Three angels with glorious wings stand in reverent silence around the body of another angel, the manuscript. He looks at each with an expression of brotherly love and sinks back into the pillows. A small cry escapes his lips, he is in great agony but trying not to show it, trying to be austere, trying to be stoic. He knows that his last words are coming and he wracks his famous mind for a last quote worthy of a saint.
“Keep the faith my brothers in goodness, keep the faith my brothers in purity.”
The others look solemn, one cries silent tears down his perfect face and the dying angel clutches his hand. “It is no sin to grieve but I do not need you grieving,” the angel attempts to rise “I need you to carry on my work with the knowledge that it is what I and God both wish of you.”  The angel lies back and breathes out slowly, peacefully, he never gets the whole breath out.
The crying angel hides his face and attempts to control his breathing. His body would not co-operate, the bits that tried hurt him almost as much as the loss he had suffered: they talked of public face and honour even among his beloved brothers. His soul crinkled and crumpled under the strain of his unmoving sobs. All the pain that longed for release stretched and fought at his composure. Idiotically he thought of an advert he had seen in which flavour attempted to escape from a foil-wrapped product. He wasn’t much of a foil around his sorrow. Very thin lines of metal were all that separated all the things in the world. Could he hurt more? Could he ever hurt more?

The old angel had been the epitome of the chosen pure in thought and deed, so pure as to be purifying. His skin of manuscript had the work of decades inscribed on it in a white tracery of repentance-scars. The web covered his body, eschewing form and method it seemed to be striving for movement. Each thread must be picked out in gold, molten gold, thicker than treacle. Only the very most skilled would attempt the work on a paper but on a manuscript it was not to be thought that anyone could perform the art. No one, but several or not at all.
The several were gathered, the top of the class, the cream, the highest of the blessed. They were several in number and exquisite in form. Flowing silver locks forming into their perfect blanc robes, their wings brushed, the claws on the leading edges burnished and glowing with pride of place. The several had arrived and would work themself to death if need be.
The several were the greatest of the angel artists skilled at all they did.

The several had arrived carrying the tools of their craft, the instruments of their art. They surrounded the dead one and began to heat the metal, boiling silver with mercury. Silver quick, silver slow. Perfect pure colour in the pot, imperfect canvas, not manuscript, not paper but slate. Outdated, outmoded, unwanted, unneeded. The several worked for many hours, toiled. They worked hard. In difficult circumstances. They did not hurry. Their strokes upon the slate were made as designed, as ordained. As they worked the light of the furnace danced on their perfect, angel-white skin and in their preacher eyes. Eyes of brimstone, fire, damnation, redemption, but goodness, unstinting goodness. Eyes made powerful with zeal and mercury fumes.

The slate screamed, unheard, outdated, outmoded, unwanted, hated, known to be wrong.

The crying angel led the way. It was his right, his perfect right. He was perfectly right and good and he believed. Always he believed. Belief was his, their, strength, courage, dignity and power. Angels are nothing without belief, without faith. The crying angel was the new manuscript, his paper was to be rubbed away to purify his surface. He stepped into the room, slate tinged the air. The stink was heavy and nauseating. The cleansing must start.

A lighter flicked on.
It illuminated a contrast, slate by paper, light by dark, goodness by evil. The new manuscript prepared himself for the writings of God, the whispered tracing of his legend. The doubts of the manuscript faded away as he knew they must. He must receive the writings, he must receive his prize.

The prize slashed along his chest, over his legs in go-cart races of pain, up his back like the grand knife national. He was fair sport and committed himself to the importance of his glory before the lord. He was lanced and bloody, mazed and filigreed, patterned  with rococo slices. The slate cut deep but thin and precise and bloody accurate. The manuscript fell and could only watch as the angels carried out their penances.

The manuscript lay with his story aching, tugging at his nerves. Whiter still than his flesh and wings the bandages lay. Lay all about and around and beneath him. The swaddled him like a baby. Baby Jesus.

All the angels read the story by hand. Up his legs and along his arms, down his twitching, muscular, scarred chest and around his loins. Their paper next to his white-scarred manuscript looked a shade darker, a shade more wicked. They felt and rubbed and toyed. They all felt and rubbed and toyed with his scripture, with the gospel of his body. They all read of Satan’s evils, his blasphemy and his unnatural creations. They thought of God above and Satan below. God of the air and the winged warriors, those of pure blood and belief, those of the paper and the scriptures. Satan of the earth and the rocks, the slate, the corrupted and sacrilegious creatures who masqueraded as God’s children of Adam and Eve. They swore to bring down the light against the darkness, to destroy the blackness at the core of evil. They solemnly swore, they all pledged, they all took the oath.

The new scripture was young and vigorous. He was determined to live up to his predecessor’s reputation and so no one was surprised when he declared jihad on the root of slate power. The enemy had formed a group to make the slate feel more like God’s people, more like real people. Their pit of filth was called ‘the black jaguars’ and they were trying to say that they did not have to die in their country’s fight against the other great evil. The evil of redness. The evil of blackness was the evil of Satan. The evil of redness was the evil of godlessness. There was a war against the red evil and this ‘black jaguar’ group of black evil was refusing to fight. More proof of evil could not be sought and the new manuscript was eager to write a lot more scripture. On himself and on the unclean.

The door went out. The angels soared in and started preaching. One zealot started repenting his sins upon the slate in the middle of the floor. The manuscript flew into the room and approached the slate. The scripture this time was staccato and explosive, smelling of fireworks. The manuscript sank to the floorboards in holy ecstasy. His hands searched the floor for feeling, they felt the rough boards and the small burns in the wood. The burns on his body embellishing the scripture with supreme gravity.

A lighter flicked on.
A sputtering flame led to a small box. The contents of the box were very keen to preach and in the confines of the box they seemed only to boom with the voice and the power of God.
The floor gave way, paper, slate and manuscript were burned and crushed.

The manuscript awoke, his halo dark and lifeless, his scripture marks uncauterised. Blood seeped from his mouth. He was in some sort of basement, a slate basement, a place of slate power. He was the good Christian in the lions den. He was Jonah in the belly of the whale. Only by God’s grace would he survive.

The manuscript awoke again and pulled himself to a sitting position. He groaned; human.

Back awake again. There were more groans in the lions den. Then the manuscript saw the slate and the rage of war carried him up on waves of strength borrowed from fury. His body suddenly paid back the debt and he fell to the ground, spent. Cursing himself for his levity he wondered how far you must fall to be a fallen angel. He may well be fallen, he was breathing his own blood through his nose.

Back up again. The manuscript looked again at the devil’s corner where the half-slaughtered slate lay in well deserved agony. He stared at the child of Satan and spat a gob of blood in that direction, though half went down his chin. He stared and tried to kill the enemy with purity of thought. But the thoughts came slowly, slowly enough to be tainted by the curse of imagination. The slate was not the child of Satan only a freakish form of anti-albino. No that could not be, he was evil, is evil, the enemy. Not a human being like himself, not like himself. The manuscript was an angel, pure in thought, word, deed and skin, above the flock. Not a human and not like any slate. He could be human none the less, human inside, human outside, surely that made sense. He stared at the man, into those cold, animal eyes that were more human than his own. No servant of satan could be so human. They were all monsters, inhuman. The man’s eyes burned back at him, full of human hate and fear. Yes, there was fear. Genuine emotion, too sincerely felt to be a trick of the devil. This was a man who felt, needed, hated and loved. Probably loved more than the manuscript, more than the man who was the manuscript. The manuscript loved only God. The other angels? He did not love them. This man must have friends, family, lovers; only slate lovers, only weak-woman lovers. Was that only? Was his love with the angels any better? This was a man after all, a man with feelings, needs, hates and loves. He was a wounded man. The manuscript was a wounded man. Did it not then follow that they were equal? Not too different? Identical in the mind of God?
That last thought was the worst, it bit and burned. Had the man a god? The same god? Was his the real God? Reality was God’s will, was it God’s will that the slate’s, no, the man’s, God was the real one? The manuscript had no answers, only questions. He must know or he might never be pure again. Pure. Pure and unadulterated. Adulterated with what. The manuscript could be sullied by slates and weak-women. But slates were men, paper were men could not women be men in their own way?
The manuscript stopped himself raving. He would find out the truth. He must find out the truth. He shaped a question in his mind.
“Do you have a God?”
A long silence followed. The man had stopped groaning. Maybe he had just died like a slate after all, maybe the manuscript was made better than the slate, maybe
“Yes.”
Came the answer. Just “yes”  no emphasis, no inflection, no query, no questioning tone. A word, unadorned and human. As pure as anything could ever be and it had come from the wounded black man. He was a man.
“What is his name?”
The angels crashed through the door into the belly of the whale. They gathered up their dying manuscript and reverently carried him to the exit. The manuscript lolled back his head and stared at the wounded man.
The man answered him
“Allah.”
And then an angel shot him from on high.

Three angels with glorious wings stand in reverent silence around the body of another angel, another manuscript. He looks at each with an expression of brotherly love and sinks back into the pillows. A small cry escapes his lips, he is in great agony but trying not to show it. He knows that his last words are coming and he wracks his mind for a last quote worthy of a martyr:
“I spoke to a man. You would call him a slate. He did not even believe in Satan. He had few sins to his name.”
The angels did not hear him because that breath was his last.

He was prepared for the grave, the highest honours were to be placed upon his body. His tracing scars of scripture lay tangled around his body. He had died putting the finishing touches to that web of scripture. The web covered his body, eschewing form and method it seemed to be striving for movement. Each thread must be picked out in gold, molten gold, thicker than treacle. Only the very most skilled would attempt the work on a paper but on a manuscript it was not to be thought that anyone could perform the art. No one, but several or not at all.
The several were gathered, the top of the class, the cream, the highest of the blessed. They were several in number and exquisite in form. Flowing silver locks forming into their perfect blanc robes, their wings brushed, the claws on the leading edges burnished and glowing with pride of place. The several had arrived and would work themself to death if need be.
The several were the greatest of the angel artists skilled at all they did.
They did their job.
They did their job unknowing that they were consigning their gospel, their precious manuscript’s sinning soul to hell.