Disclaimer: I own nothing but
a bunch of coasters stolen from German bars.
Rating: PG-13 for language that could have been easily avoided, but,
hey, it's me.
Other: I'm at it again…don't worry, kids. Theater classics like The
Alchemist and The Duchess of Malfi are safe
because I never want to have to read them again. 'Tis
Pity She's a Whore will also be spared because I
really don't know what you could do with that. And if it makes you feel better,
I almost used Goethe's version. Then I remembered that Marlowe put in a good
angel and a bad angel, and that beats out poodles any day.
Faustus tossed the Bible aside. "The reward of sin is death" wasn't particularly appealing. That was worse than medicine and law. He picked up a book of magic and smiled. That was where the real power was, contained in a recipe of circles, candles, lines and letters. Once he mastered this, he'd be a demigod who could do anything he wanted. He could probably get away with tormenting the Pope...
"Faustus, put that damned book aside," said a voice.
He looked up. Two angels had appeared in his study. "In fact," continued one of them, "I think you should give it to me lest it tempt your soul." The other angel rolled his eyes.
"I'm afraid not," said Faust. "But you can take everything else. I'm done with it."
The first angel's face lit up in a not particularly holy way. "Do you mean it?"
"Thou shalt not steal," said the other angel.
"It's not stealing; it's a gift."
"False idols."
"Do shut up, dear," said the first angel who was already grabbing as many books as he could.
Faustus continued reading. This didn't seem to concern him, and it would be nice to get rid of some of the clutter.
"We might have to make two trips," the first angel mumbled.
"We?" sneered the other one. "You're going to have to make two trips."
"You could help me carry these."
The other angel sighed. "Aren't you supposed to be saving this poor bastard from himself?"
"I am. I'm taking away all this evil, evil knowledge."
"Lying again?"
The bibliophilic angel drew himself up to his full height and said with a great deal of conviction, "It's not a lie if you believe it."
"Oh, sweet Je—someone. Do I need to be the good one?" He leaned over Faustus' shoulder. "Repent, you stupid bastard."
The authentic good angel glared at him. "If you really wanted to be good, you'd help me go through these."
"I'm allergic to book mites." He turned back to Faustus. "Hell isn't particularly nice, you know. Still, you'd probably better give that to the greedy—"
"I'm not greedy."
"Yes, you are. If they were looking for people to play the Seven Deadly Sins, you'd be Greed." He thought for a moment. "And Gluttony."
"I'm going to audition for Wrath in a moment."
Faustus watched what happened next with fascination. He'd just rejected Divinity, but he had never thought that bickering angels would stick their tongues out at each other. The War in Heaven had probably involved nothing more than hair pulling and childish name calling.
After a minute or two, both the good angel and what was presumably the bad angel looked slightly embarrassed and turned away from each other. "Is that damning magic particularly rare?" asked the bad angel.
"Extremely," Faustus replied.
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Maybe you should give it to the gr—er, angel. I'm sure you'll have plenty of other opportunities to damn yourself."
"What do you mean by that?" asked the good angel. "I thought we agreed—"
"Shut up."
"You shut up."
Faustus waited for the hair pulling to start. He also made a mental note that if he was going to start summoning spirits, he was going to be very specific in his requests. He wanted knowledge more than anything, and he didn't think that spirits like these could even manage pithy maxims. "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" would probably be their limit.
He suddenly realized that the argument had stopped on the clever retort of "You shut up." The good angel had gone back to the books, and the bad angel was staring at him with strange eyes. Faustus stared back. He couldn't tell if the odd color was a trick of the light, but there was something oddly hypnotic about them. Before he could start to wonder why he seemed to be suddenly infatuated by a man with wings, one of his arms had been painfully pulled behind his back.
"Give me the book," the bad angel hissed in his ear.
Years later Faustus would ask Mephistopheles how it was possible to hiss a sentence without any sibilants in it. At the moment, his only concern was escaping his angelic/demonic intervention with all his limbs. He handed the book over.
The bad angel straightened. "If you say anything about this," he told the good angel, "I'm going to snap your arms off."
"Of course, dear." The good angel somehow managed to look smugly surprised.
"Right." The bad angel glanced at Faustus. "Well, that takes care of the 'repent, don't repent' bit. Let me tempt you to a drink, angel."
"Not here. I don't think I can stand another beer garden."
"Oh, Go—Sa—fuck no."
Faustus watched them leave. The idea of angels drinking didn't seem quite right, but he hoped these two kept at if for awhile and didn't come back to bother him. Rubbing his shoulder, he stood up and shouted for Wagner. He couldn't be the only scholar in town with tomes of forbidden knowledge. Hopefully someone he knew would have something that included both summoning spirits and keeping them away.