I found Grendel perched over the dying man's feeble and withered frame. He was half watching an episode of Married With Children with his single throbbing eye ball. His astral hand tinkered with the man's heart through his steadily rising and falling chest.
I slumped down in the nearest chair. It happened to be occupied by the man's weeping spouse. She didn't seem to mind us occupying four dimensions at once. She shivered, wiped her tears and begun to sob louder.
"I can't take a break with you, can I? Jesus H. Christ on a stick, man. I leave for what, an hour and you're up to this bullshit?"
I flapped my wings nervously. I shed a couple of feathers that immediately dissolved into a glowing, golden mist.
Grendel simply sat and twisted his fingers around the deep fried gunk that clogged the man's ticker.
His posterior erupted in a magnificently noxious fart that was thankfully contained to the higher reaches of the celestial realm. The dying man knew nothing but a gentle and sweet wind upon his scruffy face.
Somewhere, an angel died. I, however was made of much tougher stuff than to be slain by a demon's partially digested breakfast burrito.
"He is your assignment, Michael."
He spoke, pulling the diseased tissue from around the man's straining head and into nothingness.
His widow stopped sobbing for a moment, her head occupying the space that was reserved for my astral colon.
I snapped my fingers. Somewhere within the man's lungs a vicious and incurable cancer began to devour healthy, smoke free tissue.
"So? I should have the right to go to a movie or something."
Grendel scowled with jagged, ill fitting teeth and plunged his three clawed astral hand into the man's lungs. He grunted as the cancer put up a glorious battle.
"You're the Arch Angel of Death, Rebirth, War and Cotton Candy. You exist in a completely delineated plane of existence. This moment for you is both your job interview and retirement party. You're experiencing the end times and The Almighty kicking my buddies and I from heaven.
You know who's going to win the Superbowl. Every Superbowl until it fades from memory. Why would you want to see a movie?"
He replied, bestowing the ravaged man with the gift of life with a flick of his scaly wrist.
I kicked off my sandals, causing his withered muscles to rot through a mysterious east African pathogen.
I shrugged.
"I like Bill Murray."
Was my only reply.
Grendel lowered a gaping celestial mouth and sucked the poor bastard's flesh clean. It was an agonizing five minutes, but he was left pathogen free.
I snapped my fingers. The man gasped, shat his robe and died. His widow became hysterical and ran out of the room screaming.
"You're an ass."
Grendel said with a scowl.
"Now, now.."
I started, but Wheel of Fortune came on.
Labels: Flash Fiction
