House of the Morning Star, by Maricela Huerta

I shielded my eyes as the brightest burst of color I'd ever seen invaded my eyes. Even with my arm and eyelids in the way, however, my eyes still hurt from the sheer intensity of color.

It was then that it hit me. “Wait. Color? Isn’t Heaven supposed to be white?”

My arm dropped as the pain in my eyes receded and my jaw dropped. This was nothing like I'd imagined Heaven to be, and it had to be Heaven. There was no smell of sulfur, no heat, no screaming or pleading souls.

But these people didn’t quite seem like souls of those who would spend the rest of their lives worshipping God.

Off in the distance, there was a low musical sound and the bright-colored light that had blinded me on the way in.

One of the souls stopped and stared at me. He sighed and rolled his eyes before looking up and yelling, “Hey Gabriel, you messed up again! You dropped him too soon!”

There was a flutter of wings before the man I assumed to be Gabriel dropped loudly in front of me. “Hey there, I'm Gabriel. Sorry about that. Carry too many souls at once and you start getting butter fingers.” He grinned, and there was an air of mischief around him. “Oh well, buckaroo, at least you’re not too late for orientation.” A hand landed on my shoulder and suddenly we were in a mass of people, all of then confused-looking and milling about in a much different manner than those I saw earlier.

The soul turned to me, and it was in the split second that I saw his golden wings fold behind him that I realized he was the angel Gabriel.

“Oh my goodness, you're Gabriel the angel,” I gasped, my eyes feeling like they were going to bug out.

“The one and only.” He bowed mockingly and turned, motioning for me to follow him as he walked away.

“Since technically I was the one to make you late by dropping you, I’ve got to give you the opening spiel. This usually takes a long time, but I’ll see how short I can make it. Let’s see. God decided he was sick of humans, but he knew that someone needed to carry the weight of his position. So when good ol’ Lucifer comes barging in with Chaos, who is the only all-powerful being in the universe besides God, God decides ‘Eh, why not. He can’t exactly make it worse than humans have.' So he gives Lucifer His old coat of jewels that shines when God is praised, and alters it so that it shines when Lucifer is praised. That's that light over there. He also upped his powers a little bit, but not too much since most humans ask for such petty things, even Lucifer wouldn't have to raise a finger. So God did all that, then dragged Chaos off to some far quadrant of some galaxy and they're having a fun, old-fashioned boxing match. I can’t exactly blame Him. For being completely all-powerful, it must have been a bore to watch over humans, so it must be nice to be able to blow off some of that excess energy that’s built up over the millenia He’s ruled.”

I gaped at him. “You mean Lucifer is in charge? But he’s evil!”

Gabriel tsk’ed at me and rolled his eyes, leading me to a line of souls. “Chaos is evil. God is purely good. Everyone and everything else is some sort of a mixture of the two. It causes eternal balance. Also, God didn’t kick Lucifer out; Luci ran away from home like the angsty teenager he was. He came back as an adult with the mind of an angsty teenager, but once Dad sat him down and talked to him, Luci came to his senses and now he's not such a brat anymore. So, really, things are fine. Yeah, Hell still exists, but Lillith runs that circus now, and Lucifer has his work cut out for him here.”

He smiled at me once again and patted my cheek the way one would a child. “It’s okay, kid; you'll get there. Anyways, here you’re going to wait until you get to the front of the line, where they’ll figure out the best way you can praise Lucifer. He’s not bad, and you’ll figure that out soon enough. And try to stop seeing everything through those super-jaded eyes humans have got. It’ll be a lot easier in a few thousand years. 

 “Besides,” he said, shrugging as his wings unfurled once more and he lifted off of the air in a glowing golden light, “in a few more million years, Lucifer will get tired of humans too, and he’ll be begging for God to come back.”