“So you think you can tell heaven from hell.”
Sam took a deep, shuddering breath. She’d been careful not to be left alone with any of the choirboys on either side, to always have someone else there to ground her to reality, but now she could hear their voices.
She’d know Abbadon’s voice anywhere.
Some people didn’t believe in angels - but many did.
Most people refused to believe in Satan.
Sam was pretty sure she heard his voice - or something close to it. Abbadon had been to Satan what Gabriel had been to God during the War in Heaven. And now he was on earth, seemingly at the beck and call of the hollow-eyed boy sitting on the floor next to the radiator, fidgeting with a broken pencil
“Blue skies from pain?” another voice asked.
Another angel. Sam didn’t know any of their names besides the one that had first spoken to her when she was a child - Asrael - but this must have been the one accompanying the skinny moppet of a blonde girl who was curled in the cage in the corner.
A cage.
The things the government did that the people didn’t know, didn’t care about in their fear.
“What?” Abbadon asked.
Neither Abbadon’s singer nor the girl were reacting, and Sam couldn’t be sure that she wasn’t just hearing voices. She’d taken her meds. Hadn’t she? No one at the Bureau could know.
“Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell?” that second voice said, almost sing-song, taunting.
“You know nothing,” Abbadon spat. “You’ve not yet seen hell, not seen half of the horrors –”
“And did they get you to trade your heros for ghosts?” the other voice continued.
Abbadon let out a snarl.
And then the blonde girl said, “Chill out. It’s just a song.” And she began to sing, “We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl year after year.”
Sam straightened up. “You taught an angel classic rock?”
The blonde girl sat up. “You’re a Listener?”
(350 words)
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