Lost Angels, California

By: Mara

 

Disclaimer: This story and everything in it is MINE! Please ask before borrowing.

 

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Elizabeth, a pretty young angel, knelt before God in his throne room. She had perfect straight blonde hair that fell to her waist, eyes the color of blue satin, and soft wings of pure white that were even softer to the touch.

 

“God, please,” Elizabeth begged, “I never did anything with him! I swear to you that I didn’t!”

 

Another angel, tall and lanky, with chocolate hair and coffee eyes, stood near God’s throne. He was the Metatron, the Voice of God number five- the other four were incinerated by God’s uncontrollable wraith when they disagreed with him. The Metatron looked to God momentarily, analyzing him. He sighed, upset that she would lie to God, and then pivoted back to face her.

 

“God has decreed that you are to be banished from Heaven…permanently,” was the Metatron’s sad reply.

 

Elizabeth gasped, stunned that she would be cast out of the Golden Gates. A wind, cold and mysterious, swirled through the room.

 

“You will, however,” continued the Metatron, his perfectly white wings wrapping around himself tighter, “be allowed to keep your wings. If you lead a good life, when you die, you will be readmitted into heaven as an angel again, for on earth you will no longer be immortal. But God has spoken…well, I have spoken…for him…and…well…you get the point…”

 

The Metatron slumped back into his chair beside God’s throne, horribly depressed that he had to have delivered such terrible news to his good friend. He had always despised the fact that God made him deliver bad news. God could talk to angels. God could talk to his own son. It was only humans who couldn’t stand the awesome power of God’s voice. [Author’s Note: WOW, Dogma rip-off! Not to mention the idea of the Metatron…or was that in the Bible? *shrugs* I dunno anymore…] But he couldn’t argue with God. After all, God is infallible.

 

“My God, give me one more chance,” pleaded Elizabeth. “I was tricked into it. I regret it so, looking back on it. I regret being so weak. Forgive me, please!”

 

The Metatron’s brow furrowed with worry. He hated to see Elizabeth, tense and terrified, on her knees in front of their creator. He looked to God once again, turned back to Elizabeth, crystal-pure tears rolling down her porcelain cheeks, and slowly shook his head no. God had made his decision.

 

“You’ll be cast out in two hours. God says to say your goodbyes now, before being confined to Earth.”

 

Elizabeth bowed once to God, and then darted out of the throne room. The Metatron stood back up, restless and upset, binding and unbinding his wings from around his body, a curious habit of his, as he paced the floor. God stood up, placed a hand on the Metatron’s back, and gave him a smile, gently pushing him towards the doors Elizabeth has run out of moments ago. Confused and weary, the Metatron turned to look him in the eyes. Pointing towards the doors, God pushed him again.

 

“You want me to talk to her, my Lord?”

 

God nodded, once again shoving him.

 

“Thank you, Almighty,” graveled the Metatron. “Thank you so much!”

 

*          *          *          *

 

Back out by the Gates, the Metatron caught up with Elizabeth, talking to Emily Dickinson and a group of other non-angels. Tired from his rapid flight in search of her, to catch his breath, he leaned heavily on her shoulder, wheezing overdramatically.

 

“Metatron,” Elizabeth greeted him with fake sarcasm, “you are out of breath. Did you forget to tell me something? Did God change his mind and decided he wants to take my wings as well?”

           

“No need for sarcasm, little Lizzie,” chastised the Metatron. “I only came to talk to you. And stop calling me Metatron. Call me by my given name.”

 

            “Oh, but Allen,” she teased, “Metatron, the voice of God, the Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth suits you so much better.”

 

Allen stuck his tongue out at her, wrapping an arm, slender as a snaky vine, around her shoulders.

 

“Walk with me,” he urged her.

 

She excused herself from the group she was with and they walked, taking the nearest heavenly path, beautiful as anything from Monet, filled with wandering people, majestic in appearance as anyone Bottichelli ever painted.

 

“So why did you sleep with Rei,” Allen bluntly started the conversation.

 

Elizabeth, to keep Allen close, clasped his hand tightly in hers. An exasperated smile playing on her lips, she sighed deeply.

 

“I love him, Allen,” she said. “That’s all there is to it.”

 

            “But Rei’s a demon,” Allen cried out. “Angels and demons are not supposed to love each other, and they certainly are not supposed to sleep together!”

 

A few people on the path surrounding the two angels turned to look at them, wondering what Allen’s outburst was all about, strange thoughts dancing into their minds.

 

Cupping a hand over his mouth, to hush him up, Elizabeth retorted, “I know it was wrong, and I know I am losing a lot for him, but he is loosing a lot for me too. He’s being kicked out of hell by his Master, too: Mephistopheles.

 

Removing her hand from his mouth, he now clasped her hands tight.

 

“I know little Lizzie,” he softly whispered, trying to not draw the attention of others, “I know he was.”

 

She looked him deep in his eyes, eyes that were such a deep, dark brown that they were almost black.

 

“What else do you know, Metatron?”

 

            He chuckled, “Can’t put anything past you, can I Lizzie?”

 

She vigorously shook her head no, eager to know what Allen knew.

 

“He’s in Los Angeles,” said Allen, “living in a dingy apartment near a well-to-do nightclub.”

 

            “Take me there,” she shouted with joy, shaking him violently by the shoulders. “Show me exactly where he is!”

 

Allen had to shush her, a quick finger to her delicate crimson lips, when a certain someone started to walk up to him. Pointing, to quickly inform Elizabeth, Allen singled him out. Not that you could have missed him. They both bowed low in front of the man before them, the man having stopped at them.

 

“Metatron,” the visitor melodiously greeted him.

 

            “Your father said he wishes to see you,” Elizabeth blurted out loudly.

 

Alarmed and puzzled, Jesus turned around to make his way to God’s throne room. Appalled by her actions, Allen simply left his jaw hanging, staring at her in shocked silence.

 

“What,” she questioned him with mock innocence.

 

            “You lied to Jesus!”

 

            “So?”

 

            “You lied to the Son of God!”

 

            “I want to go see Rei and I want to go see him now.”

 

Allen sighed.

 

“Then let’s go, little Lizzie…”

 

*          *          *          *

 

Rei sat in a chair by his window, all alone. Rei was tall and handsome, even for a demon, with jet black hair that always hung in his eyes, a well built body, and coal black eyes that contained the fires of hell itself. He watched with utterly no fascination the pigeons pecking at the sill of the window he stared out, radio blaring heavy rock in the background.

 

“I hate birds,” he muttered disgustedly, “I hate them all. They remind me of her. Everything beautiful and pure and innocent reminds me of her!”

 

Snarling like some great beast, he sprung up from his chair. Picking it up with both hands, teeth gritted in anguish, he smashed it down on the milk-crate coffee table nearest him, splintering the chair into pieces. Ultimately forced to resort to his fists, he demolished anything and everything in his sight. Tables cracked, chairs buckled, and the window - the only window in the apartment - was reduced to razor-sharp shards, coming to a rest on the mottled gray carpet. Hand bloody from his rampage of blind rage, he let his knees give out and collapsed to the floor. As he picked glass out of his fist, he cursed to the silence of the room, ardent and oppressive, to validate his anger.

 

“Now that was bloody asinine of you, Rei. Very literally bloody asinine. It won’t get you very far.”

 

Alert now to the fact that he wasn’t alone, Rei looked irritably around the room.

 

“I know your voice,” he muttered aloud, “I know who you are. Metatron! Show yourself!”

 

Allen, on luminescent wings of pure white, alit on the window sill, peering in through the broken glass as though he were one of the curious pigeons that had roosted there earlier.

 

Rei hissed at him through gritted teeth, “Did you come here to poke fun at me too, Bible Lackey?”

 

Allen rolled his eyes, climbing into the room all the way.

 

“Hardly,” he drawled out dramatically, “I’m way above that. Rather, I came to you bearing good tidings – from me, not God – and a…gift…”

 

He cocked his head to the side, interested as to that the Metatron meant, yet skeptical still of the seraph. Allen turned around, his long, slender frame leaning out of the window, and whistled faintly.

 

“Bible Lackey,” laughed Rei inanely, carefully getting up off of the floor, “you’ve gone off your damned rocker.”

 

To steady himself, he leaned against the wall nearest him, his hand clutched tightly to his chest. He looked down at his hand, embedded with glass fragments, and was disappointed to discover that his former Master had indeed taken away his demon ability to auto-heal. A flutter from the area of the open window made him look up again. His mouth gapped open, unable to contain his own surprise, as one more person stood in his home. Elizabeth, her cheeks rosy from her flight, stood in the sunlight filtering in, radiant with beauty.

 

“Oh, Rei,” she exclaimed sadly, coming towards him to place a hand on his face and tend his injured hand, “why did you have to go and do all that?”

 

She ran a hand through his longish hair. “They took your horns, didn’t they? Did they take your wings to, my love?”

 

He nodded bitterly and scooped her up in his arms, strong and protective. The radio hazed out bittersweet lyrics: “Now I will tell you what I’ve done for you…Fifty-thousand tears I’ve cried…” Tears of happiness, a rarity on Rei’s part, flowed from the two lovers, ecstatic to be reunited. The song continued:  “How can you see into my eyes like open doors…Leading you down into my core…Where I’ve become so numb…” [Yes, if you recognize the lyrics, they are from two different songs…but hey, at least they’re from the same band…] Taking his leave silently, Allen inwardly vowed to check up on them later, sometime when God was busy and wouldn’t notice. Rei guided Elizabeth to what was left of the sofa, and she descended there in a heap amidst his hugs and kisses.

 

“I’ll never let you go,” she whispered tenderly in his ear.

 

*          *          *          *

 

Techno dance beats, hypnotic and pounding, escaped from the front doors of the nightclub. Rei led Elizabeth through the doors into the sweltering heat of the masses of raving people. Uneasy around crowds, she stopped short, forcing Rei to halt as well. It was too loud to be heard where they were, so he motioned to her to lead him instead. She dragged him upstairs to a table on a balcony over the bar and hunched down in her seat. Rei put a comforting arm around her.

 

“What’s wrong, Babe?”

 

“I don’t like it here,” she whimpered, “it’s hot, it stinks, and I don’t know how to dance. Not to mention all the sinful indulgences being passed around.”

 

In an odd habit of his, to question ‘sinful indulgences’, he cocked his head to the side.

 

“Drugs,” she cried out, flailing a hand out over to dance floor’s general direction, “and alcohol and sexual promiscuity! It’s all over the place!”

 

Rei let go of her to give her one of his sly yet charming grins and then kissed her on the cheek.

 

“I thought you wanted to celebrate,” he said, “so I brought you to my favorite haunt! You’re human now, Lizzie, babe. Drink, take drugs, have sex, have fun! Live a little!”

 

“You mean live in sin like you,” she heatedly shot back.

 

He laughed out loud, a sound that sent sensual tingles down her back. He found her simpleness to be amusing, and he paused for a moment to give a couple of woman down on the ground floor that had been staring at him an air kiss. They giggled and whispered to each other, one of them motioning for him to come down. Elizabeth hit him in the chest, hurt that Rei would do that to her with her right next to him. Snaking an arm back around her, he smiled lovingly at her, pulling her close again.

 

“Lizzie, baby, calm down. Don’t get so upset. I was just messing around. I love you,” he assured her, “and I always will. But don’t ruin the celebration. Get drunk with me. Make wild-crazy love to me. Help me create some ‘sinful indulgence’…”

 

Kissing her all over her neck and shoulders, bare in her spaghetti-strap top, he did his best to persuade her. She giggled from the sensation of his longish hair tickling her cheek. To make him stop, she shoved him away.

 

“Come on,” he goaded, “come experience the wonders of something called Jack Daniels…”

 

*          *          *          *

 

Ten minutes later, having downed somewhere around eight or nine shots of his precious Jack Daniels, Rei was telling the bartender all about his past employer.

 

“He’s not really evil,” Rei slurred, “just misunderstood. And another thing…Mephtopilis…Mephsoiltee…Meph…uh…the devil…he ain’t red and he ain’t no half goat. He’s a handsome devil who comes in human form. Goddamn, he’s just a fallen angel, not some damned fire-breathing beast. He’s this pretty little blondie…damn, if I were gay…”

 

Elizabeth blushed.

 

“Rei, please,” she begged him, “let’s go. You’ve had enough.”

 

“Bartender!” Rei slammed his shot glass down, “Pour me one more!”

 

Elizabeth turned away from him, leaning over and resting herself on the bar top. Bored and tired, she wished she were at the apartment right then, asleep in bed, wrapped in Rei’s arms. A woman sat down next to her at the bar out of the blue, smiling politely at Elizabeth as she did. She had long auburn hair held back in a bright red scrunchie and she wore a long sleeve shirt, which Elizabeth thought was odd seeing as the temperature in the club could have hardboiled an egg.

 

“Hey,” said the woman, “what’s wrong with you?”

 

Elizabeth jumped; she hadn’t expected the woman to talk to her at all.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Yeah, you,” replied the woman. “What’s got you so down, girl? That your cutie boyfriend over there, drunk off his ass?”

 

Elizabeth nodded resentfully.

 

“I just feel so out of place here, you know? Like this isn’t what I’m here for; like I’m lost.”

 

“I know what you mean, girl. What’s your name?”

 

“Elizabeth.”

 

The woman flipped a business card onto the bar top in front of Elizabeth’s face.

 

“Well, Elizabeth, come to this. We meet every Sunday night at the community center down the street. Seven o’clock pm. Hope I see you there.”

 

Elizabeth looked the card over as the woman got up to leave. The card read ‘Lost Angels, California. Support Club for the Lost Souls of LA’ and then the address and time.

 

“Wait,” Elizabeth called out, “you never told me your name!”

 

“Tabby,” she barely managed to shout over the crowd she was in, “Tabby Hearten.”

 

And then she was gone, having disappeared into the swarm of people. Meanwhile, Rei still babbled on.

 

“So I says to God,” he gargled, sputtering his drink everywhere, “I says to that son of a bitch that he can shove it where the heavens don’t shine…”

 

*          *          *          *

 

Two days later, it was Sunday, and Elizabeth found herself standing outside the LA Community Center at seven pm with Rei, holding the card Tabby had given her. Rei kept muttering to himself something about how stupid this was and that he was missing a good movie on TV. To keep herself calm and under control, she took a few breaths, deep and tranquil, and dragged Rei into the building. A kind lady at the main entrance told them what conference room they needed to be in. Elizabeth thanked her and quietly entered the meeting, slipping herself and Rei into a couple of seats in the back row as someone was already up in front of everybody speaking. Finding Tabby in the first row, she glanced around at the 15 or so other people already there, attentively listening to the man talking. Elizabeth, not really listening, scanned the people in there more. When the man was finished, he sat down next to Tabby, who got up and took her place at the podium. She smiled, looking out among the attendants.

 

“Well, another meeting is starting,” she began, “and I’m happy to say we have a couple new faces here.”

 

She gestured to Elizabeth and Rei at the back of the room. “Everybody, this is Elizabeth and her boyfriend…um…”

 

“Rei,” he rudely grunted.

 

“Rei,” she repeated, obviously choosing to ignore his vile attitude. “Let’s all welcome them to Lost Angels.”

 

A chorus of voices rose, saying hello, welcome, and various other greetings. Elizabeth politely smiled and nodded a hello, suddenly feeling shy, while Rei only grunted again.

 

“Elizabeth,” continued Tabby, “we’ll introduce you to everyone later in the circle. But first,” she turned her attention back to the others, “anything new to discuss?”

 

A collective murmur began, but nobody outright said anything. Tabby asked if old issues needed to be re-addressed. Again, nobody had anything. Happy with the commencing events, Tabby laughed and clapped her hands together once, to show her excitement.

 

“Then gather the chairs in a great big circle,” she said, giddy as a child.

 

Directed to follow suit, Elizabeth joined.

 

“Any questions before we start,” asked Tabby.

 

“Well, yes,” Elizabeth slowly articulated. “What exactly is Lost Angels?”

 

Tabby was more then happy to explain. “Lost Angels is a support group for people who feel like they just don’t belong. We meet here to give each other the support, advice, friendship, love, and knowledge that they are not alone in this world.”

 

Puzzled, Elizabeth asked, “What do you mean, ‘don’t belong’?”

 

A woman to her right stood up.

 

“I had breast cancer. I lost a part of me to that disease that made me a woman.”

 

Elizabeth, shocked by this, listened in awe as others stood up too.

 

“I have AIDS.”

 

“I’m gay.”

 

“I’m bi-racial.”

 

“I’m an Afghani.”

 

“I have a drug habit.”

 

“I was raped.”

 

This went on, until everybody had had their say but Tabby. Then Tabby, with tears in her eyes, rolled up her long sleeves. Scars, raised and pink, forming angry shapes that seemed to come to life and cry out in anguish, criss-crossed the insides of her wrists and forearms. Having nothing to say, Tabby waited patiently with the others, all looking to Elizabeth. Waiting patiently, they all looked all looked to Elizabeth.

 

“What’s your story,” Tabby questioned her gently.

 

Pausing, to think to herself, she carefully studied the faces around her. All these faces, serene and full of love, accepted her completely. It gave her the first twinge of hope she’d had since she had come down to Earth.

 

“I’m a lost angel,” Elizabeth began, “because I betrayed God’s trust and he turned his back to me. I am truly a lost angel.”

 

“We’ll help you find your way again, little one,” said an old man, who earlier had related to her that he was a holocaust survivor.

 

Crying tears of joy, she threw herself into Rei’s arms and wept. All he could do was hold her. “She’ll find her way,” he silently thought to the old man. “I’ll make sure she does. Whatever it takes, I’ll make sure of it.