‘Jesus, really?!’ yelled Kapre at whatever had just rudely interrupted her sleep.

‘Yes, really,’ said Jesus. ‘Your guy is about to make a mess with the microwave.’

Kapre blinked into the scene.

‘It’s fine,’ she managed to sound feeble and withering at the same time. ‘Those are Dryad's Saddle. He’s going to make them fucking disgusting, but they won’t do him any harm.’

‘I was thinking more about the fork.’

‘Holy-bollocking-shitfuck!’ Kapre suddenly realised the situation and lent in to blow at the fork and make it jangle in the bowl. She hoped to all Heaven she wouldn’t follow through with vomit. Spewing on the mortals was a big no-no, they covered that in the first week of angel training. It worked, the idiot man heard the rattle and removed the metal just before ruining his mushrooms in the microwave.

‘What were you doing last night?’ Jesus asked.

‘Drinks with the girls,’ Kapre answered on instinct. ‘Got carried away on the communal wine. Sorry, I knew I had a shift this morning. Won’t happen again, boss.’

‘There’s no hierarchy here,’ Jesus spoke in a way that made it clear there absolutely was a hierarchy and Kapre was in danger of tumbling rapidly down it if she wasn’t careful. ‘And you can always be honest with me.’

Of course, Kapre knew Jesus knew the truth, but there was no way she could open her mouth and admit she’d snuck into hell to drink whiskey and fuck demons until an hour before she started work, again. She closed her eyes and took a breath, catching echoes of sulphur in her nostrils. Her skin blushed as she remembered pushing it against the leathery body of a satanic soldier she hadn’t bothered to ask the name of.

Jesus coughed.

‘I’m awake!’ Kapre cried out, doing little to help herself. She opened her eyes and looked at the son of God, then followed his gaze to see the moronic mortal about to dive into the glowing red elements of a toaster with a butter knife. She all but kicked his hand off course before turning back to Jesus. ‘It’s fine, I’ve got this, I promise.’

The supercilious scion smiled and evanesced, leaving Kapre to pull herself into focus and keep her earthly idiot alive until she could clock off and pass out.

She realised the smell of sulphur was still there at the same time she used a wing feather to tickle her charge’s nose into noticing he’d left the gas on full.

The odour told Kapre what was going on, humans were idiots but this wasn’t natural. She squinted through the ether and saw exactly as expected. Forming a plan to turn the morning around, Kapre checked her breath and, satisfied it smelt more of bourbon than of bile, moved to her underworld prey.

‘If you weren’t here trying to kill him, I wouldn’t need to be here trying to save him,’ she whispered to the demon from behind, making sure her lips brushed the crispened skin of his ear as she did. ‘How about we…?’ she let her hand fall down his body.

As Kapre commenced the carnal corruption of yet another Devil’s henchman, an unwatched mortal turned blue, his airway blocked with a clump of soggy radiated fungus.