Angels

We need angels! Angels to save us! Angels of Newcastle, like the angels of Berlin in Wings of Desire! Angels in black-and-white footballs shirts, who just watch over everyone. Who witness our lives, our joys, our sufferings, and comfort us without our knowing it. Who put an arm around us when we need it …

Newcastle angels – sure, Driss says.

What about St Cuthbert? Eric Burdon? Io asks. 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?

Angels can’t be drunk, Io says. They don’t have bodies.

Just like demons, Furio says. Like the Nephilim! Always looking for bodies to inhabit.

Can there ever be good possessions? I ask. Could an angel possess you?

I don’t think it’d be called possession, Io says

I’d like to be possessed by an angel, I say. And do only good. I’d like to be the instrument of something very good.

To do the will of God, Io says.

But what is it: the will of God? I ask.

To get out of this campus as soon as possible, Furio says.

Unless God wants us here, Io says.

To do his work? I ask.

Io, shrugging. I don’t know.

I’d like to die as an angel, I say. Emptied of all things – all sin. And 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. Fucking beautiful.

Is that God’s work: a mercy kill? Furio asks.

I don’t think God means for us to die – not just yet, Io says.