Sometimes Jimmy wakes up screaming.
He can't control it, can't even try, but the Angel loosens his grip once and he's out there with a knife in his side and so much blood he stops breathing for a second, two.
It's over before he can even blink.
Jimmy remembers things, as he sleeps.
Cinnamon cake, a young girl's smile, someone singing in an empty church. Warm sweaters and warm hugs and God and things that smell nice and don't bite.
But Jimmy has nightmares too, where he sleeps.
Fire and sulfur and eyes so black they look like shadows. Someone telling him he's going to Hell, someone telling him he's already safe in Heaven, and someone else entirely telling him they love him (but not him, not actually him, because he knows that one is for the angel).
And then it's all over and Jimmy wakes up again for just one second and sees sunlight. He wants to hate it. He wants to hate the feeling of someone else wearing a face that isn't his anymore. But he sees sunlight sometimes and he knows it's on purpose, a gift before he dies again.
"Comets," he wonders later, in his dreams. "Aren't quite as bad as they seem."
