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by
Anne Hoffer
 
 

The low hum and rhythm of life passed Suriel by as he walked the crowded streets. A few put their hands over their hearts in an unconscious gesture of recognition at his presence. His eyes scanned them once: two months for that one, a few years for her, tomorrow for him. Others felt the opposite: a breath of fresh air reinvigorating them, a joyfulness for a fleeting moment. Those who were really spiritual, no matter their religion or lack of, could catch a glimpse of him as he passed. It would just be a peripheral view, and turning to check again, no one would be there because he would just be walking on, invisible, searching out his souls for the day.
He stopped. Across the street a little girl clutched the hand of her mother who busily scolded the child, "Why don’t you ever say anything? At least a hello to people! I mean, really, you know how to do it, I hear you whispering to your dolls at home. You’d think that when faced with living people, just a little hello could come out of your lips!" However, it wasn’t the mother or daughter that interested Suriel; behind them walked another angel, Shateiel, of the Silence. She did not make the little girl silent, of course; she just reveled in the quietness of places and spent most of her time in churches, libraries and sleeping children’s rooms where silence is the most precious.
"Hey, Shateiel! Looking hot today!" She stopped and looked at Suriel, frowning with her hands on her hips. He greeted her the same way every time they met, but only in jest as he was more interested in male angels, and also because she never spoke, so never could tell him off. She did, however, have fun with his jokes. Today she pulled out a piece of paper and pointed at it, then him. Reading the words across the street he saw it was a lawsuit for sexual harassment that she had swiped off of some lawyer’s desk. The nearby trees’ leaves brightened a shade as Suriel doubled over in laughter, and when he flung a tear away, delicate, breaking crystal sounded, planting a wild rose in the street.
Suriel kept on his walk toward a homeless man who tugged at his senses. He found the poor creature slumped against a dingy, brick wall with an unshaven chin and bottle clutched in his hand. He placed his index and middle finger on the man’s forehead to ascertain it was his time, then drew out his sword, held it over the man’s head, blade down, and sliced it through his body. Sheathing his sword, he took the man’s hand and drew out his soul.
The man’s glossy eyes glanced around him and fixed on Suriel. "Are you . . . the Angel of Death?"
"Yes. I’m going to take you to the Gates."
The man stared at the angel, glanced down, and scoffed. "Young whippersnappers these days, the clothes they wear!" He folded his arms. "Well, let’s get to it!"
Suriel glanced at his clothes: black suede boots, tight vinyl pants that were open slightly on each side at the waist and laced together, and a tight shirt that had a small opening going halfway to his waist. He really didn’t see anything wrong with his clothes, but went on his way the man anyway.
When Suriel returned to Earth, he walked along the same street toward a bar where a dead waitress lay on the floor. A man performed CPR on her, but futilely. Oddly, as Suriel touched her forehead, he couldn’t feel anything about her. He mused what he should do, then drew out his sword and pulled the woman from her body. As he stood, Suriel saw him in the back of the crowd: Olivier.
They stared across the room, so close, yet with centuries between them. Suriel’s eyes glazed at the sight; the humans and their dying bodies left his mind. The soul at his side did not matter at all. There was Olivier, not seen since the Fall.
He walked, a woman to those who saw him from the back with his hair down to waist, short skirt, boots almost up to knee, and low-cut, nearly off-the-shoulder shirt. Painted nails and pale, pink lipstick helped the illusion from the front, but looking at his face, you could almost be positive he was really a man.
"Olivier . . ." the name sounded rusty and unused on his lips.
"Suriel . . ." the cross-dressed, fallen angel paused as he took in Suriel, "I think Pusiel would be angry with me . . . selfishly taking mortal life . . ."
Suriel glanced back to the waitress by his side who stood awed at the angels. With a hissing breath he revived her giving Olivier a look which cracked a glass behind him. Clutching his sword furiously, he turned from the Fallen and left the bar. 
"Please," Olivier ran after Suriel and grabbed his arm to stop him, "I’m sorry . . . but, there was no harm done . . . right? Suriel . . . I, I just wanted to see you again."
"Your Lord doesn’t keep good company?" he retorted angrily, pulling his arm away.
"No . . . it’s not that . . . I . . . I still love you, Suriel. Can’t I be your star again? Can’t I hear your poetry and caressing words like before?"
"If you hadn’t gone, you could have."
"Why does it matter?!"
"I . . . I can’t associate with a Fallen One."
"Did He ever say that?"
"No . . . but--"
"Can you tell me, honestly, that you no longer care?"
The Death Angel wavered and glanced at the sidewalk. "I care for the Olivier who was with Him, not thrown to the Abyss."
"I am the same. My thoughts still work in the same manner, my voice still sounds the same, my heart still yearns for you." The Fallen’s hand brushed his cheek. "Please, Suriel, please, would you love me again?"
Olivier leaned up to Death’s lips and kissed him lightly, but he pushed the former angel away, and stared hard at him. Death’s gaze would have wilted a mortal, yet here stood a Fallen, and he only stared back. "Why now, Olivier, why now?"
"Do you not think that I haven’t thought of you every passing moment? Do you think I haven’t been searching you out, waiting for the courage to speak to you again? After the way you looked at me when I Fell, I . . . I was afraid you hated me, and I couldn’t bear to hear it. You know how time is Suriel, you know, and . . . I didn’t have the strength to face you."
Suriel’s eyes gleamed. "I have work to do." He turned from him, walked away to the sound of crystal breaking. He glanced back once and saw a tear leave the Fallen’s face and crack the sidewalk when it struck. A wild, rose bush took root noticed by no one else except for the gayly singing thrush in the trees and Silence in an alleyway.
#
Suriel stalked the streets feeling loneliness hanging on his heart as if a weight had been tied there and kept sticking in the ground as it dragged along. It hurt to think of Olivier, a man he had put out of his mind for so long, then who just showed up and destroyed the safety he had built. His feet carried him to an apartment and he passed through the wall, called his wings forth, and flew up through the floors and flashes of mortality until he reached the tenth floor where a man lay dead on worn carpet with a woman kneeling by him crying over his body. He’d died suddenly from a weak heart and had been laying here for nearly half an hour; the woman had just found him.
Suriel went through his ritual and the man’s soul stood looking at his weeping lover. "Poor girl," he said, "she’ll be so lost."
"She will move on."
As Suriel prepared to depart, the man stopped him, pointed at her frantically, tried to touch her, "She’s . . . she’s going to . . ." The woman pulled a gun out of her purse and looked at it with dry eyes, stared at the man’s empty shell, closed her eyes, and pulled the trigger. "Alice! No! Nooo! Alice!" He crouched by her body still trying to touch her.
Suriel sighed and kneeled by Alice shaking his head. Her soul soon quivered next to the man’s and they embraced and kissed. 
"Why did you do that? You could have joined him later, if you had waited."
"I couldn’t live without him. Not for even that short amount of time! It would be worse than Hell."
"So you just threw away His gift to you? Life and happiness?"
Alice grew angry at Suriel; she clutched her lover’s wispy hand and spoke, "What would you know of love? Do you even feel it? Do you know how painful each second of every day would be, living without him, how horribly haunted my dreams would be? No, I guess you wouldn’t know. If you had ever loved, you would know that it makes you crazy. Others might have the strength to move on, but he is my strength."
"If you waited, you wouldn’t have endangered your soul."
"What do you mean?"
"Suicides can go to Hell. If you did, you would be separated from him for eternity." "Will she go to Hell?" The man held her worriedly. 
Suriel considered the pair. He thought he had moved on from his breaking heart, yet, he hadn’t found anyone new, hadn’t even looked or considered. He had forced himself into a limbo area where he tried not to feel anything, so never got passed the betrayal. "I don’t judge; I only deliver."
"Don’t worry," the man said stroking her hair, "I wouldn’t let you go alone. I’ll always be with you." The angel looked sadly at the soul mates and wondered, where does the soul of an angel go once that angel has Fallen?
#
Death sat visible in the same smoke filled bar where he had first seen Olivier, hoping that he would see him again. He glanced around at the people slowly dying from cigarette smoke then to a dark corner of the room where a hazy being with long hair and a short skirt stood. Fixating his eyes on the seemingly empty space, he nodded his head once. 
Olivier’s visible form attracted stares of many kinds. He sat gazing across the table at Death, who turned his eyes away to the humans at the bar. 
"What is he dying from?" Oliver asked.
"Nothing, yet. In two years he’ll have lung cancer. Eight after that he’ll have emphysema, and then six months later he’ll be dead."
"I miss hearing it."
"What?"
"Your death reports. I miss them. I liked to hear you talk with that tone in your voice. I missed your voice." Slowly, he reached his hand across the table and settled it on Suriel’s.
"You were right, before. I do know how time is. Your absence gave meaning to it: long, painful, and lonely . . . my heart tells me one thing, and my mind doubts and misgives."
"I wish you’d follow your heart."
"What if I don’t like where it leads me?"
Olivier smiled, "You’ll just have to go with it then . . . unless of course . . . it says that you don’t love me . . ."
"No. I’ve always loved you and I realized recently that I still do. Just, to act on it . . . now . . . it would be easy if you came back."
Olivier stood still clutching Suriel’s hand and sat in his lap smiling. "I can’t and I won’t. I do not regret my decision. I cannot change my beliefs."
"I know . . . yet . . . I want to be with you. I miss you too." He held the Fallen close to him, breathed in his scent, that old, familiar smell and feel, and hugged him tightly. Olivier held Death’s face in his hands and kissed his lips once more. The thrush sang on the window and Silence stalked the shadows.
#
"I love it, when we make love."
Suriel kissed his lover’s fingertips up to his neck. "So do I. It assures me you’re still a man under those dresses and that makeup."
"You are absolutely horrible. How is it that I ended up in the Abyss?"
"Because," Suriel smiled, "you’re just too sexy."
They lay snuggling in each other’s arms and among the roots of a tree listening to the chirping of a bird among the otherwise silent landscape. "You don’t regret this decision, do you, Suriel?"
"Only that it took me so long to make it." He rose slowly from Olivier and picked up his sword. "It’s my shift now, but I can see you again in two days."
They shared a kiss, Death held his lover one last time, and set off flying toward the lingering souls.
As Oliver pulled on his skirt, the thrush landed in front of him and sat silently. 
"Shoo!" He waved his hand at it, but the bird only chirped loudly and snipped at his fingers. He withdrew his hand. " . . . Caim?"
The bird transformed to a fallen angel sitting before Olivier.
"You-- you have no right to be here! I am your superior!"
"We’ll see." Caim snapped his fingers producing writhing black serpents that bound Oliver’s wrists, ankles, and, as he produced them in attempt of escape, his massive wings as well. "Abeko will have a punishment for you."
#
Suriel practically skipped to all his souls. Seeing Shateiel before him, he grabbed her hands and swung her around happily. "Hey there, Hot Stuff." She returned none of his joy. "Shateiel, what’s wrong?"
Her eyes looked up at him sadly, then turned past him.
Over his shoulder, he saw an angel’s shadow. "Pusiel?"
The other angel drew out a flaming whip, and smacked the sword from Suriel’s hand. "You do not deserve that post!"
"You cannot relieve me!"
"I bear the seal of your lessers, peers, and archangels. I have the power." He produced an angel feather of shining gold, each fiber of it comprised of a single strand from each of the aforementioned angels. Suriel spread his wings to fly.
A fiery pain seared through his body as the whip grabbed onto his black wings, and, in a burst of holy flame, incinerated them to ashes. Bones cracked when he landed. Angel blood dissolved the sidewalk like acid and formed the beginnings of a holy spring. "There will be no wings for you my to-be-fallen friend. Not until your future is decided." Pusiel grabbed Death and held his arms behind his back painfully. "Thank you, Shateiel, for informing us of this treachery."
Suriel stared shocked and angry at her, but she would not meet his gaze. 
"Tell me how the Angel of Silence informed you?!"
"She can lead, and I can see."
#
Had there been trees in the room where Suriel was punished, they would have withered to dust with his screams.
The Angel of Punishment grabbed Death by his hair and forced his head up as he peered into his eyes, searching through his tormented soul and body. A heavy hand smacked him across the face. "Why do you harbor such love for the Demon in your soul?" Whip. "It pollutes your being, your very form." Whip. "It has no place beside your love for Him!" Whip. "Surrender it and you will be forgiven." Whip. Whip. Whip. Pusiel stopped his flaming weapon and waited for the response.
"What . . . what right have you . . . to tell me, to stop my love?"
"You will be Fallen."
"No! Not because of Olivier!"
"You speak his name here!" The whip lashed him again followed once more by angel screams. Shoftiel, the Judge of the Punishment Angels entered the hard-walled room, and Suriel took the moment to breathe and spit out the blood collecting in his mouth. If he hadn’t known they ascended to one of the Heavens, he would have thought they were in a human, interrogation room.
"Your judgement has been passed by Him: Pusiel has delivered your punishment; you are forgiven. Shateiel will watch over you and report on any further misconduct." The Judge nodded stiffly and the bindings on Suriel’s body fell away leaving him to stand as an infuriated Pusiel watched. Shateiel stood in the doorway with head bowed. Suriel pushed past her to the open air and beauty.
#
In the Darkness, past the flaming familiarity, there existed a lone Fallen One, his bindings tightening with each passing breath. In the cold, dark captivity he was placed, the black serpents still crushed his limbs, but a larger one now crushed his body, smothered him, broke him, and tears only healed his body to be hurt more, only rejuvenated the snake, so that each new pain brought more.
Black Things soared around Olivier and dove at his tattered body and face and tore them further. What strength they received from angel tears. After the crushing, he was left in an earthen hollow to recover having to force away the insects that crawled to feed off him. When Abeko, bride and partner of Hell’s master, thought the physical punishment enough, she smiled. "I loves this sound. Tell me what you think?" A wave of her hand and the hollow flooded with the horridness. After several days of it, she released the Fallen One back to the world.
#
They stood at the inevitable meeting. "You were hurt," Suriel noticed immediately.
Olivier trembled and held his arms. "She made me listen to your screams of punishment. That was the worst." The two angels stood gazing at one another afraid of getting too close, of the pain that would come with it. "What do we do now?"
"My body hurts so much, but seeing you hurt . . because of me . . . I’d rather have my heart torn out."
His lover approached him slowly and took his hand. "I would do it again, if I knew I could see you after."
Suriel took Olivier’s other hand in his and pulled him in for a hug. "After so many centuries, I would not lose you so easily."
"We will be wary. A thrush haunts us."
Turning back to look at Shateiel, Suriel glared, "Shall we fear the Silence as well?"
Shateiel looked sadly at them, then smiled and put her hand over her eyes and turned away. Suriel spoke her meaning, "‘See no evil, speak no evil.’"
"But Caim, I fear him."
"We will watch . . . and if, at any time, you feel the physical pain is too great for you . . . we could stop."
"No! No, never."
The battered lovers walked along the street leaning on one another. "What made you change your mind, Shateiel?" Suriel called back to her. She ran up in front of them and began signing quickly. Suriel translated for his lost Olivier. "‘Your hearts are one; I cannot tear them apart. Besides, what right have they to punish you for love? Should my love, Phul, have been Fallen, I would continue to love him. I have no doubts of that. I am sorry I turned you in before. I feel heavy at the thought of it. Secrets need Silence more than anything."
They walked down the streets many times more, arm in arm, careful to stay away from the birds and heavily trafficked angelic areas. Many times they resorted to apartment buildings, just walking up and down the stairs and halls, peeking into rooms, and talking of the impending death of the inhabitants. They would see generations pass through them before a little bird finally saw them, and a fallen star was forced into darkness.
"Shateiel . . . I want your help." Suriel faced her soon after Olivier’s imprisonment, " I want you to go to the Punishment Angels, and . . . I want you to tell them you saw us together. No, don’t shake your head, listen. If Caim were to go and tell them about us, I would lose your help, and you would be hurt. There would be no way for Olivier and me to be together. If you could tell them that we were together again, then no matter what Caim said, you would still have your credibility and you could still help." 
With shaking hands, she took one of Suriel’s and nodded.
#
After going through two Angels of Punishment instead of only Pusiel, Suriel was forgiven and released. He paced the streets for many nights before his battered Olivier ascended from the depths. "You were hurt? Did . . . did Caim get to the Punishers? Do they know?"
"No, hush, it’s alright." Suriel held him close. "I thought he’d try that so I had Shateiel turn me in. That way I can keep her help and stay with you."
Wild rose seeds struck the sidewalk as they walked and Olivier felt the desperateness of their situation. "Something awful will happen to you."
"I probably have to go through the other five Punishment Angels before anything really bad happens. And what comes, comes."
"Even . . . even if they will Fa--"
"What comes, comes. I love you, my fallen star. Though my blood should form one thousand new rivers, I love you. You are most important to me."
Olivier smiled and cried more, rubbing away his running mascara.

THE END
 
 

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