Page 15 of Inbetweeners
Phoenix laughed. “I’m a demon.”
Emmett stopped twirling his fork in the spaghetti. “A demon?”Oh fuck.He hoped that was a joke, but somehow he didn’t think it was. He wondered what Phoenix had done to deserve Hell.
“What are you?” Phoenix asked.
“An angel.”
Phoenix sighed.“Of course, you are, Mr Perfect. How long have you been dead?”
“Almost a year. What about you?”
“The same. How did you die?”
“I don’t know.”
Phoenix frowned. “How can you not know? What’s the last thing you remember about being on Earth?”
“I don’t have any memories of how I died. Or of anything else.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t.”
“Is that common?”
Emmett shrugged. He’d never asked anyone up there whether they remembered or not.
“That must be awful,” Phoenix said. “Remembering is what kept me going. Though it was also part of the punishment, recalling what I’d lost. But at least when I was…in a dark place, I could cling to thoughts about my friends and family. I’m shocked that they don’t let angels remember.”
“They do,” Emmett mumbled. “I was given the choice and I chose not to remember.”
“What? You chose not to? Are you crazy?”
Emmett glared.
“And now you don’t recall why that seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“I thought it would be easier not to remember, not to miss people, that it would make life—the afterlife—more tolerable. Maybe I was right. Since I can’t remember anything, I’ll never know.”
“Well, maybe we can uncover your past. Google your name. Do a reverse image search.”
“I’ve already googled. No sign of me. I think they’ve changed my surname.” He still wasn’t sure if he wanted to discover why he hadn’t wanted to remember.“What about you? Do you want to go and see your friends and family? Tar said that if we did see people we knew, they wouldn’t recognise us, but you could—”
“No. There’s no one I want to see. What’s it like in Heaven?”
That had been an abruptnoand a swift change in direction from someone who’d said thoughts of friends and family had kept him going.
“Have you forgotten already what it’s like there?” Phoenix asked.
Dickhead.Emmett hesitated. “Heaven is…dull. I’ve never been so bored in my life—as far as I know.”
Phoenix scowled. “Bored? Fucking bored? What the fuck?”
Emmett flinched at the harshness of his voice and the increasingly raised tone.
“You have no idea what it’s like in Hell, you lucky fucking bastard. Too hot to breathe. Living alongside a host of demons out to inflict as much pain as possible in as many ways as they can, on anyone they feel like hurting. Day after day of getting broken to pieces and hoping like fuck you’ll stay broken, only to wake and discover you’ve healed enough for them to break you all over again. Want to knowhowthey like to do that? The sort of tortures they inflict? They rape, strangle, stab, bite, beat, whip, cut off bits of you… Bits you never even want to think about losing. They’re fucking inventive, I’ll give them that.”
“Maybe you deserved it.” Emmett had snapped out the response but regretted the words the moment they came from his mouth.
