#hi kids... it's me...

Bartleby tried to think back, through all the things he’d seen, to the butchering of a chicken. He’d never seen the butchering of an angel before, but as he gripped tight onto Loki’s wing, bending the joint in on itself, unnaturally close. It was much easier to imagine his pained sobs as the squawking of livestock.

He sees in his mind the strong, sunkissed hands of a butcher. Probably from the 17th century. Gripping the bird’s corpse the way Bartleby grips Loki now. Ever tightening his fist until the joint pops. He hears the perverse noise in his old partner. Loki has stopped screaming, but he’s still crying. He can’t tell if it’s the sound of mortality entering him or his divinity leaving him.

The pop means the bones are detached, finally, but if he leaves him like this, he’ll either heal or his wing will turn gangrenous and fall off. This is where the knife is most necessary. He lets go of Loki for a moment to deploy the serrated blade. That was Loki’s idea, to buy a Swiss Army Knife. For the options.

He slipped it into the natural fold of the joint and started to saw up, towards heaven. And just like the fowl, his skin and tendons yielded to the blade like butter. Nothing on earth was easier than this.

“B… Bartleby, please, I don’t think this is such a good idea anymore. Just… stop.”

Too late. He thought as he picked up Loki’s wing, divine nerves seeking connection made it twitch and contract. He stood before Loki and dropped it at his feet.

“That’s just the pain talking, Loki. Humans don’t regret.”

-

God works in mysterious ways. That’s what they always said.

When his mortal form was disincorporated by the voice of God, Her true, impossible, loving, eternal voice, he thought that would be the end of things. Condemned to hell on the spot. He didn’t expect to wake up. Least of all in a bed, next to Loki.

The man he had stricken dead on the sidewalk in his divine fury. He only knew what it was like to have a conscience for all of 20 minutes, but that was the thing he’d regretted the most. Bartleby shoves him in his shoulder a few times, trying to wake Loki up. He barely moves. For a moment, Bartleby wonders if this is hell and he has to live with a limp, rotting corpse for eternity, then he starts to groan.

“Stop hitting me… There’s no cartoons on Friday, I wanna sleep.”

“Loki, wake the fuck up.” He smacks him in the back of the head.

Loki turns onto his back, which doesn’t seem to be bleeding from two little stumps anymore. He smiles up at Bartleby.

“I thought we died.”

“As did I, idiot.”

Bartleby climbs out of the bed, over Loki, and begins to walk around. They seem to be inhabiting a bedroom together. A real bedroom. There are posters he didn’t put up, photos he has no memory of taking. On top of the dresser, there are two wallets. He grabs the one he presumes to be his and looks inside.

Bernard Grigori . August 7 th 1972. M. Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

He turns his head when he hears Loki sit up. He throws the other wallet to him and comes to sit on the bed.

“Look at this,” He brandishes the plastic card in Loki’s face. “We’re more than mortal, we’re… Milwaukeeans.”

“Fuck. Do we have to actually get jobs now?”

-

Bartleby held the knife in his teeth as he tried to stop Loki’s panicked flapping of his one remaining wing.

“Stop being so fucking dramatic!” He dug into the shorter angel’s back with his knee. “I am not going back alone, Loki! You’re falling with me if you like it or not.”

“Okay! Fine, fine…” He he stopped flapping and accepted his fate. “Can you at least to it fast this time, like… just pop it then slice it and… over? Please?”

Bartleby smoothed his hand over Loki’s feathers. It’s the closest thing to an erogenous zone that can exist on a body as divinely desexed as theirs. That does some good at calming Loki down before he does that he asked. Snap. Saw. And finally off. His second wing fallen to the pavement his right side.

The scent of his blood turns from sweet to tinny, earthy. Made of soil. Bartleby brings the knife to his lips and tastes, finding Loki’s humanity with his tongue. He looks down at Loki’s body, shuddering, in shock, hugging his wing to his chest like a child and hiding his face in it.

“Did it work?” His voice is muffled by the feathery object.

-

Loki looked out over creation. It was lush and beautiful. He loved heaven, it was paradise after all. But it was bland. By it’s very nature, nothing there was alive. Nothing there ever changed.

“Are you jealous?” The familiar voice of a grigori spoke to him. He wasn’t that close to any grigoris. They were such know it alls.

“No.” He spoke curtly. He didn’t feel envious of humans. He knows he doesn’t. Angels aren’t supposed to feel that way.

“Alright, then… Why are you watching them?”

“God hasn’t been satisfied with their offerings so… One of their offspring is going to be killed.” He pointed across the field to the two boys playing next to a herd of sheep.

“Cain or Abel?”

Loki looked closely between the two boys. “...I can’t tell the difference.”

“The sheep-keeper has been very pious… sacrificial… he’s a pure soul.” The grigori pointed to the other boy. “This one hasn’t. He has a tendency to be a little covetous as well. Do you think God wants him for heaven?”

“He might.”

“Are you supposed to… you know.” He mimes smiting someone with the flaming sword, all stage screams and severed limbs.

“No, not at all.” He smiles and looks at the other angel from the corner of his eye. “That’s for special occasions."

“Like what?"

“Like… if we razed all of creation.”

“Why would we do that?”

“To start over.”

The grigori nodded. They looked out over creation together. It would definitely be a lot to raze.

-

Bartleby continued looking around the apartment. They were still in Wisconsin, of course, but the view suggested they were a few hundred miles from the airport. Among the posters and photos, there was also a framed Bachelors degree on the wall with his fake (read: human) name on it. In Film Criticism of all things, what a useless discipline.

He heard the water turn on in the bathroom. Who but Loki would take a shower at a time like this?

“How come I went to college and you didn’t?” He calls to the bathroom.

“Maybe I joined the army? I convinced a lot of people to do that instead of going to college.”

Bartleby opened the door and looked around their bathroom. It was bigger than the one in the airport hotel, but that was mostly because it had a bathtub/shower and a larger vanity. He looked at the products strewn about the room. Hair gel. Shaving cream. All the things he passed over in the duty free store like they were nothing. Because they were nothing.

“I remember.” He opened the medicine cabinet and was unsurprised to see it full. Humans love medication.

Grigori, Bernard. Controlled release lithium carbonate, 450mg. Grigori, Bernard. Zoloft. 300mg. Keruv, Lawrence. Testosterone. 50mg. And with it were syringes.

Bartleby picked one up and examined it. He turned to Loki, who was toweling himself off before exiting the shower.

“Hey, check this out.” He brandished the packaged needle to his roommate apparently. “You’re a druggie.”

Loki’s jaw dropped, his towel on the floor with it.

“No way. I am?”

Bartleby cocked his head looking at Loki’s human body.

“Where’s your dick?”

-

“Y’know… God said you have to sacrifice that which you love most dearly.” Loki walked through the woods between Eden and Nod with one of the boys from the field. “He’s going to know if you lied.”

“I don’t love anything.” The boy kicked a small rock with the sole of his sandal. “Not the plants. Not the animals.”

“That can’t be true.”

“It is.”

Loki grew stern with him. “Lying is a sin, Cain.”

“I’m not lying! How can you love a thing? I don’t. I love my family, that’s it.”

“Well, you have to sacrifice something. Who in your family are you going to give to your God?”

That made Cain stop in his tracks. Loki knew he didn’t need to say anything else. He deployed his wings and flew away. He couldn’t wait to see what would happen that evening. What God asked him to make happen. The first human death in all of creation. Nothing could spoil that for him. Not even his grigori.

“What did you do?”A now even more familiar voice said.

Loki turned to the grigori. Since the last time they spoke, he’s forgotten his name. He thinks it might be Bastard.

“What did I do? I did what God asked of me, same as you do.”

“God asked you to get Cain to slay Abel?”

“I mean… The Metatron said Abel was to die. I just had to make sure it happened.”

They watched together as Abel slayed a lamb and offered it up to God.

“Their bond was so innocent.” The grigori shook his head. “How could you corrupt it like that?”

“He’s the one with free will.”

Cain picked up a stone as his family bowed in prayer.

“He loves him. Even now, I don’t think he even knows it’s a sin.”

Cain sobbed as he hauled the stone over his head and brought it down on Abel’s. He fell limp. His blood mingled with that of the lamb.

“How could he? No one’s loved someone enough to do this before.”

The clouds turned dark as the Metatron descended to deliver God’s judgment. Loki and… Bartleby, he finally remembers it, fly back into the heavens together. They’ll know Cain’s fate soon enough.

-

Loki tossed back a shot of mead or whatever new alcohol the humans were into this century. Bartleby continued to talk at him about something the other angel didn’t quite follow. The charging of indulgences, probably.

“And they do it blatantly, in what their pastors say is the house of God. It’s disgusting.”

Loki grabbed the calfskin decanter that housed the drink and refilled his cup, carefully. He smiled and looked at Bartleby when he was done. “I can smite them for you, you know. They’re sinners.”

“I guess.” He sucked his teeth at the thought. “Every sinner was once an innocent.”

“Yeah, until they sinned, Bartleby.” The smile on his face dropped as he watched a man solicit a prostitute in the corner of the bar. “Look at that. What do you think they’re going to do together?”

“Fornication… he’s also an adulterer… and… there’s not a name for the third thing.”

“There’s not even a name. That’s crazy. That’s a new level of depravity from their kind.”

The barkeep rang the bell for last call. Bartleby picked up the calfskin and tipped it into his mouth, there was barely anything left. He dropped some silver pieces onto the table.

“Get us another bottle, we have somewhere to be.”

Loki listened, taking the money and procuring another bottle. Bartleby guided his drunk, ambling companion out the door and before long they were arm and arm, going down the street of Sodom. They passed a married couple embracing. Loki squinted at them, regarding them with some suspicion and curiosity.

“It’s weird that the woman came from Adam’s side, isn’t it? They’re made of the same thing, but… He existed first, technically.”

“Technically, yeah.”

Loki giggled. He had always been a happy, suggestible kind of drunk. The kind you shouldn’t leave in the company of strangers. “Do you know how God made us?”

“Not us specifically.”

“Who’s older, do you think?”

Bartleby thought for a moment. “Me. Definitely.”

“Definitely?”

“Yeah.” Bartleby grinned. “If anything, I bet he made you from my side”

“Don’t be a jerk.” They came upon a large, ornate home in the town square. Loki looked up at it, turning his head to examine it. “Is this the place?”

Bartleby looked around, he saw two young girls gawking at them from a window. Loki stuck his tongue out at them, and crossed his eyes. The girls laughed, loud and were called away by their mother.

“Yeah, this is it. Those are Lot’s daughters.”

“Are they innocent?”

-

“I just don’t understand why we wouldn’t… Look the same.”

Bartleby sat on the edge of the couch. Loki was calm, already seated and drying his hair with one towel, another strung across his lap. He looked at the naked angel closely. He had a scar between his ribs where Bartleby stabbed him.

“You didn’t seem to care about that very much when I looked dead and you looked alive.”

“Loki…” He leaned closer to him across the cushions. “You have really got to get over that.”

“It happened yesterday!”

Bartleby pouted. He reached his hand out to pull at Loki’s towel.

He scooted away from him. “You’re not looking at it again!”

“I would let you look if it was mine!”

“No, you would not! You would kill me about it!”

“What do you want me to do? Unkill you? It’s a little late for that.”

Loki sighed and scrubbed his face in his hands. Part of him was happy to be with his grigori again. Ecstatic, even. It was it’s own kind of damnation to know that was how he wanted their last millennium together to end. And now, it didn’t have to be over.

“She gave us a gift, Bartleby. A wonderful gift, we get, like… Fifty more years together. And who knows, maybe we’re meant to learn a lesson by being mortal and in the end we can… we can go back.”

“I thought I killed your faith.” He was smug as he said it, almost mocking the other angel.

“Not my faith in Her.”

“Shocked not having a dick hasn't gotten rid of that.”

Loki cocked his head at that. “I didn't have one before.”

“That's different. Now it means something that you don't.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means… You have all of Eve’s burdens. Kind of ironic to make the angel of death a bringer of life, don’t you think?”

“That would be strange but… I don't know that it's a burden. I’m sure Bethany could do something about it.”

Bartleby sucked his teeth. “How are we going to get to heaven together if you go around getting abortions?”

“So you do believe we could get back?”

“I…” He fell back onto the cushions and grabbed his head. “I don't know, okay! I don't know.”

Loki knelt on the couch and moved closer, looking down at Bartleby. “Did you get what you were looking for?"

He looked up at Loki. The light in the ceiling turned the former angel’s dirty blonde hair golden.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You said you missed it. Did you feel Her divinity?”

Bartleby thought back for a moment. How it felt to hear Her voice, strange to his ears, to his body that couldn't stand it, but just the same to his spirit, or whatever ineffable aspect of his existence had granted him a self. An angel is never taken apart and put back together by the Almighty. Mortals experience it all the time. If he's still, he can feel it. Cells. Protons. Dying and moving and changing inside him. It's what he’d been missing. Divine Presence.

“That's not…”

“Be honest with me, okay?” Loki took his face in his hands. “Did you feel it?”

Bartleby looked deep into his eyes. He could feel the warmth from Loki’s palms sink into his cheeks. A warmth from his blood, from his heart, that ran through his whole body.

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

A tear rolled down his face and into Loki’s hand. He wiped them with his thumbs, then let his right hand trailed down Bartleby’s face to his neck. Loki felt his pulse thrum under his fingers. It was exciting to know they were both alive in the same way. His hand trailed further down to feel his heart.

“Can you still feel it?”

Bartleby tried to speak, but the words were stuck in his throat. He closed his eyes and started to focus on breathing. Loki brought his forehead to his. Their breath mingled, Bartleby felt the warm jet of carbon dioxide fall on his lips.

-

The two angels are standing in a market while Bartleby picks the vendor of books and scrolls clean one last time. Loki is bored out of his mind. He’s clever, he has infinite wisdom from his Creator. But he’s not a big reader. At least not compared to Bartleby, who has been a nerd since they came out with cuneiform.

“Can you fucking believe yesterday?”

Bartleby rolls his eyes. “No, Loki, no I can’t.”

“All of those people came to that one house just because we were in there. And fucking Lot. He was going to hand over his daughters! His sweet, innocent-”

Bartleby lets his sack of scrolls fall with a thud. “And nothing happened to them because it wasn’t part of God’s plan. I’m not happy about Lot’s behavior either but… This was a test for Abraham, he failed, and now we can give this family the chance to save themselves before we-”

“Before we raze this whole fucking place.”

“I know you’re excited to wield the sword again, but… Let’s be real. There are other innocent virgins that live here.” He picks out two more scrolls and pays the vendor before hauling his sack over his shoulder again.

Loki starts to walk with him, back towards the village square. “So we should let that mob of perverts, that wanted to tear us limb from limb. That wanted to make us as low as they were, to… to Sodomize us. Do you really think we should let them go free just for a few innocents? Innocents that could go on to do the same thing?”

“No, I’m just saying you could take your work a little bit more seriously. You’re ending lives. Human lives. Those who He made in His image.”

“Those He asked me to dispose of for doubting His infinite fury. You’re only here because…”

“Because why?”

Because I like to work with you. It’s not a very angelic response.

“You’re a better public speaker. Now let’s go.” He jerked his head in the direction of Lot’s house. Bartleby follows.

They do it all. The blinding of the Sodomites, the pillar of salt, and for his grand finale, Loki makes it rain sulfur and flames. From where Bartleby sits, with the calfskin decanter and his scrolls, it’s almost beautiful. He’d compare it to a fireworks show if that had been invented yet.

And at the end of it, Loki comes back to him. Exhausted, his physical form caked with blood and ash and dirt. His wings almost as black as the Morningstar’s. There are no more cities of Plain. Loki made sure of that. He lets himself be pulled in by the armored breast plate for a hug. Sulfur clings to his hair. Bartleby presses his forehead to Loki’s. Thoughts flow through him and into the other angel. Or maybe the other way around.

I’m happy to see you again.

-

The sun sets outside the apartment window. The view is amazing. Brilliant red and orange. A painted sky, the golden light it casts turning their millennial gray apartment into something beautiful.

Bartleby traces his finger along his partner’s back. Where his wings used to be. Loki stares ahead with a blank look on his face. He feels it. The very human need to doubt.

“You look weird. What are you thinking about?”

“I’m wondering if you’re still the same.” He chews his bottom lip a bit. Bartleby can see the rim inside his mouth turning crimson. “And if you are the same, are you going to hurt me again.”

Bartleby sits with that for a moment. He wants to excuse it all as side effects of being an angel, but it dawns on him that nothing he did to Loki was that extraordinary. The lying, fighting, and stabbing. It’s nothing he couldn’t do in this life.

“I might.” He cards his hands through Loki’s hair. “Does that mean I don’t deserve Your forgiveness?”

Loki’s hands wrap around his body tighter. It’s like feeling the warmth of his hands on steroids. Bartleby wished they were angels again, just to singe the clothes off of his body and really feel Loki’s skin against his.