That question bothers me. I don’t know how much the law applies to me at all.

Look, as you may have gathered, I’m not entirely Irish. I’m not even sure if I’ve got a soul – I mean, assuming that everyone else has. That may rule out me being affected by religious law, but how would I know? (I’ve had to give it some thought and if we don’t all get a bit of sense over birth control it’ll be standing room only on this planet, sooner or later. That may not be the kind of law they mean, though.)

I’ve killed a couple of demons myself, and I’ve helped Angel kill more. Now that’s probably not against the law, but I don’t know. Maybe there are places that would call it cruelty to animals or something? I don’t really know what the law would say about it at all. Some of them just evaporate or turn to dust, or whatever, and there’s no corpus-delicti. In a lot of legal systems that means that they can’t call it murder, maybe they can’t call it anything.

I don’t know what could happen if one of them killed me. If they’d killed Angel I suppose he’d have turned to dust, vampires usually do. Anyway, it wouldn’t have been a crime to kill him and it might not be a real crime to kill me.

That’s what it meant when they used to sentence people to be outlaws back in history. The law didn’t apply to them any more. You could do what you liked to them, if you were strong enough.

Of course, the outlaws had to break the law to survive at all… So, it can be illegal to keep yourself alive, but is it wrong?

Don't ask me. I didn't teach an Ethics class.

Muse; Doyle
Fandom, Angel the Series,
Words, 310

I did try to cheat at poker, that one time. I managed it, too, until Mickey the Zipper caught on that his cards just might be reflected in his own glasses, laid down beside him on the table.

My shoes were cosmetic, for a while. Nicely polished uppers and the soles worn through. Some people cut out cardboard insoles and put them in their shoes, so when they wear through like that they won’t have their bare feet on the pavement.

Linoleum tiles work better for protecting your feet, but I was stupid. I was cutting shoe-soles out and sticking them under the shoe, not in it. I never thought of putting them inside until I read about the cardboard insoles, and I didn’t do that until I could afford books again. It’s really difficult to make your shoes water-proof either way, but the tiles give better protection from glass and so forth.

If things had been different I’d have put having a decent job-hunting suit before having anything more than basic food, too, and I’d have put food far above having drink.

Right at the beginning I thought about trying to make the visions show me horse races, or maybe a winning lottery number. I mean, if you’re going to see someone eaten by a Drokken demon or dragged through a dimensional portal wouldn’t you think that you might see what’s on the TV behind them at the same time?

It doesn’t work like that, though. I’d guess that The Powers take trouble to prevent it. There’s no sense in giving someone really painful visions so that he can atone and then making him a millionaire at the same time, is there?

Muse; Doyle,
Fandom, Angel (the series)
Words, 202

284 You're fired! Talk about a time you were forced out of something.

If there was any hope of getting away with it I’d say I’d lost the teaching job for health reasons. It’s even true, in a way. “For a given value of truth,” they’d say nowadays.

I was settled in that job. I’d been there since I was 18 or so and I’d got hopes of being a Headmaster, one day. Then things changed when I was 21. I told Harry I couldn’t keep the job for long and she told me not to be so negative. She said that knowing I was half-demon hadn’t changed me in myself. I was still the man she’d married and I was still the teacher they’d employed.

That literally depends on how you look at it. I went on working, all right, for a while.

Have you ever noticed how a summer cold can come on you so fast that you’ve no chance to suspect it? One second the Headmaster’s asking if you can take some extra classes because some of the staff are off sick, and the next you’re sneezing all over him?

I found out about being half demon on my twenty-first birthday because if I sneeze, or if you really startle me – that’s when I look like my father.

So, I was forced out of teaching because I got a cold, (or maybe a hay fever attack, although I’d never had it before.) If I tell someone that they’d probably wonder why I didn’t sue them for wrongful dismissal.

I’ve never found an answer to that.

Muse; Doyle.
Fandom, Angel, the series.
Words; 256

My first thought was that I don’t really speak any – except English, as you’d know from the post itself. Then I thought about it.

(Well, I really clicked the spell-check on a letter and it glitched; it asked if I wanted UK English or American English. When I looked there’s a whole drop-down list in there, eighteen kinds of English, from Australian to Zimbabwean, with Irish listed as an English in its own right. That figures, too, I started to put things in closets after I’d been here a while, but before that I put them in cupboards.)

I only speak a few words of the Gaelic but I’m a native Irish speaker. I always understood every word that was said to me, there. Here, if you say that the crack’s good down at the Hibernian Mouse they can take you up wrong, (and be disappointed when they find out it just means that there’s good conversation.)

So, there’s Southern Irish, then I can write educated English when I put my mind to it; the kind they call “received English”. That helped with the teaching, not so much for getting lessons over to the ninth grade but for applying for the job in the first place. Then I speak and understand American English.

That may not be a too bad a list. Sometimes people expect me to speak the Gaelic and ask if I ever wanted to get back to my roots, but I never did see the use of learning that. I’ve never met anyone who had the Gaelic but spoke no English. (I never saw the need to learn the Brachen language, either, if they’ve got one. I've always heard that they speak English, too.)

Muse, Doyle
Fandom Angel (the series)
waords, 290

I’m not sure if it matters how I’m buried. It’s not easy to be sure if I have a soul at all, but I suppose I should go ahead as though I do.

Cremation isn’t permitted to Catholics. I read somewhere that it’s believed that the fire destroys the soul as well as the body. That does seem odd. I’m almost sure they had that wrong. It doesn’t really make sense. I mean, either the soul is still attached to the body or it isn’t, and if it isn’t then how would what happened to the body affect it?

Maybe it’s because the body is supposed to be resurrected in the end, so if it’s been burnt then there’s no way. It seems unfair if it’s like that, though. There’s a fellow who used to live across the hall from me who lost his leg in a car accident. I think they must have incinerated it at the hospital, so would he come back like that in Heaven? (Or wherever…)

When I changed dimensions, or whatever, I think my body stayed pretty much as it was before I ... I don't remember anything much about it. It might answer some questions if I did.

Anyway, if I died predictably I’d really like to have got to confession first, and then have someone get the last rights for me when they’re sure I’m dying. There’s some prayer I learned in school that we’re supposed to say at the end, too, but I can’t remember it. I suppose I really ought to remember the act of contrition.

Maybe I should look it up? You never know.

Afterwards – I wonder if anyone would have the mass said for me? I’d need a bit of praying for.


Muse, Doyle.
Fandom, Angel the Series.
Words, 294

Doyle had opened several bills before he came to one of the familiar cream-laid envelopes used by the Counselor. He slid a thumb under the flap and revealed the usual neatly typed card – then he started to grin when he read the question, saying aloud,

“Well now, some of the things he’s asked me had me wondering whether he knows his clients apart, but this one’s addressed to me, all right!” He sighed, “I don’t know whether I can answer it, but at least it relates to my life, a bit.” Then he turned on the Dictaphone and started to talk.

“I suppose it would depend on what kind of zombie I was facing. I’ve read somewhere that you throw salt at the ones in the Caribbean. When it hits them they remember that they’re dead and go back to their graves. I don’t know how that works, but there was some garlic salt in the apartment when I moved here. That’s got to be worth a try.

Apart from that I suppose I’d need some kind of weapon that chops them up. Maybe a machine pistol, if I could get it. I mean, the whole point of zombies is that they’re dead but they won’t lie down, so I guess they’d have to be fixed so they couldn’t stand up. I don’t know if holy water would be any good, but…”

He hesitated and then picked up the phone and dialed, “Hello, could I speak to … oh, it’s you. No, I just didn’t expect to get straight through to … it’s me. Doyle. I just wanted to ask what kind of zombies you’re expecting? I mean, this week’s question. There’s all different kinds of zombie, and what I’d do depends on …” He stopped talking and listened to the agitated voice on the other end,

“Well, I’d fight, of course. Who’d want to rescue me? No, look, I do see, it’s just that I was thinking about – well, you asked me what I’d do. I suppose I was answering more in terms of how I’d do it.”

Muse, Doyle,
Fandom, Angel, the series
Words, 362

280 What do you think?

Doyle came in late that evening, but he was carrying the laptop and handling the battered case carefully. He cleared the desk by sweeping the clutter aside, hesitated over a not-quite-empty can but dropped it into a plastic bag and knotted the top before dropping it into the waste.

He picked up the mail rather warily. The pile of letters had gathered dust and a spider ran quickly over his fingers and dropped to the floor. He swore and slapped the papers sharply against the wall. Nothing living fell out so he sat down and started to open the envelopes, talking softly to himself,

“This place is squalid. I shouldn’t have moved in – maybe I can do something about going somewhere decent. Things are looking up. I can start answering my mail, too, now that the laptop’s fixed. The way that thing plays up - I do wonder about it, but plugging in that flash-drive with the exorcism didn’t get any reaction and changing the motherboard seems to have helped … a bit, anyway.

It might make more sense to get a new one but think I’ll stick to XP for as long as I can. Even Ripper George says that I won’t like Vista and he’s always trying to sell the new stuff. I think it’ll last for a bit longer and then – maybe I could get a Mac, or somebody might invent something. I haven’t got time to learn a whole new system, anyway.”

Muse, Doyle.
Fandom, Angel, the series.
Words, 245

It was some time since Doyle had received one of the long cream-laid envelopes from the Counselor. He hadn’t really missed them, but once or twice it had crossed his mind that he might have forgotten to give the man his new address.

“It’s more likely that I forgot to pay him,” he muttered as he picked the thing up and slid a thumb under the flap.

"Are you an only child? Write about your siblings or lack thereof."

He looked at the question typed neatly on the card with angry disbelief, said,

“If it wasn’t for the card he sent me at Christmas I’d wonder if he knows one of his clients from another!” and started to type quickly and angrily, mouthing the words as he wrote,

“Of course I’m an only child! Give my mother credit for that much sense, at least, will you? Likely enough I was an accident, anyway. There are things you can’t get in Ireland, not in the South. I don’t even know how long the two of them knew each other…”

Then he stopped typing and sat at the desk looking thoughtful, talking to himself,

“My father’s family knew where I was as soon as they wanted something, though. They said they were my father’s family, anyway. They knew about me, all right. If he’d remarried, or whatever, I suppose … or even if there’d been a kid that took after him more when it was small and it just stayed with him when they split up…”

He hesitated and then typed slowly,

“I don’t know anything about my family, really. I can’t answer this.”

He sat and looked at it for several moments. It didn’t really seem worth printing, let alone sending, but there was nothing else to say.

Muse, Doyle.
Fandom, Angel, the series.
Words, 285

I heard about the terrible diseases that you can get from being immoral back when I was a young kid. (Father Paul used to sound as though he thought all sickness was a punishment from the Almighty. I heard he got very frail when he got old. Sometimes I wonder if he thinks he deserves it.)

Anyway, I thought of that when I got the Mimsies, back in L.A. It’s like having very bad motion sickness even though you’re standing still. The spinning is inside your head and the nausea can get everywhere.

I couldn’t believe it when the doctor told me what was wrong with me. There didn’t seem any way I could have caught something like that. It was the doctor who pointed out that the only reason those diseases are “sexually transmitted” is that they’re so hard to catch that people can only do it by what she called “really close exposure” to the body fluids of a carrier.

After that I could work out that it probably happened when I was bitten by a Mockdreffen. That’s a kind of demonic dog-thing. Being bitten might not have been enough to infect me - but it still had its teeth in me when Angel beheaded it.

When she told me the price of the cure and produced a big bag of the medication I felt a lot sicker. The things were brown and gnarled. They were much too big to swallow and you could see that they were sticky even through the transparent wraps. They didn’t look like anything that anybody would ever want to eat. She didn’t unseal the bag until I’d paid, and then I could smell the things…

I heard later that the cure for the Mimsies was discovered by accident, in Glasgow. You have to eat caramel-filled candy bars deep-fried in batter, washed down with beer. You keep up that diet for three weeks. It changes your body chemistry. I guess treatment lasts for so long because there’s no way to be sure when the world stops spinning and making you feel sick because of the Mimsies and starts spinning and making you feel sick because of the diet.

I’ve never liked the smell of chocolate since.

Muse; Doyle.
Fandom, Angel, the Series.
Words, 373.

(Recorded for Counselor)

Look, I was a teacher once. I was ordinary. I taught third grade, just innocent kids. Well, they were city kids but comparatively innocent. I mean compared with adults - compared with city adults, anyway.

In a way, I suppose I was innocent, too. Everybody says,
“Oh, it’s a hard world,” and “Life wears the corners off us all.” And I used to say it too, but I never realised the extent of it. Not really.

Once, when I was a kid myself, I stayed with some of my mother's relatives up in the far south of Ireland, and one day I went into their old barn. I don’t remember why. I’ve got the feeling it had something to do with livestock but I don’t really remember them having any. The barn wasn’t big enough for cows or horses and I never heard of anyone only keeping a couple of sheep. Maybe it was a chicken house but I didn’t see any.

Well anyway, whatever I was there for, I slipped. I put my hand up to hold on and it went into the roof. It felt as though this bit of wood came off in my hand and then I was holding it.

( more )

Muse; Doyle.
Fandom. Angel, the series.
Words, 468

It started to come through the ceiling.

That would normally have bothered me, but it started very slowly. There was just the discolouration at the place where the ceiling met the wall. There was condensation or something there anyway. Black mould or mildew or something like that spreading down the join. I wouldn’t have stood for that, once, but it’s the slums, you know?

Then, in the dream, it started to form a kind of … message. It was almost as if it was written in the Gaelic, the letters were like that, but I couldn’t read any part of it. I knew the message was very important, so I went closer, trying to see it from all angles.

Suddenly I was closer than I’d known, and I could see it was insects. They were like mites or tiny ants, swarming towards my hand where I was leaning on the wall! I jumped back, and suddenly I saw that they had wings. They were bees or hornets or something, flying at my face. I was trying to cover my eyes with my hands but that meant I couldn’t find the door, and then there were bats …

That’s all I remember. I woke up with the feeling of something trailing over my cheek. I can’t help hoping it was the tail of the sheet but I’ve got a feeling it was a spider.

At least there aren’t any cockroaches here. Mickey the Zipper says that mice eat them.

Muse; Doyle.
Fandom, Angel, the series.
Words 240

OOC, I still don’t have a proper computer; the broken one goes to be repaired on Wednesday; I can't be sure when I will be able to post again.

My computer failed on Christmas day and it is hardly working at all. It is going away to be repaired on January 2nd.

I will be back on-line as soon as I can.

Doyle looked at the expensive cream-laid paper and the neat line of typing and laughed aloud into the dictaphone.

“Is he kidding? What kind of question is that? I’ve been in Hollywood, Los Angeles and Vegas - I've been in Killarny - I’ve seen incredible things! Who am I to say who’s fictional? I’ve seen vampires and werewolves, I’ve seen a zoo-full of demons! There was even that thing in the fountain that wouldn’t take its hat off, if that was a hat. I’ve seen the Powers – I guess I have, anyway; they said they were the Powers. All those were as real as I am myself.

If I’ve got to pick I suppose it wouldn’t be too bad being Dr Who. Why shouldn’t one of his incarnations be half-Brachen demon, anyway? It’s about time the show got more … inclusive. I’d find out how to drive the Tardis, too, not go bumping about like that. I wonder how I’d learn, though? It’s not as though you could go to a driving school for it, and when it gets to the repairs, that’s really complicated.

The trouble is, is Dr Who fiction? The way things are around here he could by coming through the next dimensional portal in that police box, and maybe with the Cybermen clumping along behind, or something. Anything could be real, around here. I’ve never seen Superman go flying across the old devil moon but that could be the high point of tomorrow’s party.

When it comes to flying across the moon, why shouldn’t I settle for being Santa Claus? I always liked working with young kids. I’d be in charge. There must be about 23 hours when you’d wish you could be in two places at once, but you’ve got the rest of the year to get over it. You get mince-pies and whisky left out for you – I don’t like mince-pies but I suppose I could give them to the reindeer – and if I did turn out to be allergic to the brutes, or had to work with a cold or something, I’d have that big beard as part of the look and it wouldn’t matter at all if I looked a bit funny.”

Muse, Doyle.
Fandom, Angel, the series.
Words, 353

I don’t understand why Cordy didn’t make that advertising film herself. I mean, she was directing it, but she had time to get round to the front of the camera all right, and she could have read the words off a card, like I did.

She was trained, too – well, she couldn’t act, but I never was sure whether she knew that. If she did she would have had to be really good at acting to be that good at hiding that she knew she was no good at acting.

In the end, I thought I’d gone out like a hero, sacrificing my life to save those poor refugees, but I guess the people I owed were just left with that stupid film,

“Our rats are low”, and Cordy said I came over like a weasel. I guess they just threw that away, in the end. But that wasn’t the end; maybe it wasn’t even the penultimate.

I don’t understand why the Powers brought me back, not really. I’ve done my best to be on the side of good but it’s nothing, not by comparison. They said I’d got things to learn. Maybe really this is a kind of Purgatory, or something. Maybe half-demons get that here.

Muse; Doyle,
Fandom, Angel, the series.
Words, 210.

I suppose I’d have to threaten them with something, but I’ve never been much of a beat-em-up type. I threatened a demon with a cross-bow once – I mean, I had the crossbow, the demon just had a temper-tantrum until he saw me looking at him down the sights.
The look on Cordy’s face made it worth the risk, but then she came in later when I was kind of reliving it for myself. It wasn’t a Walter Mitty fantasy, it’d happened. I just didn’t have enough time to enjoy it while it was going on; Cordy coming in like that kind of took the gloss off that for me.

( There's another way. )

I guess that’s the way I’d scare somebody, but it’s a bit of a specialised method.

Muse, Doyle,
Fandom, Angel the series.
Words, 398

It wasn’t the day Harry and I broke up – I mean, the day with the suitcases and the slamming doors and no forwarding address.

For one thing, that was in the evening. We’d fought the whole weekend but then she went to work on the Monday morning. We had the rest of the row when she came back. After she’d gone, well, you may be thinking that I took a drink but I didn’t. Not then.

That weekend was bad but afterward, when I was on my own, I’d thought that I ought to put more effort into things and try to be more like I was before my twenty first birthday. I’d already been out to get the stuff to fix the dent in the wall where the plate hit it. I went ahead and did that. I kind of scooped out the old plaster under the paint, so the filler would stay in there like a plug. I mixed the stuff and put it in and waited and then, when it was set solid and dry, I sandpapered it down smooth and by then the whole evening was gone.

The longest was the day after the row, when the phone didn’t ring, or maybe it was the day after that one. I’ll tell you something funny. I’d got the paint to do the wall after I’d filled the dent. I’m no handyman but most things work if you read the instructions and then do it that way.

That plaster filling was as smooth as a baby's bottom - but a lot drier, of course. I remember stroking my hand over it and thinking that I’d got everything fixed, all right. The stuff got hot when it was drying out. Some chemical reaction, I guess. I thought I’d better wait until it cooled before I did any more.

I never did get around to painting that wall. The new plaster was still showing there like a white smear in the blue when I moved out myself. The days dragged like weeks but I just never get around to that job. I guess I’d taken against the place after all that happened there.

It wasn't as if Harry ever came back there, anyway.

Muse; Doyle
Fandom, Angel, the series.
Words, 371

What's the most embarrassing thing you've ever done while sober?

Hell, I can’t choose the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done at all. I’m the man that pulled the skirt right off a fashion model in the street, outside one of the big Hilton hotels. Look, the situation was - I was watching her as she got out of the taxi. The wind caught her skirt and it went billowing out and hooked around the bumper of a car that was waiting at the lights. I went dashing over and tried to get it loose before the lights changed; she could have been dragged when it started, if I hadn’t. It turned out that the skirt was just material wrapped around her and when I pulled it sideways … right!

She didn’t give me my jacket back, either.

I’m the guy who shot a toilet bowl with a crossbow bolt because I thought there was a carnivorous demon in there! There was, in a way. It was one of those big slum rats; it looked practically cat sized when it was running out past me. By then the cistern was smashed off the wall. The water was pouring down and stuff in the room started to float. I plugged the pipe with another crossbow bolt. It wasn’t a Robin Hood shot. I just picked it up and stuffed it in there. It stopped most of the flow - and the landlord stopped saying I should pay for the damage when he saw it. I think he thought I’d plugged the leak with my second shot. I had to leave by the end of the week, though.

When it comes to my most embarrassing moment I’m spoiled for choice. Harry and I got stuck in a lift when we were on honeymoon – we didn’t know there was a security camera… You pick the one you like best.

Muse, Doyle
Fandom, Angel the series.
Words, 310

I ought to read up on that. I mean, I really should. I wonder if Google would have it or if it’s in a book or something?

I’ve never been any good at negotiating. Look, if I was wouldn’t I have got myself a better deal from the Powers than just, “Go on having visions until you end up dead?” They didn’t even tell me that I could pass them on like a kind of clairvoyant herpes if I kissed somebody goodbye, you know that?

I don’t know how to negotiate. I couldn’t negotiate my way out of a poker debt. I couldn’t even get the laptop back until I could pay for the repairs – and for that flash drive thing that only works if you’ve got a USB socket, and then when you do find out where to stick it a Moro demon steals it for the Skype, and I didn’t even think to tell it to download what it wanted and then give me the gadget back until after it threw the beer.

Everybody ought to know how to negotiate, man is a political animal.

Sometimes vampires are easier to deal with, you just have to stake those.


Muse; Doyle
Fandom, Angel the Series.
Words, 200

I can remember that day clearly, in a way, but it’s all mixed up with the feeling of the head-cold. (You know the headache and the singing in the ears? I was still at the streaming nose and sneezing stage, before it went to my chest. I could feel the ache right down my sinuses; my teeth seemed to be throbbing. I’d never have gone in if I’d known but you know the way a cold can just hit you out of the blue?)

Anyway, I had to tell her, afterward. In a way I was dreading it and, in a way, I had a feeling almost of elation. No, that’s not it, maybe excitement. What had happened was … it felt inevitable. It didn’t feel as though I’d caused it, not then. It was more as if I’d predicted it and than it came true. I felt as if I was going to tell her, “I told you so!” Almost triumphant.

I just walked in and told Harry that I’d been hit by the cold at work. I’d sneezed and the headmaster saw what it did to me. He might have thought it was an optical illusion or something, but two of the kids saw, too. One pointed and the other one started crying.
He sacked me on the spot.

After I told her I just couldn’t stand the look on her face and we had this blazing row. You can guess what that was like.

In the end I got three months salary in lieu of notice and a damn good reference. He’d have had trouble putting on record what he’d sacked me for, otherwise.

That was before I had the visions. I got used to bringing bad news after those started, but at least we could do something about it, by then.

Muse; Doyle.
Fandom, Angel the Series.
Words, 305

I don’t know if I’ve got principles at all, not in the way that question means.

The thing is, I’m an Irish Catholic. I used to leave that kind of thing to the priests and the Pope. I didn’t have to think about it myself.

The truth is that Harry and I weren’t what you’d call strict at the best of times. You’d probably guess that from reading my journal. We were married when I was eighteen.
Now you might think that would have tended to keep us from sin, but it’s not like that, really. They’ve managed to make a sin out of most things connected with sex and once you get married the priest stops talking about self-abuse and starts talking about birth-control (you're not supposed to do either one.) We weren’t planning on children until we were both over twenty-one ourselves, and I guess that says it all.

I haven’t really bothered about religion for years but I did read an article about how Irish Catholic differs from Roman Catholic. They said that with some Irish Catholics they stop believing in God at all but they still believe in the infallibility of the Pope. That fits, up to a point – and that probably winds it up for the sacrosanct stuff.

When it comes to principles, though, I just stick by my friends and try to not to let harm come to them. Oh, and I won’t stand by and see kids hurt, if I can help it.

Muse; Doyle.
Fandom, Angel the Series.
Words, 250