Angel Dust Read Free

around the living room looking at pictures: Marcus as a baby, Marcus with his arms round his mum, Marcus with his sisters, Marcus in a football team, Marcus posing like the Original Badman, Marcus in dark glasses. Marcus looking manly. My throat caught. There’s something unbearably sad about being on Collection Duty. However beautiful you make the death, however gentle, however welcome.
    I went into his bedroom.
    What a delicious mess! Clothes thrown everywhere, ash trays full of butt ends, CD covers scattered on the floor, expensive trainers showcased on their shoeboxes, an Xbox still playing over and over the opening sequence to
Call of Duty
. And everywhere there were pictures of girls, tacked up alongside sheets of paper covered with lyrics in a small spidery scrawl.
    TO MY HOT GIRL
    those fiery eyes
    Hot girl! hot girl!
    Soul on fire
    take out my heart
    i gotta do right
    i gotta talk true this time
    oh oh oh
    i’m fallin for you
    and that is so true
    i gotta do right
    I gotta talk true
    before i lose you
    oh no no
    I looked at a T-shirt flung carelessly on the floor. What was it, to be human? To feel the breeze against your face and know that nothing lasts? If Marcus could have lasted, would he have changed? I could smell change and goodness somewhere in his scent. Standing there, in his room, his life spread out before me, in clothes and music and passion, I saw the speed at which he’d lived. No time for regrets. No thoughts of the hereafter.
    I didn’t return to the living room. Right then his mother was grieving for the loss of that little boy in the photo with his arms around her. There was nothing I could do to comfort her. Not true. I could have touched her, I suppose. I could have given her oblivion. Would she have wanted that?
    I started to fret about the Collection again. The palms of my hands began to sweat. I could feel my feathers tingling. I had to get this absolutely right. Marcus had a definite time pencilled in against his name. There must be no mistake. I must get back to the nightclub. Maybe demons were already sniffing him out. Demons are foul creatures. They feast on unclaimed souls. They soil every death they touch. I went over my checklist:
Catch him as he falls.
Give him the chance to repent.
Get there before the demons.
Deliver him his Final Moment.
Pinch out his life.
Collect his soul.
    Even if he was bound for Hell, he shouldn’t fall into the hands of demons. What the heck was I doing wasting time snooping about?
    I must get to the club immediately.
    Ready to kill Marcus.

Serafina 2
    I think I was putting it off. I really
hadn’t
been on Soul Collecting Duty very long (actually it was only two and a half days) and I still felt nervous. The sleepers had been OK. They were my very first ones. They were quite easy. I just arrived and sat at the end of their beds, and waited for them to drift into my arms. All very nice and quiet and respectable. Demons don’t give a damn about them. And the ones I’d done had all been little old ladies, too. They’d all led nice little lives and put out food for the birds. They were headed straight for the First Gate. They had nothing to repent. St Peter fast tracked them through at once. God was very pleased with them.
    Of course there’d been that one soul to be guided downwards. He’d been vicious and hateful. I was even happy when I’d pointed out the river he needed to cross. I didn’t care if the demons got him.
    Marcus was going to be
so
different. Not only was he young and full of life, but he’d seen me. That was so odd. Nobody had ever told me about being seen. I went back over it in my mind. I’d been watching him from the Twelfth Gate. He’d lifted up his head and winked. I was certain of it. Perhaps it meant something? No mortal has ever seen the Seraphim. Not like that. So that made him? I don’t know what it made him.
    And suddenly I realised that it was
very
weird. What did it