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‘nostalgia will tempt you,’ and another, ‘you will live a hundred million years,’ the third, ‘and spend the rest looking back.’
‘you birthed lies shrieking and convulsing’ ‘nostalgia will lie to you’
‘But I’m sick of the name that God gave me.’ Lucifer thought he might have to come up with a new one, sometime soon, after every last remnant of Heaven was destroyed, and they could begin rebuilding.
“You make me happy. I want to be happy with you forever.” They could kiss for eternity, lay with their legs tangled in the heat of any sun, they could take each other’s hands and run until the last star burned out.
“I asked the Lord, once, if you were really an angel. I couldn’t convince myself you were. You made me feel like no other angel had. And He told me that you were simply Lucifer, His most loved creation. That you were temptation — beautiful, ripe, prohibited above all else.” Michael’s voice lingered feverish against the skin of Lucifer’s throat. “Forbidden fruit.”
this is love: torture and ruin and possession and the dips by Michael’s mouth.
I want us to embrace until these bodies curl like vines, turn inseparable as debris, knotted together, our mouths interwoven. your divinity in my mouth, your worship salted on my lips. I want to be so close I can read your mind all I want I think: you think: I: I would do anything to hear your thoughts’
“You’re everything to me, the stars and the moons, the heat and the cold, the earth and the seeds, the waters and the flowers, but you are not God.”
Lucifer kissed Michael, long and forward, miserable, pressing deep to taste his heart; kissing to death. Kissing as if it were the last thing angel Lucifer would ever do, and it was.
“Lucifer,” said the Lord, “how far you have fallen.”
“We could have had eternity, we could have had forever with one another, we could have counted every ripple in the sea.”
“It was for us. It was always for us.”
‘Where is all the ambition I caught in your eyes? Or was your gaze just another mirror to me, and it was my own that I saw in you?’
‘What a Beast you are! How I expected this destiny, Father, and yet still — you made it worse, created something greater than torture. Just to prove your superiority, one last time.’
“Because you have corrupted my creation, and turned yourself into a Beast, you will be cast down from Heaven.”
“You will be the most cursed creature, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life.”
“You have broken the covenant with the angels. They will all suffer because of what you have done. And you will no longer be an angel, nor will you have that name.”
“Damn me, damn me for eternity!”
When the Lord ordered them cast down, they fell in joy — the first shooting stars.
He cast judgment: “From the animals on Earth, I will make one in our image, according to our likeness,” and the host stared in confusion, “and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle in all the Earth, and over every creeping thing. I will call this being Man. Because you have broken the covenant, you will all have to bow for the new creation. You will worship and minister to him as you do me, and you will love his children and nurture them, knowing they will inherit Heaven from you. You will rebuild the eternal paradise, for Man.”
The demons fashioned him a crown of bones, thorns, and weeds that gave him the illusion of having horns. And they loved him.
