Hell is Other People

OCTOBER 31ST, 2006 

SAN FRANCISCO 

          I had been lectured by Cal in the taxi for what felt like hours until he finally dropped me off at the pier. It annoyed me deeply. 

I suppose he thought this approach was more useful... To make things worse, he'd insisted on babysitting Phoebe. 

What's with the tone shift in this guy? I thought to myself, but in the end I had to agree that I couldn't bring Phoebe to the Pier... 

And that was how I ended up meeting the fallen angel for a second time. 

I had waited for Kiya, and I'd assumed he was late, until I heard him... 

OCTOBER 31ST, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO 

          “What a sappy message,” came a familiar, frosty voice. “You short lived creatures never fail to sicken me.”

A blue cellphone with a charm of a plush bunny clattered violently at Ellis’s feet.

Ellis lifted his head slowly to see not Kiya, leaning against the waterfront railing where he’d asked to meet, but instead there stood a certain white-haired fallen angel.  

“You intercepted our message.” rasped Ellis.

He then thought, It’s Halloween. Why didn’t I say something cool, like: Nice costume, what are you, a freak?

The interloper grinned.

“Finally catching on, Ellis? The truth is,” replied Silver, “I’ve been sent here to kill you.”

He paused, savoring the terrified pallor of Ellis’s face.

Silver shrugged, fixing his eyes on Ellis as he said his next line.

“But I’ve changed my mind.”

He hopped off the railing with cat-like grace and moved in close to the boy whose hands were now shaking uncontrollably.

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

Silver smiled. “We’re the same age. How funny is that!”

He stepped away, looking out at the waterfront, his back to Ellis, whose heartbeat was now beginning to calm down.

I thought I was going to die for real there, thought Ellis, I thought it was over, I thought I’d finally…

The white-haired teen was quiet for several painful moments.

“Ellis. Do you know that I once had a family?”

“But you’re an angel. Or, you were. And angels don’t-”

“You’re right that we don’t have mothers, or fathers, or anything of that ridiculous sort. After all, I came into being because something greater than I wished for me to and then I simply was! There was no deliberation, or idea that I should… or,” Silver faltered, his back still to Ellis, “There was.. no, no such thing as…” Now he fell silent again.

“Ellis. Do you remember your mother?”

“She died when I was very young.”

“But you must remember something.”

“I don’t.”

Silver stared out at the skyline. It had never looked this way before - human monuments had always had a certain taste of blasphemy to him, an old habit of the heavens he’d never been able to kick, but tonight it struck him that the glittering lights and flickering windows were just the same as those lovely glittering stars and flickering supernovas, alighting and dying far away. He supposed everyone in those little lit rooms that were nothing but glowing specks from a distance might as well have all lived and died before he could get a chance to know it had ever happened.

It was Ellis’s turn to break the silence.

“I do remember a little bit.” He continued, looking up as if he were searching the heavens for the memory. “I remember it was warm and bright, and I remember someone holding me to her chest, and I conclude that that must have been my mother.”

“You conclude it.” echoed Silver hollowly.

“Who else could it have been?”

“For us angels, it could have been anyone. Any number of us, even, if we happened to become one in the moment… ”

          Ellis could not see this with Silver’s back turned, but a unfamiliar downcast expression something like a smile (yet too sad to be one) now passed over the fallen angel's face. It was a shame that Ellis could not see this expression on Silver’s face, for it softened the cruel sharpness of his face that one must develop in order to survive such a long and heavy fall as he had, and a shame as well that Silver could not see how beautiful softness looked on himself, for the water holding his reflection rippled too darkly and quickly in the brisk wind of the night. 

          However, greater events were occurring in the campus building, whose music was faintly audible from the pier...