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| Adam was doing one of the few things he had come to enjoy since he had been sentenced to twenty years on Earth. Riding along the coast on his Harley Fat Boy, he felt as if he were flying, a skill he had lost when he was convicted and sent here to live among men. As an angel of God, he had once known the unending and complete joys of Heaven. As he rode along the strip of Key West coastal road, with the sun on his back and the wind in his face, he reflected on his current situation, and how he had come to be in this place.
He remembered the night, almost eighteen years ago, as if it were yesterday. He had grown particularly attached to the woman he had been assigned to watch over. Perhaps it was the fact that she was alone in the world, never having married. Maybe it was the fact that he felt as if they had almost become one entity, while every day he felt every pain and shed every tear that she shed. Her name was Doty Branscombe, and he had come to think of himself as her husband, of sorts. He had protected her while she slept, when the demons would come to torment her mind. He watched as on one particularly bad day she had stood on the bridge overlooking a deep gorge, and he had known what she was thinking--she wanted it over, wanted to end it all right there. He was ready to fly off the bridge after her, if necessary, just to keep her from destroying herself. While he never thought of his service to his Lord, or his protection of Doty, as anything but his greatest joy and purpose, it soon began to take a toll on his own emotional stability. This distress that Adam had been wrestling with finally exploded on the night which Adam currently pondered. Doty's home had been broken into by a man who had stalked her and made threatening phone calls to her for months. When he gained access to her home, Doty had come down the stairs to investigate the noise. She was immediately struck dumb with terror. The man was in an obvious lunatic rage; he screamed at Doty, breathing out murderous threats and curses. Adam remembered the delicious adrenaline surge and the accompanying rage that he himself had felt. It went unspeakably bad at that point. Adam surmised that he may never stop replaying those next few moments in which he had done the unthinkable. If he had it to do over again, he would not give in to the rush of adrenaline and the numbing rage that had overpowered him. All he could remember from that point on was the man lying in a puddle of gore on Doty's living room floor, and himself brandishing his sword. Doty had retreated to a corner of the room, curled up into a pathetic ball. This was the incident that caused Adam to be banished from Heaven for no less than twenty years. He missed Heaven terribly; even worse, his heart had not yet stopped breaking for the life that he had taken, and for Doty's life, which would never be the same. Worst of all, he missed the fellowship he had shared with Jesus, his Lord. He had been promised a full return to his former angelic status when he had completed his sentence; still, the separation from his God was almost unbearable. For now, Adam would make his way on Earth by selling life insurance for the Providential Insurance Company. The few freinds he had, like Lolita Gloriana Smith and Keilee Uhns were able to keep his mind off of his terrible past. Most importantly, they didn't even know about his past, nor did they realize that he was an angel. |