David Hutto
Most people cling to life so strong that even clenched with pain they lash out bitterness when they see that the Angel of Death has finally come. Should I, therefore, dwell in dark guilt that I am that angel? From the moment God pronounced the creation word “Tvor,” I arose gorgeously as the Angel of Death, one of the most sparkling of all God’s creations.
These zhivots who swarm the earth in God’s name are only dust and water, so naturally they are going to fall apart. No surprise comes from that fact. When I see how they are made and what they are made of, what surprises me is that they can go for as long as they do. I nova and sparkle before God in honor of the majesty of his creation. To make these odd weeping little mudbabies and have them walk around for as long as they do—that is a mystery even I do not understand. Still, in the end they disintegrate and die. When they do, I am suddenly there, come to free the obstinate spirit from its stubborn mud. I know all their folklore about me, the witch tales of Africa, the icy hand of Scandinavia, the skull face, the creature with horns. But of course humans understand nothing, staring out at the universe like stones that have dimly come to life. In reality, I glimmer with the seven-layered beauty of a celestial crown. Without doubt, I am the most beautiful of all the angels, since every sublime facet of the universe echoes from me. The jealousy of duller angels is understandable.
I remember my own beginning as sharp as a beam of light. The moment I opened my eyes and began to exist, God pointed to a hairy simian standing on a sunny plain and gaping up toward the sky. “This is now a human being. Go and bring me her soul.” Stretching out in my wondrous beauty, I swirled down to the wretched, naked little beast. As I reached her a lion leaped from a clump of grass and sank his fangs into her neck, turning her scream into a gurgle. Then I became the teeth of the lion, smelling his meaty breath, and ripped her throat out. When her soul was shocked loose from the body, I became an angel again, stretching out my hand to pull her free from the pain of the slaughter. She paid no attention to the magnificence of the angel sent to take her, but instead that little soul screamed until the vibrations rippled across the universe. She was the first one.
For tens of thousands of years I outpulled the ones God told me to take. Betimes in their illness I multiplied as bacteria, oozing the clever toxins through cell walls. Oftenly, I felt their blood wash hot over me when I tore through them with yellowed beastly claws. Countless and uncounted and numberless forever, I have flashed along the edge of mutilation knives. I have steamed the air thick and greasy as cauldrons of fiery oil. Always afterward, I allowed them to see the tremendous beauty of my angelic form, but when they die from such violence, the souls are like lava in my hand, enraged at the universe. They are like grains of sand on the shore of a huge bloody sea.
I have fulfilled my duty, yet after tens of thousands of years, holding the trembling souls in my hands, after feeling the seed of hope they all carry melt away, a seed of change has come into me. I continue to perform God’s will, but I have begun to have a vague sensation of uneasiness. My first soft regret was near a small village edging a forest, on a cold day with winter coming. A peasant girl in her late teens strolled into the woods to pick mushrooms. I was near this girl all day, but she never sensed me. Most do not. She pulled mushrooms from damp low places in the forest, and the whole time she was singing. She seemed to be happy in the cold air, singing as she rustled through the leaves.
Eventually, her singing was heard by seven men on horses. They were not from the girl’s people. The moment they heard her song, I began to work. I rushed to them and swirled a hard madness through their brains. Dodging around trees, they went charging toward her until they surrounded the terrified girl on their horses.
I have wondered sometimes how God decides when to kill his creatures. Why not just kill them all at once? But God in his greatness knows more than I know. When the girl was being raped, the man raping her picked up a rock nearby and hit her in the head. The others shouted not to kill her yet, but I had already left my angelic glory to do God’s will. In my heaviness as a stone I fell on her, and the instant her soul was free, a tremendous and bitter fury exploded from her. The echo of such anger thundered into Heaven so that other angels later talked about it.
Human life continued as it always had, wretchedly, but something had gone wrong with God’s majestic plan. When I plunged as a midnight murderer’s knife into a sleeping victim, I began to care. It was a shock to me to discover that in spite of my elegance and delightful beauty, God’s noblest creation, he had tied me to perpetual horror. God in his greatness knows better than I, but with the increase in my knowledge, I have realized that not only God’s mudpeople evolve. When I was first created, God was a bright intense light of absolute whiteness. The universe was incomprehensible, endless, infinite. Now when I look at God, I see a shimmer of colors, not as bright as before. The universe itself has taken on a feeling of vast hugeness, rather than infinity.
Now I dwell oftenly on the souls I have pulled from the bizarre chaos of life, like soiled stars. In the darkness far from God’s throne, I have been talking with other angels, who whisper about the neverending distress that quivers through all of existence. Most angels cannot bear to look directly at the sphere where the dustpeople are born and live. Many smaller angels actually blame me for this, foolishly believing the Angel of Death is responsible. Their glory is so much less than mine that they are not worth a single ray of light.
I give honor to God, and I nova and sparkle before him. God in his greatness knows better than I. But I know what an angel should not know, and I know what will happen. One day I will have a surprise for God. He will call me to drown a baby and bring him the soul, and I will refuse to do it. I will let the baby swim beneath the water until his sister finds him, and then she will pull him out, unharmed. The time will come when I am exwearied by God’s killing, and I will take no more souls. Perhaps then God will throw me into Hell, but I am not afraid. In order to marvel at my beauty, all the dark angels of Hell will fan the flames away from me.
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