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.