As It Is In Heaven

Now that everyone has an Angel standing at their shoulder, it gets unbelievably crowded in places like the Underground. Even though less people travel this way, because it is so claustrophobic and intimidating, it doesn’t feel any less packed.
Standing on the platform, waiting for my homebound train, I can’t fail to notice the Burning Angel looming at the far end. They are very rare and distinctive. This one has flaming hair and wings, carries a blazing spear and is draped in a blood-red silken robe.
The other Angels have Him surrounded and are alert for any sign of weakness or lapse in His defences.
I can’t see the person to whom He is bound, but I notice that the other commuters are edging away: either to give Him room to escape and survive, or to move themselves out of harm’s way.
Their Angels move with them. But it looks like a tactical withdrawal to cut off the Burning Angel’s routes of retreat, rather than an act of mercy.
I hear the train approaching. Everyone surges forward. There’s a flurry of wings and weapons. The Burning Angel is hacked into a dozen bloodless pieces.
At the same moment, a man falls or jumps in front of the train. His limbs are also mangled, but with an all-too-human gout of gore.

I get home late. The first thing I do is rush to the toilet. I’ve been avoiding it all day, but there comes a time… Well, you know.
There’s something off-putting about having an Angel standing here while I’m trying to get on with my business. Even though He doesn’t appear to be aware of what I’m doing and never makes eye contact. In a way, that’s worse. He’s just a formidable presence in the smallest room.
My Angel is a Silver Samurai, as They’re known. He looks like one of those robot warrior thingies from a Japanese anime: slender body encased in a gleaming exo-skeleton of metal armour, wing struts extending from his back like a hang-glider, carrying a curved sword crawling with carved sigils.
As I wash my hands, I find it as disconcerting as ever that He doesn’t appear in the bathroom mirror. I keep glancing back over my shoulder to reassure myself that He’s still there. If ‘reassure’ is the right word.
The way He’s glowering through the wall towards the living room, I gather Linda’s home. I dry my hands, take a deep breath and straighten my back. OK, let’s go.
As I open the door, I see her Angel first. He’s a Skywalker: dressed all in white, with floppy blonde hair and wings like yacht sails, wielding a staff of light. He assumes a defensive pose, to which my Angel responds: sword thrust forward above my head.
“Hi, love,” Linda greets me. “You’re late again.”
“Bloody Tube,” I explain gracelessly, trying to sound as sanguine as her, while our Angels face-off across the room. “How was your day?”
“Not good.” Her expression clouds. “You remember me telling you about little Lucy?”
“Your star pupil?”
“Yeah. The Head excluded her today.”
“What for? I thought you said she was a brilliant student and well-behaved, too.”
“Was. Well, still is. Or would be, if it wasn’t for her Angel.”
“Oh? What kind is He?”
“One of those Mad Monks. You know: bald head, ragged brown robes, swings a big metal chain at anything that moves.”
“Well, that’s hardly her fault, I would’ve thought.”
“No. But being lumbered with Him has altered her behaviour. He’s the only one at our school and you know what kids are like for forming gangs and picking on anyone who’s different. You should see them at lunch time. They line up like armies. Kids who wouldn’t have had anything to do with each other before…”
Her voice tails off. She slumps on the couch, arms and legs crossed as she suppresses her anger and frustration.
This should be my cue to sit next to her, to take her in my arms and offer some consolation. But I am afraid of what might happen if our Angels get within weapons range and clash.
Because of this, we haven’t made love for months. I can’t even bring myself to share our bed. I remember the last time…

I lay on my back, petrified, as our Angels stood toe-to-toe and grappled, Their weapons crossed above our heads. However we ‘saw’ Them, it was nothing to do with light, as Their combating forms were still vivid in the darkness of our bedroom.
Linda cupped my face in her hands. “Look at me,” she urged. “They’ve always been here with us. It’s just that They weren’t visible before. Nothing has changed, otherwise.”
But I couldn’t relax. I was too aware of Their weapons swinging and striking silently. Though They acted as if we didn’t exist, we were evidently connected to Them by our very lives, more intimately than any lover.
“What is this?” she demanded. “Some new excuse for rejection: it’s not you, it’s my Angel?”

“Isn’t it illegal?” I suggest. “Surely you can’t discriminate against someone on the basis of their Angel.”
“You’d think so.” Linda looks exhausted. There are dark lines under her eyes. “But there’s no actual Law that covers Them.”
“Not yet,” I say, pointing at the newspaper. “But there’s bound to be, soon. Look at what happened to Brown. He lost the election because of all those cartoon caricatures of his Angel in the tabloids. A grey skeleton in hooded robes, with bat-wings and a long-handled scythe. Vote for the Angel of Death.”
“Not soon enough for Lucy,” she complains, rubbing her forehead. “I’m getting one of my heads. And I feel sick.”
“I’ll bring your pills,” I volunteer; glad to be able to do something useful. Plus grateful for an excuse to leave the room, which is shaping up to become a battlefield.

A few months ago, we went on a ‘make or break’ vacation together. It got off to an inauspicious start, with a whole flock of Angels indulging in an aerial dogfight for the entire flight over.
The holiday package was suspiciously cheap. We’d heard rumours, but not realised the full extent of their implications.
Living in the City, we were largely unaware of the world in which the Angels walked. It was mostly hidden by the congestion of our own buildings.
The view from our hotel window should have been of miles of unspoilt beaches and the blue Mediterranean beyond. Instead, there was a bleak vista of ruined buildings. Crumbled towers, broken spires, tumbled arches and shattered columns. A scene of utter desolation and decay.
Linda swore. “It’s like Dracula’s castle.”
Most businesses had closed and the locals moved away. The few tourists who remained were sunburnt Goths, attracted by the ghoulish architecture but forgetful that the sun, though obscured by dark remnants of the Angelic realm, was still beating down as strong as ever.
We got friendly with another young couple who were staying at our half-deserted hotel.
Beth had three Angels jostling behind her: a constant melee of axes and clubs.
“It’s more accurate than a pregnancy test,” Steve said proudly. “We know for sure we’re having twins.”
“How on earth do you cope?” I wondered.
“Well, I see Angels as an expression of our higher consciousness,” Beth stated, somewhat smugly.
Linda was as intolerant as me of woolly New Age thinking. “Another way of looking at it,” she said. “Is that we are an expression of the Angels’ deep subconscious.”
Steve was more of a romantic. “The War in Heaven is continuing to be fought,” he asserted. “The Fall is still happening.”
“That’s not what the religious types seem to be saying,” I countered. “They consider the Angels to be a Holy Vision. A sign that the Age of Prophecy is upon us and that it’s the End of Days.”
“Maybe that’s what the American fundamentalists choose to believe,” said Beth. “But the catholic Church hasn’t announced its official position yet.”
“Yes, it’s odd that the Pope hasn’t been seen in public since the Angels came,” agreed Linda.
“That’s because his own Angel looks so dreadful and inappropriate,” suggested Steve. “According to the conspiracy theorists.”
“I’ve heard a more scientific theory,” I say. “About a project investigating dark matter and dark energy. It’s supposed to have triggered a paradigm shift in our perception, so that we’re aware of more than four dimensions.”
Linda went into schoolteacher mode. “Angels do seem to exist in a different space/time to us. I’ve never seen one eat or sleep or change His clothes. Their appearance never alters.”
“Whatever.” Steve bared his teeth in the Goth equivalent of a smile. “It’s still cool.”
Whatever: as good a philosophy as any. No matter how trite or simplistic, Linda and I loved each other. We decided to stick together. Or, at least, didn’t decide to break up.

I fetch her migraine pills and a glass of water and set them down on the coffee table, then sit in the armchair across the room from her.
She is watching the television news, her brow furrowed as she squints at the screen.
“Look at this,” she says, gesturing with the remote. “There’s something weird happening in the Middle East.”
The camera tracks across rows of what looks like thousands of refugees camped out in the open desert. They are arranged in an oddly regular semi-circle, all looking towards an expanse of absolutely nothing.
“- as you know,” says the announcer. “We are unable to film or photograph anything in the Angelic Kingdom. So we have commissioned an artist to draw this incredible scene, to try to convey the enormity of what we are seeing here… It is the first Angelic structure to be discovered which is completely intact. And it is an amazing sight, dominating the whole skyline… In this first picture, you can see it is a huge edifice, glowing brilliant gold, covered with ornate details, that resembles a castle, a palace, or a fortress… However, in his second picture, depicted from a different angle, with the glow toned down and the outlines more clearly defined, you can see it has the shape of a chair. Or a Throne, I should say… Just as amazing is the behaviour of the Angels as They approach this structure. There is no fighting between Them, as They arrive in the company of hundreds of pilgrims each day. They literally lay down their weapons and stand at rapt attention… In this next picture, you can see Them in ranks, gazing towards the Throne. But, if you follow Their line of vision, you can see They are actually looking upwards. Up, above the Throne. Up, towards something we cannot see… In the same way that we can see Angels, but They can’t see us: They can see something in the sky which is invisible to our gaze…”
I swear. “What the…?”
“May you live in interesting times,” Linda intones mordantly.
But I’m not responding to the scene on TV. There is another Angel in our living room: a Bald Eagle. The scales of its chain-mail tunic gleam like bronze feathers as it crosses the room and stands behind Linda.
I’m somewhat slow on the uptake. It’s only when Linda follows my eyes and looks at the new Angel and a shockwave of realisation traverses her face that the penny also drops for me.
“No. Oh, no,” she wails.
“But. But how?” I demand. “We haven’t…”
“Sorry. I’m so sorry. It was only once. A moment of weakness. Of madness. It meant nothing. Truly. I’m sorry.”
She rushes towards me. To throw herself in my arms, or on my mercy. But she doesn’t make it.
Before I can react, I glimpse an arc of silver sweeping above my head. Still distracted by the new arrival, her Angel fails to parry the strike. His head is lopped clean from His shoulders. He falls and Linda also falls.
The Bald Eagle raises His mace, but doesn’t quite deflect the second thrust. My Angel’s blade pierces His chest.
I step back, far too late and reach for the phone. My Angel steps back with me and raises His sword to His lips in an ironic salute.
While waiting for the ambulance to arrive, I watch the new Angel as He gradually expires. A brand new life is lost when it had barely quickened.

* * *

They tell me it was a cerebral haemorrhage. An inherent weakness in a blood vessel that could have killed her at any time. It is little comfort to know that, apart from a headache, she felt and realised nothing.
It is also no consolation to hear that Angels all across the world are now ceasing to fight. Through whatever Angelic grapevine They communicate with each other, it appears that news of events in the Middle East is being widely disseminated.
Although Angels are not killing each other, people are still dying. In the desert encampment, where there is no food and water – barring what people carry with them – no shelter and no sanitation, starvation and disease are starting to take their toll.
As people pass away, it is reported that their Angels ascend and dissolve in the golden radiance, which is growing ever brighter.
My own Angel places His sword on the living room floor. If I could, I would pick it up and carve Him into a thousand tiny pieces. Slowly.
Thousands of pilgrims are still heading East. Whether out of human curiosity or Angelic compulsion, I don’t know. I’m tempted to join them, in an act of mutual self-immolation.
In a world devoid of love, I have no heart for Angels.