Epilogue
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I never thought I’d be returning so soon.
It’s always been funny to me how just one simple decision could lengthen or shorten a life by such a dramatic span of time. In this case, Edith chose to text a friend while she was driving, and she paid the ultimate price for it.
As of now, I wish I could say that I’ve moved on, that I’ve been partnered up with another angel and another hum, and that my long, eternal life is moving forward. However, that is not the reality of Hell. Hell is unforgiving of failure, and everything I had done in my assignment was the exact definition of a failure. It was so bad that Satan didn’t even acknowledge the results of my assignment and I was instantly turned away without a shred of dignity left intact.
I flew to a canyon wall that overlooked the Lake of Fire where a great many of my so-called “friends” sat, gossiping and priding themselves with stories that had occurred eons ago. I said nothing to them as I lumbered over to a dying tree and perched on one of the few sturdy limbs it had left.
“Not so much as a ‘Hello’ today, Raum?” I heard someone ask.
I scratched at the thicker patches of the feathers around my neck. A stinging, biting, prickling sensation on my skin was instantly familiar. Hell was infested with these awful bugs, and they crawled everywhere. They were to us like fleas were to dogs; they made our lives miserable. I hadn’t been back for even a day and they were already crawling around within my feathers.
“It’s been about nineteen years since we last saw you,” someone else said, “Any interesting stories to tell?”
I shrugged, “Same old thing, same old thing.”
They groaned in disgust. I understood how they felt. As over-populated as Hell was—due to the large amount of willful sin that’s occurred in the twentieth century—there were still good-hearted people out there. It is hard to throw a good-hearted person off the path of righteousness, and unfortunately for me Edith had been one of those people.
“She must’ve done something interesting while you were there,” I heard someone say.
I thought over my choice of words. I didn’t want to blacken Edith’s name with false doings; crimes she’d never committed. Then again, I didn’t want to bore and disgust my fellow demons with a story of how good of a person she was. It was well-balanced, actually. She had done some really great things. She had done some pretty bad things, and some really horrible things, too. Sure, she was able to get into Heaven, but the wrong doings she’d done in her life had heated up places in Hell, too.
“You really want to know about this girl?” I asked.
Someone scoffed, “That’s why we were asking, bird-brain.”
I descended from the tree and strode towards them.
“Just so you know, this story isn’t so much about the girl as it is about the immortals that had been paired up with the girl,”
A small fire was lit, as all good stories should be told around a fire. I stood before the flame in front of the canyon wall.
“Stories of guardian angels are as old as time . . .”
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