Project 19: Angel of Mercy

For every prayer that passes mortal lips, a phone rings.  Every silent supplication uttered under the breath or in the heart is connected directly to the holy halls beyond the pearly gates of Paradise.  Every plea on bended knee is recorded and acted upon by the angels assigned to guard over their mortal kin below.  And every working day, between the hours of eight and five o'clock, it falls to Angelo, archangel in training, to screen the calls of Heaven.

Angelo follows the rules regarding the manner by which he is to compose himself to the letter and budges not one tittle beyond towards the spirit those rules are meant to preserve.  Like his peers, he is clothed in the white robe and halo customary of all angels.  His robes, however, are spotted with crumbs and stains, and his halo has gone brassy from lack of polish.  Angelo scratches often under his chin, irritated by the stubble he has allowed to grow there, but he remains completely ignorant or uncaring regarding the cause of the itch  His eyes are baggy and sunken from late hours spent staring longingly at the lights of the Vegas strip from his celestial balcony. Angelo arrives this morning to work - as he does most mornings - possessed of the most unusual temper ever seen in a heavenly minister.  He dons the earpiece, lets out a sound that is as much a growl as it is a sigh, and prepares to receive the first prayer of the day.

"God, are you there?  It's Matilda."

"Mattie!" Angelo cries with no enthusiasm.  "What's shakin', honey?"  The angel spoke into a receiver that, millenia ago, would have transmitted his voice back to the supplicant on Earth.  Now that the air had been so crowded by talk radio broadcasts and other pollutants, Angelo had no fear that his voice would be heard.

He listens disinterestedly to Matilda's plea.  "My son is sick," Matilda said.  "I know it's just a cold and I shouldn't worry, but I'm scared for him.  Please help him to feel better."

"Sure," Angelo says.  "We've got plenty of time for that."  Matilda continues with her prayers.  Angelo has already diverted his attention to the half-filled cup of soda he left at his desk the day before.

It was the same thing he heard every day.  "Please protect my family."  "Bless the poor and the sick."  "Let Schwartzman make this one field goal."  After the first thousand years of the same routine, Angelo wondered if he should have kept a tally of the different requests he received.  He kept it up for only about a hundred years, although to this day he still tracks the incoming prayers of profane motorists and construction laborers who accidentally dialed into the celestial hotline through their inadvertently vain use of the name of The Lord.

Matilda disconnects, satisfied that somewhere, on some cloud, someone had heard her.  Angelo sips his soda and belches loudly.

"Keep it down over there," a voice shouts from an adjacent cubicle.

Angelo bares his teeth and throws the now-empty soda cup towards the garbage can.  It sails gracefully through the air and lands just shy of its intended target.  Angelo picks angrily at his teeth; then, satisfied that he can delay no longer, he presses the button on his receiver, ready to take another incoming prayer.

"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name."

"Hey, sorry," Angelo says.  "You have the wrong department.  Form prayers go directly to the machine."

Still the voice drones on.  "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth..."

Angelo presses the button on his receiver again and again.  "No, you're not understanding, I can't take this call."

"Give us this day our daily bread..."

"Hey!" Angelo calls.  "I need a tech guy here ASAP!"

The sound of footsteps in the corridor, and then a portly angel with a disheveled robe and hair frayed like the end of a rope appears in the entryway to Angelo's cubicle.  "Lost connection?" he says, wearily.

Angelo rips his headset off.  "I've got a Lord's Prayer on my line."

"So?  Just record it.  We're a little busy.  Storms have cut off all access to India."

"Listen, Tubs, I've worked here for long enough that I shouldn't have to take down these silly rote prayers anymore.  Been there, done that for about seven hundred and fifty years.  Now, do your job, get this call off my line, and fix the connection.  You have until they say 'Amen.'"

The portly angel sighs and crawls under Angelo's desk.  He plucks at the wires streaming from the headset and mutters to himself.  "Blessed are the meek," he says.  "Blessed are the meek," over and over and over.

Finally, success.  "For thine is the kingdom, and the po-"  The voice in the headset abruptly ceases.

"That should do it," the IT man says, emerging from under the desk.  "You really could have just taken the call, though.  It'd save us all a lot of time."

"It's the principle of the thing," Angelo says, sitting back at his desk.  "You'd think a place like this would be all about principles."

"Yes," the IT man says with a weary glare in his eye that completely escapes Angelo's notice.  "You really would, wouldn't you?"

Another voice calls out at the other end of the work floor, and the portly angel gallops off, kicking his sandaled feet high in the air.  Angelo places the headset back into his ear just as a new call on the line beeps in.

Angelo curses, "Crap!" and plucks the headset back out.  He rubs his ear and looks around guiltily, hoping no one heard him.  Even in Heaven, a swear is not always forgiven.

The coast is clear, for the moment.  Angelo puts the headset on again and prepares to take the next call.  He presses the button and says, for only the hundred-and-eightieth time "Thank you for calling Heaven.  My name is Angelo.  Would you like to try our soup of the day?"

"Our Father, which art in heaven..."

Down slams the headset again.  "I.T.!"

Man, I've been wanting to write this character for a while!

The character of Angelo has been in my head for probably a few years. In fact, I've actually drawn him before. I actually didn't reference the original design at all before drawing this one, so I'm quite surprised how similar the two designs wound up looking.

I plan to continue this story at some point, where we'll take this misanthropic seraph out from the call center and into the real world... but that's a story for much, MUCH later down the road.