The Bentley cut through an evil veil of rain, its tyres hissing over wet asphalt while Crowley drove at a speed best described by insurance companies as “premeditated.”

Somewhere behind him, several traffic cameras were making brave but ultimately futile attempts to establish exactly how fast the car had been travelling.

The Bentley, which had developed opinions about surveillance technology sometime around 2009, had already decided the answer was “not your business.”

London was full of Aziraphale-shaped holes. Spacetime had lately developed the annoying habit of manifesting angelic faces on toasts, ethereal yet slightly chubby figures across tables and celestial voice giving food advice whenever a menu is in sight. (“Mmmm, that seems scrumptious!”)

Crowley had once believed that immortality would at least spare him the indignity of ordinary heartbreak. Instead, it appeared merely to grant heartbreak more time to become inventive. And the Bentley was definitely not helping.

So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye
So you think you can love me and leave me to die
Oh, baby, can't do this to me baby
Just gotta get out, just gotta get right outta here

*switch*

How do you think I'm going to get along
Without you, when you're gone
You took me for everything that I had
And kicked me out on my own
Are you happy, are you satisfied
*switch*

But life still goes on
I can't get used to living without, living without
Living without you by my side

“Come on. Aren’t there different songs?” Crowley complained. (“Crowley, is that Bebop?”)

The universe, which lately had become far too interested in causality but still didn’t lose its fondness for narrative mischief, responded by what happened next.

White light flooded Crowley’s vision. There was the bookshop, alone, in a weird unreality of nothing. The universe had gone missing around it.
Shelves stretched upward beneath warm lamplight. Books filled them from floor to ceiling, except the books were wrong. Blank. Empty. Their content was null because there was nothing to be written.

To his relief, there was Aziraphale, standing near the counter besides a figure of himself. He looked tired.

Do they have each other at last, after literally everything else was burnt?

He saw angel began to write on a blank book and realization hit him hard.

We can just make another Book of Life.

… And then God arrived because Aziraphale summoned Her. What?

Questions. God offered one for each of them. The problem of evil was dodged? The last remnant of fairness was surely lost in Her omniscience. 

Accusations. Something he really may say to Satan, if there wasn’t any punishment.

A garden. How familiar. Reminded him the gloomy old days with a single silver lining.

They talked for less than five minutes no no no

A figure definitely not himself wanted to keep Creation ruined keep everyone dead and build a new godless one with fucking free will his nonexistent brain screamed and screamed and

Neither of them would live to see it

The regret on his angel’s lovable face no this figure cannot be his angel his angel cannot die

The regret

The vision shattered.

Crowley slammed back into his body when a phone buzzed in his pocket. An iPhone, whose logo was his design, or at least he had given that inspiration.

One message from some unknown number with the alias Omega: You have seen the ending. Now decide whether it deserves to happen. 

“Oh,” he said aloud, “someone is going to have to answer a lot of questions.”

(While the demon was distracted by his phone, with booming voice of a horn, a bus drifted into his lane with the suicidal confidence unique to London public transport.

(Look out! You may hit something!)

Crowley tried to swerve around it, expecting a smooth brush past. Such things used to happen automatically around celestial beings. Reality had once possessed narrative instincts. It knew, for instance, that when a demon in sunglasses accelerated stylishly through rain-soaked streets, the traffic ought to cooperate. 

Nevermore. chanted Reality, as the Bentley rushed directly into where another car had occupied and didn’t seem to conveniently be aren’t-there-from-the-beginning.