"Decisions" by Gwenivere Stephan

"Hello, Reverend," she said, looking very forlorn and downcast, ghostly white and almost seeming to glow against the dead-of-night darkness behind her. The man, the Methodist reverend, looked down at her. It was close to midnight, and his doorbell had awoken him. Grumpily, he stepped aside to let her in. As the strange girl stepped over the threshold and into his home, the reverend noticed that her long brown hair was dripping from the rain and that her face was pale as paper. She wasn’t shivering, however, and simply stood looking at him with a strange demeanor.

"Hello," the follower of God finally said, glancing at the clock that hung on the wall. What was so unnerving about her? Perhaps it was her eyes—so large and dark against her marble statue face. He tucked his fingers into the pockets of his robe, feeling his insides shudder.

"I am sorry to disturb you," the young woman replied after another pause full of awkward wondering. She wore a knee-length dark brown coat, which was shedding water in thin streams onto his carpet. She ignored his look of disdain.

"It is all right. What do you need?" the shepherd of people asked.

"I have a question for you, Reverend," she said, putting her thin-fingered hands behind her back and lowering her chin in a shy way.

"I will try to answer to the best of my knowledge. What is so important that you have to wake me in the middle of the night, miss?" he said, gritting his teeth as he spoke. The woman was bothering him, not only because he was tired, but because she was strange, frighteningly so. She could be no older than twenty, certainly, but she spoke with a restrained tone that made her seem older somehow.

"Why does the sun shine so brightly when it sets?"

For a minute he couldn’t fathom why she was asking him such a question. He simply stared at her. She met his gaze evenly, and waited. Finally, he said, "I suppose it has something to do with reflection and light and such."

"And why, Reverend, does the sun rise every morning?"

"Because the Earth rotates," he replied, confidently this time.

"Why doesn’t the sun simply stay set?" the girl's eye seemed to be growing larger, darker, threatening to swallow him as she raised her eyebrows. He couldn’t answer this time, because she continued to talk. "Every day the sun is born again, only to die. Wouldn’t it be more prudent to stay dead, or never to be born at all? For example, if you knew that you could taste a sweet food only once, why would you taste it? You would only be tortured by its memory forevermore. You could go insane wanting that food. Nothing would taste the same ever again."

"Well, I suppose you would taste it for the experience. Better to live on its memory than never to have known it," the aging reverend said, baffled. He was starting to feel very uneasy.

"Exactly," she said and smiled suddenly, a glimmer of humaness on her strange, cold face. "I knew you were a smart man, all around."

"Where are you going with this?" he asked, his tone angry as he glanced again at the clock, then at the door.

"It's something of a methaphor, sir. Can you guess what it means?" the pale girl continued to smile, her teeth very white and, the reverend thought (although he wasn't sure why), dangerous.

"I'm sure I don't know. Is this a prank, young lady?" he could feel his face puckering with annoyance and tried to relax.

"Reverend, I have another question. Why should I follow the rules of the church? Perhaps I don’t think stealing is wrong. I think that I deserve that thing I want so badly, and I shouldn’t have to pay. I think that stealing is right," the young woman said, looking at him boldly.

"Stealing is wrong because everything has a price, of course, and God says so," he replied, feeling suddenly tired.

"Ah. God. What if I don’t believe in God?"

"Then you wouldn’t have come to ME to have your questions answered."

She smiled widely, beaming up at him, "Yes, of course. But that’s not the point, is it? The point is this: why are your rules of right and wrong the most important? Why shouldn’t some people be allowed to think their own way?"

"Because… because my rights and wrongs were given to me by God!" the reverend stared at the dripping little woman, his mouth hanging slightly open. Should he call the police?

"Reverend…" she started, then paused and leaned closer, a dark eyebrow rising on her white face. "Yes, you like it when people call you Reverend, though you are certainly not to be revered. Do the people who call you Reverend realize that you fantasize about murder, that pain arouses you? Do they know that you beat your wife when something doesn't go your way because you enjoy hearing her whimper?"

"What?!" his heart leaped and his stomach clenched when she said it. "Who are you? I am calling the police!"

She was very close to the God-fearer now and was shouting almost as loudly as he was, "Reverend! You realize that your reasonings of right and wrong have caused thousands of murders every year! Because you don’t want others to think differently!" The girl stopped, shaking, and her voice dropped to a soft whisper. "After all, isn’t that what every war is about? Someone thinks someone else is thinking wrongly? Whether it’s about who deserves what land or whether or not a God exists, or which one. Why can’t everyone be allowed to think their own way, Reverend?"

"I don’t know!" the man cried out, his hands before him now, twisting like fighting weasels. "Who are you?"

The little woman smiled again, but her pale features were downcast, her chin titled toward her toes and her lips pressing into a thin line after that brief flash of teeth. For a moment he felt dizzy, then he realized that somehow he had walked to his bedroom—he must have, because they stood there now. She pointed to the bed, his bed, the bed of a God-fearer, of a dark heart. "Open your eyes, Reverend. You and I… neither of us exist. We are simply souls, lingering here a bit longer. You died in your sleep, Reverend. Your wife will awaken to an empty husk tomorrow morning. Do you think she’ll be sad, or relieved?"

"Stop it!" the spirit shouted, tearing his eyes away from the bed. The once-man had seen, for a glimmer of a second, himself, lying there, gray faced, mouth slack, eyes closed tightly against the dark of night. But no, it wasn’t true. It wasn’t!

"Reverend, I am here to take you away. There will be no Golden Gate where Peter waits to send you to your Heaven or to your Hell. You must make the decision yourself. If you truly believe that there is a God who will send you to your Heaven because you believe in him, then you should not be afraid of death," she said. She extended her hand to him. "Come with me, Reverend."

"Angel of Death," he whispered, stepping back. "No. I am not dead! No!"

She shook her head, "I am not an angel. Come Reverend, come with me to your land of milk and honey, yes?"

"No! I will not die!" the once-man cried. He realized tears were running down his face, glittering silver and sparkling unnaturally in the darkness. He ran into the wall, backing away from her. He could not face the dark! He could not! If he did... if he let his eyes drift quietly shut... then the dark-heart might find himself, the revered-one might find truth, the God-fearer might find his God! He could never let that happen!

The deathly pale young woman sighed, stepping back as darkness swirled up to swallow them and a scream caught in the once-man's throat. "I am no angel, Reverend, and you have made your decision. So be it. I only wish you could have answered my questions."