Death: A Life (5 page)

The Universe (detail).

But it was a long trip. The epochs ticked by, and the conversation subsided. The farther from Hell we went, the more anxious Father became. I didn’t know then what his relationship was like with God, but I did know the Gates of Hell were there for a reason, and we were meant to be on the other side of them. Looking back on our journey now I feel certain that Father had come to some kind of arrangement with the heavenly powers. How else to explain our unperturbed progress through the hollowness of pre-Creation? I even seem to recall that our way was lit, at several points, by thunderbolts that looked suspiciously divine. Yet knowing what I know now, I realize making a deal with God did not necessarily mean He was going to hold to it.

Our tempers began to fray. Father kept insisting that we were approaching the Beginning of Time, but Mother began to nag him to look at the map—a large, mostly empty chart that, since it was made in Hell, only told you where you weren’t. Bored, I kept asking “Are we nearly then yet?,” which caused Father to scowl all the more. It was beginning to seem as if this was another of Father’s doomed schemes, as when the nine-fathom deep water bed he had installed in Hell had evaporated.

As we made yet another wrong turn, I sighed loudly. Flames burst out of Father’s head and he swung around terrifyingly.

“Do you want me to leave you here?” he roared. “Do you want me to leave you here in the middle of the void?”

I shouted back that yes, he could leave me here, I didn’t care, and I never wanted to go to Earth in the first place. Well, Father paused, surprised at my response. But then, gathering my protesting mother in his arms, he flapped his wings and in a moment the two of them had disappeared.

I was left all alone.

“Mother?” I cried out, but there was no reply. Without Father’s flames, the utter blackness of the vast emptiness seemed to grow even dimmer. Yet I wasn’t scared. I had always been attracted to absence, to lack, to want, and there was something about this infinite oblivion that was comforting. As the dark crept toward me invisibly, reaching out to envelop me imperceptibly, filling my being impalpably, I felt remarkably…perky. With a spring in my step, I began striding across the vacant expanses of the yet-to-be, and felt a slipping of my hellish chains. A new figure inside me was awakening. All thoughts of Father, Mother, and Earth disappeared. In fact, all thoughts disappeared. Nothing filled my mind.

I was so enraptured by these new and strange feelings that I stumbled headlong into a large white angel. He was a vast creature, easily as big as Father, but he was dressed in gleaming white robes. Atop his head buzzed a pristine halo, as bright as a fluorescent bulb, and when his wings flapped together, feathers of the most shimmering softness imaginable fluttered from them. He was wildly swinging a fiery sword around his head while making loud screeching noises. Nevertheless, there was something ungainly about him. His sandals looked much too big, and his sword swept through the air haphazardly. At one point he dropped it so close to his foot that he squealed and leapt back in horror. It was at that point he noticed me. He screamed again.

“Who goes there?” he screeched in the voice of a thousand startled sparrows.

“Just me,” said I.

“Oh! Please forgive me, my Lord. If I had known it was just You I would have begun the hosannas.” And then the angel cleared his throat and began singing a hymn. It was woefully out of tune. I just stood there, very confused, shuffling my feet. After a while, the angel peered at me out of the corner of his eyes and slowly stopped singing.

“You’re not Him, are you?”

“Er, no,” I foolishly replied, “I’m me.”

“Me?” said the angel. “Or me?”

“Just me,” I confessed.

“Oh.” There was an awkward silence. I leaned over and picked up the sword, whose flames immediately expired. I handed it back to the angel.

“Hold on!” he said. “Are you from Earth?”

I felt my head begin to spin. I had inherited none of my parents’ natural deceptiveness. Now, however, I needed to dissemble.

“Yes?” I said, thinking that as long as the angel didn’t know I was from Hell I would be safe.

The angel dropped his sword again, slicing a sliver off his sandal.

“I knew it! I knew it!” yelled the angel. “I’m Urizel,” he said as he extended a soft, heavily moisturized palm in my direction. I shook it. “What are you doing here?”

“I…got lost,” I decided.

“Oh, don’t worry,” whispered Urizel conspiratorially. “I get lost all the time. I mean, how can you keep up with Creation? One minute there’s nothing, then there’s something. It’s simply impossible to keep track.” He stepped back and looked me up and down. “So are you a sheep? Or a human? I can never tell the difference. In either case, I thought you didn’t have wings?”

“Oh, we do for now, but it’s just to begin with,” I said, flapping my scaly wings nonchalantly. “Apparently we’re going to evolve out of them soon.”

“Evolve?” said Urizel, turning the word round in his mouth. “Is that one of His new projects?”

“Yes,” I said. If only Father could have seen me, he would have been proud.

Suddenly however, a loud trumpet sounded, and from out of the ether appeared three more angels. They looked a lot fiercer than the one to whom I was speaking. One was blowing a silver trumpet, one was cloaked in a thundercloud, and one was wearing shining white armor and had dazzling golden hair. They surrounded me in an instant. The trumpeting continued.

“Israfel,” boomed the angel clad in white armor. “Israfel! When you’ve quite finished ravishing our ears, will you please be quiet?”

Israfel, looking pink-cheeked and a little out of breath, lowered his trumpet. The trumpeting continued.

“Israfel!”

“Sorry,” said Israfel and hid the trumpet beneath his robes, where it continued to sound.

“What’s going on here, Urizel?” said the angel in the white armor as he shook out his golden hair. He had a medal pinned to his chest that read
CHAMPION OF THE FAITH,
and another below it that read
RUNNER-UP, DISCUS.

“Hello, Michael,” said Urizel. He swallowed nervously.

“That’s Archangel Michael to you, Urizel,” roared the angel in the thundercloud, “you miserable excuse for a heavenly being.”

“Yes, yes, of course Gabriel, I mean Archangel, Gabriel, sir. Sorry. I was just inquisiting of this being from whence he cameth.”

“Really?” proclaimed Michael, looking down his perfectly aquiline nose at me. “We have heard whispers of beings in the wrong places, and you know how He hates beings in wrong places. From whence cameth he?”

“From Earth, sir, Archangel, sir.”

The faces of the three archangels darkened.

“We don’t like your sort round here,” Gabriel spat at me.

“Now, now, Gabriel,” said Michael, before fixing an unconvincing smile of piety to his face. “All His creatures are beloved to us.”

“Oh really? Is that so?” said Gabriel, turning his thunderous aspect to his colleague. “Well, what about the creeping things?”

“I told you we’re not talking about the creeping things anymore,” hissed Michael.

“You said you didn’t like the creeping things,” said Gabriel, unpleasantly warming to his theme. “You said they kept getting in your hair.”

“Listen,” said Michael, “what I may or may not have said is unimportant right now.” He turned his visage toward me and reaffixed the smile that had slipped somewhat in the previous conversation.

“So are you a sheep, or a human?” he said.

“Oh, I’m a human,” I responded, furling up my wings as tightly as possible.

Archangel Michael: Do
Not
Touch His Hair.

“Prove it!” Gabriel leered.

“Yes,” said Michael, glad to be on the offensive again. “Yes, I think you
shall
have to prove it. It’s the only way.”

“But how can I prove I’m human?” I complained. I began looking frantically for a suitable piece of nothingness to hide in.

“Well,” said Michael, “He said that He made you people in the image and likeness of Him, although I personally can’t see the similarity. So go on then.”

“Go on what exactly?” I inquired.

“Do Him,” said Michael, as if the answer should have been obvious. “Do God.” So there I was, separated from my parents, in the middle of the void, surrounded by a group of rather surly angels, being asked to do an impression of a deity I had never met. My earlier enthusiasm had all but vanished, and I suddenly became aware of what a sheltered existence I had led, and how little I knew of the ways of Creation. Here was I, a simple being from Hell, who thought he knew everything there was to know about existence, and already I was at a loss as to how to proceed in this sophisticated and perplexing Universe. Truly such moments are humbling to a young supernatural being. But I had no time to bemoan my fate. I hadn’t the slightest idea of what God was like. All I could imagine was that He was the exact opposite of my own father. Clinging to this belief, I spread my arms, as if in a warm embrace, and boomed in a high, unthreatening voice, “I…I love you…my child?”

“Oh, he’s very good, isn’t he?” interjected Urizel, clapping his hands together.

“Not bad,” said Michael, a little disappointed.

A deafening trumpeting gave Israfel’s answer.

“Oh, give it a rest,” moaned Michael. He seemed to have lost all interest in me. He opened a small mirror and began combing his blond locks.

Only Gabriel didn’t say a word. He just stared at me.

“Haven’t we met before?” he growled.

“Not that I know of,” I said as I desperately tried to look as un-Satanic as possible.

“No, we have. Now where was it?” continued Gabriel. “Heaven?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I replied desperately. “I’ve never been there.”

“Your face,” continued Gabriel, looming closer toward me now. “I’ve seen your face somewhere before.”

“Come on, Gabriel,” said Michael, snapping shut his mirror. “It’s hosanna time.”

Gabriel took a long final look at me.

“Humph,” he said.

“Okay then, human, on your way,” said Michael. “Don’t forget. We know if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake. Urizel, as you were.”

“Yes, sir, Archangel, sir. Thank you, sir,” replied Urizel as the three archangels flapped their wings and disappeared into the void. When they were out of sight, I collapsed, exhausted. But what exhilaration swept through my body! I had done it! I had lied my way out of trouble as if I were Father himself. I felt a shudder of nondread, of unpain, of antiagony, of what I now know can only have been the first inklings of Joy. It was some time before I realized that the angel next to me was crying.

“I’m going to be stuck out here for all eternity,” he sobbed. “No more hosannas for Urizel. It’s just blackness and guard duty and…” he gestured at me, “sheep.”

“Human, actually,” I responded, much more confident now that the archangels had gone. “And I think you’re doing a splendid job.”

“Really?” said Urizel, lifting up his head.

“Oh yes,” said I. “I bet very few angels would have spotted me wandering by.”

“I suppose so,” said Urizel, wiping the diamond tears from his cheeks.