Shoulder Angel

The woman in front of me could be explained in three words. Those words were: Ethereal Cosmic Goddesses. All with capital letters at the front. There is a difference, and if you wanted to go for a fourth word… mhnn, irritated. Yeah, I would go with irritation and I was really hoping that something or somebody else pissed her off before me. Why? Because if not I had a sinking suspicion that I might just be completely boned here, and I didn’t even know why. Seriously, forget how did I get here. What did I do? She stalked back and forth in front of me, with a vexed and befuddled frown on her face. Iridescent blonde waves swinging around her waist as she did so, punctuated by the clip-clop of an unbelievably high pair of heels. Stilettos that could have doubled as art. Disney princess themed art. Finally she stopped and faced me. Brown eyes flashing at the very idea of having to deal with my bullshit right now, before she closed her eyes for a moment. “What did you do?” she asked in a strangled voice, and if I wasn’t nervous before the I was now. It buzzed under my skin, and made me a little more than faintly naseuous. “It’s not that bad,” I said immediately, and she snapped a little. You could almost hear the strings being pulled too tight, and POP! “Not that bad? Not that? You broke the entire system. Billions of years have ticked by, and it was totally foolproof,” she hissed and she seemed completely baffled by it, “It was perfect, and now it's broken… WHAT did you do?” Oh, that’s what I did. I could see how that could be a problem. The thing was I really wasn’t too entirely sure exactly what I had done, specifically, so… that was an issue. On the backfoot of things, I reacted the only way that I could. Defensively. “It wasn’t my fault,” I protested sheepishly, although if things had gone badly enough that I was being spoken to by her then it probably was my fault. Still... If their system was as perfect, and as foolproof, as they said then there was only one question I wanted the answer to. That being, how could I destroy it… accidentally? Without even realising what I was doing. It wasn’t like I’d accidentally stepped in mud, and tracked it through the house without realising. It seemed like the kind of thing that should be doomed to failure without extensive planning, and effort. Maybe it had been a mistake, and there was somebody else that was supposed to be here answering for this? “You think you’d be here if it wasn’t your fault?” she replied in a flat voice. Oh… something in the very marrow of my bones told me that I should be very careful about how I answered that. I decided to redirect that question altogether. Nope, not falling into that trap. “Can you read minds?” I asked as if that was the important part. Honestly, I was dodging the question because all of this was so ridiculous that I think I’m just going to pretend that it's a dream. Otherwise I will have to surrender what’s left of my fractured sanity. “Yes, but that is entirely besides the point,” she said before stopping with narrowed eyes, “Wait, what were you thinking about that you were worried that I was consciously reading your mind?” I did not want to answer that, and smiled brightly with the hope that she wasn’t going to be persistent about it. “Never mind,” I said shiftily, “I still don’t see what I did?” “You conspired with a demon, and broke the entire Heaven-Hell system!” she shouted, throwing her hands up and beginning to mutter to herself, “What in the name of Me? Doesn’t even know what she did! What did I do to deserve this?” Demon? What on earth is she on about? I thought to myself, actually offended by the accusation. I made a consistent and clear effort to ignore and defy that asshole. I took pleasure in making his life a living hell, in ways both extreme and more often extremely petty. “What are you talking about? I haven’t been working with that,” I said, shuddering and considering my options I decided to use a species quantifier rather than a curse word, “Demon.” The look of sheer offended disbelief was immense. It was like she was trying to figure out just how truely stupid I was, and I must say that it was not a good feeling. Sort of like an ant being looked at under a microscope… outside on a summer's day. Do you think that if you die in a dream, then it happens in real life too? If the answer was yes, I was beginning to think that I was toast. “Tiana! Do you really think I’m that stupid?” she demanded with volume, and an inhuman glow entered her eyes. I shook my head hurriedly, flinching in the almost mother-like tone my name came out in. You know the one. It’s like… when you hear the person in charge of raising you into a decent human being yelling your name, and you know that if you’re lucky then you’ll be too dead to face the consequences of whatever you did? All tempered with the feeling that maybe you’ll be okay, because the person calling your name loves you? It sounded like that, and the familiarity was unsettling. “Noooo,” I said, dragging it out, and trying to figure out what I could say after that to avoid digging the hole deeper. If I really had done what she was accusing me of, then I was probably already standing in one that was 6ft by 6ft. The next step being covered over, I did not want to f**k this up. “Then why are you pretending that you didn’t unleash a kind of chaos into the universe that has never been seen before, with Owen?” she said loudly, and I stopped dead. OWEN?! No. No way. Nuh-uh. Does not compute. “Say what about my shoulder angel now?” I asked her, and now it was my turn to be utterly lost. Her face paled, and she shook for a moment. I was really hoping that it wasn’t with anger. “You thought that Owen… f*****g Owen, is your SHOULDER ANGEL!?” she said, her words gaining speed and pitch, “Are you insane? What? What?! WHY?!” “Well not now,” I said, blowing out a sigh, because Owen was a demon? Damn! How is that even possible? It didn’t make sense, but I didn’t doubt her. It didn’t even occur to me to do so. “Wait… if he’s my shoulder demon,” I said starting in realisation, “You mean you’re trying to tell me that that asshole Johna is an angel?” Depending on how long you spend thinking about it, the longer you do the worse it gets, Johna being an angel is way more terrifying than Owen being a demon. “Yes,” the goddess snapped. “Johna?” I repeated his name, just to double check, “Tall, brown eyes, smug face ripe for punching? Johna?” It was fun to watch her blink at my descriptors. Hey, it was a lot more polite than I wanted to be. “Yes,” she repeated, and looked annoyed at having to do so. “The intolerant, snobby, picky, man-splaining asshole, Johna?” I said suspiciously. “YES!” she cried. Huh. “WHY?” I yelled in response, “How does he meet standards? Did you have to dig a hole for the bar, because the floor wasn’t low enough? Why would anybody not clearly evil send Johna as their representative?” She froze, and stood statue-still as more and more words just leapt from my mouth. “See, now I know where things went wrong. Think about it for a minute. You sent Johna? Was it really that wrong of me to assume that he was pretty much a form of evil-incarnate?” I told her, shaking my head in despair that it might not have occurred to her. She opened her mouth to say something, and then seemed to deflate and close it again. “Okay, so you might have a point there,” she grumbled before perking up again, “But it’s not the point. So once again: What. Did. You. Do!?” Well I was hoping we’d detoured far enough away from that we might get distracted enough not to circle back again. Not so, bugger. “How much time do you have?” I asked her sarcastically, unable to stop my hands from fidgeting as I waited for an answer. She raised a perfectly sculpted brow in response. “Are you looking at me with your eyes closed, or are you just that dumb?” she asked in amusement, “We’ve got all the time we need.” Wonderful, I thought in frustration, that was just what I was hoping for. Not. “Your funeral,” I supposed finally, “But don’t blame me if you get bored, or tap out. You might tap out, my life is… weird as fuck.” And considering where we were standing, that was saying something. “Somehow I think I’ll manage,” she said dryly. The imposing empty room filled with furniture, and we took a seat. The room didn’t exactly have a ceiling. More of a… galaxy of stars, and aurora borealis style lights, extending on forever. Actually I was going to stop looking up, I was starting to get dizzy. “So I suppose that all of this started with my head injury,” I said with a sigh, “I didn’t see either of them before I hit my head that hard.” She snorted. “What could you possibly have hit your head on that would make the pair of them appear?” she chuckled, and I felt obligated to answer that question. “Oh, I tripped on an escalator, at the Teatree Plaza shopping centre,” I said breezily, “My shoe got caught, and it was really all downhill from there… or downstairs at the very least. I broke my Iphone… and also my leg, and fractured my skull.” It felt a little bit like victory, because whatever she’d been expecting it hadn’t been that. She leaned forwards a little, and I took that as my sign to continue from there. Hopefully whatever I did would be more apparent than it was to me, because if not I had a sneaking suspicion that I was in trouble. "Start from there," she ordered, with a wave of her perfectly manicured hand. **** I woke up in the hospital...