It was open-mic night at a little dump off Western Av. Anybody who wasn’t falling down drunk could get up on stage and do a few minutes. If he thought he was funny.
There were maybe 20 people sitting at the small tables. They weren’t exactly connoisseurs of comedy.
A man in his 30s wearing a suit and tie flashed a bright smile and took the mic off the stand. He held an open notebook. He began reading:
‘I’m thinking of changing my program. Repellent humans have become so proficient at taking life, and so dedicated to it, I’m annoyed. I see my job as something dignified; they see death as ordinary, dumb, and they see killing as a way of gaining attention.’
‘The QUALITY has gone out of it. A man attacks an old lady in a wheelchair. What am I supposed to make of that? Should I restore the old lady to life as, say, a young girl? Should I hack down her attacker and send him to the Underworld of foul rivers and swamps?’
‘I can do things that would surprise you. I can rearrange space and time. For example, if I were really irritated, I could turn back the clock in a region and cancel a war that already occurred. These extraordinary skills are included in my package of tricks, as an afterthought. Just in case. For special crises. But I can access and apply them for “off-label” purposes whenever it suits me.’
‘Suppose I placed a crucial thought inside the skull of the Pope, and the next day he declared a new Inquisition, aimed at corrupt prosecutors who let violent maniacs walk on no bail?’
‘You might ask, “What does this have to do with me?” You just want to stay away from death altogether. You want other forces to handle that. The war in the Ukraine doesn’t really interest you. I could pique your interest. I could insert real-time footage of people in that war dying right in front of your eyes on television. I could show you, live, a thug beating a storeowner to death with a baseball bat.’
‘I’ve died many times. Experiencing it was a perquisite for my job. I’m used to war, of course.’
‘I can’t tell you what you must do. My overall mission orders don’t permit it. But you do have the means to make an impact. People are addicted to screens. They must have them. Laptops, cell phones, tablets. There are many platforms. Why do I have to show you what death looks like? Why can’t you show yourselves and others? Yes, it will take some ingenuity. You’ll be censored at every turn by authorities who claim that DEATH, LIVE, IN REAL TIME, is a terrible thing to watch, violating every standard—while those same authorities PERPETUATE death and killing.’
‘What would have happened, if people had the technological means to show, LIVE, the murderous hordes of Attila in action? Show it to people all over the world. THERE IT IS. Humans—below animals on the food chain.’
‘Well, you do have the means now.’
‘Don’t shrink away from what I’m saying. Don’t reject it. And for God sakes, don’t pretend you don’t understand. I know you do. Everyone understands death. At least the fact of it.’
‘Imagine a trial in which the defendant is charged with having shown death, LIVE, on a screen. He addresses the jury. “I revealed What Is. I took pictures of something that happens every day. You’re asked to send me to jail, while the murderer I put on your screen walks free?” People would watch that trial.’
‘I’m the Angel of Death because I can handle it. Any death, anywhere. Those are my credentials. That’s how I won the job.’
‘Now I’m asking for your help. Yes, I could intercede in startling ways, but then this thing you call civilization might collapse from the shock of experiencing my tricks.’
‘Better it should come from you.’
No one in the club laughed.
The man walked between the tables and out the door.
He stood on the sidewalk and looked around.
A limousine pulled up to the curb. He climbed in the back seat next to a woman.
“How did it go?” she said.
“It was a start,” he said.
PART 2:
Club Z is an upscale joint on Sunset.
The room was packed this night.
The same man in his 30s wearing a suit and tie flashed a bright smile and took the mic.
“Right now I’m an ER doc at the Golden Hospital. I stitch wounds. I dig bullets out of people. Set broken bones. I do surgeries to stop internal bleeding.”
“I’m sure some of you heard that an LA prosecutor had a stroke in the middle of a trial, right in the court room. Well, they brought him to my hospital two nights ago.”
“I didn’t treat him. A few of my colleagues did. After my shift ended, I went into his room. He was in a coma.”
“I sat in a chair and waited to see whether he’d wake up. I wanted to ask him a few questions. Last year I had treated two gunshot victims, and this prosecutor handled the case of the shooter. Under orders from the DA, he reduced charges—and the shooter was eventually sentenced to eight months. I was curious about that case.”
“I also attended a woman six months ago. She was wheeled into the ER. There was a lot of blood. Some guy on the street with a long knife had sliced her up for no apparent reason. This same prosecutor handled that case. The attacker was given eighteen months. The woman almost died. She’s still recovering, at home.”
“The prosecutor has dealt with a number of defendants like this. Reduced charges, short sentences.”
“I sat in his room and read a magazine for a while. I went down to the cafeteria and had a sandwich. When I came back, he was still out. I sat down and waited a few more hours.”
“Around three in the morning, he opened his eyes. I told him he’d been in surgery and was in the ICU now.”
“He looked at me.”
“He said he wanted to die.”
“I asked him why.”
“He didn’t answer.”
“He closed his eyes and didn’t talk after that.”
“He’s still in that room. It’s touch and go.”
Silence in the club.
The man put the mic back on the stand, stepped down off the stage and threaded his way between the tables and out the front door.
He stood on the sidewalk and looked around.
A limo pulled up to the curb. He got in the back seat next to a woman.
“How was it?” she said.
“I moved up a couple of rungs on the ladder,” he said.
“You’re the Angel of Death,” she said. “You can move up whenever you want to.”
“Yeah, I’ve always worked from the top down, but now I’m going from the bottom up. I don’t like the QUALITY OF DEATH these days. It’s getting out of hand.”
PART 3:
The man in the suit with the bright smile was sitting next to a Mr. Toad late night network talk-show host. With a viewing audience of several million people.
HOST: Your rise, I have to say, has been meteoric.
ANGEL: Because I talk about death. Everybody is interested in it.
HOST: Well, not TOO interested.
ANGEL: A lot of people watching us right now want it.
HOST: What?
ANGEL: They want to die.
HOST: OK, I’ll bite. Why?...
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