Hallowed Be Thy Name

The Do-Gooder

He rolled onto his back in a vain effort to keep the blood from flowing out of his body quite so quickly, and the figure turned upside down in his vision. His nervous system must have overloaded from the initial shock of the knife, so he couldn’t really feel the pain, just the increasing cold throughout his body. Where was the law now? It had forsaken him. No Angel broke from its circle in the sky to come for him either.

The figure opened its mouth to speak again, but its attention was suddenly drawn by something out of Stacks’ vision. Fear entered the wildness of its eyes, and it thumped its chest twice with its injured hand and held its fist above its head. “I am a loyal servant of God,” it said, before turning on its heel and running away.

Stacks waited to see what had prompted its departure. Waiting was all that he could do now. He wasn’t sure that he would mourn the loss of his life; there was nothing much to mourn apart from the few private pleasures that got him through each day.

A shadow fell across him, taking away the glare of the street light directly above him, and he looked to its source: a silhouette with no features against the stolen glare. The silhouette raised a shaking hand to its unseen face and rubbed its shadowed features thoughtfully.

“Officer Stacks,” said an old man’s voice. “I hope that you can appreciate the irony of spending weeks looking for me, only to end in me finding you, fallen victim to the conditions of life that you work so hard to maintain.”

“So be it,” replied Stacks. Speaking was difficult; he didn’t seem to have enough air in his lungs for more than a couple of words, and the pain came alive when he tried.

“Do you know how it used to be?”

“I have often wondered. A Godless time.”

“And was that such a bad thing? Is this worth the misery that it takes to preserve it?”

“I’ve lived a worthy life. I shall not be corrupted on my death bed.”

“To be corrupted: to be brought from right to wrong, but which is right and which is wrong Officer Stacks? Do you presume the arrogance to know?”

“The will of God.”

“You only say that because it is what he has taught you.”

“He can destroy us if we disobey.”

“If he destroyed the world then he would be completely redundant, as he would be if you were all truly happy. There would be no need for him to exist.”

“I am deserving of God,” he sobbed, his grip on the world slipping.

“Indeed you are Officer, I don’t disagree with you on that count.”

“I serve God,” he said triumphantly and finally, his thoughts fogging with the effort.

“You serve the Lord, true, but you have no place for him in your life. You are shacked up with the Devil, Officer Stacks, while serving the opposition. You have no true place with either. It’s all meaningless anyway; humans are just the rope in a tug of war between the damned and the divine.”

Stacks’ life and his faith crumbled as the meaning and sense of his comfortable life fell apart. Death’s proximity dissolved any denial or resolve that his life had given him. Suddenly he didn’t understand anything any more, but it was too late to learn afresh. His cheeks were wet again, and his eyes stung as tears leaked from them – a lifetime of tears as yet UN-cried – and the world blurred.

The old man crouched down beside him, and the light fell on his wrinkled face for the first time. He mopped Stacks’ tears away with a white piece of cloth that smelled like a summer’s day in the countryside, and Stacks saw the kindly face of an old man smiling down at him.

“Don’t look so surprised. What did you expect? The Devil himself?” The old man said. “I suppose I may have a touch of the demon in me, to do what I do,” he chuckled as an afterthought.

Above them an Angel dropped from its circle, and headed down to earth. Sobs racked Stacks again, and his belly ignited in pain.

“I could save you tonight Officer Stacks, but I’m not going to. There are others that need my skills, others more deserving than you I’m afraid. The world would be a better place without you anyway,” the old man continued with the same kindly smile on his face. His hands shook as they mopped the filth and tears from Stacks’ face. “You die tonight for the Devil’s plan, in the arms of an angel; torn in death as you were in life.”

With that he stood, and was gone. An Angel quickly replaced him, stepping delicately out of the sky. It knelt and took his head in its arms and stroked his brow. It didn’t speak but to mutter prayers to God in the highest. Stacks moved his lips in the rhythm of the prayer that the Angel spoke, but he wasn’t sure if they were actually words that he mouthed, he wasn’t sure of anything any more; he wasn’t even sure that he ever had been.