The Complete Zagzagel Diaries (9 page)

Nothing made sense.

“You say you’re a loving God—you are a parent. Can’t you see? Why do you torture us—I mean, why torture your children, so?”

I held my ground, Chloe tucked safely beneath my wings, as an unusually warm and strong gust of wind threatened to blow me over. If I survived to tell the story later, I’d say it was Big Papa’s exasperated sigh. “You’re tired, Zag. Put the child down, and come home,” His voice carried on a clap of thunder.

“No!
I can no longer sit by and watch as you toy with these humans.” Without logic or care or reason, I further wrapped the child safely inside my wings and bowed my head—not in reverence but in an ancient tradition. I felt the first jolt of power pulse through me before realizing what I had begun. Every hair on my body stood on end. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard Papa’s disbelief in the hitch of His breath.

Heat radiated from me, bathing Chloe in a healing cocoon, and I recognized the old lines stated with purpose from my lips as they flowed like honey yet tasted strangely like vinegar. I would not stop. The child would not die...

...and I would pay the price.

With a gasp for air and a cough, Chloe breathed in life; her blood-matted hair stuck to her forehead as her bewildered gaze met with mine. I unfurled my wings, smoothed over her limbs, straightening each in turn, putting the finishing touches on mending bone and marrow along the way. “I don’t want to die,” she said, her cough producing a spot of blood that trickled along her jaw.

“Never on my watch.” I wiped her blood from her skin. Though I smiled, tears clouded my vision as I sealed both our fates with a single word. “Amen.”

I shuddered as Chloe scooted out of my arms and onto the sidewalk. She paused to tie one of her boots before turning to me. “I’ll miss you,” she said.

With those words, I knew it was done. I awaited the sensation, my last breath...stealing one final glimpse of your world.

“Me too,” I said, amazed that I remained on the side of the road, alongside Chloe and full of life.

At once, she grinned. I froze.

“What’s happening?”

Chloe’s smile grew.

I must have appeared perplexed for she grabbed my arm. “I think you’ll like it,” she said, holding me firmly for a second before releasing me.

With her release, I felt myself swept up and away. Helpless, I closed my eyes, ascending not of my will. “You know of my impulsiveness. I could not have stopped myself if I had tried,” I whispered my final plea for mercy as Papa tightened his embrace.

“I know, Zag.” Papa’s voice filled me, surprisingly with warmth. Lightning flashed around me as I was pulled into the Heavens, where the floodgates seemed to have opened and huge drops of rain fell from the skies. “I know.”

Loved

For early evening, the park two blocks west thrummed with life… I think a more accurate way to describe the sounds and sights would be churned, like this unexplainable hollowness in my gut. Devoid. Much like something special had been taken from me. Thinking on it hurt. Literally, my head throbbed with pain the more I tried to remember Big Papa’s face or His words, and I knew we had had them...at least, I thought we had. What I could not recall were the specifics of the outcome of our last confrontation. One minute I had knelt on my knees before Him, the next, I found myself wandering this lonely stretch of road….

Men, the rugged and the whimsical, passed the entrance; I couldn’t help but take them in—their differences and their likes. Some families, picnic gear in tow, headed home. Three punk skateboarders vied for attention on the sloped corner near the stoplight. Not a one of the people I watched seemed truly happy. Of course, nothing new, not with you humans, but it bothered me deep down, and I didn’t understand why. Unlike when I’d found fascination or folly in my past, or, at the very least, something to pass my time, I now realized how much I truly disliked watching you in action.

As far back in my memories as I scrolled, I remember watching over you—some of you from the time you took your first breath, and I held some of your hands all the way to the grave. I was paid to watch, I admit, though, not in any way you might understand. Fulfilling my duties had earned me recognition at Big Papa’s feet. Performing my job well garnered His…well, to put it simply, I was paid in love.

Nothing thrilled me more than knowing I’d receive Papa’s blessing, and yet at the same time, each assignment He handed down made me despise being told what to do, how to do it, when and where, just a little bit more. From that revelation alongside my current actions, I should’ve noticed something was different, but I didn’t, and I continued, even when I found I wasn’t being paid to do so…

Fishnet, black and finely woven, stretched taut on a pair of snow-white legs that went on forever… Now, there was a sight worth emblazoning to memory. Not as if I’d never come across stockings or legs that fine. Nonetheless, something about this woman captivated me.

From the way she leaned half into the open car window to the way she backed away with a jerk and a snap, flipped both her purse and her hair over the same shoulder in the span of a breath, I was hooked. As she stalked my way, I continued to gawk, mouth agape…pleading with my brain and my eyes to turn away, mind my own business. Common sense failed: I couldn’t do it.

She crossed the first intersection…and she didn’t turn. I stepped back into the shadows of the darkened ma & pa breakfast joint and pressed against the wall. Oddly, I froze, arms straight, palms to the bricks on either side of me, as if holding my breath might help. I held the pose, a strange foreboding washing over me, yet with the sudden adrenaline, I’d never felt more alive. Tongue nervously playing with my bottom lip, I peered around the corner—she’d passed the second intersection…two buildings away—I groaned, smacking the back of my head against the wall in my hasty return. With her nearing footfalls, panic consumed me, a feeling I’d never known, and I felt excited and yet so utterly alone all at once. Whatever the reasons for my reactions, I didn’t understand. My heart raced.

She rounded the corner of the building.

Our gazes locked…beguiling amber eyes carried me back to a memory I didn’t want to claim but could not deny.

Bowed at Big Papa’s feet, forehead pressed to His knee, I’d wept. Ages ago, His robes had calmed my rage, absorbed my tears and anguish…and I think, at the time, I cared for Him as much as I felt He cared for me. Somehow, circumstances—or maybe life—had me forget.

“No greater love exists than that which I have for you, Papa.” Try as I might to show my reverence, my words had sounded unconvincing, even to my ears, and I recall bracing myself for the swift action I’d anticipated in His reply.

Papa’s hands caressed the back of my head, however, surprisingly gentle, and His chuckle sounded even more so. “You knew the day would come, Zagzagel,” He’d said, His voice somber.

I did?
Yet, as I concentrated on His words, took them in—probably, for the first time since that era long forgotten—I acknowledged Big Papa was correct.

“I did,” I said, though exactly when I’d come to the realization, I was not sure.

Get out of my head!
My bewilderment hardened with the thought, and I heard a maniacal sort of laugh that didn’t come from the lips of the woman with the amber eyes and fishnet stockings, but came from her, nonetheless. My mind reeled, as I was held to the wall, enthralled by a simple look, unable to move if I’d have wanted…but as she held me in place, I realized I didn’t want to go anywhere.

“There you are!”

The shout pulled me from the world’s most perfect hypnotic lure and from the bricked-in wall to a face familiar yet miles away in my recall. As the young lady appeared to drift over to me, threw a blanket about my shoulders, and secured me inside, I remembered her angelic face.
“Chloe?”
The single word came out on barely a breath.

“Damn it, Zag.” She pulled the blanket tight, pressed the edges into my hands. “You can’t keep wandering off like this until I get you oriented.”

Dressed in white, from her head to her shoes, she looked like an angel—an angel? Had I failed her? “I’m sorry,” I said, attempting to clutch my spinning head, my vision suddenly distorted.

“My God, Zag.” She started leading me, stumbling deeper, into the darkness of an alley.

I looked over my shoulder, but the woman with the fishnet stockings had disappeared.

“One dramatic scene to another…” she continued her mumbling as she dragged me along.

Her words registered finally, and I wondered how many times I’d wandered, and where I’d wandered from or to…and how Chloe was so—so old…?

“What are you talking about?” I no sooner got out the question than my world went black.

…My name is Zagzagel. My Father is all knowing, all caring, omnipotent. He created me, admittedly, because both He and you needed me. I’m sure He wanted me to make him proud. You, on the other hand, asked only for my protection, my service…for me to give a rat’s ass. I sucked at my job, or I wouldn’t be here, but ultimately, I sucked worse at being His son…

Taunting, alluring, the strange woman’s stare returned, boring into my dreams, my past, my conscience, with intent and words that dripped like honey from her lips…
“I told you so,”
she whispered.

I bolted upright, blinking, gasping, clutching my throat. “Where am I?” I croaked out the words to no one, managing on wobbly legs to stand. My head intervened with the more pertinent question—
what’s wrong with me?
—as I fell back to the bed…
to silk sheets?

“Should be a pair of pants that fit in the closet. T-shirts are in the second drawer from the bottom.”

Through my fogged-over brain, I didn’t recognize who called to me from another room until the voice resounded louder and clearer for a second time.

“Just ‘cause you’re out of a job doesn’t mean you’re going to lay around here all day.”

Throat as dry as parchment, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and tried focusing on the womanly silhouette in the doorway.
I’d been asleep?
I’d never slept…hell, I couldn’t recall ever having the need.

“Come on, Rip Van Winkle. No lounging on my watch.”

The proffered cup held inches before my face felt cool to the touch. Condensation clung to the bright red coating, making it slippery as I wrapped my fingers around the drink. With half the water downed and my vision clearer, a taller, mature, more heavenly endowed Chloe came into view. “Chloe…”

She looked upon me with a smile. Cup in hand, with my other arm, I pushed to sit on an extremely cushy mattress. Her mother never would’ve afforded a bed this nice. The realization hit me, alongside a tremendous pain in my gut. “How old are you?”

“Oh, Zag.” An exasperated toss of her arms followed her words and the roll of her eyes. “Of all the questions you could ask.
That’s
what you’re most concerned with?”

Truth awakening alongside me, I stopped partway through a nod.
Was I concerned?
I stared at the hands in my lap—my hands—and noticed a hangnail before noticing I could use a manicure in the worst way.
Did I care?
Did I feel anything for the woman, once my charge, who now stood before me, a warm palm across my forehead?

I’m not sure which frightened me more, the fact that the obligatory concern I once held for her no longer existed inside me, or that I didn’t seem to care it had vanished as if never present.

Between her thumb and two fingers, she held my wrist. “Vitals are good—”

Cold metal touched my back off-center from square between my shoulders; I jumped.

“Would you sit still?”

She stumbled to regain her footing, as I twisted abruptly to look over one shoulder, then the other.
What happened to my—?

“They’re gone.” Simple but effective, she stated the obvious.

I might have panicked had she not.

Apparently, my attitude had made it through the transition unscathed. I, however, no longer had wings…defrocked, like one hated or abandoned…or maybe human…. No point in deciphering semantics, I was officially without employ…and in severe pain! I doubled over, arms wrapped around my middle.

“Not entirely true, Zag.” Ignoring my pain, she shoved me upright. “He doesn’t hate you. Now, quit acting like a child.” Her voice had grown as stern as the look marring her once concerned expression. She slung her stethoscope around her neck. “You’re not quite human, I have to admit. That’s the tricky part.”

As I pondered how her power to read minds seemed to have sharpened over the years, my stomach let out an unholy noise, like some monster from the pits of Hell; the pain clawed at my gut as if trying to break out. I glared, moaning as I rocked back and forth, holding my stomach. Chloe swore she tried to hide her giggle.

“What’s wrong with me?”

“You’re hungry, silly. You’ve been asleep for almost a week.” She took the empty cup from me and set it on the chest of drawers. “Not sure how your body will adjust to actual food, but get dressed, we’re going out.”

Twenty years older, at least.
In a week? I could remember being…awake—the word felt foreign now that I’d actually slept, but I knew at one point I had been awake. I could remember walking the streets and amber eyes that seemed to sear my soul…and at the time, I hadn’t known I was naked.
I shook off the memory. “So, you’re a doctor, now?”