Fallen: A Comedy of the End Times
an excerpt

It’s after five when the doctor finally comes in to the exam room.

“Mr. Fallen?” he says, not looking up from my chart in a manila envelope.

“Call me Chris,” I answer.

“Chris.” He looks at me as he pulls the rolling office chair out from the desk and sits down. “How are you today?”

“Um…good, under the circumstances I guess. How are you?”

“Good. What seems to be the trouble today?”

And now, after five hours of waiting in this God-forsaken place for this very moment, I don’t know what to say. My tongue, as they used to say, has cleaved to the roof of my mouth.

The doctor looks back down at the chart, begins writing something, and looks back at me. When he seems satisfied that I’m either unwilling or unable to respond to his question he says, “It says here that you’ve been having hallucinations, visual and auditory. And that you believe you’re someone else. Is that right?”

“Kind of.” And then I blurt out the only thing that comes to mind: “Doctor, I’m the Antichrist.”

“Uh-huh. Go on.”

“I mean, at least, I think I’m the Antichrist. But I know that can’t be true. So I must be…you know…” I trail off and touch my head to indicate my obvious infirmity of mind.

“And how long have you been having these thoughts?” he asks.

“Well, since I can remember. Since I was a kid.”

“And what makes you think you’re the Antichrist?”

“Well, for one thing, Malanthros told me. That’s the demon that visits me, I told the nurse about him.”

“And how long has that been going on?”

“Malanthros? He started showing up when I was six, on my birthday. The day my dog died.”

“And why else do you think you’re the Antichrist?”

I pause for a moment, trying to think of how I must seem to this doctor, in his completely sane white coat, in this sober exam room, inside this utterly normal hospital.

“I have powers.”

“Such as…?”

“Well, I can bring the dead back to life. At least I brought my dog back to life. And I can heal people.”

“I thought the Antichrist was evil. That doesn’t sound very evil.”

“Well, see, technically I’m an angel. Er, a half-angel; my father, Lucifer, he was an angel before he rebelled against…”

The doctor writes something in my chart. He says, “OK, Mr. Fallen, I’m going to admit you upstairs to the psychiatric department, overnight at least. One of the doctors up there will examine you. OK?”

“I guess…OK.” I smile, and thank him. It feels like a weight’s been lifted off my chest, and I can breathe for the first time in years. I’m not the Antichrist. I’m just a nutjob. And someone here is going to fix me, and I can be normal. No more Satanic powers. No more visions of Hell on Earth, or Armageddon, or plagues, or any of it. And no more visits from Malanthros. As the doctor leaves the room I wonder idly if I might actually miss old Malanthros. I suppose I will--I’ve known him practically all my life.

A few minutes later a male nurse shows up with a wheelchair. We take a ride on the elevator and upstairs. In the psychiatric department, I wave at the nurse behind the admissions desk as I roll by. I think she sees me, but she’s trying not to notice. That’s fine. That’s fine, because everything’s going to be better now.

The male nurse rolls me down a hallway with mauve-painted walls to a little room that I assume must be where I’m staying. I’m a little surprised by how normal it looks. There’s a bed—not a hospital bed, but something more like you’d find in a lower-end motel room—a writing desk, a wardrobe, a bathroom, a sink, and a TV mounted in the corner. And it’s a single room, I’m relieved to find, since I had been pretty nervous about sharing a room with one or more crazy people. The nurse wheels me inside, tells me the doctor will be around to see me soon, and closes the door.

And locks it.

Ah, nice, it locks from the outside. Suddenly I don’t feel so much like everything’s going to be OK. I feel more like I’m a crazy person locked up in the psych ward of a hospital. Which, it’s plain to see, I am.
For the first half-hour I just kind of sit on the edge of the bed in a muzzy kind of shocked state over the situation I’ve gotten myself into. I’m in a psych ward. I’ve gotten myself locked up. I’m in the fabled looney bin. What was I thinking?

And almost as in answer (ok, no, from past experience I’ll say intentionally as an answer) there’s an uncomfortable change of pressure in the room, accompanied by a flat-sounding “pop.”

“Hi, Malanthros,” I say.

I look up at the demon. He looks pissed.

“Just what in the bloody damn HELL are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” I answer in mock innocence, trying to buy time. I already know this isn’t going to be pretty. The saying usually goes differently, but I can tell you from direct experience that a woman hath no fury like a demon scorned. I think there’s a little smoke coming off the top of his head—wouldn’t be the first time.

“You know perfectly damn well what I mean. C’mon, we’re going.”

“I can’t, Malanthros. Not this time.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I’m staying here.”

“Oh, that’s bloody brilliant, that is. More trouble I don’t need.”

“Sorry.”

“Shut it.”