Another Tale Left in the Gutter

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Weddings,
in his personal and honest-to-goodness opinion, were horribly happy.
There would be lots of tears from the women, and way too many smiles
from the bride and groom. Then there was the overall décor of
the church (or chapel, if you prefer small, church-like buildings
that were being run by bald, chubby and aging priests). There would
be too many pink or white flowers and too much white cloth. At the
moment, however, he was not in a chapel or a church or any other
place where weddings were usually held.

He
was at Worlds’ End, a nice old dingy pub located at the Crossroads
of the Worlds, attending the wedding of two entities he had known
since the Beginning.

Metatron
was facilitating the wedding of a Mr. A. Fell and a Mr. Anthony J.
Crowley.

“Where
are they?” Metatron asked, a hint of irritation in his voice but
the expression of someone’s 50-year-old mother-in-law on his face,
Lucifer-the Devil and Crowley’s
best man.

“Maybe
they forgot the way,” Lucifer smiled, obviously enjoying Metatron’s
distress but was also worried for the groom and…the other groom.
“You know the path to Worlds’ End is quite difficult to find.
Even I can get lost in the Great Traffic of Different Dimensions and
Universes.”

Metatron
sighed and adjusted his bow tie. He looked at Lucifer, who gave a
knowing smile. He sighed again.

“I
wish we didn’t have to go through this,” he muttered.

“We
can’t do that,” Lucifer said, as he stared at the horizon
stretched out before them. “It’s written already.”

“True,
but I just wished the Lord wasn’t finicky about Its decisions. We
could’ve won the war.”

Lucifer
giggled and patted Metatron’s shoulders. “Or we could’ve
won the war. I don’t pretty much care ‘bout the whole Heaven
against Hell thing. I mean, what are we fighting for anyway?”

At
that, there was a flurry of feathers and several layers of clothing.
A second ago, there was nothing in front of Metatron and Lucifer.
Now, however, there were two persons before them. One was dressed in
black, like Lucifer. He had black hair and amber gold eyes behind
purple-tinted glasses. He also had a strange shadow-that being of a
shape of a man but had serpentine features. The second one was
dressed in an all-white tux, had platinum blond hair like Metatron
and was clutching a bouquet of pink roses in his hands.

“You
two,” Metatron started. “Are late. Where have you been?”

The
figure in blank brushed his pants before answering.

“Aziraphale
didn’t want to wear a wedding gown,” he answered flatly.

Lucifer
erupted into a fit of giggles.

The
second figure hit his partner on the head with the bouquet.

“Wedding
gowns,” he said, in a crisp British accent (although the being was
not British by any standards). “Are for women. I am not a woman.”

“You
most certainly act like one,” his partner remarked.

“I
DO NOT!”

At
the pub’s entrance, a woman with shocking blood-red hair and
orange-red eyes and dressed in, well, a crimson dress with spaghetti
straps, poked her head out.

“Yo,
fellas!” She yelled.

The
four male beings turned to her.

“We
ain’t got eternity, y’know!” She said, and went back into the
pub.

Somehow,
by the graces of the Powers That Be (said Powers That Be appeared as
a young woman with longish dark-brown hair and dark-brown eyes and
dressed in a dark-brown schoolgirl uniform), the wedding went
wondrously well. There were no objections and obviously no madman
crashing the whole event. The after party, on the other hand, was a
different matter altogether.

Here’s
what happened.

After
the customary tossing of the bouquet by the bride (in this case,
groom, since Aziraphale was very much male although angels and demons
in general were genderless), in which it was Michael-the Archangel of
Fire, Justice and Short Tempers-who caught it, majority of the guests
were impossibly drunk, having downed nearly a hundred bottles of
alcohol. Lucifer and his wife, Barbelo-the Queen of Hell and Satan of
Wrath-began to giggle uncontrollably at some joke made by Raphael,
the Archangel of Wind, Healing and essentially, Pimping. Crowley
began to take pictures of his guests doing silly things while his
spouse (cough) led the Congo dance with his shirt unbuttoned and a
lampshade on his head. Beelzebub made a rude remark about Metatron’s
cardigan and was tossed, rather professionally, into the wedding cake
by the latter. Abel had managed to anger Cain by telling his brother
not to smoke pot and drink Jack Daniel’s at the same time and was
now attempting to put himself back together while his older brother
lay on the sofa, dead drunk and high. There were only nine people who
remained unaffected by flow of alcohol in their veins. There was
Azrael, who was playing a Playstation 2 game brought by Mammon; the
Powers That Be who was and is always known as the Creator, Existence,
the First One, Malakh and Gramps; and the Endless-who were too busy
having fun with the drunken fellows, save Destiny and Dream.

The
Powers That Be (we shall refer to It as Malakh and/or Gramps from now
on) looked at Its Rolex watch. It was Time telling It to continue the
path of Everything

 After
the party, everybody left the pub. The Everything continued.