The Exhausted Angel
By Mercedes Lawry
The Exhausted Angel put her head in her hands and let out a long, loopy sigh like a string unwinding from a ball. On and on, the sigh. She was stymied by this latest assignment – acting as a guardian to K Jr. who was a troublesome boy, continually getting into scrapes and exasperating everyone around him. She had never applied to be a Guardian Angel, but the pool was dwindling and she’d been recruited with promises of more vacation days and a refresh on her wings. It was one thing to guard a child from stepping into an abyss or sledding into a busy street or choking on an olive pit. It was another to watch over a boy who was sneaking into his neighbor’s basement and cutting himself on sharp implements he was trying to steal, or dragging his cousin’s dog into the woods and tying him to a tree intending to pretend the dog was lost, then getting himself lost, the little dickens, and crying for his mother. In short, K Jr. was a pain in the ass but angels were prohibited from expressing such feelings though they certainly had them now and again. This was a job for the patient and the Exhausted Angel was not that. She did much better lolling about in the clouds, praising the Almighty. She would definitely have been up for delivering a message, say, in a vision to a wannabe saint. But those assignments were few and far between and face it, the Exhausted Angel was a bit past her prime and unlikely to be called for a role requiring that Renaissance look.
The Exhausted Angel thought about appealing for a transfer but word had it there was a multi-decade waiting list. She wasn’t sure if his parents became atheists would K Jr. lose the privilege of having a Guardian Angel and how in the world could she bring that about anyway? Just like a mother with a new baby, the Exhausted Angel had to sleep when her charge slept (and yes, angels did need sleep or rather an ethereal state of rest) for when K Jr. was conscious, he was at risk of sabotaging himself every waking moment. How will he ever learn, the Exhausted Angel asked a colleague, if there are never any consequences? He won’t, came the reply, but once he becomes an adult, we don’t have to care anymore. It didn’t seem like an angelic response but many angels had run out of steam watching the mess humans had made of the world.
The Exhausted Angel looked into trading. Perhaps a young, energetic angel would be up for the challenge of K Jr., and she could acquire someone more docile, perhaps someone addicted to LEGOs. Apparently it had never occurred or even been suggested before but the Almighty said they would take it under advisement. No one knew quite what that meant, but the Exhausted Angel took it as a hopeful sign for hope must be seized when it appears, even a foggy hope. Of course there was the chance that K Jr. would calm down and mature, perhaps become focused on something that would exhaust all his energy, something which in olden days might have been stamp collecting but in the present would undoubtedly include the clicks and beeps of technology. And, the Exhausted Angel realized, with luck, one day robots might replace Guardian Angels altogether, robots who would not grow frustrated and exasperated but would perform their duties in the cold, dispassionate fashion that might assure greater success, allowing rank and file angels to return to their clouds and their lofty chanting of Alleluias.
THE END
Author Bio: Mercedes Lawry has published short fiction in several journals including, Gravel, Cleaver, Garbanzo, Pithead Chapel and Blotterature and was a semi-finalist in The Best Small Fictions 2016 and has two nominations for Best Microfiction 2021. She’s published poetry in journals such as Poetry, Nimrod, & Prairie Schooner and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize seven times. In 2018, she won the WaterSedge Poetry Chapbook contest judged by Molly Peacock. That book, “In the Early Garden With Reason,” is available on Amazon. Additionally, she’s published stories and poems for children. She lives in Seattle.