Angel

Two, four, six, eight. The lights come on in the eight apartments in the building. The city's daily life slowly begins, the air changes its scent and consistency. It's less and less sticky and cold, but I can still almost feel it clinging to my skin, transmitting its chill so well it reaches the spongy center of my bones.

I pick myself up from the sidewalk with a massive hangover. I can't remember if it's the "peach" or if someone kicked me again.

I open one eye; from a frog's perspective, the sidewalk can seem like an airport. Especially if you can't take a single step. Who am I? To you, just a bum in a vomit-stained jacket. With all your belongings in a single shopping bag. But I am the guardian angel of this lonely city. You wonder if all angels look like bums, or if all bums are angels? Neither. You could risk saying I'm unique among both. I know everything about everyone, understand everything, know the reason for every event. I've seen everything and I can see everything. I live among you, I wait, I observe. I learn. It's even a pleasant pastime, especially reading people's minds. Have you ever wondered what it's like? People actually think about terrible nonsense: what they're going to eat for dinner today, whether they forgot to turn off the gas when they left the house, whether it's raining, whether the sun is shining—nothing groundbreaking. In reality, everyone is the same, or very similar. I just don't understand one thing, yet it's so difficult for them to communicate... If everyone, even for a moment, would put aside their ego and come to the conclusion that they are all the same mind, just duplicated 6 billion times. Ugh, I've gone too far with my philosophy; I've had trouble with it since childhood.

But it'll be alright. Soon I'll be back in warm heaven and feel like God's behind the stove. Hehe, good one, I got that joke right. It's all because I drank a little at

Gabriel's birthday party, so I had to puke through the gates of heaven too. Imagine, Mother Teresa going

to heaven, and then a weld on the golden gate. A bit of bad luck. So I got overtime;

I had to come back down to earth and help 20 people get to heaven. I've already made it 19, one left.

I'm standing at the bus stop. As usual, people are casting contemptuous, slightly intrusive glances my way. Thanks to my ability to read their minds, I know what they're thinking. What a poor man. Why did he fall so flat? Good thing I'm not like him. An inconspicuous old woman stands in the corner, thinking, "What a pig, it's only 9 a.m. and he's already drunk."

I mentally tell her that it's not just yet.

I boarded the tram and immediately felt my blood nicotine levels drop. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anyone to offer me a cigarette. A young woman stood in the corner, looking like a child in shame. Strands of short black hair slightly obscured her cheeks, giving the impression that they were ready to blush at any moment, even for no reason, embarrassing their owner.

I tried to guess her thoughts. But for some reason, it wasn't as easy as usual. I could only see that she was dreaming of something; she looked like an artist contemplating a new work of beauty. I'm sure she never dared to fulfill any of her desires. She probably changed their colors, got lost in the punctuation of expectations, or simply did everything backwards.

"Um, do you have a moth?" I asked, breaking her from her reverie. "

I don't smoke. "

"Um, I didn't ask if you smoke, but if you had a moth?"

I didn't.

Too bad.

Sorry, this is my stop, I have to get off.

That damned exterior always makes everything difficult. People react strangely to those of lower social status. I might not have even followed her off the tram to avoid embarrassing her, but I would have done so if I hadn't finally heard her thoughts.

"I can't get out of this. I'm afraid to go any further; I've long since closed off the possibility of return. I live, I trust, I dream. I create days, weeks, months, trying to stay in them, be myself, feel like I did when I knew so little. I'm getting lost in myself."

The lack of sun that day surprised me. It's usually nicer this time of year. If the weather weren't so eager to wreak havoc on the temperature and sunlight statistics, my wandering after this woman would certainly have been more enjoyable. I felt the averageness creeping out of everything, overwhelming everything with its sticky weight, hiding and smothering my feelings, invading everything I wanted to touch, feel, try. It covered everything in a thin layer, like fresh snow that falls and then melts within 30 minutes. However, mediocrity and colorlessness don't disappear so easily.

The colorful shop windows made everything look even more grotesque. In one window stood an armless woman dressed in a yellow-orange coat; she would have resembled the Venus de Milo if not for the bright colors and garish makeup on her polymer face.

In front of another window sat an elderly man with an accordion, and before him sat his entire fortune, the bottom of a plastic bottle into which some passersby had dropped a few coins, or perhaps he had done it himself to entice them.

I watched her as she walked from store to store, crossing items off her shopping list one by one. People sometimes make lists like this to avoid forgetting something important. I recently met a man who had put a new soul on his shopping list; his old one was wearing out very quickly. Thinking, observing, and feeling everything too intensely was killing her. He thought that if he had a new one, he would carry it in a box on his chest, the kind medieval knights used to carry locks of their ladylove's hair in. He would take care of it. Absolutely.

Finally, she finished shopping and went home. I was standing outside her building, a completely ordinary one made of a large, gray, filthy slab. Watching the evening slowly descend on the tacky housing estate, sipping fruit wine.

I heard her cry in my head, so similar to the cry of a little girl when she learns that Santa Claus doesn't really exist. I saw her emerge from her building dressed in a short skirt, high heels, and a colorful blouse. As I took another sip of wine, she gently wiped a tear away, careful not to smudge her carefully applied makeup. I wanted to approach her and say something, but my homeless, alcoholic appearance prevented me from doing so.

I knew it would be her, the 20th person, and I would help her and myself. We would both go to heaven. She was good and had nothing on her conscience that would prevent her from, you know what.

I followed her all the way to the bus stop, then I approached her without her noticing. We stood there together, me right behind her. One move was enough, all I had to do was grab her and take a step forward. Escape was so simple, it was hard to believe. Laughter, sadness, radiance, scent—everything was supposed to cease to exist, and this grayness and mediocrity would finally cease to emerge from everything I touch...

...we were supposed to stop thinking, only feel pleasure....

...I gripped her tighter and took a step....

..then I heard only a crack and lost consciousness....

..the space above my head seems endless. I'm lying in the middle of a meadow full of unfamiliar flowers that exude an almost mystical scent, a setting reminiscent of a Druid service, I can almost feel the weight of magic in the air, black and white all blending together, swirling around. Where did I come from?... Nothing is simple now. Questions, though thousands of them, remain unanswered. Who am I? I reach into my jeans pocket and pull out documents I can't decipher. Scraps of information struggle through the coils of my neurons, but I'm too confused for random facts—dates and names—to have a chance to form any kind of whole. Only one thought kept running through my mind...why am I alone...suddenly everything vanished.

I woke up again, and everything was dark. The air was so hot I could barely breathe, and all I could hear were people moaning in the distance. Then my cell phone rang. A text message from my boss:

"YOU MORON!!! When I said you were supposed to help people get to heaven, I meant you were supposed to help them become better, not push them in front of a tram. What am I going to do with these twenty poor people now? I don't even have clean sheets for them."

Beautiful, oh fuck, beautiful, now he's telling me that.