Shadows in Heaven

Gabriel was not long for the world, this time around. An unfortunate childhood accident left the body he occupied dead. It left the boy he briefly was grieved for by people he hardly got to know.

Unbaptized, he found himself in hell, speaking to old colleagues.

"Greetings, Djibril," said Penemue, the fallen one who had taught humanity to write. "133,306,668 of us have fallen so far from the places you dwell. Won't you tell us a story, Messenger?"

Gabriel, wearing the skin of his former life, and the wings of his rank, stood small and naked before the glowering demons of Hell. He breathed once, and then sang.

The song was a story of his previous life as an infant brother, a second son, and of the accidental life and death that God Himself had granted to a faithful servant. Gabriel had only sought to experience enough of the flesh to be reminded of whom he was created to protect. It was an old arrangement, made not long after the many angels had fallen.

This experience, however, had not made him more sympathetic of God's most beloved creatures. Coming to the end of his song, he told of his desire to inform God of his grievous mistake in making these creatures who only spat upon the rest of divine creation.

The angel, wearing the guise of the child he would have been, swore to the demons of Hell that if he were allowed, the songs he would sing would be tall as monsters, casting shadows across the landscape of Heaven itself.

leslie powell

minneapolis, mn

walpurgisnacht, 2006.