I should have called the police the moment I woke up, but what was I going to say? “Hello? 911? Help! I think I’m going to die because I had a dream that I died.” Yeah, even in my head I sounded ridiculous.
What happened to me was horrifying, but no one read about it in the newspapers because it never happened.
“It was only a dream.” That was what everyone kept telling me. But everyone was wrong. I died that night. I was murdered in a firestorm.
One single, white lie wasn’t supposed to bring with it a lifetime of obstacles. I lied. I said yes when I was supposed to say no.
I committed a crime. I should have been handcuffed, sentenced to life in prison, executed even. Anything would have been better than the punishment I served because of that little white lie.
“You’re such a terrible liar, Abigail.” This was what everyone I knew said whenever I tried to tell a lie, but then again, everyone I knew then knew nothing. I wasn’t crazy. No, honestly, before I found myself in wacko-land, I was a walking ray of sunshine. Everything in my over-idolized life was perfect.
Until he came.
First, I thought, Finally, someone to chase away the monsters underneath my bed. But as it turned out, he didn’t come to chase them away. He was the monster.
He was also my guardian angel.
BETTER THAN A HALLELUJAH
*Gideon*
“You see what power is – holding someone else’s fear
in your hand and showing it to them.”
Amy Tan –The Kitchen God’s Wife.
“...Shouldn’t have been the—” A woman on the phone rushed by without noticing me because she quite literally couldn’t see me.
I stood, invisible, beside a traffic light somewhere in New York City, staring at the cars passing by and at the people running for shelter because of the heavy rain pummeling the city.
A Lumenian guardian angel stood beside me with his énas, a seven-year-old boy named Paul. The boy and his mother had been shopping for a new school bag, and his guardian angel was stuck following them around. Paul was like the puppeteer, the guardian the puppet, so wherever the boy pulled his strings, the angel followed.
Times like this made me realize my happiness in being a different kind of guardian angel—the kind who did everything but guard.
“Gi-Gideon,” the angel stuttered the moment his eyes met mine. He knew what was coming. As a Grandinian angel, it was my job to try and hurt the human being guarded, and it was the Lumenian angel’s job to try and save the human.
I never missed a target, so whenever the guardian angels sensed my presence, they knew that their end was near.
Paul and his mother, a young woman in her early thirties, stood in front of me among a crowd who waited for the walk sign to change. Paul was circling his mother and singing a childish song. She pulled his yellow raincoat’s hood over his ball cap.
The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout.
Dammit, I had the boy’s stupid song stuck in my head.
Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
What was the next line again? Oh yeah…
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain.
Typical human nature for the sun to show up and dry up the rain.
And the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again.
That’s one stupid spider.
Ahead on a busy road, a Ferrari braked at a red light, rock music rattling its closed windows. Two punk teenagers sat in the car bobbing their heads to the song.
Looking at the young boy and at the sports car, I snapped my fingers. Instantly, the walk sign changed to the white silhouette of a person walking. Without looking or waiting for his mother, the little boy pushed through the crowd at the curb and sped his way toward the street.
“Paul!” the boy’s mother shouted, running after him, but the boy was too far ahead. She forced her way through the crowd, hurrying to reach him.
I looked at the boy and snapped my fingers once more. Instantaneously, the Ferrari surged forward with force toward the boy. His guardian angel appeared beside him. I could hear him whispering, “Turn and go to your mother, Paul,” but the boy was young and stupid, not listening to the voice in his head that was supposed to be his instinct.
The driver tried to brake, but the car fishtailed through the intersection, with the teenagers yelling in panic.
The boy’s guardian angel tried to stop the car, but it all transpired too