They were the most unlikely of partners, and in the strictest sense, they were not.

They represented their respective ends of the divine spectrum, and for a long time, they didn’t communicate nor acknowledge one another.

They did have one thing in common, souls.

It was after a particularly long day when the two entities stopped to draw breath that they became aware of each other. Both looked exhausted, well as exhausted as an angel can look.

Greg was from the upstairs department of eternity and Wayne was from the downstairs department.

They acknowledged it had been a long day and Wayne invited Greg to have a drink with him in Hell’s kitchen as it was the best restaurant in all eternity and widely known to sell the best sushi and if there was one thing Greg liked it was sushi. Wayne, on the other hand, had enjoyed sushi since the beginning of time, which you can rightly imagine was a long time and so, was looking for something different. In particular, he had for a long time craved a ham sandwich, which, oddly enough, he discovered the best ham sandwich could only be found in the upstairs café, Angelic Delights.

And so the friendship began. They found it a pleasant experience to unwind after a big day, especially those days when natural disasters had taken a huge toll on the lives of so many.

It had never occurred to them that having someone to sound off to could be so cathartic.

It wasn’t long before they realised they could work together, discuss the day, argue the merits of one soul over another and send them to their respective eternities.

Even more remarkable for both entities was knowing they enjoyed each other’s company.

At the end of a day’s work they would turn up in Hell’s Kitchen, Greg with his ham sandwich for Wayne, discretely packaged in a brown paper bag and Wayne having ordered the chef’s special sushi for Greg, the two would ‘chew the soul’ as they referred to it and wind down in each other’s company.

They learned it was always so much easier to agree than to disagree. Some souls they acknowledged were problematical, they could go either way. They devised an interview system whereby they could ascertain the souls true worth. Often the soul would be so disturbed by the interview they would give themselves away and after a long time on the job both Wayne and Greg felt they had developed a good method of judging a soul’s worthiness.

Thankfully for all concerned, their partnership worked very effectively, and each soul received what it deserved. The pious were happy to spend an eternity hymn singing and the not so pious spending their eternity plotting terror and mayhem which never sadly came to anything as hell had a way of making you forget things and start all over. Repetition said Wayne, was hell in itself.

So as they finished their dinners the alarms were sounding, and it was back to work, a plane had gone down, and neither looked forward to dealing with it, but as they often said to one another, “One of us has to do it.”

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2020/01/16/tale-weaver-258-partners-16th-january/