“Friday,” he whispered.
Then he was gone.
Friday was the ceremony. My Choosing ceremony.
The fuck did that mean?
Man, I hate that guy.
###
Mom was super pissed about me getting home late, but I think she was so happy to see me not Smited that she wasn’t maybe as pissed as she might have been. She was still plenty pissed though, especially because she’d gotten a letter from my guidance counselor that afternoon and had been stewing and waiting for me to get home all day. Turns out they’d noticed that I stopped going to class a couple weeks back. Oops. What could I say? It’s not like I was going to go to college or anything. The fuck was the point?
So the next day, Thursday, we bundled into the Mom-mobile and went to meet with Mr. Muesli. I forget how to spell or say his real name, and he’s a nut and a fruit and a flake, so I stick with Mr. Muesli, and it makes him so mad that his little mustache puffs right out like a scared cat.
Mr. Muesli’s mustache was already pretty fluffed when we got there, though. “We’re very concerned about your future, Samuel,” Mr. Muesli said, the little emblem of his angelic protector—Raphael, the Healer—glinting at his throat. He folded his hands on his desk. His nails were perfect rounded squares. His desk was perfectly clean. He had one pen and one pencil lined up on either side of his blotter calendar. Who the fuck even uses pens? Who blots things anymore? “We thought you’d like to talk about it. We’ve been getting some disturbing reports. Do you have an explanation for your recent… behavior?”
I looked at Mom but she was all thunderclouds-on-the-mountaintop.
“I dunno,” I said. Things went downhill from there.
Basic points that I remember:
1) Mr. Muesli wanted me to do well.
2) Everyone wanted me to do well.
3) Doing well meant Choosing correctly.
4) Which I was clearly not prepared to do.
5) Here are some pamphlets.
So that was fun, and I mean fun as in angel-type fun, so not fun at all in any way.
I was basically told that I would not be swearing to Raziel or Michael or any of the interesting angels. There was apparently an option called “General Obedience” that meant, near as I could tell, working for everyone at once but no one in particular and generally doing manual labor building pyramids and monuments and cathedrals and filling in the potholes when Michael decided to drop-kick demons from orbit. Mom tried to defend me, which honestly kind of startled me, but Mr. Muesli never liked me and had clearly finally decided to drop me right in the shit for good.
Well, fine, then. They didn’t want me. I had other options.
###
It took me a while to find Satan. You’d think he’d stand out more, but he blends in a lot better than he should, and nobody likes to even mention him, which makes asking which way he went kind of a pain in the ass. Half the people don’t answer, even if they’ve seen him, and the ones that do like to give you shit. I get tracts. Once someone lectured me for almost thirty minutes until Satan wandered back around and stole his laptop bag and got the police called on us.
I wasn’t really in the mood for happy memories, though. Between Mr. Muesli’s sanctimonious bullshit and Mom telling me that if I left the house I shouldn’t bother coming back, I was pretty far in the emotional shithole. I remember having a hard time finding the street signs because everything kept getting blurry. Every now and then some smarmy asshole would come simpering up to try and find out what was wrong, earn brownie points from whatever angel they’d sworn their lives to. Mostly people got the fuck out of my way, which was good. I didn’t need to ask directions; I knew where I was going.
I started at the old warehouse Satan had shown me and spiraled out from there. When I started passing people whispering in clusters and looking disturbed, I knew I was getting close. He always knows the most upsetting thing to say to anyone. It’s like a knack. I think it was basically his hobby when we weren’t fucking around and doing stupid shit.
Something twigged, even through my haze of anger, when I saw who Satan was with. Some old bag lady was just kind of sitting on a stoop, and he was leaning down and whispering in her ear. I slowed my stride into more of a sideways saunter. My feet wanted to turn around. They were probably smarter than I was. I wonder what would have happened if I’d listened to them?
At any rate, Satan heard me coming and looked up.
“Sammy!” he said, smiling. “I stole you a Snickers.” He held out the candy bar. Actual King Size, not just Fun Size. Usually he keeps those for himself. I realized I’d missed dinner, and my stomach rumbled.
“What’s up?” I said, gesturing with my Snickers. The old lady was just staring off into space. Her face was wrinkled like last year’s apples, and she stank like a toilet. Even hungry as I was, I couldn’t bring myself to eat in the face of that smell.
“Eh? Oh.” Satan started peeling the wrapper on another candy bar, like it was a banana. “She’ll kill herself tonight, probably, or tomorrow. Drugs.” He bit into the candy bar.
“What? Why?”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Because I convinced her to.”
I looked at him like he was crazy. “Because… ?”
“Look at her throat.” When I glanced down and back up in obvious confusion, he snorted. “No sigil. No angel. No protection.” He grinned, showing his rotten teeth, liberally smeared with nougat. “No reprisals.”
“So you’re just going to off her because you can?”
“Despair is a sin. It’s the only one she’s got left.”
“Okay, but… I mean… fuck, dude.” I felt my face flushing red.
Satan’s eyes went flat and dark. “They kicked me out.”
“Yeah, I get it, so you break their rules back at them, but…”
“No.” He waved a hand, sharply. “Not just opposing. Asking. I am asking questions. I ask questions and wait for them to answer.”
I was having a hard time catching my breath, and not from the old lady’s B.O. “Dude, they answer you all the fucking time by bashing your head in.”
“That’s not the question.” His face was reddening, too, except on him it was more of a burgundy. “She is.”
“…what?”
“Mercy. Grace.” His nostrils flared. “Punishment.”
“What, you want to talk hypocrisy and unfairness? Fucking hell, man—”
“Exactly.” His eyes gleamed with triumph.
The old lady whimpered, then. Not a big noise. Barely even a noise. I don’t think she was trying to talk. I don’t think she even knew anyone was there. But I heard it. And it’s like, what the fuck? This is it? I got bullshit from the Muesli-nauts of the world, bullshit dropping down like manna from heaven, and what’s left? More bullshit, except political. And Satan was just so pleased with himself, like this was what was important and good and correct and not just hanging out and having fun and not caring about stupid crap.
I punched Satan. Well, I tried, but he dodged. Probably leftover omniscience or something, because he looked pretty startled.
“Fuck you!” I shouted. I pushed his chest, and he backed away a step with a grunt. “She’s just some old outcast, probably from before the Rise and who never got a chance to get caught up with the way things work. Lot of old folks had it hard then, when the fighting was going on and no one knew for sure what was happening. My grandpa died in the wars; you know that. You gonna fuck him up if he was here? Kick him in the balls, steal his prosthetic leg? You talk about sticking it to the angels because they play righteous when all they do is screw people over, but what the fuck, what exactly the fuck is the difference between you and them when it comes to poor assholes like this lady?” I shoved my Snickers bar into the bag lady’s filthy hand. She held it like she was a mannequin in a pose. “Asking questions? How about giving some fucking new answers for a change?”
I turned and stormed away. I’d planned on waiting out the
night in Satan’s warehouse, but I wasn’t really processing things on that level, not then.
“Sam…”
I didn’t turn around.
“Sammy!”
I held up my middle finger and kept walking.
He didn’t call a third time.
###
It was cold in the bushes. We’re fairly northerly, considering the way things got shifted around to accommodate the Lake of Fire and the Big Box. You know, the twelve-thousand cubits one? Yeah, fuck those fat cats who live there, but it’s not like they give a shit that their house has shoved glaciers down in weird-ass places and made weather forecasting even more of a mug’s game than it used to be. Anyway. Point is that even at graduation time, temperatures still got pretty low around three in the morning, and I’d left home without a jacket.
I’d debated whether it’d be better to try and hide from the Angel of Death or present a moving target. On the one hand, if he searches the whole city every night, and that’s supposedly what he does, then any given spot is going to be unsafe at some point, so staying put won’t work forever. On the other hand, if you’re the only thing moving around in a silent and still landscape, you’re not going to be hard to spot, you know? In the end, it was just too damned cold for me to keep on my feet. I went to the place I figured everyone would least expect to find me.
I went to school.
The doors were padlocked, so I bunked down in the hedge beside the building and spent the last few hours of the night crouched amid the old cigarette butts and discarded condoms. Both of those were against the rules, but like that ever stopped anyone, right?
I must have slept. I’m not sure when I slipped off, but I know I was asleep because I remember waking up to the watery morning sun and seeing that creepy motherfucker crouching in the bushes in front of me, just staring in my face. Black eyes. Deep black.
“Yaa—” I croaked. Too dry to shriek properly. I licked my chapped lips and tried again. “How long have you been there?”
No answer. No response.
The cold radiating off him made me shiver. “Well, you’re too late now. Sun’s up. Curfew’s over.”
He might have nodded his head the tiniest fraction of an inch. Might just have been the wind moving his hood.
“Man, I don’t know why you’re bothering with me. I’m going in tomorrow. Later today, I mean. I’ll take the stupid oath. I’ll do the stupid jobs. You fuckers win, okay?”
Nothing. Not even a flicker.
“Fucking talk, you asshole! Answer me!” I reached out a hand to… to do something. I don’t know. The cold was so intense near his skin that it blistered my fingertips.
I think I might have touched him. Not his cloak or anything. Touched an actual angel. Which is supposed to kill you.
And then I woke up again. It felt like waking up, anyway. I was in the bushes. I was cold.
The Angel of Death was gone. If he’d ever been there.
My hand hurt, but I ignored it. I had a lot of aches after that night, right? Could have been anything.
###
I lurked around the school entrance until the buses started showing up. Cafeteria was open for the free-meal kids. I joined in the trudge-walk. Technically I qualified, even if I didn’t usually partake. Cold cereal and lukewarm milk and a runty pear. Mm-mm good.
We had classes like normal for the morning. Technically it was still school, but since all the tests were finished and all the grades assigned, it was basically just a day for tearful farewells and yearbook signings and cleaning out lockers and all that crap. Everyone kept doing double-takes and stammering that they hadn’t expected to see me again. It got really annoying, and I wasn’t in the most stable mood to begin with. I ended up almost taking Martin’s head off when he offered me his yearbook to sign, which I felt kind of bad about—he was a dweeb, but he meant well, and he was mostly harmless. His yearbook looked basically blank, from what I saw. I think I made him cry. The other kids left me alone after that, at least, but the teachers started watching a lot more closely. I saw a lot of hands go up to touch sigils. Nervous gestures. Was this what it was like to be feared? I’d have said I should enjoy it while it lasted, but there was not a lot to enjoy about it, from what I could see.
Then came the last bell. Everyone lined up like good little soldiers and trooped to the Assembly Hall, with its stained-glass portraits of the archangels.
It was time to Choose.
All the kids who were ready to pledge their lives to angelic service were lined up in the front rows. Kids go up and swear their oath. The presiding angel seals the compact in fire and hangs the new-forged sigil around the youthful neck. Everyone claps, and we rinse and repeat for about three hours. I’d been attending these things for years. Well, not recent years, but you know. When I was little. I think this year we had Zdaxg, who was about as minor-league as angels come. Not even any official purview, just “minor angelic functionary.” He must’ve been hiding behind the door when vowels were handed out at Creation, too, but at least no one would be surprised that they couldn’t read the signature on your certificate.
They played the usual dreary school hymns, and we all stood up and sat down at least three times. I stopped paying attention and just stayed in my seat no matter how many times my homeroom teacher hissed at me to stand up. When the actual assembly began, my jaw nearly dropped. They were going in order of age, and they’d started with the kindergarteners. Not a ton of them, sure, but come on. Those kids are five, six at the oldest. How can they already be swearing their oaths?
I watched, shifting as if my seat were slowly being heated from below. I didn’t feel hot, though. I felt cold.
Really cold, now that I thought about it.
The seats beside me had been empty when the assembly started—big surprise there for the demon-lover who’d spent the night sleeping in a bush—but I saw something shadowy out of the corner of my right eye. Something maybe like a pale face with ink-black eyes.
My right hand was going numb with cold.
“I gotta go,” I said, a little too loudly. Kids from the next row turned around, then quickly turned back to the front. I stood up and pushed my way out of the row of seats, ignoring the protests of the students I was shoving and stepping on. Zdaxg was droning something in Enochian as I fled up the paper-thin carpet and out the double doors with a bang. Fucking angels, man. Footsteps followed after me; sensible shoes, hurried stride: teachers.
I could hear some kind of commotion from out by the front doors. They’d expect me to bolt that way, I was sure. Hopefully they’d hear the same noises and jump to the same conclusion. I ducked into the stairwell instead.
Not sure what I was thinking, exactly. Mostly that I just wanted to get away, hide somewhere till everything was over. Maybe I was going up to the roof for some other reason. I don’t know. I’m not a psychologist.
But I found myself up there and I kind of wasn’t really surprised. It was just where I needed to be.
The Angel of Death was waiting for me. He was standing by the edge, over where the ducts stick out and you can watch the girls’ soccer team practice. It’s just a thing I know about, okay?
“Man,” I said to the Angel of Death, “what the fuck is your problem?”
No answer. Big surprise.
The wind picked up, and I heard noises coming up the stairwell. The utility elevator started up, too, rattling and clanging. You’d think I was some sort of criminal mastermind and not just a loser kid in a city full of fucking angels.
I walked over beside Death because I just did not care anymore, and anyway he could teleport or whatever angels do and he clearly wanted to follow me around for whatever fucked-up personal reason. He was staring at the field even though no one was playing soccer, and he didn’t react to my presence. At least I didn’t have to see his eyes. I looked down.
“What, am I supposed to kill myself now? Is that what angel-vision tells you is going to happen?” I scuffed my shoes and watched a p
ebble tumble down. “Even if I was planning on it, I wouldn’t now. Anyway, it probably wouldn’t kill me. Break some bones, though, definitely.”
We watched no one playing soccer for a while.
I shook my head. “Fuck it. I’m going back downstairs. That’s what you want, right? I’ll say the words and do my work and keep my head down and probably eventually have the mandatory kids and send them to the mandatory schools just like the rules say. I get it. It’s like a Lifetime movie. I’m growing up. See how fucking mature I’m being?”
The Angel smiled then. I could just see his lips curling slightly from under his hood. Except it wasn’t like a Go in peace my son smile. It was more like a Ha ha sucker smile. Which made me even more unhappy and uncomfortable than I already was.
I stepped back and headed for the stairs, not quite willing to turn my back on him. You can’t trust anyone with wings or a halo. It plays with their minds.
The utility elevator arrived with a thud and a groan. Someone inside grunted, and the iron grate rolled back. Then, wheels squeaking, out came…
“Satan? What are you doing here?”
He was pushing his little clothing rack. The terrible black wings were… okay, they were still pretty beat up and moth-eaten and generally really thrift-store-looking, but they were clean now, and shiny in places, like they’d been oiled, and as near as I could see all the little linkages and struts that had been snapped or rusted out had been replaced. They looked… functional.
Satan peered out at me from behind the wings. “I fixed them,” he said. “Ready to go.”
A weight came over me, like someone had dropped a leather poncho over my head. I felt like a half-deflated soccer ball, where you give it a good kick and it just kind of goes “whud” and flops ten feet. “Man, I told you.” I thought about that. “Okay, I didn’t exactly tell you. But you know, I thought you got it. I’m not swearing to you. I don’t think I can. It’s too fucked up.”
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