Heaven Expresso

Did you know that Gabriel loves nothing better that a mocha frappucino? With extra sprinkles if you would please. And that St. Peter cannot do without his morning lemon donut complete with a cup of molten sludge that he swears is the reason that Lucifer could never fall asleep? Well now you do. And how do I know this? It's because I’m the coffee girl. Yes, even angels, saints and God herself need everyday comforts to get them through the day; magazines, hair appointments...there are even congestion charges now imposed upon the airway above the City of Angels because of the low visibility due to the smog below. Maybe I should introduce myself, I am the coffee girl at 'angels and airwaves', and yes the band did steal the name, tom saw it in a prophetic dream. Only the top angels are known by their given names, sort of like titles. So as you have probably guessed nobody calls me by my name, but I do have one and it's quite a nice one if I do say so myself. My name is Mara, cute eh? My mother named me after her favourite album, a band named Runrig, I was Scottish you see but moving on.

Angels are sacred and mystical beings, very graceful and very elegant. I am not elegant nor am I graceful, I am only five foot five and I fall over all the time, oh and I only look eighteen. That's because I died when I was that age, a bus accident on the way back from my last day of school. You see the thing is that angels only become angels if they have done exceptional good during their time on earth, so when I unwittingly saved half a dozen lives on that bus by shielding them I became a winged messenger myself. I didn't ask for it, trust me when I say that spirits have a much easier time of it than angels, you get loaded down by responsibilities and the wings get in the way all the time. But the one responsibility I didn't consider was the fact that all these spirits would look to higher powers to deal with their final wishes, and seeing how the saints are always busy who better to bother than the coffee girl? Usually it's nothing that a quick walk to the living well wouldn't fix, I mean you can see anything you wish down that thing, but occasionally it's something that requires an extra...push.

Isabella was a five year old beauty from France with hair like ripe corn and a personality that shone through any bad moment; she told me that she wasn't supposed to be in heaven. It turned out that her stepfather had abused whenever her mother was out of the house, finally leading the little girl to run away. Unfortunately she didn't look where she was running and was hit by a motorcycle in the busy rush hour traffic; nobody ever knew what that man had been doing to her. As a rule we lower classes aren't supposed to go on investigations until we reach gold wing status, I’m only a lowly cadet in flight school. I keep crashing into the billboard above the airway over London, it's not my fault that they built it at a very sharp bend, and I’m getting better at not damaging the poster. Saint Michael wasn't happy with the way I flew right through Jesus’ face the last time I took out the concert board, I was doing him a favour, and the Son's beard had a decisively dodgy look to it.

Anyway, back to what I was saying, the day I found out about Isabella I went straight to Saint James as he was dealing with misplaced spirits that day only to be told that the case was already sorted and that the devil was going to claim this man in two days, sorry but where is the justice in that? A terrible human being gets killed but in this happening he misses out on judgement? He'll get his judgement in Hell, that's what I was told, but the thing is that the devil likes people like this to end up in his hands; they aren't tormented by the torture of their peers so they make brilliant agents to send back to earth.

How do I know this? All new angels are sent to spend a week in Hell so they can understand how the entire system works, God and Satan are not pitted against each other, it's a divine partnership on the collection of souls. These souls are rehabilitated during a period of five hundred years and then sent back into the world with no inkling of their previous life; this is so the soul bank known as the Guff is never empty. When I went to Hell it was winter and I spent the entire time stuck with two new angels and a new demon, one of which was from Africa and the others from the Caribbean, they wouldn't shut up about the snow. Yes you do get winter in Hell, it isn't just eternal third degree burns and smoky ceilings, they have every kind of weather but only in the most extreme levels, so our snow would have swamped us had we not been in the recruits’ hostel on the demonic tower block. As it were, we were quite cosy in the replica of a Swiss lodge, complete with an eternally burning fire; come on it was Hell after all.

Well, while we were there we saw all sorts of interesting things, I never knew that Hitler was quite so short, I’m nearly taller than him, and Lucifer has an ever dodgier beard than Jesus. But that is nothing in comparison to Lucifer’s wife! She’s GORGEOUS! So not fair. Tall, willowy and blonde, a typical beach babe along with the typical dumb personality but he only goes for arm candy. God’s husband is a lovely fellow, really down to earth and happy, a great one for D.I.Y too, is it any wonder that their son was a carpenter?

I’m getting off track here, I always do, it’s a personality flaw. Today is a Tuesday, that means that flight school is out for the day and the office will be full of angels coming down from their Monday highs. Plenty of work normally but today its as silent as the grave. That’s not technically true, spirits blunder about their bodies for so long that if you listen closely enough you can here them complaining about the dark and space down below. It takes an ordinary spirit about a fortnight to find the light, although that’s actually us shining a torch in their face to show them the way as they’re taking so freaking long. Some of us have lives you know!

The bell over the door just chimed a verse of Ave Maria, someone’s come in the shop! Finally, a break from this monotonous boredom!

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