I Can't Hang

James set Brady down on the roof without a word from any of us. Brady winced and wrenched his eyes shut, immediately reaching down to cradle his wound but stopping when James whacked his hand out of the way. Spotting his overshirt on the floor next to us, James picked it up and put it on Brady’s wound, completely disregarding the fact that he just used it to clean my blood up…

“Jesus!” Brady croaked. “Chill out, wouldja? It’s a scratch, not a damn cut!”

But he was far from being right. Even though he still had his shirt on and everything, you could still see the blood spilling from the wound. It stained James’s makeshift bandage and looked like it hurt like hell; the blood was a deep red and almost black – you knew that shit was deep.

“No, but it’s pretty serious and needs pressure,” James offered as a rebuttal. “If you die again…”

He trailed off. We all knew where that sentence was gonna go, and we didn’t like it. The thought of losing him to the demons terrorizing Manhattan sent chills up my nervous system.

I couldn’t even bear to look at him anymore. The blood was sickening, spilling outta him like that. And his face was so wrenched over with pain that he didn’t even look like himself no more. I just turned around and started pacing back and forth along the rooftop, listening to the sirens wailing in the distance with the sound of crushing rocks and screams. I was starting to get nauseous from it all.

“Well…” Brady started. “There goes our chance to be heroes…”

“We tried,” James shrugged.

“We’re fucked,” I mumbled.

Biting my lip, I glanced behind me and the two of them on the ground, James trying to keep him from going under.

“If we stay here and just try to keep him safe, then we might have a chance at redemption. I mean, the angels might take us back up and fix him up, and then we can explain to them what we did, and how we tried to fight,” St. James went. The kid was just babbling then.

“Or, we could just give up and surrender and make it all easier,” I said to myself under my breath. Nobody heard me, as far as I know.

Seeing the city get destroyed made my stomach turn more than looking at Brady did. So I turned back to them. He was sitting up and clutching at his side with the bunched-up fabric of James’s shirt spilling between his fingers, grimacing and chewing on his lip as the blood flow slowed down.

And the younger man sat there beside him, alternating between staring at the broken skyline and the other fallen angel. His hand was clasped onto his shoulder, locked there like they were connected by a bone or something. And the wind blew softly around us, shifting nothing but stinging our noses and turning our cheeks red.

“They’re gonna find us, and then it’s all gonna be over,” Brady mused through clenched teeth. “Then that’s it. When they come, you shouldn’t even bother tryin’ to stop ‘em.”

“That’s the spirit,” I rolled my eyes.

James said nothing.

A rumble trembled up my legs and shook me in my shoes. It wasn’t much – hardly noticeable, really. But it was something. Man, was it something. It was enough to shake us out of our puddle of self-pity and force us to make eye contact again, and when we did, holy hell.

“What was that?” Brady whimpered.

The loud crack of rubble smashed through our ears to my right. I looked over, prepared for the worst. But even with that peace of mind, I still couldn’t stop my heart from dropping when I saw two beady yellow demon eyes staring back at me.

If my life ever felt more surreal, you could’a fooled me. ‘Cause that was definitely the weirdest thing I think I ever saw. Sure was the most terrifying, that’s for sure.

Nobody said a word. The air was still. It was all quiet until a low hissing noise surfaced from the throat of the minion’s, threatening us without a comprehensible sound. My pulse quickened upon hearing it grow louder and more intense.

Brady and James were huddled back, already receded from it, and the sheer amount of fear in their faces was amazing.

“Fallen angelsss,” the demon growled.

I looked at it and it looked at me and I think my breathing stopped for a moment.

The beast swung its scrawny leg over the side of the rooftop. Thin meaty muscles contracted as it flexed, showing itself to us in all of its demonic glory. I’d never been this consciously close to one of these, and it was starting to freak me out. Especially since that thing was as tall as I was.

James shot me a look that said, “What do we do?”

The demon crept closer. On rickety limbs it stood; on hoofed feet it walked. With its size, being about my height and skinnier than a middle school kid, it shouldn’t have been too terrifying – but this thing was literally the spawn of Satan. It invoked fear into our hearts – even mine.

“So who’s firssst?” it hissed.

“None of us,” I choked out.

My accidental friends looked at me like I was from a different universe.

“You’re the fallen ones. Your time in Heaven has come to a close,” it went on, justifying itself. “You’re all coming with us…”

“No we’re not,” I persisted, surprising myself. My knees were shaking and my palms were waterfalls.

“Kyle,” Brady chimed in, his voice raspy, “don’t be an asshole. Don’t be stupid.”

James didn’t say a word. He just stared over at the older man and rolled his tongue around his mouth.

My hands escaped from the pockets of my pants and flailed. “Why the hell shouldn’t I? Why should I be the one denyin’ this crap?”

“Accept it. You just sit back and let it go. Look, I tried, okay? At least I tried,” Brady coughed, holding onto his side and gritting his teeth. “I did something. Unlike you two.”

James and I glanced at one another and I could see it in his eyes – his heart dropped. Mine did too.

“So just take me to Hell and get it over with, a’right?” he mumbled. A soft breeze fluttered the hair out of his battered face; his eyes were blurry and glazed over with some element I couldn’t identify. “I faced the demons and I tried. That counts for somethin’.”

The hissing started back up again from the demon. A toothy grin spread out across its wrinkled face and it stepped forward yet again, closer in our comfort zone than it was ever before.

James’s hand disappeared from Brady’s shoulder. Instead, he pulled it back and was fidgeting with his own hair.

And before our very eyes, Brady had submitted. He was all dolled up in the demon’s arms, hands tied behind his back and his wound still seeping blood from it. I guess Hell didn’t care if you bled your heart out. Just as long as you were willing…

I’ll never forget what it looked like when Brady and the demon stood at the edge of the roof. The sky went even darker than it was before, and the hurricane-halo battle happening at the corner was raging on wearily. Painted clouds were chunky in the sky and looked muddier than ever. The destruction looming in the distance tugged at the heartstrings.

I stood back with James at my side. Mere feet in front of us were our friend and a soldier of Hell itself. We’d never see him again, even if we did end up going to Hell.

God would kick us out anyway since we didn’t do jack shit to help the cause, and then we’d end up lost in an eternity of torture. I guess since I knew at that moment that I’d never see Brady anymore, I tried to lock the memory in my head as much as I could. And it worked.

All I could see was his back. It was all cast in a shadow, too. He looked lifeless, even for a dead soul. Defeated. There wasn’t nothing I wanted to do more at that moment than to just run up and push the demon off the side of the building and cry and try to convince him to want to be an angel again.

A vicious wind picked up, scattering tiny rain mist droplets over the broken city.

Brady looked over his shoulder at us. I couldn’t really see into his eyes, but something told me they were hurting.

“It was cool while it lasted. You were a good kid, Kyle. I liked ya. And I liked you too, James. Wished I could’a spent more time with you two. Probably the only friends I’ll ever have. Maybe Hell’ll be better, who knows.”

And that was the last thing he said to us before he and the demon plunged downward.

They moved like a movie. One second they were there, and then the next, he was gone. I blinked and I lost him. The first angel I ever met and the only one I ever truly spoke to.

I went numb.

The wind stopped.

James stared on at the horizon, but stepped over closer to me. His arm brushed against mine and fogged me in slowly back to the issue at hand; when I looked up at his profile, his eyebrows were hunched over and scrunched together.

My throat felt dry and scratchy and I couldn’t talk properly. I didn’t wanna. There was a lump down there that was on the edge of rising.

“That’s it,” I still murmured. I didn’t speak loud enough to speed up the lump.

James said nothing.

“Should…should we just stay here, or…” I trailed off.

He pursed his lips and then bit his bottom one. Then I realized his entire body was covered in a thin coating of dust and dirt, and his shirt was stained with mud and ash. Patches of soot appeared on his arms and hands; I wasn’t close enough before to see it.

“James?”

And he charged forward. He ran full speed ahead like he was born to fly off the top of a building in Manhattan, and it scared the hell out of me. His wings, previously tired-looking and shrunken into his back, exploded in a flurry of feathers and expanded as the wind ballooned into them.

His shoes thumped against the concrete of the roof. He looked like a baseball star going in for the home stretch after hitting the biggest homerun of his life. And as his hair was blown back by the intense wind pumping in our faces, he jumped up to the ledge.

He went right ahead, swinging over the lip like it was nothing but a twig.

And I followed him, scurrying up like a little hamster. Looking over the top made me queasy when I realized how far up we were. What made it worse was seeing James hurtle down, down to the earth with nothing but his old wings keeping him up. By the time I could truly see what he was doing, he wasn’t nothing but a tiny little speck of dust in the distance.

Eyes wide, I slowly backed away from the ledge. The last thing I needed was to fall over.

James just risked his afterlife. And what did I do? I stood back and didn’t even have the guts to watch him.

A splitting headache was beginning to surface in my brain. I hated thinking about all of the ‘what ifs.’ I liked definite answers. But I didn’t have one – and that’s what bugged me the most about all of that crap. All I could do was brush the hair out of my eyes and try to stay focused.

Brady and the demon had to have been at least on flat ground by then. James wasn’t real snappy with his decision to jump down, but he wasn’t slow or nothing. They were both gone from my line of sight, ‘cause I was backed up nearly against the other side of the roof, the other lip.

And I kept thinkin’ and kinda sayin’ to myself, “Holy shit, I’m all alone. No.”

I didn’t like being alone there. Not when demons were attacking my hometown and one of ‘em had discovered where the fallen angels were at. I was crossing my fingers and even asking God maybe to get James and Brady back up to the rooftop so I could stick with them and not be alone ever again.

Instead, I ended up cold in my thoughts again. I ended up pacing around the roof with my hands all up in my pockets and everything, walking around aimlessly with no direction and no real purpose in sight.

Please, I thought. Get ‘em up here. This is giving me the creeps.

And it took a while, but somebody must’ve heard me.

Like a bottle rocket shooting up from the ground, James blasted through the air and up above me, his face covered in shadow. He held Brady in his arms, draped over limply. His wings, simple silhouettes in the muddy sky, spread as he prepared to land.

I stumbled forward and smiled big for no real reason at all, I guess.

James touched down on the roof and let Brady go. Meanwhile, Brady fell over and curled up on the cement as the younger man turned back around without so much as a “Hey, you owe me for saving your afterlife…”

And when he dropped from the sky this time, I had the guts to go over and have a look at what the hell he was actually doing. I saw him plummet gracefully like all the angels do in the movies, heading straight for the asphalt and missing it by inches.

All I could see of him was just a big old motion blur, really. ‘Cause he was speeding away, and then a couple seconds later he was cruising parallel to the beat-up street, gliding only a short distance from some major road burns.

At first I couldn’t see what he was going after, but then once he kept going, I spotted it – one lone demon scuttling away from the scene, trying desperately to keep its head up in times of danger. I just knew in my heart it was the one who took Brady. I couldn’t really tell from where I was standing, I just knew it. And the stupid thing was trying so hard to be safe. I almost felt sorry for it.

But to be honest, it was pretty cool to see old St. James tackle the hell out of that thing, grasping it by the twiggy midsection of its torso and snapping it. And he didn’t stop there, no. He held on and absolutely drove it into the ground – literally. The already-damaged asphalt peeled up like groundhog holes as James tunneled through, digging forward with a demon in his hands.

Cars scattered in the street flopped sideways with the intense impact James caused. The earth shook, even from where I was standing. It was nothing short of some kinda miracle, I tell you. Seeing it stirred up this feeling of excitement in my bones when nothing else could.

I stood there gripping the lip with both hands, knuckles turning white. James and the demon were well under the pavement, probably brawling it out with nothing but sheer skill determining the winner. I couldn’t see either of them. And for about thirty seconds, I watched the area, hoping to see some more movement.

But nothing happened as far as I could see. So I turned around and glanced down at Brady. I didn’t want to. I hated seeing him like that, all cut up and everything.

But for some reason, what started as a little peek ended up being a full-on stare.

He was all pale, which was real weird, especially since he was always a few shades darker than my white ass. Slowly, his chest rose and fell, but his limbs weren’t moving. He blinked a couple of times. Wasn’t much. If I didn’t know any better I’d have thought the guy was dead again.

“…Brady?” I asked softly, turning around all the way.

He didn’t answer for a while.

I walked over and got a good look at him – the deep gash that had congealed itself into a slight scab on his stomach, the dirt and scratches covering his arms and face. At least the blood wasn’t pooling outta him no more. Still looked like it hurt. But what took me a little by surprise was that his face looked like it was in the most pain. His eyes were slammed shut and so was his jaw, his temples bulging.

I looked down at his hands. Veins were popping from his arms as he held them at his sides, with his fists clenched like he was holding two big stress balls.

“Are you okay?” I whispered.

His chest heaved with air and slowly deflated. Hesitantly, his eyelids fluttered open.

“What the hell do you think I am?” he growled.

Out of instinct I jumped back.

He pulled one of his hands up to his face and rubbed his nose, using the other arm to help him sit up properly. However, when it proved to be too much pain, he gave up and ended up half-sitting on the lip of the roof, looking exhausted.

Staring off in the distance, he seemed to relax. For a moment he went back to looking like Brady. All wide-eyed and ready to take it on. But then he blinked, and so did I, and then he didn’t look the same anymore.

He cracked a smile, though. Not a big one, but it was still a smile. “God, I fuckin’ love that damn kid.”

And I smiled right along with him.

His grin was short-lived, though; in an instant he was doubled over as a sharp pain shot through his body from his wound. Clutching his cut, he coughed and choked until I got my senses straight and ran over to him, timidly putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Dude…” I trailed off. I didn’t want to say his name. It’d hurt too much.

Brady looked up at me, his lips all quivering and everything and his eyes all watery. He didn’t say anything, though.

James shot up from behind us, but even though I could feel him there, I didn’t turn around to look. He was there anyway next to Brady in an instant, on his side across from me, doing the same thing I was doing – a hand on his shoulder, quietly stumbling over words to say.

“It hurts,” Brady squeezed out.

“Don’t touch it. We’ll get help. We’ll send for angels to heal you, and then we can explain ourselves to God,” James bargained, only kidding himself. I didn’t buy a word of it. “It’ll be fine.”

I wanted to punch his lights out and tell him it wouldn’t be, but I didn’t wanna crush his spirit.

He was still grasping his wound, trying to hold his skin together like the whole universe would explode if he let the sensitive area separate just a little bit. It didn’t even look as bad as it did before. But the way he was all tense and everything let me know that the pain didn’t subside just yet.

I caught myself staring at his face. It was weird. And kinda creepy looking back on the whole thing, but I don’t care. I’d never felt so hurt in my life or afterlife. It was like all the crap he was going through was somehow sent to me instead and I was right there with him, writhing around on the floor at a nonexistent gash.

Before I could even think about what I was doing or why I was doing it, tears were rolling down my face. And just like that one night in the hotel, these tears hurt like little bitches. They burned. Sometimes, it hurts to cry. ‘Cause you can’t breathe and your tears sting and everything, and just realizing how much it hurts makes you wanna cry more and before you know it you’ve cried every tear in your entire body.

I guess I wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing or how I looked to Brady or James at that moment. I didn’t care if I looked like an idiot, sitting there and crying so bad that my whole body shook. I hadn’t cried since that night in the hotel that I hate talking about. And so many things had gone wrong in the past day – more so than any of the past weeks combined – that it felt like everything had just fallen apart spontaneously.

And the funny part was that nobody said a word. Neither of them spoke, and neither of them looked at me weird or laughed. They just sat there along with me, and Brady even weakly put his arm around my shoulder. I didn’t give a shit if I was getting blood on my hoodie. It’d burn off in Hell anyway.

So we sat there. It was a long time. It felt like a long time, anyways. The wind was still and only blew a little bit and it was real soft. I didn’t feel cold anymore.

“Guys,” Brady finally said in a low, raspy voice, “I’m sorry.”

“Hold on a little longer, please,” James urged, whispering the words. “Once it all dies down…”

“I’m sorry for gettin’ you guys in this mess. Pretend you never met me,” the older one mumbled. He was quiet. I could barely hear what he was saying. No emotion was passing through his face, and his eyes were blank. Just unreadable hazel dots in his head.

I buried my head in his shoulder, saying nothing.

“Hold on,” James ushered.

“I…can’t,” he replied. “Maybe you guys can…hospital…Heaven…”

“Once you’re dead again, that’s it! You’re dead! You can’t just be revived again, unless the demons take you,” St. James struggled. So many things were in his voice that I could get a headache just trying to decipher it all.

“Maybe I don’t wanna be revived,” Brady grunted. “Maybe I deserve this.”

“Don’t ever think that,” James threatened, shoving a finger in his face.

Brady shot him a dirty look, but couldn’t keep it up for too long. In an instant he was back doubled over as his wound wrenched his nerves yet again, and James and I were on our knees next to him, cradling him and trying to alleviate it at least a little bit to no avail.

He sat back after a minute or two of choking on his ache. His eyes fluttered closed as his chest pumped with air rapidly.

And that last thing he did was so weird. He smiled. He laughed. And he told us, “I guess once you fuck up all your second chances, you’re done.”

And when I went to hold his hand out of some crazy impulsive instinct, it was limp and cold.