I Can't Hang

After a while, having Brady’s hands locked underneath my armpits kind of hurt. I thought I wasn’t supposed to feel pain, but I guess that wasn’t the case. Of course not. I wasn’t an angel yet.

Pff. I still didn’t believe him. I thought I was snoozing in a hospital bed, maybe banged up a little bit, but still very much alive. I don’t care if he had wings and a halo and all that crap. He was a creep. A freakishly tall, 1980’s creep.

“Y’alright kid?” he asked periodically, breathing heavily above my head.

All I did was say, “Uh huh.”

I looked down at Manhattan and spied hundreds of little bite-sized candy bars standing on one end and toy cars, a gazillion ants moving along the tiny lines that were streets. As inwardly scared as I was, I had to admit that it was beautiful, being up here and seeing my hometown from a mile above the ground with all the rain clouds flooding water over the slicked pavement.

But before I could get too comfortable with it, Brady let out a serious grunt and shouted, “Hold on kid, it’s gonna get bumpy!”

I held my breath. Ripping through clouds and feeling moisture gather in my hair and on my clothes, I grimaced, trying to keep from slipping out of his grip and falling to my second death.

But the turbulence stopped.

The sound of clothes tearing in wind ceased.

I felt dry.

“Kyle. Kyle. Wake up. We’re here,” Brady bugged, poking my shoulder.

I opened my eyes and everything was white. Literally. White…white clouds under my feet, a white gate, white sky…what the hell? What was happening?

I stumbled backward, falling on my butt. It didn’t hurt because I was landing on a cloud. “You’re…you’re kidding…right?” I gasped.

“You’re tellin’ me that you still don’t think Heaven exists, or at least the kind of Heaven that stretches across everything everyone believes in,” Brady stated flatly.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know how.

“Well, whateva. You’re here, you’re at the pearly gates, and I gotta help you become an angel. Now stand up, we don’t got forever here.” He paused, snickering to himself. “Well, actually, we kinda do, but, you know.”

He yanked me up by the arm and pulled me up to – literally – The Pearly Gates, where there was a pedestal beside it. Behind the counter was some old guy with glasses and a white robe. I didn’t recognize him.

Brady gave a genuine smile to the guy and put an arm around my shoulder as if we were best friends. “I’ve got a new one here,” he said, “Kyle Strickland, age fourteen.”

I kinda wanted to ask how he knew all that, but before I could, the pearly gates had opened and we were granted entrance.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Running – er, flying – everywhere were angels. Angels as far as the eye could see. Tall ones. Short ones. Girl ones. Boy ones. Black, white, Asian, whatever. All different kinds of angels were swarming this place, and even after rubbing my eyes so bad they turned red and slapping both of my cheeks silly, I didn’t wake up.

I was losing hope in waking up, actually. After this…man. What the crap? How could I create all of this in my sleep?

Brady shoved my shoulder. “Yeah, it’s real. D’you believe now?”

I didn’t speak.

“It’s alright. I had the same expression when I was first here,” he shrugged.

He led me through lumps of holy people, smiling and saying hi, while I just walked in his path and tried to figure out why he suddenly put on a nice face up here. It didn’t add up – none of this did. Why was I here? Why wasn’t I burning in Hell if it existed alongside Heaven – or whatever this was?

We stopped in front of a lone room in the middle of the crowds, and Brady pulled me aside and leaned in closer.

“Alright…now I know you’re probably thinkin’ a lotta stuff right now. Okay, for starters, I know you don’t believe in any’a this stuff,” he whispered. “And secondly, there are some rules I gotta go over before I can officially register you as an angel.”

“Why am I here?” I asked simply.

“’Cause you’re dead.”

“No, idiot. I mean, if I’m…why am I not in Hell?”

Brady cracked a smirk and put his hands on his hips. “You ain’t no bad boy. All you did was not believe in God. Other than that, you’re clean. You could’a fooled anyone into thinkin’ you’re a perfect church-goin’ religious kid.”

I looked at him funny. “But…isn’t that a sin?”

Brady sighed. “Kid, don’t listen to bible-thumpers. Even God thinks they’re kinda psycho. Doin’ one sin ain’t gonna make you have to rub elbows with the devil – now, bathing your entire life in sin, makin' life difficult for other folks, that’s different. That’ll get you into trouble.”

My mouth dropped. I had no more questions ‘cause I think my brain had just broken.

“Now, first things first – rules,” he added, clapping his hands together. “When you’re an angel…it’s frowned upon to cuss, at least at your age. But you can’t say G-D it, even if you’re my age. But I think we already went over that.”

“So what happens if you do swear?”

Brady shrugged. “A little thing. People kinda look at you funny. Potty mouths don’t really make a lot of friends, at least not with the old folks up here, or old-fashioned ones.”

“Oh. Alright, I guess.”

I shot him another confused look.

“Okay, the next rule – you can’t go out willy-nilly and advertise yourself to the world, bein’ all obvious and stuff,” he explained. “We angels gotta be incognito.”

Crossing my arms in defiance, I said, “Well, what about when you were chasing me down on earth?”

He smiled arrogantly. “I got experience. And, when I get people who’re dead, them and I are invisible to people. It’s only otherwise when we’re visible. Our halos follow us wherever we go, but our wings can be hidden. I know how to blend in, unlike you, all hootin’ and hollerin’ and screamin’.”

I sneered at him. “Well…wait. If people saw the angels, then…then…they’d know Heaven was real, and…you could stop a whole lotta arguments down on Earth…”

“You really think people would believe it?” he interrupted.

“Huh?”

Brady brushed his hair back. “Folks down on Earth are still havin’ trouble thinkin’ that anybody who’s got a different skin color is the same as them. People see all the galaxies and stars out there and they still think we’re alone in the universe, for cryin’ out loud. Seein’ angels fall from the sky would cause a stir, that’s for sure. But it wouldn’t get any more believers.”

“So…” I trailed off, my eyelids drooping to set up for a deadpan. “The billions of religious people out there wouldn’t change your mind up here?”

“Well, it would reassure those folks in their faith, but it sure as heck wouldn’t make any new faith.”

I couldn’t help a little smirk, even if my mind wasn’t completely made up yet.

Brady cocked his head to the door and motioned for me to go it. “That’s where angels are made. It’s where you get your temporary wings.”

“Wait. Temporary?”

“Well, yeah,” he said. “They let you fly around for a couple weeks, and if you’re a good kid, then they let you stay and keep your wings. But if you break any rules, you have to start your two weeks over again.”

“Well, what happens if you break a bunch’a rules as a permanent angel?”

“You go down to Hell.”

I gulped.

“Are you gonna go in there?” he urged.

“Are…you gonna go with me?” I asked, a little guilty of being dependant.

He sighed, rolling his eyes. “Whatever, kid.”

We walked on over, he closed the door behind us, and I was standing in front of a big table – colored white, of course. Sitting at the table was a middle-aged woman with dyed blonde hair and a warm smile. She greeted us with a nice, “Hello,” and told me to stand before her.

“You’re on a roll lately, Brady,” she said to Brady. “That’s, what, thirty-seven people this month?”

“Yeah, I’m workin’ hard,” he boasted. “It’s a tough job to bring ‘em up here, but I like doin’ it.”

The woman turned to me and smiled again. “And what’s your name?”

“Uh…Kyle. Kyle Strickland.”

She nodded. “And how old were you?”

“Fourteen.” I bit my lip.

“I hear you were an atheist before you were brought here,” she smirked. How the heck did everyone know that? “How do you feel now?”

I didn’t answer for a moment. “…I don’t know yet.”

“Well, maybe after this you’ll know.”

The woman snapped her fingers, my eyes slammed shut, and then I felt about ten pounds added to my weight.

I turned around, and I had a pair of medium-sized, glittery wings on my back.