The day I met Azazel on the Las Vegas Strip

Azazel was one of the leaders of the rebellious angels that had strayed from God's law according to the Book of Enoch in the time preceding the great flood. He taught men the art of warfare, of making swords, knives, shields, and coats of mail, and women the art of deception by ornamenting the body, dyeing the hair, and painting the face and the eyebrows. He had also been popularized by the Rabbis as a great seducer of women. Eventually God sent Gabriel to punish him, and under Lucifer he became one of the fallen angels.



I met him one day a couple of years ago when I was walking past the Venetian hotel, very hot and moderately angry and slightly lost. When he first approached me it was as a salesman trying to convince me to rent a car which was very tempting at that point except for the fact that I had no license and no money, so I politely declined. The second time I met him was when I was backtracking down the same sidewalk about ten minutes later looking very obviously disoriented and he asked me if I was going somewhere in particular and I said no because I wasn't, except for maybe some shade.

He said he was going to take a break so we sat down against a wall and he told me about a dream he'd had that to him had seemed very real. The earth had split open somewhere not too far away, and he gestured vaguely outward into the heat of the desert. He said the ground began to come apart slowly at first, and then faster, moving towards the city. He emphasized the intensity of the blood curdling cracking sound it had made as it went, and said that in the dream he felt like he was witnessing a portion of the end of the world.

I have always felt very attracted to the idea of the end of the world and how it had a romantic and exciting notion about it and I told him so. He seemed interested by this and we talked about why the world might end and if it might be due to the sinful nature of man and how engaging that would be, and we talked about reincarnation and the collective consciousness and the kaballah and god. He was very intelligent and articulate and insightful and charming and I was quite impressed.

I must have said the right things because he said he was going to let me in on a secret. He told me to read Memnoch the Devil, because most of the things in it were true and it was the most reliable account of what had really gone on between God and the devil, and the reason he knew this was because he had recently realized he was Azazel himself, and was slowly recalling his memories of being an angel after a few thousand years.



I was very enthralled by this because I'd never met a real angel before, so this whole thing was just delightful and I told him so. He was pleased that I believed him. Apparently most people didn't.

He proceeded to tell me all about how within the next decade a great war would be waged between God and the Devil and all the angels, and many humans too. At first it would be silent, and then there would be things like cracks in the earth that cities fall into and domestic animals devouring their own kind and spontaneous fires and mass hysteria. As stakes became greater for god and his angels, the world would transform into a battleground for an all out celestial war. Most people would not understand but some people would play a part in it. He said that i would be one of them because I knew the right things and asked the right questions, and that he had to go because we'd been talking for two hours but he was looking forward to seeing me again in a few years. He shook my hand, expressed gratitude for our conversation, and walked off into the las vegas sunset and palm trees through the fake grass and cockroaches to sell people cars.



So now you guys know how the world is gonig to end. I wish I'd asked him whose side I would be on.