Terminal (Terminal trilogy #1)

20: Heavensent

One ride up, and no batted an eye. One ride up and I was on the empty Earth of the present, breathing in the October air. This was the first time in all these years that the month in Heaven and Hell was the same as that on the cycling Earth- because the latter jumped from October to May when the change came, there was usually a gap in seasons.

It was nice to have this level of consistency between realms, even if in two days it'd be another hundred and seventy years before we got back to this point. And god, I'd be alive for all of them.

So would Michael. The despot of the angels. I had a feeling he wouldn't take kindly to me.

Good thing I knew exactly where Heaven was, or I'd have died of mourning. You don't really get how hard it honestly is to wander a wasteland. Especially one you grew up in- the empty cars, the growing plants... I was tempted to wander down into Hornbrook, but I think would've honestly cried.

Up the highway and through the pines, taking deep breaths. I'd never been to Heaven, per se, but I knew enough about things to know what to expect. My first glimpse- a shoddy white wall where no wall should have stood felt like an appropriate introduction. I had to admire Michael's dedication to an aesthetic, building a seven foot brick wall in the middle of a desolate forest, just in case some deer decided to take up arms.

I followed the length of the wall until I could spy an open gate. Guards, but no actual iron fence in the way. This would've been great if I wasn't certain the guard post was a twenty four seven, though utterly pointless, position.

Then again, I guess it was doing a good job at keeping unsavory types like me out.

I'd been spotted a good thirty feet off, and I was surprised to find I had yet to be speared through the head. I approached the sillily dressed guards and gave a polite, angelic salute.

"Hello." I was trying my hand at angelic; I knew the basic idea, but it was hard to formulate complicated sentences. I just hoped one or two words would be enough to clear me through.

The guards were both clearly astonished, but they made no effort to sheathe their weapons. They started quickly chattered- to each other and to me- in angelic, but it was so mixed up and fast that I couldn't get a single word.

Angelic was a fucked up version of latin, basically. I'd studied it in high school, and I'd had plenty of time to learn a few words. But angels had a unique grammar system, complicated slang, and very little regard for the language theirs was related to.

"I am with Percial." It took me a long time to stumble these words out, and while I think the guards got me, neither seemed particularly pleased or impressed. "And Michael." I gave another salute. "I go?"

"No." Ouch, I knew that word.

Speaking of ouch, the next thing I felt was a knife to my neck and a whole lot of pain. Good thing it was over fast.

Death really isn't fun. It's pain, it's aching, it's suffering- you know, that kind of thing. Then this kind of sinking feeling, like the world is quicksand, or your friends just did that trick on you that makes it feel like you're falling through the floor.

Then you're out, in this spasm of dark light, the sort you see if you rub your eyes harder than you should. When I was younger, I thought the dots in my eyes were atoms, and the fuzziness of things meant I had the world's most powerful eyes. Turns out I just needed glasses. Never got them though.

There's a fall, and there's a rise, and then I was back again. Blinking at the sun, usually lying in the grass. I always awoke in the same spot in my old backyard on the cycling Earth, under the oak tree. I'd catch my breath, shake a little, and get up. Sometimes I'd lay there and pretend everything else had been a dream, and that my mother was dead and I was merely thirty-five.