Fallen Angels

Given the circumstances I'm not sure we could have done anything else. It was raining, for one. Large drops, the kind that normally arc down from trees and fall on your cheek and make you feel like hell because it's been so long since a woman kissed you. Anyhow, it was raining, and we were all gathered there staring down at a hole in the earth where we were told an old friend was supposed to be. Judy was there, and Frank. No sign of their spouses per usual. I don't like either one of them, but I get together with them from time to time to remind myself why I never get together with them. Judy gets a bit drunk and Frank spends the whole evening recounting stories from the war like he's goda-- Hemingway. They're insufferable, and I spend most of the evening laughing along with their jokes and secretly wishing that I could be in any other room with any other two bores.

I don't know why we couldn't have chosen one of them when it came down to it. The group of us, you see, we're principled. Not a two bit cheap whore amongst us to put it roughly. And when we set our minds to doing something we sure as hell get together and do it. So look, we didn't have a lottery or anything. I don't know where Kent had gotten off to, his being the hold that was supposed to have been filled. We had all gathered to say goodbye to one of our formerly feathered friends. It's rare that one of us passes. Most of us can't remember how old we are.

But we get together so infrequently, that it seemed a shame to let the moment pass. None of us could quite remember who had started the rumor. Perhaps it had been Kent himself, that sly old bastard, which should have tipped us off. The rain started to lift, and a bit of brief light fell on the ground near us, the color of a near spent bulb.

None of us liked waiting or being somewhere for no reason. It reminded us of the nights we'd go to visit our women, and they'd remind us that they had other duties, headaches and husbands, laundry and television shows, while we stood naked in their bedrooms, and they clipped their toes. Towards the end of these modest affairs they'd often turn to us with their existential questions. We seem to bring that out in them. They'd be worrying a cigarette between two fingers, looking half-drowned in the soft lamplight asking us why they were there at all. None of us ever gave a damn about that question. We already knew why we were there. Heaven, as it turns out, is moderately boring. So we sided with the old snake in hopes of getting a shot elsewhere.

As it turns out though, things aren't much different down here. The only things we look forward to are, sex, death and football games. The rest of it is just nonsense. That's why we gather round when we hear one of ours has gone kaput. It's a nice reminder that we have something to look forward to as well, something unknown, like the curve of a leg hidden beneath silk.

It is time now. Carrie, it has been tacitly agreed, will be the one to go. None of us ever cared for Carrie. She was too nice. We never knew what the hell she was doing down here anyway. We all had her pegged as baking cookies and setting them in some cloudy window, not down in the dirt.

Her wings are filthy. The godam- things are near impossible to wash. And as she spreads them, Carrie smiles at the lot of us. The sky is low, the wind brisk. When she takes off the lot of us cease breathing. We revel in the sight of her skinny ankles, her dirty wings. All of us hate flying. As she arcs back around the wind catches her in an updraft, and I consider throwing a shovel to bring her down. But she knows better, dipping back down towards us. We are not standing on this filthy plot of land to watch anyone fly. We are gathered here to watch her fall. She spins like a top on her way back down, as it go gain speed, as if Gabriel were chasing her with his fiery sword, she falls back among us, and we scatter in the rush of wind.