I remember falling from the sky to watch your birth. I remember. Do you?

When I landed on earth this time, I first noticed the fluorescent lights. You, of course, didn’t know what that was at the time: neither fluorescent nor light. I suppose you never could define the former and you were seeing the latter for the first time. From that day it seemed you were aware of my presence, crying hysterically, then staring right at me. I remember. What a strange child you were. Are.

When does childhood end for the naive? Since birth, you’ve seemed so odd to the people around you. Unfortunately for both of us, yours is the only mind I can read, so I’m stuck with the thoughts of a prick and you’re stuck with a guiding compass almost as oblivious as you. 

When you were a boy, you went to a school just small enough for everyone to know everyone else, but just big enough for you to be singled out. I remember when you overheard your crush, which was a common occurrence for you (overhearing is socialization for the socially inept), saying that she wanted to marry the fastest boy in school. If you willed it to happen, happen it shall (not). You swung your bald head and marched straight towards Max, a snot-nosed brat with one of those Odell Beckham Junior mohawks, and challenged him to a race. He was wearing highlighter-green Under Armour from head to toe, the first sign of your impending defeat.

The race began. You dug your red Asics into the ground and shortly after you slipped, fell, and lost. It was clear you were going to lose. Even now, I haven’t the faintest clue why you thought you were going to win. What a strange child. You looked around and, seeing the crowd go wild, blushed warmly, then hung your head, not daring to let anyone see the tears welling in your eyes or the wood chips on your forehead. The blush was consumed by red. You were still gasping for air as you looked for a way out. With your peers pointing and laughing on all sides, the sounds getting louder, and each pointed finger feeling like another stab at your ego, you convinced yourself that you had one option. I knew it could only end badly, so I rushed over to grab you with the spirit of restraint. “Hush your mind, child,” I hissed.

But you shoved me off. “Shut up!” you yelled, and then you were charging at Max. I couldn’t believe it.

My eyes were about to jump out of their sockets, my mouth was agape, and I watched you lose the fight. I started to sweat, something I hadn’t experienced in a long, long time. Wings I forgot I had sprouted, and I flew away. Charging through the sky like a child with the keys to a jet-pack. 

Did you just speak to me? Is that normal? Is anything about you normal? Most of the time that I’ve been observing you, I’ve been in the background, just here and there, but this was different. I go through one cloud. You’ve never spoken to me. All those times that you looked at me, were you really looking at me? One more cloud. But why, why, why? Why am I even to observe you? Why do you see me, you strange child, you mistake? God what a waste you are. One more clou-

“You dare to abandon my child?” Bright light floods around me, and an almost known yet completely unknown voice echoes through my being.

Am I dead?

“You are not dead.” 

God? You can hear me?

“Of course I can,” God spoke through the image of a sword with a pen on the other side of the hilt, “and I want you to know that I’ve known you since before my child was in the womb.” Was I not in the womb? That’s right, I wasn’t born, I fell! Angels are not born. Ah yes, an angel, I’m an angel! 

Yes, that’s why I’m here. Was there. Now, I’m here, with Him. Reprimanded. Consoled? 

“Both. I gave you the programming, but I don’t fault you for forgetting, forgetting in the way that you understand, although I do in the way that I do. For abandoning a purpose that you knew you had, but forgot, forgot in the way you understand, where it came from. Guardian Angels. Angels. Humans. Made in my image.“

“I’m sorry.”

“Made in my image, but wanting the wrong parts. Parts that are selfish. Wishing to be exulted, thinking yourselves to be gods. To be. I am. I am what I am. And you are what I’ve given you. I will be what I will be. And you will be what I’ve given you. A status as my child. Be grateful, be afraid, obey, now go forth.“

I woke up in the nurse’s office. Wait no, not me.

It was you. I stood there, and as the Nurse took your pulse and asked you questions about what happened, you just stared. As if you were trying to attack me. Trying to stab me in the heart with a steak knife, or with your gaze. What a sad, angry child. From that day, you only became angrier with me. Every fall, lecture, rejection, loss, pain, failed assignment, drunken night, breakup, you’d give me that look. At the end of your second semester at university, as you tried to explain the “D” on your transcript to your mom, your eyes swelled up. The only words you could muster up were “I don’t know,” and then tears streamed down your face. I would have felt bad if you hadn’t ignored your assigned partner when he texted you about studying together or your professor when he sent you an email that your grade was in danger with links to resources on how to improve, resources you decided to never use. The day you received that lecture from your mother, you were especially furious, and you made sure I knew, so I asked, “Why do you hate me so much? I’m just here to help.”

We sat in silence for what felt like an eternity before you said, “Your face… it looks like mine.” 

Ten years later, you got a job as an accountant, and constantly you would do just enough to get by. That scant way of living permeated into your marriage.

Your wife was a great, kind woman. One you didn’t particularly love, which you realized about a week after proposing, but you decided to stick with it. “She’ll do,” you thought. 

She gave you two smart children who did better than you ever did in school and at the start of their careers. Your biggest challenge wasn’t fatherhood or work, it was always the little things. Once at a dinner party, your wife’s friend, Amy (you hated Amy), had just created a FaceBook. So, she asked for your wife’s and you saw over your wife’s shoulder that her relationship status said Single. Your wife chuckled nervously and said she didn’t know that was even a feature, before quickly changing it to Married. I tried to calm you down, but that night you started an argument. 

Putting it nicely, to your wife you were irritable, fat, and lazy, but the final straw for her was something you called minuscule: You never cleaned up after yourself.

One time she confronted you about this. You had the usual look of apathy as she pleaded with you to respect the space that she also lived in. With your eyes glazed over and mouth slightly ajar, you nodded. I had to use all of my might to get you to go to the kitchen. I motioned to the dirty dishes in the sink and asked, “Can you at least do this right?” You struck me with that usual look, with eyes I’ve come to know well. You stood over the sink for a few seconds, rolled your eyes, and walked back to the living room.

“She’ll get over it,” you muttered while sitting down. Two hours later, she came home early from a dinner you’d declined to attend because you didn’t “feel like it.” Closing the front door, she asked if you had washed the dishes as if you were her third child. “Mhm,” you responded, not taking your eyes off the TV. When she walked into the kitchen and saw instead two dishes on top of the mess you’d already made, she dropped her bag. The sound of her Owala, which she’d had to beg you to buy for her birthday, startled you, and only then did you speak.”What’s up with the noise?” you said.

She walked out of the kitchen and said plainly, “Get the fuck out.”

Two weeks later, during one of your stress episodes, you had a disgustingly greasy pizza to yourself. Fast food was a staple of these episodes, even though your doctor had warned that your high blood pressure was a likely cause of your death. Then you thought about all of the decisions leading up to this point. You thought about all of the hard work it took just for you to be a boring man with a boring job, and no respect for yourself or the people around you. An unlikable man who was given too many opportunities to be better, and took none. I almost felt bad for you. Tears started to well up in your eyes, then everything stopped. A sharp pain attacked your chest and you fell to the ground next to the pizza box. As you were dying I stood over you, and I watched you, almost heartbroken, for a final time. I looked at the body you lazily put together, and you looked back at mine: the image of how you would look in a perfect reality. Should I have done more to help you? Brokenly, I muttered, “I’m sorry I wasn’t a better guardian angel.”

With your last bit of strength, you said, “Guardian angel?! You’re no guardian. You’re a reminder, is what you are, of everything that’s wrong with me, David. With that face that looks just like mine and that melancholic look in your eyes. Always looking down on me! What do you know that I don’t?! Noth-“

“Even in death, you remain a child,” I responded to David’s corpse. His eyes went blank, and I closed them with my fingers, “How did I get stuck with you? How did you get stuck with me?”

 

The End.

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An angel watches over even Nazareth Napper.