A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives. -Jackie Robinson

Early morning sun invaded our bedroom through the spaces around the window blinds. I lay, staring at the red numbers on the clock as the minutes of my life passed. I listened to the chatter around me.

She is broken.

She's already failed.

He can do nothing.

He questions The One.

I want more.

They can't be stopped.

They can't go on.

I had no desire to scream and wail at the voices. I just wanted to rest. Leaden weariness pressed me into the mattress. I felt like I was recovering from a near-death experience. I admitted that was close to the truth.

My thoughts drifted along, flotsam and jetsam on the churning tide of the universal consciousness.

I recalled a thousand times when my children had shrugged and said, "I don't care," or "whatever." My mind served up a thousand more instances when I had said the same thing.

I thought of all the times I put my head down and hurried past a beggar. I was in a hurry. The money in my wallet was marked for something else. I felt awkward and uncomfortable in those moments, and didn't want to be bothered by strangers.

An image of my friend, Janet, from high school surfaced. She had been a raging hippie. She was going to travel the world, leaving a trail of positive change in her wake. By the time she was thirty she was six figures in debt with student loans and a mortgage, working at the local grocery store, trying to make ends meet after her husband left her with two children and very little financial support. She screamed at her kids every night and smoked weed all weekend, reminiscing about the good old days and scoffing at her idealistic youth.

I considered the recent election in which the people voted down a proposal that would encourage shoppers to bring their own reusable bags to the store with them in order to avoid excess plastic going into the dump and littering the landscape. Disposable bags were so convenient.

I remembered the pastor from my childhood. A handsome, well-spoken man who knew every member of the congregation. When I had been in Jr. High he took us on a mission trip. We were fixing up houses in a poverty-stricken county. He told us not to speak to the people. "You don't know what those kind of people are like," he said. As I painted a window shutter I'd peered in at them; a family of three looking sad and tired and embarrassed to have a bunch of children in designer clothes working on their home.

Maybe we were a broken people. Maybe the universe was broken. Maybe it had always been that way. If so, wasn't it beyond repair?

The creature had chewed the man's arm the way people chew on chicken legs. My stomach churned. I forced down my gorge.

In my mind's eye the angel, Raziel, shed his body and loomed before me.

You're already falling apart. He chose poorly. Don't you agree, Simone? The hissing tormentor was back.

When nature could no longer be denied, I slid my feet into the ridiculous furry pink slippers Donovan had given me for my last birthday, and left the refuge of my blanket-nest.

Searching for normalcy, I took a cup of coffee out to the porch and sat there, feet up on the rail, and watched the world come to life.

Ike came for morning snuggles and I held him, breathing in deeply of the sweet scent of his fine blonde hair. I held his chubby body a little too tight and insisted that he stay with me a few minutes longer than he really wanted to. Again and again I pressed my lips to his warm head and told him I loved him.

Michael joined me. He didn't speak. I'd told him all I could last night. My words were spent. I just laid my feet in his lap and let him rub the tops of them absently while he sat with me, watching the birds hop through the fresh-cut grass and the squirrels chase one another up and down the tree trunks.

Donovan came outside, rubbing his eyes. "Why is everyone out here?" He asked, taking in the sight of his little brother stacking sticks in the back of his huge toy dump truck.

"We're living in the moment, son. It's spring. Time to come alive. Care to join us?" Michael asked him.

More will join us.

How much longer?

Why are we waiting?

This can't happen.

We'll be destroyed.

It's so dark here.

She's nothing to be concerned with.

The Keeper moves against us.

We cannot win.

We cannot lose.

Our numbers grow.

He will be ours, in time.

The earth-bound grow weary.

I struggled to keep the threads of conversation separate from one another. I took a deep draught of scalding coffee. It burned my throat and made my eyes water. Those things were real. I clung to them.

Donovan rubbed his head and disappeared inside for a moment. He returned having pulled on a pair of jeans that looked like they hadn't been washed in a month with earbuds jammed in his ears. He padded down the steps to Ike and lent a hand to the road construction and clean up. Ike chattered away at him, used to his brother's unresponsiveness when he "had his ears on."

He goes.

Does it matter?

She won't act.

The darkness is growing.

The lost ones are nothing.

She will act.

She will die.

They are no concern of ours.

He will show her all.

It makes no difference.

I took another sip of coffee, keeping my eyes on my oldest son. He was trying to balance the sticks into some sort of tipi that the truck could park in. He frowned deeply and paused every few moments to rub his forehead.

He is already ours.

I'm so hungry.

The darkness grows.

Wrath...

Fire...

The Keeper...

A Prophet comes...

Donovan stood and knocked the structure over, causing Ike to cry out in frustration. He yanked on the cord of his earbuds so that they fell out. "Is someone coming here this morning?"

My heart stuttered. I sat up. "Why would you think that?"

"I just... forget it." He stomped inside, letting the door close too loudly behind him.

Ike jumped up and followed him in.

"I'll go save the little guy from certain destruction," Michael said.

"Wait," I rose as well, and reached out to him.

"You OK?" He asked.

"I think he's right, Michael. I think Raziel is coming."

"So soon? How do you know?"

I didn't answer I just held his gaze.

Michael gave voice to the concern in my heart. "How does Donovan know?"

I swallowed, hard. "Maybe he just asked because Freyja showed up and he must notice that I've been away more than usual."

Michael nodded, but his troubled eyes mirrored my own. "I'll check on them. You go ahead and get dressed."

"I'm sorry," I told him.

"For what?"

For being a crazy woman. For leaving you here to deal with my job while I follow the voices in my head. For relying on you so much to provide strength for our family. For taking our sweet, quiet life for granted for so long. For dragging you in to this drama. I hugged him and relished his embrace and finally said, "Just know that I appreciate you. I love you."

"I love you, too."

I showered, and dressed, and stepped back onto the porch to find the angel sitting on the steps, waiting for me.

"Let us walk together, upon the earth," he said.

"You told Ba'al that's what you've been doing."

He stood. "It is what I do."

"So you keep knowledge and walk?" I asked.

"I observe and record," he answered.

"And sometimes intervene on behalf of mankind."

"Sometimes," he said.

Salvation is a myth.

Not for all.

For us.

There is no point in resisting.

We will be destroyed.

They will be destroyed.

Does any of it matter?

I rubbed my face as though I could scrub the babble away. "I'm struggling."

"You are trying to stand on your own. You must accept your role fully, and allow a Power greater than yours flow through you."

"That power almost killed me last night."

"No," he argued. "You became frightened by the power moving through you and you cast it away. Without that protection, standing in the Glory of Spirit almost killed you."

I snorted. "I don't even know what that means."

"Walk with me, Simone," he insisted.

The part of me that wanted to stay safely tucked away with my family warred with the part of me that reluctantly admitted I wanted to know how this story would end. I sighed and moved to join him, and we walked down the steps together.

"What you witnessed last night, the one who died, he was not a victim, Simone." said. His voice was quiet. It must have been his way of being gentle. "That man went willingly to the slaughter. He, too, was bored. He, too, wanted more. He was unsatisfied, though he had everything he needed. So he filled his days with drugs, and sex, and violence until his family could no longer tolerate it. They put him in a hospital, but he left against all advice and ended up in that place, where he lived each day in a haze thicker than that of the day before. His mind was weak, his spirit was broken, and those you saw convinced him that they were gods. They told him they would grant his spirit release if he gave himself to them."

We turned at the end of the street, toward the downtown area.

"We are bound by time, here. Our enemy is swift and merciless."

I understood he didn't mean any of the creatures we'd seen the night before. "Who is the enemy, Raziel?" I asked. "Is that, like, Satan?"

"Satan is..." It was his chance to sigh, loudly. "I am... There is too much to explain. I cannot give you the whole picture. It would take an age to tell. No. I do not mean Satan. For now, suffice it to say that it is the being, Acedia, who is leading the movement against man. If he is moving at the behest of another it is a deeply shrouded secret for, not even at the Right Hand of That Which Is have I heard news of it."

"Acedia." I thought for a moment. "Apathy?"

He raised an eyebrow.

"What? I remember my Latin lessons. A little. A very little."

We were passing a yard where a little girl with pigtails was playing in a sandbox near the front porch. Her eyes lit up with wonder at the sight of Raziel. He bowed slightly, and she grinned widely in response. "Children have eyes to see Light." He said.

It seemed logical to me. Children were pure and untainted by the skepticism that so often motivated the daily decisions of adulthood. It was no wonder to me that a child would sense Raziel to be something extraordinary.

He returned to the thread of the conversation. "Acedia feeds on the passion of men until theyhave no will beyond the pleasure of the moment. You have seen him move in your lifetime. You have been remembering his victims all day."

"You listen to my thoughts?"

He showed no remorse. "Your thoughts scream out to be heard."

I shuddered to think not even my thoughts were private.

"I have answered your thoughts in the past," he said.

We paused at a stop sign to let an old lady in an enormous white Cadillac move through the intersection. Raziel told me, "She is on her way to the physician. She had a stroke some time ago, and she can't use her left hand or see properly. Her driver's license was revoked, but she has no one to call for a ride."

"No one?"

I thought of Michael's mother. Of our parents, she was the only one still alive. She lived in Arizona with her sister. Would she be so desperate? She'd always been so healthy and active that we'd never thought about it.

"As far as she was concerned, she had no one to call," he said, and then went on. "Acedia does not possess men, as some seek to do. He moves among them, whispering to their spirits that the way of gratification lies in the possession of material wealth and physical pleasure. He feeds on the passion of humans, leaving them no will beyond seeking the satisfaction of the moment."

We sat on a bench in a mini-park between the bank and a dentist's office. Men and women rushed from one place to the next, paying little attention to one another and none at all to the angel and me.

A mist swirled around our feet, despite the bright sun. It distracted me as I tried to focus on Raziel's words.

"People have pursued their pleasure to the point of exhaustion," he said.

"Not all people," I insisted, making a conscious effort not to lift my feet up out of the thickening fog. Something deep within my core recoiled from it.

"Too many people, Simone. Acedia has experienced great success in his endeavors in this age. "Humans are convinced they are too busy to love their fellows. Acedia robs men of the joy of life, leaving them a mere shadow of what they were created as. Men who lend their ear to him, even for a moment, find themselves restless, unhappy, tired, and unmotivated to even the simplest of actions. Those who become overwhelmed by these feelings suffer affliction of their physical bodies. They have pains your doctors have no treatment for, or even names for. They seek relief in food, and medicine, pleasure, sleep, sex, any way they can get it. When it is no longer bearable to live a life without true meaning they seek relief in death but, even once they have found passage through the veil, many wander without direction."

I was only half listening. A smoky tendril was wrapping itself around my right leg. I couldn't take it anymore. I yanked my feet up onto the bench, angling my body toward Raziel. All around us people carried on, paying no heed at all to the bizarre murk.

"What is that?" I asked.

"They are lost souls, neither alive nor dead. They are without purpose."

"Ghosts?" I asked, horrified.

"Yes. That is a good word for the lost ones. They have rejected life as men and do not accept that which is on the other side. They care nothing for what is, and seek always what could be and, in doing so, they fail to truly exist at all, in any realm."

My legs twitched with wanting to run away from this abomination, but there was nowhere to go. The gloom extended to every corner. My breath came faster as I neared panic, and then Raziel's energy began to increase. Just as he'd become less at the park during our first encounter, so now he became more. The ephemeral spirits were forced away from us as metal shavings would be forced from a negatively charged magnet.

Untouched, now, by the lost ones, I began to calm a bit, and Raziel drew back once more. He went on as though nothing had happened.

"Acedia is one of the craftiest of enticers. He uses the great gifts that have been bestowed upon man; food, sex, comfort, rest, joy, to tear him apart. Acedia will whisper in a man's ear that he must eat until he is never hungry, rest at every moment of weariness, experience pleasure to the exclusion of pain. The result is exhaustion and an upsetting of the balance. How can one enjoy food if they are not hungry? How can one enjoy sex when they don't know longing?

"Man was created and put into this marvelous world, situated in the Great Scheme with precision. They were given every good thing they needed. They went on to create marvels of their own, finding ways to explore far beyond the boundaries of their physical limitations. Look all around you! Natural wonders: trees, and waterfalls, and mountains, and new wonders that man himself created: sky scrapers, and computers, automobiles, and beautiful works of art. Wonder upon wonder! Yet, for all that, man, influenced by Acedia, is not satisfied. He cares about nothing beyond himself."

Ae powerful need to defend my race enflamed me. "That's just not true. People do care. There are a lot of good people in the world. You can't judge us all by a few jerks."

"Some care," he conceded. "Some work for noble causes for the sole reason that they want to give the appearance of caring. Regardless, Acedia feels That Which Is has given far too much to men. He feels it is his right, therefore, maybe even his destiny, to take from them their pleasure for his own. And so he has moved among men, feeding on them, for millennia. He has destroyed countless many. This age has been a feast for him the likes of which he has not seen since the days before the coming of That Which Is in the form of Man. The Realms are filled with the energies of those who have cast aside matter in search of release from Acedia's poison. Yet Acedia, like those he influences, remains unsatisfied. The spark of That Which Is, in men, is a constant aggravation to him. Look."

He held out a hand to me. Acknowledging to myself that I'd already committed myself to this path, I put my shaking hand in his. In a flash, we stood on top of a tall building in a busy city. The place was unknown to me. It could have been anywhere in the world: an architectural mountain-scape of buildings, bridges, and monuments slashed with a thousand roads as busy as ant trails, illuminated by the dazzling sunshine. The sudden change to this from the ordered bustle of a small Midwestern town was dizzying. It took me a moment to re-establish my equilibrium.

"See with my eyes, Simone," he said.

I saw a familiar enough scene. It was a modern city with millions of residents. Scores upon scores of well-dressed, well-fed, healthy-looking people rushed about. Each individual was absorbed in the pursuit of those things they felt were so vitally, crucially important: getting to work on time, making it to the next meeting, picking up a child from school, buying food or clothing, or any other number of daily tasks. In the shadows were the broken ones; those who were no longer part of the rushing millions. They were homeless, hopeless, hungry, addicted, abused, uneducated, unloved, and sick. No one saw them. People walked past them, stepped over them, went out of their way to avoid them.

A young couple emerged from one of the buildings. They glowed with their youth, their love, and their passion. They moved together, and around one another, in the way unique to new lovers who cannot get their fill of each other. In their arms, they carried covered baskets, and they walked through the crowds, intentionally seeking the shadow-dwellers. Before long, an old man was handed a sandwich from one of the baskets. The young woman kissed him on the cheek. The pale, listless rays of color swirling aimlessly around him burst into bloom, and spread forth into the crowds. A woman on her way to a hair appointment seemed especially affected as the rainbow of emotion wrapped around her, sank into her very pores, and began to reflect out again, changed and deepened by her own bright aura.