Lucifer's Gift, Part III

This story begins here.  The last entry was here.

...and bumped against one of the fallen cherubs, who was now sitting on the floor.

With his fat, baby-like fingers, the reached out for the apple sitting in front of him.  The apple was gleaming, shining, looking perfect.  It definitely did not belong in the grasp of this chubby little imp!



I went diving out of the booth in which I had been sitting, lunging for the apple.  The angel clearly intended to do the same thing, but he was currently sprawled across the table, and so it took him some time to turn himself around and re-orient himself.

From the other side of the diner, there was the sound of very sharp, very pointy high heels clicking across the vinyl floor.  I glanced up as I hurried forward, and realized that the succubus waitress had just re-entered from the back room.  Her eyes went wide as she realized what was happening, and a moment later, she was also hurrying forward, reaching down for the apple with a clawed talon.

We were all lunging towards the cherub as fast as we could, and it was anyone's guess as to who would get there first.

The baby sitting on the dirty floor looked up, and I saw him look from me, to the angel, to the succubus.  He lifted the apple up towards his chest, towards his face.

"Don't do it!" I shouted.  I didn't know what would happen, but I knew that it would be bad.

"For the sake of your soul, resist the temptation!" the angel called out.  "You'll be damned!  Damned!"

"If you eat that thing, I'll split you in half myself to get it back out!" hissed the succubus, snarling in a manner that was extremely un-ladylike.  "I'll rip you limb from limb!  Give it up, and I'll grant you the mercy of a quick death!"

All of our words must have blended together into an indistinguishable babble of noise for the cherub.  He looked up at us, paused-

-and then lifted the apple up to his mouth.

There was a slight pop.

And the cherub - and the apple - vanished together in a puff of smoke.

As the target of our lunges vanished, we all skidded to a stop.  There was a moment of mutual near-awkwardness as we tried to avoid running into each other; I especially wanted to avoid the clawed talons on the hands of our demonic waitress.

As we stopped, however, none of us wanted to make eye contact with the others.  "Erm, well, I guess my job is done here," the angel sighed, keeping his eyes down.

And with a pop, the angel vanished.  Only his paper cook's hat was left, drifting down lazily to the floor.

The succubus turned to me, and I could see an angry fire burning in her eyes.  She raised her claws and hissed at me, but she didn't take a step towards me.  Clearly she was angry, but attacking me wouldn't help, and I could see that she probably wasn't supposed to kill me herself.

Finally, with one last huff, the succubus also vanished, leaving behind a cloud of foul-smelling yellow smoke.  And I was left alone in the diner.

I settled back down at my table, leaning back and enjoying the silence.  I assumed that I would wake up at any point now.

But for the moment, I just relaxed in the peace.

What a weird dream, I thought to myself.

I wondered what it meant.