#37 Disobedient Angel

There is something I need to tell you.

First, let me explain. You don’t know me. You’ve seen me on occasion, passing on the street, around the corner of the hall at school, in the distance at a game, or on the far side of the park. You think I must live here, nearby, somewhere. But we’ve never met. I’ve never introduced myself.

You are the only one who can see me.

Have you heard the stories, of someone who got in a car wreck, and they say someone pulled them from the car, but then when they looked again, no one was there? Those stories are true. That’s what I am. I’m a messenger. A task that needs to be fulfilled.

The universe was perfect when it was created, but people were given choices, and sometimes they make the wrong choice. When that happens, the universe gets broken in small ways. Those ways can add up, until things go really, really wrong. I’m a correction, a small adjustment of the course of the fate of everything.

But that’s all I am.

Once I make that adjustment in the course of time and space, I will die.

It won’t be death like you know it. You have an immortal soul. I do not. I’ll simply cease to exist. Once my task is complete, once I’ve done what I was sent here to do, I will be gone. Utterly gone.

I had something I was supposed to tell you. It was years ago when I came into being for this one task. I came and I found you, and I was about to do it. You might remember, though you probably do not. You were very young, and so I appeared as a child. A child who wanted to speak to you, but was too shy and turned away.

I wasn’t shy. I had gotten to like existing. In the short time it took me to cross the expanse from heaven to earth, I came to enjoy being alive.

Your message, I thought, could wait. And so I dallied. I wandered the earth and sky, I saw what good and evil there was among humankind, and with horror and wonder I pondered the purpose of it all. But most of the time I simply looked at things. At flowers, at clouds, at trees, at a rainbow. The ocean in its might and terror, the stately land, the deep blue ice of the north and south poles, the whales in the depths and the stars quietly watching over all. I saw all of the people, going about without seeing, for they do not know when their time is to come, their time to leave it.

But I know. It is my choice. I have been given choice too, strange enough, and that is my torment. Why have I been given this choice to make? To fulfill my purpose and pass away into nothingness, or to delay my destiny and continue to be aware of myself and everything around me.

I have not grown tired of living, but I have grown tired of being afraid. This message I have for you, it must be important. I do not know entirely what it means, but that is for you to puzzle it out. You will know what to do with the words I have for you.

I am afraid that by waiting this long, some terrible thing will come upon the world. I am a correction, a repair, I am here to undo something that should not have happened, but I was sent so long ago perhaps now it is too late. And if it is too late, should I sacrifice myself for nothing?

And if I do tell you, even though I am supposed to vanish, to cease to exist, perhaps because I have been disobedient for so long then I will not pass lightly into the void. Perhaps there is a special hell for disobedient angels. The terror of it eats at me. Perhaps I am already burning in it, and my only release will come when I finally deliver my message.

And so, now that you understand, I will ask you a question. I will leave this up to you. It is your choice now. Do you want to hear what it is that I have to tell you?