Breaking the Mold

Chapter 3:  Through the eyes of a "god."

It is almost impossible to describe what it is to be nothing, or at least nothing that one would realize as a sentient being.  When you are nothing, you exist for the soul purpose of serving the laws of physics.  You become married to the concept; Physics tells you yes or no.  Physics tells you what things you can affect as energy and physics tells you what you can occupy and how you will be able to do it.

Being a ghost, I imagine, would be quite different because as a dead thing, you are the absence of things where as pure energy, you are all things.  As I have described before, though, it does have its perks.

As pure energy, I can move anywhere in the universe that energy exists.  Concepts such as time and spacial relationships to not apply because as pure energy, I can simply become energy at another point in space time by adapting to it through quantum fluctuation and be there.  The catch is that going back past the point that I became pure energy is not an option to me as my signature in this form does not exist.  Also, should I chose to take corporeal form, or find a way as I have recently done, my abilities as pure energy cease to exist within that time frame.  For instance, I inherited a human womb to be born and experience life as a human being.  After this point in time, I can adapt and become the energy being I was before this point in time or I can become the energy being that I was after this point in time but the physical presence of me in that time frame that I become corporeal and bound by time and relative space is always a constant.  It's like an immortal giving up immortality to suffer the life of mortality.  

When I view it this way, it seems so pitiful but there are definite advantages to having limitations.  It's the difference between playing an amazing video game that has gotten old with cheat codes and then trying to play it on the highest difficulty without them.

Life is hard but not as hard as the moment that I became an immortal.  The moment of the "failed" experiment.

"Son..." the voice boomed from all over, "emotions are a memory now but you can choose whether to feel them."

My mother standing there seemed so fragile and I realized that she was indeed more vulnerable than myself.  Still, I was just as vulnerable; fresh to the immortality and power that I had inherited, I was not tied to anything I had known.  I was here in this existence living for the sake of living but not truly existing with the "trivial" joys that come with life.

I did indeed go through the stages of grief that day and not because I had to but because I refused to let go of what tied me to reality.  However after about the 5th time bargaining and realizing that all I could now occupy was my present form and the farthest I could go back was to the moment that I became this, I began to seek out what passed for my father's voice in the fog.

"First of all, I want to apologize that you did not get the choice to make the decision to be what we are.  I first experienced this memory of emotion when I became what I am but it is not real and neither are we to them.  In time, they will learn to accept us and even become us but you will not be able to see that for a while as it is too far into the future for your present genesis to allow."

"How do you speak with such calm? Such..." I thought for a moment and realized that I didn't have to think at all, I simply knew that he had become nothing in all of his being.  A place where I was not at yet.

"You and I are pure energy.  Even the term son is relative because you are not my progeny but rather, we exist as equals.  We are forces of nature and this is no distinguishing me from you except for our individual consciousnesses that we choose to have.  I do not speak with calm, Djinn, I simply speak.  You will find that we serve a higher purpose now as these forms that we occupy do not limit us in the ways that physical beings are limited.  We do not consume food but rather we feed off the fount of energy that exists with all things and as long as it exists, so will we."

"So what is the purpose of life?" I asked.

"For us as we were?  To continue the cycle of energy that perpetuates life, (in all definitions) in the universe.  For us now? To be life (in all definitions and states) in the universe."

The conversation went on for a long time and in that time, we discussed the secrets of the universe that I am unable to disclose even if I wanted to because the explanation can not be firmly understood by man, or any other creature for that matter, in a way that would make sense.  As purified energy, we simply understood.

To man, the splitting of an atom is a great mystery but to us, everything involved in this procedure is part of us.  We are as intimately involved in such a process as two lovers might be in sex, except we are a part and are conscious within every piece of the process.  I could go into detail but I'd rather try to avoid being lewd in lieu of such exquisite beauty and magnificence in the experience of what we are.

Any energy signature similar to my own which was quite diverse was felt by me and I existed all over the universe.  Some refer to this as being god-like but the religious version of god suggests that he is aware of all things and as purified energy beings we were not aware of all things, we simply are.  we cannot create or destroy matter but we perpetuate it; Emotion and beauty as seen by the eyes of man eluded us.  We were not, by any stretch of the imagination, creators; We weren't manipulators either.  Our place in the universe was simply to exist in most things.

The limitations being that our energy signatures although present all over the universe, were unique to us and this became, through our own desires to preserve our sense of self, a semi-law of physics.  If we were ever to explore too far and cross a line in becoming one with all things, we would simply become the universe and cease to exist at all.

"We might never have existed, if we decide to do such a thing as blend like that..." said my former father that day.

The days and weeks went on after the experiment and as I said before, there's no way to describe that time, outside of, "we existed."

When I was born to a human mother, I had the possibility to be something.  The pun being very much intended.  I was nothing as everything and something as one thing.  One might say that humans are more diverse than just one thing but that's the beauty of human beings: you are not diverse creatures.  You strive for a oneness and create giant superstores and chains and companies to unify you in ways that make you less and less inclined to be unique.  It's a true beauty of mankind that in this way, you all identify as human and are able to separate into the illusion of difference because you are just that perfectly average in the grand scheme of the universe.

That being said, it seems that I instantly missed my ability to be part of all things as I began to solidify my position as being born human.  Although the beauty of verisimilitude did not elude me, the more human I became, the less I was able to command such presence in the universe and the smaller I felt.  Perhaps even the paragraph prior to this one is motivated by my regret for giving up that position.  For I am truly awful at being human at times...

Breaking the mold

Chapter 2: From humble beginnings comes death

As I sat on the park bench in that dismal square of land they called a park, I thought first about how much I hated these humans for all sorts of reasons that amounted to nothing; I had trapped myself in the mother's womb, I had ejected the human soul in order to inhabit this body and I was here now in this stupid park thinking about how feeble their attempts to cultivate aesthetic beauty were.  I really had no one to blame but myself that I now stewed in this corporeal devolved meat suit.

Still, In my head my memories could almost manifest the things I missed so much.  The swaying of a mane and a snout and the feeling of the wind through my wings was almost enough to make me believe that they were still there.  Reality is a hard thing to snap back into when you have the weight of memories in your head, both foreign and domestic.

As I leaned my head back, my eyes closed and all of a sudden I was transported to another time and place.  It was like a dream but one that I could not wake up from.  It felt as I felt now: unattached from this body and moving through the world while thinking my way around without actually moving at all.  It's hard to explain for how is one to explain the feeling of not being connected to a physical form with physical needs to someone who's never known the experience?

I remember watching as if from outside the plane of existence.  my vision was all blurry at the corner of my visage as if I had been crying but there was no physical manifestation of tears so perhaps it was more as if I were in a very dense fog that clouded my vision all but that which was directly in front of me.  I watched my mother's large form come bounding into the room where others had just witnessed the impossible.

This may need some background: You see, unlike my father, I never did experimentation alone.  The common question is, "Is that so you'd have somebody to help you if it went wrong?" NO!  I experiment in front of a crowd because I want them to see what I did.  I want them to know that whether an experiment fails or whether it succeeds that I was the one who perpetrated the act.  A failure is simply an idea that was attempted.  Without the attempt, ideas do not exist and without the audience, successes or failures have no control group; so they really aren't experiments at all in that case, are they?

This was to be an experiment that represented my father's life work, not to mention a dangerous one that could kill me and one that could mean great strides for our people, so I invited a myriad of different people.  Teleportation at this time was still in its infancy and would remain there for a long time until the black wings sufficiently researched it and put it into practice in their new society that would exist after we were gone but I digress.

There was a crowd of dozens of scientific minds of all sorts in the room that day and they sat behind a large pane of glass in the Ministry of Science while I worked on the sunken floor below with the various components.  You would refer to our energy generators as looking like a pirate ship's wheel as they spun very quickly around creating friction with a filament high above.  This power source, along with the power supply, was inside a protective  covering though, so nobody could really see it but I thought you might have some interest in the process.  There was a platform at the center of the room and a computer on a small table next to the generator that was supposed to capture all data as the experiment progressed.

Inside the platform and around the walls of the room, there was every kind of sensor available to our people so I would miss nothing in terms of data and neither would my colleges.  If I happened to disappear as my father did, I wanted everyone to know how it happened, where I could potentially be and what exactly happened.  All information was fed into that computer as well so there was a hard copy on it and via a hard wired connection and a wireless one, there were processors on many floors of several cliff faces that would both remotely and through a LAN record all data from the experiment.  I was wired in and nothing would stop this, not even my mother.

My mother the chef.  I don't expect a human to understand as we would more than likely look monstrous to you but my mother was one of the most beautiful creatures our kind had ever known.  For being a chef, she had still managed to keep in impeccable shape and she represented the kind of woman that was perfect in every way.  She loved me with all her heart and she had loved my father.  She loved our family and she loved it so much that she never even dated after all the time that my father had been gone.  Her family and friends asked her why she never dated and why she kept so attractive if she was not going to go out and get a man that might be a new role model for me but she was content to thinking that somewhere, my father was not gone and patiently, she waited and loved him forever as she had vowed.  To the day that she became one of us without form, she would remain the way she was: never knowing anyone else but knowing that he would return.

She looked so soft and distant as she watched her boy and as proud a face that she wore for my colleagues, I could see and feel her heart breaking.  I believe the moment before I disappeared she said, I love you son to the glass and when I was gone, she wept silently on the teleportation pad for hours.

Back to the experiment: as the energy started to flow, I stepped onto the platform and into history as they all looked on.  The amount of energy that was being generated was controlled but it set forth arks of sparks all throughout the room like your Tesla coils but rather less controlled in movement.  The energy bolts began to spin around me and for a second, it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen and then I saw a flash of light and soon I was surrounded by the light.

As my vision began to restore the light began to seem far away and it felt as though I was walking through a long tunnel before I was surrounded by light and the reverberations of every living thing began to pulse right through me.  As I looked around, I noticed that my peripherals were extremely impaired and yet, I felt all things in every moment.  Being pure energy, I found that time did not matter to me anymore.  Nothing really did.  It also occurred to me, however that I was no longer corporeal or able to be seen.

I felt the silence around me though and watched my mothers distraught face as I had now completely vanished like sand in an hour glass.  In this form, I could truly sense all of her worries and pains and as I permeated through her, I wanted to cry but according to the laws of physics, I knew I no longer existed.  All of a sudden, a voice began to speak in my head.  It was filled with authority and seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

"Son..." Said the voice.

Breaking the mold

Chapter 1: The before times.

 

The Taylorn weren’t always as we are now.  There was a time when we bore corporeal form.  Great seven to eight feet, per human standards, winged creatures; with sharpened beaks and long muscular arms that were attached to 3 digit claws with an opposable third claw.  There was a time.  With our stubby little muscular legs that resembled lions feet but with defined musculature and visible talons, we could sprint short distances but our wings would do most of our movement for us.  Our faces, besides the beak, were much like humans: we had eyes in the front of our heads and ears that resembled those of elves from your story books; our manes stretched down our back and we were covered in hair with the exception of our wings which were feathered, at least amongst the prominent families which I was from, with great white feathers as pure as a summer cloud.  It was a glorious time but progress waits for no man or beast as you humans seem to suspect.

The difference between my race and yours is that our drive for purity and progress was united amongst the strongest, to the middle of the road, of our society.  We were united to overcoming all limitations and things that made us weak.  Through this, we began experimentation on a great many things.  Most of our experiments on the Taylorn genome were a devastating disaster.  The progress we made created great strides in our medical fields but they fell short of creating the god like image we hoped to achieve.  Our abilities to become non-corporeal and transcend physical form happened quite by mistake.  It happened through experiments that had nothing to do with our physical forms at all.  Our non-corporeal forms happened as a result of the desire to move about the universe in no time at all.  Through a glitch in a matter transporter.

Our abilities to become non-corporeal and transcend physical form happened quite by mistake.  It happened through experiments that had nothing to do with our physical forms at all.  Our non-corporeal forms happened as a result of the desire to move about the universe in no time at all; through a glitch in a matter re-locater.

I believe it was may of my twenty seventh year that I began to remember the accident. There is no doubt in my mind that others who might walk amongst us may have had glimpses of it and formed religions and cults around it but nothing so perfect as the beings that we were.

Listen to me talking about perfection as if I even knew what it was. If I had been perfect, you'd think I would have found myself in a situation that didn't implicate such reprehensible and perhaps moral repercussions.

It was all such a haze but I suppose I'll start at the beginning:

My father was a tinkerer and my mother, a chef. The two of them were the most disorganized wild beasts our race had ever known but they were wealthy in a society of freedom and they were wealthy from other Taylorn's love.

My mother's cooking had not only given birth to a renewed respect for cooking and a cook book that gave individual Taylorn women respect from their husbands, but also a chain of successful restaurants world wide with staff so devoted, it could only be compared to the cults in earth terms.

They weren't violent like a cult though, they just served a higher purpose and they served it for the love of preparation and feeding and they served it for a few chips at a time.

The prices were so low and the food was prepared so well from such easy to find materials that it was practically irresistible to any passerby.

My father's tinkering was a bit more complicated to explain. It started off when he was young: fixing old toys and toasters for older Taylorn women but his complex mind and ease of craft would never be satisfied with such paltry pursuit. His experimentation began to evolve as he grew, moving from simple matter resequencers to the very first  transporter.

In his 370th year, he disappeared while in the midst of an experiment that ended in a massive power surge that shut down power for the entire cliff side.

My mother was cooking a fried bhat bhat loaf in the kitchen and I was playing by the cliff's edge. Every once and  while, I'd purposefully dive off the cliff, swoop down and around and then hit the cliff entrance to our home so hard that it dented the front porch.

I was only 98 at the time and as a young Taylorn, I was anxious and what was more dangerous to our poor front porch, I was getting hungrier with each wafting of my mother's fried Bhat Bhat.

The Bhat Bhat is a winged rat and they are usually fluffed up with meat on their stomachs like your earth turkey as they are clumsy in their landings. Some keep them as pets and find it barbaric for us to eat them but I was not about to trade in a fried Bhat Bhat for stewed cave moss and Cobbnobs. Sure they'd go well with the Bhat Bhat but it is the same way I do not understand humans who will order broccoli without the benefits of chicken when they order Chinese food.

"Djinn! Djinn, you awful thing!"
She burst out laughing as I skulked the edge of the cliff, feigning falling off and slamming back into the edge when she peeked out the window to scare her.

"Djinn, go get your father, remind him that cold Bhat Bhat means the crust will get soggy."

As I flew forward, I saw a blue flash through the tiny window of his room and his physical form collapse like sand granules. As I hit the cliff, the explosion came and all the lights went black.

I wouldn't know what took him until I reconstructed the entire experiment and used a far safer alternating form of current so as to control the process.

It was in a wind that gusted through the city that reminded me of that day. The day I watched my hands turn to dust and then into pure energy. Energy that was made of the electrical impulses in every being. As for my father and myself after that day, we simply had no form holding those impulses together except for the energy loop that was our pure form looping around into its self. We were a Möbius strip of energy and soon to follow was our entire species.

The Song of Humanity

As I stumbled over the stairs in the common hall of this white, floral scented, urban apartment building's hallway, I mused over the elegance humans must have to use these legs all the time.  To count each stride in such ephemeral grace must make the moments that much more precious to them.

Oh what a joy it was that my lord, blessed be he, has let me walk amongst them for a day. Father, you have truly displayed a rendering of your own soul in those of man kind!  At the bottom of the downtrodden carpeted stairs, I steadied myself and got to my feet. The onning of the condensed lobby was purple and what a glorious and regal shade too! In the oval mirror above a desk, I looked at myself but forgot that I would only see my true nature in the mirror.

Still gazing at myself, I smilled thinking of where I was and stretched my long black wings as I got ready for my first day as a man.

I was overjoyed at the great outdoors and the booming life of an American city.

"Hello!" I said to the first person I met on the sidewalk.

They didn't answer but rather stared at me strangely as if they knew.  Did they know who I was? Were my wings showing? I felt back and though I knew they were there, I did not feel them so I knew I was still concealed.  My concerns assuaged, I moved on.

On the next block, I saw one of those human beings of great importance. I knew because he wore a business suit and talked into a tiny box that he seemed to enjoy.  I shadowed him for a while and saw the strength of mankind; that it did not stop to discuss small matters but rather blazed on through  crowds of people with such fierceness that it was worthy of angels in the great war. I admired this man and wanted to be him so I decided to engage him.

"Hello, Sir! How are you today?" I said with a smile.

He nodded and continued his conversation with the box.

"May I ask you..."

He waved his hand at me and ran off into a crowd.

I suppose I could have followed him but I did not see the reason.  It was strange, why would he not seek to share with a brother. I appeared as one of his kind and checked again to see if my wings still remained hidden but they were vacant as ever.

At the corner of some lively intersection, I hopped on some metallic vehicle and gave the man in the front seat some of this paper I had received for my day outside of heaven.

"You don't need to give me that much," said the man.

"I don't understand..." I said

"Ok asshole, here's your dollar and I keep this dollar. Get on and sit down."

"Thank you, sir," I said.

He looked out of the front window and seemed to stare at some bit of nothing that wasn't long ago. Then he shot a glance at me and nodded.

Looking out the windows, I saw all kinds of people.  They were busy and very little of them seemed to not be tied into some greater concern than simply enjoying being a human like me.

It depressed me and took me by surprise. I read their thoughts and became even less impressed. They seemed to judge their neighbor harshly and those who were happy thought with such bitter sarcasm that it seemed they only existed instead of lived.

Every now and then, I ran into the occasional believer. Not in my father, although there were many who claimed to do that as well, not always with sincerity, but in the beauty of being alive.  There's was only a feeling that I saw. The thoughts behind it were not as visible to me.

Regaining my composure, I left the "bus" and got off in a great nature preserve in the heart of this concrete monstrocity.  Walking through it on the concrete paths, I saw a man sitting on a bench just feeding the birds, eating a hot dog and scribbling on some document he had on top of a note pad.

His tired eyes had wrinkles on either end but his joy seemed to overflow from all parts. His wisdom was like that of a prophet and he seemed to be heavily focused on what he was doing.

Seeing room next to him, I sat down and began to watch the birds and envy their gift of flight. I had about ten or eleven hours left of time before I would have their gift again.

He hummed some long forgotten tune as he wrote all over the page in front of him and smiled at the scribbles as he shook his head.

He looked over at me and smiled so, I figured I would try, "hello."

He laughed and said, "Well hello there, son."

"Father?"

He laughed again, this time louder and roaring and simply shook his head as he went back to his work.

There was a long silence and I gazed out on a large pond and vast nature in the heart of a place that seemed built to choke life.The expression on my face must have betrayed me because he all but knew my thoughts.

"What's wrong, boy?" He said.

His cap was turned down but his eyes beamed out from under it a coffee brown that stood out in the shade like a fine table lacquer.  He had a perfectly square patch of facial hair that seemed to hang from under his nose all the way to where it dribbled off from his chin with a regal sense of grace.

"I believe in the majesty of humanity." I told him.
"I would give you a valuable piece of advice, son," said the old man in between crooning some tune long since forgotten by time, "the world was and to an extent, still is, built by ambitious, idealistic young men. You tryin' to get in on the ground floor, though. You gotta remember also, that it's maintained by hackneyed, crestfallen old folks like me. That's the real reason they tell you to respect your elders: 'Cause you gonna become one of us, some day."
I spent the majority of the day at the park and we sat there in silence for another hour or two before he got up nodded and left. I went back to heaven at midnight.

Story Stopper

Epilogue

There are few things that one experiences that they can truly call miraculous; mostly because miracles are hard to come by in life but for the devout, we experience miraculous all the time through having god in our hearts. What miracle heaven is? Well, it was something that I would not try to describe in the human tongue for I am neither a saint, nor an apostle; no.  I am simply a reaper; one who hails from the greatness of a complicated love that will last forever with my eternal Grim, Dolphiel.

His misguided efforts to make sense of forever were tragic to me but I have faith in my god before I have faith in myself and I feel this may be why I have, finally, been granted the divinity of Angel class.  Michael didn't tell me why I had been granted access to heaven but I did not want to ask him out of fear that he could also take this joy away.

Things on earth had been fretful, to say the least, as of late and I had heard talk and felt so many feelings of impending doom coming from mankind.  I followed the orders handed down to me, however, and did what I always did in the embrace and love of nurturing souls unto heaven.  I have always believed that a bad man is not essentially bad; lest he be given the chance to stand naked in front of the power of his god or as much power as a reaper can muster, he will be judged unfairly.

For this mercy, the ancient Greeks called me Prometheus for what I gave unto them but I directed them to the thanks that should be handed to a merciful god.  Granted, I took a truly evil soul to hell without question but one who lived as the Nicolaitans did should not be punished for his indulgence for even Jesus on the cross said, "Forgive them o' lord, for they know not what they do."

I acknowledge that Jesus Christ came after the Greeks and forgiveness wasn't the lord's strong-suit before him but I am always a believer in god's love and mercy. Our lord and Christ simply translated that into something we could understand. Blessed is the heretical for he is but a child in the eyes of god's greatness. Mercy is what mankind deserves; even the wolves.

Through the gates, I saw the seals and I saw them opened. There before me was the throne of god. At his alter there stood those devout enough to look upon god's face and that was all they could do or care for forever after.

With my sudden visage I wanted to scream. I wanted to pour out weeping and grasping at his reinment for although j acknowledged the bliss he must have been in: his mouth open and his eyes wide; his expression filled with splendor and awe whilst his gaze was locked on the glory of our father, your father, god almighty! I wanted to wake him from my selfishness.

I felt my heart sink but my wings outstretched, I flew above the petty feelings of a reaper and into the exuberant joy of an angel. Dolphiel was where he belonged now and something on my heart and soul told me that I should not fret him and I listened unconditionally.

It was then it was announced to the heavenly host that I would be the new Grim Reaper. They acted bemused as heaven went about its bussiness. It was astir with the power of the lord but even more so: with the work that had to be done to maintain the universe and existence.

Without existence, there is chaos and in chaos the powerful play would stop but the powerful play goes on and we contribute a verse.  Some call death the story stopper; as if to die is the end of a journey but the real death would be that of the world and the universe its self and in my capacity, I swear to always fight that from happening. The grim reaper ends a life but it is to maintain the cycle of all things as well as the balance thereof. In this way, I lubricate the wheels of time, matter and all things in the name of a loving lord. I do not stop the story because without me, there would be no beginning middle and end, I am the story starter. Where does yours begin and whose ended so it could?

Story Stopper

Part VI: Death within Me

For a long time, I evaded heaven. The earthly planes are like a desert to the angels and they did not know how to find me but the force of God is to powerful to challenge.

Honestly, I had never meant to challenge god but being half angel and half human, I could see both sides.

Lucifer was right in the part that he said the Angels did not have the free will of man but having the free will, humans were not equals either. The one thing that they lacked, the reapers held in abundance. Reapers were not supposed to leave the confines of the vortex between the worlds but the new ones that I was making were in part imbued with the divinity of Lucifer and/or myself.

On the earth, so many were taken, they called it the end of days. I reaped only from the future world Lucifer had shown me because there were more souls there and going back would reduce the number of souls I had to reap.

It was amazing how many I could take in one fell swoop. It was astonishing at how, for all their magnificence and innovation, man really was as fragile as the biblical analogy of sheep.

The reaping was so easy... too easy... it was easy enough that through such ease of mass slaughter, I began to wonder if this creation of the lord was really worthy of the wonders of the universe?

I became lost. The silence of the heavens, due to my evasion, became like a great din in my heart and Lucifer's pain permeated me.

Before I knew it, my reign of terror had stopped and I had drained myself of so much angelic essence that I was practically human.

In this time, I found myself at the throne of the lord looking down at the floor.

"Dolphiel, you disappoint me," the voice said. "You have brought about a new chance for man kind, however, and for that I am greatful. You have also brought legions of demi-angels to heaven and sacrificed your own angelic essence to do this and for this, I cannot condemn you to hell. I can't let you continue with your job, however; your will is too strong and free. Therefore, I will bless you: look up! And gaze upon my face."

Story Stopper

Part XV: Death Forever

The wind beneath my feathers, I floated downwards to meet him. Dressed in shining armor and glowing white with the full force of an archangel, Lucifer stretched out his wings and the awesome power of his light shown upon my like a conflagration. What brilliance he had for the leader of all things evil. What beauty was he for a denier of God!

I knew what must be done but was lost in the beauty of this creature before me.

"You were cast out, banished, ostracized, Lucifer! But you never fell," I said.

He laughed and spoke, "you are observant of my beauty but you also know I can take many forms, ay?"

"I know you're a lost, petulant, little boy with daddy issues," I said.

"How dare you!" He snapped, " you may still be in his graces but I was once and still have the force of a higher choir of angel! You impudent little wretch! You dare to talk to me that way?"

"You are the lord of lies. You have lied so much, you have forgotten that you may be higher born than I but neither one of us trumps god."

"I lost a battle, Dolphiel, but gaze upon my brilliance! Look at the cruelty of your god! Think you: that if he felt you were not worth his graces, he wouldn't cast you out? Do you not see that an angel is but a servant to god but to me, we are masters of all that we see? We are a brotherhood that supercedes the failure that is humanity!"

"God created this universe for them!..."
"...And what did He make for us?" I was but a sheep in a small corral before he created the universe for man.

"No!" I said, "he created earth for man. Man is free to roam the universe on his own force of will but can he? Not in his wildest dreams. Man is limited by mortality..."
"...you speak of weakness!"

"Perhaps, but where man gets free will to own his planet, you have the high heavens to roam. Look at all that is the domain of god and his power and all you must do to be part of that is to accept him as the lord supreme and carry out what is his will.

What a magnificence it is to be an angel, Lucifer. Man gets to go to heaven but he changes and leaves some behind. He is enraptured by the magnificence of heaven but he is not free to roam it as the angels are.

For this, you do not even belong in hell. This is too good for you! You belong with Death forever!"

With the end of my sentence, I swung my scythe and slew Lucifer. I took his divine essence into me and kept it there to feed me. I went out and began to reap the souls of all that I could. I created "accidents" and "natural" disasters that were beyond god's plan and his will.

With Lucifer's essence and my human side, I was very hard for the angel's to find and the souls I reaped were dumped in the heavens and it was there they overflowed but most of them, became reapers like me...

Story Stopper

Part XIV: The death of innocence

"Dolphiel. Wake up, Dolphiel."

As I opened my eyes, I saw the plane of existence. By that I mean I saw the chaos that was the existence of all things before all things existed.

First, there was darkness; such blackness as cannot be comprehended by anything describable. God was not attached to anything in this world so falling from grace and the absence of Him in a fallen angel was the closest one might come to describing this blackness. One word that would come close would be absence; the absence of God, the absence of the angels, the nothingness and lack of sensation that breaches even death.

The feeling weighed on me as I watched this and as my nothingness began to burn, the voice that had awoken me made a sound like a child's pop gun. In that instance, there was, all of a sudden, a gathering of compact and minute lights. They were not arrayed like stars but rather focused into a small area like sheep in a pen.

I heard them speak. My step-brothers began to sing. They sang in joyful chorus, which brought light unto this rather compact area. They were only talking to each other but the light of god within them gave so much power to their voices, they could scarce do anything but sing; once the song had begun.

The reverberation was so sonorous that the whole of existence began to swell and as the voice which had awakened me began to yawn, the area of those tiny lights expanded exponentially.

All of a sudden the universe was astir with singing and lights flying in every direction. The stars were formed by the sweating of the angels and lights all over filled the great expanse of this new existence.

For a long time, there was peace and happiness and angels dwelled in the great expanse but they felt the universe and some even questioned god: "what is all this for?"

This was the right question because shortly after, the whole Genesis of man's existence was born. It took a long time to even get to man's existence but as they arrived, so did the magnificent gifts god gave to them.

Most of the angels were overjoyed to have such frail creatures to Sheppard but not everyone saw them as frail. Those who didn't, even saw them as an insult or as a threat to the kingdom of heaven so they rebelled.

I saw god's most beloved Angel stand by his side and as he received all the praise and love of god, he became so full of himself that he saw himself as beauty beyond man and eventually beyond god. His hubris was seen by his brethren and though a third called him king, all fell from grace who did.

A third of my step-brothers looked at Lucifer and loved him above god and my step-brother Michael took the multitude and war broke out to shake the heavens with god's wrath.

The voice that had awoken me started weeping like a wounded child. He wept as strongly as history would ever see him weep again for I had heard this voice before and knew him.

As I watched brother slay brother with weapons as fierce and savage as any that man could create, I watched the multitude crush this misguided and vicious rebellion with seraphic ferver. The anger of god and his betrayed heart reigned strong and gave Michael the advantage over his brother Lucifer. Though Lucifer was so filled with self-agrandizement, he cowered in fear in the face of his angered father and fell under the spear of Michael with little more than a whimper.

For all of Lucifer's rebellion, it was no more, in the end, than sound and fury signifying nothing. As he fell, I watched his face and I felt his heart and the voice that had awoken me disappeared.

Where that holy voice was, the voice of another who was as beautiful as anything holy turned to ugly resentment. His heart cried as his eyes wept and he knew what he had done. He was awakened as Adam and Eve to the sadness and reality of a harsh world. It was as if he had eaten the forbidden fruit himself and all of a sudden, he knew all things like no angel ever had or ever would. This realization made him painfully aware of the cruelty of his actions towards his god but it also made him see that there was no forgiveness for angels and because of this, he became even more aware at the imbalance of god's love towards man as opposed to god's demand on the angels.

He hated man for all these things and blamed man for him and his brothers fall. He blamed god for the situation and realized man's importance if he was ever to take back heaven for him and his fallen brethren. In this, he awaited the day that he could corrupt a Nephelim or even show his feelings and point of view to one who was part man and part angel.

As time went on, I saw myself and my transcendence. I saw Lucifer watch this and realized that I had felt him out of the corner of my eye as it happened. He had only awaited my doubt and now I was aware of why that voice which had shown me all this wanted me to know.

As the visions began to fade like a dream on the back of my eyelids, the last thing I heard was, "I love you, my child, for all that you are. In the coming end, I hope you make your choices with your eyes open. This is all any father can ask of his child. This is all He can ask for ALL of His children."

Letter to the departer

I crouched at the top of a building somewhere in New York City and looked down at them.  The wind rustled my feathers as I stared into the multitude and imagined their sorrow and anguish from living.  I am truly the devil they make me out to be, that much I cannot deny but reasoning matters I suppose.

Some call it arrogance.  Why would a child question his father and why does order seem preferable to chaos but have you ever lived in chaos?  Where is the order for those beyond the vale?  For that matter, where is the chaos?  The lack of one denotes heaven and the lack of the other would be perceived to be my domain but does anyone question my motive?  History is written by the winners or so they say.  The lack of both order and chaos is where we were but the freedom to choose is inherently human.  I was damned in heaven as well as hell because for all my power and importance I am still bound to being what I am.

The angels never really had a choice.  "Lucifer, my beloved brother," He said with a smile as he cast me out.

Many of the other angels had their wings cut off or were severely tortured before heaven cast them out but me?  I am bound to have forgotten its destination as I forgot my pledge to be His servant.

Spreading my wings, I can fly in this phased out dimension and watch reality unfold but can I find my way back to the whirlwind between the worlds? Never.  I am never to go back to my father and even have the chance to talk to him again.  The pain was immeasurable and that was punishment alone but the pit of hell is what I am chose to rule for my "misguidance" of humans.

"What is a man but a miserable pile of secrets."  Humans wrote this in a video game they dispense to their children.  It's the devil that made those humans write such awful words in their public forum but not everything evil that comes from humans is my fault.  This is the nature of chaos and order in tandem.  This is the nature of God.

Humans would condemn me for my arrogance and call me the prime evil but is it not evil to cast a soul into this world of choice and freedom?  If freedom is so important why was I cast from his light for asking for it?  Yes I can be the dragon as the Revelation of John suggests and yes I do seek to destroy man and heaven but it is for the bitterness and lack of heart that gives me my drive.

You see, Dolphiel, I do not get to have a heart.  I don't get to have free will.  Even as "evil incarnate," everything going on is his will.  Do you think that God would allow an angel to function free just because he's fallen from his grace?  I still have my wings; here I fly above the people, watching their pathetic run about and just hoping that they will deny their lord and come with me to populate my heart which has become hell.

As I settle on this building across town, I write you this letter in hopes that you'll get it and understand what it is to be fallen.  I hope you will get it and understand what it is to be Lucifer, the devil, Satan.

Perhaps if you know, then you will understand what it means to do what I do.  You will understand that the human part of you will be with me always.

Story Stopper

Part XIII: Death becomes him

"What do you want with me Lucifer?  I'm ashamed enough of my betrayal as it is and yet you mock me still?"

"On the contrary," said the well dressed angel, "I seek to rebuild you."

I looked down at the floor and said nothing.  Deep within what was left of my human soul, the absence of god was like no pain anyone on earth should ever feel.  Even the most brazenly heathen people on earth are still loved by the lord.  That warm confidence is felt even if it's not recognized.  The atheists would call it confidence, panache,  je ne sais quoi, vivre! But when you've spoken to god, felt his presence while in his presence, you come to understand what it is that invigorates man to be such an amazing creature.  We have the love of a father who created us to be as he is: powerful in our independence.

On the opposite end, angels were not created to preform any independent function.  Their soul purpose is to serve god and carry out his command.  It was for this reason, we are told in heaven, that Lucifer was cast out from god's light.  It is also for this reason that god granted me the status of an angel because whereas my human side served to usher a soul into heaven, my angelic side was meant to force a devotion to the function I was meant to preform.

"How can you rebuild what is not there anymore?" I said.

Lucifer remained quiet and put his hand on his elbow and the other on his chin, as he began to look me over like a tailor getting ready to fit me for a nice suit.

"You're not lost, Dolphiel.  You are very much still here and have incredible power that you don't even realize you have.  Now granted, your choir was lower than mine was but look at me! I am god's equal only I exist on the negative scale..."

"...You are no equal to god!" I snapped at him.

He looked at me with pity.  God how low I've sunk that the devil pities me.  However, he envies most humans and disguises it as pity so I could be victim to the crafted fantasy of the lord of lies.

"You are no victim, my friend," said Lucifer, "on the contrary, I said I was here to rebuild you and that is what I'll do.  To call it a selfless act makes me seem too..."  He paused and turned his nose up as if sniffing the air for the right answer, "Christian.  However, whether you like it or not, you're in my boat now and we are both no longer in the light of god."

I looked out the window of the cruiser and watched the city below.  He watched from behind me as I marveled at the creation of man.

"Amazing, isn't it?  It gets more like heaven every day..."

"...Without the glory of God and miracles," I moaned.

"Dolphiel, human beings have the potential for great things.  You control their mortality.  You still know who's going to die, where and when.  As you look out that window, think about this: all that was built by people who lived in a temporary existence and had limited time to come up with long term solutions.  Building up was a logical conclusion to the growing problem of population but the way that they did it.  This skyway that we are traveling on: what would the right man have come up with if you didn't take his life in some of his finest years?"

I thought hard on it for a minute and he did, indeed, have a point.  The philosophy in heaven was that god and only god decides when it's time to take a person.  Samael does it in droves but he is still bound by god's decree.  Everything that happens in this existence is by his command.  When I was first an angel and was being trained by Samael, he explained to me that what he did, he took pleasure in but that pleasure stemmed not only from the sickness of his mind but more so because he carried out god's command with an artistic excellence.  He told me that the devil's greatest desire was to take the earth from man because from the earth it was a simple one step to heaven.

As we approached a sidewalk where Lucifer could let me wander this empty city of millions upon millions, Lucifer looked toward me and said, "Would heaven give you a better deal?" With that, the door opened and I was pushed out in front of the cafe de 2 moulin in Paris, France.  The year was back to being present day and as I got up off the ground, I walked over to a chair and sat down in it.

I noticed that I was out of phase with the natural world and there in front of me, but a distance away was the killer of children at a local school.  My mouth watered as I strongly desired to pull him into this phase of existence but I hesitated and watched as he turned to me, looking straight in my eyes as no other person in the city could, and winked.

As I watched him walk away, I felt my wings behind me still in tact and thought hard on the decisions I had to make as either a god, a mercenary, a toady, a soldier, a mid-level-manager or simply me, Dolphiel: the great escapist.

I had felt the absence of god, it was all so real but the devil wouldn't tempt lest he knew he could be convincing.  There were elements of truth to the things he said.  There were elements of things he knew were my greatest desires.  In an eternity, I had not seen or felt such choice dangled in front of me.  Part man and part angel: was this a cruel joke of the lord or was this fantasy Lucifer created to get me to favor his side?  Perhaps we will see.  Perhaps I will avoid Michael in the human realm and through the vortex in combination where I might be able to hide and test god's love and patience.  Perhaps it's time to end this madness or blossom its potential? Death becomes me and who I am is the end of the story line, regardless of orders.  The story stops with me.

Story Stopper

Part XII: Outside the soulless

"Child of the lord! You question god in your heart and the nature of your position gives you great strength.  It is here that you must witness the power of the lord that shown to you may make you a believer and save your angelic soul as well as what remnants of your human soul are left.  Perhaps darkness will deliver you unto the light."

With that, the angel Michael swept down upon my wings and the feathers on them burnt so I could no longer ascend to the heavens.  Without wings, I could not even exist in heaven.  I grabbed my scythe as I fell and saw Deviel ascend and she cried out as she watched me and reached out for me as my fingertips brushed hers until there was nothing but the vortex.  In there, I was tossed and spun and disoriented until I fell to the earth in front of a statuesque man in a long overcoat.  He was well dressed and looked well bred.  He stood in front of me and looked down at a golden pocket watch as if expecting me.

Looking around and trying to determine where and when I'd landed, I noticed that the nice clothes I'd been wearing were now in shambles and I seemed to be in England some time around the mid to late 1800's.  The man in front of me spoke, "Hello, Mr. Dolph.  We've been expecting you.  Please, if you will."  He motioned to a carriage near by and headed towards the double doors.

As he handed me new clothes, I stepped in and began to change. Getting in, what I saw was an ordinary carriage but as I bulled the shirt over my head and the door shut, it was much roomier than the outside made it seem.  There was a grand, white room and a long satin couch in the middle of it.  Outside the windows, all one could see was fire and the walls of a great pit.

"For all intents and purposes, you are in a carriage in London traveling White Chapel where I will dispose of another whore a little later tonight, but a deeper game is afoot as you may well know by now."

Coming out of nowhere, a broad chested and beautiful man with flowing golden hair came across the room toward the couch.  He had to have been at least equal height with Michael and yet as it was obvious to me that he was an angel, as he got closer, he shrank and developed into a fine looking, proper English gentleman.  He was around six feet even with longer, dirty blonde hair; his eyes were green and his nose very properly sat on his face indistinguishable from any other one might see in any time period in English history.

"Lucifer!" I said.

Sitting down on the satin couch in the middle of the room, he responded, "In the flesh, my dear boy."

We sat for a while, looking at each other with differing glances.  I looked at him as if waiting to hear a speech but he looked at me as if he did not care what was said by whom, if anything was said at all.  It was as if he were studying me.

"You're a fascinating creature, Dolphiel.  Do you know that angels consider you to be neither man nor angel?  You 'fit in' nowhere.  Why, with such nomadic proclivity, and such astronomical raw power, one such as you could be a creator of an entirely new existence..."

"...or its destroyer..."

"Ironic, my friend, that I am the one with the glass half full attitude and you with the tragic ennui on your breath."

He laughed aloud, which scared me at first but once I realized where our conversation had gone, I tried asking some questions of my own.

"What do you mean, 'power'?  You should know by now that I am no longer the angel of death."

"Oh really?  I hadn't noticed," he laughed.  "You were never the angel of death, Dolphiel.  You were the Grim Reaper.  A position that has its own set of rules.  Your angelic status has been revoked so you are no longer the Grim Reaper but make no mistake of it, you are still, in every way, granted the ability to reap souls and once you regain your strength, you will be able to walk through the walls of fire outside this room and travel to any point in time you wish to go.  The only difference is you're in my domain now.  You've fallen."

"...but what power is it to reap souls?" I asked him

"It is a great power, my friend," he replied.  "We have the power to offset the balance of god's creation.  You have the power of an imagination that's imbued with the image of god himself.  Being part human, makes you part god! Or did you not understand what He meant when he said, 'made in his image'?"

At this, I grew visibly uncomfortable and began to question, in my mind, just how far from God's decree I was prepared to go.  Lucifer, sensing my discomfort, asked if I preferred a more complacent setting than hell and with a snap of his fingers, we were traveling in an aircraft of some sort, over a city I did not recognize."

"Where are we?" I asked.

"We are in London, I've just changed the year to 2,338."

"You can traverse time?"

"I'm the devil, son, I exist in every instance of time just as god does.  It is how I am his equal and yet, his opposite.  He represents the rules and devotion to him.  I represent the devotion to nothing and to no one."

"How can one be devoted to no one?" I said.

"I'm glad you asked," said Lucifer.  "We have much to talk about."

Story Stopper

Part XI: Inside the soulless

Reading through the papers in some cafe in Paris, out of phase with the human realm with my wings extended, I learned of the latest school shooting.  I sometimes like to sit in the the human realm like this because my wings are often stressed in the vortex between the worlds and Paris in mid-march is windy but delightful to stretch one's wings.  Oh the great irony that humans could not see me and yet here I sat as one of them would, just slightly out of phase and with outstretched wings.  Only babies and people who may have caught a "glimpse" from the corner of their eyes would notice a dark angel reading the news at the Cafe des 2 Moulin on the Rue Lepic.  The irony that I was in Paris, reading about school shootings was also not lost on me but given the nature of my job, and in the words of the angel Gabriel, death is "poetic."

Humans are such violent perpetrators of death but this one on the front page of some American nothing magazine was an artist.  He was a fool granted that his dental records, which would have been so perfect had he not made them out of stone, were found to be false and a manhunt would have been started for him had he not vanished into thin air.  Only I knew where he was and as I watched him at the coffee table adjacent to mine, I admired his poise to have killed an entire school of high school children without batting an eye or displaying any remorse in this cafe here, not more than 2 weeks after it all happened.  His convictions were worn on his sleeve but I could also read his mind being the supernatural creature that I was and it was completely swirling; not unlike the vortex between the worlds.

Speaking through a hole in the vortex, not to mention obviously using some of the last remnants of her temporary grim status, Deviel called through the vortex saying, "I know what you're doing and you should stop before you get yourself in trouble.  Taking advice or 'words of wisdom' from humans especially one with a mind as dark as this one is ill-advised."

"Be silent!" I yelled, shutting the tear and pulling the human to my phase of existence.

He sat there staring at my wings at first and then at me.

"Are you not afraid mortal?" I said.

"Why would I be?  I don't even know who you are," he replied.

"I'm the angel of death," I told him.

"That's hardly true.  You are in no way Samael."

"How do you know Samael?" I said in shock.

He paused and reclined in his chair and smiling, he said, "Now you don't seem to know who I am."

I thought for a moment about my journey and paused as a sudden realization crawled up and down my spine like a million spiders made of ice.

Looking directly into my eyes, he grimaced slyly with a sick spiteful, stentorian stare and slowly said, "he can be taught."

For the first time in millennia, I was truly frightened.  It was as if fear became embodied in this rather plain looking man before me.  

"It's nice to finally meet you, Dolphiel.  I am nothing to fear, though.  I serve my purpose as you do."

For a moment I was shocked and could not speak but when words found me, I replied, "then why are you fallen and I am loved?"

"Are any of us truly loved by our maker?" He asked.

I had no response as he moved closer to me and sat down at the table next to me.

"I have been sitting inside this body whispering and suggesting he commit unspeakable and unthinkable acts in the name of god and yet god is not here because he does not meddle in the affairs of humans except to give them strength and love to fight me.  ME! Who was his most beloved until these pitiful flesh bags came into existence on this horrible, painful, ephemeral, realm that he's forced on them. The war for heaven is oft talked about in this place and yet none of them knows that the war is over.  God won when he cast me out.  He proved that by the power of the heavenly host, he can expel anything from heaven.  The irony is that this not only includes angels but man as well.  My fiery realm would not exist if god had no wrath.  The Christians call him awesome! and the jews call him loving but is he?  If the fact remains that in Judaism, it's spoken that sinners are punished and in Christianity, it's said that those who do not cleave unto the blood of 'the lamb' and get saved are condemned to hell, then I ask you, is god really all loving?"

My breath was taken away by the hate that poured out of this vessel like the vortex between the worlds, without the stability of a reaper or the wings of an angel.  It was like a punch to the gut and it took me a while to regain my composure and a while longer to even remember that I still served god but the words came to me from the human side of my being which was odd because I hadn't known it for 3,000 years, give or take.

"God's love is based on choice.  We are given the choice to love and obey or we are given the choice to fall as you have, Satan."

He laughed hysterically in a maniacal way that gave rise to my entire body being frozen in place.

"I'm sorry but it's so funny to hear my name bastardized like that.  I prefer Lucifer and I am an angel, child; Perhaps cast out but I am still an angel."

He stared at me for a minute and would not let me speak.  It was if he had stolen all sound from my body or clenched his fist around my voice box only.  After a minute of pondering me like a chess player from across the small table, he said, "Do you really have a choice?  I mean if you do, congratulations but have you ever tried being bad?  If you truly have a choice then you can break gods commandments and rules and you will be fine because it's your choice and he loves you unconditionally but if you don't then he will cast you out as I have been because there is definitely a wrong choice in the divine equation."

I reviewed my own words and thought hard on them.  What choice do I have?  To what extent does god love me that he will tolerate the tomfoolery that I am capable of before he casts me out?  Looking to the skies, I fell on my knees and prayed as a human would: from a distance but god did not answer.  Instead, I watched Satan walk through my pull of this phase of existence and back into the human realm.

A moment later, my prayer was answered.  The world seemed to melt and my wings were gripped as if my humongous hands and pulled hard toward the heavens.  There on the heavenly planes, stood a man of great stature.  My best guess would be that he stood at least 9 feet tall.  His hair flowed golden and his wings seemed to stretch out like skyscrapers on their sides.  In his hands, he grasped a weapon that was pointed towards my face and the sword was aflame!

Lead By Example

The light shining through the Christian Academy windows, looked blue through my eyes. It was like some bad, made for TV recreation of what was about to happen but I was not cogniscent enough to really care either way.

The TV drama of this moment might paint me out to be some sort of malevolent, maniacal mastermind but in that moment there was nothing. There was no joy or glee for the feeling of killing.  There was no pain in my heart that caused me to shoot everyone. I felt no sexual rise from the murder or feeling of superiority or even any feeling of regained control in my life; all I felt was the machine at my fingertips that mowed down those who were being judged by their god.

I remember walking into the cafeteria and sliding a bar and chains on all of the exits. From there, it was simply a dance of blood and slaughter. At first the gunfire was loud and unnerving but after a while, the slaughter became like drums and the screams like horns as I danced to the music of death. The song would even rise and fall in climax until it dwindled down to the last few shuffling of children and teachers and voluptuous lunch ladies that puked the words, "hunny chile..." to the fat faced megalomaniacs who roamed the earth at this disaster on earth.

"RATATATATATAT!"

Such quick work of a school run on routine.  It was good it worked this way too because the crowd was concentrated and I killed every last one. Not a few people in the cafeteria and a few missed in the library. Not 7 dead and 6 wounded, all 158 students, 29 teachers and 5 neurotic lunch people. All dead. I counted and I used my knife to poke holes in their heads to make sure.

Death came slow and painful to them but there was a reckoning that day. At the end, I climbed the fire escape and burned down the building from within and from outside, with a cadaver that had my teeth in its mouth. A nice set of pebbles carved to replica in played my own mouth but the body lay with the others in the building as it burned to the ground.

If I had the power of a higher being, I would have simply taken them without all that pain but as a human being, this was to be a cautionary tale of woe for all those who thought that they were safe.

Sleep well princes and princess. Tell your story in the afterlife and to the people still living by your example. Bon voyage.

Story Stopper

Part X: Death Lives Always

What a strange life this Michael had that he would choose such rash action.  I remember none of living that life save the pictures and images that are held in the records of time.

Deviel was happy to have me back but I was displeased with my experiment.  Even when I had the memory of my current self erased to live life as a human, was it really all gone to eternity when all was said and done? Had god cursed the angels by giving them eternity to watch humans meander a world we could never experience or even truly understand?

I had lived mortal lives where I was only a walking shadow because inside I was still the Grim Reaper. I had now lived a life as a human who seemed to experience only misery but none that I could remember as me.

It wasn't me anyway; it was Michael that experienced the misery and from the hall of records and the stories and manifestos he'd left behind, there were always remnants of me that plagued him until his death.

Yes! I had cursed this poor soul to be me but not know it and it had driven him mad.  Perhaps the experiment was not all a loss for now I knew for sure that no human could live with the weight of responsibility for which my job entailed.

What powers do I hold as the angel of death? Can I call myself that when the title clearly belongs to Samael? It's interesting how time works in the afterlife. To humans, their little minds can only perceive that Satan was cast out of heaven a long time ago but for us, it could have been yesterday, it could have been tomorrow. For all I know, Satan is in heaven still and in hell at the same time.

Only god is omnipotent and omnipresent and all the "omnis" but existing outside in the vortex between the worlds, we reapers have extrodinary grasp on powers that would seem to be only his. Obviously, we do not have his mighty strength but we do have a presence throughout all eras of recorded time. We can not be at every one simultaneously and we can not know everything that goes on at every point in time but we can go to anywhere we desire in time.

Are we not then gods of death?  The Japanese seem to call us Shinegami or death "gods" I am the chief of the death "gods" so in my own way, I am a god supreme.

Hearing my thoughts, Deviel shushed them.

"No Dolphael! Do not think such things.  To question the limits of your position in the grand order is what causes one to fall."

"Yes but are we not free as humans are to question our existence?" I replied.

"No, you are not," a voice came down through the void and there before me, I saw him shining with the pure light of god himself.

"Gabriel!" I gasped.

"Deviel, you are right to caution your Grim to such foolhardy thoughts. I come as a warning and to fulfil my duty as the messenger archangel, Dolphael. To question the supremecy of god is herecy and if you do not heed this warning, second to me is Michael.

The irony that the human I had "made in my image" would be my destroyer should I not end my quest.

"Do not misunderstand me, Dolphael. I do not seek to have you end your quest at all.  God seeks for all his creation, including the angels to marvel at the beauty of what he has made. The Seraphs are so ecstatic about it that they fly around his head and sing 'holy holy holy' forever."

"What a life..." I mumbled.

"It may not occur to you, brother but being a man who has ascended to the rank of angel is a big deal. You have a unique perspective which is why the burden of man's mortality was placed on you. Samael knows only how to destroy but you are well versed in love, poetry (in more ways than one), sex and have the ability to even go back and forth and to live as one, if you so choose, provided your primary function is preformed. You have been given the pardon and indeed encouragement to have reapers who preform your tasks for you on service of you which is only allowed because they serve god first. You are a lucky creature Dolphael. Do not ask for more blessings than god can allow."

With this speech, he ascended back into heaven. It occurred to me that I could follow him but my reapers would always remain here or on earth; not as humans, mind you, but as shadows of human beings, remnants and in a world out of phase with the one that mattered.

Time cannot dictate how long I sat and thought about what he said but do not children always question their parents? Don't they always want more as is the nature of growing up? Most importantly: aren't parents always scolding their kids?

Michael of Princeton, NJ

Trying to compact one's life into a long story is easy but growing up a poet, it will have to be a short story as I am taught to never waste a word on pointless details.  Maybe I should have considering where I am now but it's too late for conversation so I'll start with the best of times and the worst of times and we'll go from there.

My parents divorced when I was young and perhaps this separation sparked my own separation from reality, maybe not.  Since I was little, I've felt out of place. I spent my life chasing women and thinking on a larger scale that seemed to see a life as pointless to the eternity of mankind.

Often times, throughout my life, I have felt different. I've been able to see into people's souls and read their actions accordingly. Some call it future sight or clairvoyance but I simply call it placing the demeanor of a man up against the norm for him and reading critically.

There's nothing there but sometimes when I get to thinking really hard, I can feel phantom wings on my back that plague my physiology with thoughts of flying in my dreams.  When this happens, I feel an emptiness inside of me that becomes prevalent when I truly think about forever.

In eternity, nothing matters besides love but when one lives for this kind of purity, they often find themselves meandering the extremes which is why I find myself where I am now.

Growing up, I bounced through relationships. I chased women around the world. From all around the country to the shores of Japan and Africa. The hunt for immortal romance was always on my mind and I'd always find one thing that fit, only to find out later that there was a million things that didn't. Even now, at 30 years of age, I find myself facing death because life never mattered at all.

You see for all my romance, there was an equal amount of sex, and one of those times, I happened to bring a child into this world. The girl loves me and I loved her but it felt out of place and I knew it. I did right, however, and married her and now my child is two years old and I work a shit job for shit pay to support both my wife and the baby.

for the longest time, what kept me from doing evil was the hope for the future but as hope diminished at this dead end job, my reservations grew less and less and here I find myself with an empty can of gasoline in my hands and retribution in my heart.

She sits inside her empty room on her computer filled with more work for her underpaid workers.  Her mean spirit has crushed their souls more than once and although she is only a middle man, a scandal can ruin the integrity of any company.  With her door shut and her curtains on her only window to the inside of the building down and closed, she hardly noticed as I began to douse her door in gasoline.  Lighting the match, I trust in my lord and savoir that I might shed light on this operation and change the nature of the people who live in ignorance of the injustice.

Throwing the match on the floor, I watch as the office goes up in flames.  Her curtains peal back lapped up by the flames tongue like aging wallpaper over time and I see her face through the tiny window next to the door as she can go nowhere due to my dousing the door in gasoline and burning it as a barrier.

In solemn resolve, I see her clawing at the window and screaming in agony. All I can offer her are the words, "vivres in infernum perpetuam, nefandus"

I prayed to god in this moment and offered as retribution, my life and my soul for taking hers.  I accepted that my lord and savoir was the only way to heaven as the flames grew higher and the light around me flashed and sparkled.  I watched her burn to death in front of me and stood amidst the flames.

The light dimmed and I found myself in the swirling Vortex between the worlds.  My wings stretched the gap and I was no longer Michael of Princeton New Jersey.

Story Stopper

Part IX: Dead to the world

"What is the point?" Said Deviel looking at me indignantly through the gaseous cloud of the great vortex.

"How am I to truly know if I never worry about the consequence of death?" I told her.

"...but if you are to hit the reset button and to truly live a human life, what happens if you meet true death as a human? What happens if this personality... no! Who you truly are, doesn't come back?"

"Then we will test god, his angels and his grand plan on whether this was truly meant to be my position or not."

"Why must you do it though? Are you so egotistical that you can not be content with merely seeing death at work every day on the lives of these humans whose souls seem to be constantly in the mortal draft?"

"I am immortal so I will never know, would I?"

"And what is any one of us supposed to do without you? You are the angel whilst we are mere pawns as reapers."

"This is why, while I am gone, you will be the Grim. You are more than well trained enough and you are more than qualified to run this department and if it so happens that at the end of this, I am dead to the world, I trust you will know what to do."

"This is foolish and I will never submit," she said; but by that time, I was already gone. I was waking up as a human and seeing the world through the eyes of a baby. 

My human eyes still knew I was the Grim but after two instances or two years in human time, I had learned to talk and had become someone new. I no longer remembered Dolphiel but only Michael who is the man my parents raised into a fine young man.

Story Stopper

Part VIII: Dying: what comes naturally

Death is part of gods plan. Whether it be the guy who dies old and feeble in his bed, the person who suffers through debilitating cancer or simply: the man who was in the "wrong" place at the "wrong" time and got his chead guillotined off by a serpentine garage door, God intends to carry these souls to the afterlife.

In the latter case, God wants the soul and gives the order but it's not exactly their time yet. That's where I come in. Most simply, I could make souls like this have a heart attack: a lot of places around the world don't have access to adequate healthcare so there's rarely any question when someone dies of a heart attack. In the United States, it's surprising not everyone dies of a heart attack.

In any case, the heart attack is the way I'd usually go because it's easy, it does not cause much pain and it doesn't stand out from any other person's death. After seeing the artwork of the archangel Samael, however, I was dying (pun intended) to make some gruesome art of my own.

As stated before, I do not revel in the death. Death is painful beyond the immediate people who die. It affects the living more than the dead even, but God is the Alpha and Omega and he does have a plan, however screwed up it may be sometimes. In this way, Samael and I have a job to do that is morose, vicious and sometimes straight cruel but we are ultimately still here to pass the will of god on in the form of death. For him it's mass death and he sets those things in motion like a child would play with dominoes and for me, and consequently my reapers, it's individual death plan that in certain cases, I get to make up.

In all fairness to the man whose head I all but cut off with the garage door, he should have lived for another 20-30 years had his death been natural, but the order form said his name to be ferried unto god's domain in heaven.  Therefore, it is my duty to cause his death.

Mind you, I'm not allowed to kill him in the way a hitman would or even the heroic and clandestine Nordsman. For me, the death has to come as a result of natural events that lead to his death.

Many people think I can just touch something and it dies but contrary to the Hollywood view of death: I am not a skeleton, the death touch exists and causes cardiac arrest but it's an ability which is actively summoned not something that happens to everything living that I touch.  I picked up the cat, I brought him to the front of the garage. I put that "something in the air" that disoriented and caused this man paranoia and delusions of grandeur but he was the one who followed every step I laid out for him.

When the garage door snapped and gravity (a natural force) pulled it crashing down on his neck, I was merely there to collect the soul. The beauty of it was in how natural it really was: this man was a writer and he was paranoid in general. He gorged himself on Stephen King and E.A. Poe as many American's do. He was obsessed with the cynical and morose view of other American writers and charmed with the possibility of a naturally occurring, gruesome death.  The irony that his life would end this way was poetic. Not to mention the fact that death by garage door was unique and bizarre. The newspapers would have to report on this even if he hasn't been a well known writer in the human realm. 

The way he was laid out left him with a look of shock on his face that reminded me of a child on Christmas realizing that he'd finally gotten that shiny toy train that he wanted so badly, or whatever kids get excited about these days. He was indeed dead but the way the body was sprawled out exuded such life in an innocuous, to humans a least, vibrancy. This man died fighting with the last few signals his brain could send through his spinal column and was stopped, quite literally, only because he was pinned down by forces too great to overcome. When you're the Grim Reaper or even someone with an eye for the beauty of a well planned machine, this is art.

When he looked at me with that stupid face of shock, awe and fear, he had already realized he was dead. In this way, this was also beautiful because death did not come as a questionable thing for him. When that garage door slammed down on his neck, he knew and accepted immediately that he was dead.

When prompted, all I had to do was confirm what he already knew.  He began as most people do when they're surprised and swore.  After I had confirmed what he already knew, we both stood over the scene and admired the poetry of irony I had laid out in front of us.

When he finally spoke, he said, "what comes now?"

"I am to convince you to accept your death and then to imbibe your soul to carry it to the afterlife."

"What? You mean like eat me?

There was another long moment where he looked around at his surroundings and then up as he smiled.

"I always knew I'd be telling death to eat me when he told me I was dead but I never expected this kind of irony," he said.

He laughed for a bit and then surprised me with his last request.

"Do I get to ask for a last request? I mean if you're here to take me to the other side to a fate inevitable, do I get a last cigarette or something? The same as a man tied to a stake in front of the firing squad? Or do we even have the time for something like that?"

I laughed out loud when I thought of time and death existing in the same instance but realizing the man was serious, I told him, "Of course. We exist outside of time now. If you've ever heard of the echo: a ghostly Repeat of events that happened in the past cast in real time like a hologram, that happens because souls exist outside of time so that death can reoccur at any moment in time..."

"I don't need a science lesson but that's interesting to know. Thanks. I just want to see my wife again. She was a nut and we didn't always see eye to eye but she was my wife and I loved her in my own way."

The two personalities were polar opposites. He was a personality filled with darkness, violence and personal torment and she was made of such light that she almost shimered like an angel when her car arrived.

I had the power to exist outside of time so I could certainly speed up time to the moment she got home to see the scene.  Here in the Phoenix sun, you'd think one person would have passed the body and called it in but in the two hours that were two seconds in our time, no one had noticed the body at all. When she got out of the car, she reminded me of Deviel with her shimmering ora that looked like the pure blue light of heaven.

This was my charge's first time seeing an ora as they are not truly visible to the human realm. Most nuts who say they see oras are either victims of near death, hence part of them are trapped in the afterlife until they die, or tripping on psychedelic drugs.

When the wife saw her husband's head hanging on by flaps of skin and a crushed spinal column, she fell to her knees and began to cry in gasps and inaudible screams. It wasn't that we wouldn't be able to hear them she was just to frightened and hurt to make any sound.

My charge, for all his toughness and talent for mimicking and profiling psychopaths and sociopaths, was actually softer and warmer on the inside than anyone in his life might have known. He reached out for her with such passion, his heart broke simultaneously with his acceptance of death.

The spirit orb floated around in circles where the wife lay face down on the pavement sobbing like a wounded dog. Opening my mouth it slowly floated into me and my wings stretched alive, tearing a hole in the fabric of space-time and making a doorway to the vortex that lead to the beyond.

As I felt the great pain in his soul floating inside of me and vomiting the residual emotion that permeates off of every soul, I thought about the irony that this soul whose evil thoughts were so poignant that they emulated and rivaled E.A. Poe, was on its way to heaven.

A man who had felt lost his whole life still accepted the glory of god in his soul enough to ascend to the great and colorful planes of Elysium. As I neared heaven, I opened my mouth and he went forward through the "long tunnel" that leads to "the light at the end of the long hallway" at the opening to my mouth.

It all seems a bit rediculous when I say it out loud but seeing heaven, I didn't feel like entering it for the first time. I didn't even laugh at the rediculousness of the situation because layed out before me were fields of green that went on forever and bubbles that represented different worlds that belonged to the spirits of all time; their colors flashing like TV screen echoes on the walls of American dens across the nation.

I turned and floated back into the vortex feeling the wind on my wings and watching the floating reapers without any wings but with the ability to move in any direction  on any plane of existence because of their title.

Life for any human is hard but dying is what comes naturally. Never dying is hard but we find ways to make it. Always being the one to set up the dominoes but being forced to let the human knock them down wasn't even satisfying because being the Grim, I get to see death in every form but what does it mean to die? Or to give death by your own hand?

A Quiet Tuesday

Sitting in my favorite chair, reading Edgar Allan Poe, I become overwhelmingly aware of the silence in our home. The grandfather clock's heart beats in the hallway with the speed of a humming bird.  It's ticking and pounding mimic my imagination when I have a good story idea, pounding away at the weary keys on my computer.  It's funny how slothful I can be on a lazy, hot day in a Phoenix July.  The sun creeps through the windows and beams of it reflect off the dust in our home. It's almost as if hands are reaching into my home.

As the strangeness of the light begins to get to me, and quite frankly, the strangeness of Poe's imagination, I decide that there's got to be a place in our house I can go to get away from phantom specters in the middle of the day.

My wife is an interior designer and always believed that a view of nature was important to sound mind, body and soul.  I have to hand it to her, she makes me feel incredible, not to mention her sexual prowess would intimidate rabbits, but to the tormented mind that I so well disguise, she comes across to that part of me as invasive as the gaunt and yearning solar fingers that plague my diseased mind right now.  Don't get me wrong, to look at her, you'd say what a lucky guy and I do feel that way but she's slender with perfect shape, filled with energy and joy and my demons could plague and darken the skies of Neverland were I to let them freely express themselves like they wanted.

For the time being, it is not my demons I fear but those demons that exist in reality: heat, UV exposure, the eerie feeling that I am not alone and death himself walks amongst the hydrangea that so neatly moat my home.

"What am I reading for anyway?" I tell myself.  "There's articles to write and bills to pay.  Suffer the writer who doesn't infest the world with the insanity of a deranged mind through his tortured drivel."

Looking down at the story of Annabel Lee, the irony of the preceding thoughts are not lost.  I admire Poe but people make him out to be a god.  As if he never scratched his butt when he arose from a lazy boy in a Phoenix July.  The desert heat sticks to you.  It surrounds you like a warm blanket when you think back to New Jersey where you were raised but after living here for some time, that warm blanket becomes a noose and just as maddening as the still beating heart of the dead old man beneath the floor boards or that damn grandfather clock that won't fucking shut up with its incessant ticking of the seconds that whine through time in a never ending loop that goes on to infinitum till the ticks become a hum and you wonder why there's never a tock?

"It adds character," my beautiful wife would say.

It adds character like the windows everywhere and the bony sunshine fingers that mock me and scratch the floor...

There's a scratching noise from somewhere.  Where is that coming from?

I head into the garage; Yes! At last. The garage where there are no lights and no peep holes for the heat or sunshine.  If only it were air conditioned in here because it's like one of those "rejuvenating," clay sweat lodges out in the desert.

Scraaaaaatch... Scraaaaatch... Scratch scratch...

There it is and it's coming from outside the garage door.

I pull up the segmented pieces of chained wooden door links like a serpent into the top of the garage and a cat, as if startled jumps directly into my line of sight.  Being the dumb ass I am, I actually get startled and bump my head on the garage door which I have not fully lifted yet.  Well! The weight is more than I can bear on my head so it knocks me down to the floor but this brilliant ballet ends with all segmented heavy wooden pieces crashing down on my neck as I watch my own demise.

When I come to, I can clearly see the chaos that has become of me and my head barely hangs onto my neck through pieces of lacerated skin.  Behind me, there's a man with wings and a rather cro-magnon brow.  He looks to be Mesopotamian or something middle eastern but is that even possible?  Mesopotamian?  How do I even know what that looks like?  His smile looks devious and yet at the same time proud as if he'd just figured out how to make some incredible Rube Goldberg machine that ended in...

"Aw shit... I'm dead..." I say aloud.

I can tell he's speaking Aramaic but for some reason I can understand him as he says, "Yes, my good sir, you are indeed."

Story Stopper

Part VII: Dead Stop

It had been building for a few weeks and although j had for seen it, there was nothing I could do to stop it. A soothsayer is a human being with the extraordinary gift to predict the future but a reaper exists outside time its self and therefore he knows the future.

I remember it in bits and pieces as I do most of my experiences being human. I was a student at Virginia Polytechnic institute in the year 2048.  You'd think there would be flying cars and robots everywhere but not much had changed, really.

The first thing I remember is lounging at the bottom of a staircase that crossed under a bridge and looked out onto a garden. It was there that a couple of students were talking philosophy and though I could see them, there was a man in a long black camel skin coat who stood in the shadow of the bridge. His face obscured, he talked to me of philosophy and as I debated him, I walked over to him and crossed past him and as I walked into the garden, I saw that this man was wearing a Guy Fauks mask which made my human brain think, "what a poser," buy my angel mind was terrified.

The next scene I remember is seeing the man in the mask on the roof of a building and as people passed by, no one seemed to notice. I had just gotten to an art building when I heard a scream from behind me. Several people wearing Guy Fauks masks walked around an island amidst a brick walking path circle with guns drawn. People ran and I ran to a small concrete wall jutting out from the ground like a tree would grow. It had a square base at one end and columns that grew out of the ground like tree trunks along the way up a hill.

In front of me, I saw the panicking art students and in their panic, I saw them looting art supplies like oil base paints and charcoal pencils. I remember thinking to myself, that would be how humanity would act when doom is imminent. All the while, this man in the Guy Fauks mask stood at the top of the building looming like a seven foot tall gaunt monstrocity or a perverted VanGough version of a human gargoyle. Still, no one noticed his presence but me.

As the chaos escalated, someone noticed one of the people in the Guy Fauks masks open and close a briefcase while someone else shouted, "bomb!"

I remember being glad I was on my back behind that end pillar of cement but I also remember thinking if the bomb should go off, how much of this mortal body would be protected from the blast? I remember trying to change positions as the chaos ran rampant and more people tried to take shelter being the slats in this small wall. Still other people next to me, stood next to the wall, watching the bomb squad at work as they arrived.

None of it made very much difference because as the time for the explosion drew nigh, I could feel it in my bones. As the bomb exploded, I crawled out of my physical form and into a world where time had stopped.

Not stopped for real, mind you. Only god can stop the flow of time but more along the lines of the world was on pause like one would pause live TV from a TiVo remote: the program keeps playing but for the moment at least, I am able to view a still image of the world that is already burning in live time.

Ironically, the man on the roof top could still move in this frozen time and at this, it became apparent as to who he was. I had gotten my job from him.

"Good evening, Samael," I said.

Stretching out three pairs of darkened wings, he floated to the ground, leaving his mask on.

"The heat from it is amazing, is it not?" He said.

In the moment the bomb had exploded, the last thing I felt with my human nervous system was the heat and the last thing I saw was a great blue light; it was the lightest shade of blue I had ever seen.

"I have been at this job for a long time, Dolphael," (He pronounced my name slightly differerent than I did) "...and in none of my destructive exploits have I ever seen the awesome power of mankind's own vision of destruction equaled. I reigned down vulcanized sulfer from the skies on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the power of that destruction made me weak but these days, all it takes is the slight convincing, in human form no less, to fit a bomb into a briefcase and set it off. What is the high angel of death to do with himself when his job gets to be this easy?"

As he wandered the frozen scene, he poked and prodded at the stagnant chaos in this vignette from a nightmare. He loomed over those who cowered in fear of the explosion and I found the irony that they were all this close to the true angel of death and the Grim reaper, but still afraid more of the bomb, almost humorous. I say almost, of course because mass death such as this, despite it being god's will and god's personal hand of destruction, is still tragic in both the metaphysical and the physical sense.

Our lord kills indiscriminately but he is the designer and everything he does has a part to play in his master plan. Looking at the way Samael scoped out the destruction, however, made me think that after all this time, making world wide floods, hitting the planet with an asteroid, reigning down burning silver and the list goes on to infinitum, I thought I might have seen a glimmer of joy exuded from the being of Samael.

Even I had to admit that he had become an artist at destruction and the people were almost placed in this vignette of frozen time to make a living work of art. A living work of Goya, mind you, but never-the-less a picturesque vision of the beautifully grotesque avant garde.

In this moment, I remember the times when I was still reaping often and the times I had orchestrated deaths of my own to picturesque horror. I misses those days.

"Well," Samael told me, "My job is done here, time for your reapers to come collect the mess. Good to see you again Dolphael. I miss your early work. Perhaps I'be inspired you with what's happened here. I look forward to the individual encore. Until we meet again, Dolphael."

With that he faded away; like a sand sculpture drying out and falling apart grain by grain. I hated to say it but the truth was, he had inspired me and I couldn't wait for an order from god to end a person before his time. I wasn't going to pass this one onto one of my lesser reapers this time.