Color of Angels' Souls

by Sophie Audouin-Mamikonian

  Seeing that Jeremy looked unconvinced, he quickly added: “I mean, you will once you finally get over what’s happened to you.”

  Jeremy smiled. So Angels could have a sense of humor as well? They could lament about their death, but also rejoice in their newfound life. He could feel the fog start to lift, almost hear the clicking in his head as the gears slowly began turning again.

  “I feel a lot better now. Thanks, thanks a lot, Flint. Could I ask you a question or two about—”

  Flint lifted a finger, halting him in his tracks:

  “First, you’d like to know why your skin is that color, and why the others are colored as well. Second, you’d like to know why you ended up here, and third, what the heck you’re supposed to do now. OK. First of all, the colors reflect who you are. If you have more of a positive outlook and tend toward more positive feelings, like happiness and bliss, your soul is blue. Those traces of pink would suggest that you have a bit of a mean streak, and orange reveals a desire to destroy your opponents. Nothing to worry about. Those of us who are red are usually violent, and may even be murderers. You’d do well to stay away from them. As for your second question, the answer is: I haven’t the slightest idea. We’ve all checked in at the same hotel. We’re all here and that’s all there is to it. And as for your last question, what you’re supposed to do now, the answer is: survive. If you don’t feed yourself, you’ll do the same thing that billions of people before you have done: You’ll disappear.”

  “I’ll what?”

  “We disappear: the oldest Angels, the ones that get tired, the ones that give up hope and let themselves go. They become more and more transparent, and eventually they just disappear. Don’t ask me where they go, because I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  “You said I have to … to feed myself? But ghosts don’t eat!”

  “First of all, you’re an Angel, not a ghost. And second of all, all creatures must seek out sustenance, and we are no exception to the rule.”

  “Well, what are we supposed to eat?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Flint reassured him with a toothy grin. “We feed off the humans!”

  2

  The Taste of Feelings

  Jeremy recoiled in horror.

  “What? You’re cannibals?”

  Flint only laughed. It was always the same with the Cherubs.

  “No, of course not! We feed off of their emotions. Your color indicates that you’re attracted by human emotions such as joy, pleasure, love, happiness, and creation. Red Angels are more inclined toward sorrow, sadness, depression, and destruction. This is what we eat. Emotions have colors, and they emanate from the living in the form of vapors. We Angels call it “Mist”: White is for satisfaction, a feeling of fulfillment, and it can feed anybody—both blue Angels and red Angels. It’s hard to find though, and is quite a delicacy. Blue is joy, green is jealousy, yellow is envy, red is anger, violet is happiness, orange is revenge. … and then there is black, which means murder or perverse lust. Go toward the emotions that seem the most tasty to you and breathe in the vapor.”

  “The blacks and reds don’t tempt me much,” Jeremy frowned, before adding: “Even if I were dying of hunger, if you get my drift.” He could feel his sense of humor returning.

  Flint only shrugged.

  “Whichever one you breathe in, it’ll taste delicious. And no matter which emotion you choose, it will feed you. Besides that, it’s entirely up to you: Eat whatever you want; no one will judge you here. If you want to turn red, that’s your own problem. The Mist does more than just feed us. You can also use it to make things. Like clothes. But it’s a hard technique to master. The things we make may last anywhere from a few minutes to …” He hesitated a moment, then added vaguely: “A little while longer, depending on the strength of the Angel who creates it. Well, I better get going—afraid I’m running a bit late for a poker game with some friends. If I don’t hurry, the new cards we made might disappear before I get there! As my buddy Imhotep said in The Mummy: ‘Death is only the beginning!’ He actually never said that, you know, and he’s been steamed about that movie ever since. Dunno … the quote always seemed appropriate to me. Well, be seeing you!”

  “Hey, wait! I need—”

  “Trust me, you don’t need anything. You’ll pick things up very quickly. Oh, and don’t forget: Whatever you do, don’t let the Reds get too close to you—it can be dangerous!”

  “What? What?”

  But it was too late. With a wave of his hand, Flint was already disappearing amidst the trees. He left Jeremy all alone on the sidewalk next to his quickly stiffening cadaver.

  Depressed by it all, he slumped down to a sitting position on the sidewalk and contemplated his decapitated head. For a second he felt just like Hamlet: furious, disoriented, lost, unhappy, anxious, terrified even.

  “ ‘To be, or not to be, that is the question,’ “ he whispered. “I always thought that that scene was weird, but now I think I know what Shakespeare was trying to say.”

  His own face stared back at him with a blank expression. For once he didn’t need a mirror to look at himself. He had thick brown hair and steely gray eyes—although they were slightly glazed over now—and a firm, square jaw. He actually wasn’t that bad looking. If he’d had more time, he could’ve been a real heartbreaker. But he had worked sixteen or eighteen hours a day and had almost forgotten that the opposite sex existed. What now? What was he supposed to do with his life … or death, he should say? He could think of nothing, except to sit there beside his lifeless body like a lost soul.

  The police car that had scared away the murderer came back up the street. When its headlights illuminated the growing puddle of blood, it screeched to a halt and the two officers jumped out of the car. One of them gasped loudly when his flashlight lit up the corpse’s glassy eyes and their hypnotizing stare.

  “Aw shit,” Harry uttered in a choked voice. “The poor guy got his head chopped off!”

  His partner looked around warily, and noticed the broken street lamps.

  “That makes two tonight! I hope we don’t have a serial killer on our hands.”

  Jeremy perked up at these words. Two? What did he mean, two? He turned toward the police officer, desperate for more information.

  “Go on,” he said to the officer. “Go on, tell me some more. Was the other murder just like this one? Where did it happen? Why? How?”

  To Jeremy’s great surprise, the man answered as if he’d heard him.

  “Hey, you know what?” he said to his partner. “The coroner who examined the girl’s body said that she’d had her head cut off with a katana.”

  “A what?”

  “A katana, it’s a Japanese sword! And it looks like this guy got the same treatment. Look at the wound—a perfectly clean cut. The blade went right through the bones. He must have died instantly. At least he didn’t have time to suffer.”

  “What do you know about it?” Jeremy yelled. “It hurt like hell; it was unbearable! And there was nothing instant about it. The whole thing lasted an eternity!”

  The officer seemed to react again to his words.

  “The poor guy. What a terrible way to go. And so young!”

  Jeremy suddenly realized that a brown and silvery gray Mist was emanating from the upset police officer, but there was none coming from the other guy. He was even more amazed when he realized that the Mist had an appealing fragrance. It smelled … good. He was about to move closer to it when a voice behind him made him jump.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” it said calmly.

  He turned around. A woman in her fifties with long, dark hair and completely blue skin was leaning nonchalantly against the wall. All she was wearing was a skimpy loincloth and a band around her chest. Her attire made Jeremy uncomfortable. He wasn’t used to all this exhibitionism.

  “You’re making him feel bad.” She pointed at the police officer. “If you eat his Mist now your color will change, and you’ll start moving more and more
toward negative emotions. That’s probably not a good idea.”

  Jeremy walked over to her. There was nothing special about her—except of course the fact that she was blue, a much darker blue than Jeremy. She was short and chubby and had a mischievous gleam in her eyes.

  “My name’s Tetisheri, passed over in 1600 B.C.,” she said as she extended her chubby little hand to Jeremy. “And you?”

  Jeremy’s eyes opened wide. He thought he’d heard that name before.

  “Uh, Jeremy Galveaux,” he replied. “I passed over about a half an hour ago, I think. Like to be more precise but I’ve lost my watch.”

  “So I saw. What a strange way to go.”

  Jeremy could only sigh. He got the feeling his decapitation would be following him around for quite some time: ‘Hey, there’s the guy that got his head cut off in New York City! What kind of afterlife is this anyway …’

  “What were you saying about the Mist?” he asked nervously. “I shouldn’t eat the brown stuff, is that it? And why did you say I made him feel bad?”

  “We can … have an influence on the living. On most of them anyway. We can arouse their emotions: anger, hate, love, sadness, happiness. Weren’t there ever times in your life when you suddenly felt angry without knowing why? Or frustrated, or worried, or exhilarated for no apparent reason?”

  “Um, yeah … sure!”

  “It was because of us. Not always, but most of the time. We need the living in order to survive, and if they’re indifferent or uninterested they can’t give us any food. So we have to rile them up a little bit.”

  “That’s what the other Angel told me,” Jeremy said, aghast. “You’re like … vampires. You don’t drink blood, but the emotions that you arouse from the living.”

  “What other Angel?” asked the blue woman, who looked tense all of a sudden.

  “Flint. He’s the one who helped me out when I died—or passed over, I should say.”

  “What color was he?”

  “Blue. Even darker blue than you.”

  “Oh good, a Blue,” she said, suddenly relieved.

  “He was in a hurry so he couldn’t explain everything to me. What am I supposed to do now?”

  “The first thing you need to do is relax. Then you have to start feeding yourself. That’s very important.”

  “I still don’t understand why Angels have to eat. Aren’t we pure spirits?”

  “Mmm, not completely. As you can see for yourself, there is life after death. And believe me, it you want to survive, you’re going to have to fight just as hard as you did when you were alive.”

  He looked at all the Angels around him and felt depressed again. What kind of afterlife was this anyway! If he ever ran into God, he would have a little talk with him about what “paradise” was supposed to be like! Then something else struck him: He should probably ask her about the rules that governed his new existence while he had the chance.

  “And what about sleep? Do we sleep? I mean … can we still sleep if we want to?”

  “Yes—and thank goodness, or else we all would have lost our marbles a long time ago. Pick any bedroom you want.”

  “What do you mean?” Jeremy frowned.

  “Walk into a house or an apartment building, go into a bedroom and lie down,” Tetisheri replied impishly. “Just like you usually do. What’s so hard to understand about that?”

  Jeremy’s eyes opened wide.

  “You think I’m going to just walk in and sleep on top of somebody?”

  “You don’t sleep on people. We pass right through all living creatures. You can sleep through people. But don’t worry about that, there are all kinds of places where you can rest. You don’t really need a bed—you can even float in the air if you want. But it’s true we don’t sleep as much as in our past lives. Just a few hours a day. There are some sleep addicts here though. The Sleepers. The only time they wake up is to get some food. Then they go right back to sleep. A lot of them disappear though because sometimes they forget to eat.”

  “I see.”

  Actually he didn’t understand a thing but preferred to drop the matter.

  Then Jeremy jumped back when a pigeon suddenly appeared right in front of him. Its head was smashed flat and its wings were all askew. It barely had time to emit a “cooo” before it disappeared.

  “Whu … what was that?”

  “What?”

  “I … I just saw a pigeon, and it was in pretty rough shape!”

  Tetisheri smiled.

  “Oh, he probably just got run over by a car this instant. Animals don’t stay. No one knows where they go. They pass right through without a trace. Which is probably all for the best, or else we’d constantly be hounded by packs of ferocious beasts who’d be none too happy about how we killed them for their skin, meat, and bones. Thousands of animals and insects die every day, but you usually don’t see them because they pass through so quickly. It’s usually the Newcomers who see them, but it only lasts for a few hours. Pretty soon it’ll just seem like the air is shimmering all the time.”

  He heard a “Pop!” and half a dozen surprised-looking cockroaches suddenly appeared, then disappeared almost instantly. Jeremy felt miserable again and could feel his whole being begin to slump, but his sense of humor came back in full force to save him from a humiliating crying fit.

  “Ahem,” he cleared his throat to cover the trembling in his voice. “Considering all the mosquitoes, spiders, and wasps I killed in my day, I’m relieved to learn there won’t be zombie swarms trying to seek their revenge.”

  Which made him think of something else he was wondering about: “Are we … immortal?”

  “Not exactly. Let’s just say that you’ve got a good chance of surviving for a few thousand years. But it’s rare to find Angels that old. After a while they tend to get bored and disappear.”

  “They get bored?” Jeremy asked, all ears. “So what do you do with yourselves all day—and all night?” he added as he took in the frenetic dance of the Angels around him.

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  Tetisheri sighed. She had probably repeated the same thing thousands of times before to Newbies, but Jeremy had no intention of letting her off the hook now.

  “On who you are,” she finally answered. “There are different sorts of Angels. I already mentioned the Sleepers. They’re the most passive Angels. There are also the Happy Ones, who forget completely about the living and just eat the Mist and enjoy their new lives to the fullest. That’s what most of the Angels do. Then there are the Activists, those of us who still participate in the world of the living.”

  “Participate?” Jeremy asked with surprise. “How do you do that?”

  “We go to the movies, or read over the shoulders of the living, or even directly over the computer screen of our favorite authors. We can even eat while we’re reading. We whisper into their ears, and we go to plays, concerts, and cocktail parties. We entertain ourselves. And,” she added sadly, “last but not least, there are the Avenging Angels, who don’t think their lives on Earth ended the way they should have, and who want to go back. Or those who were … murdered. Many of them go crazy.”

  Jeremy could feel the lump in his throat.

  Her face suddenly brightened and she gave him a warm smile, as if she were sorry to have scared him.

  “But the best thing you can do here is find a purpose for your new existence. To keep busy. To avoid disappearing.”

  His goal had been to become the youngest king of the financial world, but he got the feeling that he wouldn’t have much luck on that score in the afterlife.

  They stared at each other, neither one speaking.

  “If I were you,” she finally said, pointing down at his corpse, “I would try to figure out why someone killed me in such a horrible way.”

  Her words bothered him and he reacted without thinking.

  “It was probably all a huge mistake,” he snapped. “I don’t have any enemies! I can’t see w
hat there is to figure out. In a couple minutes they’ll say that the murderer emptied my pockets and that’ll be my epitaph:

  DECAPITATED FOR FIFTY DOLLARS

  AND A MODEL 3137 BREGUET OPEN-WORKED

  GRANDE COMPLICATION WRISTWATCH

  BY SOME NUTCASE WHO WATCHED

  TOO MANY KUROSAWA MOVIES.

  “Hm. Maybe you’re right. But on the other hand, do you have anything better to do than to look for some answers and—who knows?—maybe to find them?”

  Before he had time to argue the point, she gave him a mischievous grin and closed her eyes tightly, as if she were concentrating very hard on something. Then she winced, and Jeremy was just about to ask her if everything was OK when suddenly she began to … fly away. Just like that. Not like some angel beating its big chicken wings, but more like a balloon filled with helium. A big blue balloon—or more like a blimp, since it looked like she could change directions as she rose.

  OK, maybe it wasn’t the most appropriate image, since she was nowhere near as big as a blimp, but the resemblance was certainly striking. Jeremy stared on in wonder as she rose into the sky (the whole process looked awfully painful), until she passed out of sight behind a building.

  He looked back down at his body, and realized that, in addition to feeling anxious, lost, and abandoned, he could sense another emotion that was slowly creeping into his psyche.

  Anger.

  He started to look around to see if he could figure out what was going on.

  The coroner had just arrived. He was tall, thin, and very grave, with incredibly long, bony hands. When he saw Jeremy’s head lying askew, he shook his own and officially declared Jeremy deceased without missing a beat. Then he pulled out a thermometer and with no further ado stuck it into Jeremy’s liver. Jeremy winced. He couldn’t feel the pain of course, but the way the doctor had jabbed the thing into his body sent shivers down his spine.

  The police officers took hundreds of pictures, made drawings, and took measurements. Jeremy couldn’t believe how much time they were taking. In the movies, this type of stuff usually only took a few minutes, not hours!