The assignment was to bring down an angel; or, to be more accurate, an ex-angel. Although not common, it happened on occasion that an angel fell from Grace and was condemned to live out a mortal life as a human being. Easy prey, the Devil called them. Ex-angels were bitter and resentful, and prone to fall for deceit and the whole soul-selling business. They made good trophies. Their main function was to boost the Devil’s ego in her constant fight against Heaven.

So it was a modest assignment and one Number Three took with reluctance. He suspected his immediate boss, Number Two, was trying to stick him with unimportant tasks to prevent him from getting more credit and moving up the hierarchical ladder. Morale, companionship, and team-spirit were all spelled lower case here, if at all.

Number Two was an ill-tempered, sycophantic jerk, and that was Three’s professional opinion, and due to some bureaucratic error, Two lisped. It unnerved Three to listen to him, but Number Two was his superior and he had to endure his ethereal presence at least until one of them got promoted. Which should happen soon enough. Number Two was only in this position because he was a favourite and a suck-up. Three couldn’t wait until he was powerful enough to make Two’s existence a living hell, so to speak.

He now looked him square into the flaming eyes and repeated, “An ex-angel? Aw, come on Twooy, you’ve got to be kidding me—this is a beginner’s job.”

“Ey,” Number Two snarled, “I don’t make the thupid athingmenth, I juth hand ‘em out. You wanna complain? Go thee the Cap. Oh, I juth remembered—you can’t, can you? Not fucking high enough in the fucking hierarchy, eh?!” This last remark he brought forth with a phoney smile and an overly sweet tenor. Degrading as it was, Three couldn’t take any offence from that. Listening to Number Two speak was cheering him up too much. And he knew for a fact that it bothered his superior that he wasn’t able to speak flawlessly even after a good ten thousand or so years among the undead and not-so-holy.

Three gave in with a put-on sigh.

“Whatever, I’m dying for some R and R anyway. I’ll be looking forward to getting back up there and having a decent pair of legs to stretch. Meanwhile, I believe your linguistic skills are improving, Twooy; you only spitted twice in five whole sentences,” he said and evaporated in a ball of lightning. The furious “Thtop calling me that.” he didn’t hear.

* * * *

Three shoved and pushed the essence of his being through Earth’s crust, surfacing in Anchorage, Alaska. This part of the job he could exist without. Fortunately a devil doesn’t take the form of flesh and blood until after arrival on the surface, so the scratches and bruises of his tiresome ascension were entirely theoretical—he didn’t have a body, yet.

He chose a male one, which was a custom he had adopted over time. This way he didn’t have to look down at himself every few minutes to make sure the way he acted suited the gender he had taken on. He looked at the memo he had taken with him. “Tsk, Angel White, what sort of a disguise is that supposed to be? Who is this one trying to fool?”

He tsk-ed once more, then walked into downtown Anchorage, where Angel White worked. As a waiter. At an ice cream parlour. Go figure. At least the ice cream was good news. Three enjoyed the taste of it. He could spend days eating cone after cone, trying out all the flavours and combinations. The annoying thing was, once he was back and had transformed into his normal form, he couldn’t remember it anymore. All the tastes and sensations were gone and all that was left was a vague feeling of something he had liked. And that was a sensation he didn’t like at all.

The ice cream parlour in question was in a strip mall, somewhat obscured to drivers-by by a huge decorated tree in the parking lot. Fairy lights and glittery things that hurt Three’s eyes were no doubt an attempt at cheerfulness all along the mall. The parlour looked fresh and clean and comparatively non-festive. No ‘Happy New Year’ banners, no fake snow, and none of those annoying, glittery giant snow stars.

Three peeked in through the window: There were a lot of customers, sitting and standing, eating, drinking, chatting, laughing. A general feeling of gayness wafted from inside out onto the warm, sunlit street. There were three waitresses, two waited on the tables and one was at the counter serving the to-go customers.