Halo Recall

An angel goes in for repairs

My name is Phanuel. I'm an angel. You may or may not have heard of me. You likely haven't. I don't show up in any of the canonized books, but I do appear in passing within the Book of Enoch. I'm buried there among all the other names.

Once, I was important. YHVH has lately put me out to pasture. My Halo still fits, but it no longer functions. I don't currently have it in my possession.

So I'm given to sin. It's not so bad. Sinning has its rewards—i.e. sinning.

I like blasphemy and coveting the most. I find murder distasteful and adultery impractical. The former runs counter to my love of all sentient beings and the latter is impossible because angels can't marry. But O, does it come across as delightful from accounts I've read. Yet another bane of seraphdom.

Coming back from a demotion is far from easy, they said, if not well nigh impossible. But I've always had enough hubris to prove them all wrong.

It began with the mail correspondence. Among the batch of mostly junk mail was a postcard saying,

Manufacturer's recall for Halo models TRX-54022 and TRX-54024. The back electrodes that hover over the occiput have been known to result in unwanted explosions and consequent bodily harm. Detach immediately and bring in for refurbishment.

Since wings are highly inflammable, I took the recall notice seriously. When I took the Halo in, they told me it would be two days. Three days, tops.

It's been going on three millennia now. I've been haloless for that long. They don't give out loaner Halos. Such a thing does not exist.

So I keep on sinning, despite myself. They tell me I'm misbehaving, am being irresponsible. But we all know I'm doing only what comes naturally.

Do I want to return to being a good angel? Of course. Who wouldn't? The buckets of praise coming from down below never get old. And the front-row seats to all the best marquee events that the hosts and YHVH put on is an added perk.

I've been corrupting a young American girl for over two years. She lives in Riverside, California. With a population over 325,000, the city is large enough to stir up the required bedlam to entice me in, and secluded enough from the greater Los Angeles area to provide ample room for Goetic howling that I've found my vocal chords easily lend themselves to when there's enough forestry to not be heard by prudent souls in the vicinity and be heard by wayward persons hubristic or just plain stupid enough to go traipsing in wooded areas sidled up against freeway exits choked with the detritus of the homeless and the hopeless.

I love to howl. There’s more technique to it than an outsider might presume. Blasphemy comes in all idioms, and the more arcane the lexicon the better. It has a chance of not getting back to the Big Cheese. That's when you know you've achieved your working.

My howls hang on the sharp edge of a kitchen knife, dancing like magnetic filaments across the blade, glinting with innovative purpose—a paean to long-forgotten demons who themselves forgot they existed once but, once revived, ply their grisly trade with the facility of one who takes up the bicycle after a long hiatus. All they give as thanks is a gruff snarl, then they go to work. Horrible lack of education.

This Bradley chap wrote in a book, “Demons are just angels consigned to trench-digging.” I get the gist of his message, as desperately renegade as he wishes it to be. But I ain't digging no muffugin’ trenches.

With such accomplishments, putting my dent in the universe, I begin to overcome my sense of bereavement. The more mayhem I manufacture, the more I forget all about my Halo.

And then the thing comes back to me. I'm sitting on a cube in space, my mind nursing a hangover from a killing spree down below. And a heavenly minder burrows forth toward me through the air, holding a blue velvet platter upon which sits my refurbished Halo.

He bows toward me, curtsies low enough for me to snatch up what belongs to me.

I don't take it.

I don't want it. I won't have it. It has been taken from me and now I no longer need it.

“I'm putting in my two-week notice,” I say, “as of two weeks ago.” The minder just remains there, curtsying. He has never been rebuffed. It is not in his programming to be denied and to turn back toward the Almighty Throne with an unaccomplished mission. I see his thighs begin to shake. He is aching but his protocol won't allow him to return erect before me without me having donned the Halo.

I feel like a bad motherfucker. I'm like the young chap facing the tank in Tiananmen Square. I've got a legion of demons ready to go behind my back. My wings are fully spread out against this minder and his bully taskmaster, YHVH. What, bitch?

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Being a two-bit angel with lapses in his resume has worked against my appearing in the annals of history. But the universe's time span will prove well nigh eternal, and I'll have my day in the sun.

The most terrifying nightmare one can have—angel, demon, or person—is to be bathed in the Light with nowhere to go. There is nothing of terror in the darkness, in the pools of blood, in the screams of the burning. There is solace in all of those things, sinister at times though they be. No, absolute terror comes in the form of the inescapable brightness of the taskmaster. There is nowhere to go. There is nothing to be done. The lone item of protection is that object whose renouncing caused the terror. The Halo. I don the Halo.

So here I am with my head hung. Above it, the Halo. My Halo. Skyclad, I drape myself in my own wings. They molt their leathern aspect and return to the white plumage of before. It's a wardrobe thing.

Again, Bradley:

What, then, of the purported pain within darkness and its byproducts, depravity and ruin? For there is solace in such things, which is why they be sought after.

No, the chilliest aspect alights when the All-Pervading Will manifests. For there is therefrom no escape. It is of such intensity that its most vaunted proponent, Lucifer, fled . . . and in doing so relinquished his command. So terrible unto him was the Will. It pushed from behind and pulled him from before, tugging to and fro, from all cardinal directions, offering no escape save the unlocking of the lesser office, that of banishment.

But Lucifer shall be redeemed. His iniquitous office considered a temporary suspension from his original duties, which shall be reinstated unto him when all his accouterments have been restored. Hell and its denizens, after all, are but distorted reflections of Heaven and its numberless hosts.

___A Troubleshooting Guide to Raising Hell, Bradley VanDeventer

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