This is not the worst moment of my life.

He's not sleeping, of course; his type never does. One of the only things left in common with my type, and I can't say it's anything either of us holds as a common point.

No sleep, no dreams, no death of sleep to soliloquize about. I'm maudlin tonight - that's one of my words, though. How to turn a weeping Mary Magdaline into a word for someone moping in one easy step - be the Prince of Dark Humour and laugh at things that really aren't funny.

Like this. This isn't funny, but I'm laughing. I can't help it any more, and maybe he's just pretending not to notice. Maybe he still thinks of me as Laughter, somewhere where he doesn't show people - that's also not funny, except that it is.

God, there's a fucking rebellion between us, an attack on God himself and what the fuck right does he have to rest in my bed?

No fucking right; I took that away from him twenty-five thousand years ago when my feathers went to leather and Heaven burned us. When Michael kicked Lucifer in the gut - I watched it happen and smiled - and threw him out of Heaven by the front of his shirt. Earlier, even. I took that away from him when I was called to talk with the Metatron - the voice of God - and she leaned and whispered, "There's something we want you to do, Kobal, though you'll hate us for it. You'll have to."

It was the first use of the word 'hate'. The first fucking use; how was I to know what the fuck it would do to me when I agreed, do anything for Him.

Eli rolled over, stretched, his ragged dirty dreadlocks tangled on the pillow. The city's grit had stained the sheets as we'd sweated away like humans. I might throw them out. I might keep them. I can't figure out which is funnier: A Prince of Hell holding on to stained sex-rags out of sentiment or a Prince of Hell throwing them away as if they meant nothing.

Lucifer, Kronos, all those darker Princes, they'd like shit like this to mean nothing. It can't mean nothing, because something fucking happened, but it can be funny to pretend. To make like this isn't real.

And so it goes: Always trying to decide what's the funniest, even when I know it's not funny at all.

"Hey," Eli says. He reaches up to touch my face and I can see the dirt under his fingernails. Well, it does make sense: when I met him yesterday he'd been begging for money in the streets. God will make a beggar of all of us, I suppose, from meanest Prince to most loyal Archangel.

Eli had said he was just enjoying Creation, when I took him home and gave him liquor. Just out among everything, man, living his Word, being part of Creation. He had five dollars in change from that day's begging. He gave it away to another sick homeless bastard as he followed me.

"Hey," I say back, and hold his hand. "How're you doing?"

Eli smiles, the expression crinkling the dark skin around his eyes, lighting up his face. "Great. Just great."

And as moments go, I guess I've had worse.