Hush Yael

I didn’t want to do it right away. The time must be right. I cannot act on instinct or impulse. I must wait to kill him.

So I do. For another five days, I watch him in the clouds, just like normal. Einat doesn’t think anything of it. Then again, she doesn’t know what is going through my head. More importantly, she doesn’t know of my encounter with the Devil that one night. She was oblivious to it all.

It was actually for good reasons, too. I didn’t necessarily want her getting caught up in my business. This was something I had to do, that more than likely, would end up changing my fate in the afterlife. If anyone had to take action, it was me.

As the sun sets, I stand in my room, holding the gun in my hands. I am feeling the touch of cold, hard steel for the first time. With this, I have the ability to do what no one in my family could do before. The time is coming.

And despite her cluelessness, Einat deserves to know. Her last vision of me today shouldn’t be looking from the outside in at her younger sister through the window, with nothing running through her mind except for what will happen if she does, or doesn’t, do what she’s planning on doing.

It’s ironic, in a sense. Ironic that I’m contemplating murder while I’ve been educated in mercy.

“Yael?” I hear her voice as she steps into the room. I cannot directly see her face, but I feel as though she wants to stare into my soul. She suspects something. “You haven’t been outside all day… is something the matter?”

A part of me wants to lie to her, just so she doesn’t worry about me. However, the truth can’t be kept from her forever.

“…Come with me,” I whisper, gently taking her wrist and leading her outside. “There’s something I need to show you.”

We face the clouds- the ones that show the still living humans- and I find the one I have been staring at for the last thirty-three years.

“Do you remember him, Einat?” I grit my teeth as I speak to her. “Look at his face and tell me if you know him from somewhere.”

It doesn’t take long; the second his face appears, she lets out a small scream and takes a couple steps backwards.

“That’s…that’s him…” she manages. “He’s the one… that killed me.”

I nod slowly. “That’s right. That’s him,” unconsciously, I pull out the gun from a knapsack slung over my shoulder. “And there’s something that needs to be done.”

“What do you mean by-” she stopped when she looked to where I was standing beside her, and her gaze cast downward at my hand.

“Wh…what’s with the gun?” Einat’s voice shook when she laid her eyes on the weapon in my hands.

“You know damn well what it’s for,” I reply, pointing to the image of the all-too familiar man’s face in the clouds. “This is for revenge.”

Einat stared at me and slowly shook her head. “Yael, this isn’t right,” she started. “Just because he brought death to our family-”

“Do you still not get it?!” I nearly screamed at my sister. “Think about what you said not thirty seconds ago, Einat. He killed us! He shot dad, crushed your head in… he has to die!”

My sister and I were in Heaven for a reason. I was supposed to be an “angel”, like her. But I was bent on death and destruction.

Einat opened her mouth to say something, but shut it before speaking a word. What could she say? There was nothing to say. Her little “Hush, Yael” speech wouldn’t work on me anymore.

I slipped the gun back in my knapsack, preparing to walk towards the gateway that separated Heaven from Earth. In order to get the job done, I had to go back. The upside was, for the time being, I would be alive. But in order to come back, I had to die again. And I hadn’t figured out the plan that far ahead.

I could feel Einat stare at my head from behind me. Her hands reached out to my arm. “Yael…”

My response was a quick jerking of my limb out of her grasp. “Don’t touch me.”

Any moment now she was going to break down in tears. “Will you be back?” she sniffled.

And there was the question of doom. I bit my lip, thinking of something reassuring to say. “Honestly, I can’t promise anything. But I’ll do what I’m able to.”

With one final nod and a bittersweet goodbye, I pried open the gates and ran down the stairs.