Angel and I stepped out of Dr. Dhrish’s office, a room full of high hopes behind us. “That was a very nice thing you did there, Brittany,” Angel said with a smile. “That’s exactly what I would have done.”

“Wait… you’re okay with not processing my glasses through the normal process?” I stepped down the front steps onto the city sidewalk, doing my best to readjust to the brightness of the outside.

“And what is ‘the normal process’?” Angel offered his right arm and waved off the driver who was waiting for us to finish our appointment. I could see two Secret Servicemen walking about 50 ft behind me, with another one following across the street and another following from the rooftops. “Oh, we’re walking?” I asked before answering his question.

He looked around at the Secret Service, smiled and waved, and then said, “Why not? Even Presidents deserve fresh air and good scenery every now and then. Besides, you need to adjust to those glasses before we see the Head of the Department of Energy and your house is actually not far from here. Four…maybe five blocks? These guys will make sure you stay safe while you enjoy your stroll.” I smiled and waved at them. They did not respond but continued to scan the area for threats as they followed us.

“Alright then. Let’s go for a stroll!” I held his arm a little tighter. “What is ‘the normal process’? I don’t know… isn’t there a similar process you follow to ‘unalive’ people and things?”

He snorted at the ‘unalive’ statement. “‘Unalive’…that’s a good one. Ha! But the reality is that nothing ever truly becomes ‘unalive’. Disassembled. Yes. ‘Unalive’…no.”

“But I thought you handled all-things-death. Isn’t Death just that? Unalive?”

“Great question.” He stopped walking and turned to look at me. “Inhale for me.” I followed suit. “Good. Now exhale. As far as you can go.” I exhaled as far as I could go. “Now STOP!” I stopped myself from inhaling and waited. I’m sure he only waited for 5 seconds. To me, it felt like two minutes. “Good…now inhale.” I gulped in another breath. Once I reached my peak, he said “Great. Now STOP!” I stopped. Once again, I felt like I was going to explode as he waited more than 5 seconds. “Awesome. You can let it go now.” I coughed as the air came rushing out.

“That’s amazing work there. Now… did you die?” Angel offered his arm once again and we continued strolling down the road.

“Of course not! I’m still here.”

“Exactly. Yet, even in breathing, my brother’s processes and my processes are at work. If you were to stop inhaling, what would happen?”

“I would asphyxiate. My brain would lose all oxygen. I would die.”

“That is correct. And if you were to stop exhaling?”

“I guess I would ‘drown’ in oxygen?”

“Yes. Very good! It’s medically called ‘hyperoxia’ or ‘oxygen poisoning’. Your body automatically knows it needs the right amount of both inhale and exhale. Something naturally inside of you has figured out how to temporarily pause inhaling to allow time for exhaling. Each pause for the right amount of time is what keeps you ‘Alive’ or in my book, assembled. Put together as you, in this form.

“If any one of those processes were to take a little too much or too little oxygen, you would begin an automatic process where there is a code written in your DNA to pause it indefinitely. This indefinite pause begins a chain reaction where from the atomic level, your organism as it stands now will disassemble itself and disperse amongst the universe. Agents that work under me know to collect these particles and atoms and redisperse them throughout the universe into their proper places. As always, your breath returns back to Most High, as this sacred and holy process has always been and always be His. And as decreed, your body will return to Terra, as from the dust you were made and to the dust you will return…”

There was a deep silence between us as we continued our stroll. Angel broke the silence with a small chuckle, “And yeah. I oversee that entire process. Since you were asking, almost all living beings that breathe oxygen ultimately die from oxygen problems in the brain. Plants, stars, planets, inanimate objects and concepts die in other ways. But the concept is the same. The balance between active and inactive energy breaks down. The whole death as a job process in and of itself is a lot of work. But you know, that ‘self-destruct code’ if you want to call it that was never supposed to be written.”

“Really? So what was it supposed to be?”

“Just the breathing exercise you did right there. Inhale, pause, exhale, pause. Not inhale too much, pause forever or exhale all the way and pause forever. That’s just wrong.”

“Wrong? So we weren’t supposed to have that last breath?”

“No…” Angel said gravely. His voice turned very cold. “And honestly, I was never supposed to oversee Death across the Universe. And once upon a time, I used to have the perfect relationship with V. Like we were inseparable. I mean, I still do see him often to this day, but there’s tension between us now. There wasn’t any animosity between us before.”

Angel stopped in his tracks, looked around at the environment, and gestured to a nearby outdoor cafe. “You look a little out of breath actually. Want to take a breather for a few moments? We’ll work on adjusting to your glasses.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the Secret Service conveniently stop and find corners or benches to stand by to continue their observations.

As we sat down at a table, I took time to admire the scenery. The street looked like a normal city street. People were walking briskly and going about their day like in any other city. I wasn’t going to lie, overall, everything looked like a nice cross between Washington DC and New York City. On every other block, there was an all-glass skyscraper or tower, followed by older colonial-looking homes and cottages squeezed in between. I did note the few buildings that looked like the famous Brownstones, but at least in the location I was at, the scenery flowed nicely. Mature trees lined the city road and there even looked to be a tiny park in the center square down the road. I also loved how clean the streets seemed to be overall.

“This is a very nice city…” I mused.

“Oh… it looks nice to you?” Angel raised his eyebrows.

“What? It doesn’t look nice to you?”

“Did you turn your glasses on?”

“Oh! Right!” It hit me then that I turned my glasses off as we were walking outside of Dr. Dhrish’s to lower the brightness as my eyes adjusted to the outside light. I double-tapped the glasses to turn them back on again.

Immediately, all of the colors intensified. The reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, purples… become so much more of what they already were. I could even now spot the ultra-violet and infrared colors in the environment too. And…whoa… now that I could see all the colors, I could also see all of the graffiti…and advertisements…and all of the strangest creatures you’d never expect to see, just walking. The streets were so much more crowded now. “Whoa…” I said as Angel sipped on the water the waitress left on the table for us. “Right?” Angel agreed.

“This space was ‘quiet’ and quaint for a city. Now…”

“It’s always been a very busy city. What more would you expect from a capital city?”

What seemed like empty space on some of the glass tower buildings, was now ethereal digital scrolling billboards promoting various commodities and services. The most notable ones were one of an energy drink called “Rush! with FEAR” and another was of a billboard of a local law office.

It read: “LEWIS S. IPHER & ASSOCIATES; ATTORNIES-AT-LAW.” The face of a chiseled man in front of a deep red background. He looked to be about his mid-fifties peered out with a well-practiced smile and hand outstretched as if to offer help. His hair was thick, long, and combed back. It was still black with a few streaks of gray flowing back with the rest of his hair. He wore a very clean goatee. Underneath his image, he listed a laundry list of services from traffic law to criminal and family law. The advertisement ended with “What can Lew and his crew do for you?” in bold white letters in front of a black border.

“Geez… I said. Looks like Lew really wants to represent us…”

“You can say that again…” Angel shook his head. He kept his eyes down toward the table, almost as if in shame.

“What’s wrong, Angel? Did I say something?”

He shook his head again and met my eyes. “No. Lew…is…not someone I… can support, right now that is. You know someone you ‘love to death’, but, they just… they just don’t get it? It’s complicated. We used to be friends a long, long time ago. He’s…changed. A lot. You could call him an opportunist. He let his ambition get in the way of everything. Quit his job…no, well, actually, he got fired from his job. Then decided to go into business for himself. It makes no sense how successful he is right now. Not that I don’t wish success on everyone, but…” his voice trailed off.

I empathized. “Sounds like you two go way back.”

“We do…and that’s the hard part about all of this. He was my best friend. Ya know?” Angel looked like he was about to cry. “So you know how I’m an angel? Lew isn’t human either. He’s an angel just like me.”

“Oh, Angel… But in the advertisement, he looks very human to me.”

“Yeah… that’s what he was going for. He still retained his shapeshifting capabilities from his Cherub days. I think he still has a lot of the features Most High gifted him with. Used to be the wealthiest one out of all of us. You know he has a jewelry fetish? It’s weird. He used to be decked out in bling all the time. But yeah… just about anything he asked Most High for, he got. Real ambitious dude.” Angel sniffed and took another sip of water.

“Anyway…he and I used to be real buds. I had only one job back in the day. Just one. I was the Angel of Rest. When Most High rested after the first Creation, that was me he chilled with. That’s my favorite hobby if you want to know. Chilling and having good conversations like we’re having now. Lew’s job was singing. Most High loves music…and all things arts-related, really. He loves a good story. He loves dance. Not just for entertainment, but because it helps Most High focus and it helps the rest of the angels keep timing. Remember, we don’t exist in time and space, so we need the music to help us know when to do things and how long to do them for. Most High gives the commands and uses the focused energy from the songs to draw His blueprints and create, ya know?

“Lew was really, really good at singing. Remember how you can see sounds and hear colors with those glasses? Yeah. So Lew’s original name means ‘Bearer of Light’ or ‘Morning Star’. It was a job description. He would sing the light and help us all understand Most High’s next plan. We were like an orchestra with Most High as the composer and conductor and Lew as the first chair/lead singer.” Angel stood up from his chair and offered his arm as if to signal that we should keep walking. I got up, felt around for some change in my pocket which was magically there, and left a tip for the waitress.

As we continued our walk, Angel continued, “Anyway, yeah. Lew was there at the beginning of it all. He was made of Light. And he was there when Most High spoke (more like sung) light into being.”

“Wait…Most High sings? And Lew is…Light?”

“That’s pretty much all Most High does. His voice is a singing voice too!” Angel chuckled. “Most of the Universe sings. It’s all music… and it’s okay music now, but in the beginning… it was the most beautiful song and light show I think I have ever experienced. And as always, I got to play all of the rest notes.

“But yes. What you see is a very diminished view of what Lew used to look like. He has to look this way to be somewhat visible to you. Before, he was, quite honestly, the most beautiful one among us. And he was brilliant.”

“But…I thought he was a dark being. And isn’t light always good?”

Angel shifted and laughed, “What in the Lord-of-the-Rings-nonsense is that? Light is light. Dark is dark. Dark cloaked in Light… or vice versa Light cloaked in Dark…now that’s something else. It messes up the original song.”

We passed by the small park I had previously spotted in the distance. There were a few trees here, park benches, and a playground set. When my glasses were turned off, the park looked half decent. But with them turned on, I could see litter and spray paint everywhere. Neon tags of a clenched fist pointing up at the sky covered the overfilled trashcans, slides, and park benches. Now that I noticed it, the fist tag was all over the city.

“I think I heard and read stories about Lew growing up. His name was Lucifer? Right. He doesn’t cloak his name very well in this world…”

Angel chuckled. “You’d think… it may also just be a diversion. Don’t know what he’s thinking here, but his ambition makes him quite a strategist, so be careful when dealing with him. But yeah… Light and Dark they are what they are. Neutral. Good and bad or in your case, good and evil, weren’t labels that we put on things like light and dark until much later. Things are created in darkness and then brought into light. We don’t determine what they are until they’ve matured. At least, that’s how Most High did things. Terra was created in darkness. You were created in the darkness of your mother’s womb. A seed sprouts in the darkness of the soil that my worker worms have reprocessed. As that seed grows, it’s brought into the light once it breaks through the ground.” We paused to look at the children, happily chasing and playing with each other, oblivious to the litter and graffiti around them.

“It was only when Lew sang a song about himself and said he could create better than Most High… well, it threw off our timing and messed up the song. Two-thirds of us couldn’t and wouldn’t sing along with him. One-third stayed the pace and sang with him, happily. That was a tough day. It sounded horrible. Terrifying even. We all had to do new jobs on that day.”

“New jobs?”

“Or should I say…shifted jobs? Well, my brother, for one, did continue to build things, but before, building things used to be like building Legos. It was fun and easy. And it still is fun to him…in a sense…but now he suffers for his craft. He sweats, groans, and brings forth Most High’s creations in pain and suffering. He’s become a hard angel. Hard to live by. Hard to be around. Harsh is an understatement. Working double, triple and even quadruple shifts is a norm for him. He doesn’t believe in breaks…like…at all.

“And for me…I…pause like before…but because the timing is off… well… the creating, the breathing, the singing… it all can pause… forever…” his voice drifted off. “This is why I’m always interested in being paid with time. I’ve been searching the Universe and all timelines for where the timing went. I’m also sad that I can’t spend the time like you can with the ones I love the most. I can’t just relax whenever I want to, enjoy Most High’s creation and wrestle with V…or when Lew and I were cool, we’d sing a song together. Well, he would sing, and I would pause. And we’d make music. Yeah… they were fun times. But that has paused…indefinitely…”

Angel turned and shifted us to the right. We walked up to an inauspicious building, shaded by very tall, and mature Walnut trees. “I think this is where you’re holding your meeting today.” I stepped up to the painted evergreen door.

“Just know,” Angel said pausing before I knocked, “our hard sides… Most High programmed us this way for Lew and the angels that sang with him alone. Not for you and the rest of humanity. I really don’t want to be pausing and ‘unaliving’ forever. I really like spending time with all of the souls I meet. Even the ones who were misled by Lew’s ads.”

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Words: 2,857

Total Word Count: 26,299