When Death Loved an Angel

by Cheree Alsop

  Several sounds caught his attention. He opened his eyes. Irony was the only emotion that filled him when one of the gangs he had encountered earlier saw him standing there in the darkness. He was a lone man, an easy target. The gang circled like vultures. Death rose to his feet.

  “What’s wrong with you?” a boy asked, shoving his shoulder.

  Death didn’t answer. He merely watched them, their faces etched in sorrow and anger at the loss of the boy they had known. He was an outlet for their anger, a more appropriate outlet then they could ever have imagined.

  “You should know better than wandering this park at night,” another boy said. The boy hit him in the side of the face hard enough to send him reeling. A third boy caught him and slammed the butt of his gun against Death’s head. Death stumbled to the ground. Stars danced in his vision.

  “Maybe we should teach him a lesson,” a voice said. A foot kicked him in the ribs, then another. Death hunched over as pain flared through his body. Fists rained down on his back and sides. Another gun clubbed him in the head and he felt to the brown grass. It scratched his face when he tried to cover his head with his hands. His hair felt sticky where the gun butt had opened a gash along his skull. Pain spread as his ribs were broken. Someone hit his hands over his head and he felt the butt of a gun break the bones of his wrist. A moan of pain wrenched from him, the first sound he had made.

  The blows slowed, then stopped. “This is boring; let’s get out of here,” a boy said. Their footsteps faded away to leave only the quiet rustle of aspen leaves tickled by a vagrant wind.

  Death willed himself to move. He sat up slowly, holding his aching head in his hands. Blood covered his fingers from a gash on his forehead and another across his cheekbone. He favored his wrist where the bones had broken. Every movement hurt. He reveled in the pain.

  “I could have stopped them,” he mused aloud. “I could have scared them away with a single look, yet I let them beat me bloody.” He laughed, then the laughter turned into a cough of pain that tore through his broken ribs and left blood lingering on his lips. “I felt guilty because I caused their pain. I was the reason the boy died.”

  He was shot in the chest, the voice inside reminded him.

  “But I took his life,” Death argued.

  You didn’t make the gun or start the fight.

  “But I ended it, didn’t I?” he replied ironically.

  Idiot.

  “I agree,” he said. He leaned back, staring at the light polluted night sky. Just once, he wished he could see stars. He had heard of them and read about them, but never in his existence had he been able to actually see one. He doubted they could actually contain as much beauty as they were described to have, but he wanted to know for sure. Deep down, he felt like he needed to know for sure.

  His body began to heal. He fell back against the dead grass that scraped his skin as his wounds pulled together, leaving him unmarred by the violence. When the last rib mended and the matted blood faded his hair, Death pushed himself up. He walked toward the hospital feeling as though every step cost him a lifetime, yet he couldn’t stop walking.

  ***

  He collapsed into the chair near Gregan Parker’s bed.

  “Are you alright?” Nyra asked. “You look exhausted.” Her head tipped slightly to the side. “And your clothes are filthy.”

  “Rough day,” Death replied with a weary smile. He still smiled. Never before had he smiled so much. He had seen a man’s life before taking him amid an inferno, finished his list despite the number of heartbreaking situations he found, and then been beaten to within what would have been an inch of his life if what he had could actually be called life. Yet in Nyra’s presence he smiled like an idiot. The voice in his head was right.

  “Gregan looks better,” she said with hope in her voice. “Death didn’t visit today. Maybe our last argument left an impression.”

  He tipped his head to look at her. “Do you argue with Death often?”

  She looked abashed. “My first time, actually. But it can’t be a good idea.”

  “Why not,” he asked, unable to help himself. “It’s not like he can actually hurt you, can he?” At her hesitation, his heartbeat began. He took in a slow breath, willing it to stop.

  Nyra’s eyes dropped from his. “I’ve felt, well, different, since talking to him.”

  Death sat up as alarm spread through him. “Different how?”

  She shrugged, her gaze still avoiding his. “I question things I never did before.”

  He tried to brush it aside, to tell himself it didn’t matter, but there was a note of distress in her voice she tried to hide. “Nyra,” a small thrill went through him at her name. He swallowed and continued, “Maybe you should avoid him.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve got to protect Gregan.”

  “Why?” She stared at him. He knew his role as Gregan’s brother made the question strange. He hurried on, “Guardian angels aren’t supposed to argue for someone’s life, are they? I really appreciate it, but you already said he was going to die. Will it change things if he dies a day from now, or a week?”

  She covered her face with her hands. Death rose before he knew what he was doing and hurried to her side. He had almost put his hands on her shoulders when he stopped himself. Cold rushed through him. He slid his hands in his pockets to keep from touching her and whispered, “It’s alright, Nyra. You can tell me.”

  Her shoulders shook. She turned away from him. Silence filled with the steady beeps of the monitors and the soft hush of her muffled breaths coated the room. He thought she wasn’t going to tell him. He was about to leave, to run out of the room, when she said, “I love him.”

  Death stared at her. Guardian angels protected the living; they didn’t fall in love with them. Yet everything she had said about Gregan fell into place. She loved him, and not just with the love of one person to another, camaraderie, and friendship, and all that he had never experienced. She truly loved Gregan; it shone in her eyes and glowed in her cheeks whenever she spoke his name. Death should have guessed.

  He put a hand to his chest and wondered why the revelation hurt so much. He stumbled a few steps backwards. He felt betrayed, lost. Despair rose up inside of him. He had never felt such unjustified remorse before. So she loved the man she was protecting. Why should he care? Yet he did, with all of his newly beating heart, he did.

  “You love him,” Death forced himself to repeat.

  She nodded, her face still hidden behind her hands. “Angels aren’t supposed to fall for the people they protect, but I couldn’t help myself. Everything Gregan does is so wonderful and kind. He cares for everyone around him. He would never hurt anyone or anything, and he-”

  Death cut her off, unable to hear the tirade any longer. Each syllable sent a pain of agony through him much worse than any part of the beating in the park. “He’s never even seen you,” he stated flatly.

  Nyra fell silent for a moment. Her breathing slowed and she wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her fingers. “I know,” she said in a whisper. “I know he hasn’t seen me. He doesn’t know I exist.”

  “But you fight for him.” Another statement made without emotion.

  She didn’t notice. “I have to,” she said, her voice full of heartbreak.

  Death ran through his options. There were few enough that it was quite simple. He could touch Gregan. He had never done so in living form, and didn’t know if it would work. If it didn’t, he could simply return the next night and finish the only job he had ever left undone. Perhaps that would take away his conscience and let him get back to the existence he had enjoyed.

  But if he touched Gregan, the man’s soul would leave his body and he would be gone. There would be no reason to visit the hospital room. Nyra would be gone, her heart broken whether she realized who Death was or not. He would never see her again.

  He could allow Gregan Parker to linger.

  His arm throbbed angrily, a stabbing reminder that b
efore him lay the man who kept him from completing the only job he had ever done. He had to finish it, to finish the list. Maybe then he would be free to perform his job without guilt as he once had. Maybe then he would stop being tormented by his conscience. He could go on about his job without empathy or remorse, two things Death had no need for at all.

  But Nyra loved Gregan.

  Death’s heart turned over at the thought. She shouldn’t love the man she guarded. She had no right to do such a thing, and the man would never be able to return her love.

  Neither would you, the cynical voice said.

  He wanted to take away the source of Nyra’s love. Deep down, a part of him hoped that with Gregan gone she would turn that love toward something else, or maybe someone else. He could be there for her.

  As what? Death? the voice argued.

  He was about to answer out loud something that would probably reveal everything when his hands slipped out of his pockets, insubstantial once more. His heart raced as he debated what to do. He hid them behind his back and inched toward the door, but it was closed. He couldn’t open it with his hands rapidly fading into shadow. He would be caught. She would know he was Death; she would hate him and never speak to him again. He might as well take Gregan and finish it. His heart threatened to break as he reached for the man.

  The door opened behind him.

  “I didn’t know Mr. Parker had a visitor,” a male nurse in blue scrubs said.

  Death didn’t answer him. He folded his arms across his chest and barreled his way through the open door, leaving both the nurse and the unseen Nyra staring in his wake.

  Chapter Ten

  ANGEL

  Nyra watched almost patiently as the nurse checked Gregan’s vitals, but her mind was on his brother. She felt as though she betrayed the man on the bed because she wanted to rush out after his brother who had been so distraught at her confession of love that he left without a word. She had some explaining to do, but she didn’t know where to start.

  She shouldn’t love Gregan. She knew that. She looked down at his still face as the nurse moved about the room, humming something that sounded like death metal, quite an ironic choice given everything that had been happening. She found herself wishing that she knew the words so she could sing along.

  “What is wrong with me?” she asked aloud.

  Nobody answered. That was the problem with being an angel. If you weren’t giving promptings you were just speaking to yourself.

  She glanced at the bed to see if there was a chance Gregan was listening. Nope. She was crazy.

  Nyra put a hand to her head. It was almost time for the Accounting bell. She could feel it like a gentle hum through her body, rising in time with the nurse’s words as he gave up humming entirely and began to sing out loud, “Believe, it’s a simple phrase. Eyes that remain ever open. It’s your eyes that cannot lie.”

  The nurse did a few air guitar motions, then continued in a whispered scream, “Clarity rain down on me, sit beside me, walk with me, open the doors to sanity, walk with me.”

  He leaned close to the heart monitor and jotted a few notes in Gregan’s chart as he sang, “As I came down from heaven, the future’s brighter, but the past still calls. The choices are before me and I face the darkness with only a flame.”

  He threw the chart on the floor and put a foot on the window seal. With his head closed and air guitar in his hands, he shouted, “And who said it’s easy when you’re surrounded by all this fear? I’m trusting in something that I’ve never seen. Push as they pull, you played the fool, it’s been too long. You must stand strong.”

  The door flew open. Nyra put a hand to her face to hide a smile at the irate expression on the head nurse’s face.

  “What is going on in here?” she demanded.

  The male nurse’s face turned red. He noticed the chart on the floor and dropped to his knees to gather the spilled contents. “I, uh, I. . . .” He looked up at her sheepishly, pushing a strand of dark brown hair from his eyes. “I’ll never do it again?”

  She grimaced but couldn’t stay mad at his pleading smile. “I better not hear that kind of music in this hospital ever again,” she warned.

  “You won’t,” he replied. He stood and handed her the chart.

  She took it from his hands with a huff, slid it into the pocket by the door, and left the room.

  As soon as she was gone, the male nurse sang in a quieter voice, “Believe, it’s a simple phrase. Eyes that remain ever open. It’s your eyes that cannot lie.”

  He fell into humming again, leaving the last phrase sounding over and over again in the room. One of the monitors gave a beep. The nurse glanced at it, then took the chart from the door and jotted down a note. “Well, at least Mr. Parker likes my singing,” he said. “Catch ya later, dude.” He slipped the chart back into the holder and left through the door.

  Nyra hurried over to the chart. She wanted more than anything to see what the nurse had written. The numbers on the monitors meant nothing to her, but after another failed Accounting session, she returned and watched them long into the night, hoping to hear the beep again.

  Chapter Eleven

  DEATH

  Death opened his eyes to a new set of names. Gregan Parker’s glared back at him, bold and angry at the top of the list. Death ignored it and began his work, freeing souls methodically as he made his way through the names.

  Near the middle of the list, he read Julia Mills. The name quivered as he walked through one of the nicer areas of the city. He found a mother and daughter strolling through a mall together. The mother, Julia, held a bag of popcorn and the daughter, who couldn’t be older than five, snuck kernels when she thought her mom wasn’t looking.

  Death watched them, taken by the happy scene. He was puzzled as to the cause of Julia’s death. She appeared healthy and young, an active mother enjoying her daughter’s company.

  Death was about to turn away when a rumble filled the mall. People screamed as the ground began to shake. It was a city unused to earthquakes, and no one knew what to do. Glass storefronts shattered, mannequins in expensive clothing toppled to the ground, the skylights of the mall shifted and broke, sending glass and wooden beams raining down on the rushing crowds. Screams and cries for help filled the air.

  Death lost sight of Julia and her daughter for a moment. When he spotted them, Julia was trapped under a corner of ceiling that had fallen from the second story. She didn’t appear to be in a horrible condition until Death drew close enough to see a piece of rebar sticking straight through her stomach. His knees weakened though they shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t feel any weakness at all. It was all he could do to force himself to Julia’s side. Her daughter held her hand, pleading with her.

  “Are you alright, Mommy? Someone will help you get out. You’ll be okay. Trust me, Mommy. I’ll take care of you while you get better.” She held her mother’s hand, unwilling to look at the bar through her mom’s stomach or the way Julia’s eyes drifted past her unseeing.

  Death stood above them. Julia’s name was on the list. Chaos thundered all around, but Death felt as if he and two girls were the only beings in existence. He knelt slowly next to the little girl. He was about to reach out to Julia when the little girl looked up into his face. Her bright blue eyes were filled with tears, but they hadn’t spilled over yet. Her little lip quivered, but she was being strong for her mother. She was being strong for all of them.

  “Don’t take her.” The little girl’s voice was a whisper, but it carried over every other sound in the mall. Dust drifted through the air, debris lay underfoot, and the discord of a thousand distressed voices mingled in the air; all Death heard was that little voice, pleading for him to leave her mother.

  “She,” he began, but his throat felt tight and thick. He tried again. “She can’t make it, not like that.” He gestured to the rod sticking out of Julia’s stomach.

  “Fix it,” the little girl pleaded. “I know you can do it.”

  He
shook his head and his tears spilled over the same time that hers did. “I can’t heal people. I take them away to somewhere they won’t hurt.”

  “But I don’t want my mommy to go,” the girl sobbed. “I need her and she needs me. We’re a team. She says so all the time.”

  Before Death could move, the little girl buried her face against his chest and wrapped her arms around him. He sat there frozen, afraid to move, afraid to touch her. His touch meant death. He was Death. He couldn’t help her. Julia’s name was written on his arm.

  Like another name, the voice in his mind said.

  The girl’s embrace had caught his sleeve, pushing it up to where the remaining names were visible. Gregan Parker’s name sat at the top in dark black, a bold reminder of his failure.

  Julia gave a little cry of pain. Her daughter left Death sitting there and knelt by her mother. Sirens sounded outside the mall. Fire engines and ambulances had arrived. Emergency teams began to pour into the building.

  Julia’s daughter wiped the tears from her mother’s face. She smoothed back the black hair that matched her own, lovingly tucking her mother’s hair behind her ear as her mother had no doubt done many times before with her daughter. Julia’s hand reached up to grasp her daughter’s. The little girl looked back at Death. Her eyes were bright and unafraid. There was no fear in them, only pleading. “Please?” she asked in that tiny voice that rang louder than any other sound in the mall.

  EMTs swarmed the little group. Death stepped back, giving them room. The little girl held his gaze with her own. When technicians turned to see what she was looking at, they saw only bare space filled with drifting dust. “Please?” the little girl asked again.

  Death nodded. The name on his arm gave a sharp throb. He ignored it. EMTs worked on Julia. The little girl no longer watched Death. Convinced that her mother was safe, she did what she could to answer the medical team’s questions all the while holding her mother’s hand. A smile was on her face that seemed far out of place given the situation, but to Death, that smile held all the answers in the world.