by L.C. Barlow
* * *
As Cyrus lay in his bed, I crept out, took his car, and drove to the Minister's home.
Their corpses were heaped on the marble kitchen floor - three children and the mother - and I thought back to just hours before, when Cyrus slit their throats, sacrificed them to the boxed god he now worshipped, and practically skipped with joy as he reiterated to both Alex and me how the husband would return, his faith for the next few days shattered, and that we would revisit the home and kill him. We would send him to hell. It was, in a way, hell on top of hell. Hell-squared.
I knelt to the shiny black marble tile that reflected the moonlight through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and my knees instantly grew cold and wet in their blood.
I held my hand over the woman's face and brushed the hair from her eyes. I opened my hand wide and brought it close to her, flexed within myself the desire to resurrect, and I saw the woman's green eyes shift up towards my hand, just as the children had done before in the woods, just as the families on Cyrus's land. The ball of my stomach grew warm.
In one swift movement, I touched her cheek and those same eyes came alive, her mouth parted in a deep gasp, and she leaned over to her side while looking wildly in every direction.
“What did you do?” she whispered. It sounded violent, accusing. In her emotion I nearly forgot my confidence; yet, when I heard my own voice begin to respond, it swiftly returned.
“I’ve brought you back.”
“Back?” She looked to the ground at her own blood on the tile, her right hand lightly clawing at it, and then to her children beside her.
“Oh God.” Her left arm went to her left side and then neck, checking for the previous wounds. “Oh God, you brought me back.”
“Yes. I did.” I leaned forward and crouched closer to her level, my shoes squeaking on the floor.
"Who are you?" she asked, and her eyes drank me in.
I nearly stuttered, stupidly. I hadn't planned what to say.
Her breaths billowed out before her as she looked incredulously at me. She shook her head. "Who the hell are you?! What... Where was I?"
"You were dead," I said. "I... I came to bring you... and your children... back."
The woman looked behind her wildly and saw her children on the floor. "Oh my God," she said. She crawled to them and grabbed at each of them, unable to decide if she should touch them, and then she pulled both towards her. "Oh my God, hurry."
"No," I replied, and she turned to me. "No, we need to clean this place before I bring them to."
The woman peered at me as though not understanding. She shook her head back and forth.
"I swear to you, I am here to return them to you. But they don't need to see all of this. We need to clean everything."
She pelted me with questions then, her brain like a person's just waking from a black out. "Who are you?" she asked, and then, "Who did this to us?"
I stood, but I did not answer her.
"Are you an angel?" she asked, breathlessly.
I said, "I'm not anything. I'm not anybody. I'm not what you could possibly guess that I am. More importantly, I do not have all the time in the world." I stepped to her quickly and knelt down. It startled her.
I touched her arm. "Help me clean this, so I can give you your children back."
We cleaned. I took the sheets back to Cyrus's and burned them, but not before we washed the children, not before we tucked them back into their beds, not before I saw their blue eyes waken, as if from a bad dream, their cold bodies suddenly hot and full of energy, and not before she thanked me.
As I left their home, she stung me with the words, "You are so miraculous. Thank you. Thank you. God is so good. I thank Him for sending you to me." She was clawing at my arm and holding me close. By then, the memories of what had happened returned to her, and tears streamed down her face.
As I was leaving, "You must be a guardian angel," she said.
I whispered to her again, "I am nothing. Believe me."
At her front door, stepping into the night, I whispered, "Never speak of this, or the death will return." This was not true, but nevertheless I said it. She nodded her head in assent.
"I'll never doubt Him again," she said as I stepped onto her porch and out into the cool air. This sentence made me pause, but no response felt safe to speak.
I made sure my knife was snug in my pocket as I walked back to Cyrus's car, bundles of clothing and sheets to burn under my arm.
There are no such things as angels, I thought to myself as I walked that path. There is only Cyrus, those who follow him, and those who sneak around him. Everything is a backwards dealing, a script where errors are miracles, and corrections are only a bullet away.
As for good works, they are dangerous and impossible. Only the likes of demons can successfully complete them, and they know not wholly what they do.
