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2014
“Miss? Miss? Did you hear me?”
The girl shakes her head groggily. Memories jumble and fight and cascade over each other, until it’s all a tangled-up mess of fog and string.
The only thing she knows is that this isn’t El Salvador. No corner of the shithole she called home looks like this, smells like this.
None of it is this…bright…
“It’s okay, miss. Plenty of folks get first-time jitters, nothing we haven’t seen before,” a male voice is saying. “Let me start again.”
He clears his throat. It’s at this point she notices how strange he looks.
He’s dressed almost like a kitschy game show host, with curly blond hair and a too-wide smile. But he has no nose, an impossibly slim waist, and are those…
Wings?
“I’m Saint Peter. Yup, the very one you’re thinking of!” he continues on. “And you, lucky lady, are right here in my big book! Which means…”
He sweeps his arm to the side, and for the first time, she realizes what’s standing behind him.
A pair of enormous, shining, golden gates.
“Welcome to Heaven!”
[---------------]
2015
A year. A whole year has passed.
Heaven isn’t anything like what she imagined when mamá told her stories, or dragged them into a too-small, run-down church for mass every Sunday.
It’s better. It’s so much better.
The food never runs out, no matter how much she eats.
The beds are luxuriously soft, and she can sleep as much as she wants. No overdue bills or greedy landlords or…handsy clients to disturb her rest.
Every method of entertainment she’d only dreamt of on Earth is right at her fingertips – from petting zoos to libraries, musical theater to video games. All of it one-hundred-percent free.
Sure, there are…rules. A lot of rules.
Despite having every other type of food or drink she could possibly imagine, there isn’t a drop of alcohol anywhere to be found. Sleeping in is fine, but staying out isn’t – curfew goes into effect right at sundown. And those libraries seem to be missing a lot of books, if the angels running them decide they might be “less than wholesome.”
But that’s okay, right? A small price to maintain paradise. The last thing anyone wants is to be tempted into sin, when escaping it was the whole point of being here.
The only thing truly bothering her is the fact that after a year, she still hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her mother or sisters. They’d all died before her, so why weren’t they here?
She’d asked Sera about it once. The archangel had really taken her under her six wings, acting as a gentle and nurturing guide when Heaven had first seemed so overwhelming.
Sera had thought the question over for some time, and then said, “Heaven is a large place, child. Winners across millions of years of human history walk these streets. In the fullness of time, you’ll see everyone you need to see.”
She lets her own wings fall across her shoulders like a blanket, pushing the thoughts from her mind. There’s no need to rush. After all…
Heaven is forever, right?
The thought has her so distracted, she completely misses the sight of a platoon of angels rising up behind her, and disappearing into the sky.
[---------------]
2016
“Big S put in a good fucking word for you. Thinks you’d be a tight fit for this gig,” says Adam, walking her through a hallway hidden from the rest of Heaven. “Me? Still need some convincing. Maybe we could hold some…try-outs?”
The way he takes hold of her arm, and his full-fanged smile, and his smug little eyebrow waggle, leave nothing to the imagination on what he’s proposing.
And suddenly, just for a moment, she’s back in El Salvador, being led to a dark bedroom by a man three times her age because it’s the only way to make rent this month…
She wrenches herself out of his grip before she can think better of it. But then she sees the fiery look in Adam’s eyes, and remembers the difference in their ranks, and hastily tries to spit out an explanation.
“You’re…really nice, Adam,” she mutters. “I’m just not…I mean…I’m more into…girls…”
There’s a long pause – too long – as this information washes over the fabled First Man. She tries to gauge his reaction. Disgust, hatred, revulsion?
Instead, his grin widens, and he shoots her finger guns. “Niiiiiiiiiiiice.”
They come to the end of their procession, where she sees a sight that would’ve taken her breath away, if she still had lungs.
Row upon row of uniformed angels, armed to the teeth and arrayed with military precision.
“Nothin’ wrong with a little sister-scissoring, dollface,” Adam continues their previous conversation, unimpeded by her awe. “I mean, long as I get to watch of course. Hey Lute! Care to slurp some fishpies with the newbie?”
He points at an angel at the front of the formation, who tears off her helmet and scoffs with what evidently is disgust.
Adam shrugs his shoulders. “Eh, her loss. She’s lucky she’s pretty,” he says, before turning back to the girl at his side. “Anyway, troops’re about to fly out. You’re too green to join this year’s mission, but maybe next round?”
“And, uh…” she responds, not meeting his eyes. “What would I be doing, exactly? With respect, sir.”
Both Sera and Adam had been remarkably cagey on that point up until now.
The smile that spreads over the First Man’s face is wider than with any of his sex jokes.
“Simple. You’d be protecting Heaven,” he tells her, snapping his fingers to open shimmering portals around them. The soldier angels fly through them in rows of seven, led by Lute. “See, down there? The Sinners in Hell have been cooking up a fucked-up little rebellion. Once they have enough little shits for their army, they’ll rise up and knock down the Pearly Gates.”
She tries to imagine it. Legions of demons rising from the abyss, tearing apart the streets of the Promenade brick-by-golden-brick. Slaughtering her fellow angels without mercy.
She’s heard all the stories. Knows how ruthless and bloodthirsty Sinners are. Everyone does.
As her world crumbles around her, Adam is pacing back and forth. He picks up one of the spears the soldiers had left behind, twirls it over his head, and promptly fumbles it to the ground.
“Ahem…point is, my Exorcists are all that stands between those debauched cunts and the fall of fucking Heaven,” he says, nudging the spear out of sight with his foot. “So whadaya say, Lil’ Miss Chica-Seeking-Chica?”
Adam leans forward – too close – and offers his hand.
“Can I count on you to make the right choice?”
[---------------]
2017
She spends her third year in Heaven very differently from the first two.
“Basic training” with the Exorcists is grueling and unforgiving. She learns quickly that just because an immortal soul is capable of eating and sleeping, doesn’t mean it has to.
So there’s nothing stopping her from training every second, every minute, every hour and day and month. And that’s exactly what she does. Time blurs together until it loses all meaning, as she hones her angelic body into a weapon with a singular purpose.
But through all the exhaustion and aching joints and verbal abuse, never once does she regret her decision to join up. Not even for a second.
Because as much as she dislikes Adam, she can’t deny the truth in his words. She doesn’t have a lot – okay, any – friends in Heaven, but she has neighbors and acquaintances, and she knows they deserve to spend their afterlives in peace.
Giving up a small portion of her own to protect them is the least she can do.
Which all leads up to today. Her very first Extermination Day. Marking her calendar, she’s not sure what to think when she realizes it’s also the third anniversary of her arrival in Heaven.
But all else falls away when she puts on her helmet. When she flies through a portal at Lute’s command, and for the first time…
Sets foot in Hell.
Even the worst of Adam’s profanity-filled rants couldn’t prepare her for the sight. Every inch of this place practically oozes with depravity and vice, from the sex clubs to the crack dens to the…
Okay, seriously, Cannibal Town named a restaurant Red Toddler?
But she allows herself only a single moment to sigh in loathing. She’s on a strict timetable, after all. And she has her orders.
So with exacting precision, she carries them out.
Her first kill is a frog-demon in a coat bedecked with swastikas and carrying a tiki torch. That makes it easy. No use wondering why he’s down here.
Still, she makes it quick. Even for this filth, she sees little point in prolonging his suffering. One thrust of her spear through his Iron Cross-shaped head, and this deplorable ass is no more.
And so it continues. Over the course of the night, she executes serial killers and rapists and terrorists. Cannibals and drug kingpins and oil company executives.
Admittedly, some of the Sinners she meets are less…obviously deserving. Salarymen dragging themselves home from the office, couples holding hands, young women posing for selfies (admittedly, probably not at the best time). If you squinted, and ignored their horns and animal parts, it was almost hard to tell them apart from the Winners she was protecting up above.
But that…had to be her imagination, right? These souls wouldn’t be here if they didn’t deserve it. By definition.
Still, as the sun sets and she returns to the sky, leaving behind a culled and bloodied Pride Ring, there’s one thought she can’t seem to shake. No matter how hard she tries.
That of the hundreds of demons she exterminated today, none of them had the look in their eyes that they were “plotting” anything. On the contrary…
Every single one had looked upon her with pure, undistilled terror.
[---------------]
2018
“And a big fuckin’ toast to the bitch of the hour!” Adam shouts out, raising a glass of non-alcoholic but still somehow incredibly strong liquid over his head. “For shattering the record for most shitwads iced in a single Extermination Day! Three cheers for…”
He pauses for a moment, putting a clawlike finger to his chin. “Come to think of it, never got your name, tiny-tits. I’ve just been calling you ‘the lesbo one’ in my head.”
She’s uncomfortable, at best, at these post-Extermination parties. She snuck off early from the one last year, staring at the ceiling for hours until the screams of the Hellspawn faded from her mind.
But it seems her “accomplishments” have taken that option off the table.
Speaking quietly, hoping to throw the attention off herself as quickly as possible, she tells him.
Adam, however, makes a face like she just told him to care about the woman’s orgasm during sex.
“Uh, no. Lame, zero out of ten, unbreedable,” he says. “Too ordinary, too…ethnic. My girls need names that’re extensions of my legendary, give-no-fucks energy. Something like…”
He thinks long and hard about this – longer than she’s seen him think about anything. But eventually, after a great deal of snickering behind his hand, he comes up with an idea.
She spends the rest of the party quietly mulling it over. Obviously her first instinct is to reject the ridiculous, frat-boy title, but the more she thinks on it the more she feels there might be something there.
“Hey Vaggie.”
The voice floats over from across the room, and she realizes Lute has hung back, the two of them alone for the first time ever.
The younger Exorcist swallows nervously. She’s never exactly gotten along all that well with Lute, or any of her comrades for that matter. But maybe all this would be easier if she had just one friend among Heaven’s militia.
Biting her lip, she decides to take the first step.
“I’ve been thinking. Maybe we could pronounce it with a hard ‘G’? Vaggie?” she says casually. She’s terrible at small talk but tries to affect the tone nonetheless. “Then I could say it’s short for, I dunno, maybe…”
But she’s stopped by the polearm of Lute’s spear, which she uses to slam the other angel against the wall.
“Shut the fuck up! You may have Adam fooled, but that’s because he does ninety-percent of his thinking with his dick,” Lute sneers. “I know what you are, and I know you don’t belong here.”
The newly christened Vaggie trembles with fear. “What’re you talking about?”
“You know damn well what I’m talking about,” comes the hissed reply. “You’re sinful down to your core. Adam excuses it because he thinks it’s ‘hot,’ but that doesn’t change the facts. Leviticus 18:22, bitch.”
It takes her a few seconds to realize what Lute is going on about. When she does, her jaw pops open.
“Wait, this is cuz I’m a lesbian?” she asks, aghast. “Okay, first off, that verse doesn’t actually say anything about women fucking women. And second, I can’t be the only queer person in Heaven. For fuck’s sake, we literally went to a Da Vinci art show just last week!”
That manages to deflate some of Lute’s anger, just slightly. “Wait, Da Vinci’s gay?” she says in confusion.
“Little bit!”
Lute grinds her teeth for a few seconds, before renewed fury flashes through her golden eyes and she presses the spear harder against Vaggie’s neck.
“Doesn’t matter. The sin isn’t to have these…feelings inside you. It’s to put them into action,” Lute is practically seething as she speaks. “Everything’s fine so long as you bury them, deep down. Lock your shame in a chest and throw away the goddamn key.”
Lute’s breathing slows, but remains just as heavy. She stares into Vaggie’s eyes with undisguised hatred, barely blinking.
“But then you waltz in. No shame at all. Fucking proud of your sin,” she whispers harshly. “Every day, tempting those who did the right thing. Making them have…thoughts they…that they shouldn’t…”
Finally, the realization hits Vaggie like a freight train. But before she can give voice to it, Lute releases her, practically slamming her helmet over her head and turning away.
“I know you’re the golden girl right now. But you’ll slip up eventually,” she says. “And when you do, I’ll be there. To show Adam I was right.”
Vaggie has no idea how soon she’d make good on that threat.
[---------------]
2019
“Se va a la mierda…la madre que te parió…me cago en todo lo que se menea…”
She thought that bleeding out in a filthy alleyway was something she’d only have to go through once.
At least when she died on Earth, it’d been quick. The client who didn’t appreciate her “no refunds” policy had stabbed her right in the heart, and she’d only been in pain for a few seconds before blacking out.
Lute and Adam hadn’t been so merciful.
Both her face and her back are in absolute agony, and without her halo it seems she no longer has any of her angelic powers – healing included. She crawls through the alley separating a pachinko parlor and a dominatrix den, oozing golden ichor over the mountains of garbage bags and rat-demon droppings.
She uses the last of her strength to strip herself of her bloodied armor, helmet, and spear, shoving them in the nearest trash bin like a teenager hiding his drug stash. But she has no delusions that simply “ditching the evidence” will make any difference.
Vaggie just doesn’t want to die a weapon of war.
Because despite how much the pain screams at her, no matter how much she realizes her impulsive decision has cost her, she finds she can’t regret the choice she made. That Sinner couldn’t have been more than three, four at most.
What could he possibly have done, in so short a life, to be worthy of oblivion?
What could he have done to get damned in the first place?
She spends what’re surely the last moments of her afterlife experiencing one crystallizing revelation after the next. All the things that never seemed to add up about Heaven.
The “rules” that seemed to be ripped straight out of a fascist dystopian playbook. The caginess of Sera and the other higher-ups whenever she asked a probing question. The fact that a cabrón like Adam was there at all, much less in a position of power.
Whatever that place was, it wasn’t Heaven. Not the one her mamá told her about. Not the one she believes in.
Or…does she still believe? She isn’t sure. She isn’t sure of anything right now. It’s getting…so hard to keep her thoughts straight…
Dimly, as her vision fades, she hears footsteps echo through the alley. Finally. She’d been expecting this sooner.
Lute could’ve easily killed her if she wanted, but her chosen punishment was far crueler. To leave her maimed and helpless, at the non-existent mercies of the Hellspawn. Like tossing a crooked cop in gen-pop.
Maybe, in a sense, this was justice. At least a little bit of it. This nameless, faceless demon would get to exact vengeance for their brethren.
The thousands upon thousands who’d tasted second death at the tip of her spear.
They take hold of her face, brushing her hair to the side to gaze at her empty eye socket. What are they planning to fill it with, she wonders? Molten oil? Acid?
Whatever tortures await, she hopes they at least don’t drag it out too m…
The thoughts peter away when she realizes what the stranger is doing.
And they go completely silent when she realizes this demon – who is, against all possible logic, bandaging her wound with all the care of a field nurse – is a woman.
A very pretty woman.
With the kindest eyes Vaggie has ever seen, in either of her lives.
“You don’t have to speak. I bet you’re still in shock. I can’t imagine what you must’ve gone through,” says her rescuer. “But don’t worry, my place isn’t far. I’ll take care of you. Umm…if that’s cool with you, of course! Totally fine if it isn’t!”
She offers a hand and smiles warmly. And despite everything, Vaggie finds herself doing something she hasn’t wanted to do in a long, long time.
She smiles back.
“My name’s Charlie,” the demon tells her. “What’s yours?”
[---------------]
2020
Living in Hell turns out not to be all that different from living in Heaven.
Okay, sure, the food isn’t…quite the same. A lot less caviar and white truffle oil, a lot more artery-clogging fast food that looks like it was still alive a disturbingly short amount of time before she eats it.
The beds are more likely to have spikes than silk sheets, there certainly isn’t a single (non-porn-related) library in sight, and the less said about the general state of the bathrooms, the better.
So…yeah. Fine. It’s pretty shitty.
But Heaven had been pretty shitty too, in its own way. It just hid it better.
Still, there’s one thing Hell has over its counterpart. One thing that makes living here bearable, no matter how many bear traps and IEDs she has to dodge just to make a grocery run.
For the first time since dying, Vaggie can say she has a friend.
Charlie is…impossible to sum up in words. Nothing like any other human, angel, or demon she’s ever met.
In this miserable shithole, she’s an endless ray of sunshine, impossible to extinguish no matter how much the world tries. True to her word, she not only nurses Vaggie back to health but seems to appoint herself as her informal guide to the quirks and vagaries of Hell – all without being asked.
She shows her the small handful of restaurants not run by long-dead mobsters or third-world dictators. Helps her get her Dragula license. Gives her the run-down on the history of Hell’s various Overlords and who not to piss off if she wants to live down here in peace.
(Or alternatively, who she should piss off.)
Naturally, given the state she found her in, Charlie assumes she was a freshly dead Sinner who happened to get (sort of) lucky against the Exorcists. And Vaggie never finds the courage to correct that assumption. How could she?
Especially when she learns Charlie is Lucifer’s fucking daughter.
Oh yeah. That little nugget had made for interesting dinnertime conversation. Learning that her new bestie was the kinda-sorta head of state of the nation she’d spent three years genociding.
And yet…and yet…
When she’s with Charlie, she’s almost – almost – able to forget all that. The Princess of Hell spreads joy and optimism the way most of her fellow nobility spread plagues, and no matter how much she tries to guard herself, Vaggie is hardly immune to the infection.
So as the weeks and the months roll by, Vaggie finds herself thinking of Heaven less and less. Not when she could be thinking of Charlie’s radiant smile.
Or her full-bodied hair, somehow managing to smell like honey no matter how much blood and offal gets in it.
Or the sweet sound of her voice whenever she breaks into song. Which is a lot.
Okay…so maybe she’s got a bit of a crush. Not one she’s ever likely to act upon, but it makes for a nice distraction, if nothing else.
It means that as time goes on, she’s not really paying much attention to the calendar. Not realizing that the days are ticking by, one by one, to the one-year anniversary of her fall into Hell.
And all that entails.
Until suddenly, she’s seeing her neighbors board up their windows and stockpile weapons. Seeing demons who’re normally spoiling for fights turn tail and slink into a dark corner.
Even Charlie loses her normal cheer as the day draws closer, her expression turning somber and contemplative as she gazes up at the sky.
Vaggie follows her eyes until they settle on a celestial orb, its white glow so bright it’s almost taunting. And she realizes what’s about to happen.
“I’m sorry,” she says, bottom dipping out of her stomach in horror. “I have to go.”
She flees to the apartment Charlie pulled more than a few strings to help her obtain, and triple-locks herself inside.
And spends the rest of Extermination Day screaming into her pillow, trying and failing to drown out the sounds of the carnage around her.
[---------------]
2021
When the next Extermination rolls around, Vaggie makes sure she’s prepared.
Forget plywood boards and nails – she reinforces her apartment with steel plates and what the salesman describes as an “indoor moat, crocodiles cost extra.” And much as it creeps her out simply to touch one again, she winds up dumping almost all her meager savings on a genuine angelic spear, abandoned and resold by Carmilla Carmine.
It’s a little heavier than her old one. Not built for her frame. But it will do.
Not that she expects to do much fighting when the day does come.
Really, it’s more a comfort blanket than a weapon. When her fingers close around the heavenly steel, the familiarity of the sensation is enough to empty her mind. Block out the world around her.
Let her forget all the things she did the last time she held one of these.
It’s how she spends the entire week leading up to Extermination Day. How she fully intends to spend the day itself.
Except a certain someone doesn’t make it so easy.
Five knocks, in a musical rhythm. Vaggie knows exactly who’s on the other side of the door before she announces herself.
“Vaggie, it’s me,” says Charlie, her voice distorted by the sheer number of barricades separating them. “I just want to talk. Can I see you?”
But though she feels her heart do a little jump simply from hearing her voice, Vaggie can’t bring herself to move an inch.
“I…I can’t,” she murmurs back. “It’s not about you, Charlie, I just…”
Her voice trails away to nothing.
“It’s okay. I understand. The Exterminations are scary for everyone, but I bet it’s gotta be even worse after what you went through,” Charlie tries again. “But you don’t have to face it alone. Please, just let me in. Y’know…figuratively. And also literally, you have a lot of locks.”
Her words, meant to comfort, instead strike Vaggie like icicles. Because what she feels isn’t fear, not for one moment.
It’s guilt. And shame. Guilt and shame and rage and vicious, unyielding hatred. Toward the monster who, just a few years ago, slaughtered scores of human souls without thought or remorse.
And who now has the gall to live among them, unpunished for sins infinitely worse than theirs.
Outside, she hears a sliding sound and then a small bump. Instinctively, she knows Charlie has slumped down against the other side of the door.
A position she finds herself mirroring, once she steps over the piss-poor excuse for a moat (dammit, she knew she should’ve sprung for the crocodile package).
“There…is so much I wish I could tell you about me,” she admits to the princess, her voice barely above a whisper. “Dios mío, you have no idea.”
“Then why don’t you?” says Charlie.
“Because…” Vaggie swallows, trying to force down the lump in her throat. “Because there’s something inside me that’s…broken. And usually I can hide it away, push it to the side. But when this time of year comes around…fuck, it all falls apart again. Like the wounds are bleeding fresh.”
Her voice grows raw, ragged. “Shit, Charlie, if I tell you…I know you won’t fucking rest until you fix it. Except this can’t be fixed. No matter how many unicorns or rainbows you try to throw at it. It’s my cross to bear, and I can’t force you to…”
“I like you.”
Those three words are spoken so plainly, so bluntly, that it utterly stops her in her tracks.
The most Vaggie is able to get out is a hoarse, strangled, “Wh…What…?”
“I know it’s gotta be, like…the worst possible time to say this,” Charlie continues on, her voice quiet but determined. “Vaggie, you’re my best friend. I’ve lived for over two centuries and never felt this kind of connection to anyone before. I know I can tell you anything, do anything with you, and trust it’ll turn out right in the end. Every day, you’re the first person I want to see when I wake up, and the last one before I go to sleep.”
The Princess of Hell lets out a long, rattling sigh.
“But when I saw you this week, running yourself ragged to hide away from the horrors of the Extermination…I realized that wasn’t all I wanted,” she says. “I wanna hold you close, every fucking minute of every fucking day, and take away all that pain. Or at least…help you share it. As a partner.”
Vaggie blinks several times, freeing tears she hadn’t realized she was shedding.
“If you don’t feel the same way, that’s okay. At least I got to say it out loud,” finishes Charlie, who’s clearly crying too, judging by the hitch in her voice. “But I hope I haven’t been imagining it. This…pull between us. So please, please, if you could just…”
She’s interrupted by the sound of several dozen padlocks, deadbolts, and assorted chains being undone with professional speed.
And by the sight of Vaggie standing in the now-open doorway, unable to resist a smile in spite of it all.
“You weren’t imagining it,” she says, grasping Charlie Morningstar by the shoulders and leaning forward.
The kiss is warm, and sweet, and the first of so, so many to come.
[---------------]
2022
A year later, the couple are spending the night in Charlie’s bed, snuggled close.
They’re both naked and covered in sweat, Vaggie’s body pressed against her girlfriend’s as she spoons her beneath the covers. The familiar warmth and tender softness of their joined forms helps ground her, even as she knows yet another Extermination looms – mere hours away.
“How’re you feeling?” asks Charlie in a small voice.
“Better,” Vaggie answers truthfully. “This day is still…hard for me. I doubt it ever won’t be. But if there’s any place in Hell I can feel even the slightest bit safe right now…it’s by your side, hon.”
“I’m glad you’re doing okay, Vaggie,” says her girlfriend. “Cuz I’m not.”
The admission comes in a strangled, wretched whisper. It’s so pained and miserable and utterly unlike Charlie that her first instinct is to pull the Princess of Hell even closer to her chest, wishing that she could shield her from whatever is causing this despair.
“You’ve done so much for me. More than I can even begin to list,” Vaggie tells her. “So whatever it is, tell me. Especially if it’s something I can solve with stabbing.”
Charlie takes several deep, squeaky breaths, Vaggie made acutely aware of each by the way their bodies push and pull against one another.
“It’s just…” she begins, pausing for an audible sniffle. “I’ve been watching the Exterminations go on for decades now. Year after year after fucking year. And I can’t do anything about it! I’m supposed to be Heir to the Throne of Hell, and I…I…”
Her voice falls away again, seemingly at a loss to express exactly how she feels in words.
So instead, she does what Charlie Morningstar always does when her emotions are too immense to contain within her heart.
She sings.
“Vaggie…I know…
How hard it can be
When you’ve nowhere to go
Vaggie…I see…
How hard that you fight
To protect you and me.”
But this isn’t one of the bombastic swing or big band melodies her girlfriend typically favors. The type she’ll burst into at the drop of a hat, when she wins a hand at Old Iron Maiden or tries a new ice cream flavor.
This song is quiet, and somber, and every lyric sounds like it’s ripping the princess in two.
“But then this day comes
Again and again
They run and they hide
And they die in the end
It’s like clockwork
Like clockwork…
Like a fucked-up clock
That I can’t stop from spinning
Like clockwork
Like clockwork…
And every year
My people’s ranks keep thinning
Fuck…fuck!
Fuck, I don’t know what to do
I try to be strong
I try to be brave
But I just keep failing them
I just keep failing…
You…”
Charlie is a full-on sobbing mess now, her song vanishing into a mangled, wordless cry. Vaggie squeezes her girlfriend even tighter, rubbing small circles into her back, but none of it seems to help.
She knows Charlie needs reassurance right now, needs to hear words of comfort, but she’s always been shit at speaking from the heart.
Which leaves her only one choice.
She joins her.
“Charlie…you’re not…
Alone in this
You’re always in my thoughts
Charlie…don’t cry…
We’ll find a way out
Find it, you and I.”
Charlie’s breath hitches as Vaggie holds her tighter than she’s ever held anything before.
Though it terrifies to even consider giving voice to these words, she forces them out nonetheless. Because it’s what the woman she loves needs to hear.
She continues to sing.
“I know this day seems
Like it comes without end
But angels aren’t as flawless
As they like to pretend
Just like clockwork…
Like clockwork…
They don’t even realize
All the pain they spread
Like clockwork…
Like clockwork…
So let’s take that clock
And smash it fucking dead
Fuck…fuck!
Fuck, where do we even start?
I don’t know how
And I don’t know when
But we’ll do it together
We’ll do it heart…to…
Heart.”
Charlie turns over slowly in their bed, so that the two women are face to face.
The Princess of Hell and, unknowingly, the Traitor of Heaven. Gazing into each other’s eyes, searching for truth.
“Can we do this?
I don’t know, it…
It’s been going for so, so long…”
Vaggie’s hand cups her girlfriend’s cheek, her own doubts drowned out by the overwhelming flood of love she feels for this person.
“We can do this
We can show it
That Heaven’s been goddamn wrong…
You’ll change their minds
You’ll touch their hearts
And if they refuse?
That’s where I come in
Charlie, I’m your shield
I’m your spear
And we’ll end the Exterminations
Right now, right here!”
Charlie is still crying, but now there are happy tears mixed in there too.
As the woman who dreams without limit is starting to hope for the one thing she never dared to.
For the last verse, they sing in unison. A perfect duet.
“Like clockwork…
Like clockwork
We’ll turn this into
Just another day!
Like clockwork…
Just clockwork
We’ll search for it
We will find a way!
Together, we’re strong
Together, we’re brave
Together, we’ll save them
Side by side, me and…
You…”
[---------------]
2023
They spend the next year working feverishly.
A part of her feels like she overpromised during their dramatic musical number, but Charlie is so excited at the notion of not having to watch scores of her subjects get massacred every year that Vaggie can’t help but be swept up for the ride.
So they spend dozens of late nights brainstorming over drinks, throwing out ideas no matter how outlandish. Vaggie has to gently talk Charlie down from such creative suggestions as “hide Hell under a giant blanket” and “build a second Hell and push it somewhere else.”
Then there are other ideas that’re far more reasonable on their face, but which Vaggie knows won’t work for one reason or another – and which she subtly has to shoot down without letting Charlie realize how she knows.
Arming the citizenry to defend themselves? It’s the plan that appeals to Vaggie the most, but she’s pretty sure it’s impossible. In all recorded Exterminations there’s only been one angelic casualty, and that one was…friendly fire.
Reasoning with Heaven? Vaggie knows that’s doomed to fail as long as Adam is the dick in charge. Charlie looks crestfallen when she tells her an ironclad rule: don’t trust in angels.
They go around and around in circles as the weeks drag into months, growing increasingly desperate while the next Extermination Day looms. By the night before, they’re both holed up in a tiny conference room in the back of a seedy pawn shop, and blisteringly hungover.
“Urrrrrrrgh…” Charlie groans, grabbing an armful of poster paper with scratched-out ideas and stuffing it in the garbage. “Why does this have to be so haaaaaaaard?”
“Sweetie, we are trying to change the entire sociopolitical power structure of the afterlife here. No one said it would be easy,” says Vaggie gently.
“I know, I know! It’s just…” her girlfriend bites her lip and fidgets with her thumbs, the way she always done when she’s at a loss for words. “I feel like there’s something we’re missing. A path Heaven and Hell never considered. If only we could prove they can work together…”
For the hundredth, thousandth time, a tiny voice in Vaggie’s head screams that she should tell her partner the truth.
That they are the proof. A demon and an angel, sitting in this dank little hovel beneath flickering fluorescent lights and surrounded by empty vodka bottles, trying to make things better.
But yet again, the chains of fear hold her back. How would Charlie react to learning she shares a bed with a murderer? With someone who won medals for the sheer number of demon heads she stuck on a pike?
Would she…leave her? It’s the worst thing Vaggie can possibly imagine. The only purpose she has left in this world is to stay by Charlie’s side. To do everything in her power to make the princess’ dreams a reality.
So instead, what she says in a small voice is, “I don’t have an answer, Charlie. But if there is one, I know you’re the right person to find it. You found me at rock-bottom, and showed me I could be better. So I’m sure you can…gaaaagh!”
She’s spooked out of her train of thought by Charlie, who is now hovering less than an inch from Vaggie’s face, her bright yellow eyes wide as saucers.
“That’s it!” she exclaims, now quite literally bouncing up and down with manic energy. “Dammit, where’re those markers? The scratch-n-sniff ones, I need to color- and smell-code!”
Vaggie can only watch in astonishment as her girlfriend tears off a fresh sheet of paper and jams it against the wall. Within a minute it’s covered top-to-bottom with mad scribblings:
HELL
OVERPOPULATION
FLUFFY UNICORNS
RAINBOWS
RECOVERY
REHABILITATION
CLEANSE (JUICE)
CLEANSE (METAPHORICAL)
SINNERS -> HEAVEN
12 STEP PROGRAM
11 STEP PROGRAM
1 STEP PROGRAM
OKAY FORGET THE STEPS
REDEMPTION
And finally, at the very bottom, circled and underlined and with each letter and exclamation point drawn in a differently colored marker:
¡¡¡¡¡¡HOTEL!!!!!!
[---------------]
2024
“At the end of the rainbow there’s happiness. And to find it, how often I’ve tried…”
Charlie likely doesn’t realize she’s being watched as she sings over the balcony. Vaggie gazes up from several stories below, her heart breaking as they close the door on yet another Extermination.
Not for the first time, she thinks about how her relationship with this day has evolved. From blissful ignorance to pride to crushing, soul-shattering guilt.
But she meant what she said when they last shared a song. Her fondest wish is for Extermination Day to become just another day on the calendar. To pass mechanically, like clockwork, from one to the next.
No longer the day she witnesses thousands of Sinners die in bloodshed, and only be able to think of how she took part in the carnage.
But instead the anniversary of the night she met the love of her afterlife, and pledged to spend the rest of eternity by her side.
Vaggie steels her mind and her heart. They’ve done everything they can to prepare. The hotel is fully renovated and ready for opening (if a bit…lacking in amenities). The interview with 666 News is scheduled for the next evening (so long as Charlie can stick to their talking points). They’ve even got their first guest to show off (though for god’s sake, where the fuck is Angel Dust?).
She lets out a long, exhausted sigh. She doesn’t know what tomorrow will bring. How this first-of-its-kind project will be received by the wider denizens of Hell.
All she can do is trust in Charlie. Trust in the woman she loves.
A woman who’s far more of an angel than Vaggie ever was.
“I promise you, Charlie,” she says, turning around to retreat back into the hotel. “I’ll make your dream come true. Whatever it takes.”
And with that, she gets back to work. There’s still so much left to do.