E: Happy hours

I'm really sorry to have to tell you this, but God saw you lot
coming.

My name is Gabriel, but you can call me Gabe; all my friends do. When I
say "friends", I really mean "associates". I'm not really sure if I
have friends, and if I do, I couldn't say with any degree of certainty
who they are.

Anyway, you've probably read about me in the Bible, which was really
the culmination of the Man's early publicity machine. At the time we,
His tireless canvassers, were more than pleased with the way we were
portrayed; save, of course, the odd quibble. After all, we didn't want
the whole truth getting in the way of everything we had achieved up to
that point. Neither did God; and He was pretty chuffed with the way He
came out of it too.

When the sales figures started to filter through, the Lord's face was a
picture. I began to feel for him something approaching affection. He
was a much nicer guy back then. See, in those days, he still believed
his own PR. He really did see himself rewarding lifetimes of loyal
service with better lives in the sky. His heart was in the right place
but theory is rarely translated smoothly into practice.

Cut to the present, harsh realities of the afterlife, ruled by the now
jaded, sadistic swindler that you call God, Heaven-dwellers call "The
Man" and close friends call "G".

The time has come for you to know the truth, I think.

I am writing this on my laptop at a beer-stained wooden table in a
dark, smoky bar in Massey Brook. This is the scary west-end of the
sprawling Metropolis called Heaven.

Also here is my fellow archangel, Mickey. He, like me, has spent a
productive eight hours lubricating his throat with inferior flat lager
and bitching about things. I only brought the computer from work to
write a snotty letter to some of G's more vocal creditors. The
drink-fuelled rants lead to my unfolding the Notebook PC, declaring
various intentions, and hammering the keyboard furiously with the only
four fingers I use for this purpose.

Mickey thought I was joking at first. Still chuckling, he went to get
the next round in, a job that took a good half-hour thanks to a rugby
scrum of lushes at the bar. He returned with two pints of warm sweat
and a curious frown. Squinting over my shoulder, he used phrases like
"You're serious, aren't you!" and "You know what you're getting
yourself into!" and "For Fug's ache, not here, it's too public!"

He doesn't realise how little I have to lose.

Just now, I looked out of this table's window at Heaven's gurning
cityscape: the random towering tenements with massive solitary oval
windows look like empty boxes of tissues arranged vertically. They are
separated only by deserted concrete wastelands of varying size,
occasionally boasting a lazy breeze-block rectangle calling itself a
shop, a bar, a factory or an office building. There are no cars here,
and consequently no roads as such, just an elaborate web of tramlines
to take the workers to work, and back home, and to the gin houses, and
back home again. Confidentially, I've grown to love the place. But it
would take a twisted mind to perceive this miserable town as
paradise.

I then turned to Mickey, who was - still is - glaring at me
expectantly. We are in full uniform: vests, originally the colour of a
milk tooth, now decayed; creamy many-pocketed combat trousers;
no-longer-white leather boots. G chose the colour; he's a sucker for
living up to Earth perceptions, and doesn't concern himself with such
trivial matters as what a bastard the uniform is to wash.
Unsurprisingly it was also G who came up with the mark of the angel: a
pair of wings tattooed on the upper left arm. Mine is blacker and more
vivid than Mickey's, but maybe that's because he suffers from a needle
phobia. These are the only wings we have. We angels only fly in the
sense that we run very quickly.

I looked at Mickey's pudding face, his big brown frightened eyes, his
brown shaggy hair, his uneven disc beard; and, as he stood to leave,
his flabby arms, and the paunch that resisted birth but was forced into
existence. He has the appearance of a man in his early thirties of
average height.

"Mickey," I said, "do you want your name left out of this? Can I not
count on you?"

"When have you ever not been able to count on me, Gabe?" he whined, in
that evasive, answering-a-question-with-a-question way of his.

"Before you go," I said, as he made to leave, "describe me. You know,
for the book. For the readers."

His response came back like the rhythm-free yelps of a Yorkshire
terrier with a jumpy disposition: "Dead thin &;#8230; tall
&;#8230;six two &;#8230; blond dyed &;#8230;hair &;#8230;
face &;#8230; er &;#8230; sharp nose small eyes small ears
&;#8230;chin beard.

"Thanks, you're giving me Pulitzer-winning stuff here," I said
mock-huffily.

"And you're a good angel," he slurred, winking shiftily. "Put that in
as well."

Seemingly distracted by his thoughts, Mickey drank up with a shaky left
hand, and put a petrol lighter to a crooked cigarette; he walked out of
the bar like a man on a mission, leaving me to the tell the story which
needs to be told. Your God has gone much further than a breach of the
Trades Description Act in his brochure.

This is the tale of how it all went wrong.