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Stained.

There were those five men in a pub.

It was a rural kind of pub at the edge of nowhere, a geographic point that almost exactly as far away from anything that could be called a city as possible. It was the kind of place where exotic things like cappucino and Mai-Tai had definitely been heard of but were best appreciated when they happened to other places. It was that kind of place.

It was getting late but no one seemed to mind. The five men were drinking and talking, and they did not wish to be disturbed, the girl who restocked their beer being the only exception.

"They came down on their opponents like Roman soldiers," said the old man. "The others, they never had a chance. They fought bravely of course, you had to give them that. But in the end it was just a matter a time. And believe me, it didn’t take long. They were toyed with for a while, but then it was like a stormed had taken the field. Everyone was screaming, including me. It was a massacre." He drowned a significant amount of beer with one gulp, wiped off his beard and smiled with nostalgia. "It was beautiful. Simply beautiful. I remember it as if it happened yesterday. And I’ve never seen anything like it ever again."

The other men were looking at him, their arms resting on the wood of the large table, nodding solemnly. It was a deep moment.

When the silence started to become a little too solemn, the brutish fellow with the stubble beard spoke. "Yeah. Football was just different back then."

Everyone mumbled something affirmative.

"I mean," he continued a little louder, "what happened to the game itself? The players have turned into nannies. ‘Oh, I stumbled, I fell, I hurt one of my sweet hairless legs.’" He made a disgusted face. "It’s embarrassing!"

"It got worse since that guy with the hairy nose took command," said the blond one who was a regular football player himself and therefore felt slightly insulted, but actually not that much. "He just keeps messing things up. Our boys will not get anywhere with that trainer. You hear what I say!"

"Yeah," the brute man agreed. "Trainer. Bloody bastard."

"Yeah, yeah," the fat boy agreed enthusiastically. "It’s the trainer’s fault! You bet! They should be outlawed."

"Are you out of your mind?" the brute man shouted at the boy, who was not really a boy anymore but was rather often treated like one. "You have no fucking clue! Without our last trainer our games would have gone down the toilet! So don’t give me that shit!"

Instinctively the boy backed away and the man calmed down again.

"You can’t just generalise things," he added.

"You know, they’re not the real problem anyway," said the blond, "it’s them bloody politicians.."

"Damn straight!" brute growled. "They think they came to Earth with gold eggs up their bottoms! Sodding pigs."

"Damn right!" fat boy admitted. "That dirty bunch, they’re the source of all that shit! All of them-"

"Except him," the old man interrupted between gulps.

The others grew silent, except for the fifth man who had been silent all along. Then the others nodded.

"Yeah. Right. Him," admitted brute.

Boy was almost afraid to ask but he just couldn’t help it.

"Him?"

"Him," Brute told him with barely constrained anger. "Him! Our minister president, you moron!"

"Oh." Fat boy swallowed. "But what about that guy with the bushy eyebrows?"

"What?" Spittle flew from Brute’s lips as his eyes opened to enormous seizes. "That bloody fucking son of a bitch finance minister? That’s enough! I’m gonna-"

"I think he means the other guy. The... ah... foreign minister," Blond suggested.

"Oh." Brute furrowed his brows. "Yeah, that one’s all right, too."

With some disappointment the Old Man inspected his empty glass. And since he did not have much else to do with his mouth at that moment he spoke.

"All in all," he spoke, "it’s as much a matter of belief as anything. Belief as anything."

The remaining men nodded, except for Brute who obviously did not share that opinion.

"I don’t believe in anything these days. Belief is just an excuse for stupidity."

"Why do you still go to church then?" asked Blond.

Brute’s fist came down hard on the wood, shaking the table.

"Because I’m fucking catholic, you nitwit!"

Blond looked at him for a moment, puzzled. "You don’t have to scream at me."

"Oh. Sorry."

"That was really unnecessary."

"I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to."

"Jeez," Blond gestured at his glass where the remaining beer was slowly recovering from the shock. "And you almost spilled my beer. That’s not nice."

"Really sorry, mate. Really," Brute repeated.

"Ok then. I believe you. So ah. You were saying?"

The wrinkles in Brute’s face became deeper as he tried to regain his initial thought.

"I think you were talking about belief?" Fat Boy suggested carefully.

"Ah! Yes, thank you!" Brute exclaimed. "And now shut up! As I was saying. There is no place for belief in this world. I mean, what is there left to believe in? Miracles? Angels? Santa Clause?"

"Yeah, wheels and fire," Blond shook his head dismissively. "What’s up with that?"

"Right. Them Cherubim, the first celestial choir."

"The second, actually," Fat Boy remarked.

"What?"

With a sigh Fat Boy put down his glass.

"The Cherubim, they’re the second choir of angels. The Seraphim are considered the first, the highest in rank, closest to God, according to Dyonisus Areopagita. They have three pairs of wings, while the Cherubim only have two which makes it easy to distinguish them. Except in the book of Meos where the illustrator got it all wrong."

Brute gave him a long look.

"That’s my son," Brute said then, proudly. "How come you’re so smart? You must have your mother’s genes."

Fat Boy smiled. "The physical ones for sure."

"No, I’m serious. You’re the smartest. Without you these evenings would really get dull."

Everyone else mumbled approval.

"But why do they need three pairs of wings?" Blond asked.

The boy shrugged. "I don’t know. That’s angels for you."

"Yeah, you never know what they’re up to," Brute admitted.

"I had sex with an angel once," said the fifth man who hadn’t spoken until now. It made everyone else stir uncomfortably.

"It was good," he added and turned back to his drink. A silence followed in which the other four men stared guiltily at their glasses.

+++

The TV set hummed rhythmically. The voices coming out of it were low but that didn’t matter. Gabriel had good ears. He heard everything. And it was better this way. The walls of this apartment were paper thin. Maybe the dirt that clang to it was the only true buffer.

It was a replay from earlier today, one of those afternoon talk shows that always made their guests look silly. But for some reason they still kept coming, as if they didn’t know they’d be made fun off, or worse, openly attacked. They kept trying.

I didn’t know I could get pregnant from him, said the obese girl. But what’s going to happen to the child now? I’m too sexy to have a child!

It’s not the child’s fault that you weren’t careful, said the middle-aged man. You could have asked him right away if he was gay or not. Now it’s a little too late.

But, said the obese girl, sobbing. But he is an imbecile! What if the child is going to be dumb?

It’s all in God’s hands, said the angel. It is out of your reach now. Take faith and make the best out of the situation. Accept the child as your own and be a good mother. That is all you can do.

Oh Christ, moaned the middle-aged man. What do you know? You have no idea what it means to be pregnant. How it is to feel the child grow inside you. The insecurity, the shame, the guilt. What do you know?

I know almost everything, the angel replied. Only the Lord himself has more knowledge.

Oh yeah? asked the middle-aged man. Then why don’t you take your knowledge and fly back to heaven, or have you forgotten where it is?

A few people in the audience applauded. The angel cried.

Hey, you bastard, said a woman in the audience. Don’t you care about his feelings at all?

Again people applauded. Some different, some the same.

Feelings? the middle-aged man shouted. Feeling? Did he care about her feelings? Did he?

Maybe he can’t, suggested the host. He was a middle-aged man as well. In complete silence the angel was still crying. Maybe he just can’t.

The TV had long been turned off. It didn’t matter. It was already in his mind. All in his infinite mind from which there was no escape. Angels couldn’t forget. It was one of the downsides of being immortal.

Therefore it didn’t matter what happened or had happened. In his mind it was all the same. Time did not exist for angels, everything happened at once. The past is never over. He remembered everything as if it took place right that second. The past was still happening.

The smell was still there. The dripping sounds as he entered the alley that night. The way his feathers had brushed the bricks. How their sweat rained down on him. The sudden realisation that he was not alone. How their fluids dried on his skin and mixed with the street dirt. He didn’t know what fear was. Nobody had ever taught him to know fear. That’s why he did not feel it when the six of them came closer. One of their baseball bats broke over his skull. There was pain but no fear yet. There wasn’t until they started penetrating him. And he wished that at least their voices would go away.

The only thing Gabriel could not remember was paradise. It was gone, like it had never existed, and in a way it hadn’t. That was the only way it worked, for to remember paradise was to be there. And Gabriel wasn’t. He only knew that he had known it once. And that it had been taken away from him.

But except for that his memory was flawless.

+++

The word had reached everyone, as was to be expected. It was, after all, a part of their very being.

At His throne they gathered and listened attentively. Their numbers were vast but not endless, far from it. Nothing that could be counted was every endless.

And then there was Him. God. The creator of this universe and ultimately all its creatures. Even for a god he looked very old and experienced. His wisdom was endless because it was the only possible measurement. Everything else was inevitably beneath him.

"The time has come," he said with his usual calm voice. "Ever since I created this world in my image, faith has been declining. Not only the faith in me or you but the faith in creation itself. I have been watching. Quietly and without intervening. But I do not see it falling back into place by itself. We need to act."

His ultimate words rang in their ears and hearts. Each one was perfect and complete. That too was inevitable. Perfection was what he was.

"We have to restore their belief. The belief in us, the world and in themselves. It is necessary, and we can no longer wait. Therefore I decided that some of us shall descend to Earth."

The last words were received like a clap of thunder. Some angels did not know what they meant, others were very worried. However, no one understood the consequences. Maybe not even He.

"It is inevitable," he continued. "The messengers we send will act as living proof for our existence. Their presence alone will be enough to rekindle the faith and make people believe again. For the first time men will know without any doubt that we exist. That I exist. No longer will they be able to disregard that fact." There was a sound like he was breathing.

"Life will be changed forever."

That was what he said. Even though the angels cannot remember anything else that happened that day, they all remember the words. It was the last time they had heard His voice.

+++

By night the city stopped appearing and returned to the simplicity of being. It displayed its twisted visage with undisguised honesty. So many things did not change.

The street was lined with hookers. Some with cars conveniently parked nearby, some without. A non-blonde offered Gabriel what she called a short glimpse into paradise. He could smell her fake hair from a hundred yards away. And there was nothing elysian about it.

Some presented themselves behind colourfully lit glass, teasing and gesturing at by-passers. There were signs and offers. And there were red cushions with cigarette burns spread over them.

A dark haired angel with elaborately painted wings lowered his head as Gabriel went by, offering the glamour of his body to the next person passing. Gabriel recognised him but did not call him by his name. The greatest have fallen the lowest, he thought.

In the distance the towers glanced back at them. Gabriel followed the path deeper into the city like he had planned.

From the shadows a hand grabbed his and wouldn’t let go. Devastated eyes that had once gazed into eternity now looked for a trace of comfort. The hand was cold and the creature’s wings smelled like cat piss, the feathers trembling in an unhealthy rhythm.

"Help me," it whispered. "Come on, help me out, my brother. We need to take care of each other now. So far from our father, from Him..."

Gabriel casually inspected the angel’s arms. They were covered with wounds from infected needles. Substances as these could induce memories of bliss that every angel knew. But they could not take you away from this world. There was no escape from here, not even temporally.

Angels did not dream.

With resignation Gabriel watched a maggot fall from his brother’s brilliant grey hair. It had a foul odour and was streaked with dirt. But you could still see that it belonged to a celestial being. Bits had been carefully cut off, others simply ripped out.

"Please make it stop," the fallen angel pleaded. "Undo it. Save me."

"I can’t," said Gabriel. This was what they were given. There was no way out and no way back.

Angels did not die.

+++

It was not as they had thought it would be. In the light of the eternal city they had believed that they would be welcomed. That people would approach them, eager to hear the words of the Creator and rediscover their faith. That the descended angels would be like torches, burning bright with God’s love in the desolate darkness of this world.

But that light was gone the moment their feet touched Earth. The curdle that connected them to paradise broke. And darkness fell around them.

It was then that they understood what it meant to be on Earth. To be cast down and bound to the soil. And they understood in the same moment that it was irreversible. It was forever.

Humans were curious creatures, and they started to examine their new arrivals. Arrivals, they called them. Not visitors. And they began to explore their boundaries and their limits. They were introduced to fear, desperation, lust, sickness, betrayal, pain and hate. During the first months of their stay they demanded it to stop. Then they cried. Then they pleaded. It took the angels a while to understand that it would not stop. Not ever again.

Soon people grew tired of them and accepted their presence as a normal thing. Angels were common. Though not everyone called them angels. Some named them aliens, some fairies, others referred to them as non-humans and for some they were simply gods. Common gods.

After a short orientation phase it was mostly over. Humans were tolerant beings. They

readily accepted the inevitable. Questions were asked. Questions like "Is there a god?", and when the angels answered with yes, people started arguing if this was a good thing or a bad thing. Although some quickly came to the conclusion that it did not really matter. What mattered was "down here", not "up there". And that was when the angels finally understood. Their mission had failed, it had been doomed to fail from the very beginning.

Heaven was still a matter of belief. But the angels had become a matter of fact.

+++

Gabriel stood in front of the cathedral, the city’s tallest house of God. It had been built in good faith, he knew, and with the strength of belief guiding the process. There was even a statue of him inside which bore a remarkable resemblance.

The doors were closed.

With growing intensity he started knocking, then banging on the wood.

"Let me in!" he shouted. "I demand entrance! I want you to know what you have done to us! I want to know if it was worth it! If our existence was worth it!"

A window opened on the nearby church house.

"Stop it right there," said the priest. "Or I’ll call the police. This is a place of silence."

"Cursed silence!" shouted the angel. "I won’t be silent any longer! I demand an answer! I am Gabriel, the sixth of the archangeloi, set over Paradise, the Seraphim and the Cherubim! I am Heaven’s warrior! Let me in! And make Him answer me!"

"Go away! The only angels are heaven’s. You are not an angel." said the priest, visibly uncomfortable before he closed the window.

Angry tears welled up in Gabriel’s eyes. He continued banging on the door.

"Let me in!" he screamed.

"He won’t hear you," said a voice next to him.

It belonged to an unwashed man with a beard as filthy as his clothes who sat in one of the cathedral’s many small corners, leaning against the cold brick wall. Gabriel must have overlooked him.

"He won’t hear you, and if he does he’ll pretend he doesn’t," said the man. "So shut up and let other folks get some sleep."

Gabriel looked at him, smelled the dirt and the grime. It disgusted him just as much as everything in this world disgusted him. The dirt on his own feet disgusted him. He had spent weeks trying to get that dirt off his soles, his skin. But it was everywhere, even the air itself was filled with dirt. And Gabriel had never been able to feel clean again. Instead he felt impure. Stained.

"Open the door!"

"Forgodsake, man!" The dirty man shifted in his position without getting up and gazed directly at Gabriel.

"He is not listening to you. No one is listening to you. Now shut the hell up and hope that he didn’t call the sodding cops yet."

"But he is supposed to listen! He is supposed to listen to us."

"Well, welcome to the real world."

With his pride fuelled by frustration Gabriel stepped in front of him and spread his wings.

"I am angel."

The man nodded. "Good for you."

"This house was built in my name. The people are supposed to serve God, to serve me. They are supposed to believe."

"And believe in what exactly?" asked the man. "In you? Why would anyone do that? Do they believe in tigers, cars or the sun? What is there to believe?"

Gabriel stared at him.

"Are you saying that they don’t believe in us because they know we exist?"

"For a being of infinite wisdom and grace you are remarkably stupid," the man replied. "People believe in things that are too strange or too great for them to understand. Things that can be understood are not worth any belief. They bear no wonder, no sense of the unreachable. People do not believe despite their lack of knowledge but because of it. That’s what it’s all about. Belief can never be proven right or wrong, that’s why it is so powerful. It can be anything. It can be greater, bigger, brighter, more beautiful and powerful and with more bloody cherries on top than anyone can imagine. There are no limits to belief."

The man eyed the angel’s wings curiously.

"Existence, on the other hand, is very limiting," he added.

Gabriel’s expression had turned blank. He knew all this, that’s what made it so much worse. People wouldn’t believe in something that was right in front of them because it simply wasn’t necessary. It would be like selling yourself under price.

Cheap, thought the angel, looking back at the street he had come from. There were some red lights in the distance.

"There is no sun."

"What?" The dirty man might have fallen asleep in the silence.

"There is no sun," Gabriel repeated. "There was one, once. It burned down a while ago and had to be replaced with... something else."

The man blinked.

"What do you mean? Something else?"

A slight smile played on Gabriel’s lips.

Then the police cars arrived. The lights were flickering over Gabriel’s perfectly pale skin. Half a dozen men in uniforms appeared, baring weapons. In the brief moments of disorder he could hear the dirty man slip away into the dark.

"Oh no, not one of those," Gabriel heard someone say. He didn’t even bother to react when a cop positioned himself in front of him. The others were pointing their weapons at him. It was all so fitting.

"Careful, mister," said the first one. "What are you doing here in the middle of the night?"

"I was looking for answers," said the angel.

"Well, you’re done for tonight. I’m afraid you’ll have to come with us, sir."

"And careful with the wings." There was laughter.

"It’s all right," said the angel. "I found what I was looking for. You know, sometimes things are so obvious and you still don’t see them coming. Like when I was told that you don’t believe in us because we are real. You studied us, you examined us, you cut us open, until all your curiosity was satisfied. Until you had all the answers. Now you know us. And with your growing knowledge you believe in less and less."

With a move that could barely be traced by human eyes Gabriel grabbed the cop’s head and twisted it until he was staring back at his comrades. There was a high pitched snap. With the other hand he lifted the gun he had just taken before the dead body had reached the ground.

"Until there is nothing left to believe in."

"Hold it right there!" shouted another cop before he dropped dead like three others. Blood was dripping down a hole right above his eyes.

The remaining officer stared at what was left of his team.

"Oh god," he whispered. Then his eyes searched for the killer who was already standing behind him. He didn’t even have time to turn around before Gabriel grabbed him by the neck.

"What is there left to believe when you have seen paradise?" said the angel calmly. "No one ever thought about this, did they? There is nothing to believe in. And nothing to lose."

The cop was slowly losing his last breath.

"You’re... going... to hell..." he croaked.

The angel nodded. "I'm way ahead of you."

Gabriel dropped the body and left. He had all the answers he needed. In fact, he had all the answers there were. Now it was up to him what to make of it.

In the darkness a pair of dirty hands lit a cigarette. There was a sigh of relief.

"Now, that didn’t take long."

The End.