Entanglement

voice

Phil POV

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I was going insane.

With the new missions I had involving going down to Earth, I found myself hoping for something. I found myself hoping that I would run into Dan.

Every single time I thought about him I had to remind myself that he is a demon. A demon. Evil, dark, merciless, rude, lifeless.

But there was something so different about him. Especially now.

When we ran into one another four days after my trip to Hell, he acted so strangely. He acted kind and like he wanted to be my friend. So I, of course, had been nice in return. I knew it was in his nature to act unappreciative and I knew that was why he had said the day had meant nothing, but I could easily read him and see that it did. I resisted smiling every time I thought about how I was beginning to grow on him, as if maybe my amazing angel ways would rub off on him and he'd stop being such a terrible being.

I was still lenient. Dan was a demon. And yet those words felt useless in my brain, because I smiled when I thought of him. And it was very unusual for an angel to smile because of a demon.

Ever since he'd told me about his incident with burning down an entire building, I could feel curiosity burning away at my skin. It definitely cleared up many of my questions, and yet it added more as well. I understood why Korey looked at him the way he did, except I wondered why he knew at all. I knew why a demon with his job had met with us angels, and yet I asked what it had to do with us. Dan had said that nothing had happened since, so why were they still keeping an eye on him? Why did they act like the incident played a much bigger role than it seemed? And lastly I wondered if we would find out. If something else would happen.

Despite all of this, my singular life as an angel within the last month had improved greatly, in contrary to the way it had gotten collectively harder for everyone in the afterlife. My job as a Habitant had nearly fully transformed to that of a Premier. Korey always had me near his side now, and I helped make the important decisions that would sure cause results in the future. And yet I felt no fear when I explained a new plan to a group of angels; everyone I knew trusted me. Everyone I knew believed that I would make the correct decision.

Louise, however, had been causing me worry.

She had been the first to notice, years ago, that I was not your usual angel. That I got annoyed, I got angry, I got sarcastic, and I didn't get scared.

"I'm noticing it worse now," She'd told me only a few days before we were scheduled for our next meeting in Hell. We had been standing by the gates of our field sections, eating lunch.

"Noticing what?"

"Phil," Her voice dropped, and her eyes looked serious now. "You know what I mean. You know what I mean when I say that you need to get rid of that anger and that annoyance. You're an angel, Phil, or have all these trips to Hell caused you to forget that?"

I'd scoffed. "There's nothing wrong with me."

I heard her sigh, and she looked away from me. "You're a good guy. You do the right thing, you know why demons are bad, you don't believe in killing. And yet something is off with you. I don't know what, but I just want you to know." With those words, she walked off, and my eyes went to the cloud I was standing on.

Because of my strangeness, I didn't feel fear. And yet the possibility that I was losing my humanity scared me more than anything.

I convinced myself I wouldn't believe it. I was Phil Lester, a good man, an angel for crying out loud. I was not inhuman.