It All Went Wrong

Maybe Cody had been listening to Elise’s music too much, because as he stood facing down Agent Samuels and a dozen other armed agents, all he could think of were song lyrics.

Six feet under by age twenty-five.

It was a sad, sad day when his life could be summed up by the lyrics to song by a band called Venus in Furs. Somewhere, while she plucked playfully at Israfel’s wings, Elise was laughing.

“Stand down, Cohen,” Agent Samuels said. Her voice shook, but her hands on the gun were firm.

Cody knew why her voice was shaking. Even though she couldn’t see them, she could feel them, the Fallen who’d accompanied the choirboys the government had rounded up, had foolishly thought were prizes. Samael, Abbadon, Malpas and Zagan. They hovered on the edges of the crowd, black eyes glittering with malicious glee, and their choirboys stared past Cody, eyes devoid of human soul.

“I have nowhere to go but down,” Cody said. “Six feet under, from the looks of it.”

“You don’t have to die today, Cohen,” Agent Samuels said. “What do you say? Will you come with me?”

Samael was the first to move, had always been the first to move, from the war in heaven to the war on earth, and he was grinning.

Cody felt afraid and tired, but mostly tired, because he’d spent the last ten years being afraid, and he was tired of it.

“Can you hear me? Cohen? Don’t listen to your angel. Listen to me. Cohen!” Agent Samuels said.

She didn’t know Asrael was gone and, for the first time in a long time, Cody was alone.

Agent Samuels shouted again, “Cohen!”

And Cody remembered lyrics to a song half-forgotten.

And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but...

“Hallelujah,” Cody whispered, and stepped back over the edge of the cliff.

(322 words)