Angel Falls
Michael Paul Gonzalez
Winchester, UK
Washington, USA
First published by Perfect Edge Books, 2013
Perfect Edge Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., Laurel House, Station Approach, Alresford, Hants, SO24 9JH, UK
[email protected]
www.johnhuntpublishing.com
www.perfectedgebooks.com
For distributor details and how to order please visit the ‘Ordering’ section on our website.
Text copyright: Michael Paul Gonzalez 2012
ISBN: 978 1 84694 678 3
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.
The rights of Michael Paul Gonzalez as author have been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design: Stuart Davies
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
We operate a distinctive and ethical publishing philosophy in all areas of our business, from our global network of authors to production and worldwide distribution.
For Ola, who saves my soul every day
For Mom and Dad, who I owe my all
For Carl, who showed me how much fun writing stories can be
For Adam Meyer, the best of best men
For everyone in Write Club who keeps a boot to my backside so my fingers stay on the keyboard
And undying alphabetical appreciation for their stern feedback, and support during the process:
Aleks Bienkowska, Mlaz Corbier, Paul Eckert, Mark Grover, Gordon Highland, Jason M. Heim, Derek Hynes, Amy Lloyd, Berto Martin, Shana & Garrick, Danielle Tobias,
Simon West-Bulford
And eternal thanks, of course, to Phil Jourdan for the opportunity to unleash my vision of Hell upon the world
See, critics? I’m already doing your job for you!
Caveat Lector
Memento Mori
Sona si Latine loqueris
In The Beginning…
My mother once told me, “You can’t take it with you when you die.”
I told her I’d see her in Hell and we’d find out who was right.[1]
You take it all with you, and then some, and you end up here in this border town, the land of the not-living and not-quite- dead. To get from our point A to the point Hereafter, you’ve gotta walk. It’s you, alone, carrying thirteen crystals containing the most important moments of your life. Somewhere along the way, you’ve gotta let go of it, the good, the bad, all of it, until you’re erased, a clean slate, ready for the next step. Most people go crazy along the way. Used to take about seven years, for the fast ones. Nowadays, hardly anyone bothers trying to make the trip.
Humans are notoriously cowardly to begin with. They knew what they had to do, but they found excuses not to move. It’s why this place has grown from a tiny shantytown somewhere near the beginning of eternity to the sprawling metropolis it is now. They set up shop and decided it was far better to spend forever in a capitalist limbo than to face up to what they did on earth. If you can’t procrastinate in purgatory, where can you, really?
Those thirteen sorrows will always be there, waiting. You go into any apartment or house here, and you’ll find the ofrenda altar. The styles can vary, different shelf arrangements, different colors, but the contents are always the same: thirteen dull globes, like black pearls the size of grapefruits: the anima crystals. Everyone else can see inside your anima crystals, but to you, they’re just dull black voids. It’s a matter of etiquette here, you don’t discuss what other people have done. Not to their face anyway. Not that it matters. You can’t even hear discussions of your anima crystals. It’s like a cosmic Cracker Jack prize. You only get to know what’s inside when you’re on the Long Walk, the journey beyond. Most people are happy to spend eternity here gleefully clueless.
I’ve been watching over this place since the beginning. I named the town Angel Falls. Poor little misunderstood me. You do the math.
Here, it’s all about status quo, living the good old days, every day. There’s no need to eat, but people do. No need for clothes, but high fashion is a must. You get the idea. We welcome all cultures. All different belief systems. Other dead cities are still in operation, but through vigorous marketing and acquisition strategies, I’ve grown our little burgh into the biggest and the best. They all end up here, even the atheists. Well, the atheists tend to strut off confidently into the desert, and return later with half of their anima crystals and none of their sanity.
I was sent here, contrary to current popular belief, to keep an eye on things when the original landlords moved on. The Aztecs called them Mictlantecuhtli and Mictlancuatl, the god and goddess of the land of death. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it? On pronunciation alone, Mr. and Mrs. M were making things so drab and boring down here, they had to go. Yes, there were rumors of hostile takeover, but I prefer to think of it as God’s Will. The Head Office had so many vibrant things in the works. It was time to consolidate, out with the old and in with the new. It’s the way the world was designed to work, after all. When the dirty business was done, they sent me down to shed a little light on things.
And then, the little punks, the infinite jackasses, they close the door behind me. Big cosmic joke. Ha-ha on me. I should have expected it. We do this kind of thing all the time to each other, these meathead frat jokes. Think of your friends pulling you naked from the shower at the gym and throwing you out of the locker room into the Senior Ladies’ Aqua Aerobics class. Now multiply that by infinity and you’ll see how we play things over on this side.
I’m stuck here until the door opens for me, and I’ll be damned if I do anything other than the minimum required of me, which is to watch over these poor lost souls. I don’t have any brimstone, no pitchforks, and fire is completely unnecessary, but helpful for certain things. We’re all pretty much equal. I mean, I can do a few things that some of the others can’t. I am The Lightbearer, after all. But they can do things that I can’t. Elvis kills me on the dance floor. Jim Morrison drank me under the table. Took us a few months, but still.
We got ‘em all, man. The best part of Angel Falls is the theater and music scene, bar none.[2] These guys, they were attention whores up top, and now that they’re playing their eternal encore, they’re intolerable. But highly entertaining.
Cobain’s Lounge is the place to go if you’re into the indie scene. You can go down to Lenny B’s for stand-up…but that’s mostly for the new crowd. The long-timers, they’ve heard all the jokes, and nothing short of a Sam Beckett play makes ‘em chuckle.[3] Still, there are a few acts that draw big. They just opened a Dangerfield’s down here, and Billy Shakes’ Globe has the best shows.
There’s fun to be had, and I intend to make the most of my time here. People are either going to attempt the big Crossing or they’re not. It doesn’t make a difference in the grand scheme of things. Here’s how The Boss set it up: everything had a beginning, and everything will have an end. What happens in between (minus a little heavy-handed tinkering from the Big Guy during the initial deployment phases) will happen, and then we’ll get to the end and have a good laugh about it all.
Free will, man. Let the chips fall where they may. So. Here we are at the edge of eternity, with a million stories to tell. Here’s how it works:
When someone arrives, regardless of who they were, they become instant celebrities, because they’re the last to know what was happening on Earth. Keeps us in the loop. They learn the ropes and then figure out how
they can make themselves useful. We get new restaurants, new fashions, new sports.
When you arrive, you’ll already have your own apartment, furniture and all. I used to lay a pamphlet on the chest of each new arrival, helpfully titled, “You’re Dead… Now What?” It had ten frequently asked questions, and ten slightly helpful answers. It had maps, things, places, and people to know. But you give people answers, and they’ll find more questions. Offer them hints, they want instructions. Maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. I was turning into a busy landlord, a building manager, the Ralph Furley of the ninth circle. No good, man. No good at all.
I decided the best thing to do would be to lay low and just visit the people who need me the most. I hear them pray, the truly distraught ones. It’s one of my many talents. The variety is staggering: angry prayers, happy prayers, fear, distress calls, you name it. I hate every last one of ‘em, because it all adds up to two words for me: damage control. How do you look a little five-year- old, blonde-haired, blue-eyed sprite of a girl in the eye as she tells you she’s ecstatic to have finally arrived in Heaven? What do you tell the grandparents who want to find a cloud to perch on to watch over their loved ones on Earth?
Yeah, they call out, and I’m always there to answer, whether they like it or not. I’ll admit, I get off on it a little. Watching their faces, that little spark of confusion that’s followed by an expectant grin. I give ’em the canned speech, “Behold, an angel of the Lord has come unto you.” And then, when I tell them which angel has come, boy things usually go south quick. I explain how things work here, then they usually fall into one of three categories:
1. Their concept of Heaven is the only true and correct one, and their God is the true God, and by the way, when will we be meeting Him?
2. All religions are correct, since we all worship the same God, therefore, the hereafter is a great melting pot, and by the way, about God, where is She anyway?
3. There is nothing after death and this is all just a hallucination.[4]
First of all, we get thousands of people through here every day. And there’s no waiting to get in. This city is huge and ever- expanding. Think of the biggest city you’ve ever been to. Now imagine the city fills up a continent. Now a city-planet. You’re not even close to guessing the size of this place. “Vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big,” to quote one of our favorite resident authors and know-it-alls.
I named a few of the areas and then left the rest to Free Enterprise. Souls got bored of wandering the grey plains. I told them to fix it themselves. You leave two or more people in a cave together for longer than an hour, and they will come up with some crazy shit, I kid you not. Hell is what they made it, and they made it pretty awesome.
The city is separated into several sectors, sort of a walking tour of history. People tend to cluster with others who died around the same time, so we have a bit of a Disney situation. Near the outskirts (if we had outskirts) are the caves, and somewhat closer to the center of the city (my house) there’s a Renaissance village, a Colonial America Village, Deutschland (several variations, including medieval, post-war, and Hitlerville), SavannahTown, Wild West, Feudal Japan, Eskimo Cove, The Isle of Formerly Repressed Homosexuals, you name it, we got it. A week just isn’t enough time to see all of our attractions, so won’t you please stay longer?
One of my favorite areas lately is Pirate Bay, off in the great waters that flow around and between the city. Sounds crazy, I know, but geography and direction here are states of mind – you’ll see. Anyway, bunch of old salty dogs have lashed together their vessels into a makeshift shantytown. Long as nobody falls in the water, everything’s okay. There are things in the water too horrible to imagine. Well, not too horrible for me, seeing that I imagined, bred, and raised them. They’re my little compromise. Anyone gets too stir crazy, they can swim with my Leviathans, and sooner or later, they’ll be eaten and digested, the bodies broken down into bits of ether floating in the Eternal Sea. I’m not too sure what happens to their spirits once they’re digested. Maybe they get a free pass to move on past the final border, maybe they’re just floating in the sea for eternity, disembodied. I can’t be bothered.
Yeah, I feel like I could stay here forever.[5] Things here had been halfway decent for an eternity, and I intended to keep it that way. So, imagine how shocked I was to find myself in Heaven of all places, after wandering the desert in search of my own anima crystals, chasing a famous girl I’d never heard of who’d stolen thirteen crystals in an attempt to find her lost love. Stuff of legends, right? Pain in my ass is more like it.
But I’m ahead of myself. This story, like most where I come from, begins with the naming of people, places, and things.
Chapter One
Why did the lady cross the bridge of the damned? To get to the other side, of course.
Lake Samael is the biggest body of water in Angel Falls. Let’s call it the center of town. Ground Zero. Where I fell down and went boom and left a deep dent, and cried until my tears filled it to the brim. That’s all the embarrassment you’ll get out of me today, okay?
Lake Samael, it’s full of islands, bridges, tunnels, aquariums, you name it. There’s one piece of land, Cinvat Bridge, otherwise known as the Bridge of the Requiter, that leads out of town and into the desert for the Long Walk. I met the man himself once, nice guy that Requiter. Used to go by the name Rashn, but now he just prefers “The Righteous”. He was here before me, and I think he’ll be here long after I leave. He likes to peer over into the water and spear fish without looking. Then, even if nobody’s around, he holds it high over his head and calls out “Fish! Fish is a winner!” Great guy. Anyway.
I was in the Etruscan quarter taking in some rays, people- watching at a pool built into one of the coves of the Lake, when a man near the bar burst into golden flame. I’ve seen weirder. Then, he started running straight for me. I didn’t panic. There was a pool between us, so I’d have plenty of time to get ready for him. When he decided to flop into the pool and paddle clumsily towards me instead of going around, I still wasn’t too nervous. I mean, I’m Me , so I’m not scared of…uh-oh. He was swimming pretty fast, faster than a mortal man could, and he was still on fire . That’s enough for me to at least start shuffling towards the exit. The man started shouting as he paddled furiously, steam rising so fast that the pool roiled like a thermal spa.
“She’s gone!” he screamed between breaths and swallows of water. “It’s all over! The end is nigh!”
He hauled himself over the lip of the pool and rolled to my feet. He rose to his hands and knees and shook the water from his wings. I took a step back to keep my patent leather dry and shiny, took a sip of my lemonade, and said, “As far as high dives go, I’ve seen better. Which one sent you, then?”
He stood before me, eyes red-rimmed, lip quivering, the Fear of God pulsing through his Holy Veins. “She’s carrying things that are. Not. Hers!”
I cleared my throat. “Protocol. Which one are you?” I raised an eyebrow.
He sighed, cleared his throat, and in a glass-shattering baritone declared, “I AM THE ANGEL PHALEG, WARLORD AND RULER OF THE ORDER OF ANGELS, SENT BY HE WHOSE NAME CANNOT BE SPOKEN, TO BRING FORTH LIGHT INTO THE WORLD OF MEN.”
“And it is good,” I said in answer. How I do love this fraternity shit! “So… Fag, is it?”
“Phaleg,” he said, deflating and turning his luster down a notch.[6]
“Sure,” I replied. “Listen, I’ve got a big day coming up here, and I got stuff I gotta do. So, you know, as a member of the club, I bid you welcome, and enjoy your stay, try the steak, and—”
“A great wrong has been committed. A grievous error. A horrendous crime against nature. Against order. Against our Lord!”
“ Your Lord. Did they turn Elvis away at the gates again?”
“What is Elvis?”
“Nevermind,” I walked away towards the bar, knowing that he’d be following right behind, that good ol’ Dad had sent him, and anyone Sent was always On A
Mission, or Here With A Purpose, or What Have You, with Capital Letters. My Day Was Shot, and I was only thirty hours into it.
“I was getting into a groove,” I informed him. “I was on my twelfth bag of wine. I was almost…buzzed?”
“You can’t get drunk,” Phaleg said.
“Maybe I can if I think I can. Or maybe I am if I think I am. I can do whatever I want!”
“That’s blasphemy! Maybe you are drunk! Wow…”
I waved him off and made my way out of the building and onto the streets. It was pot throwing day, so all the newbies and tourists were here to see how the Etruscans did it. I hoped it might be a good way to drown out the lackey following me around, but I knew better. Through time, through space, through the ages, we can always hear. Angels are cursed with the gift of hearing everything and understanding. Phaleg was bumping along beside me, and I happily realized I’d daydreamed through most of his ramblings.
“…empty ofrendas! Can you imagine the consequences? And do you know why she did it?”
I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I saw a good chance to feign interest. “No, why?”
“Well,” and he stopped walking. “Well, we were hoping you would know. You’re here to watch. It’s your job.”
“I’m the Light-Bringer. Not the Playground Guardian. Besides,” I added, gesturing towards the sky. “He can see it all just fine.”
“That’s not fair,” Phaleg answered. His eyes were brimming with golden tears, all dewey and honey-smelling. He wasn’t being accusatory, just stating a fact. And I knew he was right, and it sucked the heat out of my anger. I stopped and leaned against a wall.
“If she makes it across the desert, this is all over. Everything.” “Why should I care?”
Phaleg turned away from me. “I fell in love.” “Now who’s being blasphemous?”
“Don’t mock me,” Phaleg snapped, and in his eyes I saw a glimpse of his calling, the Warlord.
Angel Falls Page 1