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Jophiel felt high off adrenaline, a cackling ricochet from his chest.
Sandalphon was trapped, squattish and wedged within a circuit framework of electrical currents, he was currently mere electrons flowing through the conductive pathways of South London’s mobile phone network. He was certainly unleashing a torrent of profanities to Jophiel in the vast echo chamber of his confinement—a prisoner trapped in a vintage voicemail machine.
Ah well. One less angel for war.
For a fleeting moment, Jophiel allowed himself to forget the gravity of his current situation, a smug exhale escaping through his nostrils. ‘Not bad,’ he mused to himself.
There were myriad ways he could spin this tale into a plausible denial. Jophiel was always good at creating a spin. He could feign ignorance, play the role of an idiot who had never even heard of a telephone.
After all, who was he, a mere celestial craftsman sculpting stars, to comprehend the intricacies of trapping a blathering sod in a humble voicemail box? He just made pretty lights in the sky.
It didn’t matter, excuses were excuses, and soon he would be booking it towards Alpha Centauri.
Hopping down from the base of his wing chair, Jophiel’s foot made the careless blunder of missing out on the marbled floor, tripping him up and snapping his spine straight.
Something felt wrong.
He shifted his corporeal-not-body’s weight from foot to foot. That wasn’t it. Whatever it was, it was all equally uncomfortable. He found himself gazing into the distance, his form swaying slightly, reminiscent of a fox caught in the headlights of a suburban one-way street. Odd. Very, incredibly, odd.
A horrid malaise began to set in the underbelly of Jophiel’s celestial core, knotted and weaved through the dermis of his being.
What was this? Was it the sounding horn, the call for war? Had it somehow been found and signalled? No, it couldn’t be that. He couldn’t even remember where he ended up hiding it – his brain was foggy. It didn't feel like a discovery, but rather a relentless tug, a void steadily expanding within him, as if something essential was being inexorably stripped away.
He was missing something; he couldn’t feel something. He’s an angel, for someone’s sake, he’s supposed to be feeling –
Suddenly, Jophiel was hit with a thundering nausea. A coughing-gag escaping his lungs as he gripped his loungeroom table.
Love.
Jophiel couldn’t feel it anymore.
He found himself becoming devoid of love. It was abrupt, emptying, and unforgiving. Its warmth extinguished as a pail to a hearth.
The absence he was experiencing wasn’t from humanity - it wasn't the amorous aura emanating from couples entwined, nor the fondness detected for a favoured film or melody. No, instead it was the pervasive emotion which once enveloped him in its mundanity, stretching endlessly through his existence, radius boundless in transparency, now vanished without a trace.
If he couldn't feel love, and he hadn't fallen...
His mind churned with vivid images of a particular being, a particular fallen angel. Foolish and reckless, a barn owl with their heart laid bare for all to trample upon, and Jophiel couldn't bear the thought.
Jophiel swallowed hard, bile rising in his throat. Azazel.
What had they done?
His corporation took him to the Bentley faster than his mind thought to be inside it.
They couldn’t be - no, it wasn’t possible. There wasn’t enough capacity in the universe to swallow the thought. If Jophiel wasn’t feeling their love, their devotion, then the only reality he could accept was that Azazel had finally decided not to give it anymore. Their fight leaving Jophiel undeserving, his last real words to the demon creating finality.
The Bentley thrummed with urgency, sensing the gravity of the situation. Miracles were given with a soundless utterance as pedestrians were fortunately curbed from casualty.
That stupid bird. That thoughtless, breathtaking, self-sacrificing, beautiful, feathered creature. It was the only outcome Jophiel could accept; the pain of the love which had once been so endlessly given suddenly gone for him was better than the pain of Azazel lost.
Perhaps the demon finally figured it out? As far as Jophiel was concerned, Azazel had never been aware to their lack of control; their love had always been so overpowering that Jophiel had adjusted his breathing accordingly. It became the new normality, unsuspecting in its longevity. If Jophiel wasn't actively seeking it out with his own selfish desires, he might not have even noticed, assumed it was a part of the landscape to life. Visiting angels didn’t even notice, the love so embedded in earths atmosphere.
Azazel's love was so engulfing that it obscured everything else, like being unable to see the forest for the trees. And it was gone.
Sirens pierced the air, their wails slicing through Jophiel's contemplations like a hot knife through butter. With a determined effort, he diverted his attention away from the cacophony. In the bustling metropolis of London, such emergencies were as common as pigeons in Trafalgar Square. Ignoring them was practically a survival skill. But as the fire trucks sped past him, their destination unmistakable, Jophiel's unease grew. The bookshop, that sanctuary of quiet and solace, now seemed to be in the path of the approaching calamity.
Jophiel angled his phone from his pocket, his foot pressing harder into the accelerator. With a swift swipe, he accessed Azazel's profile, an owl nestled safely appeared on his screen. A pang of longing surged through him, tightening his throat with anxiety as he dialled. The echoing dial tone seemed to mock his apprehension, intensifying the sense of urgency pulsating through him.
"Answer, Azazel,"
Ringing continued.
"Angel, please," Jophiel muttered through clenched teeth, the taste of worry coating his tongue with an acidic tang.
The phone rang out.
As the Bentley skidded to a halt, Jophiel was met with the chaotic scene of fire trucks wrestling with a towering inferno consuming the bookstore. Their efforts to breach the crumbling doorframe seemed futile against the relentless blaze. Jophiel's mind ground to a halt, choked by the harsh reality that his body struggled to acknowledge.
"Are you the owner?" a firefighter's voice pierced through the chaos behind him.
"Does it look like I run a bookshop?" Jophiel snapped back, not pausing to consider that, frankly yes, he did very well did look the type. Albeit a more gentrified, high-end, coffee-and-plants sort. Nevertheless, he stormed through the crumbling facade of the bookstore, paying no heed to the now muffled warnings echoing behind him.
"Hello? Azazel! For Go—, for Sa—, for somebody's sake! Where are you!"
In that moment, Jophiel felt like he could settle for just about anything – the sound of Azazel's disappointment, a glare of anger or mistrust. Anything that involved Azazel being whole and present in this very moment would qualify as the highlight of Jophiel's prehistoric existence.
Instead, Jophiel found himself engulfed in flames. Shelves buckled and collapsed under their own weight, while paper disintegrated into ash amidst the swirling inferno. Coughing into his elbow, Jophiel struggled to discern anything through the smoke and haze.
A sensation of water lapped at his feet, and with a muffled hiss, he jerked his foot away. Surely it was just the firefighting efforts. The thought of hellfire or holy water only made his celestial essence claw at the edges of his throat, threatening to unleash a primal scream from depths he knew wouldn’t sound human.
Azazel's expression as they handed over the lighter of hellfire haunted Jophiel's thoughts. Those endless, warm eyes, the soft feathers adorning their head, the scarred hands clasped in prayer. Hands that Jophiel had never had the chance to hold, to soothe, to make new promises upon himself.
All the unsaid words hung heavy in the air with the smoke, a weight that had grown over six millennia of companionship. They had spoken volumes to each other, yet in the grand scheme, it would never be enough.
They knew so much of one another and yet so little, if only they had communicated all along.
"You took my best friend!" he screamed, beckoning to the sky.
Amidst the debris, Jophiel found himself engulfed by a sudden need to have answers to trivial inquiries, each one a futile attempt to grasp at the essence of their bond. What colour was Azazel’s favourite? Did they enjoy being in owl form? Were they to truly believe Jophiel would never think of them again?
Kneeling amidst the wreckage, Jophiel felt the weight of all those unspoken sentiments crush him.
“Oh. You’re gone –” he whispered, fingers clawing at his middle.
"All they ever did was believe in you, in the so-called 'great plan'. Bastards! All of you!"
As Jophiel went to lift himself from the bookshop floor, his eyes caught onto something. A book which still was holding shape. That book – the one that was misplaced in the back of the Bentley. ‘The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch’ was embossed with golden lettering on the front.
Jophiel was keenly aware of the significance the book held for Azazel; prophecies had always been a fascination for the demon. He could still fondly recall the sensation of treading upon desecrated ground in pursuit of a bundle of prophecies. The affection to the memory soured.
Well, when one is mourning who can judge if they take something to salvage? It would be all he had left.
Clutching the book with desperate fingers, Jophiel sought solace in its weight, a tangible lifeline.
Loneliness began to seep into his being, a vast emptiness that only a being as ancient as himself, one who had witnessed the birth of worlds, could truly comprehend in its magnitude.
A pub, he decided. Get completely smashed, drown his sorrows without reservation in his own end-of-times party for one. After all, what was the indulgence of sin without a demon to tempt him? Or more accurately, a demon to tempt him away.
Leaving the smouldering ruins of the once-beloved bookshop behind, Jophiel trudged on, knowing with a profound weight that he was for once completely and utterly alone.