Angels

are real. They follow behind you as harbingers of calamity. Wingless angels of death. Riding upon the backs of jet-black horses. Waiting for the hand of God to welcome them back. I believe there may even be one following me right now.

On the first day, I had received a letter announcing a visit from Father. I hadn’t seen him in so long. I needed to buy more food to welcome him with open arms, but every grocer I visited had nothing to buy. All of the food had rotted on the shelves. Fresh vegetables crumbled to dust in my grasp. Milk and eggs reeked as I walked down the aisles. Meat squirmed with maggots as I browsed the displays. Other shoppers panicked, the food in their carts turning to mush while they waited in line. I returned home boasting only spoils. Radio stations and TV news announced a nationwide famine that night.

The next morning, another letter appeared from Father. We decided to meet somewhere else to avoid the food shortage, so I boarded a plane and flew across the border. As I landed, many of the people in the terminal coughed and wheezed. I took a cab to a nearby hotel while people on the streets around me began to collapse. Pedestrians hemmed and hawed. Some screamed in pain as hives broke out all over their bodies. Men vomited blood. Women collapsed in spasms. My cab driver’s eyes swelled shut as we smashed into a median. Notifications announced that a new virus had broken out and swept through the country.

A new text appeared from Father. He told me to get out of the country before it too shut down. To meet him elsewhere. The airports began to close, but I managed to steal a helicopter from a private hanger. I flew low and quick, trying to escape the chaos, but tanks mobilized on the ground below me. A missile exploded against my side like thunder. The helicopter plummeted to the ground as a ball of brimstone. Landing in an already flattened wasteland. As bombers hummed across the sky, trucks carrying artillery flew past my bloody head. Men dug trenches and missiles soared through the clouds. I hid in the broken cockpit and trembled in fear. For I knew what was to come.

I awoke to the wet nose of a black horse against my face. The ground was dry and cracked now, its dust filling my lungs. I stood up to an emptiness before me: plains of sand stretching endlessly. Riding the horse across the borders of old countries, atop the bones of their inhabitants, I wept. The sky was grey and the crumbling earth beneath my feet was stained red. Withered trees and bloated fish rising on top of pale oceans filled the air with the stench of death as I wandered in the suffocating silence of barren wastes. I looked up at the white sun that now dimmed this empty world, the hand of Father reaching down from the sky.