani, and Donna took a seat on the other side of the table. Gabriel looked around the diner. The wallpaper looked old and faded and the floor had seen before days, but the food smelled excellent.

  “You couldn’t have called?” Donna chided.

  “I would have, but I left my phone at the house,” Dani said. “Why were you trying so hard to find me?”

  “You haven’t heard what happened at Kicker’s after we left the other night?” Donna asked Dani. Dani shook her head. “Apparently someone called in about a bar fight, but when the police got there they said that everyone in the bar was unconscious.”

  “Must have been one hell of a bar fight?” Dani said.

  Donna laughed, “No, they think it must have been some sort of a gas leak, but they haven’t found a source yet. Did you smell anything before we left the bar?”

  “Me? No, I was as drunk as you were. I don’t remember much about that night,” Dani said, and the turned to Gabriel with mischief dancing in her eyes. “How about you, Gabriel? What do you think could have caused all those poor people to pass out?”

  Gabriel took Dani’s hand and kissed it, “Maybe it was Divine Intervention.”

  Donna looked at their hands and smiled, “I see the two of you have come out of the closet about your relationship.”

  “I was forced to admit to myself that I love Dani more than anything else in creation,” Gabriel said. “I was lucky to find that she love me a little in return.”

  “I love you a little?” Dani asked, raising her eyebrow at him.

  Gabriel smiled at her and pulled her chair closer to his, “Do you love me more than a little?”

  Donna ignored them and continued on with her conversation, “I also heard that the police found a man’s body in the cemetery that your mom’s buried in.”

  “It’s really not that odd to find a body in a cemetery,” Gabriel said. “That is where you put them.”

  “It’s odd to find a fresh one lying on top of the ground,” Donna said and leaned across the table. “I heard from the cops that come in here that the man had a hole through him the size of a softball. They said his heart had been torn out. What could do something like that?”

  “I have no idea,” Dani said smiling, and looked at Gabriel. “But I’m sure the man vexed his killer.”

  “Yes, I’m positive that his killer was vexed,” Gabriel said, smiling.

  “You two are weird, so I’m gonna leave you alone and go get you some food.” Donna said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “She didn’t ask us what we want to eat,” Gabriel said, watching Donna walk back to the counter.

  “She never asks her friends what they want, because she doesn’t let them tip her,” Dani said. “She says you’ll eat what she brings you and be happy to get it.”

  Donna returned a few minutes later with plates piled high with bacon, eggs, and fried potatoes.

  “Enjoy,” Donna said, and went to greet several customers that had just entered the diner.

  “Donna seems to be up on all the latest local news,” Gabriel said, digging into the food.

  “She’s here Monday though Friday from opening until the end of the lunch rush,” Dani explained. “That’s two different shifts of cops. They come in and talk about everything that’s happened during their shift, and Donna hears it all. Not much happens in Clarksville that she doesn’t hear about it first.”

  “I thought she went to Cosmetology School with you?” Gabriel said. “What’s she doing working in a diner?”

  “She does hair out of her house from three in the afternoon until around nine at night,” Dani said. “She’s doing both jobs until she has enough money to open her own solon. She’s been saving money for three years now.

  “She’s exhausted most of the time, but she only needs another five grand to get her started. She figures she can save that if she stays here another two years.”

  Gabriel was impressed by Donna’s drive to succeed. He glanced around the diner again and spotted a plastic case full of scratch off lottery tickets. Why not?

  “Give me two dollars?” Gabriel said to Dani.

  Dani pulled her small wallet from the duffel bag and handed him the bills, “What are you doing?”

  “Watch and see,” he said and walked over to where Donna was leaning against the counter waiting for the food orders to come up, and held the two dollar bills out to her.

  Donna looked at the money, “What’s this?”

  “Consider it a tip,” Gabriel said.

  “No way,” Donna said, “I don’t accept tips from friends.”

  “We’re not technically friends,” Gabriel said. “I insist.”

  She took the money from his hand, and Gabriel said, “Now buy that lottery ticket.”

  “I’d just as soon throw the cash in the garbage,” Donna said. “Those things are a waste of good money.”

  “It’s money that you didn’t want anyway,” Gabriel said. “Buy the ticket. What do you have to lose?”

  “Two dollars,” Donna sighed and went behide the counter. “Which one?”

  Gabriel pointed at a brightly colored $2 ticket, “That one.”

  Donna pulled the ticket, rang up the purchase on the register, and came back around the counter.

  “Go ahead,” Gabriel said nodding at the ticket.

  Donna pulled a dime from her tip pouch and scratched the little boxes on the ticket. And then Gabriel heard her catch her breath.

  “That can’t be right,” Donna said quietly and raised her eyes to Gabriel. “It says I won $15,000.”

  Gabriel smiled, “Congratulations.”

  She tried to hand the ticket to him, “This is yours. I used your money to buy it.”

 
; “No, you used your money to buy it,” Gabriel said, pushing her hand back. “All I did was tip you for doing your job.”

  She stared at him for a few more moments and the screamed, “I just won $15,000!”

  She ran to Dani, who’d jumped up when Donna screamed, and danced around the diner with her.

  “How did you know?” Donna asked Gabriel when she’d calmed down a bit. “How did you know that lottery ticket would win?”

  “Just a lucky guess,” Gabriel said.

  “Bullshit,” Donna said. “But thank you. I can put the money to good use.”

  “Was that winning ticket even in that case, or did you create it from thin air?” Dani asked when they left the Pancake House a little while later.

  “Does it matter?” Gabriel asked. “The ticket is valid. You said she needed the money. Now she has it, plus a little extra to help her along.”

  “That was really nice of you,” she said.

  “I’m an angel,” Gabriel said. “I don’t just kill shit. I do have other skills.”

  Dani laughed, “You’re killing me with your cussing. I never would have guessed that an angel would swear like you and Michael do.”

  “I told you, we adjust to blend with the humans around us,” he said. “And angels aren’t the innocent harp carrying creatures that humans imagine us to be.”

  “So where are we going next?” she asked.

  “I have a location in mind,” he said. “It’s a few miles from here so I’ll wait until after dark to fly you there.”

  “Okay, where do we go until then?”

  “Nowhere,” Gabriel said. “We stay out in the open and blend in with other people.”

  “You don’t have a shirt or shoes on. You can’t blend in with anyone.”

  “I’m projecting clothes, if that makes you feel any better,” he said. “Everyone around us sees me as completely dressed. Don’t you think Donna would have mentioned it if I’d come into her place of business half naked?”

  Dani said, “I don’t see anything but your pants.”

  “That’s because you carry the Blood of God,” Gabriel said. “Most angel mind tricks don’t work on you.”

  “Good to know,” she said.

  6.

  They walked around Clarksville most of the morning, just seeing the sites that she’d seen her whole life and talking.

  It was nearly noon when Dani said, “Well shit, here comes this hooker bitch.”

  They were about to cross the street at a place Dani had called Five Points.

  Gabriel looked up the road in front of them and saw a tall black haired woman walking in their direction, “I take it you have a problem with her?”

  “Constantly. Sheena was Buddy’s girlfriend before he started dating me. She’s the one that got him into all the heavy drinking,” Dani said. “She hates me, and I hate her ass, too.”

  “Hi, Dani,” the woman said when their paths intersected. “Buddy still whippin’ your ass on a nightly basis?”

  “Hey, Sheena,” Dani said. “You still trading pussy for pills?”

  “Bitch,” Sheena said to Dani, immediately pissing Gabriel off.

  “Whore,” Dani calmly retorted.

  Gabriel listened to them bicker back and forth. When Sheena called Dani a punching bag for a loser, Gabriel had had enough.

  He quoted from the Bible, “Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled.”

  “That’s Ezekiel 23:19.” Dani said, laughing. “It was my mom’s favorite quote when anybody brought up prostitution.”

  Gabriel reached out to lay his hand on Sheena.

  Dani grabbed a hold of his arm, “What are doing?”

  “She’s a prostitute,” Gabriel said. “I’m going to smite her and send her to Tartarus.”

  “You can’t do that,” Dani said.

  Gabriel said, “Yes I can, and the decision to do so is mine alone.”

  Sheena just stood there staring at Gabriel with a look of wonder on her face.

  “You’re gonna kill her just because she’s a hooker?” Dani asked. “I don’t know if you’ve looked at the job market lately, but gainful employment is kind of thin on the ground. If she has to sell a little pussy to get some bills paid, how does that harm you? Please don’t do this.”

  “You don’t even like her,” Gabriel said.

  “What’s that have to do with the price of tea in China?” Dani said. “Just because I don’t like her doesn’t mean that I want to see her dead. Please don’t do this, Gabriel.”

  Gabriel looked from Dani to Sheena and dropped his arm.

  As much as he wanted to smite this woman, he let her live, “Another day then,” he said, and then took Dani’s arm and led her away from the whore.

  7.

  “What is it with you and cemeteries?” Gabriel asked Dani when she led him into the Greenwood Cemetery down the road from Five Points.

  Dani smiled at him, “My mom loved Riverview cemetery, but this graveyard is where I hung out with my friends when I was a teenager.”

  “Why in the world would you hang out in a burial ground?”

  “To smoke weed or drink,” she said. “And to toast the grave of Sgt. Carter, of course.”

  Gabriel looked confused, “Who is Sgt. Carter? I know of many humans bearing the name of Carter that served in the military, but none that were buried here.”

  Dani laughed as she led him through the cemetery to Frank Sutton’s grave, “Wow, there’s something you don’t know? Frank Sutton played Sgt. Carter on Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.”

  “Of course, he was an actor,” Gabriel said looking down at the small simple headstone. “I’m surprised that there isn’t a huge monument to him. I know humans love their celebrities.”

  “I wondered about that myself,” she said. “But the rumor is he was one hell of a great guy, and humble to boot. They say he wouldn’t have wanted fan fair on his headstone after he was laid to rest.”

  “But you found him,” Gabriel said.

  “It wasn’t that hard,” she said, looking down at the grave. “Everyone who was born and raised in Clarksville knows he’s buried here. Frank Sutton was a home town boy, and home is where he lays in rest.”

  “You know only his body lies here, right?”

  “I know, but it’s symbolic.”

  “I don’t understand why humans cling to the bodies of their dead,” Gabriel said. “It’s not healthy.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s how we cope with death.” She couldn’t explain it to him any better than that. “What do you with your dead?”

  “Angels?” he asked. “There’s nothing to do with them. Our bodies linger longer in Heaven than they do on earth, but in the end we go the same way demons do. Only without the fire and smoke.”

  “You just evaporate?”

  “Essentially,” Gabriel said. “My body may be mostly human, but angels are made of pure energy. Human souls are made of energy, but your bodies are made of matter. Humans decay, whereas our bodies simple dissipate after death.”

  “You talk about death as if it’s simple.”

  “It is for the person or angel that dies,” he said. “You’re alive, and then you’re not. The emotional toll of death is a concern for the living.”

  “Don’t you care about the emotional toll that death takes on the living?” she asked.

  “No, it’s not my concern,” he said, and then looked at her. “Or it didn’t used to be before I found you.”

  She glared at him, “Are all angels as cold as you are when it comes to humans?”

  “I don’t feel that way anymore, Dani,” he said. “But to answer your question, unfortunately yes. There are not many angels that are so bold as to go against God, but a l
arge portion of them look at humanity as the assembly line for God’s favorite toys.”

  “That’s just jacked up. I may not have believed in angels before you showed up, but if I had I would have assumed that they’d be kinder than they are.”

  “I told you that angels aren’t innocent, but not all angels feel that way about humans. Some see them as God does and proudly serve humanity accordingly.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better about the fact that most angels hate me?”

  “You have nothing to fear from them as long as Michael and I still stand,” Gabriel said and kissed her on the forehead. “Only one angel has made a move directly on humanity.”

  “Who?” she asked, shocked. “When?”

  “Asteraoth. He was a Seraph; better known in Heaven as a Fire Angel,” he explained. “Asteraoth tried to turn himself into a Kamikaze bomb. He’s the reason I was on Earth a hundred years ago.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He flung himself from Heaven and aimed his body at the Earth,” Gabriel said. “I caught him, but it was a close thing. He was probably only two thousand feet above the surface of the Earth before I got a hold of him. Even then, the damage was incredible. Trees were blown over for miles around, and you could see the shape of his massive wings burned into the Earth. Unbeknownst to me at the time, smiting a Seraph in mid-air can be a bit…unstable.”

  “Would he have left a crater like Lucifer did?”

  “No, Seraphim are a different type of angel,” he said. “They were never meant to be on Earth and as such, they have no Earthly body. If he had actually managed to touch the Earth, he would have ignited it. Humanity would have been destroyed in an instant.”

  “Why would he have done such a thing?” she asked.

  “I don’t know and if anybody else knew, they didn’t tell me,” he said. “I stopped him, which was the end of my concern for the matter.”

  “Why did you stop him if you weren’t ordered to?”

  “Because it was the right thing to do,” he said. “And God would have wanted me to do so.”