Flyer

Before losing my wings, I got a feel for the fall. There wasn't a noise in the movie theatre other than my breathing because the sound of the film had cut out and I was the only one who stayed. I had an odd appreciation for the silent movie; it seemed that it wasn't shared by anyone on this coast at all. Breathing in and out and in...and out, I made the soundtrack on my own, syncopating my heart beat to match the rhythm of the mouths on screen. I let my back push really nice and firm into the fur jacket I was wearing to clear off the bite of the cold from my skin. It wasn't supposed to be so cool in heaven, but I knew my time was running out, so God might have already cut my central heating since I had failed to pay rent. "What if it was a game?" was what it looked like Fred Astaire was saying to Ginger in the black and white serenity. I lit up my cigarette despite the NO SMOKING signs wallpapering the room. 

It wasn't quite so bad just yet because I was only going to be a fallen angel for eternity, and I kind of liked sky diving when I was alive. 

I had to come up with a name now, because hell doesn't take well to saints, and I was getting awful good at feeling like a sinner. 

"Hey princess," The security guard called, "no smoking eh??" I nodded and snuffed it out on the seat next to me, burning a little hole in the faux-velvet covering. 

Princess. 

It could work. Something like that. 

They turned the lights on and shut off the movie, wordlessly telling me to leave. 

Jesus was waiting by the door, and without saying a single thing, unhooked my wings from my shoulder blades and shook his head sadly. 

"I'll miss you, JC." I said to him. My face was melting off already and he gave me the kind of sad grimace that psychoanalysts give their patients before the institution. 

"Yeah," he muttered, his voice like raw silk and butterscotch, (apparently he sounded different to everyone. He made up the noises of everyone's own paradise.) "I guess I'll see you around, Lucy." 

I thought about a sex change. It always seemed like the devil should be a man.