The Angel?

A suicidal man has an encounter with a man claiming to be an angel shortly after the death of his wife.

Allen Kirsch sat with a gun to his head on a bench over looking the Ashtabula harbor. The gun was a .38 he had purchased a month earlier from a friend who has been desperately trying to get rid of the weapon for weeks. His hands were shaking as his thoughts raced to his wife who had died the night before of Leukemia in the Ashtabula County Medical Center.  Tears streamed down his grief stricken face.

Why had I not been able to help her?

“Why did you take her from me!” he cursed to the heavens.

She had been twenty-seven, smart, beautiful, and full of life before the cancer had corroded her body. Nancy had only been two years older than him and a brilliant school teacher at Thomas Jefferson Elementary in the city of Ashtabula. She was a vibrant redhead with everything going for her when he had met her four years earlier in the summer after her graduation from Kent State University. He had been working at Worthington Cylinders in Jefferson after his graduation from Jefferson High School.

They met one night at the Penny Lounge. Nancy and her friends had gone out to celebrate a friend’s birthday and he had stopped in for a beer on his way home from work. He had lived in an apartment on West 8^th Street, then a bachelor with no girlfriend who spent most of his free time with the guys. He remembered the night as if it were yesterday. He had approached her because one of his friends had dared him to and from the first words they had spoken, everything had gone perfect. They had danced and laughed for hours. At the end of the night, they had exchanged phone numbers. Throughout all of the next day at work, Allen had been in another world, thinking about Nancy and had not been quite able to concentrate on much else. She had blown his mind away.

            For the rest of that night Allen had been intoxicated, but not by booze, no it wasn’t the booze, it was her. The way she looked at him with those beautiful green eyes, the sweet scent of her perfume mix with the sweet scent and taste of her strawberry lip balm, the softness of her touch, and the very sensuality of her voice.

            He hardly slept that night, because he couldn’t get her off his mind. When he did finally slip into unconsciousness, he even dreamed about her. 

Not long after he had gotten home from work the following evening, his telephone rang. When he picked up, it was Nancy. She had not been able to stop thinking about him either. They got together late that night at his place because she still lived with her parents. But after that first night, they were inseparable.

It had been less than a year later when they got married. They had lived in his apartment at first. In less than six months, they had bought a small house on West 16^th Street. Life had been great those first couple of years of wedded bliss but then in fall

of 2004 she had become very ill. Allen had taken her to the hospital where the doctors hadn’t been able to find the cause of her illness. After three weeks and four similar trips to the hospital, each baring the same results, an abnormal blood test brought about

the horrid news. Allen felt as though his whole world had just gone through a meat grinder.

“We are very hopeful,” Dr. Hastings had said. “We caught it early enough that the chemo therapy should be able to nip it in the bud.” Those words had made Allen and Nancy hopeful too but deep down in his heart, Allen, for the first time since he had

met Nancy, had doubts. He was scared to death for her and even more of losing her.

Six months after that horrible visit to the emergency room, it seemed as though Nancy was going to be just fine. The treatments had worked great aside from the fact that all of Nancy’s beautiful red hair had fallen out. Everything was great and her doctor had told them that as far as he could tell the cancer was gone.

A month later Allen had rushed Nancy back to the hospital with chronic nose bleeds. There were more blood tests and she began to show flu-like symptoms, but worst of all was the discovery that the cancer was back and stronger than ever.

After six more months more of treatments, Nancy had told Allen that she didn’t want any more of it, she was giving up. Allen tried to persuade her to change her mind but he didn’t prevail. She had suffered up until last night when her body finally lost the fight and Allen had suffered right along with her. The cancer had killed his heart but not his body.

Allen began to squeeze the trigger to end it all. The pain and suffering in his heart was anguish that his mind could not take.

“God does everything for a reason.” A deep voice said. Allen fumbled and dropped the gun onto the park bench. The voice had come from behind him. Slowly he turned and saw another man standing right behind him. He was tall and wise looking, maybe mid forties with a bit of gray at the temples of his dark brown hair.

“What did you say?” Allen asked the tall man.

“God does everything for a reason.”

“Why?”

“Because he took your wife, right?” the tall man said slipping around the bench and taking a seat on Allen’s left.

“Yes but how did you know that?” Allen didn’t think he had ever seen this man before in his life.

“I know because I am an angel, a messenger of God.”

“What?” Allen asked grabbing the gun which was lying in the bench to his right.

“Do you want to know what the meaning of life is, Allen?” Allen looked at the tall man confused. This was bullshit, it had to be right?

“Sure,” he said.

“The meaning of life is exactly as it seems. God and Satan try to influence people everyday. Some God wins and some Satan wins. They bet books. Have you ever played Spades, Allen?”

Allen had and to him this sounded like the sickest thing anyone had ever said about God but he nodded to the tall man.

“It’s exactly like that. God took Nancy because he had won her, Allen.” He said giving Allen a warm smile. “God does many things for many different reasons, he takes different souls he wins at different times, but so does Satan or Lucifer as God calls him, but a funny thing is, its nothing like its depicted in the bible, they just both have different beliefs about the human soul. Lucifer argued with God over the value of the soul and because of him certain souls are now allowed into heaven, but no all. Those not allowed   thereby go to Lucifer for love and education. There is no evil in the universe, Allen, that is, outside of the evil man creates himself. Nevertheless, the craziest thing in the universe is, Allen that God didn’t create man, but he took credit for it many centuries ago. ”

“What?” Allen managed to ask, it was the only word his struggling mind could pull out of the tangled mess that was trying to understand.

“I’m saying God has lied, or at least over embellished a little here and there. Who hasn’t? I mean no one’s perfect.” He said giving a smile that threatened to engulf his whole face. It looked insane, but somehow soothing and pleasant. “Some suspect that he also had something to do with the lies in the bible, but if he went through Angelic channels, those who delivered the messages aren’t admitting it, so as far as we know man made it up.”

“I don’t understand. Wha…”

“Oh, you will, but next time you’re not getting anywhere when you’re trying to talk to God, because so many people don’t get anywhere, I think its cause the priest are blocking up all the lines most of the time, try talking to the other side. Who knows maybe you’ll get some answers.”

The tall man laughed and got up. There was a bright light that made Allen squint. He saw what he thought looked like feathery wings and then all went dark.

When his eyes readjusted, Allen saw a blackened spot on the ground where the man had been standing. The grass had been singed to the roots. Allen looked around but the man was no where to be seen. He raised his gun to the side of his head once more and pulled the trigger. 

 

Mark Best

August 13, 2006

Author's Note

Give me everything, I want you to tear it apart.

Reviews

[Marie]

You made some slight errors in grammer and punctuation, but those you can easily find and fix. The story was very good, very interesting, but--

It's too long. You could have compressed the first half of the story into a few short paragraphs; all that background was not needed. Your real story was between Allen and the "angel". Extensive background is needed only in a novel. A short story should be, well, short.