I first met the Devil as I was watching a red sunset the night before I started the third grade. The sun, vanishing over the horizon, was streaking the sky with an array of pollution pinks and power plant reds when a sound coming out of my underwear drawer distracted me from the fire in the sky. A rattling that might have been violent if the creature making it was any larger. As I pulled the plastic handles of the top drawer of my dark wooden dresser, I was greeted by not only the sight of my multi colored super-hero under-roos, but also by a small red bat-like creature. At nine years old nothing scared me, lizards, bugs and snakes were my favorite toys. My only thought was how lucky I was to have my own vampire bat.
It was about the size of my fist and its wingspan was roughly twice that. It laughed at me, grinning through a mouth full of Spider-Man underpants. Devils will eat anything. It didn’t strike me as odd then that this strange laughing creature had no body, just a head with curly black hair. What did surprise me was its human face, pointed noise, black goatee, thick lips, and shockingly white teeth in contrast to its crimson skin. It had no arms just the red leathery wings that sprouted from the back of its head, a little hooked tail and sharp clenching bird-like talons under its chin. The wings had claws that sprouted out of their joints like some sort of bat and the tail it used to grasp small objects. Above its dark eyebrows were two pointy little green horns that looked like misplaced lizard scales.
From that day on the Devil was always with me, laughing at my mistakes and eating whatever it could find. Devils never go to the bathroom.

A few days after finding the Devil in my underwear drawer, I discover another creature living in my room. The Angel was in my in my church jacket on a Monday. It must have followed me home the day before. I had gotten in trouble at church because I couldn’t stop yawning and dosing off during the sermon. The priest kept talking about forgiveness; I wondered why I couldn’t be forgiven for taking a nap. I certainly forgave him for being so boring.
Besides the size, the Angel was very different from the Devil. Instead of the red bat-like wings, the Angel had broad white-feathered wings that were so bright they seemed to glow in the light. When perched they stood tall and proud, like some sort of miniature bird of prey. The Angel’s face was like nothing I had ever seen; it was impossible to tell whether this creature was male or female. It was beautiful. The Angel didn’t have claws, hands or a tail. The only appendage it had was a strange yellow halo that floated over its tiny head and long hair that was unbelievably fair. In the right light you could see right through it making the Angel look completely bald with wisps floating around its smooth head. Like the Devil, the Angel tried to communicate only no with laughs and chuckles. Instead it used bird-like whistles and clicks. They made me laugh. The Devil hated them.

When I tried to tell my mom about the Angel and Devil, she told me that I had a great imagination and should write my stories down. She also said that Angels look like Marilyn Monroe and Devils look like Betty Page, whoever they are.

The first few weeks with the Angel and Devil were fine. They stayed away from each other. While one perched on my shoulder or played with me, the other would busy itself hiding in my underwear drawer or the deep pocket of my church jacket. My mom didn’t like the Devil even though she had never seen him and didn’t believe in him. She hated buying me new underwear all the time. It wasn’t until the second month of school that I named the Devil. I decided to after he spoke his first and only word to me.
I was dreaming about swinging in the playground. I was going as high as I could. The hard packed dirt would rush up to meet me and then be pass in a blur until it was way below. The sky seemed so close. I was in the space between earth and sky. If I moved my hands out of place, the chains would burn me because the sun was so hot in front of me. I was just about to reach the clouds when one of the chains snapped and I was thrown into the air, spinning like a broken top. The second before I hit the earth the slithery word, “Thanatos” woke me up. The Devil was perched on my pillow next to my right ear, giggling. I asked it what it meant. He flapped off in reply, giggling crazily.
Thanatos, I decided must be his name.

The Angel never talked to me, it would coo and click but to this day has never tried to make words. Angels never eat. Maybe that’s why it didn’t need to talk. Angels don’t do much of anything really. They fly around, bump into windows, make soft noises and look at you with a sad expression when the Devil’s on your shoulder. They seem useless. The only thing the Angel did that seemed interesting was stare into the mirror and coo at its reflection. Angels know they are beautiful.

One morning as I was getting ready for school the Angel fluttered up to me and nuzzled into my jacket pocket. I tried to stop it but as soon as I would turn my back to leave, he would try again. Finally I gave up; I was late and didn’t have time fight with it. Besides, I thought, the worse that could happen is it would fly away. No one needs an Angel in their pocket, its like carrying around a secret that no one wants to know.

When I got home from school that day Thanatos seemed really mad. He had eaten my lampshade and was half way done with a sock that had been left on the floor. The Angel fluttered out of my pocket and started bickering with the Devil like it always did. With a mouthful of dirty sock, the Devil couldn’t argue back. Since I didn’t understand them, I turned on my TV and watched cartoons. It was cold outside.
The next day the Devil was already waiting in my jacket pocket when I got up. The Angel was nowhere to be found. I didn’t know if taking Thanatos was a good idea but it was only fair since the Angel went yesterday. On the bus, the Devil flew out of my pocket and sat on my right shoulder. It chuckled happily in my ear until we got to school. No one said anything about the Devil on my shoulder.
Before recess my teacher, Mrs. Milton, handed back a math test from last week. I failed. The Devil chuckled happily at my F. This should have made me mad but I didn’t care. I had to stay in during recess to talk to Mrs. Milton. She asked me if everything was all right and said something about being concerned with my grades. Thanatos was distracting me. He was flying around the paper in my hands scratching at the red F with his pointy claws. She got a sad look in her face at the same moment that Thanatos decided to rip the paper to shreds. The only thing left was the red F at the top.
When my mom picked me up from detention that night she was mad. She yelled and asked me what had gotten into me. I tried to tell her that I didn’t do it. This only made her madder.
“Your teacher was right there when you did it, so don’t lie to me!” she screamed as I tried to explain to her about Thanatos during the car ride home.

After that, the Angel and Devil refused to stay home while I was at school. No one seemed to notice them as I sat staring at my desk or drawing in my notebook. Their little wings tickled my ears and I would sometimes giggle out loud. I used to play soccer but now no one would pick me for a team so during recess I would sit on the swing listening to the two creatures argue with each other through my ears. I didn’t notice as much anymore. Even Angels and Devils get boring after a while.  
It wasn’t until after the Christmas break that my mom went to school with me to talk to the counselor. We sat in his dingy white office in big fake leather chairs with the cracked orange padding and sticky wooden legs and armrests. He had several pictures on his desk. One was a picture of his wife and daughter, she was very pretty, and he told my mom that she was going to college now. Another was of a puppy, a little Scotty dog with its hair all grown out. I told him that the puppy was cute and he showed me another picture. In this one, the dog was grown up and looked like a snotty show dog. He laughed and said he thought he was cuter as a puppy too. When him and my mom started talking I disappeared, I imagined that I vanished in a puff of smoke but really I just dissolved.  The Angel and Thanatos came out of my pocket and perched on my shoulders. I ignored them and listened to the adults.
“Well, he’s always been a very smart boy, were just worried that something is wrong,” the counselor told my mom. “Is there something going on a home that might explain his grades?”
“I can’t think of anything,” my mom said. “He’s not watching TV hardly at all and he spend most of his time in his room or outside playing. I know he does his homework because I check it for him every night.”
“And he does okay on that?”
“Of course, I hardly ever need to help him. Even Mrs. Milton says that his homework is always correct but he just doesn’t do anything in class and he’s been failing a lot of tests.”
“Well, what concerns me most,” started the counselor, “is that last year he was one of the most outgoing students. He played with everyone else at recess, got good grades and even scored in the top five percentile on our standardized tests. Now he just sits on the swings at recess and when the first half tests came out he had gone from where he was to the mid-low percentile, a complete one-eighty. Not only that, I want you look at these.” The counselor pulled out the skinny red notebook I used for math. On the last page I had drawn the Angel and Devil sitting on my shoulders with the name Thanatos over the devil and a halo over the Angel.
My mom looked at them and gave me a sad look. I didn’t understand why this picture made her eyes well up. “He looks so sad,” she said to the counselor as she stroked my hair. “What is this word? Thanatos. What is that, a vocabulary word or something?”
“That’s what I was curious about too. It’s the name of the mythological personification of death, and in psychology we use it to describe the death instinct.” My mom’s eyes grew wide at this and her mouth opened in surprise. “I was curious where he would have learned this word, it’s definitely not a third grade vocabulary word.”
The Angel cooed at this and flapped his tiny wings making me giggle. The Devil just chuckled at the sound of its own name. I was staring at a dark spot in the rutted orange carpeting but I could feel my mom’s eyes digging into the back of my head. As they continued to talk, I started to imagine the building on fire, people, kids, running from the inferno enveloped in flames. The smell of burnt hair made me twist my nose in disgust and Thanatos just giggled. The Angel was gone, it was sitting on the counselors shoulder but my mom didn’t seem to notice. Its absence brought me back to their conversation.
“I think we should schedule a series of psychological and possibly neurological tests. I’ve already talked to my friend at the children’s clinic and we can get him in tomorrow morning. Can you take the day off work?”
“Of course I can!” My mom seemed really upset. “You look at me like I’m a bad mother but I’m not, he’s always been quite with me, ever since his father left…” she broke off and gave me a sad look that I hadn’t seen… “Since his father died.”

That night we had pizza, my favorite, for diner. My mom kept asking me where I had learned the word Thanatos but when I tried to tell her that it was the Devil’s name, she would just get mad so I told her I heard it on TV. Thanatos was in my pocket and I would sneak him the mushrooms that my mom took off her pizza. The Angel was fluttering around the kitchen restlessly.
After dinner I helped with the dishes, there were a few left from breakfast as well as the two small plates we used for dinner. I had never noticed it before but the small blue flowers on the plates and bowls looked like little heads. Some had tiny blue wings, some had nothing, not even a face. I pointed this out to my mom and she looked at me uncomfortably. That night I went to bed early.
As I was falling asleep, I remember hearing the Angel and Devil fighting. It wasn’t their usual gibbering. This time it sounded real. The Angel would coo and then be flung across the dark room. Thanatos would chuckle until an invisible thud knocked the breath out of him. I fell asleep wondering who would win.
I woke up an hour early because the Angel was making strange sounds. From what I saw in the early morning light that creped through my window the Angel looked hurt. I gently picked it up in cupped hands and noticed that one of its wings was bent at a funny angle. I don’t know what made me do it but I grabbed the tiny wing and wrenched it into place. The Angel’s eyes shot open and it screamed a terrible bird screech. It no longer had a beautiful neutral face as it twisted in agony. Its tiny halo dimmed and it looked, for the first time, like a girl. The Angel was never the same after that. It would violently assault Thanatos when he got near me but it was weaker now and wouldn’t always win.
I found Thanatos in my underwear drawer. He had just finished eating the elastic band that went to my green Hulk underpants. When I saw him he didn’t laugh or giggle, he attacked me with all the power that he had in his tiny little body. Somehow, I knew he was angry with me for helping the Angel. With his small horns he rammed into my forehead and a tiny drop of blood came out. It didn’t hurt. His attack didn’t even bother me until he bit my left ear. I screamed and the broken Angel fluttered lopsidedly to get between us as best it could. I don’t know why my mom didn’t hear us. She must have been in the shower. After the fight ended, the exhausted Angel perched on my left shoulder breathing quickly and the Devil acted as if nothing had happened as it came to rest on my other side as I sat in the middle of the floor catching my breath.
When my mom came in to wake me up she started crying. I had broken my lamp.

At the hospital that day the Angel was restless, its wing looked a lot better but it still flew a little lopsided. The Devil laughed at this. After we waited for a while in a white room with ugly plastic chairs, most of them slightly broken, a nurse called us back to see the doctor. They weighed and measured me before the doctor came in. His name was Doctor Mike. I thought that was a strange name for a doctor, but was glad he was in normal clothes instead of the white doctor outfit. His office was really neat. Instead of the usually sticky and cold bed/table he had a couch and two really comfy chairs across from his big wooden desk. My mom waited outside while I talked to him.  He asked me a bunch of questions about school and home and even about Thanatos and the Angel. I was just happy to have someone believe me and I told him everything.
When we started talking about them, they both flew away and went to explore the hospital. I wondered if there were other Angels here or just more Devils.  
“Are they here now?” Doctor Mike asked.
“No, they went to explore, I just hope they don’t fight again. The Angel got really hurt last time”
“Do they fight a lot?”
“They argue a lot but they got in big fight this morning, see my ear?” I showed the doctor my ear. It still felt red from the bite. He wrote some stuff down and kept asking me questions. Some of them were about Thanatos and the Angel, some were about my mom, but most of them were about my dad.
I told him about the last time I saw my dad. I had came home from school and found him taking a nap on the living room floor. He was hard to wake up so I went outside to play. My dad usually made me a snack right when I got home so after I played a while I was hungry. I went back inside to get him to make me something but he was still asleep. I tried to wake him. When he wouldn’t get up I called my mom. She was really scared so I got really scared and just kind of froze. I wanted to help dad but he just wouldn’t wake up no matter what I did and he was too big to move. He was breathing really weird so I knew he was alive. I wonder where he is now?
I had to ride in the ambulance while the paramedics tried to wake my dad up because no one was around who could watch me. They screamed a lot and took blood from his fingers and jabbed him all kinds of needles. The whole time they were telling me stuff like, he’s going to be all right son, don’t worry.  After we got to the hospital I found my mom in the waiting room that they made me stay in. She had left work early to meet us. I was still hungry but also really afraid because my mom looked so upset and my dad had so many needles and wires sticking to him last time I saw him. My dad didn’t come home with us. I didn’t eat again until the next day.
After that I had to stay with my Aunt Shell for a few weeks. She’s really cool and we played a lot but I missed my mom and dad and just wanted to go home.
When I did go back all my dad’s stuff was gone. Everything but his pictures. My aunt didn’t let me talk about my dad. When I did she would talk about something else or we would go somewhere and play. I remember one night I had a bad dream. I think I was trapped in a burning house and someone was looking for me. There was fire everywhere but I didn’t want to be found so I stayed hidden until the closet I was in caught on fire. I remember seeing my arm burning before I woke up. I’ll never forget that dream. Sometimes my arm still burns in the morning.

After I talked to Dr. Mike for a while he asked if I wanted to see him again tomorrow. I didn’t mind too much, I got to miss another day of school. This made my mom cry. She’s cried a lot since my dad left.

The next morning when I went to talk to Dr. Mike he asked me if I knew where my Dad was. I told him that I had no idea but I wished he would come back. That’s when he explained that my father had died because of his diabetes. For the first time since I found them the Angel and Devil were silent. There was no chuckling, no cooing, and I told the doctor this. He asked if he could speak to the pair and I told him they were on my shoulders.
“Hello Thanatos,’ he said looking at the Angel. “Can you understand me?”
The Angel looked mad and Thanatos smiled wickedly at the doctor. If he couldn’t tell the difference between an Angel and a Devil I didn’t think he was a very good doctor.
“They don’t want to talk to you,” I said. “They don’t like you.”
This was the first time I saw Thanatos’ flames. They started small and slowly grew until they surrounded him. From wing tip to wing tip he blazed. I could feel the heat on my shoulder and smell my singed hair. As the fire grew hotter, it began to burn me and I screamed as I tried to get Thanatos off my shoulder but he wouldn’t leave. He dug his tiny claws into my shirt and laughed, more wickedly than I had ever heard from him. Dr. Mike tried to calm me down but the pain was so bad all I could do was shout. “Leave us alone!”
I thought the Angel had vanished while I was trying to get the burning Devil off my shoulder. But it hadn’t, it was right there fighting him with me. Thanatos was just too strong for us that day. When it was all over my face and shoulder were bleeding. Dr Mike was holding my arms tight against my sides. When I looked in the mirror I had deep scratches on my right cheek and ear. He told me that I had hurt myself. I must have done it while trying to put out the fire.

After that I had to stay in the hospital. They put me in a room with a small window that looked out over the parking lot, a TV and a long white bed. They told me if I was good I could watch TV for a few hours a day. I tried to be good but I never got to watch TV.
Every morning a nurse would wake me up and make me take some medicine before I got out of bed to go to my new classroom. We didn’t study the same things here that we did in Mrs. Milton’s class. One day we would talk about my dad, the next we would talk about my mom or Aunt Shell and no matter what, the teachers let me draw all I wanted. I still had to do normal school stuff in my room though.
The Angel and Devil weren’t around as much anymore. I don’t think they liked the hospital. I would wake up and Thanatos would be chuckling in my ear at the Angel who was always trying to fly out the closed window. After the nurse came they would both hide until I was done with my special classes and daily talk with Doctor Mike.

“Let’s go outside. I want to teach you how to catch a baseball.” The summer break had just started and my dad was eager to get me into baseball. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I liked soccer better. He bought me a brand new mitt and bat.  
My mom was at work so it was just me and dad like it was every weekday from when I got up to 6 pm. My dad had gone to the doctor a few months earlier and was told that he needs to take some time off work because his diabetes was making him sick. He and my mom had told me about it a little after dad quit going to work and the baby sitter stopped coming over. They told me that he had to be very careful of what he ate and so we all had to be careful of what we ate. I didn’t mind, it seemed important, and every now and then my mom would still let me have a candy bar when we went shopping.
“Okay, son, here comes the heat!” My dad liked to exaggerate about how fast he was going to throw. The first time I believed him and ducked and covered my head. This made him laugh. My dad used to laugh a lot.
I miss his bristly beard and the way it used to scratch my face when he would hug me. I miss his laugh, and I really miss playing catch with him.
Doctor Mike told me that my dad sounded like he was a really great guy. I knew he wasn’t coming back. I guess I’ve known since that day. I tell Doctor Mike that I think knowing he’s dead is different than knowing he’s not coming back. He agrees.
He asked me to tell him another story about my dad, something that makes me happy he said. None of it makes me happy. All it does it remind me that I won’t see him again. Doctor Mike asks me what we used to do every day. I tell him I want to leave but can’t find the Angel and the Devil.

They let me draw when I talk to Doctor Mike. They always ask who is in the picture and what they are doing. I draw a picture of my dad while we talk. It doesn’t make me feel better it’s just what’s on my mind.
“We used to go the park,” I say as I trace the sun’s yellow outline with a black crayon. I also tell him that I would get home from school and my dad was usually watching TV sitting on the couch with a bottle of water. When I would get home he would say stuff like, “Hey slugger you want to play catch?” or “You want to get a snack before we start that homework?” He always helped me with my math homework. I think he was smarter than my teacher.
I didn’t like talking about my dad for very long. It made me want to cry and Doctor Mike said that was okay. Even though I was coloring and never had to look him in the eyes I could feel his sadness watching me. I wasn’t going to cry no matter how sad I was.

I had finished the picture of my dad. I drew him right in the middle of the page. He was bigger than me and I sat on the green grass with the Angel and Thanatos on my shoulders. My dad was smiling and I was sad. The sun was a bright yellow traced with a thick black and the clouds were all grey. I wanted to draw my mom in there to but I couldn’t find a place for her.

I think I was there a week when my mom came in to see me, all teary eyed and sad. She said she had missed me but I don’t remember her being gone that long. She told me that I could go spend a day with her if I wanted to. I was kind of tired and the medicine the nurse gave me always gave me a headache. “Besides,” I asked her. “What would Thanatos and the Angel do while I was gone?”