It's wet this morning, the sky bluish black in the hours before dawn. It always rains here during the winter, here in the city that just celebrated the election of a new leader, one the people hope will be the lesser evil. It's a sad statement, but an accurate one.
Here, my name is Pat. Here, I am not an angel. Here, I am a man.
We are shaped by their expectations, you know. Their imaginations, fed by the media and their society, set the guidelines we must follow to blend in. When I was assigned to this city, I wore polyester suits and gold chains under an open-necked shirt. Ten years ago, I went days without shaving and coordinated my pastel polo shirts with my crew socks. Even now, with the lack of a popular archetype, I still must conform. The rumpled raincoat and half-empty bottle of Scotch mark a return to the old images, the pulp of Hammet and Spencer. I am not one of them by my birth, but I must be more human than many have hoped to be.
Here, I am not an angel. Here, I am a detective.
I look out the window, holding the blinds out of the way with one hand as ice rattles in the glass my other holds. In twenty years, you can begin to know a place, to become familiar with it. And in twenty years, you can start to forget Heaven. You remember the hymns as memories only, the notes lost to time. And you forget just how very far away it is, how far down we have come to be here. Until you see something so clearly that it terrifies you, and reminds you why we came.
I have seen the others here. They are the ones who are sent here to accomplish something, safe in the knowledge of a mission, of the security of Heaven when they have finished. And I have seen the ones who come here to hide, losing themselves in the bustling humanity, hoping to avoid the consequences of their defiance. They do not have that security, that hope. They know that they will have to pay, eventually. And eventually, they do. They always pay.
My cheeks are wet, I realize, for reasons I cannot name.
My door opens. I turn, wiping my face as I do. She is blond, tall and thin, the black evening gown a perfectly predictable part of the persona they have fit me into. She looks like trouble.
"Mazpatiel," she says, in my mind as well as my ears. I know her. Her name is Dominique, and she is why I am here, the cause of decades of vigilance. She is my Superior, and it is time to make a report.
----------------------------------------------------------------- See Pat and the gang in Fiat Justitia, Ruit Caelum. Available at http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~maya/nomine/fiat.html
Back to the INC Mainpage.
Back to the Adventures page.
Elizabeth McCoy <[email protected]>
Archangel of Archives