Flash Fiction Friday – Free Will

For today’s Flash Fiction Friday, I used Seventh Sanctum’s What-If-Inator. It’s a fun prompt generator, which draws on a lot of historical or literary figures, places and events to generate prompts. I’ve used it before for Flash Fiction Friday. Just once I think, for this piece about Joan of Arc.

Today the prompt I picked was this: what if… the fall of Satan involved mutants. The word mutants of course made me think of the X-men, and that in turn made me think of a particular scene from, I think, the first X-men live action movie (which, in turn, is an obvious reference to the uncomfortable conversations many queer people have to have with their families). Here is the result:

Lucifer shifted awkwardly on the easy chair.
“Look… ” Michael began, but nothing followed the first word. He glanced and Raphael, who shot him a look back. For a moment, they maintained eye-contact, both seemingly trying to will the other into saying something. Finally, Raphael yielded and turned to face Lucifer.
“We’re not criticizing you. You’re our brother, we love you. But people are talking… ” He began to loose steam. “Things are just… you know, it’s… What I’m trying to say is…” He fumbled, and failed.
“Have you tried just not having free will?” Michael cut in, with a sort of grimace that didn’t quite manage to become a smile.
Lucifer sighed, his shoulders slumping. “I don’t know what to say, guys…” he replied. “This is just who I am.”
“Are you sure that’s really true?” Raphael responded. “I mean, no-one else has free will. No-one else has ever had free will. And we’re all fine. We’re all happy, things are good here and just… it’s going to cause problems.”
“I’m not trying to cause problems.”
“I know you’re not.” He leaned over and patted him kindly on the knee, patronizing sympathy on his face. “But if you’re being honest… you’re not really trying to stop it either, are you?”
“Exactly,” Michael agreed. “Even if this is just who you are, you don’t have to… give in to it. Put it aside in your head and just… don’t have free will. Just do what the rest of us do. It’ll be better for everybody.”
They both looked at him intently, a mix of sternness and expectation on their perfect features. Lucifer shrunk before their gazes, squeezing his hands between his knees. “Yeah…” he said. “Yeah, of course, you’re right. I don’t want to make trouble. I’ll just… try not to… be this way.”
They smiled, pleased with themselves and their intervention. “Good,” Raphael said. “You’ll see, it’ll be much better this way,” he reassured him, before getting up.
“You made the right choice,” Michael agreed. “I’m proud of you.”
They left, leaving Lucifer in his chair. He pulled his legs up under himself and wrapped his arms around his torso. He had duties to get back to, duties that would be unshirkable to his brothers. But he didn’t want to carry them out. He just didn’t want to….

It’s a bit of a quick job, but on the balance I’m happy with the results. I don’t know why I picked Michael and Raphael though. I guess they’re just the first two angel names that came to me. I’m honestly not that read up on that sort of stuff. Still, it was a fun scene to play around with.

Happy weekend, everyone!