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@fallingstarnovel
Welcome to Falling Star!
This is a cool and sexy novel about a guy and his guardian angel, who is incredibly bad at his job.
Find the full list of chapters here!
Go to the first chapter here!
Read all the chapters chronologically here!
Get pinged when a new chapter releases by joining the official Discord server.
If you want early access to the next chapter, please consider joining the party on Patreon!
"Though my soul may set in darkness
it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night."
From the poem "The Old Astronomer" (1868) by Sarah Williams.
Chapter Fifteen
Evan was jostled awake some time later when the cage came to a stop. He felt like he’d been hit by a lorry, and then rolled over again a couple of times for good measure.
They were standing at the bottom of a tall, black cliff side. Straining his neck, Evan tilted his head up and up and up to look at the top of it. He could just about see something that looked less random than the stone around it - a few walls, a few hanging towers, all made from what looked like black bricks, with some tattered blue banners hanging limp off the side.
It quickly became evident why he’d woken up. Somewhere from the other side of the cliff, a meaty boom echoed out, and the red sky momentarily turned white.
“Ruth,” he whispered, clutching the bars of his cage again.
“Get inside,” yelled the western general. Immediately, the corpses around them began jogging as best they could straight to the cliff face. Evan was getting tumbled and jostled about inside his metal cube. He knew he was getting bruises on top of bruises in here.
As they got closer, a thin cave mouth appeared from behind a sheet of black rock. Two big demons stood guard at either side, waving the centuries of corpses into the dark passageway beyond. Sensing he was losing his chance to catch Ruth’s attention, Evan turned his face to the sky and hollered:
“Angel! ANGEL! I’m here! I’m right here!”
“What are you doing?” hissed Velupes, appearing at his side in an instant and giving the cage a ringing slap.
“ANGEL, I’M HERE, RU-“
An explosion hit the rock above them. Gravel and chunks of black rock started pattering down, along with a heavy cloud of dust and black sand. Velupes flew away, wings cracking like whips, and disappeared into the red sky and out of sight.
The general sent him a poisonous glare, barking out “take cover!” to his carriers, before also galloping off with her huge horn at her lips.
The corpses carrying him were already going at full speed to the cave mouth. Evan could only watch the red sky, looking for Ruth, as the cage was pulled into the dark past the demon guards and into the underground. Inside, several different sets of staircases were carved into the black walls, and corpse soldiers poured into each like ants into a vast warren.
As soon as he was inside, one of the demon guards ran to a lever hidden in the cave wall. With a loud rumble, a great black portcullis began lowering down from the ceiling. Nobody seemed to care that corpses were still marching into the cave mouth - in fact, as the portcullis dropped, it even caught a few in its teeth as they slotted into their grooves in the floor. It wasn’t a pretty sight at all, but Evan couldn’t look for too long.
No sooner was the portcullis lowered, than an intense white light exploded just beyond it. Evan yelled and flew back, hit with a wave of heat and pressure. His ears popped, his eyes hurt with afterimages on his burning retinas, and the whole gate shuddered and slammed into its hinges.
The corpses stumbled, but didn’t drop him. They just kept carrying him deeper into the cliff, away from the noise.
When Evan dared look back, still half blinded, he could see a smoking crater just beyond the portcullis, and what looked like several extremely well cooked skeletons.
Ruth really wasn’t holding back. Did that mean he knew Evan was here? When he called out, did it work?
But before he could see anything else, the cage shuddered around a corner. The whole procession tilted upwards as the corpses started walking up a narrow passage, filled by rough-hewn stone stairs.
“Let me out,” he said to the corpses carrying him, but these ones didn’t respond. They just kept walking, up and up, ascending the slowly spiralling tunnel step by step.
It wasn’t a peaceful journey. Sometimes, the walls would shake, and a ringing boom would resonate through the stone. Ruth was keeping up his assault on the castle - because Evan assumed that he had arrived at the western warlord’s headquarters. Seeing the intense, whistling white light outside had been terrifying, but comforting too. It reminded him of the same streaks in his vision that he got when Evan fought the cat demon for him.
It took a long time to go up. The tunnel was only a little wider than the cage and corpses together. The air smelled like damp cave, a little wet, a little mildewy. On the curved ceiling of the tunnel, small pale lights hovered at regular distances, too soft and formless to be electric or flames.
And then, finally, a light started forming at the end of the tunnel. Ruth stared up, squinting, as the procession exited the tunnel and ended up in a vast dark hall. It seemed they were still underground from the sight and smell of it, but now at least it was slightly less claustrophobic.
Around them, corpses were mobilising, throwing sacks and weapons to each other, clumsily running them into dark doorways, overseen by various small demons flapping around the room with tattered wings.
One of those small demons came over to his cage, which finally got lowered to the floor and left to rest. The demon resembled a strange white bat, with sharp fangs and a huge fluffy chest poking out of a small leather jerkin. It stared at Evan.
Evan stared back.
“Why’s there a bleedin’ human in my hall?” it said, growing irritated all at once.
The corpses did not reply, so it flew down and examined the black paper stuck to the door. Its eyes widened, and it let out a deep breath.
“Just what I need,” it muttered. “Another human getting under foot when we are under blooming siege. S’like lava floods, ain’t it, you don’t have one for years and then about seven turn up all at once. Next thing you know, we’ll have the Lord of the Crossroads knocking at our door inviting himself for tea as well.”
“I don’t know who that is,” Evan said blankly.
The demon jumped back, face blanching. “Eh, this one’s chatting to me! You… how’d you get down ‘ere?”
Evan couldn’t help but sound a little sullen when he said, “I was kidnapped.”
“Bloody kidnapped. ‘Course you was.” It snapped its fingers, and the corpses picked the cage back up again. “Put it in the dungeon with the other one. His lordship can come deal with him after he gets this bleedin’ angel off our backs. It’s not in my duties, is it, dealing with humans? It’s just not in my duties…”
The other one…?
The corpses carried him away from the small demon, who was still muttering darkly about his duties and his wages, and into one of the many stone passages lining the black brick walls.
Evan looked around with wide eyes, trying to memorise as much of the journey as he could. They walked past many wooden doors - mostly closed, but a few were open. Inside seemed to be a variety of stock rooms, filled with barrels and sacks, or nondescript boxes. Craning his neck, Evan swore they passed a room that was filled with croaking frogs jumping around some kind of glowing pool, but they went past too quickly to tell.
Along, take a left, keep going, go through an archway, down a small flight of steps - Evan quickly forgot the whole sequence, but he was sure he could navigate his way back by sight. He was imagining himself hiding in the many crevices and crannies along the hallways and corridors, when the cage came to a stop outside a heavy, heavy metal door.
One of the corpses lurched forward and rang a bell.
After a moment, the door creaked open. Evan shrank back in sudden fear, because the thing that looked through the door was a demon, yes, but unlike any demon he had seen so far.
Brown hair fell limply in any direction over its head, like a mop. Between the strands of hair, big eyes poked out, unevenly spaced, wrapped around its skull in every direction. It was tall, and vaguely human shaped, but oh so completely wrong in every sense.
It raised a hand to the black paper on the cage. On each fingertip, an eye opened up, and pupils rolled wildly until they focused on the paper.
After a moment, it nodded and stood aside. Evan got carted into a circular room. It was obviously a prison of some kind - on two levels, arranged in a circle around a central courtyard, cell doors with barred windows faced each other, lit only by a few candles.
The corpses carried Evan up to the second set of cells. There was a narrow platform running in front of each door, making it easy for anyone on the ground floor to look up and examine each door in turn. The thing with eyes followed at an easy pace. It had too many arms, arranged on its body like branches on a tree. One of those arms reached up to its thin neck and pulled out a ring of keys, which it used to unlock a door.
Evan was unceremoniously thrown inside by the corpses. As he caught his breath on the stone floor, he heard the door slam shut, and the key turn in the lock.
“No!” he said, running to the door and looking out the small window.
But nobody listened to him. Obviously. Evan swore at himself. In what world would someone own and run a dungeon like this, go through all the trouble of locking someone up, and then actually listen when the newly acquired prisoner yelled at them?!
He stood at the doorway for a long time, staring out at the circular room below. The many eyed thing let the corpses out from somewhere below Evan, locked that door too, and then took a seat. Directly in the centre of the room.
It could see in all directions. In fact, one of its eyes was staring directly at Evan’s face peering through his window.
He shuddered and took a step back, out of view.
Well. This wasn’t ideal. Not a great place to be. But, he reminded himself, Ruth knew he was here. Ruth was attacking the castle. Nobody could withstand attacks like that, could they?
He said he was Evan’s guardian angel. If he meant it, then surely he would stop at nothing to free Evan.
But what if… what if he couldn’t? What if…
Evan sat on the dirty stone floor. He examined his surroundings.
One empty, stinking stone cell deep underground: check. One set of rusty iron manacles nailed to a wall with a very not human skeleton collapsed just underneath: check. One bucket that smelled like it was meant to be a makeshift toilet and honestly made him gag: check.
And, outside, one very ugly guard with one ring of keys that, if he was really trying, Evan could probably defeat in a fight: triple, quadruple check.
He couldn’t sit around and wait for an angel to do all the work.
…
Maybe after he caught his breath and stretched his muscles a little. That cage had been cramped as hell.
✨✨✨✨
Evan was still contemplating a plan when the distant rumblings and explosions stopped.
He didn’t notice at first. He was too busy trying to work out how to get the attention of the many eyed demon.
He tried waving a hand out of his cell and saying “hey come here”, but that didn’t work. Then he tried being flirtatious, because it was worth a try.
“I like your eyes,” he yelled. “There’s so many of them. You could get lost in them. Why don’t you come up here and let me take a little look?”
The thing kept one eye trained on him, but it still didn’t take the bait.
“Ooh, I’m just a lonely little guy,” Evan said, feeling increasingly silly. “I really hope some sexy, sexy demon doesn’t come over here and blink at me. Ooh, I’d hate to be ogled right now.”
“Shurrup,” yelled a gruff voice from down below. “You sound like an idiot, and it’s not gonna work.”
“Don’t be fucking rude,” Evan yelled back, and then paused. “Why’s it not going to work?”
“Because that thing doesn’t have any ears, you mongrel.”
Evan paused, and examined his prison guard. Hm. Now that the other voice said it, he really couldn’t see any ears.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
After thinking for a second, Evan said: “are you a human or a demon or what?”
The voice sighed. “I don’t know anymore, kid. I just don’t know anymore.”
The other voice didn’t seem interested in asking any questions about Evan, but he was still deeply curious about this other stranger. Was this the other human who was locked down here? How long had he been here?
He raised his voice again. “Where are we?”
“Hell,” said the voice.
“Well, yeah,” said Evan. “But where exactly?”
“Even if I told you, it wouldn’t mean a thing to yer.”
“Is this the western warlord’s castle?”
The voice seemed to pause. “Alright, maybe it would mean a thing to yer. Yeah, it is. Good luck to us both.”
Evan frowned. “But I keep hearing people saying that the western warlord likes humans. He’s not going to hurt us, right?”
The voice burst into phlegmy, bitter laughter. “Hahaha, you really don’t understand what’s going on, do you.” The voice turned sardonic. “I’ve thrown a hundred humans down here, easy. Where do you think they ended up?”
Evan felt himself grow cold. “Um…”
“Not having a tea party with these demons,” the voice cackled. “Not in these cells with us, not for long. Think about it kid, really think about it. Your ma might collect little painted plates of cows, might have a pottery cow on her windowsill, might even wear one of them aprons with the cow print on it and pat a baby calf if she happened to see one.” Another wracking wet laugh, that turned into a cough. And then, slowly, darkly, “but she still eats roast beef for Sunday lunch, don’t she?”
Evan shook his head. “You’ve… thrown people down here…?”
Before anybody could answer, a bell rang.
“Shurrup, he’s here,” said the other voice sharply, before falling silent.
Evan watched the many eyed demon stand up, keys in hand. It disappeared under the walkway - the entrance to the dungeons was directly below him. He couldn’t see the door opening, but he could hear it.
“Go,” said an unfamiliar, deep voice. “Find him.”
Someone yelped, and ran into the centre of the room. Evan stared, confused beyond belief. There, in the middle of the room, terrified and sweaty, was Rock.
✨⭐️✨⭐️✨⭐️
Author’s note:
Hello everyone! If you’re enjoying this story, please please recommend it to everyone you know. I can’t afford an advertising campaign so it’s all word of mouth at the minute. If you’re enjoying this, leave a comment or reblog or - well, anything I guess.
I promise the angel will be back on screen soon. It’s been so long…… when will my wife return from the war……..
Previous | Contents | Next Chapter
Chapter Fourteen
The general muttered a few more things about resupply struggle and finding new bodies and stupid angels, but Evan could only hear the ringing in his own ears. Feeling faint, he hoped nobody looked down to see the empty bean can at his feet.
Why wouldn’t that demon stop staring?? Was he rumbled? Oh, fuck, he was dead meat if he moved or reacted.
“This one’s pretty,” the red clad demon remarked suddenly, “even with the beans. How much do you want for him?”
It was becoming increasingly difficult not to react.
“For the last time, Praetor,” said the general, putting a hand up to her forehead in frustration, “I cannot sell you any of the walking corpses from the western army. Because, as I’ve explained to you a million times…”
“I’ll give you seven bushels of iron.”
“A million times,” she repeated through gritted teeth, “generals of the different warlords are not supposed to make any under the table arms deals with other generals. So no, I cannot sell a single corpse to a general of the northern army, you idiot.”
“What if I stole it while you weren’t looking and accidentally forgot a load of iron in a very accessible place?”
Evan’s stomach let out the longest, loudest growl he had ever heard.
All three demons turned to stare at him.
“… it is rather fresh,” said Velupes, his fancy doublet rustling as he leaned a little closer. “And I don’t remember assigning it to guard duty in the strategy tent. In fact, I don’t remember seeing it before at all.”
The general flicked her sharp eyes over Evan’s face. He could just about see her out the corner of his eye as he stared holes into the map, so hard and so still his eyes were threatening to water.
“Hm,” she said, and pulled out a small black dagger that shone with malice.
Evan felt a sudden trickle of sweat run down his back. He didn’t know what would be better - running, or staying put.
The general tossed it to his feet.
“Stab yourself,” she said, authoritatively.
What? Evan was sure he misheard her. Slowly, muscles aching, he bent down and clumsily picked up the dagger. Stab himself? Was she testing whether he was a mindless corpse who would carry out every instruction, no matter what? Or was this a different kind of test?
The dagger felt surprisingly light in his hands, but the edges glinted wickedly. It looked very, very sharp.
Slowly, he held it out in front of his belly, point towards himself.
And quickly, he stabbed himself - well, stabbed the clothing at his waist, missing his body entirely, like the fake-stabbing actors do on stage when they just kind of tuck the sword under their elbow and pretend to die.
It made a satisfying ripping noise through his clothes. Evan looked up at the three demons to see if they bought it.
The three demons stared back, speechless.
They definitely didn’t buy it.
Well, only one way out now. Evan held the dagger in front of him like he knew how to use it - he didn’t - and ran for the exit while muttering “excuse me, excuse me, sorry, just coming through”.
“The human!” the general barked, darting towards him, forcing him to edge towards the red demon.
“A soul,” said the red demon, and brought his arms up to catch Evan - only for the general to bring her own armoured hand down on his hands. She was quick. There was a loud clang as their armour collided. “No! It’s mine!”
“Don’t make me finally kill you this time!”
Evan backed up. In front of him, two huge demons in big metal shells were pummelling each other. Behind them, Velupes was staring right at him with a calculating expression. The only entrance to the tent was completely blocked.
Evan swiftly turned around and stabbed the dagger into the canvas. Those wicked sharp edges came in handy - it tore through like paper, and he dragged it down to make a sizeable hole to squeeze into.
“Grab him,” Velupes yelled.
Evan had completely forgotten about the other corpse in the tent. Instantly, two stiff hands manacled themselves around his leg and pulled upwards, making him fall inelegantly through the hole he had created. The dagger landed tip first in the dirt, and Evan clung onto it as supernatural strength tried to drag him back inside.
Scrambling, wiggling like a worm, Evan did everything he could to shake those hands off. They were extremely tight - the skin on his calf was being twisted in two separate directions, making him cry out in pain and kick at the corpse.
It didn’t work. It just got dirty footprints on that white toga. The corpse didn’t care at all.
The western general and the northern general suddenly rolled out of one side of the tent, a cartwheel of clashing armour and horns. The red northern general saw him, and quickly bucked off the western one, getting to his feet with an agility that didn’t match his huge bulk.
“Don’t be selfish, eh,” he said, feigning a casual tone while clearly anything but. His yellow eyes were large and round with interest. “You keep the body, I keep the soul, how’s that?”
The red demon pulled a large sword out of an ornate golden scabbard. It was wider than Evan’s head. Evan immediately started wiggling harder. He didn’t want to get LiveLeaked by that shit!
The northern general raised his sword - and got full body tackled by the western general. She hit him like a truck. He went down, knees buckling under the weight of all her shining black armour. Dust flew everywhere as they wrestled on the ground, sword landing right beside Evan’s head.
Hmm. Wait. Were all reanimated corpses the same?
“Let go,” Evan yelled.
And just like that, the corpse let go.
“No way, no way, no way,” Evan muttered as he finally managed to scramble backwards. He struggled up to his feet and immediately took off running, ignoring the shouting and swearing coming from the chaos behind him. Ahead of him, corpses were lining themselves up into rows, staring blankly around at the black rocks and red sky. There really wasn’t anywhere to hide. He just had to keep running.
Dodging past corpses, tripping over ropes, Evan felt like his lungs were on fire. There were a few more canvas tents, but every time he looked inside he made awkward eye contact with another shuffling corpse and got a bit freaked out.
It was when he got trapped in a huge block of corpses, suddenly folding around him like a school of tuna trying to avoid a fisherman’s net, that an idea came to him. Nobody noticed when he pretended to be a corpse before. Maybe he could try again.
The nearest corpse was a short balding man with staring grey eyes. He was wearing, for some reason, a plastic blue cowboy hat.
Evan immediately knocked off his own helmet, stole the hat, and threw it on his head. He shrugged off his jacket and tied it around his waist, elbows colliding with the bodies tightly packed around him. Then, not even daring to mutter under his breath, he fell in line and stood stock still.
Elbow to elbow, shoulder to shoulder, Evan was stuck in the middle of a tight block of bodies. It didn’t smell… great.
He heard yelling and clanking as the three demons caught up with where he had disappeared. The red northern general ran in the direction Evan had last gone in. He saw a flash of red dart some way ahead, and then disappear into the crowd.
The western general came to a halt. Evan heard her hiss through her teeth.
“Sentries, comb the perimeter for a human. He’s still here somewhere.”
Then she walked, slowly but with purpose, in the opposite direction of the northern general.
Hah, wait. Was it that easy?
Evan had read on the internet that when getting chased in a busy place, it was better to suddenly turn around and walk slowly and calmly back to the people chasing you, head down, while they ran past looking for a frantic escapee. It was the opposite of what they’d expect, so they wouldn’t think to check slow walkers - as long as they didn’t know your face too well.
He never thought it would actually work.
Evan found it pretty easy to emulate being a dead soldier. If he just kept walking - quietly, head down, like a corpse - then maybe he could even walk undetected all the way to the western warlord’s castle. He didn’t know how long it would take, or whether he could survive the journey on a stomachfull of cold baked beans.
But it was his only choice right now. He had to take it. He had to survive long enough to see Ruth.
Then, from above, there was the sound of ragged flapping. The area around Evan was suddenly cast in shadow. He didn’t dare look up - but the way the air suddenly whooshed down around his shoulders told him all he needed to know.
Something was flying directly above him.
“All soldiers,” drawled the voice of Velupes, the well dressed demon, from above, “third drill.”
Immediately, every single body around Evan stood to attention. There was a pause - and then, every single body threw a hand in the air, before bringing it down sharply. Evan scrambled to copy them. Hand to the hip, weapon grabbed. Held aloft. One step back. It was like some twisted, military version of the Macarena, or the Cha Cha Slide, except if Evan got a single step wrong…
The intricate dance continued, and Evan was trying his best. He thought he kind of had it. It wasn’t too complicated, and some of the other corpses were slow too, so he just looked like he was stiff with age and rot.
And then, every single corpse death dropped to the floor.
“Fuck,” said Evan, who was still standing.
Two extremely sharp, extremely tight clawed feet dug into his shoulders, and he was wrenched off the ground. His stomach plummeted into his feet as he was lifted up, way up, and the blue cowboy hat was blown off into the wind. Below him, he could see the sprawled mess of hundreds of bodies lying, dead as doornails, growing smaller and smaller.
“Got you,” said Velupes, a grin in his voice.
✨⭐️✨⭐️✨
From his new home inside a cage, Evan watched the northern general and the western general trying to kill each other.
Velupes has dropped him directly into this steel cage and slammed the door closed, locking it with some kind of magical seal - a black bit of paper covered in white scribbles, which wouldn’t come off no matter how Evan tugged at it.
Then, the cage was loaded onto two long logs, and a set of corpses picked up the logs like some kind of low-budget palanquin.
This was all done by Velupes as his general tried to commit murder in the background.
“I think you’re being incredibly unreasonable,” the red northern general grunted as he side stepped an upper cut. “I just want the soul, that’s all.”
The western general laughed coldly. “You’re dreaming.”
“I said you can keep the body! I just want the,” he said, with a deep breath, “soul!”
At the same time, he managed to throw out a kick so powerful that the western general skidded back, barely keeping her balance.
“Imagine what I could do,” he said, immediately turning his attention to where Evan was rattling his cage bars. “The raw power. The unfathomable energy. You can’t keep that all to yourself. It wouldn’t be fair…”
He started taking a few steps towards Evan, only to get bowled over as the western general jumped on his back and battered him into the ground. She grabbed one of his red helmet and started yanking it around, clearly losing her patience.
“Then let me summon the western warlord himself and you can negotiate with him!”
“There’s no need for that,” he said, his voice wobbling as she threw his head around. “Surely we can negotiate a deal right here, and he doesn’t need to know.”
There was a moment’s pause, and Evan froze. He really, really needed to get to the western warlord’s castle, because that was where Ruth was. A half-forgotten flash of a dream came back to him: Ruth, aiming a golden bow at a huge demon, eyes wild…
“I want to go to the western warlord,” he blurted out.
Everyone stared at him. Velupes, who had been lounging against one of the corpses carrying his cage, jumped back in surprise.
“Ew, it’s speaking,” he said. “Did anyone understand that?”
“Please,” said Evan. “Take me there.”
Both generals stared at him the same way he’d probably stare at a cockroach if it suddenly begged to be put in the glue trap.
“Hell’s bells, that’s disconcerting,” said the northern warlord, his mouth curling up in mild horror.
“Forget it,” the western general said, finally letting go of him to roll off and dust down her black armour. “Even if you killed me and took the soul, you’d only get vaporised by my warlord. It would be just like his ascension all over again. You saw what happened to the previous warlord. And that wasn’t even personal.”
The northern general shuddered a little, and then sighed. He also stood up, and examined the new dents in his red armour with a scowl. “Fine, fine. I get it. Have the soul then. But the body…”
“No,” said Velupes. “You know he wants both together. Go find your own human.”
“Ugh. Fine. But tell your warlord to stop being such a miserable perverse little human-lover. It’s unbecoming of nobility.”
“We’ve tried,” said the western general with a heavy sigh. “I don’t have time for this. We’re going. Don’t follow us.”
“Hm, said the northern general, and then, “same time tomorrow on the Field of Teeth, then?”
And with that, the procession began the long trek to the western warlord’s castle. Evan stared through the bars at the northern demon who wanted him so much, but seemed to back down so easily when the warlords were mentioned. Sure enough, he didn’t follow: but his glittering eyes were fixed hungrily on Evan the whole time he stayed within view.
Then, once he was out of sight, Evan sat back in his cage and tried not to feel terrified.
In front of him, on a great black horse, the western general took the lead, flanked by two armoured corpses holding fluttering blue pennants.
Next came his cage-palanquin, shuffled along by the dusty dead, flanked again by corpses holding mismatching spears.
Behind him, or slightly above him, Velupes took to the sky again. His leathery wings cracked lazily like the old sails of some creaky ship, but his eyes were keen and sharp, and his taloned feet looked ready to snatch up anyone who stepped out of line.
And finally, behind them, a great column of undead soldiers followed in neatly organised lines, some holding pennants and flags, every single one decorated with something blue, shuffling and dragging feet and letting their mouths hang open.
And there Evan was, trapped in the middle, being helplessly carried to some great demon who apparently liked humans very much. He was sure that probably wasn’t a good thing.
Quietly, trying to get comfortable on the uneven cage bottom, he curled up protectively around himself, and eventually, without realising it, slipped into an dreamless sleep.
✨⭐️✨⭐️✨
Author’s note: I need you to understand that until indicated otherwise, you have to imagine Evan with bean juice all over his face. It’s essential to the narrative
Previous Chapter | Contents | Next Chapter
Hi. Angel on your shoulder here. It's totally ok to kill that guy
Chapter Thirteen
And then, with all the confusion of an old man waking up from a deep nap, Evan jolted awake in the floor of the cart.
He was curled over the sack he opened, purple powder flying everywhere in a puff of lavender glitter. His nose and his throat felt itchy and dry, like when he got intensely bad hay fever.
Did this powder make him fall asleep? He had been having such a weird dream - the girl from his physics class was there, and there was a washing machine, and he…
The cart tipped with enough force to make him slide across the floor, and Evan realised they weren’t travelling along anymore. When he hurriedly sat up, he almost wished he was still asleep.
Everywhere he looked, people were rammed up against the cart and each other. No, not people.
Bodies. Hundreds of walking corpses.
There were some pressed right against his cart, and Evan had no time to react before the crowd surged, and the cart was tipping over, and suddenly he was flipped upside down and hidden in the space underneath.
Oh, fuck. Oh, this was really bad. Evan swore hurriedly under his breath and managed to get into a crouching position. Luckily, the cart wasn’t perfectly sealed to the floor - there were gaps where the handles held the cart slightly aloft. Evan leaned down, using the gap to try to peek out at the situation around him.
Boots. So many boots. Old boots - army boots, fancy boots, boots that looked like shoddily sewn together leather. And feet. The feet were not pretty. Some of them were worn down to the bone.
When he angled his head and looked up, he could just about see what the corpses were doing. They didn’t seem to care about him or his cart - they were too busy trying to hit each other with whatever they had in their hands. Big sticks, axes, guns used as blunt weapons - one corpse was even using a saucepan to whack other corpses around the head.
The fact he’d been knocked over was due to their carelessness.
Each blow was clumsy and slow. Limbs didn’t move right. It was like watching a battle in slow motion.
Evan scurried to the middle of his little space under the cart. What was he supposed to do in this situation? He was trapped here. As far as he knew, the moment he tried to escape, the bodies would swarm him and tear him apart. Slowly, but still! Not optimal!
He risked another peek at the warring corpses.
Now that he was looking more closely, he could see that each body was wearing something that was brightly coloured.
The bodies themselves were dusty and faded. Old clothing had turned brown or grey. Some of the clothing looked very, very old.
But on each corpse, one thing stood out, shining brightly against the dust. A lot of corpses wore a strip of fabric tied around their arm or their head. Some wore helmets with a bright plume sticking off the top.
There only seemed to be two colours - red and blue. No corpse had both. Evan kept watching, trying to work out what he was watching.
There was a leathery corpse in some kind of lamellar armour, looking more like a walking taxidermy mistake than a human being. It had a bright red flag sticking out the top of its helmet, and it was armed with some kind of mallet. Evan was fascinated - it didn’t seem to touch any of the other corpses that also were wearing red items.
Instead, it barrelled straight to a body in modern fatigues who had a blue arm band, and started clobbering him.
They were in… teams?
There was a loud thud from the top of the cart. Evan drew back, just in time to see a corpse land heavily right in front of him. The bright blue fabric fell off its head and landed on the ground, very close to Evan’s foot.
The corpse seemed stunned for a moment. After a second, it slowly dragged itself back up to its feet. It scratched its head, as if wondering where the fabric had gone.
The corpses around it didn’t seem to know what to do. Here was an enemy with no colour attached. They all seemed to stare at each other, nonplussed.
And then, as if deciding unanimously as a group, both sides started to clobber the poor newly unaffiliated corpse.
“Okay, no going out without a colour on,” Evan muttered, and snatched up the errant scrap of blue fabric. It smelled… bad, so he tied it around his elbow and tried to forget about it.
His plan was this: pretend to be a walking corpse on the blue team. Duck and weave, avoid getting hit, and run for high ground. Get out of the battle, and then…?
Well, he hadn’t thought that far ahead, but the endgame was finding Ruth and getting out of hell.
The only trouble was hyping himself up to leave the safety of the cart. Listen, it was dangerous out there. He wasn’t a dead body yet - he couldn’t just shrug off mortal blows like the corpses were doing out there. If some dead maniac in chain mail came running at him armed with a screwdriver, Evan would simply die. And then he’d be trapped in hell for real, forever, the traditional way, and not because he fell down here.
Deep breath in, deep breath out. He could do this.
Evan took one last look around. Compulsively, he grabbed the bag of purple powder - keeping it far away from his face - and just about managed to stuff it into his pocket.
Then, as soon as the nearest corpse was more than five paces away, he crawled out from under the cart and stood up.
At first, nobody noticed him. He looked around and saw several hills and cliffs to the side. To the other was sloping field of black gravel full of fighting corpses.
Up the hill it was, then.
Dodging and weaving, Evan picked his way through the crowd. It wasn't all that different to trying to navigate through a busy nightclub, except everyone was brawling instead of dancing. But still: avoiding elbows, ducking behind a couple engaged in vigorous physical activity in a crowded place, awkwardly squeezing through smelly bodies while being far too warm and far too groggy from just waking up...
Yeah, frighteningly similar.
Evan did accidentally make eye contact with one dead girl in an air stewardess uniform. She was wearing a red baseball cap and had an axe in her hand. When she saw him, she raised her arm like a summons, and charged.
Slowly.
And very stiffly.
Evan quickly backed up. It didn't seem like anybody here had the ability to run very fast. He wasn't sure how reanimation worked, but it seemed like it couldn't prevent at least a little rigor mortis.
“Chill, chill, chill,” he muttered, like that could calm anyone down, while carrying on through the field of fighters.
It was chaos. Old army uniforms everywhere, some he could recognise and some he'd never seen before in his life, all turned brown and dusty. A million different weapons, but it didn't seem like anyone was using guns the way they were designed to be used. And so many different bodies.
They weren't quite as decomposed as the sad bodies slouching around the rubbish tip, but they weren't fresh either. There were plenty of gaping wounds and open gashes and limbs flying everywhere.
Evan had to jump over someone's arm lying on the floor, and almost took someone's leg off by accidentally standing on their foot.
Finally, he got to a fairly steep scree pile, and scrambled up out of the chaos. It was slightly too steep for the uncoordinated bodies to follow, so he was safe from any stray blows up here. Finding himself at the brow of a small black cliff, he could finally squat down and look out over the wider area from the higher vantage point.
Below Evan, a valley wound through black crags. It was filled with maybe thousands of bodies fighting away. In the distance, there were some canvas tents with tattered banners limply hanging in the hot air, but otherwise it was a barren sight. No trees, no grass, no water: just a sea of red and blue specs against the black gravel, bobbing and constantly toiling under the ominous red sky.
Sonehow, Evan had found himself in the middle of some kind of battle. Between who, he had no idea.
Was this what sinners did in hell? Fight each other? That seemed slightly... underwhelming. He was sure there were more than a few people who would relish the chance to go cleaving their way through a battlefield with no worries about their health or body. Nobody here seemed phased by any of the blows. Maybe it just didn't matter what bruises you got or bones you broke after you died.
This wasn't helping him get to the western warlord’s castle. Evan had to figure out where that was, and go in that direction until - presumably - he saw Ruth’s bright daylight glow.
Looking around, he tried to see if anything looked castle-shaped. Unfortunately, the horizon was blocked with jagged peaks and blackened lava spires that made it hard to see past this little valley.
Don't panic, he told himself, though he was already beginning to panic a little. He just needed to find an even higher place and look around, that was all.
When Evan looked down at the ground again, he found a crowd of dead bodies with red accessories patiently looking up at him, quietly waiting for him to come back down.
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry. Go away.”
They did not go away.
As Evan made unwilling and prolonged eye contact with one unblinking older man in riot gear, a loud horn blasted through the valley.
Suddenly, every body stopped moving. Both the blue side and the red side lowered their weapons.
Looking around, Evan saw a black shape up on the ridge of a nearby cliff. Some jagged, humanoid shape was sitting on a black horse, big horn at their mouth(?), way above the chaos of the fight.
The horn sounded again, and there was a mass shuffle as each body separated from their individual fights. Evan’s crowd of spectators turned and walked away, dragging their weapons behind them.
Down on the gravel, it seemed that every single body was now making their way to two different sides of the slope. The red side were heading down the valley, away from Evan, while the blue side were coming back towards him and into a small gap in the nearby cliffside.
Since he had nothing better to do, Evan slid down his own steep slope and joined the crowd of walkers. As he was wearing a blue accessory, he slotted right in with the other fighters. They didn't even give him a second look as they all trudged onto a dirt path cut into the black stone.
There really didn’t seem to be much other choice right now. In for a penny, he thought, following the plodding footsteps of the corpse in front of him.
✨⭐️✨⭐️✨
After a long walk, the army finally wound through the narrow pass up to a plateau. Bodies started lining up in rank and file, automatically shuffling themselves into place - but with no small amount of chaos.
People kept walking into each other. Lines constantly rearranged themselves. It made it easy to swiftly weave between bodies without anyone noticing, not that anyone was paying much attention.
Through the various hats and heads, Evan saw a few canvas tents. One was larger, like a gazebo, while the other was much smaller and round. Blue pennants, sky blue, hung limply from their poles. On the canvas, complicated golden lettering circled the edges of the tent, and a ghastly face drawn on some kind of yellow creature snarled out at any passers by.
Evan curiously wandered by the round tent - and immediately doubled back, eyes round as dinner plates.
There was a map on a table. On the map, little red and blue pegs were scattered around, along with other curious tokens and miniature figurines. A solemn corpse in a white toga and a strange nasal helmet watched over the table, clearly the least decomposed of the army.
But that wasn’t what caught Evan’s attention.
Sitting there, stacked neatly in a pile, were three cans of baked beans. It was a surreal thing, to see in hell.
His stomach unleashed the most embarrassing, poor orphan, Tom and Jerry rumble he had ever heard, and he remembered that he hadn’t eaten for way too many hours now. Sure, he wasn’t gonna die any time soon, but it was bad enough that he was salivating over cold, own-brand baked beans straight from the tin.
Evan slipped inside immediately and grabbed a can. Someone was looking out for him - it was a ring-pull type can. He didn’t need a can opener.
“Hallelujah,” he said, nearly crying, before ripping it open.
What happened next was better left between him and the stoic corpse in the helmet. Evan had never really experienced joyful frenzy before, but that was probably the best approximation of what went down. Bean frenzy. Cold, starving baked bean frenzy.
When he came to, he had devoured the whole can full, and his hands were stained with tomato juice. With a sigh, he tried to find something to wipe his hands on, and found himself eyeing the white toga of the corpse beside him.
“Sorry,” he muttered, feeling a little bad, before cleaning the worst of the juice off on the back of the body where hopefully nobody would notice it for a while. Maybe he should go find some quiet rock to hide behind to finish his meal. Maybe he could take another can…
Just as he considered the logistics of hiding two cans of beans in his pockets (unlikely), a rhythmic clanking came to his attention. A voice drifted through the canvas:
“… can’t handle himself at the castle, then he deserves to be turned into sacred ash by a stupid cherub.”
Hiding under the table was a no-go - it was too small. Leaving the only entrance would put him in full view of anyone coming around. There was only one choice.
Evan stole the helmet of the corpse next to him and tugged it onto his own head, tilting his face forwards a little so his eyes were hidden behind the nose bridge.
Then, he stood next to his bean-juiced companion, and tried to look lifeless.
Just in time. The clanking reached the entrance of the tent, and a clawed black hand pulled the door flaps aside.
In walked the biggest brick shit house of a woman Evan had ever seen.
She had two massive horns curling away from her face, long and sharp like some weird mountain ram. She was tall, and her shining black armour made her seem almost as broad, nearly.
Behind her, a smaller demon scurried in. His outfit was what Evan would describe as eccentric and looked like some kind of renaissance costume, though he wasn’t a fashion history major for a reason. This demon opened his mouth, and drawled:
“Yes, my general, I was thinking rather the same.”
The general came to a stop beside the map, and idly flicked a few red and blue tokens away to the ground. Neither of them seemed to notice Evan at all.
“That’s seven centurions and their centuries we lost,” she muttered. “Because of that stupid angel interrupting the fight. That’s fucking irritating.”
“Indeed, general.”
“I hate outside interference. Like when that lava flow opened up in the middle of that dog fight back at the Dark Crossing. Fucking irritated me then too.”
“It really did burn through our reserves, general.”
“Now he’s going to be breathing down my neck about a resupply and - what is on my table. Velupes. What are these.”
The foppish demon looked down at where she was pointing, and blinked. “Oh, I forgot. We found these. I thought they’d make a good tribute when you go back to the castle.”
“What are they? Paint cans?”
“Beans, general.”
“Beans.” She sneered down at them with open distaste. “Of course he’ll like them, the pervert. He weirds me out something fierce.”
“Our lord’s perversity aside,” Velupes said smoothly, “how are you planning to order his summons to the castle?”
“Slowly,” she said bluntly. “I don’t see why he needs a garrison force from me. He should go pester the other generals. They don’t have to interrupt their campaigns just because he wants to intimidate an angel.”
“Oi,” said a voice from outside the tent. Yet another demon entered, wearing plate armour painted bright red, a black skull painted across their chest. “Why’d you call the battle off? You know I’m trying out that new manoeuvre.”
“Well you see, Praetor,” said Velupes, “as much as we love watching our grunts beat up your grunts for days on end, our warlord actually expects us to do our real duties when we can.”
“Why’s he pissy,” said the new demon, and the general replied, “because you accidentally hit him with your flagpole the other week.”
Evan, meanwhile, was desperately trying to be as dead as a doornail. He had hunched over a little to try and disguise his breathing, and was concentrating extremely hard on making no noise or movement.
The new demon got closer, coming up to the table and flicking a few more red pieces off the board. “A holy line of destruction, right to the western castle. Tore through my flank like wet paper. Upstairs must be pissed.”
“When are they not? If he wasn’t so weird about humans…”
All three demons shuddered. Evan quickly tried to work out who they were talking about, and realised it had to be the western warlord, whoever he was. He got excited whenever they mentioned angels, and didn’t pay enough attention to the rest.
Suddenly, the new demon in red armour stared at him.
“Why’s this thing got slime on its face?”
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author’s note: sometimes you rip open a tin can with your bare hands and go absolutely ape shit and I don’t think we should judge anyone for that. Anyway thank you for reading!!!
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I Made Your Reality
Chapter Twelve
He was falling backwards, backwards, like in a dream when you startle and your body plunges and you’re convinced you’re weightless, but there was no waking up. Just falling from the deepest black he’d ever seen, to a lighter blue, to a dusky orange purple - gathering a burning tail - burning through the atmosphere.
When he looked down, he could see the surface of the earth. It was night time - the cities were picked out in glittering light. And he kept falling, and falling, and he looked down and saw a small green field, and in that field there was a single glint of light, a reflection of his own comet tail.
And suddenly he was behind the reflection, pulling a telescope away from his eye, watching a star fall.
“Look at that,” his grandma’s kind voice said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
It was the most beautiful thing Evan had ever seen.
They watched the falling star burn and burn as it fell. It was so bright it turned the night sky back to day - that smoggy, orange purple of the city sky into pale summer blue - the stars were blotted out - so bright it hurt Evan’s eyes - and then the falling star went behind a bank of cloud, and Evan landed so painfully that his whole body felt like it snapped.
Screaming, he opened his eyes again.
This time, he was lying on black bricks. The air was colder. Before him, a pale figure was standing barefoot, a ragged white robe barely hanging off his frame. Two wings, dusty, hanging low, draped on the ground behind him.
One was the shape you’d expect a wing to be. The other… the other was half broken, and twitching painfully.
Against the black walls of whatever this cold place was, the figure stood out like a shining beacon.
“Ruth,” Evan said, breathless, scrambling to his feet.
Ruth whipped around. His blond hair was matted, face fraught. One rolling, bloodshot eye examined Evan like he was a rabid dog.
“You finally got here,” he said, with such venom that Evan shrank back a little.
“I came as fast as I could.”
“Are you ready to die yet?” Ruth spat out, which made Evan very rapidly reassess his current understanding of the poor guy.
What happened? Why was Ruth suddenly…?
Ah, wait.
He was a guardian angel. His human - the one he swore to protect - went to hell. Clearly, he’d finally found out that Evan wasn’t meant to go up to heaven. No, Evan had always been destined to come down here with the other sinners.
No wonder Ruth was angry. Evan would be angry too.
“Ruth, I…”
“Not at your hands,” scoffed a deep, deep voice behind Evan.
He turned on the spot, and found himself staring at another demon.
So, if there was a scale between “yeah I can take him” and “that would be suicide”, Hogger had been fairly low. He was only about the size and shape of someone’s retired uncle. The small demon, Pevel, was up a few notches higher, because of her sharp claws and unnerving teeth.
This demon - pale red, bulging muscles, curving great ram horns, spikes and claws and teeth everywhere - was definitely on the other end. A classic demon-shaped demon. Exactly what you’d imagine if you painted a roided gym bro red and stuck horns on him. And then made him snort a kilo of cocaine and do push ups until he spat blood.
Sitting on a large black brick throne - that can’t have been comfortable at all - the demon cast a hand at the area around Ruth.
“Did that not slake thy wrath, angel?”
Only now did Evan notice the scattered humanoid figures surrounding Ruth. Those were… hm. Demons. Very dead demons. He wasn’t an expert on demon anatomy, but he was fairly sure that most things preferred to have their heads attached to their bodies.
Ruth did not reply.
The big fuck-off brick shit house of a demon chuckled. “You’re not the first who comes here, wanting what I have.”
“I’ll be the last,” Ruth said.
Evan was starting to suspect that he was either invisible, or they were very rudely ignoring him. Well, either of those outcomes was good, actually.
“Wait, Ruth, I’m right here,” he said, because he figured he knew what was going on here. “We can leave together. I don’t even know this guy! That’s the western warlord, right? I don’t know what kind of claim he thinks he has on me, but it’s bullshit. Let’s go!”
Ruth ignored him. Bonus points for “invisible”. He hoped.
Instead of saying “sure!”, Ruth instead held his arm straight in front of himself. Making a fist, he drew back his other arm, and pulled back some invisible item - as if he were nocking an arrow on some bow only he could see.
And then, shimmering, the bow did appear. And there was a very bright, very sharp arrowhead pointing directly at Evan. The more Ruth pulled back the string, the brighter it grew, shivering with tension, burning holes in Evan’s retina.
“Watch it!” yelled Evan, and dived out the way.
Ruth released the arrow. For a moment, there was nothing.
The world went white, sound blurring and whistling, heat like nothing Evan had ever felt, his skin blistering in seconds. Screaming, he tried covering his eyes and ears on reflex, but it was shining through everything, burning away his eyelids, nothing in his ears but wet whistling and pain.
Everything felt like it was spinning. When he tried opening his eyes, all he could see was a milky blur. Pain, heat, the sound of something hitting something else…
Something mechanical beeped three times.
Hands reached in and grabbed him, pulling him from the white sud pain and into fresh, open air.
“Oh, Evan! You came to visit!”
When he opened his eyes, Evan looked down into the unusually sharp gaze of a girl he had only ever seen half asleep.
“Huh? Ashlin?”
✨✨✨✨✨
Ashlin pegged Evan up to dry.
That was literal. She took him, clothes and all, and pegged him up on a washing line in a mild breeze.
Evan was just as confused about it. One moment, he had been experiencing what he could only assume was an accurate recreation of being caught in ground zero of a nuclear blast.
The next, the sleepy girl from his astrophysics class was pulling him out of a washing machine with her bare hands, sopping wet and stinking of soapy lavender.
It was quite nice on the clothes line. He was pegged up by the shoulders of his t shirt. Every now and then, the warm breeze made him swing a little. It didn’t hurt at all.
It looked like they were on the rooftop of a very, very tall building, somewhere in a very tall city. Around them, the sun beat down a mid day heatwave, glinting off windows and satellite dishes and aerials. The sky was so blue, it turned navy at the edges.
“Your name is Evan, isn’t it?” Ashlin said.
She didn’t seem sleepy at all. Before, she always seemed to be spilling onto whatever flat surface was in front of her. But now she looked bright and alert.
“Yeah,” said Evan, kicking his feet in the air. “You’re Ashlin, right? From the library?”
Ashlin smiled. She was pegging out more washing - purple shirts and pillow cases, bed sheets and socks - all carrying the same thick smell. “Yes! You know, you’re very unusually lucky. Most people only see me when I’m either awake or asleep. You’re the first person to see me both ways!”
“When you’re asleep and awake?” Evan said, confused. “But I see you sleeping and awake in class all the time. Mostly asleep, but…”
“No, I meant,” Ashlin said, giggling a little. “I meant meeting me when I’m asleep. Like, right now.”
Evan blinked. “You’re not asleep.”
“Yes I am. We both are.” She threw a sock at his face. “Look around you. We’re in a dream.”
Evan did look around. “That would make sense,” he said, as the breeze made him sway again. “I think I’m almost dry now.”
“A few more minutes. There’s no rush.”
“No, I was... I was in a rush. I was doing something.” He frowned. “Something unpleasant. I think I was killing a bodybuilder.”
Ashton snorted. “Boys have such weird dreams.”
“Wait.” Evan looked around, taking in the sunny rooftop and the blue sky, and the sheets upon sheets of pale laundry. “How are you doing this? Sharing a dream with someone else… it’s not possible.”
“I’ve always been able to do it,” Ashlin said with a shrug, coming to sit at Evan’s feet. “Other people’s dreams are so fascinating.”
“Is that why you’re always asleep in class?”
“Kinda.” Ashlin laughed again. “Wait, I’m confused. Evan, can you help me out?”
“Sure.”
“Is this conversation happening before or after you died?”
“What?” When Ashlin didn’t elaborate, Evan tried to wiggle off the washing line, but it didn’t work. “What do you mean, before or after I died?”
“Well, the dreams don’t really come to me in order,” Ashlin explained. “I just reach in the machine and pull them out, and whatever’s in there is in there. I’ve seen dreams of stuff that happened later, and dreams of stuff that happened long ago. What was, what is, what will be… anyway, you can imagine how surprised I was to find you inside.”
“Ashlin, backtrack a little. What do you mean died?”
Ashlin paused, and then looked thoughtful. “Actually, I’m not sure. I had a dream of you a while back where you died, I think. It really wasn’t clear. It never is! People barely ever dream in explicit detail. It’s all stupid metaphors and Freud.” She sighed. “I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ll know what I mean when it happens.”
“I’m worrying!”
Ashlin got up, and walked over to the washing machine by the rooftop entrance. “Sorry,” she said. “It gets lonely in my head. I haven’t had a proper conversation with someone in a while. I forget how it’s supposed to go.”
Evan felt a little bad for her, somehow. “But you can talk to people when you wake up, can’t you?”
“It’s hard,” she admitted. “Being awake is hard for me. I keep trying to slip back into dreams again. And when I talk to people when I’m awake, I feel so dizzy and sleepy and strange that I say weird stuff, and they get weirded out. Or I accidentally say something I saw in their dreams, and they think I’m creepy.”
Evan couldn’t help but burst out: “why on Earth are you doing an astrophysics degree then?!”
“Because the professor said he’d look after me,” she said, not sounding offended at all. “My mum told him about my… condition, and he said he’d take me under his wing. I tried a few different degrees before then, but I keep dropping out. Obviously.”
“Oh.” Now Evan felt really bad. “Sorry.”
“No, don’t be.” Ashlin reached into the machine and pulled out a purple sock. “It meant I got to meet some nice people. And this is the first time I’ve had a visitor here.” She held on to the sock for a moment, before turning around, face pink. “Do you think other people will be able to visit too?”
“Maybe,” said Evan, who had absolutely no idea how he got here. “Just… sorry, I can’t stop thinking about it, the dream you had where I die. How… how does it happen?”
“Oh, that.” Ashlin shrugged. “You got eaten alive by a demon.”
“What!?”
Evan felt like the whole washing line had just swayed in the breeze.
“Yeah, you see, abstract and Freudian. You’ve got a very vivid imagination sometimes.”
“It’s not that abstract to me!”
Another weightless feeling in his stomach. Evan realised it wasn’t just shock. The whole washing line really was swaying like it was caught in a hurricane.
“Aww, I think you’re waking up,” she said, and ran over, sock in hand. “Wait, before you go! Can you… if you see your friend Aliya… can you bring her with you?”
“Aliya?” Evan said, in pure overwhelmed confusion. The jostling movement was making it hard to think.
“And Ophelia! I know she’s a little unpleasant, but I really do like her, and she doesn’t care when I tell her I keep seeing her dreams of being a furry!”
“Ashlin, listen to me,” Evan said. “I am talking in explicit, totally objective detail right now. Demons are real, and they want to eat me. This is not a metaphor or a simile or whatever. Real actual demons actually want to eat my soul as we speak.”
Ashlin looked at him, true confusion colouring her expression for the first time. “What do you mean it’s not a metaphor?”
“Ophelia is literally a cat-!”
Before he could finish his sentence, the washing line snapped with such force that the pegs flew off his shoulders. Evan found himself falling off the line, a moment of intense weightlessness, surrounded by flying laundry.
✨✨✨✨✨
Author’s note: if you’re enjoying this, please consider recommending it to a friend or two!
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*to interviewer* Yeah life got pretty easy right around the time this Angel started following me around who gives me a huge gold medal every time I make a good decision. It's hones--oh hey man what's up? Wow, another one? For not putting that rock in my mouth earlier? Ahahaha how did you even know how much I wanted to do that??? Dude thank you you are seriously the best 🥰
Chapter Eleven
It turned out that being Hogger’s right hand corpse was the luckiest position to have in the rubbish tip. He had clearly staked his claim over this landfill, and had amassed a collection of bodies to work for him for, apparently, free.
It made sense. Of course dead people didn’t need payment. They didn’t need anything at all.
Evan dutifully stood just behind Hogger and watched him manage his field of detritus.
His workers - Evan didn’t like looking at them too much - would approach the house whenever they found something that Hogger thought was interesting. The first time it happened, a corpse with only one arm and nothing below the knees shuffled up to the porch and presented a corded mouse, dropping it at Hogger’s feet with its teeth.
“What is it? Jeeves, bring it here,” Hogger said.
Evan assumed he was Jeeves now. He unwillingly got closer to the bedraggled, stumpy corpse, and gingerly picked up the mouse. It was one of those old ones which had a ball inside.
When he brought it back to Hogger, the demon snatched it away and felt it all over with his hands. He brought it very, very close to one of his small eyes, before grunting with frustration and going back to feeling with his hands.
Evan was right. He couldn’t see very well at all.
Finally, Hogger nodded. He threw it back at the crawling corpse on the ground. “Add it to the market pile,” he said, and the corpse crawled off, undignified and wormlike, into the dust.
Evan shuddered. He wondered how these bodies got down here. They had been normal humans like him once, right? Was this what happened to sinners that got thrown into hell? They got made to do manual labour for the rest of their afterlife?
This happened a few more times. Evan saw Hogger get presented with a very worn out plastic doll, which he chewed a little before tossing aside with a “bah”. Next was a dinner plate that had miraculously survived the fall. Hogger liked this a lot, and tucked it under his chair for safekeeping.
A collection of small plastic toys, clearly free from some kid’s meal, was sent to the market pile. A man’s shirt, only a little torn, was also added to the market pile. The dead dog that made Evan shudder before was dragged before him - Hogger called the corpse that brought it an idiot, and made it throw the dog away from the house.
Every now and then, the piggy little demon would take a big swig of the brown liquid he called cider from his mug, and then Evan would quickly fill the mug up from the bottle Hogger gave him.
When the bottle ran out, Evan could only hold it in mute horror, wondering if this was how he got caught. When Hogger asked for a refill, and Evan poured nothing from the empty bottle into his mug, thankfully he just sighed.
“Mark me well,” Hogger said. “Go behind the house. Find the large trough. Open the stopper and fill the bottle up. Then come back.”
Okay, Evan had to admit - he appreciated an employer who gave clear instructions. If it weren’t for the constant fear of getting murdered by demons or eaten by zombies or dying from breathing in too much dust, he might have liked this kind of job. He’d been a dishwasher in a kitchen before and been treated worse than a walking corpse in a hellish dump, somehow.
Still, he couldn’t stay here much longer. His legs were aching from standing for so long, and his knee was definitely about to give up soon. He needed to come up with some kind of plan. Hogger probably wouldn’t notice if Evan slipped away when he wasn’t looking, right?
But then where would Evan go? Maybe this was just hell, forever. Big dusty landfills and mute corpses. Was that better or worse than endless brimstone and lava?
The trough was exactly where Hogger described. It was like one of the big half-barrels Evan saw farmers put in cow fields to water their cows. Inside, it was filled with wet rotten fruit in brown water - mostly apples - and swarmed with flies and maggots.
Evan held back a gag as he gingerly filled the bottle up with rotten, fermenting apple juice. He couldn’t hold it back anymore when he saw a clump of mold slide into the bottle.
Surely this wasn’t what Hogger meant.
Feeling pure dread, he shuffled back to the demon’s side, and poured him a new glass. He waited for Hogger to sniff it and retch, to call him gormless, to smash the mug.
But the demon sighed appreciatively.
“Good batch of scrumpy this month,” he said, and then took a long sip.
Evan once again gagged, though he managed to keep it silent. He had to look away and think about unrelated things for a while.
The situation was becoming desperate. Evan was slowly remembering that he didn’t have a big breakfast this morning. He wasn’t sure how many hours he spent at Hogger’s side, but the demon never took a break. Or maybe he was on perpetual break - maybe he spent his whole life sitting on this chair, examining useless bits and pieces, chugging rotten swill, and being waited on by lost John Does.
When Evan bent down to pick up a broken desk fan, his stomach gave out a long, loud grumble. Oh, shit. No no no.
He slowly straightened up. But Hogger just huffed out that old sigh of his, voice gruff with frustration. “Don’t tell me you’re beginning to rot, Jeeves! I knew I never got any lucky breaks down here. Gormless thing. I’ll get Pevel to touch you up when she stops by.” He took a swig, smacked his lips, and dismissed the corpse that brought the fan. “Don’t touch reanimation myself. Narsty, horrible complicated, and too much risk of getting bit. Just don’t go slimy on me now, Jeeves, or I’ll have you out in the field turning over morsels.”
Evan didn’t say anything, obviously, but he wondered if this was his chance. He had no interest in meeting the mysterious Pevel at all. If she reanimated bodies, like Hogger suggested, then she’d probably realise he wasn’t dead at all.
Then he would be in big trouble.
Maybe, if he pretended to decompose a bit, Hogger would dismiss him - and then he could explore the tip and see if there was a way out. Ugh, he didn’t know what to do. Couldn’t he just run away right now? What was this old demon going to do about it?
The more sore and hungry Evan got, the more convinced he became that he could take this piggy thing, if it came to a scuffle. He just… wasn’t sure how.
Evan had never been in a fight. Well, maybe he did and now he couldn’t remember, but the point was, he didn’t know how to fight. He was sure it was fairly self explanatory, right? Just hit someone a bunch with your fists. Even better, if he could nab a weapon.
Before this train of thought could get much further, there was a sudden ring of distant bells. Hogger sat up, tiny eyes widening just enough to flash a rim of red at the edges.
“Oh ho, speak of the devil! Jeeves, go prepare my fine tea set.” When Evan didn’t move quick enough, Hogger slapped the arms of his chair impatiently. “Go into the house, gimwit, go into the cupboard, and bring out the tea collection! Wait, wait, wash it first, and bring the fermenting loaves too. Cut them up fancy.”
Evan’s ears pricked up when he heard “cut”. Maybe there was a knife inside the house. At least he could use it for self-defence, if nothing else.
Slowly, wincing as his knee complained the whole time, Evan dragged himself to the doorway of the dilapidated house and managed to pull the rusty door open.
Inside, it stank. Evan tried to breath through his nose. There was a bed in the corner, stained brown and yellow, and evidently a source of much of the bad smell.
On the other side, there were some cupboards and boxes full of junk. Taking his time, Evan scrabbled around for a knife, pulling aside old tea towels and kettles and plugs and mismatching plastic bowls turned bone yellow with age and dirt.
He found the tea set. He assumed it was a tea set. It was covered in chintzy flowers, weirdly delicate, as if it had just been pilfered from some grandma’s fine china cabinet. It was all chipped and cracked, but at least it wasn’t completely shattered.
Outside, the sound of heavy footsteps suddenly filtered through the chicken wire windows. Evan slunk up to the window, to see who was coming.
A hand drawn cart made its dusty way to the back of the house. Pulling at the front were two big guys - nope, bodies, definitely dead, but huge.
In the back sat a smaller demon wearing a very large hat. She had feathers for hair, and snaggle teeth sticking out at random from her mouth, but she couldn’t have been taller than Evan’s thigh.
Evan drew back a little and watched her. She rummaged around in the cart for a big, and then shrieked out:
“Hogger, I got something for you.”
Hogger yelled back, “well, come around, daft bint, and show me what it is!”
With a strength that didn’t match her size, the small demon pulled a body from the bed of her cart. Its limbs were stiff and skinny. It looked like a teenage boy.
Evan looked away, concentrating on her instead. He didn’t like the sharpness of her black talons, long and wicked, at the end of her fingers.
She trudged around to the front of the house, and threw the body down on the floor. “Eh? Eh? What about it?”
“What about it indeed,” Hopper said, groaning and pulling himself off the chair stiffly. Evan watched through a gap in the door, careful to stay in the shadows out of sight. “It’s blighted small. Where’d you get it?”
“Field of teeth,” she said, stretching out its limbs. “Reject from the Northern Army. Too small, the warlord didn’t want it. Immediately thought of you.”
Hogger huffed. “You saw a rejected runt and thought of me.”
“Yeah, you daft pig. But I also thought, eh, it’s small, it can reach into all those nooks and crannies. Go on, what do you say.”
Hogger whacked the legs and arms with his cane a few times. “Not bad quality. Hey! Wait a minute, his ankle is broken.”
“Do you want him or not! I’m not wasting a scroll on him if you’re not interested.”
After a moment of thought, Hogger nodded. “Alright, crank him up. He’ll replace my crawler soon enough, once that gives up the ghost.”
The new, small demon - this must be Pevel, Evan thought - got to her hands and knees. She felt for something in her coat where Evan couldn’t see, and then pulled out a scroll of black paper. In milky white paint, she had drawn some kind of complicated mixture of lettering and shapes - but then she pulled her hand out of sight, towards the corpse’s head, and Evan didn’t know what was going on.
“Jeeves! The tea set!”
Oh no. Hogger wanted him. Evan didn’t know what to do. Carefully, he gathered up the china in his arms, and then hobbled out the door.
With shaking arms, he placed everything carefully on the table. Pevel didn’t look up at him, too absorbed in her task - which was, he realised, slowly inserting the scroll into the corpse’s ear.
“Bah, bring out more cider too,” Hogger said. “And where are those fermented loaves? Go, go!”
Evan went back into the house, and started looking for a knife again. It was as he bent down to search under the cupboards that he heard a noise - a dry thump, a series of cracks, and a low voice whispering something he couldn’t understand but gave him goosebumps.
When he stood up and looked outside, the corpse was slowly pulling itself up off the floor.
Ah. So that was how it worked. Weird demons put paper in their brains and that made them walk around, somehow.
“I hate it when you do that,” Hogger said. “Is it obedient now?”
“I told it to do everything told, just like usual,” Pevel replied, clearly grinning. “Now cough up.”
Hogger muttered, but handed over the plate he had stashed under his chair. “How’s that?”
“It’ll do.” Pevel took a seat on the porch, watching the newly made walking corpse amble around as if confused. “It’ll take a moment to calibrate. You know how human bodies are.”
“Held together with string and spit,” Hogger agreed. “What I wouldn’t do to have a soul on my hands. None of this reanimation malarkey.”
“Funny you should mention it. Rumour says there’s a real human what fell into hell, soul and all.”
Evan stopped breathing. Uh oh.
“So what? They do that all the time. Daft things.”
“Yeah, but this one’s been claimed. Huge bounty on that soul.”
“Really now? By who?”
“By the western warlord,” Pevel said, voice dripping with intrigue. “He says the soul and the body are his, and he’ll shred anyone who separates them.”
What the fuck? Evan desperately wanted to know more. Who the hell knew he was down here already? Why did a warlord want him? Okay, obviously for nefarious purposes involving his human soul or whatever, but was that why the other demon chucked him down this slope? He didn’t want to get shredded?
Hogger let out a low, long whistle. “He scares me, Pevel, I’m not shamed to admit it. Crazy bastard. That poor human.”
“It gets worse.” Pevel’s voice got even lower, somehow. “There’s an angel been spotted rampaging towards the western warlord’s castle. Nobody’s got close enough to ask what for, but it’s obvious, int it?”
Evan’s heart suddenly bounced around his chest, so loud and strong he felt like he was going to fall over. Ruth? Did Ruth find out he fell down here? An angel coming to find a human - that had to be him, right? Evan couldn’t help but suddenly feel a wash of relief and hope.
“A blasted angel? What for?”
“You can go ask, not me! I don’t fancy being turned into ash today!”
He had to get to Ruth. Ruth would save him.
“How’d you know all this?”
“Cause I ran into old Chopper who knows Caver who trades eyeballs with Bobble, and he saw Flat Eye Hobert on the refuge road, and Flat Eye told him that two idiots tried to ransom a human to the western warlord and he wasn’t getting involved, no way. Apparently he chucked him down a rubbish pit. Idiot.”
“Hah, that’s funny,” said Hogger, suddenly thoughtful. “I just got a fresh body today. Looked like someone chucked it in the pit.”
Evan didn’t move. There was a long, heavy silence.
“You what,” said Pevel.
Quickly, he looked around. There was a gap in the wall leading to the back of the house. If he squeezed through…
“We can have a look at him,” Hogger said, clearly curious and skeptical at the same time. “Jeeves! Come here!”
Evan wedged himself in the gap. He was slightly too big - his belt buckle got caught on a bit of metal sticking out, and he got stuck.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Eh? Where is he?”
“He’s a bit slow. Jeeves!”
The metal screeched as Evan pulled himself free. His shirt got torn and his ankle twisted sharply, but he spilled out the other side, right behind the cider trough.
“What was that? Hogger, are you sure he’s dead??”
“Quick, quick, go in the house and grab him!”
Where could he go? Evan looked around. It was dark and foggy, sure, but he didn’t know which was was out. The cart had left a trail in the dust on the floor. Maybe he could follow it and escape.
“He’s not in here! He’s - oi, Hogger, he’s out back! You! Stop there!”
He had no time to run. Brain scrambled, he did what came naturally after watching his housemate play hours of GTA V on the living room TV. He hopped into Pevel’s cart, right into the driver’s seat, and looked for a way to make it go.
“Oi! He’s in my cart!”
The walking corpses yoked to the front didn’t move. Evan took a deep breath. Maybe they were like that teenager out there - maybe they just had a scroll in their brain that said “obey everything told”.
“Run,” he yelled.
The corpses picked up the handles to the cart, and started running.
“He’s - he’s alive! Human! Hogger, you wait here!”
Pevel burst from around the side of the house. Her eyes were blazing under her hat, feathers flapping as she started running after him. Evan made uncomfortable eye contact, and then yelled at the corpses louder: “run faster! Get out of this rubbish tip! Go, fuck, go the way you came!”
“Idiots!” Pevel screeched. “Don’t listen to him!”
The corpses slowed down. Evan yelled, “do listen!”, and they sped back up.
“Don’t listen!”
“Do listen!”
“Don’t listen!”
“Don’t listen to anyone but me!” Evan yelled. “And go faster!”
The corpses went at full tilt. Pevel was running fast, but her pin legs sank deep into the dust. She was making rude gestures at Evan, and even though he didn’t understand them exactly, he got the gist of it.
“Keep going,” he said, as the house, and the two demons, faded into the fog. “Don’t stop for anyone unless I tell you.”
Did the demon really not plan for this? He just told them to listen to him, and they did. Did nobody steal bodies around here? Evan was baffled, but thankful.
He clung to the front of the cart, watching the rubbish pit speed by. Dust flew in his mouth and his eyes again, but it was good to finally rest his legs. Everything hurt a lot, but nothing seemed broken somehow. Even his twisted ankle felt better now the pressure was off.
The cart seemed to retrace the way it came, judging by how it followed the trails in the dust. Around them, ambling bodies shuffled past, all looking for treasures in the junk. The slope of the ground gradually evened out, and as it did, the piles of rubbish got smaller and flatter.
When they went over a small bump, a corpse by the side of the road suddenly rang a bell. This must have been Hogger’s version of a security alarm, he thought, and then stared at the road ahead. Maybe this was the end of his territory, or whatever he thought the rubbish tip was.
The way ahead was just a packed dirt road, surrounded on all sides by looming black stone, which rose from the dust like sharp teeth. The dust cleared a little, but the ominous black clouds kept roiling overhead. The stink of sulphur came back. Evan’s throat ached with it.
He didn’t dare slow the cart down. When he looked back, all he could see was the dust cloud kicked up by the cart, obscuring anything behind him. It stung his nose and eyes. Everything smelled like charcoal and ozone.
The black rocks turned into a gorge. The rocks started getting higher and higher, almost joining above Evan’s head. Everything was cast in darkness, and the air was thick and stank down here. When he looked up, he spotted figures with ropes dangling into the gorge, as if trying to fish for something. He ducked down, hiding his face, hoping he was still covered in dirt enough to pass for a dead body.
Ruth was going to the western warlord’s castle, the small demon had said. Maybe he thought that Evan was already there. If that was the case, then if Evan went to the castle too, then they’d at least be closer to each other.
If anyone could help him bust back out of hell, it was his guardian angel.
But how could he get to the castle? It wasn’t like he could stop and ask for directions. The demon who heard him speak seemed to work out he was a live human pretty quickly, so he could only assume corpses were usually dead silent. Haha.
Maybe the corpses hauling the cart knew where it was. It was worth a shot.
“Excuse me,” he said to the corpses. “Take me to the western warlord’s castle. At full speed. Please.”
There was no acknowledgement of his words. Just blank empty stares, clumsy rapid footsteps, and hanging open mouths. Evan shuddered.
Settling back in the cart, he decided to have a rummage around and see what he could find. Pevel seemed to be some kind of wandering body trader - a reanimator, that was the word they kept using - but thankfully she wasn’t hiding any more bodies in here.
There was a cloth sack and a wooden box rattling around. Evan opened the wooden box first, hoping for something edible, but it was just a bunch of black paper scrolls. When he dug a little deeper, he found velvet bags, but they were just full of small dry bones and strange dice and old leaves that smelled foul.
They probably weren’t edible, so Evan put the box back.
When he opened the cloth sack, he found another, smaller cloth sack. Frustrated and unamused, he quickly untied the top.
There was another, even smaller, cloth sack.
So sue him. He was hungry and tired and in pain. His fingers weren’t working properly, and there was dust in his eyes. The cart was wobbling and jerking around on the uneven dirt road.
Maybe he wasn’t as careful as he should have been.
When he ripped into the final cloth sack, a burst of glittering pink powder bloomed out, right into his face. He accidentally took a deep, powdery breath. The soapy taste of lavender went down the back of his nose and burned his sinuses.
Evan didn’t move for a half second.
Not a smart move, he thought, and then-
✨⭐️✨⭐️✨⭐️✨⭐️✨
author’s note:
Thank you all for reading so far!! Next update soonish :) let me know what you think!
If you want to, you can come join our discord (link in the pinned post!)
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Also, look at this gorgeous sketch of Hogger drawn by the lovely CloverGhost on the discord :o :o :o isn’t he beautiful???
Chapter Ten
Evan couldn’t see anything. He was falling through darkness, though the sound of air rushing past him told him the hole he was falling through was very narrow. It felt like he was falling down a deep, dark well, but he had no idea if there was water at the bottom.
The sense of panic was indescribable. His thoughts were an incoherent jumble of adrenaline and fear - a mixture of I’m gonna die and it’s going to hurt and god damn it, I really shouldn’t have bothered studying.
But then he kept falling. And he kept falling. What had been an ordinary, understandable fear of hitting the bottom at full speed, now morphed into a brand new kind of fear. This was getting really, really deep below the surface. Scary deep. Mining for scarce minerals kind of deep. The kind of deep where the cold, hard earth started getting warm again.
If he survived the fall… nobody was coming for him. How could they? This was so far down, there wouldn’t be any phone signal, and nobody even knew where he was, even without the added complication of being deeper than most fossil remains.
Falling for so long did weird things to Evan’s body. He felt dizzy and nauseous, and his muscles were starting to strain. But mostly, he felt stupid. Really stupid.
Why did he ever agree to come here? What was the point? Was that weird old priest even a priest? Or just a serial killer who liked dropping young men into boreholes?
And then, without much warning, Evan hit the bottom.
It was painful, sure. His entire body went from terminal velocity to no longer falling in less than three seconds. It felt like his whole body had been given whiplash. At first his brain was only white static, and then sparks of pain flared up over his whole body.
He was pretty sure he had bitten his tongue and possibly dislocated a shoulder, and now he was tangled up in a weird position and couldn’t move. It felt like he had somehow been tied up with hundreds of tiny abrasive ropes.
It took a moment for his vision to clear, and even then, he found himself scrunching up his face and groaning from the pain.
When he opened his eyes, he realised that was because he had landed in a net. He was still bobbing around, swaying from the force of his landing, and each jostling movement was agony. He really hoped nothing was broken, but his knee was killing him right now.
Through dim red light, he thought he could see the floor beneath him getting closer and then further away again as he bounced in the air, like a baby in really fucked up cradle.
Groaning and hissing through his teeth, Evan tried to look around to see where he had ended up, but it was incredibly dark down here. Was he in an old mineshaft?
“Help,” he yelled out uncertainly.
His voice echoed in the darkness. And then - with the hiss of a match being struck, a dim orange light flickered on in the distance. Evan perked up. Maybe someone here could help him.
“Hey, help me!”
Footsteps shuffled closer. Someone was coming closer and raising an old lantern as they went. As the light grew brighter, Evan could see details picked out in shadow against the glow.
The figure was bundled up in layers of thick cloth, and their feet were scraping against the floor with oddly hollow noises. They raised the lantern high, and Evan found himself looking directly down into their face as they accidentally lit themselves up by accident.
The thing looking up at him had large flat eyes like two dinner plates, filmy and soft like some kind of awful deep sea fish. Its jaw was huge, but it still couldn’t seem to contain the forest of thin, sharp teeth, which poked out of its gormless mouth in every direction.
Evan shrieked.
“Shut up,” said the thing, though it struggled not to lisp through its mouthful of toothpicks. “I hates the screamers. Where’s the docket then? They hands it to you before you got dropped?”
Evan was so taken aback that he had stopped shrieking. He stared in a mixture of horror and bafflement. “Docket?”
As if on cue, something whistled past him and landed on the floor with a bang, narrowly missing the creature. It swore, jumping back and shaking its fist up at the shaft Evan just fell through.
“Unprofessional really,” it muttered as it picked up the item - a little cloth bag. Evan strained to watch as it pulled out a piece of paper and read it. “That thing hit me, and I’d be going up there myself to suck their eyeballs out their sockets, believe you me… huh… now what the hell…?”
As it read the paper, the thing’s eyes were scrunching up in an approximation of a frown, before they suddenly bulged out of its face entirely like two inflated balloons.
“Just tell me what’s going on,” Evan begged, overcoming his sense of fear in an effort to… to do something.
The thing tore the letter up and then started eating it, shredding it with its many teeth. “We’re all fucked,” it said, choking slightly on the paper. “You, me, those two idiots up there. Fucked. Drawn. Quartered. Dead, no matter how you look at it.”
It shuffled over to some corner of the darkness. There was a creak, and then the net suddenly dropped the rest of the way to the floor. Evan yelped and felt his arm take most of the impact. Ouch, that wasn’t good.
“Get me out of this net,” he yelled. “I think my knee is broken!”
The thing ignored him. When it came closer, Evan realised it was about three times his size - something that wasn’t so apparent when he was hanging over it. It grabbed the net he was tangled in, and then hauled it over its shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
“The sooner I gets you out my hands,” it was muttering, “the sooner I can start running. Fuck the payment! What good is payment if I’m made of mincemeat? Oi, stop wiggling back there!”
Evan had been desperately trying to find the opening of the net so he could climb out and escape. Unfortunately, this thing had a tight grip on the opening, and didn’t even seem to notice when Evan tried to bite its fingers.
All Evan could do was wince and try to breathe through the pain as he was carried through more damp darkness on this thing’s back for an uncomfortable amount of time. His knee was throbbing, and there was a telltale cold pain coming from the side of his arm which suggested half the skin was scraped up.
He really didn’t know what to do. What was the protocol for cases like this? He never thought he’d need to know what to do if he got kidnapped, especially not by… demons.
Because this surely was a demon. And this place was surely…
The cold, dank tunnel started lightening, a dim red glow picking out details in the uneven stone flooring. The light grew stronger, and heat flooded the tunnel, and then all of a sudden they were out and into a much bigger space. Evan saw that the demon was taking a narrow path etched into the side of a cliff, and below him, there was a vast ravine. Deeper than anything he had ever seen, wider than a city, a great gash of jagged rocks and glowing, steaming floes of magma. And it was hot - so hot he was sweating. Hot like an oven, and stinking of sulphur.
“This is hell,” he said in shock. The demon ignored him.
Strangely, Evan didn’t feel all that surprised. When he was younger, he spent a lot of time imagining this moment. Yes, he thought he would be dead before then, and he had expected more of a formal admittance - someone with a clipboard, a great queue of sinners, not unlike a customer service kiosk really - but everything else felt so familiar.
So this was how it felt to go to hell. Evan slumped in the net in resigned despair.
Evan, you heard the reverend, didn’t you? Bad, evil boys don’t go to heaven. They burn and burn forever…
The toothy demon walked for a good long time down the narrow rock paths. The pain was slowly fading, but Evan was starting to get cramps all over. He started wondering when the hellfire and torture would start.
That was how it was, right? You got sent down to hell, and then they tortured you for eternity with all kinds of inventive and horrible methods. Maybe it had already started - this first part was bad enough.
They started slowing down. Evan tried to peer over the demon’s shoulder to see if he could get a good look at his next horrible awful method of torture, but it was impossible with all the netting in the way.
The demon suddenly grabbed the net and held it out in front of himself. Evan looked down - and groaned. There was a long slope beneath him, stretching down into a thick smoke, steep and smooth.
“If you survive this,” the demon said, flat eyes narrowing, “tell him I didn’t have no part in this. Tell him it was them two up there. I’m washing my hands of this.”
Evan felt his grip on the net loosen, and the bottom of his stomach dropped out. “Wait, wait, wait, wait-!”
The demon dropped him, and then turned and started walking away.
A moment of weightlessness - and then a tooth-crunching impact against the gravel slope. The bag rolled a little, Evan’s face was pressed into the ground for a horrible moment of dry friction, and then the bag settled so he was on his back.
He didn’t move. Maybe, if he didn’t move, the bag wouldn’t slide down the slope.
The net shuddered one centimetre down the slope.
“No, no,” he breathed.
Another moment of complete stillness. And then - a stone gave way.
The net started sliding. Evan swore as it picked up speed, losing his breath when his back and tailbone hit against a few small stones, his elbows getting scraped by the holes in the net.
Sure, if this was a sack on a slide at the fair, this would be fun. Evan would have enjoyed this a lot more if there wasn’t the added danger of being grated like cheese by the holes in the netting. Thankfully, it mostly seemed to protect him from friction.
It definitely didn’t protect him from the dust being kicked up by his rapid slide down the scree.
He had to try and keep his lips closed to stop breathing in the ashy, acrid dust. It bloomed around him, blinding him.
Then, he hit the fog clinging to the sides of the slope, and it all got worse. The air was hot and dry and painful to breath.
All he could do was try and tuck his arms into his sides and wait for the end of the slope.
The ground was becoming more bumpy - the net kept hitting things, bigger and bigger each time. Something snagged, and Evan was thrown forward suddenly as something caught on the net.
“Ow!”
He yelped, almost choked out by the ropes - and then he heard something tear.
With a disorienting, painful tumble, he rolled out of the net, suddenly freed by the snag. He found himself rolling on his side over and over, uncontrollable and unstoppable. It was like when he rolled down grassy hills as a kid, except now he was too old and too big and getting extremely nauseous from spinning so much.
When he slammed into something soft and came to an abrupt stop, there wasn’t much he could do. He could only find the strength to roll onto his back, and stare up at the malevolent smoke clouds parting around the trail he left down the slope.
Everything hurt.
“How am I not dead,” he said, half-coughing up ash while he said it.
Finally, when he’d caught his breath back, Evan turned his head to see what stopped him.
Huh. Weird. It was a battered leather sofa. It had clearly rolled down the slope too, scraped up and dusty, springs and torn foam spilling everywhere. What was that doing in hell?
When he gingerly sat up, he could see more random junk scattered around the slope. Here, it wasn’t so steep - things came to a stop here, just like he did. He saw old computers, some with big cathode screens, and dented hubcaps, and plastic bags turned brown by the dust, and piles of old clothes, and a lawn chair, and - a dead dog. He looked away from that sad grey little pile of fur with a grimace, thankful he didn’t land on that instead.
Slowly, Evan pulled himself to his feet. He was grateful he could stand at all. His knee and now his ankle were aching like hell, but he was feeling pretty good for a guy who just got fly-tipped into the depths of the underworld. Twice.
The ground felt very unsteady and loose under his feet. He half-walked, half-slid down the slope a little further. Everywhere he looked, even more rubbish piled up. Some of it even seemed curated - piles of hubcaps, or big collections of plastic bottles. This was a rubbish heap, he realised. Like a landfill, maybe.
“Dickhead,” he muttered, wishing the demon who threw him down here would trip over his own feet and fall in lava.
It was dusty down here, a bowl filled with dry smoke, and visibility was poor. Ash clouds hung low in the air, making every breath feel gritty and taste like burned plastic. Bigger things started looming out the gloom - whole cars, a shopping trolley, a lawnmower - and then Evan saw a lurking figure.
He froze, and ducked behind a wrecked fridge.
The figure was human-shaped, nothing too weird, but hard to tell from just a shadow in the dust. It was trudging through the litter, swaying back and forth, head tucked down.
Evan got a little closer, trying to be quiet, but the figure didn’t notice the crunch of gravel or his loud breath.
It was… a woman. In a tattered dress that might have been yellow once, now torn up and frayed. She was examining the ground intently, hands loose, arms flopping to the ground.
But - most importantly - she didn’t look like any kind of demon.
“Hey!” Evan said, coming closer. “Excuse me, miss, I’m sorry to bother you…”
The lady ignored him. She slowly turned, looking this way and that. Evan swallowed his words, suddenly overcome with white hot fear.
When she turned her head, he could see that she was missing half the skin on her face, and a good chunk of her jaw.
No living human being was supposed to look like that. Horrified, paralysed with it, Evan couldn’t look away from the flash of old, dust-pale gore.
He’d never seen exposed bone before. Had never seen a dead body that wasn’t sterilised and done up for a funeral. And this woman - this woman was either incredibly unwell, or she was dead. There was no way she could be alive with a face like that. He could see her tongue flapping - he had to stop looking or he would throw up.
There was a shuffle across the way, and Evan span to see another human figure walking slowly through the dust. It was also hunched down, examining the ground as it slowly picked its way through the trash.
He couldn’t move. What if they got closer? What if it was like the zombie movies he didn’t like, and they scented his blood and tried to eat him? Even if they weren’t violent, he didn’t want to get near anything like that - every inch of him knew it felt wrong - something bad, something to avoid at all costs.
His paralysis snapped when he heard something scuff a stone behind him. Blindly, blankly, he wove through the piles of rubbish, eyes wide and watering with fear and dust, heart pounding, more scared than he’d ever been since he left home.
There were more scattered around. Some were men, some were women, faces drooping, eyes staring blank, flesh putrefying and mouths hanging open. Some were so decayed it was hard to tell, brown remains of hair scraped over bony heads, black fingers grabbing at random items in the piles.
Evan didn’t look too long. He just kept making his way down, wondering when the sloping field of rubbish would come to an end.
And then, through the dust in the air, he saw a few weak beams of light. Yellow and flickering, but there. Anything was better than the interminable grey of the slope, the hazy half light filtering through the smoke.
A squat house, made of wood and corrugated iron, appeared from the dust. It had a porch around it, and out on the deck, a set of bent iron chairs and a table.
Sitting in a chair was some kind of old man - no, a demon, pig-nosed and with old bat wings shot full of holes until they absolutely couldn’t fly anymore.
Behind them, a corpse dressed in a dusty black suit balanced a bottle of something brown on a tea tray.
“Mm?”
The demon in the chair perked up at the sound of Evan’s footsteps coming closer.
“Found something good? Bring it here.”
Evan froze, unsure whether to come closer or keep running. So far, he hadn’t met any demon that didn’t try to immediately murder him.
“Gormless thing,” the demon said, not too unkindly, “I’ll be more specific. Walk up the stairs and give me the thing you have.”
When Evan still didn’t move, the demon seemed more interested. It tilted its head, large bat ears flicking away dust, and then sniffed loudly.
“Eh, wait a moment, wait a moment… is this a new body? Doesn’t smell rotten, smells very fresh… did you fall down the slope, little deadling? Want to come work for me? It’s an easy job for a corpse, easier than the wars. Hogger will look after you.”
Did this demon think Evan was a dead body that fell down the slope? He didn’t seem at all surprised that a supposedly dead body could walk around - was this normal down here?
Thinking fast, Evan decided pretending to be dead was probably a good idea for now. He remembered what Ruth told him - that demons wanted human souls. But dead people didn’t have souls, did they?
He shuffled a bit, imitating the clumsy stiff walk he saw the other bodies do. He probably looked like a corpse too - his body was coated in ash and dust, grey and frayed from the fall. The scrapes on his face and arms were bleeding, but the blood turned black where it mixed with the dust.
“Come here, come here, let Hogger poke you,” the demon said, and Evan got a little closer. He shuffled to the edge of the deck, keeping a wide berth.
Hogger smiled, and pulled out a cane from beside his chair. Quick as a flash, he hit Evan’s right arm, first his shoulder then his fore arm.
“Still soft,” he marvelled. “You’re either not long dead, or someone took great care to preserve you. Any missing limbs?”
More hitting from the cane, this time on Evan’s other arms and his thighs. The demon - Hogger - whistled, an uncanny noise from his nose. His eyes were tiny black beads, each as small as a pea, and Evan suddenly wondered if this demon could see very well.
“All intact. Very well cared for indeed. Definitely not a warlord’s grunt. Don’t tell me a noble tossed you down here… what did you do, add too many sugars to her tea?” Hogger laughed loud and gross, coughing up spit, and then hit Evan with the cane again. Evan was struggling not to make any noise.
“You can understand simple commands, yes or no? Jump.”
At first Evan didn’t understand. Hogger huffed, displeased.
Making a split decision, he jumped. Hogger whistled again, evidently pleased.
“Perfect. Alright, Jeeves, you’re relegated to kindling again. Tarrah a bit, go away.”
The corpse in the black suit turned and walked away, going around the back of the house and presumably off to gather kindling or whatever Hogger meant. Evan suddenly regretted being so good at acting. He realised that he was supposed to replace Jeeves.
“Stand beside me,” Hogger said, “do everything I say, and keep my cider topped up. That’s a good deadling.”
✨⭐️✨⭐️✨⭐️✨
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I dont know if youre still here, but I wanted to ask if this novel is finished? I hope so
hi!! this novel is under construction - but i really appreciate the support ❤️
i'm going to continue this novel and make sure it finishes one day!! this is a promise!!
NASA
Chapter Nine
"Uh, hi," Evan said.
Ashlin didn't say anything in return, so Evan barrelled on nervously.
"I'm Evan. I should have introduced myself, haha... um. Did you... overhear...?"
Ashlin slowly nodded. Her pale eyes were bloodshot and bleary, which gave them a filmy, glossed over kind of look. Maybe Evan could convince her she was having auditory hallucinations due to lack of sleep?
"It's nice to meet you," he added, because awkward silences made him compulsively want to fill them.
"I recognise you," Ashlin said, eyebrows drawing together.
Evan nodded eagerly. "We're in the same class as Aliya. I've seen you there too."
"No. I've seen you in my dreams."
...
Evan deflated in his chair. Why couldn't he make friends with normal people? "Oh. That's... nice."
"I saw you making a cup of coffee."
Time came to a standstill, digging its feet into the ground and refusing to go no further. Evan went perfectly still. When he next spoke, it was casual, obviously so. "What do you mean?"
Instead of answering him, Ashlin picked up a pen and started drawing on the paper beneath her, tracing circles around circles in long black loops. "I don't think it means anything. It's just a dream I had. There's nothing special about making a cup of coffee."
"Oh," Evan said, like his hands weren't gripping onto the chair beneath him, white knuckled. He forced them to relax. "That's a boring dream to have about someone."
"Isn't it interesting?" she continued. "You looked so unhappy. Stirring and stirring and stirring..."
Evan felt his breath catching sharp in his chest. "Have we met before?"
Ashlin considered this, giving him another filmy look. "No. No, we've never met. Oh, you look unhappy again. I have a nicer dream if you want it."
Warily, Evan nodded. Ashlin began drawing more intensely, hand swirling around and around on the paper, though she wasn't even looking at it.
"I saw night walking through a meadow wearing her cloak of stars. You were following behind her, your eyes glass, on three legs, too afraid to touch. I saw you gather the courage and pluck a star right off her cloak." She yawned, her head drooping. "And then I saw you put it to your mouth. Did you eat it or did you kiss it? It was so interesting... I just wanted to keep watching..."
With that, her head fell on the desk again. Evan jumped in surprise.
Did she just fall asleep again? Just like that? And did that even count as a nicer dream?
He poked her, but she just murmured and let out a long breath from her nose. It was then Evan realised his hands were shaking.
It was fine. It was just a weird dream this girl had! Obviously she ate too much cheese before bed time. Or she was on shrooms.
It felt rude to leave her there alone, especially when Aliya had booked out the study room, and it wasn't like she was disturbing him, so Evan ended up staying there and getting some work done after all. It was better to focus on his studies than to think about... literally anything else.
Evan could not stop thinking about it.
He did literally the bare minimum of work, before bailing and heading to the nearest café for something sugary.
Ashlin's words kept knocking around his head and catching him off guard. Not just her weird dreams – though they were scary enough – but everything else too. Like the fact that there was a simple solution all along.
While he waited in line for a pastry and some hot chocolate, he sent off a text to Ruth.
> hey ruth sorry to bother you! i just had a quick question
The response took a little while this time. Evan was already sitting at a table with his order when Ruth finally replied.
You're not bothering me. <
> heh sorry
> but um anyway, question!
> today i heard that curse marks can get removed through being blessed, is that true?
Another long gap. Evan drank his cocoa and ate his pastry and didn't feel any better for it when Ruth next replied.
Sometimes. Where did you hear this? <
> well this is actually a very funny story!
> you're going to laugh
> i accidentally ended up studying with the demon from yesterday
These responses were very quick.
Did she hurt you. <
I am not laughing. <
Did she hurt you in any way. <
> no it was fine!! don't freak out, sorry, i probably should have opened with the fact nothing bad happened...
> but anyway yeah, blessing! why didn't we try that out last night?
> we should give it a go, right?
It might not work. <
> let's try anyway. i mean, i thought being blessed was a good thing! so even if it doesn't work at least i'll be full of good vibes and stuff!
> maybe we can try it out tonight?
There was a long delay, so long that Evan had finished his drink and left the café by the time he got the response.
Something came up. I can't come over tonight. <
Oh. Oh.
Well, that was fine. Evan blinked down at his phone, firmly ignoring his first reaction – which was childish and stupid, and tasted a little like betrayal.
> haha that's fine! maybe another night then :)
I'm sorry. <
> why are you apologising haha? these things happen, don't feel guilty!!!
I said I would be there for you. <
He did say that, didn’t he? But even Evan didn’t take it that seriously. He knew better than to expect someone to actually be there as much as they said they would be. Life was too complicated - something more important always came up. Always.
Anyway.
Since Ruth was busy, Evan could entertain himself. And he didn’t need an angel to bless him! There were churches full of people who could give blessings, right?
His mind made up, Evan pulled out his phone and started looking up nearby churches to visit.
Evan hovered in front of the church doors, too hesitant to actually cross the boundary and enter past the threshold. The doors were huge, made of old black wood, and were studded with iron nails - they looked like they were designed to withstand a siege.
There was a smaller door cut into the wood that visitors could enter through. Inside was too dark to see. Evan listened, but he couldn’t hear a sermon or a service or whatever.
He just had to go in, find a priest, and ask for a blessing.
…
He couldn’t do it.
It was too embarrassing, and there was a huge chance that whoever he tried to tell about his curse mark would think he was insane. Curse marks? Angels? Demons studying in the library?
His own memories of going to church were vague and unhelpful. Hard wooden pews, his feet dangling in the air, and an unbelievably tall vicar droning in the pulpit about… something to do with a ribbon wrapped around an orange. He wanted to eat the communion wafers because they looked like biscuits, but he was never allowed.
Not helpful at all. He should have paid more attention back then. Now he had an actual, practical reason to listen!
But Evan had never been back to church, not for a long time.
He took a deep breath and edged through the door, entering into the cool, dark interior. The inside was… surprisingly modern. Light wooden floors and caramel wood pews with pleasant cushions. Spotlighting on the dais and the pulpit.
A horrible electric thrill ran down his back, congealing over where he knew the mark was. It tingled and sparked, like it knew it was in dangerous territory.
Evan swallowed, and crept forward a step. There were one or two people sitting in pews, heads bowed in silent prayer. Before he met Ruth, Evan would have felt terrible coming into somewhere like this, where people were actively worshipping, while being somewhat indifferent to the concept of God. Like he was a sinister interloper hiding in a flock of sheep.
Now, though, he had rather pressing and deeply personal reasons to be here.
Evan started sweating as he tried to figure out his next move. He really didn’t feel like he was supposed to go deeper into the church, as if the closer he got to the pulpit, the stronger the feeling of imposter syndrome would be.
When an older woman in a dark shirt with a customary white dog collar appeared out of a nearby door, Evan made accidental eye contact with her and immediately regretted it. She smiled at him and made her way over - but Evan took a few steps back. Old, uncomfortable feelings were pressing down on him again, things he felt long long before he came to university.
“You look a little lost,” she said kindly.
Evan tried to make his mouth work. “No, I’m… I need… Can you…?”
As her smile turned into a confused frown, Evan flinched, before hurriedly tripping over his own feet in his haste to get away. He spilled out of the church and onto the pavement, strangely out of breath and flushed red with mortification.
The sun seemed very bright out here compared to inside. He was so distracted that he didn’t notice that he was about to bump into someone until it was too late: he and the stranger went sprawling.
“I’m so sorry,” he blurted out on autopilot. “Shit, are you okay - wait, you!”
The stranger he had knocked over was no one other than… hm. Evan had forgotten their name. Tree? Rock? Branch? No, it was probably Rock, right?
Rock was lying on the ground. When they saw Evan, they scrambled to their feet, eyes darting around nervously. “Hey,” they said, laughing awkwardly. “Evan. Didn’t see you coming out of… church.”
Their voice lilted curiously as they saw the doorway Evan just rocketed out of. Feeling very self conscious about the woman inside, Evan darted back onto his feet and held out a hand to steady Rock. “Yeah, I was trying to get blessed.”
Rock blinked. “… what? Why?”
“Because of this stupid tattoo,” he blurted out, and then sighed. “Someone told me to try blessing it, and now that I say it out loud, it sounds weird as hell.”
Rock slowly shook their head. “No, it doesn’t sound stupid at all. The tattoo you were asking me about, right?”
“Right.” Evan tried not to crumble with embarrassment. He probably sounded half crazy. “I thought about asking the vicar here, but I got a little nervous. They’d probably just tell me to stop pulling a weird prank on them if I asked.”
Rock was looking at Evan with a searching gaze, their eyes roaming over his face. They frowned for a second, before seeming to realise something.
“I know a priest,” they said hesitantly. “Someone who has experience with… well, it’s a curse mark, isn’t it?”
“Apparently,” Evan said helplessly. “I still don’t think it’s real, but I trust the person who told me. Wait, you know about curse marks?!”
Rock nodded. “You’re right to be cautious. It may be an ordinary tattoo. But let’s just say I’ve witnessed a curse before. I know they’re real. And this priest can tell us if it’s something you need to worry about or not.”
Taken aback, Evan looked at Rock with new eyes. He thought he was the only person who had experienced the supernatural, and yet Rock was apparently totally up to speed with the concept of curses. What the fuck? Was everyone around him getting cursed or blessed or followed by devils all the time, and he was just too oblivious to notice?
It was possible. After all, he point blank tried to tell Aliya that her study buddy was a demon, and she still didn’t get it. Was he just like that before an angel came along and opened his eyes to the truly abnormal things happening all around him?
“Okay,” he said hesitantly. “If you could, I would really appreciate seeing a priest. Does he. Does he have experience with. Um. Demons and stuff.”
Rock nodded. “Yes. Lots of experience. He travels around doing exorcisms and sermons, all hush because Big Church hates him. You know how it is.”
Evan, who did absolutely not know how it was, nodded and pretended he understood. “Well, lead the way.”
Rock guided them both through the city, down the sloping roads to what Evan recognised as one of the night club quarters. Now in day time, it was quiet and seedy, hemmed in by tall buildings with oppressively uninteresting entrances.
At night, this place was wall to wall with drunk students and youthful locals who wanted to find cheap booze and loud music. Or so Evan had heard.
Rock stopped outside of what might have been a shop front a long time ago. Evan looked up and examined the peeling name painted above the dusty windows.
“… the Blue Angel?” he said quizzically.
Rock shrugged. “Gotta let your clientele know where you are somehow, right?”
They knocked on the door. After a long minute, there was a rattle, and then the door creaked open. An older woman peered at them, her wrinkled mouth pursing in disapproval, but then she stepped aside.
She gave a particularly dirty look to Evan, letting out a judgemental sniff when he walked past. She disappeared into the gloom, leaving them alone in an empty bar that smelled of stale beer and alcopops. The floors were horribly sticky. It felt like they were loathe to let shoes leave their surface, clinging on with disgusting tenacity.
Bemused, Evan swapped a look with Rock, who just chuckled. “You should see this place on a Monday night. Pandaemonium. Alright, follow me.”
Crossing the room, they went down a very steep set of stairs into a basement with a low ceiling. Evidently this place, as damp as it was, was also busy on Monday nights, because there was another bar and a DJ booth crammed into the gloom. The smell was even worse down here, like old hops and vinegar and eggy vomit. The substance that made the floor so sticky also appeared to be on the walls and ceilings, making them shine like a watery cave. Evan swore he spotted stalactites forming in corners of the room.
It was dark, but Rock didn’t seem unnerved. They confidently opened another door, with another set of stairs behind it. There were several signs saying “keep out” and “staff only”, which they ignored.
Jogging down the stairs, the eggy smell got worse, like stagnant water. Evan surreptitiously held his nose. “Are you sure he’s down here?”
“He’s always down here,” Rock replied confidently. “When you need him, he’s always down here. He just kind of knows.”
Perhaps it was a mistake following this person he barely met at a party he didn’t remember to a nightclub he had never visited to see a priest who was definitely banned from every church in the country. Evan was starting to get second thoughts, and he was considering politely excusing himself, when the stairs finally ended. There was another door. Rock rapped on it, and someone inside coughed and yelled, “come in lad”.
Feeling socially obliged to enter, Evan stepped through the door and into a small, dark room. A fluorescent office light flickered above, casting a harsh greenish glow on the only inhabitant of the room. It was a man, maybe in his sixties, with a patchy yellowing beard poking out from his strange cowl. He looked like he might have fallen out of a sixteenth century plague pit, if only he weren’t wearing a grubby pair of white trainers and sweatpants that had seen better days.
Notably, he wasn’t wearing a cross or a dog collar. Evan wondered if this was what priests looked like on their days off.
Rock peered from behind Evan, patting him on the shoulder before scurrying into the room.
“Listen, we’ve got a poor guy here with a big fuck off curse on his bum.”
Evan turned red. “It’s not on my-!”
The old man raised his eyebrows. “Does he now. And why hasn’t he been dealt with yet?”
“Because it’s…” Rock said, before coming to a nervous halt. “Evan, do you mind showing him?”
Maybe it wasn’t too late to go home. But fine. He needed this fixed, and he’d done worse for the doctor, so Evan undid his belt and lowered his jeans just enough to show off the tattoo on his lower back.
The old man whistled. “Bit extreme. Someone really wanted this particular little shit.”
“Hey!” Evan said, but they ignored him. Tree said, urgently, “yeah. Someone did. Someone we both know did.”
Since he was facing away from them, Evan thought they had both gone silent, but when he turned back around, they were staring at each other with the telltale wide eyed look of a pair that had been in the middle of an intense whispered conversation.
“Bugger,” said the old man, and then, “shit me. You’re not really doing it, are you?”
“You fucking kidding? He’d kill me,” Rock said, looking both excited and terrified. “No way I’m claiming that, either way. But a mark like that. What do you reckon he’d pay for its safe return?”
The old man huffed, and spat, and then grinned. “Fine. But you didn’t talk to me. And I want tax. I’m investing.”
“Fine. Deal. So you’ll do it?”
“Yeah yeah, keep your hair on.”
Evan had very much lost the plot. “You know what? This has been lovely, but I think I’m going to head out.”
Rock and the old man stared at him. The only door into the room slammed shut, and the light flickered overhead. Evan suddenly felt like something had stuck the soles of his shoes to the floor.
Oh no. He really should have just gone to that nice, normal church. Even if they laughed at him, he had a feeling he’d be in a better position than he was right now.
“Don’t worry lad,” said the old man, leering with a dreadful tombstone tooth smile, “there’ll be someone to catch you at the bottom. So don’t bite through your tongue. They always bites through their tongue.”
Evan stared at him in bewilderment, and then at Rock. “What’s going on? What are you…”
Rock’s eyes were gleaming. There was a low susurration, the light flickered again, and then a trap door opened up underneath Evan’s feet.
Rock and the old man vanished from sight as Evan dropped like a stone into the void below the floor.
He fell for a very long time.
author’s note: this really happened to me actually
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Chapter Eight
Evan felt his face turning every colour possible. First he went red, and then white, and then red again, and then possibly green, before he had to cough and look away.
“Well,” he said, scrambling for something to say in response. “That’s. Thank you.”
Ruth snorted gently. His wings faded away from view, and he seemed more like a normal boy again. “You don’t understand yet. That’s okay.”
Of course Evan didn’t understand! This was too insane to understand!
“Okay, okay, I get it,” he said, because he didn’t think he could take anymore explanation. “That’s. Good. Okay. But uh, this means that demons are real, then.”
“Yes.”
So hot goth girl really was a demon. Evan quickly latched onto that instead of thinking about how intense and handsome Ruth was while swearing allegiance...
His heart was suddenly beating so fast. He needed to calm down.
"Um... so Ophelia, uh, attacked me. I just don't understand what she wanted with me," he said, averting his gaze in case somehow Ruth could read his mind. Could angels read minds?
"The same thing all demons want," Ruth said. "A human soul."
"Oh." Evan blinked and thought about it. "Does it need to be a bad soul?"
"They don't care about if it's good or bad. A human soul is powerful no matter who it's from."
"But why do they want it?" Evan said, peeking up at Ruth in concern. "What does it do?"
Ruth wore a heavy expression for a moment. Quietly, he took the seat beside Evan again, and summoned a small amount of light in his loosely clenched fist. It shone like a star trapped in his hand. Evan stared at it in enraptured silence.
"Why do you think humans have souls, Evan?"
"... To decide who goes up to heaven and who doesn't?"
Ruth shook his head. "There's something in that, but again, that doesn't interest demons. Do you know what else the soul does? It powers the body." The light pulsed, but when he opened his palm, there was nothing there anymore. "Demons don't have souls. They're awful, twisted things running on old mechanisms. It makes them hungry. Makes them jealous. A human soul is so heavy and so full of everything, so unbelievably condensed – what a valuable thing to have. What a source of power to covet."
Evan put his hand on his chest, feeling his heart beat. "So she was trying to take it. My soul."
"Yes." Ruth slowly let his hand relax again, his blue eyes flickering sideways.
"By killing me?"
"That's one method, albeit a crude one."
Evan was trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Ruth was the kind of person who said "albeit" out loud, when he realised what was said. "She really was going to kill me... shit, too deep, never mind that, what are the other methods?"
"Not important."
Evan waited, but Ruth really didn't say anything else. "Shouldn't I know just in case someone tries to do it to me?"
"They won't," said Ruth with an air of finality. "I'll be there to stop them."
That made Evan shut up, his face turning pink for no good reason. Slowly, quietly, he rearranged his thoughts.
"Okay," he said quietly. "But what if you're not there one day?"
Ruth opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He stood up as if restless, turning his body aside like he was examining something across the room. Tall and slender, his blond hair trailing over the edges of his collar in little curls, he was for a moment unreadable.
"That's not possible," he said shortly. "I will always be there from now on."
That made something in Evan's chest hurt. People said that. They really believed it. Evan didn't hold it against them – and he didn't think Ruth was lying on purpose – but nobody ever really stuck around for good. Things changed. Life happened. People grew apart from each other. Everybody left, in the end.
He didn't want to think about it anymore, and he certainly didn't want to make Ruth feel bad by pointing out how unrealistic that was, so instead he just smiled to himself.
"I should make dinner," he said, instead of anything else he wanted to say. "I didn't eat while I was in the library. I'm going to try making onion soup."
"That sounds nice," Ruth said, still facing away and holding himself as still as a statue.
Evan couldn't help but chuckle a little. "... Would you like some?"
Ruth turned around fast, blinking at Evan like he really hasn't expected that at all. His face melted into a sunny smile. Too bright, way too bright, Evan needed sunglasses to look at it directly!
"I've never had soup before," he said. "I think I'd like to try it."
And so Evan led the way into the kitchen.
It didn't feel scary handing Ruth a knife this time. Now that he was sure that the guy wasn't a secret murderer, but in fact a literal servant of God here to protect him, Evan didn't mind letting him handle sharp objects in the kitchen.
They fell into a companionable silence as they went through the steps of cooking. The kitchen filled with the smell of onion and butter as Evan showed Ruth how to fry the ingredients in a pan.
Slowly, after adding salt and garlic, and slowly pouring in some cheap ready stock he bought from the shop, the soup started coming together.
"I wish we had some tiger bread to dip in it," Evan sighed with longing as he poured two bowls of soup. "But we'll have to make do with the normal stuff."
Ruth stared at him when he said this, before nodding. "I'll bring some next time."
To avoid spills, this time they sat on the floor together on cushions taken from the sofa. Evan leaned forward and watched with wide eyes as Ruth took his very first spoonful of soup.
The angel's eyes closed, and his mouth twitched around the spoon.
"It's good," he said once he had swallowed. "It's very good."
Evan sighed with relief. He knew it would be okay — soup was hard to get wrong — but knowing that this was someone's very first introduction put a lot of pressure on his cooking skills!
Around mouthfuls of his own bowl, Evan idly asked, "don't you eat anything up in - up there?"
Ruth took some bread, tearing it apart with his fingers in obvious fascination. His expression was oddly blank when he replied.
"Food is a frivolity to an angel. We're not humans. We don't need nutrients or hydration. The celestial body remains unchanging, ever perfect, each molecule in its exact place. So no, nothing gets eaten up there."
Evan winced. "That sucks. Or maybe it's fine – it must be nice to not be hungry."
"Not to be hungry," Ruth repeated, "nor thirsty, nor sad. To do nothing but witness and sing and be, no need, no famine, no want." His expression softened a little as he held up his spoon. "But it means an angel never gets to taste soup like this. Isn't that a shame."
With great relish, Ruth sipped at another spoonful. Evan watched with a wide smile, and wondered what he could cook for Ruth next time. Assuming there was a next time.
When the soup was finished, Evan and Ruth washed up the kitchen together. It was a lot easier to do with someone helping. Evan didn't want to admit it, but he was quite a messy person – he tended to leave pots unwashed and dirty dishes in the sink. It wasn't like anybody would complain anymore since he lived here alone, but with Ruth being his guest, he felt a little ashamed to leave things in the usual state.
After they finished, Ruth gathered his things up and went towards the hallway. Evan blinked, a hollow feeling in his chest.
"Oh. You're leaving?"
Ruth looked at him, head tilted to the side. "It's late. Aren't you going to sleep soon?"
"Ah, I guess – I thought you were going to stay longer – but it's okay if you need to leave!"
"I don't need to leave."
"Then..." Evan hesitated, glancing up the stairs. "Maybe you'd like to... stay over?"
Ruth froze in place, eyes going comically wide. "Huh?"
"It's just that, since my housemates aren't here, I have two spare rooms, so you can pick whichever you like," Evan said, ploughing on with the offer even though he was fairly sure he was coming on way too strong. It was just that he really didn't want this nice evening to end. And there were murderous demons out there who wanted to kill him, apparently, so sue a guy for being a little nervous!
"In... in your spare room," Ruth continued, his voice somehow relieved.
"Yeah, I wasn't going to make you sleep on the couch," Evan chuckled. "Wait, but, um. Only if you want to! I understand if you need to go back to, um, you know," he said while nodding upwards, "and deal with some business. But you're welcome here too."
Then he felt a little awkward, so he added, "sleepover!" in a fun, quirky voice, and then immediately regretted it. That was even more awkward. Wow.
There was a long silence. Ruth stared at him, before slowly letting out a melancholic sigh.
"I do have business to finish," he said. "I can't stay tonight."
Evan deflated. "Oh. That's fine." It was fine! Maybe Ruth really did have stuff to do. Either that, or he was politely making excuses not to stay over with this weird guy who was being way too enthusiastic about his spare rooms. Understandable! Evan would do the same in his position!
"... Maybe tomorrow night?" Ruth said after a moment.
"Ah, tomorrow? Yeah, yeah! I'm free tomorrow! And every night, I guess, haha, I don't really do a lot-" oh my god stop talking!! "- sorry, tomorrow, that's fine!"
With a quirk of his lips, Ruth looked pleased. "I'll find you in the evening."
"Wh – find me? Oh, because you're my guardian angel. You probably know where I am all the time, right?"
Another moment of silence, before Ruth stiffly shook his head. "I have your phone number."
...
Angels needed phone numbers to arrange meetings?
Before Evan could ask any more questions, Ruth was making his way to the front door again, and after a few more goodbyes, he left the house. Evan couldn’t help but watch him go, as usual. It was like he wanted to make the moment last until he had to be alone again.
With a sigh, he closed his front door and headed upstairs to his room.
Evan didn’t really want to leave the house the next day, but Aliya sent him a text in the morning inviting him to a surprise study session in the library. She managed to book a private room and, since those were both more rare and more valuable than any precious metal or gemstone you cared to name, he wasn’t about to pass up this chance.
He rolled into the room with a meal deal and a cup of coffee, ready to go, only to find two interlopers side by side with Aliya. The first was the sleepy girl he kept seeing in their lectures with her head on the desk, clearly snoozing through the entire class. She had black hair that was dip-dyed pale purple, and it spilled over the desk as she leaned against the surface, supporting her head in one hand. She gave Evan a curious glance and then yawned so wide he could see all of her teeth.
To Aliya’s right sat a horribly familiar figure. She was bandaged up and had two black eyes, her face blotchy and swollen in patches, but she was still wearing her black platforms and winged eyeliner.
“You!” they said in unison. Ophelia the demon stood up and pointed, but hissed as her injured arm jostled too much in its cast.
Aliya sat in the middle with her laptop and a stack of textbooks and notepads. She hummed in surprise as Evan and Ophelia stared at each other, unblinking.
“You know each other?”
“I have to go,” Evan said, turning on his heel and walking out the door.
He didn’t get very far away before Aliya chased after him, catching him by the shoulder and stopping him in his tracks. “Evan, wait! What’s wrong?”
One of the students in the nearby seats gave them a very pointed glare.
Evan hesitated. His palms were clammy and he felt sick. “I... why is Ophelia there?”
“Ophelia? She’s my friend. I met her during freshers. How do you know her?”
Evan paused. “I met her at a party.”
There was an awkward silence. The student to the side kept glaring at them. Aliya tilted her head, before gasping.
“Wait, Evan, did you have an awkward hook up with her?!”
“Hey!” said the student angrily. “Do you mind?”
They both quickly apologised and moved to the side, continuing the conversation in hushed whispers. Evan was somehow both bright red and horribly pale at the same time.
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like?” Aliya hissed. “Don’t you like her? Did she stand you up? Did she ghost you?”
She tried to kill me! But Evan knew it sounded crazy. If he said that, Aliya would never believe him again. “She... I don’t think we like each other very much. We didn’t hook up!” Evan thought about it. They did kiss... but that wasn’t exactly a hook up! She just kind of attacked him with her mouth. “No, we didn’t hook up.”
Aliya stared at him. “You paused in a suspicious manner.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did.” She gasped again. “Wait, that party? The one I bailed on?”
Again, Evan hesitated. “What about it?”
“When you got so drunk you couldn’t remember anything...”
There was a very suggestive tone in Aliya’s voice. Evan’s face scrunched up as he tried to work it out - and then he grimaced. “We didn’t do anything. I think we kissed? It’s not important, that’s not what this is about, she was just - she did some questionable things to me-”
Aliya was vibrating in place ever since he said “kissed”, but when he said “questionable things”, she instantly went still, eyes lighting up with understanding. “Oh. Did she threaten to kill you?”
This threw Evan for so much of a loop that he was basically performing aerial gymnastics. “Wh. What? Wait, you know? About her being...?”
Aliya nodded, her eyes huge. “I know.”
Holy shit. Aliya knew!
“That’s, that’s amazing, I thought I was the only one - but how can you stand to be around her? Aren’t you scared? I mean, isn’t it suspicious that she wants to hang out with you even though she isn’t in our class?”
Aliya held up her hand in denial. “I invited her, how is that suspicious?”
“Why?! She’s a demon!”
“Oh, Evan,” Aliya said with a sigh. “Don’t call her names! I know you’re upset but there’s no need to be rude. I’ve always known Ophelia is a huge asshole and a bully. We’re both very perceptive people, aren’t we? But don’t worry, I won’t let her get away with this. Do you want me to beat her up for you?”
Evan was, once again, utterly fucking baffled. “But she... how can you beat her? She’s a literal demon from actual Hell, isn’t that scary?”
“Evan! I love this new side of you, it’s so rude. You should keep doing it. But I’m not scared of her at all - she’s not actually from Hell or anything, and she’s kind of weedy, so I reckon I could have her in a fight. I did kickboxing when I was in high school.”
Deflating, Evan gave her a despairing look. Wait. So Aliya didn’t know. She thought he was just insulting her friend. “So she’s just... a regular human girl. Who threatens to kill people.”
“I wouldn’t say she’s regular, that’s for sure. It’s a bad habit. She doesn’t actually mean it. I’m trying to train it out of her.” Aliya thought for a moment. “I’ll have to wait to beat her up until she’s finished healing. She’s in a pretty nasty way after the motorcycle accident.”
“Motorcycle accident,” Evan repeated flatly.
Aliya sighed. “I know she’s a bit abrasive, but please stick around and study with me. I’m really desperate and I can make her buy us snacks. Please Evan? Please?”
They both turned and looked back at the study room. There was a small glass window in the door, and Ophelia was pressed right up against the glass, watching them with wide, round eyes. When she noticed them staring, she fell away and scrambled out of sight,leaving behind a little fog cloud on the window.
“I don’t want to,” Evan said bluntly.
“I’ll buy you a big bowl of fancy beef noodles at the expensive noodle restaurant with takoyaki if you teach me how to do the last set of equations the teacher gave us,” Aliya countered.
Evan shook her hand. “Deal.”
Inside the room, the sleepy girl had not moved, her eyes gazing down blankly at her note paper. Ophelia was perched on a chair, somehow both very nonchalant and incredibly obviously aware of Evan’s position at the same time.
Aliya took her seat again and launched into studying, bringing up the slides from the last lecture they had. Evan tried his best to stay attentive, but it was hard. The side of his face was burning from knowing that Ophelia had her big green eyes trained on it, unwavering and creepy and right in his peripheral vision.
Beef noodles... takoyaki... on someone else’s debit card...
As Aliya went on, the sleeping girl’s head landed on the desk with a thunk as she appeared to fall asleep. It made one of Aliya’s precariously stacked piles of textbooks fall on the floor.
“Oh my god, Ashlin! Oh, she’s out. Sorry, Evan, she works night shifts... wait a minute.”
Aliya slid off her chair and slipped under the table, leaving Evan and Ophelia alone with the sleeping girl, who was apparently called Ashlin. Immediately, Ophelia hissed, baring her fangs at him in full display, her pupils turning into thin slits as she leaned violently towards him.
“Where’s your guardian angel, Golightly?”
She whispered it quietly so Aliya couldn’t hear it, but even though it was quiet, it was dripping with sarcasm. Evan didn’t rise to it. He just gave her an unimpressed glance, pretending like he wasn’t sweating through his shirt. Leaning away imperceptibly, he whispered back, “why? Looking for a second round?”
“So brave now you have your little putto to hide behind, humanboy.”
“Is that a slur?” Evan glared at her. He was so anxious that it didn't even feel real anymore. It didn't matter what he said because every nerve was lighting up in sheer fuckery and his heart was pounding like a bass drum in a shitty disco. “Don’t be fucking rude. Want to die?”
“I’ll slurp your marrow up with my long tongue and feed the rest to my deadlings as scraps,” Ophelia growled, her eyes glowing like strange lanterns.
Evan nodded like that was acceptable. Thinking for a moment, he tilted his head before whispering amiably, “our Father, who art in Heaven, blessed be thy name-”
Immediately Ophelia started writhing and shaking her head, smoke coming from her bandages. The room heated up a few degrees and thick black hair was sprouting from her arms. Before things could go too far, Aliya picked up the last of the books and remerged from under the table. She took one look at Ophelia and Evan, before yelling “hey! Are you guys about to fucking fight?”
“He was casting curses on me!” Ophelia immediately snitched out.
“Evan, I understand Ophelia incites murderous rage in anyone who looks at her for more than five seconds, but can you please hold back from casting curses on people before this study session devolves into chaos?”
“She doesn’t make me feel murderous rage,” murmured Ashlin sleepily from her position face-down on the desk.
“She was threatening me!” Evan complained, pointing at Ophelia. “She said she wanted to drink my marrow!”
“Oh, ew.” Aliya looked both disgusted and intrigued. “Okay, don’t flirt with each other either. Don’t talk about marrow.”
“-mostly Ophelia makes me feel rage but not the murderous kind-”
“What do you think marrow is?” Evan asked, horrifyingly curious despite the current situation.
“I don’t know! I don’t want to know!”
“- sort of a low burn. A nice grill. Grill rage.”
Ophelia was still hissing incoherently. Aliya put her head in her hands and sighed.
“Okay, let’s take a little break. This is nothing. This isn’t studying. Ophelia, come with me on a little walk, okay?” When Ophelia seemed resistant, Aliya added, “I brought the spray bottle.”
“Not in the library,” Ophelia immediately spat out, getting up and following Aliya out the door. Before she went, she paused, and seemed to think of something. Her eyes narrowed as she turned around and gave Evan a slow smile. “Human, why don’t you ask your darling Ruth why he doesn’t just bless you and get rid of that tattoo, hm? Or is he just waiting for the opportunity to FU-”
Before she could say any more, Aliya’s hand reached back and yanked her out of the room.
What?
Mentally exhausted, Evan kneaded his eye with the palm of his hand. Oh, this had been a mistake. Upsides: somehow he hadn’t been killed, maimed or kissed again. Downsides: he was fairly sure his only friend on the course was somehow now involved with a murderous demon, which was dangerous, except... she seemed to have a handle on it? Maybe.
And then there were the weirdsides, like... what did Ophelia mean by blessing the tattoo? Would that work? In that case, since it was so simple, why didn’t they do it already? Angels could definitely bless things! It was like, the most basic angel power, probably!
And as for the rest of that sentence... well, whatever, it didn’t mean anything. Ophelia was just weird.
Taking a deep breath to calm his pounding pulse - he got so angry when he was anxious, holy shit, did he really ask if she wanted to die? - Evan let his hand drop. When he looked to the side, he jumped in place.
The sleepy girl, Ashlin, was no longer face-down on the desk. She was looking at him in intense fascination.
---
me thinking up names: yeah make them all start with vowels, genius manoevres
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Chapter Seven
There was no time to move, no time to duck or run away. All Evan could do was stare in horror as Ophelia reared back, raising a hand that was adorned with sharp, shiny black nails. This couldn’t be real.
None of this felt real. This just didn’t happen to nice boys like him! He didn’t get kissed in alleyways by scary girls, and those girls didn’t turn into nightmare monsters that wanted to bite him in half. He had to be dreaming.
Breathless and terrified, he could only cringe away as her sharp mouth came nearer. Her breath was hot on his neck, so hot it stung. The sulphur stench was clearing out his sinuses.
Ah, well. He was actually going to die this time, right? Kinda cringe.
Before those sharp teeth could do more than leave a scratch on his skin, there was a whistling sound from down the alley. Evan turned his head to see who it was coming from and to call for help, only to pause. It wasn’t a person. It was a blinding white light, coming so fast his eyes couldn’t focus, so fast it was making a whistling sound as it tore through the air.
Oh, shit. It was coming right towards them. Was that a fucking rocket launched missile?
The white thing collided with Ophelia at full force, with an impact that made Evan’s teeth crunch. It stuck in her side like an arrow - and then the light grew so strong that he instinctively closed his eyes, covering them with his hands. It was magnesium-bright, making his vision glow red between his fingers and behind his eyelids. It hurt.
Ophelia yowled like a burned animal. There was a series of thumps and crunches. When Evan cautiously opened his eyes again, there were overexposed blue-green smears everywhere from where his eyes had been overloaded, and he couldn’t quite see right in front of him. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he was sure he saw Ophelia dart sideways. She was hunched over all wrong and feral.
The alley was suddenly lit up. There was the slow approach of footsteps. Evan tried to see who was coming, but looking at that intense white light hurt too much. He had to raise his hands to cover his eyes.
“Hahaha, there you are,” Ophelia panted, her laughs coming out short like she was forcing them up manually from her lungs. “Hello again, little putto.”
Evan turned his head to try and get a look at who she was talking to - but then a warm, smooth hand covered up his eyes, and a quiet voice murmured, “be not afraid”. It sounded deep and familiar.
There was the sound of fabric and fur swiftly moving from place to place. “Hey, don’t ignore me,” Ophelia purred from slightly further away. “Why did you hurt me so bad? I was only playing with him.”
“Back, foul creature,” the mysterious person said. It sounded a lot like Ruth, except his voice was... more, somehow. Bigger.
“Oh, so that’s how we’re going to act.” Ophelia snorted. “As thou wilt, o fearsome angel. Are you here to smite me, hm? Here to play the good guy in front of the prey–?"
Her voice crumbled off with a snarl as another pulse of light burst from between the gaps in Ruth’s hand, so bright it hurt.
"Ruth?" Evan said curiously. "What's happening?"
The hand seemed to freeze slightly. Then, nonchalantly, too nonchalantly, Ruth said, "I'm just dealing with some vermin."
"Ruth?!" screamed Ophelia. She sounded out of breath, her voice moving swiftly around as more crunching gravel sounds rang out. It sounded like there was a really interesting fight happening between her and Ruth right now – if only Evan could see it. "Is that what you're calling yourself now? You cherubic little hypocrite..."
"Die already," Ruth said, which made Evan forget all about the fight, actually. Were angels allowed to say that? It seemed so blunt.
Evan thought he might be going into shock again, because he honestly didn't feel very surprised to learn that Ruth was probably a genuine bonafide angel. Actually, the most shocking part was learning that angels were nothing like he thought they were. There was a lot less choir music and soft gold lighting and white feathers, for starters. What kind of angel had light-beam missile powers and said "die already"?
This was too exciting not to look at. His eyes were still mottled with light burns, but he tore Ruth's hand away anyway and tried to figure out what was going on.
Ophelia was a black furred lump that jumped from wall to wall within the alleyway. She was being forced to avoid small balls of light, brighter than a firework and faster too. He gasped in awe – only for Ruth's hand to cover his eyes again.
“Don’t,” he said urgently. Evan just wanted to look even more than before.
There was a loud screech. It felt like there was a sudden, slow build of pressure in Evan’s ears, like when there was water stuck in them and he needed to pop them. Ruth’s hand left his face, so Evan could finally look up and see what was going on. He raised his head.
He found himself looking up into Ruth’s face. Every inch of his skin seemed perfect in a very cold, solid way, like someone had carved him out of marble with a delicate, loving hand. There was golden light pouring out of his eyes, no iris or pupil, just a blinding glow. Even his hair was glowing, just slightly, and the air around him seemed to teem with energy.
He had both of his arms raised, bracketing Evan and keeping him safe. Behind Evan, there was the sound of Ophelia snarling like a wildcat and the high pitched bat-whistle whine of light being thrown at her, but Evan couldn’t see that. All he could see was the dispassionate anger that Ruth was wearing, the curl of his lip, the unhuman symmetry of his face.
Now, this. This was more like it. This was more like what an angel should be.
“Wow,” said Evan quietly.
Ruth seemed to hear him. It snapped him out of whatever mood he had been in before, and there was a hint of panic on his face. He floundered for a second.
Suddenly, he pushed Evan’s head so that his face was smushed into the fabric on Ruth’s chest. Evan tried to push back, but the hand on the back of his head was stronger than him, so he was stuck. However, even when he closed his eyes, he could still see after-images of Ruth’s face seared into his retinas.
Another screech, and then Ophelia laughed, high and sarcastic: “fine, I get it. He’s your claim now. Fucking vulture, always picking off the best meat first!”
A scuffle, a scrape - and then everything was perfectly still. Evan waited for Ruth to release him, and wondered what was going on. At least Ruth smelled nice - like an incense he had never smelled before, a little smokey like a bonfire, warm and strong. Was this what angels smelled like?
He felt a bit light headed. He just sniffed an angel. That had to be against the rules somehow.
“... is she gone?” he asked curiously.
He felt Ruth shift. “... she’s gone.”
“Oh. Good.” Awkwardly, Evan patted Ruth’s shoulder. “You can let me go now, Ruth.”
“Ruth? Who’s Ruth?” Ruth said. He sounded panicked again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Evan laughed. He twisted his neck so he could free one of his eyes, and turned his face just enough to see Ruth’s chin. “It’s okay. I know it’s you. I already thought you might have been an angel, anyway.”
Ruth stiffened. Gently, he pushed Evan away. No longer glowing with light but still handsome and cold, his expression had turned complicated.
“How did you know?”
Evan smiled and shook his head. “When you saved me from the truck... I saw your wings.”
“Fuck.”
Evan let out a shocked gasp. “Angels can swear too?”
Ruth’s mouth sealed shut, and he looked away sheepishly. “You weren’t supposed to know.”
All Evan could think was: how could I not know? You were glowing and shooting balls of holy light everywhere just now. You weren’t very good at hiding it. Were you even trying? But he just shook his head again and took a step back from Ruth so he could get a good look at his whole body.
“Huh. Not what I expected at all. You look just like a regular person.”
Ruth looked back long and heavy. “Let’s get you home. You’re shivering.”
“Am I?” Evan looked down - his body was shaking after all. “Oh. Huh.”
“Come on.”
The walk home was quite nice, actually. Evan felt strangely cold (it was winter, after all), but Ruth slung his arm around his shoulder until it didn’t feel like his body was jittering apart anymore.
“I’m sorry,” Ruth muttered.
“Huh? For what?”
“For not getting there in time.” His face was hard to see, now cast in shadow as they passed under the streetlamps.
“What do you mean? You got her before she hurt me.”
“That’s not true.”
Evan, confused and alarmed, tried to work out what Ruth meant. Hurt? But she didn’t. All she managed to do was...
“Oh, the kiss?” He chuckled. “That wasn’t hurting me. A lot of people would feel lucky to kiss a girl like that. I should be flattered-”
“Flattered she didn’t let you say no?”
Evan slammed his mouth shut. Ruth sounded angry. Shit, what did he say wrong? He must have pissed the poor guy off somehow. His heart was hammering. He never knew what to say when people were mad - he was always worried he was just going to make it worse.
Better to change the subject.
“Why did she say that I was your claim now?”
Ruth’s answer was clipped. “Some demons think like that. In terms of ownership and territory. They pick on humans as prey.”
“As prey? That’s scary. For like food or what? Why did she think you...?”
“Because she can’t understand that there might be another reason why I’d want to protect you.”
They were coming up to Evan’s front door now. He stepped away to unlock the door, but his heart was still hammering. Casually, way too casually, he asked, “and why do you want to protect me?”
When he turned back to look at Ruth again, he froze. Ruth was staring directly at him, intent and unwavering. His eyes were just as cold and grey as ever, but now they seemed tinged by something silver, something far stronger. They were glowing like stars.
Ruth looked away quickly, but it was too late. Evan saw it.
“... Ruth,” he said soothingly. “Sorry. I don’t mean to push. Forget it.”
“Because I’m your guardian angel,” Ruth said suddenly, all in a rush, before Evan had even finished speaking.
A moment passed. From a few streets away, someone’s dog was barking.
“My what?”
Ruth looked at him again, more sure this time. “Your guardian angel.”
“Sorry, one more time?”
With a little shake of his head, Ruth just waited as Evan visibly processed what was said. Guardian angel? Was this guy serious? But those weren’t real, right? Or... if they were real... why the hell did he have one?
“That’s... are you sure?” he said, half laughing.
Ruth just nodded, saying nothing else.
“Well.” Evan opened his door, and after a moment’s thought, held it open for Ruth to enter too. “I suppose I better let you in, huh?”
Evan brewed two cups of tea, because he wasn’t sure what the etiquette was when meeting a celestial being who was devoted to one’s safety and well-being. He took the time in the kitchen to get his thoughts straight, only for his brain to once again become a fuzzy, confused mess when he saw Ruth again.
Ruth, who was sitting quite normally on the sofa, looked up at him with an expression of concern.
The thing was that he looked like a normal boy. Sure, he was handsome, and there was something of a renaissance painting in his features, and sometimes he glowed and had wings, but he was also very tangible and real. He had spots of imperfection. His hair was messy. He swore, and he got embarrassed and flustered, and he couldn’t cook.
Evan had been idly considering this possibility for a while, but somehow when faced with the answer in plain words, it seemed a little... far fetched.
Ruth took the tea with a nod.
“Guardian angel, huh,” Evan said, because he had no idea how to approach this topic of conversation. “Wild. Like, a real angel huh?”
Ruth nodded and took a sip.
“With like, holy powers and stuff?”
Another meek nod.
“So that means... that heaven... and God...”
“Don’t say that name,” Ruth said quickly, and Evan slapped a hand over his own mouth. Oops. Was that blasphemy or something?
“Sorry, sorry. I don’t know how this works. I haven’t been to church in a long time, haha. Oh, fuck, I shouldn’t say that to you. I shouldn’t swear either. But you swore, so maybe it’s okay? Uh oh. This is bad.”
“Why is it bad?” Ruth said, once again looking concerned.
“Because I-” Evan said, and then gestured at his whole body. “I’m... you know. I’m not a... how do I put this...”
Ruth was giving him nothing to work with, merely staring at him in confusion.
“I’m not going up to heav- up there,” Evan finally hissed, pointing to the ceiling. Some of the tea spilled out of the cup he was holding. “Look, how much do you know about me? Did they give you a file or something with all my details on it? Did you get assigned to me because I was failing, or what? Okay, maybe I could use a little help. Is this like some kind of remedial class thing?”
“Stop panicking,” Ruth said finally, taking the cup of tea out of Evan’s hands. “I’m not here to quiz you or improve you. There is no test.”
Evan stared at him in incomprehension. “Of course there’s a test. How else do you decide who goes, uh, up or down?”
“I’m serious. Stop panicking.”
“I’m not panicking!”
Very gently, Ruth guided Evan to sit down on the sofa. With a complicated wave of his hands, he pulled a blanket out of nowhere and pulled it around Evan’s shoulders. It smelled like milk and honey. Evan wasn’t sure how he knew what milk and honey smelled like, because it wasn’t something that he had the opportunity to smell many times before, but somehow he just knew it would smell like this blanket.
“Even if you’re not panicking, you’re scared.” Evan went to protest, but Ruth cut him off firmly. “You’re shaking, and your eyes are darting everywhere. Listen to what your body is telling you.” Ruth kneeled in front of him, tugging the blanket shut. “And listen to what I’m telling you. Neither of us are lying to you. I haven’t earned it yet, but one day, you’ll be able to trust me like your own heart. You are the last person on earth I would ever lie to.”
The glow was coming back, just slightly, just enough to tell that Ruth really wasn’t just a normal boy. Slowly, the wings unfurled again, white and fluffy, one standing tall and proud, the other drooping and lazy.
“I’m not here to judge you. I’m not here to guide you one way or the other. Whether you think you’re good or bad, what you believe, the things you’ve done and the things you’ll do - none of these things matter. Evan, I am your guardian angel. My whole-hearted allegiance is to you.”
Previous Chapter | Contents | Next Chapter
Chapter Six
note: please see content note at end of chapter for content warnings!
Ten minutes later, Evan looked down at the bowl in front of him.
The contents were unrecognisable. There was nothing edible in this bowl. Instead, it looked a little like the kind of stuff they used to fill potholes on the road. It was black. It steamed. There were mysterious crispy chunks running through it.
Ruth stared down at the bowl as well. His face had turned completely red, and his eyebrows were twitching. This was the first time that Evan had seen him look so frustrated and embarrassed. It was so childish that it was oddly endearing.
"It looks good," Evan said after a moment.
Ruth pressed his lips together. "It doesn't look good."
"It doesn't look good," he agreed with a sigh. "That's okay. These things happen."
With a pained look, Ruth grabbed the bowl and tipped the black mess into the bin. It fell out in one congealed lump. "It's not okay. I wanted to do something nice for you. I should have... I should have practiced more, or paid more attention..."
Hearing that he sounded genuinely upset, Evan quickly shook his head and interrupted him. "Really, it's not the end of the world if the food got a little burnt. The fact you wanted to do something nice for me is already good enough! Haven't you ever heard that it's the thought that counts?"
Ruth glared at him, before looking away. "Thoughts don't do anything. Intention means nothing if you're not willing or able to carry it out in reality. I could sit here and think about cooking all day – it wouldn't do anything useful."
"Huh?"
"It's nothing, it's just – I'm just frustrated at myself, at managing to ruin something so simple..."
Evan thought for a moment. "Ruth, do you not know how to cook?"
Ruth blinked. Some of the frustration on his face faded into confusion as he looked at Evan. "Know how? What do you mean know how? Don't you just put it in a pot?"
"No, that's... you have to..." Evan said, struggling not to laugh. He couldn't laugh. He didn't want it to seem like he was mocking Ruth, but suddenly, everything that just happened made so much sense. "I'm not very good at cooking either, but why don't we follow a recipe together? That way we can both learn."
Ruth hesitated, before nodding. He still looked a little unhappy.
Evan wondered why he was so invested in getting this guy to smile again. Perhaps it was because he looked so much happier when he smiled. Like his entire face was made for it.
After searching for an easy pasta recipe, Evan was pleased to find that he had most of the ingredients already. He put the blackened pot into the sink to soak and got out a new set of pans. They technically belonged to one of his housemates, but he was sure they wouldn’t mind, and who was going to snitch?
This time, he made sure Ruth added the pasta to some boiling water. The recipe said to put some salt in the water, so Evan sprinkled some in.
"Is the salt necessary?" Ruth said suddenly.
Evan shrugged. "I don't know. I guess? Maybe it will dissolve in the water and make the pasta taste better."
Ruth hummed, eyeing the salt shaker with some trepidation and looking somewhat relieved when Evan put it away. He then immediately stopped looking relieved when Evan pulled his largest knife out of the knife rack and set up the chopping board.
"Ah, wait, I'll do it," he said quickly, but Evan held the knife away and didn't let him steal it.
"If you want to chop, you have to do it properly. Look, like this." He began chopping some scallions, trying to make the slices uniform. "Cutting diagonally makes them release more flavour... probably." He snickered. Ruth kept his eyes on the knife, hovering like a mother hen, fingers twitching with every particularly loud chop.
Evan thought for a moment. "Do you want to try it out?"
"Try out chopping?"
Evan nodded and stepped aside, holding the knife out handle first to Ruth. He looked up and down with an unreadable expression, between the handle of the knife and Evan, and for a moment, Evan had the irrational fear that Ruth was some kind of vicious murderer after all and he was about to get it in the neck.
Ruth merely took the knife from his hand and turned to the chopping board, inelegantly trying to copy how Evan had been cutting the scallions before.
Evan let out an internal sigh of relief. Of course this wasn't going to turn into a Hitchcock movie. Ruth just seemed nervous because he was inexperienced.
"Nearly. You just have to turn the scallions a little. No, no, hold them like... hang on, let me show you."
Sidling up behind him, Evan snaked his arms around the other boy and helped him position the knife and the scallions properly, moving his fingers and holding his hand from the outside to help him get the motion.
"See? Like this."
"Ah, I see." Ruth's voice sounded very distant and faint. Evan realised that he had gone stiff, his hands unresponsive underneath Evan's.
... Wait, what was he doing?!
There was no need to teach someone to cook this close! No wonder Ruth looked freaked out! His face had even gone pink with embarrassment! Evan took a quick step backwards, laughing nervously. What the hell had gotten into him lately?
"Sorry, sorry," he said awkwardly, stepping to the side to hide in a cupboard while pretending to find more ingredients. "I could have just... uh, explained a little better..."
Gradually, the sound of chopping came from Ruth's direction, slow and unsteady. Evan silently blew out a breath. It was because he hadn't had anyone in his kitchen before – clearly he didn't know how to behave in a normal way around guests anymore. He was practically spooning Ruth right against the counter! How weird! Weird behaviour!
When he stopped wanting to die, Evan withdrew from the cupboard holding a tin of chopped tomatoes and an onion.
"Haha, found it! Uh, so, I'll open this and then show you how to cut an onion without crying..."
In less than half an hour, Evan plated up two dishes of spaghetti bolognese and carried them into the lounge. At Ruth's confused expression, he laughed and nodded to the sofa.
"Student houses never have a proper dining table. I've been eating off my knees for the last two years. Sorry, I know it's inconvenient..."
Ruth obediently sat on a sofa and took a plate of food. "It isn't inconvenient at all," he said, which was very polite but patently untrue. Evan sat on the other end of the sofa, and they lapsed into comfortable silence as they both took their first bites.
Ruth blinked. He swallowed his mouthful slowly, as if he couldn't believe what he was eating. "Oh. It tastes good."
Evan nodded eagerly. "It does. Haha, why are you so surprised? Didn't you have any faith in our cooking abilities?"
"Of course I had faith," Ruth said firmly, before twirling a long piece of pasta around his fork. "It's just that I've never made food before. I wasn't sure what to expect. It's... really nice."
Evan felt his heart thump. If this was the reaction he got, he would be happy to cook with Ruth more often.
"You're acting like you've never had spaghetti before," he joked.
Ruth hummed, before filling his mouth with pasta again. The room once again occupied with comfortable silence.
Evan found himself growing more and more curious about the boy beside him. Even ignoring the mysterious hallucination and the weird events recently, he still didn't know much about Ruth at all. For example: where did he live? What kind of person was he? Why didn't he know how to boil pasta?
Either this guy was a spoiled rich kid with billionaire parents who had a private cook who boiled all his pasta for him, or he had managed to escape from some underground bunker where a cult raised him in complete isolation. Evan conceded that there were other possibilities at play, but those were the most alluring to his overactive imagination.
"Ruth, are you not used to cooking? Ah, I mean, do you not cook for yourself very often?" he asked, trying not to sound too nosy.
Ruth blinked at him, before smiling in a rather sheepish manner. "Not really. Nobody ever taught me that kind of stuff."
... That kind of stuff? That was too vague! This still didn't clarify whether he was a rich kid or a cult escapee! Evan waited for more information, but Ruth was unforthcoming, and he wasn't rude enough to ask any more questions over such a strangely touchy subject. Instead, Ruth asked him a question.
"What about you? Who taught you how to cook?"
"Me?" Evan smiled. "My grandma. She was a great cook. She liked to experiment a lot with her food – I would go over to her house, and we would make something new in the kitchen using random ingredients I picked from her fridge. She always managed to make it taste good. Like the time I picked chocolate and chicken nuggets."
Ruth laughed. "Really? Surely that isn't good for you."
"Well, it wasn't very often." Evan shook his head. "Anyway, after I moved out and started living by myself, I looked up recipes on the internet and kept teaching myself more and more. I wouldn't say I'm as good as she was, but I know the basics. And now I can teach you!"
He meant it as a joke, waving his fork in a grandiose manner like an old maestro gesticulating at his students, but Ruth just nodded firmly.
"Mhm. Now you can."
Ah? Huh? Did Evan just get roped into being someone's culinary master?
He didn't mind. In fact, he kind of looked forward to it. He didn't often get to spend this much time with another person like this.
"Hahah, well, I won't go easy on you," he said, trying to see if Ruth was serious.
"Good. I want to learn."
"I'll make you chop fifty onions in a row and watch to see if you shed a single tear!"
"If you say I can't, I won't." Ruth leaned towards him, eyes glimmering. "Not a single one."
... This sure was one devoted student. Evan gave up probing him. "Well, come over whenever you like, then. We can start your training as soon as you want."
Ruth nodded in satisfaction and sat back, taking another big bite of his pasta.
It was only the same old bolognese recipe that Evan usually made, but for some reason, it tasted better than it did before.
Over the next couple of days, Evan returned back to classes and fielded what felt like hundreds of emails from student services. He got the feeling that they were more anxiously preoccupied with making sure he wasn’t going to sue, but it did make him chuckle. In order to finally get some kind of support from his university, it only took a near death experience.
The exam he missed would have to be retaken in the spring. Evan weighed up whether it was better to delay more exams until spring and allow himself some recovery time, or to do them now anyway and avoid overloading himself when the new year came around.
He ended up politely declining any offers to delay his other exams. It was only a cut on his leg. Why did people keep acting like he was going to have a nervous breakdown?
He knew nobody was paying attention to him, but still, as if to prove the hypothetical people keeping imaginary tabs on him wrong, he made himself go to the library every day and put in extra study time. Sure, when he actually sat down with his books it felt like pulling teeth and his eyes kept glazing over - but that was just because he was a dumbass who picked astrophysics as a subject. He was struggling, but this was just normal levels of struggling. Nothing to worry about.
Since the sun set at about four in the afternoon this close to midwinter, the atmosphere inside the library was quite warm and cheerful in the evenings. There was one specific spot nestled between the rows of books where the orange halogen street lamps from outside glowed over the table, and everything outside looked so dark and cold, and everything inside was cosy and bright.
Unfortunately, Evan could not sleep in the library. He hovered at the exit, tugging his scarf up around his nose, before sighing and braving the windy, wet night.
There was a little narrow alleyway between buildings that served as a shortcut through this part of campus. Usually it was full of students, but it was nearing nine in the evening, and Evan was the only person out this late. He walked a little faster. Muggings weren’t unheard of around here.
“Hey,” said someone behind him.
Holy shit. He didn’t mean to manifest a mugging just by thinking about it. This was the worst superpower ever.
“Hey!” the person said again, louder and annoyed. Evan tried to speed up. Just a few feet and he’d be out of the alley! Stupid idiot bitch, why did he have to go this way?
“Hey, Evan, you dumb cunt!” the person yelled, which was both comforting and inexplicable. It made him stop short and turn around - only to find himself being crowded against the wall by a dark figure.
He squinted, and realised that the person currently fencing him against the wall with one elbow hitched up above his head was Hot Goth Girl. He could recognise that metal band eyeliner anywhere.
“It’s you,” he said dumbly, before realising that he had completely lost grasp of her name. “Uh... from the party.”
The girl gave him a long look, before grinning wide. “So it’s true. I heard you were going around asking what happened at the party.”
Evan nodded slowly and decided that even if she was hot, he was going to have to take the L here and accept that he was about to embarrass himself quite badly. “Sorry, what’s your name again?”
“Ophelia,” said Hot Goth Girl. Oh, yeah, Ophelia! That weird kid called Rock told him as much outside his class! He also said that Ophelia kissed... she kissed him... she...
Evan froze. “Oh,” he said, his voice mildly strangled, and suddenly became very aware of the way she was kabedon-ing him against the brick wall. “Hello.”
“Hello,” she mimicked smugly. “Heard you were also asking about the mark on your back.”
“Oh. Oh! You mean the tattoo? Yeah, actually, I was. If you can tell me anything about how it got there-”
“How it got there?” she laughed. Her breath washed over Evan’s face, and it stank of tar, like she just finished smoking. It was acrid and unpleasant. “I can do one better. I can help you get rid of it.”
Evan looked at her in surprise. “You know someone who can get rid of tattoos?”
“Not an ordinary tattoo,” she said, her black lips curling in a smile. “Can’t be removed by ordinary methods. Good news, there are two ways I can help you out, one nice, one not so nice.” Her grin widened. “Bad news, I’m not going to tell you what they are.”
“I want the nice one,” Evan said dubiously, before shaking his head. “Wait, I don’t want either until I know what they are, okay? If it’s laser removal, I can’t afford it, and if it’s make up, I can’t be bothered... look, can we move somewhere else to talk about this?”
Ophelia shook her head, which seemed very inconsiderate to Evan. He was starting to think that she was actually kind of a weirdo.
She drew something out of her pocket - Evan saw it glint in the light. It was a coin.
“How’s your luck been?” she asked.
“Bad. Hey, uh, we really should go-”
He tried to duck out of her way, but she body-blocked him. “Heads or tails.”
Nervously humouring her, he said, “tails.”
She tossed the coin. It tumbled and caught the orange of the lights down the alley. It arced and arced for impossibly long-
Ophelia surged forwards and kissed him.
Every single one of Evan’s thoughts ground to a halt.
A small animal part of his brain that had been in a coma for a while suddenly sat up and started hollering. Evan promptly ignored it. It had very strong opinions about kissing that ran counter to his sense of dignity and self preservation, and it had gotten him in trouble before. It had absolutely no problems with the fact he was getting smooched without permission in a grimy, cold alleyway that smelled of stagnant water.
The rest of Evan’s brain did have problems with this. Besides, the kiss wasn’t actually very pleasant. It was greasy in odd ways from her black lipstick, and it tasted of sulphur and burnt smoke, and his heart was thrumming in an unpleasant way. His back flared up with pain, right where his tattoo was, sending tendrils of itching, burning heat up and down his spine like insects were biting at his skin.
Somewhere beside them, the coin landed with a clink.
Ophelia stopped trying to worm her tongue between Evan’s clenched teeth and drew back to look at it with one lazy glance.
“Oh, tails,” she said in an off-hand voice. “Congratulations. You won.”
Evan looked down at the coin, at the faint impression of feathers on the tails side. His brain had not yet recovered. “What does tails mean?”
He looked back at Ophelia - and for the second time in thirty seconds, his thoughts crashed into a brick wall. Hot Goth Girl was a hot girl no longer. She had grown sharp incisors, poking out of her mouth like a horrible accident in a knife factory. Her eyes were huge and luminous green, and her pupils had stretched into vertical slits that seemed to widen and narrow rhythmically. Her face was entirely too close to Evan’s, and what he thought was cigarette stink now smelled purely like the deep belch of a molten, burning furnace.
“Not so nice,” her voice rumbled like a horrible, deep purr that did things to the monkey part of Evan’s flesh body, reminding it that in the grand scale of evolution, it hadn’t really been that long since big cats were once further up the food chain.
Evan blinked.
“What the fuck,” he said.
content note: non-consensual kissing in the second half of the chapter, not between the main characters
lmk what you think of this chapter down below in the comments or literally anywhere!! just tag me @scottiemadethis on almost any social media and i'll see it i prommy
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