The Devil Who Cared

The Devil Who Cared By Leska Beikircher The assignment was to bring down an angel; or, to be more accurate, an ex-angel. Although not common, it happened on occasion that an angel fell from Grace and was condemned to live out a mortal life as a human being. Easy prey, the Devil called them. Ex-angels were bitter and resentful, and prone to fall for deceit and the whole soul-selling business. They made good trophies. Their main function was to boost the Devil’s ego in her constant fight against Heaven. So it was a modest assignment and one Number Three took with reluctance. He suspected his immediate boss, Number Two, was trying to stick him with unimportant tasks to prevent him from getting more credit and moving up the hierarchical ladder. Morale, companionship, and team-spirit were all spelled lower case here, if at all. Number Two was an ill-tempered, sycophantic jerk, and that was Three’s professional opinion, and due to some bureaucratic error, Two lisped. It unnerved Three to listen to him, but Number Two was his superior and he had to endure his ethereal presence at least until one of them got promoted. Which should happen soon enough. Number Two was only in this position because he was a favourite and a suck-up. Three couldn’t wait until he was powerful enough to make Two’s existence a living hell, so to speak. He now looked him square into the flaming eyes and repeated, “An ex-angel? Aw, come on Twooy, you’ve got to be kidding me—this is a beginner’s job.” “Ey,” Number Two snarled, “I don’t make the thupid athingmenth, I juth hand ‘em out. You wanna complain? Go thee the Cap. Oh, I juth remembered—you can’t, can you? Not f*****g high enough in the f*****g hierarchy, eh?!” This last remark he brought forth with a phoney smile and an overly sweet tenor. Degrading as it was, Three couldn’t take any offence from that. Listening to Number Two speak was cheering him up too much. And he knew for a fact that it bothered his superior that he wasn’t able to speak flawlessly even after a good ten thousand or so years among the undead and not-so-holy. Three gave in with a put-on sigh. “Whatever, I’m dying for some R and R anyway. I’ll be looking forward to getting back up there and having a decent pair of legs to stretch. Meanwhile, I believe your linguistic skills are improving, Twooy; you only spitted twice in five whole sentences,” he said and evaporated in a ball of lightning. The furious “Thtop calling me that.” he didn’t hear.