Wrath Of God

Chapter 16: 'The beginning....'

As I drove I noticed the world around me. It was something that had become a habit over the years. I would look at people and I would imagine their lives, their fears and their aspirations. I remembered one of the first families I studied.

It was back when I was a waiter at luigi's, before I was Za'aphiel. I wonder what they were up to now? Was the husband still drinking his sorrows away and being abused by his uptight wife? Or had she had enough of his laziness and lack of ambition and moved on to a different victim? Was the daughter running for class president and having sleepless nights due to the stress of continually living up to her mother's expectations?

I saw the same thing everywhere I looked, families that appeared happy and together but on closer inspection were far from the perfect family. I passed a woman struggling to get her son into her car. She looked young, probably a teenage mother who didn't plan on being a mother and therefore had no idea how to raise a kid.

Further down the road I saw a man shouting at another man and pointing to the woman at his side. It seemed nobody had the perfect happy life. Everyone has problems.

People cheat and lie and betray those they love. People manipulate others into getting what they want. It's a world of greed, deception and pain. My trail of thought ended there. I was getting closer.

This was the first time since I was 6 years old that I was going back to the house of my parents. The day I had been taken away from there was the day my drunkard father killed my loving mother. That was the last day in that house, and my last remaining memory of it. My mother's dying screams. The anger in my father's eyes. The blood, the tears and the feeling that was creeping up on me now. Fear. The emotion brought on by another emotion I swore never to feel. Love. I cared for Alison.

She was in this because of me. Would she hate me for this? Love me despite it?

How could she? She would see me for what I am and see that my life of death dealing was not one she wanted to be a part of. No, I needed to stop worrying about her.

. I needed a clear thinking mind. No distractions. All senses on high alert. I am a professional. The best.

I am Za'aphiel. I stopped the car and got out slowly. It was the right address but the house looked very different to how I remembered it. In my mind it always looked more like those dilapidated haunted houses you saw on the television.

The house with the broken windows, unkept lawn and dead trees. The house that people who walked by swore they heard eerie noises coming from. This house was not the house from my nightmares but rather a house from a dream where Alison and I lived happily ever after. It had a white picket fence and lush green grass. The house was painted in soft beige and white tones. There was a swing set in the yard.

That wasn't there when I was a child. If father hadn't killed mother and I still lived here would mother have pushed me on the swing as we both laughed and enjoyed the summer sun. I could have lived a different life, a life of joy, happiness and laughter.

It didn't feel right. This was a house of pain where my father killed my mother and now where a man who wanted me dead held the woman I loved captive. How could a house of so much evil look so deceptively joyous and wonderful?

As I opened the front gate and walked down the pathway to the house I wondered what had become of the family that lived here. Were they killed or abducted and taken somewhere else? What pain did they have to suffer so that the Bishop could put me through this ordeal? As I got to the door it opened and a burly heavyset man stepped in front of me blocking my entrance into the house. I held my hands up to show I had no weapon. The man gestured for me to turn around, he was paid to do and not to speak.