Repossessed (2 page)

I
don't like the term “demon.” It carries quite a bit of negativity with it. It implies a pointy tail and cloven hooves. I prefer the term “fallen angel.” That is, indeed, what we are. The difference between us and the angels who didn't fall from grace is that the Unfallen were, are, and always will be faithful, stalwart, and obedient. That is their nature, just as it is their nature to rejoice in worship and contemplation of the vastness of the Creator's perfection. We, the Fallen, wondered, questioned, confronted, eventually demanded, and in general pushed the edges of the envelope till the envelope burst.

Since the Creator knows all in the vastness of time, you may ask yourself whether we the Fallen are merely carrying out our part in His plan. That
is
a question.
Good luck getting an answer. His thoughts, His ultimate designs are mysteries. Except to—maybe—the Unfallen. I've never been sure about that, because the Unfallen don't hang out with us peons much anymore.

I've never really liked those guys.

I went to Shaun's house, eager to check out this body that was now mine. On the way, I kept looking up at the vastness of sky. Oh, what a blue! And the clouds moved, not just in one direction, but rushing, tumbling, rolling, redefining themselves every second.

I felt Shaun's mouth stretching, and lifted his hands to touch his face. His fingers encountered small, squarish hard things.

Teeth. I was grinning! That was wonderful, too—facial muscles reflecting emotions, which are some of the most intangible things in existence. What an exquisite world this was! I should have come here sooner.

On Shaun's porch, I took the key from his pocket and unlocked his front door.

Shaun's parents were divorced. That was one reason I'd picked this body—less supervision. His father was out of town at the moment. His mother, with whom he lived, was at work right now, but his little brother would be here, home from school. I knew the brother, of course, as I knew everyone Shaun came into contact with, but I couldn't wait to see him through physical eyes.

Not that Shaun would have thought twice about Jason. I'd been watching Shaun quite closely for a while, and it was obvious that when Shaun felt anything about his brother at all, it was annoyance at a “pain in the butt” and a “pest.” And Shaun's brother often expressed anger at Shaun for being “bossy” and “mean.”

I already knew more than I wanted to know about human annoyance and anger. I'd spent most of my existence buried under the endless drone of negativity that envelops every one of the billions of my, shall we say,
clients
. Most of them are in my charge not because of what they did, but because of what they didn't do. There's some kind of interaction with the Creator—which of course I'm not privy to—and the souls come, slathered in guilt and regrets. There they remain, to agonize and anguish.

The only uplifting times are when, usually after millennia of suffering, a single soul suddenly, for no reason that's apparent to me, decides that it's had enough, that it's paid the price for its wrongs, and it sort of twists itself inside out, shedding its misery to go free. It's a beautiful, memorable, and very rare event. It's a cool rush, a sweet atom of a moment in an eternity of heavy dark. But even that fine moment has its bitterness. In Hell, nothing is pure joy. There's sorrow in the moment of release, when the soul realizes that a true sin, once committed, can
never be undone, and thus in one respect can never be paid for.

How the length of the soul's stay is decided, I have no idea. I've wondered often enough. I know the kind of reckoning
I
had, after the Rebellion. It wasn't a trial with judgment pronounced from on high. More like the peeling back of the outer layers of one's being, all protection ripped off, leaving one with an excruciating, painfully naked self-appraisal. When that was over, I knew what my punishment was. I knew it would have no end. No one told me. I just
knew
.

Is it the same way with souls? Do they have to serve a prearranged sentence imposed upon them by the Creator? Or do they know on their own when they've atoned for whatever they did or neglected to do?

Whatever the reason, they punish themselves. I merely oversee; I don't actively
do
anything
about
anything.

Mine is a useless occupation.

As I let myself into Shaun's house, I wondered how long it'd take the powers that be to care that I was no longer doing my job. In any case, I was going to enjoy every second of this holiday while I could.

I pulled the door shut behind me. Shaun's cat was in the entry, next to the front door, sunning itself on the windowsill. I was instantly curious; many people love their pets more than they love other humans, and
I've always wondered why.

As far as I have been able to see, animals don't give much to their owners; they let themselves be fed and petted, which has always seemed to me to be entirely a matter of self-interest. Now I observed that this cat did look very soft. It might feel pleasing under the fingertips. Perhaps stroking it might be the key to the pet-owner relationship.

But as I approached, Shaun's cat—its name was Peanut—leaped up, hissing, ears flat, and backed away. I stopped. “Kittykittykitty,” I called, as humans do, while bending slightly to hold one hand out for the cat to sniff.

The cat turned and ran. It disappeared down the hall.

Did it know I wasn't Shaun?

I stood up. I didn't see how the cat
could
know. It wasn't as if I smelled different.

I'd just have to try again later.

I stepped out of the entryway, into the living room. Shaun's little brother, Jason, sat on the floor in front of the TV, playing a video game. He was a compact and complex bundle, in person. The hairs on his head were smooth and appeared to be one shining entity, when I knew there had to be hundreds of thousands of them. His body was relaxed except for his hands, which gripped a controller, and his fingers, which seemed to spasm in tiny movements: tapping, pushing, pulling, circling.

Shaun does not normally greet his brother; in fact, he ignores his existence most of the time. But I wanted to interact, and I liked the feel of Shaun's voice rumbling out of his chest, and I enjoyed making the changes in tongue, throat, and lips that enabled speech.

“Hey, jerkwad,” I said pleasantly, because this was how Shaun always addressed his brother.

“Shut up,” said Jason without looking around. He did not say it with the same lazy, innocuous meaning that Shaun and Bailey used. He loaded the two syllables with loathing and resentment.

I was glad to have been able to exchange speech with another human, and went humming into Shaun's room.

There I stopped in the doorway to take it all in. Or tried to.

Shaun's mother says his room is one big pit without any organization whatsoever, but the truth is that Shaun has a system. He drops the dirty clothes on the floor when he takes them off, and tosses the clean ones on the bed and chair and doorknob. He does not make his bed because, he says, he will only mess it up again that night. His CDs are not in order, and they are on the floor rather than in the rack his father bought him, but they
are
in stacks. Mostly. He knows where they are in general, if not specifically. Dirty dishes lie on the bedside table because Shaun only makes a dish run whenever his trash can is
full. Then he takes all his plates and glasses to the kitchen as he carries the trash out.

However, there is no question that Shaun's room is a mess. In fact, I only fully comprehended what a “mess” was when I saw Shaun's room. Everything blurred and seemed to run together—the colors, the textures, the shapes. It was…unpleasant. Not in and of itself, but because I couldn't separate out something to experience.

Finally I bent and picked up a T-shirt. The words on the front were faded, and scaling from having been washed. I drew the shirt through his fingers, feeling the slight stretch of the material. Wonderful. Soft. I crumpled the shirt in Shaun's hand and watched it take on shadows in the folds. Then I lifted it and gently brushed the material against Shaun's cheek. It felt even softer—interesting, how the more sensitive fingers have slightly different perceptions from the face, which has fewer nerve endings.

The lips have almost as many nerve endings as the fingers. I shut Shaun's eyes and rubbed the shirt against his lips. Now it didn't really feel soft at all, but rough, and as I held it there, a sour stench rose into my borrowed nostrils and I realized that this shirt smelled like three-day-old sweat from Shaun's armpits.

“What are you
doing
?”

I jumped. It's the startle reflex; even infants have it. I didn't know how disagreeable it was.

I looked up to see Shaun's brother in the open doorway. Jason's eyes were a lovely color, sort of a pale green. I doubted that many people had observed this; Jason was renowned for his lack of eye contact.

Then I realized that what Jason saw now was Shaun standing in the middle of the room, eyes shut, while he slowly rubbed a stinky T-shirt over his mouth.

I would have known, even if I hadn't seen the expression on Jason's face, that he thought this behavior odd.

“Nothing,” I told him. That's what Shaun would have said, even if Shaun would never have been feeling his own clothes with his lips.

“Jerkwad,” I added, as an afterthought. Somehow, though, I had missed the rhythm of conversation. Jason did not say “Shut up.” He did not move.

“Are you making out with your
shirt
?”

I wasn't interested in what Jason thought of me. What I was interested in was Shaun's tongue.

The tongue has even more nerve endings than the fingers or lips. I wondered what the material would feel like against my tongue, how it would differ from what I'd already experienced.

Still, I thought carefully, to reason out what Shaun would have done about Jason. I hoped to lie low during my sojourn, whether it ended up being minutes or hours.

“Get out of my room,” I told him, as Shaun would
have, and stepped toward the door.

“I'm not in your room.”

“Get out of my doorway,” I told him, and shut the door in his face.

M
ost of the “sins” that keep people in Hell are—in my opinion—entirely natural and entirely petty. For example, Envy. It's a rare person indeed who doesn't feel a twinge of jealousy when a friend achieves something the person hasn't.

Or Sloth. Only a few times in my career have I seen a soul who hasn't taken a moment to lie around while someone else does a bit more of the work.

But from the way souls whine and moan around the afterlife, you'd think that Sloth and Envy were biggies, equal to murder. Why do they call them the Seven Deadly Sins? I couldn't tell you. And I have no influence on any of the souls I supervise, so I never have any choice but to watch these idiots torturing themselves for life
times over what seem to be the most inconsequential things.

But now I had a body. Now I got to experience some sin in the physical sense, see what it was all about. Envy, Sloth, Pride, Greed, Gluttony, Wrath, and Lust. As well as anything else I could think of. Starting small, of course—the whole point of the Shaun episode was to start small, with manageable moments, in order to ease into the experience, and also in the hope that I wouldn't draw immediate attention from the higher-ups.

I already knew that I wanted to try one of the little “sins” that comes up the most often. It haunts so many, many souls in some form or fashion that I have always wanted to see why it is so shrouded in excitement and guilt.

It is clear to me that masturbation is natural. Even apes do it. Why is it a big deal to so many people?

And if it's so awful, why do they
keep doing it
?

I knew what it was, of course, how it worked—I knew so many odd permutations of the act that it would have made Shaun's brain reel if he had still been in charge of said brain—but I just wanted to try the basic, most common method.

One of Shaun's habits was to do it in the shower, so I decided to stick with that. At first, anyway.

I went into the bathroom, turned on the water,
stripped down, and climbed in.

Then I leaped back out. I'd forgotten the part where Shaun adjusts the temperature.

While I waited for the water to heat up, I examined Shaun's face in the mirror. His hair hung over his forehead and in his eyes; I lifted it with one hand to get a better look. His eyes were a nondescript color that might have been hazel or gray. There was a white scar on his forehead that he'd received from falling off a swing when he was a child. I'd never heard him say why he chose to wear his hair in his face, but now I wondered if he was trying to hide the scar.

I rather
liked
it. How wonderful, to bear evidence of an event that must have been packed with emotion! How satisfying, to always have a physical token of something you'd experienced.

I checked out his body as well. He was too thin, in my opinion. No, not too thin, exactly—he'd just look more appealing to me and probably everyone else if he did something besides sitting around playing video games. I knew he would have felt better, too. It's been clear to me that Shaun has always felt inadequate about his build. Especially his chest and arms.

I turned this way and that. He had no muscular definition, that was for sure. There was a weight bench in his room—under several pairs of jeans, a torn backpack,
and an old blanket—but he'd only used it a few times and then quit.

I thought I'd try the weight bench out, perhaps after I masturbated, or after dinner. I was curious as to why so many people commit themselves to an exercise program and then quit. And why they then act as if they feel
guilty
about quitting. And the whole time, they behave as though they're ashamed of their bodies. That whole process has never made sense to me.

I stuck Shaun's hand under the showerhead to check the temperature. The water felt good now. I never knew how soothing, how voluptuous, running water could be.

As I stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain behind me, I began to feel a delicious excitement. Shaun's body parts felt it, too; they began to fill with anticipation.

They knew what I was about to do to them.

And I did it. Oh boy, did I do it.

When the shower was over, I was gasping and Shaun's heart was racing. I couldn't see why humans didn't do it even
more
often than they did. Heck, I would have wondered why they didn't do it all day
long
if I didn't know that there are other parts of the psyche that need fulfillment besides the sexual drive.

However, I could now understand why this feeling has given rise (pardon the pun) to more obsessions than any other aspect of human existence.

I had also decided that I probably should have started with a different body. Now I wanted to try sex with another person. I already
knew
what sex was, in great and florid detail, but now I was determined to
feel
it.

First lesson learned:
Knowing
doesn't hold a candle to
doing
.

One problem with Shaun was that he had no regular sexual partner. In fact, he had no sexual partner whatsoever. Worst of all, he had no prospect of one. He was heterosexual but had no girlfriend and no friends who were girls. I wished now I'd picked someone who was already having regular sexual activity.

But after only a short time, I already felt an attachment to this particular body, to this particular life. Good old Shaun; I'd never seen any clue that he appreciated the wonder shining in every one of his moments. I thought I'd known everything about him, but living life through his body made what I knew seem dull and one-dimensional. I liked seeing the eyes of his friend and his brother, and I wanted to see more. Humans were much more intriguing from this point of view. They were like puzzles waiting to be put together, mysteries to be solved.

No, being Shaun was fun enough. For now, I'd just try to have sex in his body. It shouldn't be difficult. I'd try a girl first—the most common human sexual experience, to
start with: vaginal intercourse between male and female.

It was only too bad that Shaun wasn't here to experience all the things I was going to do with this body. He would have loved it.