As the man died, he was visited by an angel.
It came to him slowly that he was dying, like a diver coming up from a dark depth, and faint recollection of a time before teased just outside of reach.
A picture of black, grey and white, illuminated by some light behind. A doctor in glasses pointing. There, the doctor said. That's it. He was pointing at the soft white, which stood out among the black. Big and growing, fast. As he pointed, he smiled. There, among the black, the white clouds told his future.
Not much time, the clouds said. Or was it the doctor? He looks like a vulture. That's what he thought.
Now, the cords and tubes weaved in and out of his skin, itself the color of dried paper. A mask of plastic fit around his face and made a SSHHH noise every couple of seconds. More tubes, serpentine and unlovely, roped around his pillow. The sheets felt like tinfoil and his skin howled when he shifted. All at once he remembered the thing in his chest, and as if in thanks the thing beamed pain through his being. Red and hot, the pain knew where to go and what to do. It flooded his vision like bright waving flags.
The angel, for his part, was leaning with the flat of his back agaisnt the far wall. A tan cowboy hat befitted his head and obscured a part of his face, which was pale and serious. His lips were tightly shut against each other. His eyes were new, as if that were at all possible. They squinted toward the man in the bed.
"Get thee behind me, Satan!" He had tried to say it forcefully, but there was no air in his lungs. It came out in a hiss.
"That would be a neat trick" the angel said.
The room was all saffron and the ceiling fan ticked as it spun, counting out seconds. The man realized with sadness that this thing, this angel, was the best friend he had in the world at that moment. At various times in his life before he would, depending on the circumstance, secure himself against a tide of humanity and cling to a silence deep within, a bulwark against intimacy.
Turtles have shells, he thought. All I have is silence.
A burly male nurse shambled in and the noise of it shook him out of his trance. Something was jiggling the tubes and his head turned to snow. Cold fingers trembled through his body, his chest full of ice. Subway cars shuttled inside his veins numbly. The pain, before a live hyperactive thing, was yawning. It slept and he was comfortable in his skin for a time. His soul let out a slow breath.
"Ohhhhh" he said.
"Yeah, that's the stuff" chuckled the nurse. "One for you, one for me." He winked at the man, but his crossed eyes couldn't focus. Those that work around death have an easy fellowship with the barely living. A thick cloud encircled the nurse, and he was gone.
"Close your eyes" the angel said.
"They are closed!" he tried to shout, but his eyes so wide open, the lids spasmed. His mind was filled with the colors and images of time. Need and want and pain studded the exploding collage, and his heart went up and down like a bike on bad pavement.
"What's this?" he said, but it was flat like a statement or question about the weather.
"You see it? You see?" the angel flitted about the room, tumultous and terrible, but all the while standing with his back against the wall, his weathered hat askew.
He was stunned by the scene. He was looking at himself many years ago. The lines has been erased from his face, The scene was at once framed but all around them, filling the hospital room and expanding out as far as he could see. His arms were free of the tubes and his skin, once wrinkled and pocked by years, was pink and taut, under green and black camoflage. Rain pelted his dusty cap and a long, black rifle perched on his shoulder. He lay flat with his face peeking out from under a great green canopy of a tree, the rust colored bark flaking off the trunk like useless burned skin. The rifle seemed as big as a cannon, though he had no visible trouble holding it steady. Through the scope he spied the target. He lifted his head slightly and licking his lips felt the wind against them. Tick. Tick. Tick. The sight adjusted left in small increments. Steady. Hey there.
In the valley below him a short man in a threadbare grey jacket sqwauked on a phone to someone, gesticulating wildly, a dance of one. He was going to die and did not seem to know this just yet. He just kept talking until he wasn't.
Electricity crackled inside him as the round producted the expected effect - a neat hole and pink cloud - and he was falling, falling inside himself. I killed a human being his mind screamed into the quiet of his soul, the deed expanding inside him like smoke trapped in a bottle. I killed him. Everything is different now.
At once he was back in the soft hayloft of a hospital bed, the pillow cradling his ruined head. The angel had shown him - what? A past deed to yet be undone? Some reason for something, precious enough in the flat randomness of all things? What's done can't be undone, the angel said through ages. Though the guilty are pilloried, the innocent sleep.
"Are you a demon?" the man asked no-one.
"You are a stubborn old coot" The angel said.
The man trembled. Suddenly he was afraid of what was happening. He felt doom all around, inside his shirt, hanging from his shoulders, a rock-filled pack. This wasn't like what he had read about. There was no light, no tunnel. No long gone loved ones to greet him. Only the cursed angel, grinning slightly, his eyes shaded by the brim of his hat.
He was sinking, being pulled down. there was no lightness, no relief. He felt like boulders were being loaded upon him, more and more until he could no longer stand the crush of weight. Words tried to form at his parched lips, some last recantation that would lift the weight, sling those boulders away from him, lift him up in an expansion of light and hope. But it was too late. He was was going to Hell. Not the hell of the spiritualists, or the Krishnas. This was hell with a capital H, all fire and brimstone.
And the angel, for his part, stood with the flat of his back against the wall for just another second. Then he straightened, walked to the door, and was gone. The air was a solid thing and it stood not moving in the room where the man, minus his soul, lay, while the bacteria in his gut marshalled its strength for the coming feast.
