The thin line between sinner, and savior

By The Angel Of Hope

Be-careful of the answers you seek. They may destroy you more than the question

I didn't even remember stopping. The tears had stopped, but all I had now was a lonely feeling. I began to wonder about Posta and Mr. Puppy as I looked at the dry blood on my hands. The small alley I ran into seemed quiet enough that I could spend the night and be ok. As I sat planning my next move, I could hear a slight bouncing sound coming from the shadows. At first the person stepped out just enough so light hit the blue soccer sized ball and their little hands.

"A kid?" I thought to myself.

Then the figure came fully out. It was a little girl, no more than seven. She was in a dress that matched the color of the ball. As she walked toward me, still bouncing the ball, her shoulder length hair seemed to not move. I stood up when she got near me. She kept looking at the ball and bouncing it. Then she looked at me. "Hi Mister." She said in her sweet voice. "You sure do look lonely here by yourself."

"What's your name?" I asked as I reached out to touch her hand to see if I could get a read off of her.

As I was about to touch her hand she stepped back and I missed.

"Do you want to play Mister? It might make you feel better."

"Sure, why not" I said smiling at her.

We spread apart a little and began to bounce the ball to each other.

"Are you lost?" I asked as the ball came to me.

"No, but you are Mister." She said giggling.

"What do you mean, kid? I'm not lost."

She gave me a big smile. "You know what I mean Mister."

I bounced the ball back to her. "Stop calling me that! My name is!"

"Jamie." She said as if we had known each other for years. My heart began to beat fast as I tried my hardest to remember if I had told her my name.

"Just who are you?" She began to-bounce the ball to herself again. I thought I was seeing things at first. A pen length white object fell from the ball to the ground. As she bounced the ball more, more of the white objects appeared. Soon I could make them out. Feathers!

"You have to go back Jamie."

I began to laugh. "Now God is possessing kids and using them to try and get me back?"

She stopped bouncing the ball and held onto it with both hands. The feathers still slowly falling to the ground and blowing around the alley. "I'm not a possession."

She threw the ball and it came flying at me. It was so fast I didn't have time to get out of the way. It felt like I was being hit by a ball of steel in the stomach. I went flying through the air and landed on the cold concrete. I gripped my stomach in agonizing pain. I looked over to see the ball bouncing back toward the girl. I rolled over a little and my body ended up on some of the feathers. A horrible stinging pain ran threw my body the moment I touched them.

The girl seemed to be preparing to throw the ball again. I mustered up all my strength and ran out the alley while I could. As I got down the street I came upon a church. I don't really know why I entered. Maybe it was the thought she wouldn't do harm to me here. It was late so not that many people were there. I had a seat at one of the wood pews. Nervously I looked around as I rubbed my stomach. It was sore from the hit.

"What troubles you, my son?"

I looked up to see a priest standing over me. I was in no real mood to talk to anyone.

"Look, Father." He smiled at me, and then sat down next to me.

"You can just call me Kevin."

He was a tall black man with his hair cut low. He wore a cross around his neck and tightly held onto a bible in his hand. He seemed to be rather young, and his glasses made him look like no more than a college student.

I began to rub my stomach again, because of the pain.

"Got hurt, did you now?" He asked as he read from his bible without even seeming to look at me. I stopped what I was doing and began to examine my hand.

"Do you ever wonder if God is real?"

He began to smirk. "No need to wonder, because he is real and I have a feeling you think so as well."

I began to think about all that had happened to me so far. "I wish I could go back to thinking he wasn't real."

"Ignorance is truly bliss." He said adjusting his glasses.

At any moment I could have used my feathers to heal myself, but I was in no mood to see those blackened wings of mine and in no mood to admit to myself all the things I so wanted to forget.

"Kevin, why does God burden man by making them angels in death?" He slammed his bible shut and again adjusted his glasses.

"Man was never meant to be angels. Given this powerful gift of life what does man want when he dies? More power by becoming an angel."

His voice now grew soft. "There was peace and happiness before God made man. Then that week of creation and rest happened. The week where he created his precious man. They were flawed from the start, and still he let them grow and become more and more powerful. Even as their faith in him lessens, he still loves them. No, my son, man was never meant to have that "burden" but it was only a matter of time before he gave it to them."

As he finished talking, I let out a sigh and clenched my fist preparing myself to swing at the man.

"You seem to know a little too much about this stuff, Father." Before my fist could make contact the young man was gone. Then I heard his voice whisper in my ear.

"I'd kill you myself if he would let me." I felt his arms wrap around me as he pressed his Bible into my chest. It began to burn so bad.

"Yes, one life for another, I'd be willing to do that to see you erased." I had no idea what he meant, but that was the least of my worries. My breathing became shallow and my eyes started to blur up. Then I saw it. The portal back to heaven.

When I awoke, there she was to greet me just as she had done the first time.

"Hello Jamie." She said as her naked body sat next to me.

"Damn it!" I yelled. Ashley spread out her wings and pulled me close to her.

"Why Jamie?" She sounded as-if she was ready to cry. Her soft skin pressed to mine felt so good.

"I...I had to do something to help." I began to lift my hand up. "And I found a way to."

I didn't notice it at first, but there was a cross with a thin chain attached to it wrapped around my hand. I tried to pull it off, but it wouldn't move. I began to panic as I pulled harder and found that it would not come off.

"Don't bother, Jamie."

"What did you do to me!?" I demanded to know as I still pulled at the cross.

"We have bound that satanic power in your hand"

I stopped the struggle, realizing that I truly could not get it off. "So this is how it ends before it truly started?"

She turned me to face her. "Not the end Jamie. You can still be great. Think about it, a guardian angel that was once human."

My head hung low. "I'm sorry Ashley, but I fail to see the big deal about me being an angel.

"Jamie, do you remember being a child? Playing with other kids, going to school, Even being in your mother's arms? Well I don't."

I couldn't understand what she was getting at. How could someone not remember anything from their childhood?

"Take a look at the Bible. In there you will find no reference that when man dies he becomes an angel. Jamie, angels were created by God to serve him and man. I was never born, I was created."

"What! Then what am I doing here?" I looked at my black wings and began to wonder why any of this was happening to me if I shouldn't even have the title of angel.

"You see, Jamie, God is fighting a war and he doesn't seem to be winning. Jesus died for the sins of man, but that did not stop man from sinning. More and more each day the world becomes filled with hate and war. Although we angels are here to help man as much as we can, we were never human so we can never truly understand the pain and what drives man to do what he does. What's worse is how the kids are starting to sin just as bad as the adults."

She dropped to her knees and looked as if she was going to tear up. "But Jamie, with you God can have you connect better with man, connect better with the kids. Save them before they fall far from the path."

As I sat there, I began to contemplate what I had just heard. "Hah, so this is the meaning of my existence? The sins of the father shall be inherited by the son. Because it is in man's nature to sin, he passed it on to the children who grew to sin and passed the need to sin on to their children and so on and so on."

I looked at Ashley, laughing as she looked on at me in shock.

"I'm God's little guinea pig to fix a problem he could have taken care of from the start." Still laughing, I moved near to Ashley and whispered into her ear.

"Kill all of man. That's how you fix the problem of man sinning, you kill him off."

She let out a sigh after I spoke the words. Her cheek pressed to mine and she moved her head until our lips met. All those guys out there who tried to sweet talk their girls had no idea. They had no idea what lips of an angel really felt like. Her blond hair swung into my face as we continued to kiss. Roses, that's what her hair smelt like.

"I watched you suffer so much Jamie. Oh how I wished God would have let me ease your pain, if only for a moment. I could never bear to see you suffer again. And I know how much it would hurt you if you couldn't help others. You will see that you belong here with God and that his way is the best to go about things. You will see, even if I have to force you to."

Her eyes began to tear up at she slowly stood up. Her large white wings expanded and she stood there before me with tears in her eyes.

"What do you mean if God had let you?" I said as a strange screeching began to sound in my head.

Her hand slowly moved toward her wings and she plucked one of her longer feathers out.

"Answer the fucking question!" The screeching was getting louder now.

Ashley grasped on tightly to the feather in her hand.

"What is the best way to make someone be willing to do whatever it takes to help others? To be willing to lay their own life down to make sure no one feels pain?"

Ashley's head hung low and if she was ashamed of what she was going to say next.

"By filling their life with suffering and never answering their prayers."

And there it was, the truth. Every bad thing, every unanswered prayer was God's doing. All so that I would know pain and the cruelty of man so well that I would be the perfect little angel to do his bidding and keep kids from sinning when they were faced with the cruelty of man.

"I'll kill you and then I'll God himself!" I went to lunge at Ashley, but when I went to move, it felt as if my left hand was tied down with a boulder. I looked to see that the cross was now glowing.

"You will see in time that God made the right choice in what he did. But before we can do that, we must remove that arm of yours. I am sorry, but I must watch you feel pain one more time."

The feather she had been grasping began to shine. Slowly it grew longer and turned from white to silver. When it was all done, Ashley stood there with a sword in her hand where the feather had once been.

"Hah is that your great plan Ashley? To make me feel pain till I'm willing to play along? Sorry to tell you, but bullets won't even hurt me, you need to find something better than your little toy knife."

"Oh Jamie, you have so much to learn."

She quickly thrust the sword at my shoulder blade. I locked my eyes and prepared to feel an incredible, but pointless pain. With my eyes shut, I felt the gut retching pain in my shoulder, but then something else. Not a pain but a smell. One that was familiar to me. It was blood and lots of it. I opened my eyes to see that the sword had ripped threw my body and was now covered in blood. My lips quivered as I prepared to let out a scream of pain, but it wasn't from being stabbed. The screeching was now unbearable.

"My head! What the hell are you doing to me?" The blood on the sword began to bubble and then it seemed as if it was vanishing.

Ashley let go of the sword in shock. "I'm not the one doing that."

More of my body seemed to be vanishing as the pain in my head became stronger. I could now feel blood dripping from my ears, but it too vanished as quickly as it came out. And then it happened. The screeching stopped sounding like a screech, and began to sound like a voice, a voice and a bark.

Ashley snapped out of her shock as if ordered to and made a dash to finish ripping my arm off with the sword, but it was too late. My body completely vanished before she could get to me.

In the blink of an eye I reappeared. I was standing in a pool of blood, my blood. Where was I? As my head slowly rose, I saw them. Posta on her knees, and Mr. Puppy right next to her.

"Please come back to us Jamie." Over and over she said this. You could tell she was crying as well as Mr. Puppy barked along with her prayers.

My body was weak from the blood loss and the sword was still in me, but I didn't care. I was back where I wanted to be.

"So you were the ones making all that noise?"

Posta stopped talking and looked towards me. Her eyes began to light up. Mr. Puppy looked at me and started to bark in joy. They both came running towards me. I reached out my right arm to Posta, but something changed as she ran to me. No longer a look of joy on her face. She reached her hands out to me.

"Jamie!"

I felt someone grab me from behind and pull me. My fingertips met with Posta's just before I was pulled into what I now recognized to be a portal.

When we reappeared, I was back in hell. There stood Lucifer, hooded as always.

"Good job, Vincent." He said to the person that had brought me here. He seemed to be around my age, another kid.

I was so close. I was almost back to where I wanted to be. Back with the two I cared about. Once again I was cheated of what I wanted. I sat on my knees and held my head low as I looked into the ground filled with the faces of the damned. The blood dripping from the sword onto the ground. I raised my head and looked at Lucifer as I thought about just how close I had came to being back with Posta and Mr. Puppy.

"God damn it."