Angels on Overtime Read online

  Angels

  on

  Overtime

  A divine romantic comedy

  Ann Crawford

  © 2018 by Lightscapes Publishing

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13:978-1-948543-25-5

  For permission to quote brief passages, please contact [email protected].

  For

  Marion

  A QUESTION

  There’s a saying that every single blade of grass has an angel bending over it, gently whispering, “Grow! Grow! Grow!”

  If every single blade of grass has that much loving attention, can you imagine what every single human being has?

  You’re about to find out.

  Chapter 1

  Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away—oh, sorry, that’s another story. But it could be this one, too. Could be the beginning of a lot of stories. All stories, really. But actually the galaxy isn’t far, far away, because nothing is far, far away, really…everything is just a thought away. Everything.

  So in this galaxy that isn’t very far away after all is a very large room. Very large. Emphasis on very. And large. Oh, you wouldn’t believe the love and dedication that fills this room! This room spreads on for miles and miles and miles in every direction. You can’t even see its walls. But more about the room itself in a little bit. Right now we’re standing in front of an office. The sign on the office door reads MANAGER, ANGELIC AFFAIRS—which makes no sense at all, really, because everything, everywhere would fall under the category of affairs of angels. And we’d all be managers managing them. But anyway….

  Henry, a plump, balding angel sits behind his large, angelificial desk. Now you might wonder why this angel would choose to be plump and balding and sitting behind a large, angelificial desk when he can choose to be anything, anywhere. Well, what do you think of when you see a plump, balding man? Wasn’t your favorite uncle like that? How about your favorite, old art teacher in that frumpy, navy-blue cardigan with the frayed elbows? And didn’t you just want to throw your arms around him in a big, sloppy bear hug? Well, that’s why Henry chooses to be plump and balding, and why anyone would choose to be plump and balding—because it’s all a choice. All of it, every last bit—it’s a choice. Maybe the choice isn’t made consciously, top-of-mind, but it’s made. Not sure how many big, sloppy bear hugs Henry, your uncle, or that old art teacher actually got, but I’m sure lots of folks thought about it.

  Now as for sitting behind his desk, that’s another choice, because, as you now well know, anyone can be anything, anywhere. But Henry chooses to sit behind his large, angelificial desk to be of high service. And since he is a very organized angel and loves being an Angelic Resources Manager (you know, like the best Human Resources Manager in the best organization you ever worked for?), that’s what he chooses. And he chooses the angelificialness of his angelificial desk to weed out the ones who don’t really mean it. The chaff from the wheat. The angels from the, well, angels. Okay, the less-than-dedicated angels from the highly dedicated angels.

  Henry looks to be about sixty-five—in Earth Time. Sitting in front of him is Brooke. Now Brooke is what you might picture an angel to look like...if an angel could be of Northern European descent, anyway: long, blond hair and big, blue eyes that soak in the worlds around her. She appears to be about twenty-five in Earth Time. But really, she’s as old as the universe. And so are you, by the way. Put in that perspective, you’ve been holding up very well. It’s truly amazing how wonderful everyone looks, considering.

  Do angels have wings? Well, they do if they want to. Brooke and Henry don’t have them, nor do any of the angels in our story here, but many an angel or two have donned a pair of wings for that special occasion or two or eighteen million when they wanted to look especially angelic.

  “Why would you want to do this?” Henry demands of Brooke. “It’s the hardest job in the universe!”

  “It’s all you hear about,” Brooke answers, “all over every single galaxy: Earth, Earth, Earth. I figure if I can’t get in as a human, I could try it this way.”

  “These humans can be as thick as wood. And just as pliable.” Henry looks at her over the top of his bifocals. Angels sometimes wear bifocals when they want to have that professorial look, too, just like humans. “Why don’t you go to Arcturus and just be content with peace, love, and instant manifestation?”

  “This is what I want. More than anything in the entire universe.”

  Henry sighs. “Alright then. Follow me. It’s not like we couldn’t use a willing volunteer down there.” But he smiles to himself, as if at some joke.

  Henry leads Brooke out the door and through a tiny part of that seemingly infinite room. In thousands upon millions upon billions of cubicles, thousands upon millions upon billions of angels sit at their computer desks in groups of three, sometimes four, and sometimes two groups of three or four sitting side by side with numerous monitors in one bigger cubicle. The room has a distinct thrum as it hums with the voices of these thousands upon millions upon billions of angels. If you heard this thrum, you’d realize that, well, you do hear this thrum. All the time. The Earth has this thrum, the galaxies have this thrum, the universe has this thrum, and you have this thrum. The thrum is everywhere, resonating in one universal harmonic.

  At first glance, a first-timer—which would be you—might think that the room’s vibrant radiance comes from the monitors and other external light sources. But a second glance would inform you that the monitors are actually somewhat dim and there are no other light sources. Oh, what love and devotion in billions of angels can do. Just imagine what love and devotion in seven billion—well, we’re getting ahead of ourselves here.

  Henry and Brooke pass two angels conferring over their computer monitors while the third in their triumvirate whispers softly into a microphone.

  “No, no,” one angel says to the other. “You can’t have them meet yet. They’re supposed to have a child that’s going to be the Senator of Tennessee in 2067, and they can’t conceive her until after the accident, which can’t happen for another two years.”

  Brooke looks at Henry in surprise. If she were one of your teenagers, I believe she would be saying, “WTF?”

  Before Henry can say anything, the second angel answers the first: “Okay, let’s send this schlub along. That’ll keep her occupied for a little while.”

  The first angel appears shocked. “Schlub?”

  “Okay, okay,” the second angel replies, somewhat abashed, “a drop of divinity cleverly disguised as a schlub.”

  Brooke again turns to Henry. “They do this while their assignment sleeps?”

  “Right. Their assignment is obviously a late sleeper. Could be a hooker.” And then, to the surprise on her face, “Not to worry, it’s all good. It’s all a divine path.”

  He leads Brooke past a closed office door. RAINDANCERS, the elaborate sign announces.

  “Raindancers?”

  “Oh,” Henry shakes his head, “you’d be amazed at how many humans want to rain on their own parade, keep worrying about nonsense, look at the bad side of anything. Raindancers only perform when asked, but they are in hot demand. You want to be extra busy, sign up for Raindancing.” And to her still-surprised expression, he adds, “It’s all good.”

  Henry and Brooke continue walking and arrive at a bank of elevators. While Henry presses the down button, Brooke notices a very serious angel nearby, closely watching graphs and trends appear on his computer screen. His piercing blue eyes, which peer out from under hooded eyelids, look like they belong in a bird of prey, not in an angel.

  “What’s his gig?”

  Henry puts his fingers to his lips, imploring that she keep her voice down. “Karmic enforcer,” h
e whispers. “A job nobody wants. They have to recruit from the dark side.”

  “Dark side? There’s no such thing!”

  “Tell him that. Anyone in creation can believe anything he or she wants to and create that reality.”

  “But—”

  “And he’s found a lot of people on Earth willing to participate in that reality.”

  “Yuck!”

  Henry leans close to Brooke’s ear. “Don’t tell him this, or the humans who want to participate, but karma can be changed the instant the intent to change it is there.” Henry stops for a moment to consider what he just said. “Actually, no, my mistake—your job is to tell humans that. It’ll save them a lot of time. If they can hear you, that is.”

  Ping! The elevator arrives and they hop aboard. Out of two hundred and fifty buttons with different codes, letters, and numbers, Henry locates E.

  “E for Earth,” he tells her. “But it’s not too late to choose A for Arcturus or S for Sirius.”

  “I’m good with E,” Brooke responds.

  “Just double-checking.” Henry presses the E button and turns to Brooke. “Love and remember. Love and wake up. That’s all these humans have to do. And you’d be amazed how many mountains they put in their own way.”

  The elevator departs from the enormous angelic hall—okay, it’s really part elevator, part rocket ship—and shuttles across the galaxies. Brooke gasps as the beautiful blue orb of Earth appears through the window. “Oh!”

  “Beautiful, isn’t it? One of the finest creations in the universe. And they insist on decimating it, even though they have alternatives.”

  The shape of North America appears in the window, and in just a matter of seconds, California appears to be rushing up to meet them.

  “But they’ll get it,” Henry assures her. “That’s their job—to get it—and they have eternity.”

  “They do?”

  “If not here, somewhere. But it would be a shame to waste this incredible creation. Do what you can about that, okay?”

  “Absolutely.” Brooke gasps again as the Southern California coast is now right beneath them.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah!”

  “What?”

  “Yeah!”

  “What?”

  “YES!”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “You sure you’re sure?”

  “I’m SURE I’m sure!”

  THUD! The elevator lands on E. The elevator door opens and Brooke is too surprised even to gasp. They have landed in a small patch of grass by the 405 Freeway, somewhat near the Los Angeles airport. The trees, leaves, and grass shimmer and radiate with their own internal light. From Brooke and Henry’s vantage point, the veil has been lifted, and bending over every single blade of grass is an angel whispering, “Grow! Grow! Grow! Thank you for being here. You are so loved. You are such a blessing. You are a miracle.”

  As Brooke looks up and down the freeway, she sees more and more areas of grass, and she marvels at the amazingly stunning sight of more and more angels becoming visible to her.

  The freeway is completely clogged. The cars are lit up by the light of the human occupants inside of them. But the exhaust from each car and the smog that hangs over the city seems to move, even dance, in a demonic way.

  “What—what are they doing to themselves? Can’t they see what they’re doing?”

  “It’s just wild how much denial humans can put themselves in. All of some can see, and part of the others can see, but they suppress it. It’ll be part of your job to help all of all of them see.” To Brooke’s confused expression, Henry adds, “You’ll see what I mean, all in good time.”

  He gently takes her by the arm, and they float over the cars. “We landed a little too far east,” he tells her. “We have to cross over the freeway to that neighborhood over there.” The houses he points to are barely visible through the thick smog.

  Brooke becomes aware of something that sounds like a beehive. And the beehive is growing louder and louder. As they glide over the freeway, she peers through the car windows. Inside each vehicle, accompanying but completely unbeknownst to the humans, are three angels—two are sitting beside their human and the third is in the backseat consulting a laptop computer.

  A seriously suntanned man with a seriously bad hairdo shakes his fist out the window of his BMW to the driver that just cut him off.

  “Goddamn son of a bitch! Where in the world did you learn to drive—on a farm?”

  “Actually,” Henry chuckles to Brooke, “the answer to that is yes.”

  They float over the car next to the boorish Beamer driver to find a woman who appears to be very composed—almost as if she’s about to step onto a ballroom dance floor. But inside her head, her thoughts are going a mile a minute.

  “Oh, why didn’t I tell him what I really wanted to say? Why did I say what I said? What was I thinking? Should I call him and tell him what I really wanted to say? Oh, how could I have done that? What should I do?”

  “Ouch!” Brooke winces, although she can’t feel pain. But she feels compassion—that’s her job. “That must hurt!”

  “Oh, yes,” Henry sighs, “it does. Quite a bit. Takes most of ’em a long time to learn that—if they ever do, that is.”

  The beehive, Brooke realizes, is really the cacophony of millions upon millions of thoughts drifting up to her.

  Brooke and Henry float over the next car, where the driver is singing to his dashboard. “I’m too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt!”

  They float over the next car, where the driver is doing the exact same thing. “I’m too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt.”

  Puzzled, Brooke turns to Henry. “That sounded a little different.”

  “He was singing in Japanese. But you can understand everything, everywhere.”

  “Why aren’t their angels talking to them, any of them?” Brooke asks.

  “How in the world could they hear their angels if their minds are so overly overactive?”

  They float over another car and no thoughts float up to them.

  “She must’ve meditated this morning,” Henry answers Brooke’s quizzical look. “And every morning for the past thirty years.”

  Brooke notices the woman has four angels sitting in meditation around her. “So why aren’t her angels talking? They could get through to her.”

  “No need,” Henry replies. “She’s on her right path. They speak to her from time to time just for a touch of guidance and reassurance.”

  One of the angels opens one eye to look at the graphs on her laptop and then returns to her meditation. One of the other angels breaks from his meditation to address the woman: “Thank you for all that you do. You’re such a blessing.” As the woman smiles, the angel returns to his meditating.

  “See?” Henry says to Brooke. “Actually, every single person on Earth has an angel who says that, over and over, when he or she can get through all the noise of the TV, radio, and the human’s own thoughts. But, even then, so few hear it.”

  They float over another car with two people inside and six angels accompanying them. The radio is blaring loudly. The angels have their hands over their ears.

  Brooke notices one lone angel over one lone blade of grass growing through a crack in the concrete by the freeway.

  “Grow! Grow! Grow!” whispers the angel. “You’re a miracle. Thank you for being here. You’re such a blessing to us all.”

  They float over the freeway wall, and Brooke sees an entirely different world as they glide down an attractive, tree-lined street of lovely, little homes with tidy, freshly mowed yards and well-tended gardens. Henry leads her to one particular house with requisite tidy yard along with innumerable angels talking to each blade of grass, each flower, even each leaf on a shrub.

  “When it gets too much,” he tells her, “just fade them. You’re not even seeing all the dimension
s. Even I don’t, when I can avoid it. It’d make you crazy if you did. But if you do want to see other dimensions, just choose. The choice is always there.”

  The angels in the yard fade away as Brooke makes that choice.

  The two voyagers float into the house. A pile of shoes greets them and piles of who-knows-what line the foyer. They float down the hallway and into a large family room off the kitchen. Now if you had just walked into the room, you would see a man playing with his young son and a woman potatoing on the couch to an early-morning quasi-news show. And if you could see like an angel, you would see the three humans and nine other beings in the room—a committee of three angels for each human. And that’s not counting the angels for the plants around the room, who are working even more intensely because their charges haven’t been watered in weeks.

  Jack. Ohhhhh, Jack. He’s the man playing with the little boy. Yikes—you just want to grab him by those tightly hunched shoulders and shake him loose! The only thing tighter than his clenched fists is his jawline. Jack could be very handsome if he weren’t so sad. And even if you weren’t particularly sensitive, and even if it was a rare moment when Jack had a smile on his face, you’d still know he’s sad. You could feel it, even across the room. If you were to take one look at him, you’d probably want to close your eyes so you could reenvision him as a strong, beautiful, powerful man—what he could be, perhaps what his original blueprint depicted about thirty-five years ago.

  “But it’s kind of like someone came along and deflated the balloon of his being,” Brooke says.

  “If someone else actually has that power,” Henry replies. “Which no one does.”

  Three angels surround Jack: Christopher, Sapphire, and Blake. Your quintessential computer geek, Christopher wears glasses over his sharp, black eyes (yes, as you probably already surmised, angels wear glasses, too, when they want to proudly present that intellectual look). His ebony skin contrasts against his red and blond Mohawk—even angelic geeks like to sport that alternative look from time to time. Christopher constantly studies his laptop to watch graphs, analyze trends, make mental notes from the running tick of information gathered from all corners of the universe, and calculate statistics. On occasion, he looks up from his computer, but it has to be quite the occasion—which you know will happen because you certainly wouldn’t be reading a book about a non-occasion. But basically picture an angelic actuarial services analyzer albeit from the very hip part of town, and Christopher’s your guy...well, your angel.