Angelic Rage

The village seemed peaceful enough from the outside. There were farmers in the fields, tending to the crops with gentle hands. Children were playing in the streets, kicking around balls or rolling hoops along the ground. On the air, the soft chatter of the adults reached your ears. You could hardly pick out any one conversation, but none of them seemed willing to cause harm.

That was why you were caught off guard when a little voice on your shoulder spoke up.

“Slaughter them all.”

It was full of a sort of rage you’d never heard in your life but tinged with horror and disgust. You glanced toward the tiny Angel that had appeared on your shoulder. His robes were white and his hair was blond, both signs of his purity, yet his wings trembled and his hands balled into fists.

“Hey.” You poked him in the stomach. His eyes focused on you for only a moment before snapping back in the direction of the village. “You okay?”

“Kill. Them,” he reasserted.

“Whoa, calm down there, Angel.”

Another similar weight appeared on your other shoulder, accompanied by a spot of unnatural warmth. A moment later, its source used her spaded tail to swing from your ear. It was a little red Devil, dressed in simple red and black clothing, with a pair of horns that curled around her pointed ears.

“I’m the one who calls for the slaughtering. You’re supposed to be all ‘Save them!’ Not me.”

You looked back and forth between them, hands raised in case you needed to pull them apart. They may have been semi-real figments of your imagination, but you were confident you’d still be able to grab them.

“You don’t understand. They need to die. Just look at them.”

You and the Devil did just that. Again, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. If anything, perhaps their little flowerbeds weren’t manicured properly, or maybe it was their accents. Even you had to admit, it was a bit tough to understand them, but not impossible enough for them to be slaughtered over it.

“Okay, look.” You took the Angel into your palm. “I don’t see anything wrong with this village. Is it because they’re eating bread with a fork? Because, I mean, that’s weird, but it’s not killable-weird.”

The Angel snarled and whirled on you, hair standing on end and wings spread wide. “Have you gone mad? You think their bread-eating habits have upset me?”

You glanced at the Devil with an expression that you hoped got across the message of, “Help me out here, man.”

The Devil sighed, swung her way onto the hand holding the Angel, and stood there with her arms crossed. “You forget something, Angel.” The Devil hooked a thumb over her shoulder at you. “This guy’s an idiot without us. So, either you speak up, or we do nothing.”

The Angel remained bristling but took a nice, deep breath and calmed down enough to look your way. Still, you could hear the vitriol dripping from his tongue as he spoke.

“These people are all left-handed.”

You groaned and set the Angel back on your shoulder. “Not this shit again.”