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Becoming Jared
I was only there for two weeks: I worked less than 35 hours in total. You'd think they'd at least be able to count up to 35, but no, they short-shift me 12 hours on the check I just picked up...
This is the final version of Jared's introduction. I'm rather pleased with it. Some of these images come to me as very strong visuals, and it makes me wish I had artistic talent. Jared totally was meant to be the next dark comic book hero, he's like some mutant Hellboy, although he was conceived of before I knew of the existence of Hellboy, and inspired to life by "The Ascent of Stan" by Ben Folds.
Some days he just stayed at home and laid on his bed and stared at the ceiling. It was, he was starting to suspect, as fulfilling a day as any other.
Any other day he would get up, brush his teeth, dress himself, have some toast, go to work. Sit at a desk for six hours, typing, perhaps doing research, but mostly drinking coffee, because nobody really needed his skills. Have lunch when he was told, perhaps stare at one or two of the more vibrant women in his office, wonder how they would reject him if he ever asked them out. Eventually get off work, drink a few beers, wander home and lie on his bed and stare at the ceiling.
So really, it cut down on a lot of unnecessary effort to just stay home and stare at the ceiling all day. He even spared his employers the effort of paying him. Sometimes he thought he didn't really need money to survive, he just needed air, to lift him up and float him away. Let them repossess the TV that gave him nothing but background noise, or the antique alarm clock that woke him from gray dreamless sleep.
The answering machine clicked on. He ignored the phone just like he ignored the alarm.
"Terrence? Terry, baby, it's Mom."
How had she gotten his number? Or maybe she'd had it all along and had just never thought to call.
"I just wanted to let you know that Phil and I are back from our honeymoon--"
Ah, yes, after the wedding she hadn't invited him to.
"--and so if there's any emergency you know where to reach me. Anthony is such a darling boy, you really should meet him if you're ever in the LA area. I'm sure he'd love to meet his step-brother."
So Phil did have kids. He'd suspected as much. If he stared at the ceiling long enough he could almost feel his mother out there, with her new husband and new child. The sensation was eerily strong on the nights when he couldn't sleep, images of his mother tucking someone else's son into bed, praying for his bright future and happy life, instead of her own son.
But then, he was all grown up now, and had been for a long time.
He stood up, ignored the rest of the message, none of which was in any way relevant to him. The mirror across from the bed pretended to reflect him.
What's wrong, he wondered. What happened to me? His reflection showed him the intensity of gray dreamless eyes and limp black hair. He was wearing a suit, almost. He had been putting it on in the morning when he had suddenly run out of motivation and the blank ceiling had proved too great a lure and he had fallen: half-buttoned shirt, unbuckled belt, tie slung over his shoulders like a dead thing, and all.
God, he was wearing a suit. He really was grown up, wasn't he? Where had his youth gone? He remembered drugs and alcohol and sex, not because he'd craved them but because he felt stronger with them in his system, more free. Wild. He couldn't remember very well. Hadn't he hated that suit when it had been his father's? The dead thing strangling him where he slumped at the table.
Damn. He was his father, and his future was a ceiling instead of a table. No wonder his mother didn't tuck him in anymore.
Thirty-six years old, with no dreams and no wife and no table. It wasn't that he wasn't creative, or that he wasn't attractive, or that he wasn't secure. His life should have been set.
He had simply burned out, and died. There was only a shell left of him and he didn't know why. He was his father and all grown up, like worms digging through his corpse.
When the immense man wearing a dark trenchcoat appeared behind him, he was still looking into the mirror. The foreign presence registered at once, and he found himself filled with a sudden sense of relief. No fear, no panic.
"Are you here to kill me?" he asked the man, calmly.
The stranger tilted his head, as if curious or amused. "I'm here to give you life, Jared," he said, and his voice was deep and resonant, waking something so long dormant that it was a moment before Terrence remembered what his name was.
"I'm not Jared." The words came from him against his will. He was vaguely disappointed; for a moment he had almost believed himself about to die, and then thought of what it would be to live, and now it was a case of mistaken identity. "Who is Jared? How can you give him life? I..." I want to live too.
The man shrugged. "If you're going to ask those questions," he rumbled, "you aren't ready yet."
Terrence stood, and the stranger towered more than a foot above him, could have easily lifted Terrence over his head and thrown him out the eighth-story window, goodbye little bedroom. There were no signs that the man had been dissuaded, he didn't step back and say oh, sorry, must've gotten the wrong apartment, you don't happen to know which room belongs to a Jared? He seemed, in fact, quite certain that he was talking to the man he had been looking for.
"Not ready for what?" Terrence demanded. "For a life? What... who the hell are you, anyway?" The reality of the situation was sinking in now, becoming more alarming. There was a stranger in his room, approaching seven feet tall and easily twice Terrence's weight, and he hadn't heard anyone enter. If only the man had killed him straight away, before it had occurred to him that if he didn't especially want to continue the way he'd been living, he didn't want to die either.
"Go to work tomorrow, Jared," the big man commanded.
Terrence didn't remember seeing the man leave, didn't remember falling asleep. But the next thing he knew it was morning, and he was staring at the ceiling with yesterday's suit still half on if somewhat rumpled, and the alarm was going off but it hadn't woken him, he could barely hear it. As an afterthought, he removed the clock from the wall and let it fall to the floor next to his nightstand, and wondered seriously if he'd dreamed the encounter yesterday, or perhaps dreamed yesterday in its entirety.
He got up, brushed his teeth. He removed the wrinkled suit that seemed to suggest that yesterday hadn't been a dream, put on a fresh one, and made himself toast to assuage the hunger crawling through his belly, and then he went in to work.
It was all very normal, very Terrence. But as he stood on the bus, surrounded by other easily-swaying commuters who all seemed engaged and lively, Terrence was lingeringly aware that something seemed very odd about himself. He was tense, uneasy. As if something had woken within him and would no longer be ignored.
So Terrence ignored it.
The office was quiet, the usual people milling about and discussing quietly and exchanging reports. Terrence headed for his desk, eyeing Detectives Rodena and Archer where they stood receiving dispatch. That was the post he'd thought he was headed for, before he'd wound up in a desk job, doing paper investigations and watching others ride out to glory and danger.
He'd never envied them before; he hadn't the energy for it.
Harold in the cubicle across from him greeted him with a cheerful, "'Morning, Jared."
Sudden anger rose, and before he knew it he'd jerked out of the chair he'd only just sat in, sending it careening across the tiny walled unit. "What did you just call me?" he snarled, seized with the defensive urge to lash out. He had never been so furious in his life, furious and somewhere deep within that afraid; he couldn't control his breathing.
"I..." Harold in the cubicle across from him was wide-eyed, edging his wheeled chair deeper into his personal space. "I didn't call you anything. I said good morning Terrence, something wrong with that?"
"You said--" The violent panic drained from him as water through a sieve. Of course he'd said Terrence. Why wouldn't he have said Terrence? It was just a name anyway, who cares about a name. He sat back down. "Right, sorry. I misheard you a little... Sorry."
Harold in the cubicle across from him gave him a skeptical look, but turned back to his work without another word. Whispers rose in the surrounding cubicles, and Terrence flushed uneasily.
It happened three more times that day. Jim the janitor called him Jared only he didn't; Fran the reporter bid him a cheerful hello as he left the building for lunch, but she seemed to address a man named Jared although she spoke to him; even Grace, the beauty from Forensics, whom he had long admired from afar without ever suspecting she knew who he was. She approached in what seemed like slow-motion -- Harold in the cubicle across from him muttered enviously, "You lucky dog" -- but the first time his name ever passed those shapely red lips he heard it as "Jared."
"Not you too?" he said desperately before he could stop himself. Things went downhill from there.
That night after he had been released, he went to the bar. They knew him at the bar; he wound up there two or three nights a week, drinking the oblivion away. Several of the regulars and the bartender welcomed him and by name; thankfully, the name they used was his own.
He took a stool a decent distance away from the others, because he felt strangely calm and he knew that couldn't be right, so he thought it might be best to avoid unnecessary conversation and just stick to drowning. The bartender said with good-natured cheer, "Been a stressful day, Terry?" because he didn't know that he hated being called Terry.
"Something like that," Terrence muttered.
As had happened the night before, his memory stopped after a certain point; he'd had three beers by then and was waiting on a fourth. He didn't remember the fourth beer, or what happened after that, and consequently when he woke up in jail, he hadn't the faintest idea how he'd gotten there.
He was alone in the cell, no one in sight, and he suffered no hangover and felt only a mild aching in his hands and face. Some strange languorous peace filled him, an eerie sense of being well-rested and fulfilled. It was better than sex, better than the remembered bliss of drugs, much better than beer.
But he was in jail for some reason. When he stood up, he noticed that on the other side of the bars waited the giant man who had been in his bedroom the other night.
"What happened to me?" he whispered. "Why am I in here? I'm so confused."
"You killed a man last night, Jared," said the stranger seriously.
Serenity fled him, sinking into the pit of his stomach and leaving him cold and hollow without it. "What--" There was never any question in his mind that the other man could be lying. He flew for the dull mirror in the wall above the little sink, to confirm that he was in fact Terrence and hadn't turned into someone else overnight, someone who had killed a man but Terrence was innocent.
He looked the same as he had always looked, only different. His skin was clean and healthy, his hair more lustrous than he could ever remember it being, like he'd featured in a shampoo commercial during the period he couldn't remember. For some reason he'd expected his eyes to be some color other than gray -- at least to be blood-shot out of respect for the nervous wreck he was fast becoming, the madman he suspected he might be -- but they were clear, the color of clouds that did not break.
Terrence turned back to the stranger, and demanded, "What have you done to me?"
"Nothing." The big man shrugged. "My visit to you the other night may have hurried things along, but this was inevitable."
"Inevitable?"
"Well, this or your suicide." In one step the man loomed against the bars. "You surprised me a great deal. I didn't think you had enough spirit left in you to kill a man. But you were like vengeance! Anyone who got between you and your prey was knocked aside; you never faltered!" He chuckled. "And here was me, thinking you all but broken. This way will be better for you in the long run."
There were images behind his eyes: broken glass and a man on the floor, shattering under a thousand pieces beneath his fists. Terrence looked down at his hands, saw his knuckles all scratched and bruised. He moaned a moment, unable to help himself. "How can you be admiring me for murdering someone?"
"The death? You're worried about that. Well, don't be." A humorless grin spread across the big man's thin lips. "The man you killed was named Federico Binardi. When he was a child he strangled a cat to see how it would die. He was thirty-seven years old and was on his second wife; he beat the first one when she talked back, and the second one when it pleased him. He was responsible for addicting sixty-six school-age children on crack, and if you need to know how many of them will eventually die on the road he directed them down, I can get that information for you as long as you promise not to try to help any of them. He happened to be in the bar that night, and although you may never remember the circumstances that led up to his death, he was going to hit a waitress for bringing another man a drink before him."
Paralyzing panic faded during the recitation, until Terrence was hollow again, safe. "...How do you know all this...?"
The last thing he expected was for the giant to shrug again, and admit, "I did some research while you were sleeping."
"But... Okay. So--" He grasped for straws, something rational to say, some way to keep this conversation from becoming completely contrary to everything he understood. "Even if that man was a bastard, there's no way to know that I won't do it again, and that next time it won't be an innocent--"
"It won't happen, and it won't be. Oh, no, Jared." The other man laughed suddenly. "I think you would find that even if you tried, you couldn't kill an innocent. I thought--" Then sharp blue eyes focused on him critically, in a lightning-quick change of mood. "Well, perhaps I've been taking too much for granted. Perhaps knowing who I am would help you understand somewhat."
Terrence looked up.
It seemed as if he could feel the crisp, cool breeze on his skin, sliding over his arms and across his cheeks, stirring his hair. He could see it swirling the edges of the other man's trenchcoat, and the glint of silver underneath.
"I am one called Matarael," said the giant. "I'm an angel of God, and I'm here to give you life, Jared."
For the first time, the name sat well on his shoulders -- it seemed to fit him in that moment. It was Terrence's skin that didn't fit. He found himself asking, "If you really are an angel... How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
Matarael raised his eyebrows at the question, as if to say, that's the best you can do. He answered dryly, "First of all, the proper question is on the point of a needle. That makes a lot more sense. Secondly, there are many ways I could answer. I could take the pretentious mystical route and tell you that this entire planet is little more than a needle in the eye of God, or I could take the dense asshole route and tell you that first you would need to find them all very thick-soled shoes. But the real answer to that question is that it's the wrong question. Better to ask, 'How many angels would dance on the point of a needle?'"
Then there was silence for a moment. "So... how many angels would dance on the point of a needle?"
"No more than forty, ever, in any given temporal place at any given temporal time," the huge man said frankly. "Michael's word. With a minimum of ten warriors, flaming swords and all, stationed around the perimeter. It's a matter of security, you see. It'd be a fine thing if the entire population of Heaven were dancing around on a needle point and a demon or a reasonably-sized dog wandered up and accidentally stepped on all of us. Frankly, you probably won't find more than forty angels willing to dance on the point of a needle for your entertainment anyway."
For some reason, that answer made Terrence feel infinitely better. "What am I?" he asked, because it seemed the next logical question.
The angel said, almost gently, "Not human."
He thought about that for a long while, shaking. The thing that was coiling within him seemed to soothe at the words, bringing back the ultimate restfulness, but it was almost more than he could handle. He remembered shouting at Harold in the cubicle across from him, remembered the listlessness of sitting at a table with a snake around his neck, remembered slamming his fists into a stranger's face and torso (bones fragile like eggs beneath him), remembered the bliss of waking after he'd killed a man.
"I must be a monster," he murmured.
"You are a beast," Matarael agreed. "A sacred beast. Born in the shape of a human, meant to ascend beyond, to a higher level. Your life as Terrence is over; it was never meant to last anyway. There was no woman who could have loved Terrence. No job could have inspired him. Unfulfillment would have forced you to kill yourself if your will had been broken, and not breaking brought you here, which is almost as bad. Jared--"
His arm lashed out, a huge ham fist closing around the bars between them. His face was stark and urgent. "You will never escape from this charge. If you go before a jury you will be condemned for life. There are a large number of forces in the universe that would give a lot to see that a sacred beast be given mortal leash. It is in the nature of things to destroy that which is greater. That is why I must ask you one last time to allow me to give you life. Terrence and all that he is must be left behind. You will never answer to that name again, you will never see the people who know that name again, and you will enter a world such as you cannot imagine. It will be violent, and it will be painful, but you will know peace that this world could never have given you.
"You must allow yourself to be reborn as Jared."
There was no reluctance in him to agree, he realized as he thought about it. Nothing held him back, no attachments made him hesitate. Sacrificing his life would mean nothing to him. That, more than anything else, was why he waited.
He paced around the cell as if it meant something to him, studying the thin sallow cot, the unsanitary corner for hygiene, the unbroken floors and tiny heavily-reinforced windows. Sterile and dead. Perhaps it did mean something to him.
"Okay," he said, and it was that easy.
The angel opened the door to the cell as naturally as if it had never been locked in the first place, and they walked out together.
"Heaven's got some terrific benefits packages, too," Matarael was saying. "You wouldn't believe the health care plan, and you'll never need to worry about finances again. Got a terrific loan program just in case. Plus you're guaranteed True Love; how's that for family coverage?"
He almost found himself smiling. "Why did you want to call me Jared, anyway?"
"Well, just between you and me, I've had a lot of sacred beast partners, and I can't be bothered to remember all of your human names. It makes things simpler to just call you all Jared..."
They walked into light, and Jared took a deep breath of the fresh, new air.
This is the final version of Jared's introduction. I'm rather pleased with it. Some of these images come to me as very strong visuals, and it makes me wish I had artistic talent. Jared totally was meant to be the next dark comic book hero, he's like some mutant Hellboy, although he was conceived of before I knew of the existence of Hellboy, and inspired to life by "The Ascent of Stan" by Ben Folds.
Some days he just stayed at home and laid on his bed and stared at the ceiling. It was, he was starting to suspect, as fulfilling a day as any other.
Any other day he would get up, brush his teeth, dress himself, have some toast, go to work. Sit at a desk for six hours, typing, perhaps doing research, but mostly drinking coffee, because nobody really needed his skills. Have lunch when he was told, perhaps stare at one or two of the more vibrant women in his office, wonder how they would reject him if he ever asked them out. Eventually get off work, drink a few beers, wander home and lie on his bed and stare at the ceiling.
So really, it cut down on a lot of unnecessary effort to just stay home and stare at the ceiling all day. He even spared his employers the effort of paying him. Sometimes he thought he didn't really need money to survive, he just needed air, to lift him up and float him away. Let them repossess the TV that gave him nothing but background noise, or the antique alarm clock that woke him from gray dreamless sleep.
The answering machine clicked on. He ignored the phone just like he ignored the alarm.
"Terrence? Terry, baby, it's Mom."
How had she gotten his number? Or maybe she'd had it all along and had just never thought to call.
"I just wanted to let you know that Phil and I are back from our honeymoon--"
Ah, yes, after the wedding she hadn't invited him to.
"--and so if there's any emergency you know where to reach me. Anthony is such a darling boy, you really should meet him if you're ever in the LA area. I'm sure he'd love to meet his step-brother."
So Phil did have kids. He'd suspected as much. If he stared at the ceiling long enough he could almost feel his mother out there, with her new husband and new child. The sensation was eerily strong on the nights when he couldn't sleep, images of his mother tucking someone else's son into bed, praying for his bright future and happy life, instead of her own son.
But then, he was all grown up now, and had been for a long time.
He stood up, ignored the rest of the message, none of which was in any way relevant to him. The mirror across from the bed pretended to reflect him.
What's wrong, he wondered. What happened to me? His reflection showed him the intensity of gray dreamless eyes and limp black hair. He was wearing a suit, almost. He had been putting it on in the morning when he had suddenly run out of motivation and the blank ceiling had proved too great a lure and he had fallen: half-buttoned shirt, unbuckled belt, tie slung over his shoulders like a dead thing, and all.
God, he was wearing a suit. He really was grown up, wasn't he? Where had his youth gone? He remembered drugs and alcohol and sex, not because he'd craved them but because he felt stronger with them in his system, more free. Wild. He couldn't remember very well. Hadn't he hated that suit when it had been his father's? The dead thing strangling him where he slumped at the table.
Damn. He was his father, and his future was a ceiling instead of a table. No wonder his mother didn't tuck him in anymore.
Thirty-six years old, with no dreams and no wife and no table. It wasn't that he wasn't creative, or that he wasn't attractive, or that he wasn't secure. His life should have been set.
He had simply burned out, and died. There was only a shell left of him and he didn't know why. He was his father and all grown up, like worms digging through his corpse.
When the immense man wearing a dark trenchcoat appeared behind him, he was still looking into the mirror. The foreign presence registered at once, and he found himself filled with a sudden sense of relief. No fear, no panic.
"Are you here to kill me?" he asked the man, calmly.
The stranger tilted his head, as if curious or amused. "I'm here to give you life, Jared," he said, and his voice was deep and resonant, waking something so long dormant that it was a moment before Terrence remembered what his name was.
"I'm not Jared." The words came from him against his will. He was vaguely disappointed; for a moment he had almost believed himself about to die, and then thought of what it would be to live, and now it was a case of mistaken identity. "Who is Jared? How can you give him life? I..." I want to live too.
The man shrugged. "If you're going to ask those questions," he rumbled, "you aren't ready yet."
Terrence stood, and the stranger towered more than a foot above him, could have easily lifted Terrence over his head and thrown him out the eighth-story window, goodbye little bedroom. There were no signs that the man had been dissuaded, he didn't step back and say oh, sorry, must've gotten the wrong apartment, you don't happen to know which room belongs to a Jared? He seemed, in fact, quite certain that he was talking to the man he had been looking for.
"Not ready for what?" Terrence demanded. "For a life? What... who the hell are you, anyway?" The reality of the situation was sinking in now, becoming more alarming. There was a stranger in his room, approaching seven feet tall and easily twice Terrence's weight, and he hadn't heard anyone enter. If only the man had killed him straight away, before it had occurred to him that if he didn't especially want to continue the way he'd been living, he didn't want to die either.
"Go to work tomorrow, Jared," the big man commanded.
Terrence didn't remember seeing the man leave, didn't remember falling asleep. But the next thing he knew it was morning, and he was staring at the ceiling with yesterday's suit still half on if somewhat rumpled, and the alarm was going off but it hadn't woken him, he could barely hear it. As an afterthought, he removed the clock from the wall and let it fall to the floor next to his nightstand, and wondered seriously if he'd dreamed the encounter yesterday, or perhaps dreamed yesterday in its entirety.
He got up, brushed his teeth. He removed the wrinkled suit that seemed to suggest that yesterday hadn't been a dream, put on a fresh one, and made himself toast to assuage the hunger crawling through his belly, and then he went in to work.
It was all very normal, very Terrence. But as he stood on the bus, surrounded by other easily-swaying commuters who all seemed engaged and lively, Terrence was lingeringly aware that something seemed very odd about himself. He was tense, uneasy. As if something had woken within him and would no longer be ignored.
So Terrence ignored it.
The office was quiet, the usual people milling about and discussing quietly and exchanging reports. Terrence headed for his desk, eyeing Detectives Rodena and Archer where they stood receiving dispatch. That was the post he'd thought he was headed for, before he'd wound up in a desk job, doing paper investigations and watching others ride out to glory and danger.
He'd never envied them before; he hadn't the energy for it.
Harold in the cubicle across from him greeted him with a cheerful, "'Morning, Jared."
Sudden anger rose, and before he knew it he'd jerked out of the chair he'd only just sat in, sending it careening across the tiny walled unit. "What did you just call me?" he snarled, seized with the defensive urge to lash out. He had never been so furious in his life, furious and somewhere deep within that afraid; he couldn't control his breathing.
"I..." Harold in the cubicle across from him was wide-eyed, edging his wheeled chair deeper into his personal space. "I didn't call you anything. I said good morning Terrence, something wrong with that?"
"You said--" The violent panic drained from him as water through a sieve. Of course he'd said Terrence. Why wouldn't he have said Terrence? It was just a name anyway, who cares about a name. He sat back down. "Right, sorry. I misheard you a little... Sorry."
Harold in the cubicle across from him gave him a skeptical look, but turned back to his work without another word. Whispers rose in the surrounding cubicles, and Terrence flushed uneasily.
It happened three more times that day. Jim the janitor called him Jared only he didn't; Fran the reporter bid him a cheerful hello as he left the building for lunch, but she seemed to address a man named Jared although she spoke to him; even Grace, the beauty from Forensics, whom he had long admired from afar without ever suspecting she knew who he was. She approached in what seemed like slow-motion -- Harold in the cubicle across from him muttered enviously, "You lucky dog" -- but the first time his name ever passed those shapely red lips he heard it as "Jared."
"Not you too?" he said desperately before he could stop himself. Things went downhill from there.
That night after he had been released, he went to the bar. They knew him at the bar; he wound up there two or three nights a week, drinking the oblivion away. Several of the regulars and the bartender welcomed him and by name; thankfully, the name they used was his own.
He took a stool a decent distance away from the others, because he felt strangely calm and he knew that couldn't be right, so he thought it might be best to avoid unnecessary conversation and just stick to drowning. The bartender said with good-natured cheer, "Been a stressful day, Terry?" because he didn't know that he hated being called Terry.
"Something like that," Terrence muttered.
As had happened the night before, his memory stopped after a certain point; he'd had three beers by then and was waiting on a fourth. He didn't remember the fourth beer, or what happened after that, and consequently when he woke up in jail, he hadn't the faintest idea how he'd gotten there.
He was alone in the cell, no one in sight, and he suffered no hangover and felt only a mild aching in his hands and face. Some strange languorous peace filled him, an eerie sense of being well-rested and fulfilled. It was better than sex, better than the remembered bliss of drugs, much better than beer.
But he was in jail for some reason. When he stood up, he noticed that on the other side of the bars waited the giant man who had been in his bedroom the other night.
"What happened to me?" he whispered. "Why am I in here? I'm so confused."
"You killed a man last night, Jared," said the stranger seriously.
Serenity fled him, sinking into the pit of his stomach and leaving him cold and hollow without it. "What--" There was never any question in his mind that the other man could be lying. He flew for the dull mirror in the wall above the little sink, to confirm that he was in fact Terrence and hadn't turned into someone else overnight, someone who had killed a man but Terrence was innocent.
He looked the same as he had always looked, only different. His skin was clean and healthy, his hair more lustrous than he could ever remember it being, like he'd featured in a shampoo commercial during the period he couldn't remember. For some reason he'd expected his eyes to be some color other than gray -- at least to be blood-shot out of respect for the nervous wreck he was fast becoming, the madman he suspected he might be -- but they were clear, the color of clouds that did not break.
Terrence turned back to the stranger, and demanded, "What have you done to me?"
"Nothing." The big man shrugged. "My visit to you the other night may have hurried things along, but this was inevitable."
"Inevitable?"
"Well, this or your suicide." In one step the man loomed against the bars. "You surprised me a great deal. I didn't think you had enough spirit left in you to kill a man. But you were like vengeance! Anyone who got between you and your prey was knocked aside; you never faltered!" He chuckled. "And here was me, thinking you all but broken. This way will be better for you in the long run."
There were images behind his eyes: broken glass and a man on the floor, shattering under a thousand pieces beneath his fists. Terrence looked down at his hands, saw his knuckles all scratched and bruised. He moaned a moment, unable to help himself. "How can you be admiring me for murdering someone?"
"The death? You're worried about that. Well, don't be." A humorless grin spread across the big man's thin lips. "The man you killed was named Federico Binardi. When he was a child he strangled a cat to see how it would die. He was thirty-seven years old and was on his second wife; he beat the first one when she talked back, and the second one when it pleased him. He was responsible for addicting sixty-six school-age children on crack, and if you need to know how many of them will eventually die on the road he directed them down, I can get that information for you as long as you promise not to try to help any of them. He happened to be in the bar that night, and although you may never remember the circumstances that led up to his death, he was going to hit a waitress for bringing another man a drink before him."
Paralyzing panic faded during the recitation, until Terrence was hollow again, safe. "...How do you know all this...?"
The last thing he expected was for the giant to shrug again, and admit, "I did some research while you were sleeping."
"But... Okay. So--" He grasped for straws, something rational to say, some way to keep this conversation from becoming completely contrary to everything he understood. "Even if that man was a bastard, there's no way to know that I won't do it again, and that next time it won't be an innocent--"
"It won't happen, and it won't be. Oh, no, Jared." The other man laughed suddenly. "I think you would find that even if you tried, you couldn't kill an innocent. I thought--" Then sharp blue eyes focused on him critically, in a lightning-quick change of mood. "Well, perhaps I've been taking too much for granted. Perhaps knowing who I am would help you understand somewhat."
Terrence looked up.
It seemed as if he could feel the crisp, cool breeze on his skin, sliding over his arms and across his cheeks, stirring his hair. He could see it swirling the edges of the other man's trenchcoat, and the glint of silver underneath.
"I am one called Matarael," said the giant. "I'm an angel of God, and I'm here to give you life, Jared."
For the first time, the name sat well on his shoulders -- it seemed to fit him in that moment. It was Terrence's skin that didn't fit. He found himself asking, "If you really are an angel... How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
Matarael raised his eyebrows at the question, as if to say, that's the best you can do. He answered dryly, "First of all, the proper question is on the point of a needle. That makes a lot more sense. Secondly, there are many ways I could answer. I could take the pretentious mystical route and tell you that this entire planet is little more than a needle in the eye of God, or I could take the dense asshole route and tell you that first you would need to find them all very thick-soled shoes. But the real answer to that question is that it's the wrong question. Better to ask, 'How many angels would dance on the point of a needle?'"
Then there was silence for a moment. "So... how many angels would dance on the point of a needle?"
"No more than forty, ever, in any given temporal place at any given temporal time," the huge man said frankly. "Michael's word. With a minimum of ten warriors, flaming swords and all, stationed around the perimeter. It's a matter of security, you see. It'd be a fine thing if the entire population of Heaven were dancing around on a needle point and a demon or a reasonably-sized dog wandered up and accidentally stepped on all of us. Frankly, you probably won't find more than forty angels willing to dance on the point of a needle for your entertainment anyway."
For some reason, that answer made Terrence feel infinitely better. "What am I?" he asked, because it seemed the next logical question.
The angel said, almost gently, "Not human."
He thought about that for a long while, shaking. The thing that was coiling within him seemed to soothe at the words, bringing back the ultimate restfulness, but it was almost more than he could handle. He remembered shouting at Harold in the cubicle across from him, remembered the listlessness of sitting at a table with a snake around his neck, remembered slamming his fists into a stranger's face and torso (bones fragile like eggs beneath him), remembered the bliss of waking after he'd killed a man.
"I must be a monster," he murmured.
"You are a beast," Matarael agreed. "A sacred beast. Born in the shape of a human, meant to ascend beyond, to a higher level. Your life as Terrence is over; it was never meant to last anyway. There was no woman who could have loved Terrence. No job could have inspired him. Unfulfillment would have forced you to kill yourself if your will had been broken, and not breaking brought you here, which is almost as bad. Jared--"
His arm lashed out, a huge ham fist closing around the bars between them. His face was stark and urgent. "You will never escape from this charge. If you go before a jury you will be condemned for life. There are a large number of forces in the universe that would give a lot to see that a sacred beast be given mortal leash. It is in the nature of things to destroy that which is greater. That is why I must ask you one last time to allow me to give you life. Terrence and all that he is must be left behind. You will never answer to that name again, you will never see the people who know that name again, and you will enter a world such as you cannot imagine. It will be violent, and it will be painful, but you will know peace that this world could never have given you.
"You must allow yourself to be reborn as Jared."
There was no reluctance in him to agree, he realized as he thought about it. Nothing held him back, no attachments made him hesitate. Sacrificing his life would mean nothing to him. That, more than anything else, was why he waited.
He paced around the cell as if it meant something to him, studying the thin sallow cot, the unsanitary corner for hygiene, the unbroken floors and tiny heavily-reinforced windows. Sterile and dead. Perhaps it did mean something to him.
"Okay," he said, and it was that easy.
The angel opened the door to the cell as naturally as if it had never been locked in the first place, and they walked out together.
"Heaven's got some terrific benefits packages, too," Matarael was saying. "You wouldn't believe the health care plan, and you'll never need to worry about finances again. Got a terrific loan program just in case. Plus you're guaranteed True Love; how's that for family coverage?"
He almost found himself smiling. "Why did you want to call me Jared, anyway?"
"Well, just between you and me, I've had a lot of sacred beast partners, and I can't be bothered to remember all of your human names. It makes things simpler to just call you all Jared..."
They walked into light, and Jared took a deep breath of the fresh, new air.
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