Hell's Angel

HELL'S ANGEL




Larry Mazzello, who had died eight months earlier, stumbled out of the Bing Bang Boom Tavern and onto the decrepit wooden porch.

A voice to his right said, "Hey, there he is."

He looked over. Paul something, Larry didn't remember, was sitting on the wooden glider that sat under the tinted window through which the bar's neon Open sign flashed red.

"Paul," Larry said, pulling his brown leather jacket on one sleeve at a time. He wavered slightly, and a long hunk of ash fell from the cigarette dangling from his lips. "Couple of guys in there getting into it over a glass of Coors."

"Yeah? Trading blows, are they?"

"Not yet. Thought I'd get outta there before the chairs started flying."

The crickets were chirping and it was getting cool as the sun ducked behind the trees that surrounded the property, which sat a quarter-mile into the woods, connected to the main highway by a stretch of dirt road. A group of bikers stood in the parking lot around their choppers, trading stories about women with freakishly large tits they'd gotten their peckers wet with.

"Hmm, well. How's the ticker been treatin' ya, Lar?"

Larry, surprised that Paul knew who he was, and about his heart, gave a shrug and a nod.

"All right, I guess."

"Hmm. Well, I tell ya, it's not my place to say your business, but I would'a thought a man who died once on the operating table would take better care of himself than you been doing. Know, it used to be you'd come here once or twice a week, have a few drinks and just keep to yourself. Now, you're here most every night and don't go home until you're near too drunk to know where home is." He took a sip of Miller. "Just the keeping to yourself part that's stayed the same."

"Yeah, well, you're right. Not your place to say what I can do and can't. Nobody else's either."

Paul threw up his free hand. "All right, then."

"If it's an explanation you're looking for, not that I owe one to you or anybody else, then let's just say I been missing someone real bad and I'm taking the quickest route back to 'em."

Larry, zipping his jacket up, turned his head to see what Paul's reaction would be. As expected, his face was blank with confusion. After a second, though, he gave Larry a drunken thumbs-up.

"Fair enough, cowboy."

The commotion among the bikers abruptly rose in pitch. One of them let out a long wolf-whistle.

"'Well," Paul said, "what little slice of heaven do we have here?"

Larry turned his head back, looked at the bikers and then in the direction they were all staring in. His mouth fell open and the cigarette fell out and hit his jacket on the way down, covering him with ash. He didn't notice, too entranced by the figure that stood in the middle of the parking lot in front of an old Ford pickup. He stood for what seemed like forever, just staring, and then noticed that the wood floor was moving beneath him while his feet lifted themselves up and down, pulling the front of the porch closer.

He stepped down onto the gravel. Passing the group of bikers, one of them laughed and said to Larry, "Yeah, boy! You go and get your fingers wet, son!" but he didn't hear the biker or the laughter that followed from the rest of the group.

Now, he was standing before her. She looked just as he remembered her, from the white flowing gown to the curled golden locks that hung down the length of her back to her blue eyes flecked with purple.

And, of course, the wings.

"Muriel?" he said.

Muriel smiled. "Hello, Larry."

He lowered his head, unable to believe that she was really here and suddenly embarrassed about his current intoxication. Looking at the ground, he noticed that around her bare feet a number of feathers rested on the gravel, fallen from her wings.

"How did you find me?"

"I've been watching you ever since you left."

His eyes widened. "The...whole time?"

"Hey, buddy, you shouldn't bring pussy 'round here 'less there's enough for all of us!"

He turned and flashed a severe glare at the group of bikers, unsure which one had made the remark.

"Maybe we should go somewhere else to talk."

* * * *

Once they reached his apartment, though, Muriel made it clear that talking wasn't foremost in her plans for the evening by throwing him down on the couch, ripping her gown open down the front and mounting him like a tiger pouncing a zebra. Though he expected he wouldn't last long with this beautiful creature riding him with unbound gusto, the whiskey still in his system gave him an appreciated advantage. They fucked for hours.

Near the end of their congress, Larry, eyes closed to get the full sensation of his hands moving along Muriel's flawless new Earthly skin, heard his lover's cries of ecstasy turn to moans of pain. He opened his eyes and asked Muriel what was the matter.

"My wings," Muriel said, wincing. "Something's wrong with them."

Larry slid out of her, stood up from the couch and examined her back. Something was, indeed, wrong with Muriel's wings. The flesh around her shoulder blades where they connected to her body had torn away so that the wings hung off of her like peeled wallpaper. Abruptly, the wings peeled some more, and now hung by only a small bit of attached skin.

"Oh, Jesus."

Muriel swung her head around. "Where?"

"No, it's...your wings are falling off, Muriel."

The bits of skin broke and her wings came completely away from her back and landed dead on the couch, causing Larry to jump back.

"Uh, fell off." He tried to hide the revulsion in his voice.

Muriel's mouth dropped open. "Already?"

"Already? You mean, you knew this would happen?"

She nodded. "I made a deal with Him that I could come down here and be with you, as long as we didn't do anything, you know, sinful. He said if I compromised my purity at all, that I would be on my own down here, that He'd no longer protect me."

"Protect you?"

"Angels need the Light of God surrounding them when they come to Earth. You couldn't see it, but I had it all around me, like a bubble, up until we started...you know. The Light went away then. I knew it would, but I just couldn't help myself. I missed you so much after--"

She slapped her hand to her mouth and lowered her head.

"Muriel, what's wrong?"

She brought her hand away. In her palm was a fistful of bloody teeth.

"That prick," Larry said. "He was an asshole when I was up there, and He's an asshole now."

"Thish ish jus da bee-inning," Muriel said. "Ahl kheep fawwing apaht en-tail Ah'm nuffing."

She broke down sobbing.

"The hell you will," Larry said, carefully wrapping his arms around her. He pulled her head to his chest and laid his chin on her scalp, which he only now noticed had several bald spots where hunks of her yellow hair had fallen out.

His eyes wandered blankly around his sparsely decorated, and frankly filthy, living room as he tried to think. The piles of fast-food wrappers on the coffee table and the beer bottles strewn on the floor wouldn't hold any answers, but it was better than looking down at what was happening to the love of his afterlife.

Then his eyes found the small white bookshelf sitting against the wall of the counter that stood between the living room and the kitchen. Never much of a reader, Larry had only bought the bookshelf after his release from the hospital. Determined to find a way to get back in touch with Muriel, he'd scoured every chain- and used-bookstore, buying up every book about contacting spirits and communicating with other realms. He'd visited university libraries and stolen dusty tomes. As it turned out, though, there was very little written about getting in touch with angels. Most of the writers, it seemed, were more interested in summoning demons and communing with the underworld. One of the ancient volumes he'd stolen even contained a section detailing rituals for raising Lucifer himself for the purpose of making deals with him.

It was that volume that Larry's eyes now zeroed in on. He thought The hell you will, indeed.

* * * *

Paul was once again, or still, sitting in the wooden glider outside the Bing Bang Boom Tavern when Larry and the beautiful lady he'd approached the week before strolled through the parking lot, hand-in-hand, and up to the porch.

"Well, lookee here."

"How goes it, Paul?" Larry said. There was a smile on his face the old man hadn't seen in months, and a light in his eyes he'd never seen.

"Just taking in the fresh air," Paul said, and took a drag off of his full-flavored Winston. "Now, are you going to introduce me properly to your lady-friend, or do I need to call one of them psychic hotlines?"

The couple laughed in unison.

"Paul, this is Muriel. Muriel, Paul."

Larry's new lady-friend stepped forward and shook Paul's hand and said it was nice to meet him. Her own hand was warm, as if she'd been working in the sun, although the sun had set behind the tavern several hours ago.

"Pleasure's the same, Muriel. Say, am I just a few Millers too deep, or has your hair changed color since the last time I saw you?"

Muriel grinned. "The innocent blonde look wasn't doing me any favors, so I made a few changes with Larry's help."

She ran her fingers through her fiery-red hair. Paul couldn't have said for sure later on, but there seemed to be a couple of bumps protruding from the girl's forehead.

"I see. Well, don't let me keep you two any longer. It's good to meet you, Muriel. Larry, don't get too drunk."

Larry chuckled and placed his hand on the small of Muriel's back.

"Just here for the pool tables, Paul. My drinking days are over."

The couple turned toward the tavern entrance. As Larry held the door open for Muriel, Paul let his eyes drift down to sneak a peek at the little lady's ass. The next second, he choked on the swig he was taking from his near-empty longneck, and beer came out of his nose. The sight of the woman's red, forked tail had caught him off guard.