James Hutchins (0roborus) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2020-10-11 17:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | james hutchins, ~phanuel |
Heaven and Hell
Who: Phanuel and James
What: Griping, talking, shots
When: Present, Evening
Where: Searchlight
Rating: Low (Language)
James stood at the base of a trailer’s steps, eying a pink piece of lawn decor. Christmas lights he expected; they jived with the angel’s religion and probably looked killer when she was drunk on the lounge chair in her backyard. Plastic flamingos, less of a given. For a second, he wondered if Phanuel had moved out of town. He mounted the steps to the porch and gave the hot surface of the door three sharp raps, then stepped back to give her some space, if she bothered answering. James left his hands loose.
The sun dipped behind the low structures of town, bathing the side of the angel’s trailer in oranges and pinks. A light, dry breeze ruffled his clothes and hair and sent particles of sand skittering into the skirt of the trailer. “Phanuel?” he called. Anxious because he didn’t see movement in the windows, he started to walk the perimeter of the house. “Don’t be dead in there,” he mumbled.
She wished she was dead.
Those motherfucking plants -- the creeping devils she called them -- weren’t as easily destroyed with holy water. Nope. You had to dig up ALL the roots and burn them, otherwise they kept coming back. And she was so fucking tired of feeling tired and hungover and incoherent due to their intrusion.
And the last thing she felt like doing, in the hot desert air and setting sun, was wedding them from her backyard. Not to mention Phanuel had to hire a plumber to come and clear the pipes. That was three days she wouldn’t get back.
Elfleda be damned. This angel would get payback, even if it took weeks. Months. Eons.
She looked up as she heard her name spoken, certain it wasn’t Derek’s flamingo that called out to her.
Phanuel got up and dusted off the soil from her trousers, sinking the trowel she held back into the dirt.
The roofline of the trailer pitched a sharp angle of shadow onto the ground. It took James’ eyes time to adjust to the gray as he rounded the corner, following the breadcrumbs of disrupted soil, gaping holes in the hard-packed earth with mounds of dirt around them. It looked like a wild animal had been digging for bones. James picked out a blonde-headed figure knocking dirt from the knees of her pants. His relief at finding out she wasn’t decaying in a recliner was quickly checked from his face.
“What are you, part gopher now?” James looked behind him, back at Phanuel.
“Bloody weeds,” the angel groused. “Present from the Emissary.” She wiped her brow with the back of her hand. Streaks of dirt smeared across her forehead. “Would’ve preferred gophers. They’re more intelligent.”
Phanuel stared at Hutchins. “But I don’t think you came here with landscaping tips. Unless that’s a gardening tool in your pocket.”
James looked at the front of his jeans, then back at Phanuel. “You checking me out?” he asked dryly.
He ignored her question, took a few steps farther and crouched in the mess of her plot of land, getting his boots dusty. James cupped a hand and scooped up what was ordinarily unfertile soil to inspect the sediment. The consistency didn’t strike him as strange, but it looked darker than he was accustomed to, and he had some recent experience with large holes in the ground. Pivoting on the balls of his feet, James picked up a discarded piece of plant, asking himself how something that green could flourish in Searchlight. As he sat there thumbing the leaves, he remembered what a soft, polished voice had told him she’d been doing a few weeks ago: ‘Just some gardening…’
“More intelligent than what?” he asked, holding onto the plant. “The weeds or Elfleda? I’d say she’s pretty smart.” He weighted the drooping stalk against his palm. There was magic coming off it. He could feel it in the nerves of his arm.
“She got this past me. Never felt an otherworldly presence creep up on the trailer, so that makes me think she had help.”
Phanuel gathered the upended plants and carried them to a makeshift stone fire pit. “You’re welcome to that one, Hutchins,” she continued, “in case you wanna confirm my theory. After all, you’re the magic expert.”
The buds, stems, roots and vines were tossed into the pit. She knelt next to it and picked up a small can of butane, squirting the contents over the offending flora. Her hand then hovered over the contents, and within moments the light from her fingers ignited the fluid. “Fire good.”
James cuffed a trickle of sweat from his temple. “Not always.” The scent of burning chemicals filled his nose as fire curled and darkened the edges of her harvest. He tracked the red-orange embers up a long shoot. Heat and metaphysical energy distorted the air above the pit and the warlock knelt beside her to watch the landscape through the warbly haze of a disrupted atmosphere. “In ritual, fire releases magic,” he murmured. “There’s probably a reason they like it so much in Hell. I wouldn’t breathe too deep.” James turned to study the strong angles and planes of Phanuel’s profile.
“Great, so I’m probably aerosolizing this and it’s gonna infect the entire town. Wonderful.” And yet, Phanuel let the fire burn. It was… cathartic.
She caught Hutchins’ stare. “You want me to sign an eight by ten?”
“Would you?” James asked. “Make it out to the Heretic, if you don’t mind.” He rested his arms on his knee and kept looking.
“You spell that A-S-S-H-O-L-E, yeah?”
For an angel who claimed to dislike humans, she loved to wallow in their vices. James gave her a smile. “You learn to spell like that before or after you quit your God?”
He straightened his legs and stood up. The leaves of the uprooted plant had life in them yet, and he felt the stem of one nestle against his wrist, sensing a kinship of energy on the subtlest wavelength. He rotated his arm so that it fell away before she’d see it.
“I came to make sure you weren’t dead or incapacitated,” he said. “It hasn’t exactly been quiet around here. The national guard rolled down your street and you didn’t so much as turn on a porch light. Now I know why.”
“And you know how much I love a parade,” Phanuel retorted. “Yeah, this had me pretty wrapped up for a while. And it interfered with my landline, so I couldn’t call you to come dig me out.”
When it came to technology, the Angel preferred to be fashionably late to the party. She hadn’t owned a television until the late nineteen eighties, and that was mostly so she could watch the news footage of the Berlin Wall coming down. Granted, she was soon hooked on soap operas, most notably Days Of Our Lives (which she’d recently given up for Lent, and didn’t bother to pick up again; it just wasn’t the same without Kristen Alfonso’s Hope).
Phanuel didn’t trust cell phones; she’d seen too many police procedurals that showed how the protagonist would track peoples’ movements by hacking into their GPS. Barely anyone knew where she lived, let alone where she went, and she preferred to keep it that way. But recent events proved how it would have come in handy. She sighed. “Guess this means I have to break down and get a damned cell phone, doesn’t it?”
“It might help, if you’re serious about being useful to the people in this town.” James walked out into the yard in the dwindling light, reached up and touched the network of lights she’d hung. “I’m pretty sure your magic garden was a parting gift for helping out that siren. I saw Penny, by the way,” he said, glancing back at her. “She looks good. Not a trace of anything on her. Well.” James corrected himself. “Not from Elfleda, at least. I couldn’t say about the rest. At the end of the day, she is a carnivore.”
“I figured. That’s where Sammy comes in”. She thumbed towards the pink flamingo out front of her double-wide. “He’s no Gerald though. Just a plastic lawn ornament. But I like him just the same. Really classes the place up, don’t you think?” The smirk on Phanuel’s face made it impossible to see if she was serious.
“So, is that what brought you by? Just checking on my welfare? No ulterior motive?” Phanuel waved a hand. “I’m not complaining, or being snarky. It’s… a nice change of pace, after recent events, to have a living thing at my trailer that doesn’t want to strangle me, or ask me for feathers. Which reminds me, I should probably look in on Henry.”
Looking at the ground that passed under him as he meandered in her backyard, James shook his head no at the question about ulterior motives. But then he gave it a second read, maybe because she qualified it, and when he did, he didn’t like what he heard. Especially the part about the feather.
James’ head ticked right and he gave her an irritated look. Phanuel, who puffed up with pride over being an angel, got those same feathers ruffled when too many people stopped by her house, because they might actually expect something of someone with her stature. He wondered what Phanuel was like in her heyday. He wanted to say, ‘You’re either an angel or you aren’t.’ But he stopped himself.
“Celeste used that feather to pull Elfleda’s poison out of a vampire while you were on sabbatical,” he said, shaking the plant off his hand and putting it in the lounge. He tucked his hands in his pockets. “She’s getting stronger. With magic. Not just the power of prayer.”
“Sabbatical?” It was her turn to provide Hutchins an irritated look. “I was held hostage in my own home because of Elfleda’s little housewarming-- no, not going down that road.” Phanuel blew out the air from her lungs. “I said something that pissed you off. I apologize.”
Fuck, she could use a drink. She hadn’t had a drop in three days, and the detoxing was starting to fray her nerves.
“An apology?” James snorted. “You really do feel like shit.”
He walked over to her trailer and picked up a larger shovel. James started dumping dirt back into the holes. “You know, there’s only two reasons she’d do this, and they’re on opposite extremes.” A cloud of dust puffed into the air. “Either you scored a gut punch, or you barely whiffed her and she wants to see if you can do better.” The metal blade of the shovel scraped across the ground to level it and he moved to the next. “You ever think about playing offense?”
“Have you met me?” It was an honest appraisal. “I’ve been on the defence since the Big Bang. It didn’t help that my life had been mapped out by my Father. And the one chance I had to join the fray during Armageddon was stripped away because He wants His Son to fight Belial, even though it’s literally written in stone that he and I were supposed to duke it out.”
“So what’s stopping you?” James asked. The garden tool spilled another pile of soil into a hole. “I can’t figure you out, Phanuel. You came down here and surrounded yourself with your Father’s creation, even though you’re a self-professed misanthrope.” He knocked a larger piece of rock into a hole with his boot. “You’re talking about being sidelined for the big fight when there’s a dozen smaller ones popping off around you.” James finished the row and leaned the weathered handle against the trailer. “You might have a front seat for something big, right here, in this town, but you’re not the one making plans.”
He pulled a splinter out of his palm.
There was a long, heavy pause. Thicker than the twilight Searchlight air. “Because I’m afraid to lose. Not just a battle. But people. It’s why I don’t let anyone get close.”
“You’ll lose them if you wait.” James approached the angel and stopped at arm’s length. “Most of us are mortal anyway. You’ve been watching people die and go... somewhere else, for thousands of years. If I’m in your shoes, there’s worse things than watching us die. Unless you want to admit most of us aren’t going where you’ve been.” He raised an eyebrow.
Phanuel arched an eyebrow in reply. “Maybe not you, Hutchins…”, she snorted.
The Angel drew in a breath. “I’ll buy a fucking cell phone.”
James laughed but it was a harsh sound. That one landed.
He looked at the indigo color of the sky over Searchlight and wondered how he ended up being friends with someone who couldn't make up her mind if he was decent or not. He kept his voice down and said, “The first time we met, you told me I was stupid and selfish, and you know? Part of me believed you so I got myself in check. Since then you’ve told me I was crazy for doing what I do, more times than I can count. But you didn’t have a problem knocking on my door when you needed to do something reckless.”
James went over to the lounge chair and picked up Fern’s plant. “I came over here to make sure you were okay and you called me an asshole who’s going to hell. That’s accurate.” He held up the weed for Phanuel to see, and this time he didn’t bother to hide its obvious affinity for him. “The Emissary called you an alcoholic wreck of a hermit which is also accurate. Get a phone or don’t. It’s up to you. I’m not sitting on my hands anymore.”
Fuck.
While she’d been contemplating next steps, and cleaning the mess around her abode, Elfleda chose the one person she considered a friend. While Phanuel was spewing rhetorical punishments on the Emissary, she’d claimed the Angel’s ally.
“You want me to join the fight? Then don’t play for her team.”
“There you go again. Assuming.” James let her watch the tiny tubes and spades of green flatten against the skin of his hand. “They’re dying. Things always want to die at home. They can feel it near me.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter if I burn things or say the words, because there’s nothing in me to exorcise. It’s a vibration around me.”
He looked at Phanuel. “If you don’t start using all that god-given power, and that goes for all the rest of them, too, I’m going to change my stance on not hanging onto it for myself.”
“No one’s meant to have that much power, James. It’ll end up crashing down over you. I’ve witnessed it.” Phanuel’s voice was reasoned, calm. “Pride goeth before the fall.”
“Were you looking in the mirror?” James asked. He looked from Phanuel’s dirt-smeared, human hands to the house and the isolation of the life she picked for herself. If this wasn’t a fall, he didn’t know what was. He couldn’t imagine the arrogance it took to be a believer— not just a believer but an integral part of it, the face of the Christian god, and leave.
It struck James that his friend might not be listening to what he was saying, too busy writing an inner monolog about what she was seeing, maybe, instead of interrogating it. But he didn’t come here for help, so it didn’t matter.
“You know that’s the first time you’ve called me James.” He took a step back from the shadow of the trailer and he could see, between the buildings, a little bit of the sun clinging to the hills on the west side of town. “I’m glad you’re alright. I am, too.”
“You might not believe this, but I care about you.” She wondered what effect the Emissary had on him. Not an infection; it was something deeper. Not something she could cleanse. Not that he asked her to, or wanted. “Something you said earlier. A vibration around you. What did you mean?”
“I dunno. It’s like the smoke you can’t get out of your clothes after a house fire. It’s faded but it’s still there. But I doubt a human would pick it up.” James reached up and took a loose cord out of his shirt, one with a crystal on the end. He pulled it over his head and set it and the plant on the ground next to his boot. He held out his hand for Phanuel. “You’re sensitive. You might want to hover.”
The Angel took three steps towards her friend, each footfall an inch higher off the ground. She took his hand.
Contact.
Sensations flooded her body, a shimmer of energy unlike anything she’d felt before. “I can… see why you find it… hard to describe,” Phanuel stammered. “Everything is… sharper.”
James thought she’d hover over his hand, not off the ground, so he was surprised when she took hold of him. Phanuel didn’t make physical contact lightly. “I can’t feel it anymore,” he said. But he sensed it, and he knew it was there from the way his spells bent if he wasn’t careful.
“You know what that is?” James watched the angel. He held still and closed his hand around hers.
“Tell me.”
James’ head tipped to the side, a flicker of curiosity in his eyes. “You don’t hate it.”
Phanuel grimaced. “I don’t know what to feel. It’s like… rollercoasters. You can look at it from a distance and be in amazement or fear, but you can’t know for certain how you’ll react until you’re sitting in the ride.”
That was a cop-out answer if he’d ever heard one. James looked at their joined hands, the lack of resistance in hers. He’d seen her recoil from him on touch before and it was never like this.
“It’s the energy signature of Hell,” he said.
The color drained from Phanuel’s face. “A hell dimension.”
James watched her process it. He wondered if heaven had come off her in waves when she landed on earth, and for how long. “You haven’t let go.”
Phanuel slowly disengaged from James. “And that just scared the ever-loving fuck out of me.”
“Which part?” he wanted to know. James stooped down to collect his things from the ground. He lifted the necklace over his head and opened his shirt collar to drop the pendant inside.
She stepped around the trailer until she came to the mesh door entrance. Phanuel threw open the door, walked to a kitchen cupboard, and retrieved a bottle of tequila. Two shot glasses were retrieved from another cupboard before she exited and returned to James.
One of the glasses was handed to him. “That it didn’t repulse me. It was almost.”
She unscrewed the cap and poured out two shots. The Angel slammed hers back.
Phanuel shuddered. “Pleasant.”
“Hm.” The corner of James’ mouth twitched. “Must’ve been the orgy realm.” He took the shot, let the familiar taste and burn of tequila knock the edge off the conversation. The warm feeling settled in his stomach. When memories of those places came back, he’d let himself sink into it for a count of ten, no longer, just because there was no getting around the encroachment of it into his life. On ten, he’d shake himself free and focus on another thing. Usually something that required his hands and a lot of concentration.
Phanuel knew what orgies were. So if James was expecting her to blush, he was shit out of luck.
“That’s a contradiction.” She poured out two more shots.
James leaned closer to her line of sight. “It’s not,” he said while she dipped into her supply of liquid courage. “Hell’s a lot more creative than we give it credit for. It’s not all torture racks and hot pokers. The same things that send you there? Are waiting for you. Just twisted versions of them. That’s not something they teach you in angel school, I take it,” he prodded, throwing it back to a conversation they had on the roof of the Wynn.
“Here’s the thing.” Phanuel struggled for the right words. Her question was plain, earnest. “If Hell is the same as on Earth, whatever ‘twisted’ means, then why wouldn’t people want to go there?”
“No.” James shook his head. “What I mean is, when you think about killing someone, it ends. But there, it’s being ripped apart, or ripping other people apart, over and over for eternity. When you think of sex, you think of being spent at the end of it. But there, they become fused. They don’t know how to get apart, so it’s not pleasure anymore. And that’s just a piece of it. This much,” he said, holding his thumb to his index finger. “There’s a system to it. It’s not static.” He stopped and thought over it. “But it’s a Gordian knot. It only seems like an impossible situation.”
Phanuel took in everything her friend said. This was definitely not reported in the Angel Handbook. In fact, it only became a part of the fourth edition after Lucifer Morningstar rebelled.
“Pretend I’m following but Sammy over there is playing catch up,” she proffered.
“I’m saying…” James paused. What was he saying? He went over and took that second shot from her. “So I’m about to sound like a barstool philosopher.” The tequila scorched a path. As he cast a look around the yard, he saw that the flamingo was staring at him. Did she know that thing was giving off vibes?
James turned away from it and opened his hands. “Look. The idea that souls get trafficked between these places pisses me off. But if what she claims is true, it means that hell, her hell, collects the souls that damn themselves. We could get into a whole theological debate over who’s really responsible for it, but that’s not the point.”
He paced a few steps as he tried to put his thoughts into cohesive order, then sat on the edge of her lounge chair. “Elfleda’s draw is that she sees the dark things that make people tick, and she tells you not to be ashamed of it. She shows you what you could be if you had the guts to let go of all the dead weight. It’s not a parlor trick, Phanuel. It’s the truth of your nature, stripped to its core. She offers the spiritual version of a weekend trip to Vegas, and she’s counting on you getting hooked. But she isn’t damning you by her logic, because she’s telling you, even as she’s working you, that there’s no reason to feel guilt or shame. To her, if she can guide you on that path, either in this life or the next, she can take you someplace past pain,” he said, opening his arms. “A place where you’re evolving. It’s not abstinence or restraint, it’s breaking the leash and going straight through your darkest impulse, whatever it is, and on the other side, you master it. You see it for what it was and you’re stronger. Sharper. That’s what you picked up when you touched me. The energy of souls grinding through it, and some of them are becoming more.”
James pushed his hands through his hair and then clasped them in front of his knees. “At least that’s how I could process it. And in that, if nothing else, I see something in her that I don’t always see here. Ambition. That’s what’s going to win the day.”
Phanuel shook her head. “Elfleda sounds like a drug dealer. The first hit is free. And once you’re hooked, you might as well enjoy the ride.” She made her way to him, taking a seat in the opposite lounge chair. For someone who didn’t like company, it was odd that she kept two chairs outside her trailer. The Angel would say it was to present the illusion of normalcy.
“Ambition is… well, good. But the means of achieving it, James. Look, I made a bad joke earlier saying you were damned to hell. That’s not where I want to see you end up.” Her hands twitched slightly. She desperately wanted another drink, but resisted. What if this was her gateway?
“Phanuel, I’ve been a witch my whole life. It’s as much a part of me as breathing,” James said, tapping his chest. “Elfleda or not, there’s no place for me with your god. People like me are more than likely fucked. So I’m not focused on that. I’m focused on what’s right here. I think we’re sitting on something dangerous, and she’s everywhere. Why? I’m not going to sleep through the build-up to whatever it is. But if you tell anyone what you saw happen with this?” He indicated the wilting plant. “They’ll assume I’m with her.”
“And you’re not.” She gave him a long, hard look. James was many things; a liar wasn’t one of them. “You’re not.”
She held the bottle aloft, indicating an offer should he choose it. “I’ll keep your secret.”
He held her eye contact.
“Thanks.” James took a pass on the tequila with a shake of his head. “After you get that cell phone, you should invest in some wards.” He got to his feet and pointed to the dark corners of her property, the places where the black pitched deeper than it should. “There are shadows all around us.”