Heaven or Hell

Prologue

If you’ve been through high school, you know that just one word describes it: Hell.

If you’re still in high school, you have my sympathy because it is truly a cauldron of lust and depravity, a pit of small but cruel injustices.

But remember … it isn’t forever. It’s just Hell while you’re there.

And I speak from personal experience, which is undeniably odd, because…

I am an angel.

Strange but true.

Even though I don’t have my wings anymore, I still think of myself as one of the celestial Host. You know, created by God at the same time as He designed Heaven and Earth. We’re mentioned in Genesis, which is right at the beginning of the Bible, in case you’ve never managed to read it the whole way through: Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished.

That’s me.

Was me.

Is me.

To be honest, I’m not completely sure anymore.

I never used to have much of an opinion on humanity beyond them needing guidance eternally; I simply wasn’t created that way. As Nuriel of the Second Heaven, I commanded a myriad of angels fashioned from fire and water, and my very name means fire of the Lord; I flew like an eagle, and brought forth the hailstorms.

But no more.

I’ve learned a lot. Too much, in some ways.

Although, I’m flunking math.

Until recently, I only had one thing in common with humans: Free Will.

Ah, yes, that old problem: that worm in the apple, that serpent in the garden.

I never thought I’d be one of those fallen angels. Oh, don’t worry; I’m not one of the fallen angels and I wasn’t sent to Hell … although there was a time when I thought that Hell would be preferable to where My Father chose to send me.

But this isn’t a story about how I fell to Earth; it’s about what happened when I got here.

So, Free Will is where this story starts.

Once upon a time…

No, let me start again.In the beginning, there was an angel and there was a demon…