Azrael’s eyes were tired of seeing. There
was no end to the recycling of souls—nearly 150,000 a day if he figured
correctly. Sometimes, he prayed for a plague or flu, a kind of reproductive
virus that would stop humans from creating life. He wanted empty wombs. He
wanted death to stop.
He rubbed his cheek, fanning his
wings like a peacock, flapping them repeatedly to get the blood flowing. After
a time, he straightened his spine, reaching behind his back, scratching his
pinfeathers with a knuckle. As he itched, two small feathers escaped to the heavenly
winds, floating past the elaborate, golden gates of Ezekiel, swirling around
the band of angels playing beechwood harps. The sweet, hypnotic sound filled
him with disgust. He preferred the simple chorus of birds.
He watched the trajectory of his
feathers with one of his many eyes. By the time his pinfeathers settled on the
golden pavement, he had recycled nine-hundred more souls. Death had come most
grisly in the Americas, somewhere in Europe, Dubai. But there were good deaths
too. A few in Sweden and Rome. Ireland. Antarctica.
Azrael’s eyes didn’t want to see any more
death. “I am cursed!” he shouted to the clouds.
The band stopped playing, staring at
Azrael with unruly hair and furrowed brows. After a few seconds, the angelic
fingers started plucking, strumming. Azrael sighed. His heart was wounded; his
soul the object of curiosity among the others. They thought he was a trash
collector, a distributor of mist; a collector of energy; a glorified matchmaker.
It was like baseball: he caught the souls and quickly threw them to Homeplate—except
Homeplate was a fresh, new human child. He blinked and recycled three-hundred
more souls. Death never slept.
Azrael shifted his bare feet, leaning
into the portal, pointing all eyes on one soul in Manhattan. It was him—the
one.
The karma of this soul was the worst
he had ever seen. The soul possessed an evil repeated since the beginning of
time. When he recycled this soul—a job that would take a fraction of a
millisecond—he would be creating the antichrist. Azrael looked again, blinking
savagely. It couldn’t be; he didn’t want to make this choice. It was
impossible.
How could he choose a human child to
doom for all eternity? How could he recycle a soul, knowing its placement
ensured Armageddon? He could not. But he must!
Azrael turned away from the portal. Still,
he waved his right hand and recycled seven hundred souls. He cupped his left
and caught two hundred more. He recycled them too.
But his inner eye never wavered from
the evil one. He had to do something. The soul was inching toward the
in-betweens—he must decide. There was a place of isolation near the Earth. He
could put it there, couldn’t he? He would bury it in the deepest crater, imprisoned
inside a black void. He would hide it on the moon.
