I Can't Hang

And then St. James tumbled down from Heaven amongst the incredible masses of other angels rushing down to New York. But out of all of them, he had the most baggage on his mind. They were all focused on one thing and one thing only – stopping those demons from doing too much damage, if any at all.

James wanted too many things. He wanted to let me and Brady know what was goin’ on, he wanted us not to go to Hell, he wanted himself to still be good in the eyes of God, he wanted to keep the demons down…so much. And the entire flight down, he could barely maneuver his wings right – they kept twisting up and gnarling, and it sure didn’t help that he was crowded in with a bunch of other angels going to the same place.

But at the moment, me and Brady didn’t have a clue in blue hell what was about to go down.

Or come up. You know.

I didn’t even feel a rumble or anything. All we were doing was watching TV, watching Ghostbusters for about the millionth time in a week.

“Can we watch somethin’ else?” I finally asked, fed up with hearing, “This man has no dick,” once more. I mean, I enjoy the classics and everything, but not when they’re airing twenty times a day.

Brady was too caught up in laughter to even acknowledge my discontent. I mean, he heard me all right, but he didn’t realize how sick of it I was. “Naw, naw, this is the best part!”

And Ray Stantz accidentally destroyed the city with Mr. Stay Puft, thereby prompting his ghostbusting freakin’ teammates to cross the streams or something and kill it and then have sex with the chick. I dunno. I’d seen it so many times my brain turned it to mush.

So I groaned. And I leaned back in my seat, in the bed. And I pulled the covers up over my head, grumbling to myself some colorful words that my mother’d wash my mouth out with soap for.

I just wanted out, man. I was goin’ stir crazy. There’s only so much time you can stay in a hotel with an annoying stranger, and I was approaching the limit.

But luckily and unluckily all rolled into one for me, somebody knocked on the door.

The anger bubbling in my blood vanished suddenly, and I ripped the covers off of my head, staring at Brady, who was busy gaping at the door. On the TV, the Ghostbusters were rescuing the lady from being encased in stone, instilling a quiet in the room.

“That can’t be James again…can it?” I asked, whispering for fear of being heard.

Brady whipped his head over at me and his mouth twitched. “Uh…I dunno…”

“Then who’d it be?”

He held his finger up, walking over to the door to peer through the peephole and see who it was. Then he looked back and shrugged.

And when he opened the door, there was St. James standing in the doorway, panting and sweating like he’d just got done running around the world in thirty seconds. He was doubled over on his knees, gasping for breath. But at least this time, he looked like himself, dolled up in his regular neat clothes.

“James! What the hell? You look like crap, man!” Brady exclaimed, oblivious to the words that were coming outta his mouth. “What’s goin’ on?”

I leaped off my bed and dashed over to the scene, fearing for the worst. Somethin’ wicked was just around the corner. I knew it.

St. James coughed a few times, trying to find the energy to utter any words, and bent his head up to meet our eyes. “The…the demons…they’re coming…”

And it was sorta like I got knocked upside the head with a baseball bat, you know? You ever get told someone close to you died or got in some kinda bad car accident? That’s what it felt like. Takes you off-guard.

Me and Brady had the same facial expression – our mouths dropped open in shock, eyes wide. I couldn’t tell at first if James was being serious or just shitting us. Then again, why would he play such a cruel joke on us? He didn’t seem like that kinda kid.

St. James stared at us, mimicking our faces. He almost looked like he was gonna cry; sweat beaded on his forehead, trailing down his cheek. This crap was for real.

“B-but…but…” I started, unable to finish. Nobody heard me. Brady and James were too busy being frozen in their own shock to hear the kid next to ‘em.

“God just sent all of Their saints down here to fight them off when they come,” James explained, still gripping the door frame to keep himself up. “We don’t know when it’s gonna happen, but our messenger heard from the demons down there that they plan on attacking.”

“Do they know why?” Brady asked in a harsh whisper.

James bit his lip, chewing on it so hard it looked like it was gonna start bleeding. “Yeah. They know.”

I already practically knew the answer to this question already, but just to clear it up I brought it to the light anyway. “Is it…because of us?”

And St. James looked me straight in the eye right then, nodding slowly. “They knew it was because of two former angels here, but…”

“…But you told them?” Brady finished, staring at the ground.

“I had to,” James murmured.

I shrugged. “Understandable.” I couldn’t muster out any other words.

Brady shook his head in a nervous rush, turning away to pace about the room. His hands were all up in his hair, tangling it and pulling it out in crazy directions. If I thought he looked frazzled as hell when he was forcin’ out all those ideas, I should’a taken a look at him here. He looked like he hadn’t gotten any sleep since forever.

James raised his hand timidly. “Um…are you mad…?”

“No,” he breathed, sighing heavily. “I mean, I’m pissed off, yeah, but not really at you. I mean, you did what you had to.”

Both of us kind of exhaled contently. God knows I didn’t want a fight going on in here, even though I didn’t really expect Brady to initiate one. And James’s shoulders, although still hunched forward in anxiety, stopped shaking like the rest of his body.

Brady crossed his arms. Then he stared real hard at the door frame for a while and puffed his cheeks out. “Well…I guess if we’re all goin’ to Hell, then that means we’re goin’ together…”

“Misery loves company,” James muttered, unable to look up at him.

“We’re all screwed,” I added for good measure.

I was hopeless. The apocalypse was gonna come right then and there and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it. I was the cause. (Well, one cause.) I blew it. I officially screwed everything I could ever hope to have up. All I could do was glare at nothing, glazed-over eyes just aimlessly staring into space. Just…waiting for those demons to claw at my skin and rip into my angel flesh, claiming me as one of their own, a screw-up kid who probably hadn’t even had his funeral before he lost his chance at becoming a real angel.

And I was all set and ready to do just that. But something kinda big stopped me from it.

A huge earthquake rocked the city, sending the building and its people tumbling throughout their rooms and around the lobby. It rocked up from below. Asphalt streets crumbled up into urban mountains, clawing at the sky, menacingly threatening any sort of sanity that the people of Manhattan had.

Fire hydrants exploded, spraying gallons of water into the air to never be used again. Cars flipped, taking out whoever was in ‘em and whoever was near ‘em. And even though I got thrust forward into the opposite wall of the lobby, I could see through the window all of the streetlights crumbling over from the jarring shock of the quake.

New York had seen snow, sleet, hail, rain, and heat. It’d been through a freak attack that prompted a war. This had to have been one of the toughest cities out there. But angels and demons colliding in a battle over a couple’a idiots?

Well…

At the impact, the three of us were lurched sideways into the other side of the hall. Brady bodyslammed St. James, and I ended up crashing into Brady, making one hell of an angry sandwich. Walls crumbled around us, flaking like mere pastries to the ground. Wood splintered. The ground below bubbled up like it was just boiling caramel.

Something was rollin’ down below – something wicked.

After the initial impact, I threw myself off of them and Brady jumped back, giving the dilapidated James some air. He stood up, wobbling on his already-shaken legs and struggled to balance himself. I didn’t blame him – I was trippin’ over my own feet too, trying to get up and all.

My head was spinning in a tizzy, all busy riding a rollercoaster. No, it wasn’t just that – my mind was ridin’ all of the rides in the entire theme park. I couldn’t snap myself outta it. Even when Brady took me by the hood of my sweatshirt and James by his arm, leading us out of the toppling building, I still didn’t absorb much of it. I was still in that goggle-eyed state.

The ringing in my ears was getting louder. Cream walls blurred past as we ran out of there, leaving behind our state of anonymity in order to come clean and face what we’d done. This was the first time I’d ever felt fresh air pelt me in the face in a couple of weeks, and man, it hit me hard.

We climbed out from under the broken glass, careful not to get cut. Chilly March air blew right into our faces like it was God Themselves scolding us for doing such a thing, and it stung.

You know when you feel somethin’ so hot that it’s cold? Or so cold that it’s hot? That’s what it felt like. It felt like freezing air flames licking me in the face, burning my cheeks upon contact. I squinted against the clouded sky.

The three of us stood up tall and straight, staring up at the heavens and all of the glory up there. But something wasn’t right. Maybe it was the giant-ass hurricane cloud that hovered above all of the buildings, looming ominously. Maybe it was all of the terrified shrieks echoing in our ears from all of the humans cowering in fear at the supernatural events unfolding right in front of them.

Maybe it was the fact that they didn’t know absolute jack shit about what was going on.

“They’re here,” St. James whimpered.