Conversation with an angel

Henry walked out into the afternoon sun. It was a nice enough July day, a touch on the muggy side, but nice enough. He walked briskly to the mailbox, hoping he wasn't going to miss any big plays. It has been one of the best seasons in Detroit Tigers history, and any moment could be a highlight. Normally, no force on earth could get him out of his chair during a Saturday game, but there has been a rash of identity thefts lately, people stealing mail right out of the box and using information on bills and credit card offers to rack up thousands of dollars in debt, or so they said on the news.

He waved to the mail lady, Jennifer was her name, he thought, as she pulled further down the street. Out of hand he looked both ways over his shoulder, half hoping to catch a perspective thief being thwarted by his vigilance, if only to feel really smart for a second. Incidentally, there were no such cars, and Henry really wasn't smart. The goal of his journey was mostly junk, wasted paper with a shiny coating that made it unrecycleable, there were a few bills though. He opened one, closed the box without paying too much attention, and began reading it while walking back to the house. It was a credit card bill, higher than usual. A quick glance over the bill made it clear why, his six month introductory 0% interest rate was up. He started to figure out how quickly he could pay it off, it wouldn't take too much out of the savings; he could simply transfer the funds online and write a check. He remembered Debbie used some of their savings to buy Nate a nice graduation present. He started to feel old when he realized his son was about to graduate high school.

Then he died. An aneurysm, a weak spot in one of the arteries that feed the brain, burst. It wasn't from strain, or poor diet, it just was. It couldn't have been avoided by frequent doctor visits, telling fewer lies, taking the proper medicine, paying his taxes on time, or going to pro-life rallies. He just died.

To Henry, one second he's holding mail and walking, the next he's standing over his body as it hits the ground. He wasn't all that shocked about the whole thing, shock is something the body feels, and Henry doesn't have one of those anymore. The large, beautiful man with wings standing next to him put a burley arm around him.

"Hi," he said, "what's your name?"

"Henry." Henry said.

"Nice to meet you, my name is Gabriel." The angel stuck out his hand, and Henry shook it. "I'm here to answer any questions you have and help you get used to this whole after-life thing."

Being a good Christian man, Henry took a knee before Gabriel. Confused, Gabriel sat down.

"So what questions do you have?" Gabriel asked.

Henry was now more confused than the angel. "Do I get to meet God?"

"Who is this God person you humans are always talking about?"

"God, the king of kings, our holy father."

The angel, halo of almost blinding light and all, shook his head like he didn't understand.

"Our creator."

"Whoa, we try not to talk about him."

Henry was at a loss for words for a second. "Why not."

"Sore subject" Gabriel looked over to Henry's body, "What's with all the paper?"

"My mail?"

"Yes, what's with all the 'mail'?" He was interested now, leaning forward waiting to hear a good answer.

"I was getting my mail." Henry was completely lost.

Gabriel went back to examining the corpse, "none of you ever have a good answer for that one." Then there was a pause. Henry broke the silence.

"Why is God a sore subject?"

"Can you just ask me something else, I'd rather not talk about it."

"Okay." Henry looked around for another angel, or a bright white light to walk towards. He finally settled on Gabriel again, who was engaged in trying to read an advertisement upside down. "What's the meaning of life?"

"I don't know, I never had one."

"Can you take me to God then, so I can ask him?"

"No. Not that he could answer that, he's never had one either."

"Okay, why did God create the Universe?"

Gabriel looked up from his coupon studies and raised a finger. "Back up, first of all, we all created the Universe. He certainly shouldn't be getting all the credit, especially not after everything he did to it. Secondly, we created the Universe because it's what we like to do, create."

"What do you mean, 'everything he did to it'?" Henry was starting to get mad.

"Look you just got here; it's not a good idea to be yelling at me."

"Will you just take me to God." It was worded like a question, but it wasn't.

"No, I really wish you people could just control yourselves. Everything would be a lot easier for everyone if you could just learn to go with the flow. I know it's entirely against your nature to listen, understand, help; but sometimes it really gets on my last nerve." He smiled and nodded. "I picked phrase up off of the Television. Pretty cool hun?"

Henry stared at him blankly for a second, then, "Can I meet Jesus?"

"No."

Henry stood up and balled up his fists, "What the hell is wrong with you!" He screamed. "This is not how it's supposed to be! You are supposed to be the servant of The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit, you are supposed to be taking me to him and presenting me before him so that he can find my name in the book of names and I can enter paradise!"

"Sheeeit, you best straight chill, nigga." He smiled and nodded again. "I picked that up from the Rap music. Neat? You like it?"

Henry stared at him, angry.

"Really, calm down. First of all you need to learn to count; you mentioned three names and then referred to one entity. Secondly, you're new here, with all due respect, which isn't much, I think I know better than you how it's supposed to be."

At this point Henry sat down heavily on the driveway and put his head in his hands. "I'm sorry, I'm jut so confused."

Gabriel moved over next and put a comforting arm around him. "It's okay." He took a deep breath, "Look, I'll explain. The rest of the angels and I got together one day hundreds of billions of years ago and decided to create this place. We really poured our hearts into it, and it worked out pretty good, except this one angel who just liked to fuck stuff up and hurt the creatures we were all creating."

"Lucifer?"

"Yea, how did you know?"

"I heard read about it in the Bible. There was a war in heaven because he thought he was greater than God and was cast out."

Gabriel made a face "Sure, war. Anyway, we did kick him out, there wasn't much fighting, it was 283 to one. We told him he couldn't play in our sandbox anymore and he ran off in a huff."

Henry made a confused face and started to ask a question.

Gabriel waved him of before he could get it out. "Then one day he comes back with an idea for a new creature, like all of a sudden he had learned the error of his ways and wanted to help. His creature was such a bad idea though. It didn't fit at all and was entirely uncreative. We turned it down, but told him if he wanted to actually help, he could." Gabriel ran his hand through his hair. "Next thing you know he had snuck the stupid thing into the Universe, and that's when we really kicked him out and told him never to come back."

"Platypus?"

Gabriel looked at Henry like he was stupid, "No. Those things are awesome." He shook his head to get back into the story. "So at that point we had this totally unappealing animal running a muck, and we have to try to fix everything. Turns out that he made them in such a way that they torture themselves, by giving them free will, but not enough brains to use it properly. Worst part is, the free will also makes it so we can't just pull you morons off the planet."

"Wait, what? Humans were created by…by…"

"Go ahead, say it."

"Lucifer?"

"Yep."

"No, that can't be." Henry put his head back into his hands, "It can't". Suddenly, Henry understood, this was his test. Was he truly one of the faithful, or could he be swayed by simple words from a being in proper form. "You're lying." He said.

"Why would I do that?"

"To test my faith."

"What does faith have to do with who created you?"

Henry couldn't figure out a way to explain, he turned to logic "Okay, fine, if I was created by Lucifer, and there is no God, then who created you?" Henry smirked at the smart-assed angel's confused face. He caught him. He had passed the test!

After a moment of contemplation, Gabriel spoke, "Hm? Never thought to ask that. Does it matter?"