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Crowley stared at the sculpture in the artist’s hands. Two winged man-shaped beings, muscles braced and limbs entangling, with hair, feathers, and sinuous forms carved in intricate detail.
Bless it, he really needed to stop pouring his heart out to creative humans. This wasn’t the first time it had happened; it had better be the last.[1] If he wasn’t careful, one of these days he’d say something he’d regret.
…Actually, it was probably too late for not regretting. He couldn’t quite remember everything he’d told Heliodorus that time at the bar (it was possible Crowley might have had one drink too many that day), but he had a bad feeling it had been way too much and way too honest. A suspicion that was definitely supported by this new sculpture. Ugh, why was it always the artists?[2]
He looked apprehensively from the statue to its sculptor. “Who are these supposed to be?”
With an almost conspiratorial grin, Heliodorus tapped the head of the top figure. “This one is you.”
“Me?” Crowley peered at it. “Doesn’t look much like me.”
“Since I didn’t know what the other one should look like, I thought it was only fair to give you both a face of imagination instead.”
“I see.” Thank someone for that. It would have been harder to deal with the sculpture if it had actually been a realistic rendition of Crowley’s own corporation, portraying him striving with…
“Who,” Crowley said slowly, with a creeping feeling that he knew the answer, “is the other one?”
“Your friend, of course. That is, your” — the sculptor actually winked, and Crowley cursed his own drunken tongue for having no filter[3] — “ adversary. Good, see, there on the bottom. And you, my friend, are naturally the embodiment of evil.”
He laughed, like it was a joke rather than a plain statement of reality.
Crowley looked closer at the statue. “Good and evil wrestling,” he observed aloud, “with evil triumphing.”
Now he thought about it more, he realized this wasn’t as incriminating as it seemed at first. Facial resemblance or lack thereof notwithstanding, a demon fighting (better yet, apparently overpowering!) an angel surely wouldn’t send a message any Hellish superior could complain about—
“Are you certain that they’re wrestling?” Heliodorus inquired, too politely.
“Well, sure, what else would— ”
Another wink from the artist, overly suggestive.
…Oh. Blast. Crowley felt his face suddenly flaming.[4] “Ngk, no, that’s not, we, it isn’t like that, we don’t, we aren’t, I wouldn’t even want that —”
He sputtered to a stop at the sound of the artist’s laughter. Heliodorus patted Crowley on the back, looking not apologetic at all. “All right, all right. Fine, my friend. You’re right, obviously. They’re just… wrestling.”
His voice and expression made it clear he thought he was humoring a demon in denial[5], but Crowley decided to let it go just this once.
He did accept the sculpture, pressed as a gift as it was… if only to bring the embarrassing conversation to an end sooner. Not, of course, because Crowley cared in the least about a creation made for him personally that (luckily) didn’t even recognizably depict the people it was supposed to depict. Absolutely not. There was nothing to care about. Not the human artist; not the imaginary subject matter; not the artwork itself. It was just another lump of fancily molded metal.
~ ~ ~
And yet two millennia and a couple dozen relocations later, that lump of fancily molded metal was preserved in marble.[6] And for whatever reason, the statue — good and evil inseparable — was still in Crowley’s personal collection.
