By Sheila O'hara
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| Image Credits: www.giphy.com |
Oh, Rafe,’ cried
his Mum, ‘what have you done now?’
‘He’s only blown
us to Kingdom come,’ replied his Dad.
‘It was the
switchgear, Dad,’ started Rafe, ‘I was adjusting it and then there was this
noise…’
‘Look down Rafe.’
Rafe looked and
saw the flames and shooting stars as the house and garage continued to explode
beneath them.
‘Here’s an angel,’
said Mum, ‘I wonder if we’re dead?’
‘Just hold tight,’
said Dad, ‘he’s probably come to take us to heaven.’
They were holding
onto each other like skydivers floating on a thermal, spinning round and round
in a circle.
‘Dad, I didn’t
join the two red points, I really did join the red and green…’
‘Hold on,’ said
Mum, just as the angel reached them.
‘… and then it
just went whoosh,’ finished Rafe and since he’d let go of his parents to
demonstrate the whooshing motion with his hands, he found himself plummeting to
earth and couldn’t stop.
The last thing he
heard before he came to land in the burnt debris, that was his house, was the
angel calling to him, ‘wait there, Rafe, I’ll come back for you.’
Rafe wondered how
his life would be, now that he was dead. Shame he wouldn’t have time to find
out – the angel would return any minute.
‘Still believe in
Santa as well, kid?’ said a voice, ringing in the place where his ear would
have been.
‘Who’s there?’ he
demanded
‘Old Nick sent
me,’ replied the voice, ‘I’m Numptie.’
‘I can’t see you,’
said Rafe.
‘And what would
you be expecting to see?’
‘Don’t know,’ said
Rafe, as there appeared before him a dirty old man. He had on a grease stained
black jacket teamed with baggy, brown trousers, held up at the waist with
string. It was the boots that caught Rafe’s eye; hob nailed, as though they had
walked straight out of the l9th century.
‘What’s so funny?’
asked Numptie.
‘You’re having me
on, right?’ laughed Rafe, ‘You look like something out of a bad movie.’
‘Pot, kettle and
black mean anything to you?’ replied Numptie, pushing Rafe up against a piece
of broken mirror.
Rafe peered at
himself in the mirror and saw that his reflection now completely matched that
of Numptie’s, down to the hob nailed boots, albeit a younger, smaller, and
somewhat dirtier version.
‘I’m not like
you,’ said Rafe, ‘and anyway, Old Nick doesn’t want me, I’m waiting for an
angel.’
‘Yeah, right.’
With that there
was a great clang which rang out, penetrating to the depths of Rafe’s being. He
put his hands to his head and scrunched his eyes shut, willing it to stop. When
he opened his eyes Rafe found himself in a dark hot cavern. The clanging had
been the sound of a metal door closing behind him. He almost fainted with the
heat, and, as he slipped down onto the cobbled floor, fire sparked and exploded
around him.
‘Good to see you
getting the hang of it so quickly,’ said a loud booming voice.
Rafe pulled
himself to his feet and turned to look around the cavern. There at the far end
of the gloomy hall sat an enormous creature, with horns and a tail carrying
what looked like a pitchfork.
‘Who’re you?’
demanded Rafe.
‘That’ll be a
joke?’
‘There’s been some
mistake,’ said Rafe politely, ‘I shouldn’t be here, I’m waiting for an angel.’
‘Aren’t we all,
darlin’?’ said the Devil, picking his nose with a dirty claw.
‘No, really,’
protested Rafe, ‘I’ve met him; he’s coming to get me.’
‘Your name Rafe
Mitchell?’
Rafe nodded.
‘You just blew up
your house? You that Rafe Mitchell?’
Rafe nodded again.
‘And you shouldn’t
be here?’
‘No,’ replied
Rafe, ‘it was an accident, and…’
‘They’re dead,
you’re dead, they’re there, and you’re here. Enough said.’
‘But…’
‘I do the butting
around here,’ replied the Devil.
Numptie stepped
forward.
‘Come on Rafe,
I’ve to show you the ropes…get you started.’
‘I’m leaving!’
Rafe shouted towards the place where Old Nick had been, and suddenly the whole
cavern was red with flames. Orange and purple tongues of fire came slaking
along the floor and roasted his feet – the hob nails heating up like burning
pins.
Rafe started
dancing frantically, hopping away from the pain.
‘Shame we don’t
have a fiddler,’ boomed Old Nick, from somewhere in the toxic mist, ‘we could
throw a party!’
Numptie led Rafe
into a sulphurous little hole of a room, filled with numptie clones; wrinkled,
ugly, pock-marked little toads, with nasty claws and very big boots.
‘Welcome to your
future, Rafe,’ said Numptie and pulled out a coal from the fire. He handed it
to Rafe, who tossed it from hand to hand and finally dropped it on the floor.
‘You’ll toughen up
with practice,’ said Numptie, and just as Rafe opened his mouth, he continued,
‘yeah, I know, you have an angel coming.’
Rafe picked up the
coal which he had just dropped, realising there was something written on it.
‘There’s an address on the coal – it says, ‘gas explosion’.’
‘Yeh we thought
we’d start you off easy, since you’ve already done a house fire – quite
spectacular, by the way, for an amateur.’
‘I’m not blowing
up a house.’ Rafe said, almost laughing at the absurdity of the idea.
However, almost as
soon as the laughter left his mouth, Rafe felt his whole body being pulled a
hundred feet in the air, a whooshing sound accompanying him as he once again
changed location. This sudden change of venue nonsense was beginning to annoy
him.
He found himself
outside a building and stepped warily up to the entrance. He could see a family
moving about inside and could hear the TV blaring. He wasn’t going to blow them
up. He stamped his foot in sheer rage and found himself whooshing off again, this
time to outside a derelict building. He heard a voice and spun around but there
was no one there.
‘I’m telling you
Numptie, I’m blowing nothing up.’ He just knew the sneaky toad was checking up
on him.
‘It’s not
Numptie,’ said a voice, ‘It’s me.’
‘Me who?’ demanded
Rafe.
‘The angel.’
‘The angel? The
one who dropped me into hell? That angel?’ demanded Rafe.
‘Sorry about that,
I’m quite new to this job,’ mumbled the angel.
‘New?’ asked Rafe,
‘I thought you lot were eternal?’
There was a
snorting sound. Rafe and the angel looked at each other. ‘Numptie,’ they said
in unison.
‘Come out
Numptie,’ demanded Rafe, ‘show yourself.’
‘He won’t,’ said
the angel, ‘not while I’m here.’
Rafe looked at the
angel, then at the spot where he knew Numptie was and said, ‘Why don’t the two
of you just get lost?’
There was a
scuffling sound with a sharp Numptie-like cry, and then the angel said, ‘He’s
gone, could you please blow up this place?’
‘I’m blowing up
nothing!’
‘Just do it this
once. Trust me.’
‘Trust you? Great
help you were at 20,000 feet – if you’d done your job, I wouldn’t be in this
mess!’
‘Mind your
manners, just stall for a while ‘till we get it sorted,’ said the angel.
‘What’s the
problem? Can’t angels get into hell?’ asked Rafe.
‘It’s not about
space, it’s about energy, and you’re always surrounded by the Devil’s web. But
we’re working on an interface with that, and we’ll get you out soon.’
‘An
inter-bloody-face?’
‘Mind your
language.’
Rafe sighed again.
He felt like he was going crazy; Numptie was crazy, the angel was crazy and Old
Nick was definitely bat brained.
‘It should take no
more than 5 minutes to work on an interface,’ he snapped, ‘why am I still
here?’
‘Well, if we’re
honest, we’re not sure how it all works ...’
‘All you do is...’
Rafe began rattling on for about ten minutes, explaining to the angel about
downloads, USBs, and hard drives while the angel’s eyes glazed gently over.
‘You should be
taking notes,’ shouted Rafe, trying to wake him up.
‘The recording
angel will have it all,’ the angel said, ‘I’ll be back soon.’
‘Heard that
before...’ started Rafe, before clamping his mouth shut, remembering that the
recording angel was obviously in the vicinity,
Rafe sighed and
reluctantly went back to his task of blowing up the house. He set the two coils
as he’d been instructed, but couldn’t bring himself to complete the circuit.
Suddenly he sneezed causing him to double over and inadvertently complete the
circuit he held in his hands. What a show of flames – the building went up, the
front yard went up, and Rafe went up. He’d have to ask Numptie about some kind
of weighting, he thought to himself, as he was flung hundreds of feet into the
air. It didn’t half give him a headache. As he came down to earth, he saw the
firemen arrive (time seemed to work a bit quicker when you were dead), and saw
their relief that it was just an empty building and there were no casualties.
Then there was
that clang again and he was back in Old Nick’s Hall. This time the Devil was
dressed in a designer tracksuit.
Rafe gave him a
look, ‘What? No horns?’
‘Strictly for the
tourists.’
Nick could have
passed for an ordinary bloke, a bit pasty faced though, probably didn’t get out
much.
‘You look almost
human,’ said Rafe, ‘great comb-over.’
The Devil scowled
and said, ‘You messed up.’
‘I told you I
wasn’t killing anybody, I sneezed.’
‘For someone with
no nose that was quite a feat,’ sighed the Devil, ‘you had a task, dead easy,
no problems, and you blew it, if you’ll pardon the expression.’
‘You shouldn’t be
killing people anyway – look at me, I had lots of plans and here I am, dead!’
‘Nothin’ to do
with me.’
‘You won’t let me
go.’
‘Look, there’s a
system here. Let me explain… before anyone gets born, the Fates all get
together and have a bit of a meeting in which they allocate a piece of string
to the soon to be born human being. When your time’s up they cut the string,
and you go home again. Dead simple.’
Rafe didn’t look
impressed.
‘Honest,’
said the Devil, without so much as a blush, ‘all I do is hack into their
computer, see who’s next for getting their thread cut, and arrange a little
party to welcome them home.’
‘But the angel
said ...’
‘You and that
blasted angel,’ cried Old Nick, ‘some people have to go to the
other place, I admit that, but you’re definitely one of mine.’
‘You mean heaven?’
There was a great
howl, and flames leapt out of the Devil’s mouth. Loud cries and wailing
resounded from all around. Rafe liked that.
‘Heaven, heaven,
heaven,’ Rafe shouted repeatedly.
The noise
subsided.
‘Very funny – you
do that again and you’ll end up an ice cube, in Antarctica, for six months,’
the Devil bellowed.
Rafe never
understood why people thought he was deaf; they just kept shouting at him. As
in life, so in death, sighed Rafe.
Numptie led Rafe
away.
‘You shouldn’t
upset him, he’s under pressure.’ He looked around, then whispered, ‘I hate to
even think it, but sometimes I wonder if he’s got a target to meet – but who
would he have
to answer to?’
‘God?’
Numptie screamed
and covered his ears. Once he had recovered himself he said, ‘we’ll skip the
hot coals bit, just get yourself over to Switzerland – they’re waiting for a
nice little avalanche.’
‘That’s not bad,’
said Rafe, ‘a lot of snow coming down a mountain, what harm in that?’
‘Right onto the
nicest little village you ever did see,’ laughed Numptie.
Another whoosh -
another venue. Rafe stood on the top of the mountain and surveyed the scene.
There was no way he was sending an avalanche down there. He looked down on a
beautiful little village, all shiny yellow paintwork and red geraniums and lots
of people going up and down the mountain. He stamped his foot again and found
himself transported to a very different scene. No ski lift, no skiers; just a
shabby little village in the middle of nowhere. Rafe looked around and saw the
answer – if he could just shift that nice ...
‘You look like a
man with a plan,’ said the angel, appearing by his side.
‘I want to put an
avalanche on the other side of that poor excuse for a village.’
‘Because?’
‘Because,’ said
Rafe, leaning right into the angel’s face, ‘then they can have their own
mountain, their own ski resort and then they...’
‘I get the
picture.’
‘So? How does the
hand of Rafe move a mountain?’
‘You’re getting a
bit up yourself, lad,’ said the angel, ‘and, anyway, this is beyond my pay
scale, to be honest.’
‘A bit like
interfaces?’
The angel gave him
a look and said ‘Take a deep breath...’
Rafe breathed in.
‘... and blow out
really hard.’
By the time Rafe
had finished the out breath, he saw the mountain move, then heard the clang and
there he was, back in the Devil’s front room.
The Devil said
nothing, he just shivered.
‘Someone walk over
your grave?’ giggled Rafe.
‘There’s something
good in here,’ screamed the Devil.
‘Calm down, boss,’
said Numptie.
‘I’m telling you
there’s something GOOD in here.’
‘That’s
impossible,’ said Numptie, ‘nothing good can get this far down, the hungry
ghosts get them on level five, and on four there’s that endless video loop of
eternal damnation.’
‘Well some daft
bat has left a hatch open – I’m telling you there’s good in here – and…’ the
Devil clutched his throat, ‘there’s light – I can see daylight.’
Numptie cowered
next to his boss’s chair. ‘You’re right boss,’ he whispered, ‘that’s not
firelight, that’s something else.’
‘It’s my angel!’
shouted Rafe, ‘they’ve organised the interface.’
The Devil shouted,
‘If that blasted angel is ...’
Numptie asked,
‘what’s an interface?’
But before the
Devil could answer the thin chink of light coming through the rock became
stronger and turned into a beam. As the Devil and all the numpties shielded
their eyes, Rafe could see figures swirling in the light. There before him was
definitely his angel but was that also his Mum?
‘Come on Rafe,
move yourself,’ shouted the angel.
Rafe jumped onto
the white circle of light on the floor, and Whoosh!
‘Not again!’ he
cried, ‘I thought I was getting out of here.’
‘You are,’ replied
the angel ‘but we’re using Old Nick’s Whoosh since it works so well in this
transportation lark.’
The next thing
Rafe saw was a door opening.
‘Good,’ said his
Mum ‘you’re home at last.’
‘They had a team
on you from day one,’ said Dad, sitting comfortably in his usual chair, ‘but
when they said Old Nick had picked you as an apprentice, I have to say we were
a bit worried.’
He looked at his
favourite burger and chips but then he remembered.
‘I don’t eat,’
said Rafe.
‘Of course you
don’t,’ said his Mum, ‘none of it’s real, but we thought you’d want to ease
yourself into all this “no body, no food, no problems, lots of angels, heaven”
thing.’
‘Just one
question’ said Rafe, looking at the angel, ‘Old Nick said I should have been
there because…well, because it was my fate, and their computer said....’
‘They’ve put an angel
wall in now, Rafe. Old Nick’ll need to update quite a bit if he wants to hack
back in, and you were always one of ours,’ the angel finished, ‘and he wasn’t
having you.’
‘What about what I
did for him?’
‘You turned all
his evil into good and in the case of the village – they’re all happy as can be
now with their new mountain; lots of skiing, tourism booming. They’re raking it
in.’
‘Well – that’s it
then,’ said Rafe.
‘You sound
disappointed,’ said Mum.
‘Well, it’s all
very nice really,’ replied Rafe, ‘but isn’t a bit…,’ he looked around at the
newly painted blue sky and white cotton wool clouds, with all the sweet little
cherubs chirruping merrily, and finished ‘ ...dull?’
The angel and Dad
spoke together. ‘Why do you think we went to so much trouble to get you back,
Rafe?’
Rafe laughed
‘It’ll be just like home. Can I try on your wings? Where does God keep his
computer?’
The angel just
laughed and disappeared.
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