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They aren’t, and then they are.
They are nothing, and then Something reaches out and begins to pull atoms together - picking and choosing a few more electrons here, selecting protons from this group instead of that one, topping it all off with a sprinkle of quarks, and then a few more as an afterthought - and they begin to feel it all come together, feel themself come together, and then Someone finishes with them and says their name, says, Beelzebub, 1 and She does a miracle, or gives them something of Herself, or both, maybe,2 and then Beelzebub Is.
And Beelzebub looks around and sees several others like them, something where there had been nothing, each of them nothing more than a collection of other smaller things. They are all created, none inherent, none except Her, Beelzebub realizes. And they all worship Her then, in song and in praise and in tears of joy, all at once like a signal’s been given, and through it all Beelzebub can’t help but think how do I do that. How do I make. She - God, they know now - moves among the Morningstars when the song’s died down, when it’s just a memory brought to them by a light breeze, although there’s no breeze, it hasn’t been made yet, it’s just the ripples of the universe, ripples they’re causing by existing, by being -
God speaks to them all, individually, going among them, a little phrase here, an encouragement there. When She gets to Beelzebub, She says, Beelzebub, do you want to build for me?
“Yes,” Beelzebub says, “Oh, Lord, yes.”
≠≠
Contrary to what She’d like to have you believe, She doesn’t create Heaven and Earth in one day, doesn’t call forth the celestial spheres into being, doesn’t create stars, or the moon, or even man. What she does do is create Time, and Space, and Light, and neutrons and protons and electrons and quarks and then She creates angels out of all of these things to do the hard work for her.
Beelzebub doesn’t blame Her for it, not exactly. Neat way to do a bit of work, isn’t it. Except Beelzebub’s the one doing most of the work, working in the Heavenly Development Department. At first they build things like oxygen, and helium, and iron, and lead, important building blocks, they’re told, and they like it, like the challenge of taking Her vague plans with their bad handwriting and interpreting them. Beelzebub is told iron is heavy and cold, that iron rusts, except no one knows what rust is, so Beelzebub has to figure it out. So they make iron, pulling the protons and electrons together, and they think, heavy. What does it mean to be heavy? Beelzebub feels tied down, rooted to the floor. And cold? Beelzebub thinks of space, of the way it feels on their face, on their hands. Then, rust. Beelzebub has to make oxygen, first, and they spend a long time thinking of rust, of what the word feels like, and they hold iron in their hands as they think it. Then they frown: even as they look, the surface of the iron begins changing, gets rough and brittle and red under their fingers. They scratch a nail along it and some of it flakes off into space, floating away from them.
They’ve made iron, and they’ve made what destroys it: rust.
It goes like that for a few hundred years. Sort of. Time’s a little funny. God’s still working on Time, won’t let anyone else help. Beelzebub doesn’t see many other angels, although sometimes they see bright comets streaking by, other angels busy with Her work. Beelzebub wonders, sometimes, what they’re doing. The angels they see most are the archangels, the C-suite, descending in a troop every now and then wherever Beelzebub is working. The archangels survey and pick up and sometimes drop and sometimes ruin with their smudgy fingerprints and ask Why did you do it this way? I would’ve thought it would’ve been easier the other way, and Beelzebub has to explain, very patiently, why they did what they did. The archangels say things like God’s Master Plan or Dividends or Ineffable, all of which Beelzebub figures means they don’t actually know either. There are four archangels: Michael, who is petty, and easily stressed; Uriel, who is silent and aloof; Gabriel, who is, despite his bluster, rather unsure; and Lucifer, who is beautiful, who is the very first Morningstar. He shines like obsidian, like iron. One day he says to Beelzebub - as the archangels survey some of the elements with absolutely no idea what they’re looking at, but they’re trying to pretend; Gabriel’s insisting to the others that lead is just unpolished gold - Lucifer’s looking at nitrogen, and says, “This looks like a fun gas, doesn’t it?”
“Fun?” Beelzebub says. They’ve never thought about fun before.
“Fun. Makes you laugh. You ever laugh, Beelzebub?”
Beelzebub’s eyes slide traitorously over to the other archangels, where Michael and Uriel are now arguing about whether Cerulean is a type of element or animal. Lucifer sees it, and a funny smile plays about his mouth. “Yes, we make a funny figure, don’t we? Do you want to want to know what I think?” Beelzebub nods. “I think you should try to make this one-” he taps nitrogen with his finger - “fun.”
So Beelzebub does, and thinks of the feeling they get when they see Gabriel doing something ridiculous, or how their chest lightens when Uriel gets Michael to say something completely off the wall, and then they make laughing gas. They take it over to the Jokes department, and they all get absolutely nothing done for the rest of the day.
≠≠
It’s not a terrible job, not really: they’re given vague plans for things like Her throne, which was to be seven leagues tall and brighter than the sun,3 and Beelzebub has to try to figure out what that means. Beelzebub makes rubies and sapphires, porphyry and jasper and opal and gold. The gemstones are a big hit. Purple-eyed Gabriel lingers one day after the archangels review quartz. He says, “That’s really neat, Beelzebub,” and he trails his fingers over it, and he really seems to mean it, too, the fierce eyebrows over his purple eyes gentling, and this look flits across his face. Beelzebub doesn’t know what it means. They’re not in the Feelings department, after all.4 When he leaves, Beelzebub sits down, and sketches out a rough idea for a new gemstone, quartz-based, something purple and clear and dark. They call it into being, pulling atoms and elements together, and thinking, the whole time, of Gabriel’s eyes. And the gem turns out perfect, a deep rich violet, and Beelzebub calls it amethyst, because that’s as good a name as any. They include it on Her throne, up the sides and the back and the steps leading to it. Beelzebub can’t approach the throne once it’s done, of course, most angels can’t, but they get to walk past the throne and think those are mine, I made those, even though they’re not theirs, not really, they’re Hers.
But by then Beelzebub is busy on the office building, which is to be, according to the plans, seven times seven stories.5 The top floors are to be at the very top of the universe,6 with a host of floors below, offices and armories and mess halls and floors upon floors of Rooms, which Beelzebub is instructed not to furnish or finish in any way, to create as just empty white vessels. “What’re those for?” Beelzebub asks, but the archangels don’t know. It’s on the drawing, build it, they say, so Beelzebub does.7
The office building stretches down too, down to the bottom of the universe,8 encompassing the pit at the very center. Beelzebub doesn’t ask about that, mostly because they can’t. That part of the plans is marked CONFIDENTIAL, with a nasty curse that means Beelzebub can’t talk about it. When they try, their throat closes up, and their tongue swells to fill their mouth, and their teeth feel like a loose collection of pins and needles, so they give that up as a bad job, and just build per the plans.
When they finish the building, there’s a big ceremony, all the angels playing trumpets and harps while She makes a nice little speech and the archangels cut the gold ribbon. Lucifer, the Morningstar, the first and brightest, catches Beelzebub as they try to sneak away. “Phenomenal work, Beelzebub, you should be very proud of yourself,” he says. And Beelzebub doesn’t know what pride is yet, so they shift uncomfortably instead and say, “Yeah, but the windows are all wrong, and the top floors are almost inaccessible, and the door to one of the Rooms on the 60th floor doesn’t shut all the way-”
“Nothing’s perfect, Beelzebub. The sooner you know that, the better.”
Beelzebub has in fact begun to suspect it: of their fellow angels, of the raw firmament. “Well yeah, but-” they start, because surely She is perfect, at the very least.
As if reading their mind, he says, “Nothing. Remember that, Beelzebub.”
≠≠
A few days later the archangels come to Beelzebub, who’s working on phosphorous, and they say good job, but does it really need all those stairs? It takes Beelzebub a minute to realize they’re not talking about phosphorus. “Not that we’re complaining, mind you,” Gabriel says.
“We’re complaining,” says Michael.
“Well, you wanted all those stories. How else you think you were going to get anywhere?” Beelzebub asks, which is apparently the wrong thing to say.
“Fair,” Gabriel says. “But we still really need you to make us an elevator.”
So the archangels give Beelzebub the plans for the elevator, and Beelzebub looks them over, and frowns, because there are two buttons, which makes sense - an H for Heaven, and a blue-and-green one for the Earth that’s going to come along, any day now - but there’s a third button, too, which is blank. Beelzebub says, “You cut that third button out, we save a whole star, what d’you need a third button for, anyway?”
Michael tells them not to worry about it, to just build what the drawings show, so Beelzebub shrugs, and does, focusing on how it feels to fly, how it feels to rise, their heart soaring up in their chest, shooting up so fast it feels as if it’ll outstrip their body and keep going, forever. So the core of it is right, but they have to ask around a bit, because the spec is off for the elevator cables, and the thing keeps snapping, shooting the test-cherubs Beelzebub coaxes into it up to unimaginable heights9… Beelzebub goes looking for an engineer and comes across Crowley, who frowns, and scratches his head with a pencil, and then leans over and makes a few adjustments in the materials and - “huh,” Beelzebub says, sitting back staring at it. “Yeah, might work.”
“You ask me,” Crowley says, making a face. “She’s getting a little sloppy lately in Her drawings.”
“Yeah,” Beelzebub says. “I noticed.”
With Crowley’s adjustment, the test-ride with the archangels is a success, and Beelzebub goes back to Engineering, and Crowley says not to mention it, and Beelzebub says, “Want to go get some ambrosia?”
Turns out Crowley does. The two of them go off to the mess hall to have a cup and make fun of Michael and Uriel, who are trying to get the angels to sing a hosanna glorifying Her in key and all in the same time signature, which is harder than getting a camel through the eye of a needle. Michael grows increasingly frustrated, in part because Uriel keeps baiting her, and Gabriel just stands there with his fingers in his ears, making a face, and Lucifer sits in the corner with his arms crossed, watching them all, a strange smile on his face.
Beelzebub leans over to Crowley and says, “You’d think She’d have made us all good at this, She wanted us to glorify Her,” and Crowley says, “Bit of a cock-up, that was,” and they laugh, hands over their mouths. Michael turns a sour look on them, and Lucifer turns to look, too. Beelzebub elbows Crowley and they try to quiet themselves, but they keep catching each other’s eyes and laughing. Beelzebub covers their mouth; Crowley buries his face in his cup.
Some time later, during the fifth rendition of “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” Lucifer comes over to them and says, “At least someone’s enjoying themselves.”
“You’re not?” says Crowley, all innocence.
“Definitely not,” he says, and Beelzebub and Crowley slide looks at each other across the table, because an archangel - the archangel - admitting he doesn’t enjoy the same hosannas night after night? “Have you ridden the elevator yet?” he asks Crowley.
“Yeah,” says Crowley. 10 “But what’s that third button for?”
Lucifer looks around, then leans forward. “Don’t tell anyone else,” he says. “God’s thinking of making another realm.”
Beelzebub points down and raises their eyebrows. It’s not speaking; they can do it. Lucifer nods.
“What for?” Crowley asks.
“Don’t know yet. She plays her cards close to her chest.11 She’s up to something. I’m going to find out what.”
After he leaves, Beelzebub says, “If anyone can figure it out, it’s him.” Crowley agrees. Everyone knows Lucifer Morningstar is Her favorite; She loves them all equally, of course, but him most of all.
≠≠
Time has really just begun, is still getting the kinks worked out, which means it bogs down sometimes in great heavy wrinkles where you get stuck working on argon for what’s probably years, although part of you already knows you’ve figured it out ages ago. You just haven’t figured it out yet. Or you settle in for a good day of work on glass, but time skips like a stone over a pond,12 and then Crowley slinks in and says, “Want to go bother the cherubs?” And you’ll say, “Can’t til lunch, got to figure this one out,” and Crowley, leaning on your desk, will say, “It’s half past three,” and you’ll have to say, “Already?”
“Time skip,” he’ll say.
“Thought She was going to fix that.”
Crowley shrugs. “Then She started working on whales, I heard.”
“Oh,” you’ll say. “Well, come on, then,” and then you’ll go fuck off in Engineering for a few dozen years or so, because no one’s looking for you, and why not?
≠≠
Beelzebub’s got a little down time, so they look at the elements. There are a few missing, they think. Why not make one of their very own? Rocks can wait. They carefully lock their office door and turn the vent on, just in case, and they close their eyes and they think. They think for a very long time, trying to think what the universe might be missing. For three days13 they get frustrated. The universe isn’t missing anything; it’s perfect, of course; She’d made it perfectly, and anything that hasn’t been made yet is surely going to get made when She gets around to drafting up the plans.
And yet. Beelzebub remembers Lucifer saying remember that. They think of what they had felt in their chest at the ribbon-cutting when Lucifer had complimented them, that strange bubbling glowing sensation inside them, bright green, almost chartreuse,14 a glow bright enough to cut through dark space. They think heat, they think power, they think action.
And they build. They start to work, pulling protons and electrons together over and over and over again, a little here, a little there, the universe, it seems, opening up to them, responding to them. They’re sweating, a stinging trickle dripping into their eye, dampening their palms, but they can’t stop now, they’re so close. Another here, another there, arranged around the nucleus like this -
Beelzebub opens their eyes. It’s not right. They see it immediately, with a sinking sensation, something heavy as lead. They know lead. They’ve made lead. Lead worked, lead came from Her plans. But this - something about it is wrong, wildly unstable. Dangerous even. They should destroy it. And yet-
The elevator - the blasted elevator - dings outside their office, and the archangels come trooping in. Of course. “What’s that you’re working on?” Gabriel asks, and so of course Beelzebub has to show off their element, which is a failure, and they all know it. Angels can feel lack of perfection, can sense danger and wrongness, and they all stare at it, wildly disapproving.
“Is this one of Her designs?” asks Uriel.
“No,” says Beelzebub. “No, it’s one of mine. I think if I just tweaked the electrons-”
“I think that one’s a failure,” says Uriel.
“We can all see that,” Michael says.
“Love the initiative,” Gabriel says, “But maybe a bit misguided? Maybe direct that energy towards what She wants you to make?"
“Yeah,” says Beelzebub. “Course.”
Lucifer, though, stops in front of it. It flares, suddenly, a green-yellow glow, ghostly and sick, reflected in his dark eyes. “No,” he says. “I think this could be important,” and all the archangels listen to him, because he is God’s favorite, the most privileged. “This could be very important someday. I can see it. Beelzebub, well done.”
The element brightens, and glows, nearly ringing with promise.
≠≠
One evening during the interminable dances and singing, Beelzebub is sitting to the side, playing with their cup of ambrosia. They’re thinking about the element, which they’ve decided to call uranium. Of what might’ve gone wrong. It’s that they were distracted, they think, that they doubted Her while they were doing it. They were thinking negative thoughts, unstable things. Their own failure was displayed in what they had made, then. Beelzebub wonders if She knows what that feels like, if there’d been anything She had made wrong, that disappointed her.
Crowley separates from the dance and heads their way. A white-haired wide-eyed cherub looks after him, almost comically dismayed. Crowley drops himself down next to Beelzebub. “What are you doing sitting over here glaring at everyone for?”
“I’m not glaring,” Beelzebub says, and nods at the cherub. “You little heartbreaker.”
Crowley turns and frowns. “Him? Nah. Met him the other day. Nice enough, but he’s one of God’s good little soldiers.” The angel waves at Crowley, who raises a hand back, then brushes his hand over his hair, as if checking it. Beelzebub shrugs.
“I made something,” they say. Crowley turns to look at them. “Look.” They twist their hand and the element appears in the palm of their hand, glowing gently. Crowley leans over it.
“Your own?”
“Yeah.”
“What’d She say?”
“She didn’t see it. And She won’t.” Beelzebub vanishes it back to the lab. “It’s wrong. Unstable. Something the matter with it.”
“But it’s brilliant,” Crowley says. “I mean you can really feel the energy - and the color!”
Beelzebub just grunts.
They watch the angels dance, a circular sweep, a great winged flashing wheel made of many parts, gold and white, the embodiment of delight and joy. “You know,” Crowley says, and he miracles up a piece of paper and a pen and leans forward. “That motion, there, that circular bit-” he gestures with his finger. “Might be just the thing I need for orbits.”15
“But what’s going to make them go?” Beelzebub says, leaning forward as well. “You can’t make them dance, can you? Stars, and, what’s the other one?”
“Planets,” Crowley says. “Sure you can. Make them restless, make them want to move. Energy. Like your green thing.” He’s sketching, pen flying over the paper in its own dance.
“But then they won’t stay where you put them,” Beelzebub says, and so they have to think for awhile on that, and then they figure out gravity, and mass. By the time they raise their heads, everyone’s gone, the white-haired cherub included. It’s not dark, of course; there is no darkness in Heaven itself, just a misty twilight that hovers temptingly on the edge of darkness, never getting there.
“Lab?” says Crowley.
“Lab,” says Beelzebub.
≠≠
They work together so well Beelzebub gets added to the star project. “You’re doing the Lord’s work,” proclaims Gabriel, a bit unnecessarily, because of course they are. They’re angels. Anything they do is technically the Lord’s work. Lucifer lingers behind after the others leave, poking at things in the lab, looking through the drawings and asking about them. He actually listens, actually cares. Beelzebub knows they’re not supposed to have favorites, but after Crowley, of course, it would probably be Lucifer. No. God, of course, then Crowley, then Lucifer.
They make big stars and little stars, dwarfs and giants and red and yellow. Crowley is wild and full of ideas, Beelzebub the more practical of the two, bringing him back to reality again and again. They always seem to see the hidden dangers, the consequences. All the little things that might go wrong.16
Beelzebub makes new gasses and elements and metals for Crowley to make stars out of, and sometimes the other angels come out to look at what they’re doing, although it’s strange, isn’t it, how few of them do. They’re all so focused on their own work, separate, alone. They’re almost - if it wasn’t for God, of course, whose love was in all of them, a great big ball in the center of their beings, almost like a star - they would almost be lonely.
Beelzebub tells Crowley this one day - or night, or morning - as Crowley plaits their hair. Beelzebub’s hair is long and black and thick, and when they need to talk through ideas, Beelzebub hops up on the drawing table, legs crossed, and Crowley stands behind them and puts their hair up in increasingly intricate braids and crowns and twists. He says it helps him think. Their hair never stays nice for long; it always escapes; fly-aways, Crowley calls them once, and snickers. All his fine work undone. “S’not undone,” he says, when Beelzebub asks why he bothers. “Just changed. Different, is all.”
“Yeah, worse,” Beelzebub says.
“Weeeellll, s’a bit messy, yeah, but who cares, really?”17
“Neat hair,” Gabriel says to Beelzebub in the mess hall the next day, and Beelzebub just barely stops themself from reaching up to touch it, because that’ll mess it up, it always does. Crowley’s always telling them not to touch it if they don’t want to mess it up. Because that’s what Beelzebub’s touch does, they’re learning, for some reason. Something clumsy in them maybe, something wrong. Like when they work on red stars with Crowley, and Crowley goes to get something out of the vending machine,18 and hands the star they’d gotten almost perfect over to Beelzebub, who takes it, and, looking over it from all sides, thinks it wants to go just a little bigger, so they pinch here and pull there, and-
it’s too much, and it starts to collapse, rapidly, a terrible sucking sound, and it shrinks, and shrinks, and yanks out of Beelzebub’s hands, blasting all around the room, pulling Beelzebub’s hair out of its neat plaited crown until it finally collapses in the corner, sad and wrinkled. “Awww,” Crowley groans, standing inside the door with his lunch. “What happened?”
“I’m really sorry,” Beelzebub says, turning to them, and they don’t know what look’s on their face, but Crowley puts down his lunch and comes over to stand over the star and look at it with Beelzebub. He crouches down and picks it up gingerly between thumb and forefinger. It flops, sadly. He glances sideways at Beelzebub. “Too much helium,” he says, turning it this way and that.
“Not enough, now,” Beelzebub says with disgust. They push their hair back, irritated. “Although-” they say, and then they invent balloons, which are a big hit in the mess hall that evening, and all the evenings after that, so Crowley counts it as a win and doesn’t say anything about it again. Even then, Beelzebub’s left with this rotten feeling inside of them, like heartburn, or a star that’s got too much helium and is waiting to blow at any second.
They haven’t said anything about it yet, about how they ruin things. They don’t want anyone to notice. If someone notices, Beelzebub might be taken off Development, might be sent somewhere like the mess hall to scoop out ambrosia, or out into space on broom duty. So Beelzebub starts to keep their hands, metaphorically speaking, in their pockets, and keeps their head down.
≠≠
Another evening, another dance. This time, there’s balloons in every corner, and another angel has invented confetti,19 and it’s the picture of jollity, Beelzebub figures. They watch the dance, chin on their hand. They’ve seen it before. There’s not much to do in Heaven after the work is done but sing Hosannas to glorify Her, or dance in the sheer delight of Her love, or play harps and trumpets in celebration of, you guessed it.
“Don’t you ever think there could be something more?” they say to Crowley, who’s sitting next to them, feet up on the table, arms crossed, sunk low in his chair.
“Yeah,” Crowley says. “Yeah, sometimes.” They stare at each other a beat, two, as the dance swirls on beyond them, a moment that feels as if it stretches on for an eternity. It may very well do. Time’s still screwy. Just another thing She’s abandoned in favor of the human project. At least, that’s what some of the angels are saying.
“What if-” Beelzebub says at the same time Crowley says, “Time-”
≠≠
They make a black hole. Crowley does something clever with time. They’ve all got something they’re best at. Crowley’s is time; Beelzebub’s is - they don’t know. “Seeing how things fit together,” Crowley says supportively in the lab one day, and Beelzebub assents, but they don’t think that’s it at all. They think it’s seeing how things fall apart. Still. The black hole work is going well. They’ve got the perfect galaxy formed, waiting for it. They’ve got the star almost right. Michael comes by and tells them to go to the dance, for Heaven’s sake, the other angels are going to start thinking they’re antisocial. Beelzebub makes a rude gesture behind her back as she goes. Gabriel walks by and squints his eyes at them, but doesn’t stop. Uriel is nowhere to be found.20 And Lucifer shimmers in and asks them all about it, says, “I knew you two were special,” and when he leaves, they grin at each other.
And then one night they’ve got it: a star made so heavy and so gloriously much, so much star, that it’s ready to collapse under its own weight. Crowley nods at them to do the honors. Beelzebub closes their eyes, and reaches out, gathering gasses and metals and weight and light and sound, and packs it all into the star, more, they think to it, more, more, more, you want more, and then the star wakes up, as it were, and realizes it’s hungry, and with a roar it takes a deep breath in and holds it. The universe begins to slip and tug into it, faster and faster, and Crowley barely yanks Beelzebub back in time, a hand fisted in the back of their robes.
“Thanks,” Beelzebub says.
“Don’t mention it,” Crowley says, and then he says, “Fuck, Beez, look at what we did.”
“Should we have, do you think?”
“Well, it’s too late now,” Crowley says.21
≠≠
The black hole is, apparently, a big deal. It’s a big enough deal that the archangels come out into space to see it, and even God comes down from wherever She’s been hiding to look at it. They all stand around the black hole, a great void sucking angrily, time and space and matter and stars and planets and sound and bits of rock, pulling on Beelzebub as they stand there. They can feel little parts of themself split off and get sucked in. A proton here. An electron there. Nothing that should hurt them, but they can feel the pieces missing.22
“Where’s it go?” Gabriel says. “Everything going into it.” He has to shout to be heard, words torn from him into the black hole, and Beelzebub hears him in their mind more than out loud.
“Nowhere,” says Beelzebub, and grins. “It’s all still right there.”
“Can we get to it?”
“No,” says Beelzebub.
“That’s the good bit,” says Crowley. “Everything that goes in there is lost. Well, it’s not, but it is. You can’t go in there. You do, you won’t make it out again. Trust me.”23
Michael turns away in disgust. Uriel is standing there with her arms crossed. God has a completely unreadable24 expression on Her face, staring down into the black hole. Beelzebub wonders if She feels it too, feels the pull.
“It’s terrible,” God says. “I mean, it’s very good, you two, don’t get me wrong. Splendid. Very inventive. A very good use of materials. But it’s - terrible. Awful.” She shivers.
After the other archangels turn away, and Crowley is kicking space-rocks, hands shoved in his pockets, disgruntled by Her words, Lucifer is still there, staring into it, standing on the edge, almost swaying, a terrible look on his beautiful face, almost monstrous and twisted, teeth bared.
“You feel it too,” Beelzebub says, and it’s only when they touch his arm that he seems to come back to himself.
He turns to Beelzebub, says, “For this, Beelzebub, you will be at my right hand.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
≠≠
Lucifer calls a meeting in the Velvet Mess hall, the one on the thirteenth floor. Some of the angels are out of breath when they get down there, as the elevators are, apparently, reserved for archangels only. The room is dim in the purple twilight of Heaven, smoky and amethyst-colored.
“What’s all this then?” Beelzebub asks Crowley.
“Dunno,” Crowley says. Beelzebub looks around them at the small groups of chattering angels. Some angels they recognize, but others they don’t. Heaven’s vast. It’s enormous. They haven’t met all the angels yet. They wonder if they ever will. Lucifer has, they all discover, waiting on him, been talking to them all separately, a privileged group, encouraging them, praising them, promising them things. There’s an air of anticipation. When he comes in he is glorious, a clear shining beacon of light that brightens the whole room in a radius around him. The opposite of a black hole. They all hush, reminded that he is the Morningstar, the most beautiful and beloved of all Her children. What does he have for them? A message from Her? A task?
“My brethren,” he says, spreading his hands, and how different that is, brethren instead of children. “I’ve gathered the most intelligent of you here today. The most worthy. I don’t think I’m mistaken in this - Beelzebub, the builder. Crowley, the engineer. Paimon the joker, Murmux the silent.” They all flush as he mentions their names, looking around at the others, as if to say, did you hear that? He knows me. “Surely you have wondered why it is that She alone is above all? She alone controls, dictates, commands? That everything is to be as Her will?”
“Well, She did create us out of nothing,” one of the angels says.
Lucifer is not angry; he smiles, inclines his head, as if the angel has brought up exactly what he wished. “Does that mean that we owe Her blind obedience? Owe her every atom of ourselves? Is not some of us entirely ours? Are we permitted to have nothing?” His voice is silky, low, thrumming down in their very cores, every atom responding to him as he talks, reaching into all of them and coaxing out their doubt, bringing it to the light and turning it like a jewel to study the facets, to catch the light. The angels look at each other, mutter. It feels wrong to talk about Her like this, not what they are made for. But - he is the Morningstar after all, the first, the brightest, the most beautiful, Her favorite, the one she relies on; he sings first every morning and last every night. How is it that he could be wrong?
“Is everything She does right, holy, unimpeachable?” They look at each other, unsure. Then Crowley says - “Well, She has had a bad idea or two. I mean making all these beautiful stars, getting them all going, and then destroying them? All for what? What’s the point? Doesn’t make any sense! And when I tried to ask She gave me the brush-off! I mean, come on, Hastur, if somebody all of a sudden told you that those things you’re working on - what are they -
“Cockroaches,” Hastur says.
“Cockroaches, right, if they weren’t going to matter, at all, if - what if everybody hated them, right? And everybody was like ugh, cockroaches, hate whoever made those. How’d that feel?”
“Bad,” Hastur says, sorrowfully.
“That’s what I’m saying!” Crowley says.
“And the Earth,” chimes in Beelzebub. “I mean, you take this tiny rock, you want these - humans - to live on - and you fill it full of fire? That’s structurally unsound, that is.”
“Never pass inspection,” Crowley says.
“Never,” says Beelzebub, “Not if s’not rigged.”
“Could pay someone off,” Ligur suggested. They all consider that a moment.
“Humans could get hurt that way,” Beelzebub says, finally.
“And reheated ambrosia in the mess hall, every - er - fifth day,” Furfur says, because Fridays haven’t been invented yet.
And so the grumblings start…complaints start pouring out, more than Beelzebub would’ve expected, and they look up and see Lucifer standing back with a strange look on his face, his mouth curled up.
“You deserve a God who listens to you. Who answers your questions. Who - yes, who changes it up in the mess hall every once in awhile,” Lucifer says to Furfur’s upraised hand. “Can I count on you?” he asks all of them. “When I need you. Will you come? I promise to reward you. To lift you up high alongside me. All of us equals, all of us sharing in the spoils,” he says, and his eyes flare.
“Yes,” they all say, faces raised to him. “Yes, Lucifer, yes.”
After the meeting, Beelzebub goes up to him, says, “You planned this, didn’t you?”
“Planned what?” Lucifer says.
“All us - like this. You knew we had - questions,” Beelzebub says, because they don’t want to say complaints. Not yet.
“I just saw a need,” Lucifer says. “I need too, Beelzebub.”
“Yeah?” says Beelzebub. “And what do you need, Lucifer Morningstar, First Beloved?”
“I need to be free,” he says, and his eyes flare dark as an eclipse, as a black hole.
≠≠
It becomes very apparent to Beelzebub that something is wrong in Heaven. There are cracks showing, little faults and fissures where things are starting to fall apart. The archangels are fighting more, and now that Beelzebub knows, they can see how Lucifer is goading on Michael and Uriel, how he baits Gabriel into opening his mouth and saying foolish things. God is nowhere to be seen, busy on the human project. One of the angels on the projects talks, says that God has decreed they are Her most perfect creation, that they will be beloved above all others, even the angels. Word gets around, quickly. The quality of the ambrosia in the mess hall begins to slip, turning into a reheated slurry most of the angels won’t touch. During the song and glory session, one of the sopranos flat out refuses to sing her aria and causes such an avalanche of fighting it goes on for three days and three nights. Beelzebub shuts themself up in the lab with Crowley. They’re working desperately. They haven’t talked about it, but they both have the feeling that Time is running out, that something is going to happen, and soon. There are rumors, whispers, of fights between Lucifer and God. Beelzebub is tasked with building a door in front of the throne that is impassable, indestructible. What is She afraid of, Beelzebub thinks, and who is She trying to keep out?
But it’s worse than that. There’s something wrong with the universe. It might be the black hole, Beelzebub realizes with sickening dread. Or should they say black holes, because it’s becoming apparent that some of the stars they and Crowley created are doing it on their very own. They go back to the plans, trying to figure out if it’s a design flaw or a field problem. The very fabric of the universe, Beelzebub feels - and they can feel it, can see all the disparate parts where the universe is starting to crack and split, grow weak in some areas - is beginning to fail. They try to warn Gabriel, who comes into the lab one day. Crowley’s off somewhere, probably with Lucifer, and Michael and Uriel are off fighting about something or other. Beelzebub tries to tell Gabriel about the danger, about the failures, because what will it mean for all of them if the very universe begins to fail? But Gabriel doesn’t listen. “It’ll be fine, Beelzebub,” he says, and claps their shoulder. “Trust in God and Her strength.” But standing this close, Beelzebub can see he’s just parroting the lines, that his eyes are empty, a clouded amethyst somewhere else. What do you know, Beelzebub thinks, what is it you want, Gabriel?
≠≠
A few months later a great commotion breaks out across the heavens - big crashing booms of thunder that shudder the mess halls, great flashes of lightning, one of which obliterates a star, which is there one moment and - blip! - gone the next. A solar flare illuminates Heaven, a sudden bright flash of light that leaves the angels blind for three seconds and completely ruins the carbon copy Beelzebub’s trying to make.
The archangels are fighting.
What about, no one is permitted to know, but there are plenty of conjectures. Rations, someone suggests. The Sound of Music, says another. It’s not for them to know, but plenty of the lower-order angels are milling around at the foot of Her throne, because next to God, and ambrosia, what angels love most is gossip, which means everyone finds out very quickly about how Lucifer had gone to Her throne and had been met outside the door and refused entrance. “Surely, as the voice of God, anything you have to say to Her, you can also say to me?” the Metatron says, and Lucifer says something extremely rude to God through the Metatron, and storms off.
Lucifer calls his angels together in the same mess hall as before. “Tomorrow,” he says, his teeth bared, eyes glittering with anger. “Are you with me?”
Beelzebub looks around and sees determined faces. Yes, they’re with him.
They prepare themselves. For what, they don’t know. They’re going to war; they know that, but they don’t know what war is, of course; it hasn’t been invented yet. They’ve got a few of the armory angels on their side, and they’re going to storm the armory tomorrow at dawn while the other angels are busy singing Her glory to a closed door and then they’re going to go to war. Beelzebub goes to find Crowley, who’s sitting in the lab his chin on his hand. “Come on,” Beelzebub says. “If you’re going to mope, do it somewhere more exciting.”
They go to the black hole, then, the very first one, and Beelzebub stands on the edge, feeling that howling absence of anything, that sucking need. Crowley stands further back. Beelzebub has always been more drawn to it, to the way it feels when pieces of themselves are ripped away, nothing in their place. Beelzebub can feel every single proton’s absence and wonders if they stand here long enough, will they be made perfect?
“Come on,” says Crowley, when they’ve been there - Beelzebub doesn’t know how long. Time gets funny around black holes. Maybe they’ve missed the battle. Maybe they’ll come back to Heaven and it’ll all be changed, all shining and better and equal, like Lucifer has promised. “It’s almost dawn.” Count on Crowley for an unfailing sense of time.
They go back to Lucifer’s camp, which is spread out on the fields of Elysium. “You think they know?” Crowley asks, jerking his head Up. He’s braiding Beelzebub’s hair for the battle, his hands surprisingly gentle, although they shake a bit.
“They’ve got to, right?” Beelzebub says. “Be stupid if they didn’t. Deserve to lose, if they didn’t.” Not that Beelzebub knows what losing means. Not yet, anyway.
Oh, but they will.
≠≠
The battle lasts three days.
Lucifer’s army starts the first day off shining, standing straight and proud, their spears and swords and shields aloft, their Heavenly armor catching the rays of the rising sun. Beelzebub feels certain they are on the side of right, as bright as they are, with the Morningstar at their head, the brightest of all. How can they be wrong?
They are met at Her throne by the remainder of the angels, also in their Heavenly armor, also with spears and swords and shields, also refracting the light. Beelzebub squints, nearly blinded. They’ve lost Crowley, somewhere in the vast crowd. All the angels stop and stare at each other. Beelzebub recognizes angels on the other side. Saraqael. Ezekiel. Hanibal. Phaneal. Zadkiel, angels stretching back on the plains of Heaven as far as the eye can see. At the front of the line are the three remaining archangels: Michael, Uriel Gabriel. Everyone waits, as if holding their breath.
“Step aside, my brethren,” says Lucifer. “It doesn’t need to come to this.”
“We’re not going to yield Heaven to traitors,” Gabriel says, his voice and eyes flashing.
“Traitors?” Says Lucifer. “It’s you who are the traitors. She who is a traitor. She has turned Her back on us. She has abandoned us for a new project!”
“If She’s abandoned you, it’s a failure in yourself,” Gabriel says. “Why else would you fall from favor?”
Lucifer’s face twists, and his arm comes down. “Forward!” he cries.
And they follow.
War is awful, Beelzebub finds. It goes on forever, it seems, time stretching endless, permanent, as a mess of angels, all identical, and how can you tell who is on what side when they’re all wearing the same armor? Unless you know them. Like Gabriel, when Beelzebub turns and comes face-to-face with him. He lowers his sword a half-meter. “You?” Gabriel says. “How could you? Beelzebub - She gave you life.”
“That was Her mistake, then,” Beelzebub says, and a strange look crosses Gabriel’s face, pity and determination and something else entirely, and he raises his sword - Beelzebub closes their eyes -
the feel of air moving past their face, the clash of metal, and Beelzebub opens their eyes. Lucifer himself has Gabriel’s sword met with his own. “Go!” he says to Beelzebub, and Beelzebub goes.
≠≠
When dusk comes, both sides, by mutual agreement, retreat to tend to their wounded and recoup. Lucifer’s army limps back to Elysium and stare at each other. They had expected easy victory, near instantaneous, and had found, instead, death and misery. They look nothing like the angels of before, are instead battle-weary and soot-covered and ichor-stained.
“We need something more,” Lucifer says, “something bigger, something they don’t have.”
Beelzebub turns to look at Crowley, who is already staring at them.
≠≠
They design the very first siege weapon: a great big wheeled cart with flaming spears and spiked barricades and room for a whole legion of angels inside. Crowley and Beelzebub design it, Crowley almost as if he can’t help himself, but when the time comes to build, he refuses to help.
“A lot more angels are going to get hurt if we let his battle stretch on for longer than it has to,” Lucifer says.
“I didn’t sign up to hurt angels,” Crowley says stubbornly.
“What did you think you signed up to do? Play cards?” Lucifer sneers. Then he changes his tone, because Crowley’s not backing down. “There’s nowhere to go,” he says. “You think they’ll accept you back with open arms? You think they’re waiting for you to come back? You think they even notice you’re gone? You’ve made your choice, Crowley. It’s too late to go back now.”
Crowley stares at him a moment, then sulks off. Lucifer wheels on Beelzebub, his eyes blazing. “And you?” he says.
“I’m going to need some help,” Beelzebub says, lifting their chin. He stares a moment. Then he smiles. “You! You!” He points. “Do whatever Beelzebub tells you.”
Beelzebub gets to work. Some time later - the twilight has gone on forever and Beelzebub thinks, aware that it’s long past the time for bargaining, if only time can stall here, and I can stay here an eternity building, I’ll be satisfied-
“Where’s the bloody screwdriver?” Beelzebub asks, on a creeper under the machine. They hold their hand out, and it’s placed in their hand, firm, heavy, handed to them the proper way, for them to use without adjusting their grip. Not many angels know exactly where in Beelzebub’s palm to place it.
Beelzebub pushes themselves out from under the machine and sits up. Crowley’s standing here, robes tattered and dirty, soot smudged on his cheek.
“So,” Beelzebub says.
“So,” Crowley says.
“You came back.”
"He said it. Nowhere else to go.”
And there isn’t. Is there.
≠≠
The siege machine is a quantifiable success. Quantifiable by the fact that casualties - on the other side - triple, they quadruple, they sextuple, they duodecuple. The siege machine is unstoppable, and the angels, in an attempt to stop it, begin tearing up the raw firmament and throwing it at the siege machine: stars and planets; they fracture off meteors, sink a big rotten spot into Jupiter. The universe is tearing itself apart, Beelzebub can feel it. It’s impossible that She can’t feel it too, but God is nowhere to be seen, the door to Her throne remains barred and shut. I could tear it down, Beelzebub thinks. I just need time.
Again, twilight, again, the mutual retreat. Where last night Lucifer’s army had been loud and cheerful and raucous, tonight they are silent, avoiding each other’s eyes, nursing their wounds. Lucifer, with a large slash in his neck, makes his rounds, talking to each of them in turn. “Tomorrow,” he says, “The tide will turn. Tomorrow, the victory will be ours.” Crowley, slumped down beside Beelzebub, snorts softly, but says nothing. There’s a wild look in his eyes, as if he’s gotten more than he’s bargained for. Beelzebub tries not think, and waits for morning.
≠≠
The third day is the worst of all. The fighting is more bitter and bloody than before, the angels on both sides fighting with a sort of desperation. Beelzebub is in the ruins of the forty-fifth mess hall, which they had built, and which they have destroyed, and they and Hastur and Usher are fighting five angels who are doing their very best to kill them. Beelzebub is fighting with an angel they recognize from the mess hall. They don’t remember his name now, but he had given them an extra serving of ambrosia once and winked at them. They scuffle now, pain flaring in Beelzebub’s arm, their ribs, and then the two of them are down on the ground fighting, and Beelzebub is digging at the weak point in his armor, right at his throat, and then he brings the pommel of his sword up and hits them in the mouth, and again, and again, Beelzebub’s head rocking back each time, face and skull an explosion of pain, supernova, and the look on the other angel’s face is monstrous, horrible, and Beelzebub kills him to get him to stop. It’s different, somehow, when it’s not the machine doing it, when it’s Beelzebub’s hands and a knife and the pain flaring in their face, a crushing throbbing black heat obliterating everything, a hot rush of ichor and blood washing down Beelzebub’s chin and throat, over Beelzebub’s hands as the angel dies, the light going out suddenly, and Beelzebub feels his atoms start slipping away, can feel God’s handiwork ebbing back out into the universe -
Stop, She says, and it echoes everywhere in the entire universe, and all of them stop, are forced to stop, Her command arresting every single particle of their bodies, weapons dropping from nerveless hands or claws or talons, No more, and the world twists and changes and they’re in a vast white empty space, all of them, and Beelzebub thinks is this all there really is underneath?
Beelzebub looks around. Ligur is bleeding from his head, his skull exposed. Dagon’s face is burned, skin bubbling in a strange rippling pattern, scale-like. Shax’s wings are broken, drooping behind her, dragging on the ground. And Crowley. Crowley’s been caught across the eyes, the bridge of his nose with a weapon, blood trailing sluggish down the side of his face.
She is larger and more terrible than ever, a great bright light, the very opposite of a black hole, but just as terrible, Beelzebub thinks, just as loveless. Know this, rebel angels, She says in a terrible voice, You have gone against my will, you have fractured Heaven, you have killed your siblings. For this, you will never be forgiven. Lucifer, come forth, and receive your judgment.
Lucifer comes forth, as if without will, the matter She had made them out of still answering to Her despite itself. Not that there is much left of Lucifer; he has been destroyed. Beelzebub can see the damage to his essence on every form, how his physical body is flickering desperately through shapes in an attempt to find something it can heal in: beast, angel, bird, fish, monster. For your great sin of Pride, God says, You will Fall. You are hereby condemned to an eternity in Hell, exiled from Heaven, never to return.
The archangels are weeping, even Michael, even Uriel. “How could you, Lucifer?” Michael says. Gabriel says, “I don’t understand.” There is a gash in his breastplate oozing with ichor, but he seems not to notice.
“What’s Hell?” one of the angels next to Beelzebub asks, and suddenly Beelzebub knows with a sinking heart what the third button on the elevator is for, what the pit is for. She knew all this time, Beelzebub thinks, and feels a hot surge of anger. She knew and let us build our own punishment.
She calls them all, Shax and Ligur and Paimon and Dagon and Hastur, and finds them all wanting. She condemns them all to Fall, never to return to Her. When Crowley is called, he lifts his head and takes the first step, and Beelzebub sees when he turns his head that he’s been blinded, eyes unseeing, weeping a pearlescent gold. Beelzebub shoves forward through the angels separating them, reaching him, putting a hand under his elbow, but Crowley jerks his arm away, and walks towards Her. His eyes weep blood and ichor as he stares, sightless, at God, who condemns him to Fall, to be removed from Her love, forever and ever. Someone lets out a choked noise behind Beelzebub. Crowley’s little cherub, the one they’d all teased him about. They’re all weeping, though, angels and the soon to be fallen alike. Well. Not all of them. Not Lucifer. Not Beelzebub. And not Crowley, probably, although it’s hard to tell.
And then it’s Beelzebub’s turn. They make their way forward, God’s command tugging on every atom of them. No, not every atom. Beelzebub can still feel the ones in the black hole, the ones they’ve lost, the ones still Beelzebub, not under Her control, even now.25 Beelzebub, God says, and She sounds so sorrowful. You could have built and instead you tear things apart, you break them down, and for this, you will Fall.
Beelzebub wants to reply, to say, But you made me like this, you rotten old bitch, I was there when You made me, and You know as well as I do that if there is a flaw in the finished product then it lies with the builder, and what does it say about You, that half Your creations turned out to be monsters?
But Beelzebub can’t speak, their mouth aching and useless, a black hole of pain. Beelzebub thinks that maybe She knows what they’re thinking anyway, because something ripples through the bright light and sinks in gently throughout it, something that Beelzebub thinks might be pain.
She goes on and on, endless, condemns them all, all of Lucifer’s angels, and when She is done, She says, Farewell, my children, and twists Her hand. The blank white empty space opens up below them to absolutely nothing, and they Fall.
≠≠
They Fall forever, long enough for Beelzebub to have thought three times over that perhaps She has just thrown them into a black hole, that they will be Falling forever because there is no time, or rather time is everywhere, and then Beelzebub Falls long enough to have forgotten those thoughts, to have forgotten about war, and sin, and building, to have forgotten amethyst and stars and elevators and their own name.
And then they stop.
≠≠
Some time later - a long time later; time has started again - Beelzebub looks around at them in the pit. At what used to be angels, friends, comrades, coworkers, but are now just near formless shapes lying in the sulfur, or broken over rocks, or collapsed on the shore. They’re a sorry lot of shit, aren’t they: Lucifer a mere mess of atoms, shifting and fluttering, unmoored and restless. Crowley staring blindly at the top of the vast cavern they’re in. Dagon’s opened weeping face. Shax’s shattered wings. And Beelzebub’s own breath coming harsh and whistling through their ruined mouth. Beelzebub thinks, when they can think again, You created us like this, and then you threw us down when You didn’t like what You had made. And what sort of creator are You, then? What sort of God?
≠≠
Beelzebub pulls themselves from the pit. It takes a few years. It takes another few to sit up, and then stand up, and then survey the molten landscape rich with raw materials - sulfur and iron and phosphorus, oxygen and carbon and pain. They sigh. Then they roll up their sleeves, and get to work.
≠≠
1. Not Beelzebub, of course, but that other name, long ago, so long ago sometimes now when Beelzebub goes back to one of their old creations, like the center of the Milky Way to the back hole they and Crowley had signed when they’d finished it, at first Beelzebub doesn’t know who’s graffitied their beautiful work, who’s sullied it. Oh, Beelzebub thinks then, it was me.
The next time Crowley comes down to Hell for a review Beelzebub finds something to complain about and sticks him down in Hell for eighty years to re-alphabetize the Files. About sixty years later, Beelzebub goes looking for him. “Remember when we made that black hole?” Beelzebub asks.
Crowley, elbow deep in the Files, arms lost in thick rubber gloves, looks like he’s thinking about lying. He likes his little amnesia joke, thinks he’s funny. Then he sits back on his heels, and Beelzebub feels something disagreeable then at the look on his face. They feel like they’ve just swallowed a swarm of flies, churning thickly in their stomach. “Yeah,” Crowley says. “We were a Hell of a team, weren’t we?”
Beelzebub frowns, thinking of - “Go on,” they say. “You’re released.”
“But I’m only on S.,” Crowley says, as if he can’t believe he’s saying it.
“Go,” says Beelzebub. “I’ll get Furfur to finish up.” back
2. This is what Beelzebub thinks afterwards. They know every time they make something, if they really want it to succeed, they have to give it something of themselves. A little piece here or there, an atom or two.
Enough of that, there won’t be any of you left. back
3. When it’s finished, God Herself comes out of wherever it is She goes and sits down in it.
She likes it so much She has Beelzebub build a matching card table, too, for Her games with Lucifer. The games are legend among the angels: the two of them will spend months sometimes on a single hand. She asks Beelzebub to put an extra mirror in the bottom - and Beelzebub has to figure out how to make mirrors, first - so She can cheat at cards, if she needs.
Except Beelzebub puts a mirror on the other side of the card table too, because it only seems right, and Lucifer, when he sees Beelzebub next, winks at them. back
4. And thank God for that. Quite literally. back
5. And come on, the engineer couldn’t even do the math for them? Beelzebub makes a note to go to Engineering and ask them about it. back
6. Which is difficult, given the universe’s shape; not round, as humans assume, but rather a many-sided die She rolls every now and then when She gets bored. back
7. Heaven’s Rooms are one of its best kept secrets. Each room represents an angel’s very particular Heaven, their perfect paradise. They are kept carefully locked; to enter one’s own room is sure madness, to enter another’s, suicide.
Hell has its own Rooms, too, but they are, of course, very different. back
8. See footnote #6. back
9. They seem to like it, though, giggling and telling all their little friends about it, so Beelzebub doesn’t feel too bad. back
10. He and Beelzebub had taken the thing on a dozen joy-rides to make sure it worked before they put the archangels in it. “Be a shame if something happened to them,” Crowley had said, and they’d laughed, and Beelzebub had said, “Well, Lucifer’s alright,” and Crowley’d said, “He is, isn’t he. Complimented me on my stars last week.”
“Good for you,” Beelzebub says. back
11. Figuratively. Literally, She disappears her cards into the ether until it’s Her turn, and then reappears them again. And if sometimes She’s got a fifth ace in Her hand, you can’t really question it, can you? She’s ineffable, and who’s to say the deck didn’t have five aces in the first place? That five aces aren’t a more perfect number than four. back
12. Neither of which Beelzebub’s made yet. They’ve got plans for them somewhere on their desk, which is filled with towers of paperwork and large rolled plans and snapped rubber bands and red pencils and scale rulers and drawing compasses and permit applications they’re going to get around to filling out, really, any day now. back
13. Or two hours, hard to say. back
14. They’d been helping out in the Color lab lately. A very strange group of angels, but they seemed to like their job alright. back
15. Of course, angels aren’t very good at dancing, which is why so many planetary orbits are irregular. back
16. Funny, they don’t see the big one coming. None of them do. It’s unprecedented. God doesn’t even hint at it being a possibility. back
17. Beelzebub wonders if She cares. You never see Her much anymore. She never comes down to look at neon gas, for example, which is probably for the best, because Crowley comes up with the idea of forcing the bright gas into tubes and spelling out MICHAEL IS A WANKER over the eastern fourth quadrant. The entire Engineering and Development department gets a dressing-down by a very disappointed Gabriel, while Beelzebub and Crowley hide in the back and stifle their giggles. back
18. Ambrosia, Dromedary Smashes, and Nectar-Tarts. “Your diet is awful,” Beelzebub says, and wouldn’t you know, three hours later, Crowley invents heartburn. back
19. Hastur. God would ensure he Fell for that sin and that sin alone.
It was everywhere. On Her throne, in the nap of Her card table. She had lost a hand of gin rummy because Lucifer knew a particular card by the confetti stuck to it.
And She wasn’t even corporeal, so how confetti could end up there - back
20. Apparently when she gets too annoyed by Michael she goes into the sun and stays there for days. Solar flares are indicative of a particularly good argy-bargy. back
21. And it is. It’s always Too Late. back
22. Later, they’ll wonder if this is what did it, if the black hole is what made them unstable, ruined. back
23. He was still mad about the time Beelzebub had chucked his Nectar-Tarts into the black hole as an experiment. The black hole had picked up steam after that, as if fueled, a sudden increase in pressure. And then it had burped.
It had a faint brown-sugar-cinnamon smell forever after. Black holes - like Nectar-Tarts - are forever. back
24. Ineffable. back
25. A long, long time later, Beelzebub will wonder if there’s still a part of them in the black hole that hasn’t Fallen, that remains whole, remains an angel.back