Angels

Angels – that’s what we need, Sophia says. Bring on the angels! Angels of Newcastle, like the angels of Berlin in Wings of Desire! Angels with ponytails, who just watch over everyone. Who witness our lives, our joys, our sufferings, and comfort us without our knowing it. Putting an arm around us when we need it …

Newcastle angels – sure.

What about St Cuthbert? Eric Burdon? The guys who wrote Fog on the Tyne …

Lindesfarne aren’t dead, I say.

Is Gazza dead? Driss asks.

He wouldn’t be an angel, I say.

A drunken angel, maybe, Driss says. Are there drunken angels?

Look, angels aren’t ghosts, idiot, Io says. They aren’t angels of people. Angels are their own thing.

We need avenging angels, Furio says. Badass angels, like St Michael. A whole legion of them, to tear down the campus. Do angels do that kind of thing anymore?

Maybe if we pray hard enough …, Driss says.

Are we allowed to pray for vengeance? Sophia asks.

I think it’d be cool to actually be an angel, Furio says. To have an angel’s powers. How do we get those?

Maybe we have to invite them in, like demons in the Exorcist, Driss says. Demons are always looking to inhabit bodies, right?

Sure – possession, Io says. Infestation.

I want to be possessed by something good, not something evil, Driss says. I’d like to be possessed by an angel, and do only good things. Wouldn’t you like to be the instrument of something very, very good?

I’d like to die as an angel, I say. Emptied of all things, all sin. All my twistedness untwisted. All my hatred transmuted into love. All my life, gathered up, offered up. Cured, right? Just an aching soul, crying upwards to be extinguished. And then … extinguished.