I Can't Hang

St. James soared back up to Heaven after visiting us, his crooked, creaky old wings lifting him skyward out of eyeshot and above the clouds. His mind stirred away at me and Brady and what we were gonna do with ourselves and our dead-end situation, but not once did he even think about saving his own ass.

The kid was in deep and he didn’t even know it. He was the one who helped us out and made us stay in New York when we were supposed to be in Hell. That made me and Brady liable to get into even worse trouble – which didn’t hardly even matter to us, since we all knew nothing could possibly get worse than Hell anyway, so what harm could have been done by trying to get back into Heaven anyway?

But James? Old St. James…well…he was a different story.

So young in his thoughts and outlooks. Least, that’s what I gathered about him. When we first picked up the kid in Antarctica, he didn’t speak barely a word to us until we stayed in that godawful hotel for a whopping couple days before getting exposed. Then he started talkin’, and even then he didn’t say much to us. He just stuttered and blushed like a little kid would when they have to be in a school play.

He was a pushover, the kid was. I sort of resented him after all that for letting Brady convince us to go to the store and screw everything up, but it wasn’t all just his fault. It was Brady’s fault for wanting it so badly. It was my fault for going along with him. And it was James’s fault for letting us go.

All through his flight to Heaven, all St. James was thinking about was the two losers he’d gotten intertwined with when he didn’t even want to. Only reason he knew us was ‘cause of the initial incident in the first place.

Anyway, so he was zooming up into Heaven like he always did and just rolling all of those things over and over in his head, brewing up some kind of hurricane of doubt and hope all mashed into one thing. I didn’t know if true angels got headaches, but I can’t imagine him not getting one. He was too quiet all the time. He was always thinking about something.

The gates of Heaven were in front of him and he stepped onto the cloudy platform entrance of God’s kingdom. The disguise he wore had dissolved off and he was left in the normal clothes he always wore, a white tee and a red overshirt and blue jeans. By the time he got back up there, the late afternoon sun of four o’ clock was starting to shine on the earth below it, soaking it all in the orangey tone of day. Even Heaven was affected. The gates shined a distinct shade of gold and nearly blinded St. James as he walked toward them, calmly awaiting another end of the day as an angel to everybody.

He smiled. It was a soft smile that nobody saw – not even the gatekeeper.

It was one of those smiles that’re contagious and genuine and you know when it’s real. He always had that kind of grin on – never fake. It popped up when things were quiet around.

But that smile he wore then…something told him it wouldn’t last. Just…something in the air. Some kinda little twinge of uncertainty lingering in the atmosphere.

Maybe it was the rumble lurking far below his feet, just barely shaking his nerves ever so gently. It was gentle, subtle. He hardly even picked up on it. At first, St. James thought it wasn’t even real at all – just a figment of his imagination. Somethin’ put in his head from all of the fear and questions tumbling around inside of him.

It was distant. He stood tall as he could be in front of the gates, staring at the rusty gold poles that would dictate whether or not he’d go back to paradise. Just standin’ there, focusing on it. And then he looked over his shoulder at the cliff where Heaven ended and all the messenger angels would jump from to go and rescue new souls.

Nothing. Just vast nothingness, clouds and a blue sky behind him, stretching on for millions of miles.

But that little tremble of something just stuck in St. James’s head. He could feel it in his bones. And while he didn’t know it, somethin’ was stirring down below him.

Way, way, way below him.

~~~~~~~~~~~`

Picture the deepest kinda depth you’ve ever experienced. Got it in your head? Alright. Now double the depth of that deepness. Then take that, and multiply it by a million.

Double it.

And that’s roughly a tenth of the way to where I’m gonna tell you about.

As you go further down into the earth, things get hotter. You start sweating. All it is down there is fire and brimstone and guts and carcasses just lying around, stinking up the place. This is the worst place you could possibly imagine. This is the place your parents probably warned you about if you’re like the average kid of America.

This, my friend, is Hell.

It was the place me and Brady were supposed to be in. We were meant to be burning in flames that licked up from the ashes scattered over the dark landscape, getting scraped on brimstone and eaten by all of the demons that were left to rot there for years. Demons with experience – demons that have been there since the beginning of eternity.

Demons love fallen angels. They love picking apart any sense of credibility they had, chipping away at the good demeanor that the angels had to have in order to get into Heaven in the first place. The higher you climb, the further you fall – and that was true down there.

That’s the scariest thing I think I thought about when I was staking out with Brady in Manhattan. It was one of the only things that terrified me to the point of insomnia some nights, and even though Brady didn’t show it too well, I know he felt it too.

But Hell is big. It’s huge, deep, and hot, spreading for what seems like lightyears before any sign of a cliff is seen. It’s one big bottomless pit that swallows souls alive and turns those poor spirits into things they never wanted to be.

Hell was bustling when James felt the tremble beneath his feet, millions of miles above the commotion.

Demons always scatter themselves over the barren landscape, spreading over the rocks and molten lava. Most of the time they’re only cackling out of the stupidity they’ve been forced into from years of following Satan’s orders. Nothing suits them more than evil laughs, caught up in the sheer deliciousness of their eternity spent suffering without even knowing it.

They’re Satan’s closest entourage of pals, sticking by his side since the beginning of time. But they’re not the only ones inhabiting this place – there are former humans wandering the vast spoils of Hell, maniacs who had lost their minds long ago at the onset of learning their afterlife fate. They’re the only ones here who still have a lick of common sense, and even then, it’s been worn down from all of the pain they’ve had to gone through.

That day, though, the demons were chattering about, tirelessly rousing the wasteland with cries of discontent. They weren’t laughing now. No siree. They were pissed.

But why?

Oh, they knew exactly why. Hell’s gatekeeper knew first, then he told one of the minions, who soon spread the reason around like wildfire. This riled up them all up and caused a ruckus – something bigger than anything anybody down there had ever experienced.

But Satan didn’t know. He was the only one who didn’t have a clue in Hell (pun intended) as to why things were going so helter-skelter in his kingdom.

He stood at the balcony of his enormous lair that looked out over all of the immense fields of Hell – the perfect view to look into all the suffering he was putting his forsaken souls through. Normally, when he stood out there like that, he couldn’t help but to smirk a little, that leathery skin of his contorting into sheer evil happiness at the sight of others’ troubles.

He was concerned. He wasn’t used to seeing his demons like this. Crazy and over-the-top with either excitement or anger – he couldn’t tell. And that was one thing that bugged him the most. Satan glared down at the land he owned as his own, gripping the edge of the balcony with terrifyingly powerful sausage fingers so hard that he was sure it’d break.

“What is going on?” he asked himself, muttering under his breath.

As if they heard the words he only said quietly, several demons turned to their master and looked up in bewilderment. Like he wasn’t used to seeing them all riled up in this way, they weren’t used to seeing him confused – he was meant to be old and wise and up on all the tricks that God threw his way.

One demon thrust his bat wings outward, catching a draft of the humid air that blew through the crusty moors. Riding on that updraft, he flew above the enormous crowd up to his leader’s balcony, bursting at the seams with knowledge of his peers’ discontent. Satan saw him coming and eagerly waited being filled in on this matter.

The demon landed next to Satan himself, pulling his leather wings back into his back. With a crooked smile displaying his glistening yellow fangs, he said, “You know what happened, sire?”

“No,” Satan responded, “and I wish to know. Now.”

He rubbed his tiny little claws together, chuckling. “Well, a few weeks ago God kicked out two angels from Their kingdom and they were supposed to come down here.”

Satan turned around, pacing the balcony slowly and drinking in every word. “Yes, go on.”

“They haven’t come yet. They’re in New York, sire. They went against God’s wishes,” the demon elaborated.

The Devil stopped. Partly ‘cause of the news, and partly ‘cause of the tenacity these two fallen angels had in his eyes. He’d never heard anything like this before – nobody ever had the balls to defy God’s will directly in the face.

“God is supposed to be omnipotent,” he muttered, his baritone reverberating throughout his own body. “Why can’t They see them staking out, then? Why not?”

“That’s what’s good about it, sire. This is showing how They’re not all that,” the minion screeched. “We hear They put trust into this one guy who’s practically a saint. And he ended up letting the two angels go in Manhattan, and God doesn’t even know about it.”

And Satan laughed. It started off as a quiet little cackle, but quickly grew into a hearty chuckle that was heard all through his kingdom, reaching the ears of all of the lost souls wandering his brimstone plains. To some, it was scary – but to his minions, it was music. They knew he had a plan brewing in his scarlet horned head. There would be action happening here real soon.

The Devil turned toward his demons below him, rising his hands up in terrifying power. Lava bubbled up and rose from the pools of magma between the brimstone flats, shooting toward the earthen sky. Power was tingling in his fingertips, just itching to be released in the form of pain and terror, death and sorrow. Things that he’d been accustomed to in this land.

“This is perfect!” Satan bellowed, opening his arms wide for all of his souls to see. Chest heaving with hot air, he breathed a big sigh of content, his eyes flickering with joy. Evil joy, though. If that makes sense.

The minion beside him started laughing along, not totally sure why he was laughing, but doing it anyway.

“Oh, this is great! I know exactly what to do!” the Devil hissed, grinning that toothy smile that the ones in his kingdom came to associate with pure evil.

The crowds – all of them, this time – turned toward their master, their leader, and gaped with awe as the plan unfurled right in front of them.

“I’ll send you – all of you! – to Manhattan right now! This is the perfect opportunity to punish all of those pesky humans once and for all – and drag those two angels down to Hell so they can never bail out again.”

His words echoed through the entire vast wasteland, shaking the ground with scary authority. They were all used to this. Every single one of ‘em. He’d get mad and then something big would happen.

Most of the time, though, Satan didn’t call upon his demons to go into Earth, though.

“I command all of you – all of you – all you demons, all you little devils, minions, fallen angels, forsaken humans! Go to New York right this instant! Cause a scene and get those angels, now!” Satan shouted, his powerful voice reaching all ears.

The rumble grew stronger. Bigger. Louder. Even up lightyears beyond Earth, St. James could feel it in his shoes up in Heaven, rocking his bones.

There was an uprising going on in Hell.

And soon enough, it’d spill over onto Earth.