And On The Seventh Day (excerpt)

by Nicole J. LeBoeuf

On the first day, the angel Samiel woke up with a hangover and found he was a man.

...This is the story of a guardian angel who, just this past Tuesday and for reasons yet unknown, has been relieved from duty. He suspects it has to do with his somewhat illicit attachment to Christie, his assigned charge. The Catholic Church is very specific on the topic of love and marriage, and has certain things to say about the one without the other. Anyway, by Friday afternoon, Samiel has calmed down a bit and is ready to explore the further implications of sudden mortality...

On Friday, he remembered death.

He'd been standing all morning at the fire escape, feeding the pigeons and exercising his shoulder blades. The worst of the shock was behind him, he was sure. Today he managed to keep from following Christie to work, and while he still didn't know how to occupy himself in her absence, the thought "There's nothing I can do, so why worry?" gave him a sort of uneasy relief. He contemplated being human, and joked to himself that now he'd have to exercise to prevent his flight muscles going flabby. He kept a mock-up smile plastered on his face, because if you tell a lie long enough you might just begin to believe it. Maybe that smile would become true after wearing it for, say, an hour. So, smiling, he threw alternate slices of a loaf of Christie's bread to the pigeons, stuffed the other slices in his mouth, and flexed his shoulder blades.

He looked down.

The three-car accident was as directly below him as a spitting target. An ambulance had pulled away, and traffic two blocks off parted on either side to let it go. As he looked down, he realized what had caught his attention: In this city of habitual sirens, the ambulance had gone mute. It began to let traffic back into the left lane, and, as its flashing lights faded, it became one more vehicle waiting for a traffic signal to turn green.

"Someone just died, Pigie," he murmured through a mouthful of crumbs to the cross-eyed birds on the fire escape. "See that? Someone just died. Rest their soul in the Name..." He thought about it, feeling a little sad in general, wondering whether that person had had a guardian angel to keep their soul pure for this moment. But mostly he wished that his own soul might rest from the impossible burden of living Christie's life for her. The thought startled him--if not for that burden, why did he exist? An angel is formed with a specific function to fulfill. How could he wish that function away, even if he wasn't an angel anymore?

Then he thought a little more, and whispered, "I'm going to die, aren't I, Pigie?"

The impact of being fully mortal began to fall on him in slow motion. Mortality meant that he needed to eat and breathe and drink water to get rid of a hangover. It meant he could feel pain, get sick, and--"I am going to die!" he yelped. Then he blacked out.

When he came back to himself, he was trembling all over, unwittingly perched on the headboard of Christie's bed with his knees pressed to his chest and his hands clutching at the back of his head. Little moaning noises were rising up with the bile in the back of his throat. He didn't remember leaping up there, where in his own apartment he used to perch in perfect contemplation of the Name and perfect knowledge of Christie's soul. Now the surprise of finding himself here made him lose his balance, and his wings caught at the air to steady himself. But he no longer had wings with which to steady himself, so he fell with a sort of "plumf" sound into the pillows. He lay there, curled up and shivering, mumbling like Christie's CD player on track 1, infinite repeat: "I'm going to die I'm going to die I'm going to going to die...."

Later that afternoon, having pulled himself halfway together, he found himself wandering through cemeteries and contemplating funerals. He wondered if angels, the ones that still were angels, really did die after all. Maybe they turned to stone. He thought about standing forever still until wind and rain made marble or more likely cement crumbs out of him, scattered over the markings on Christie's tombstone that said "b. 1965 d. 2041." Of course he knew when she would die. All guardian angels had that knowledge, the goal being not to save them from, but prepare them for, their deaths. The information, like the rest of his memories, had not disappeared with his immortality and his angelic vision. A man newly blind does not forget how sunlight shone just because he no longer can see it. But he realized he didn't know when or how he himself would die. He thought about what he would do after Christie was gone, and though the thought was terrible, he realized he didn't want to stand still forever until the ages made dust of him. He'd have a very hard time standing still.

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"And On The Seventh Day"  © 1995 Nicole J. LeBoeuf.
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