See this previous post for a communication to any who would join me in writing.  For a thought on David Lynch, see this article.  And see this article to read the story from the beginning.  Meanwhile…

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The cardinals returned to the throne room behind the hushed and disturbed whispers of a hundred papal guards.  A medical scientist sat over the pontiff’s corpse, brushing his face with light strokes of the hand, lost in a little song – mind broken.  An angel had assumed the throne, and taken the Mandate of Heaven.  The men were utterly shaken.

Michael had to measure his words carefully.  He had let the medical scientist into the temple to attend the fallen pontiff, but something in his voice or his presence had burned the woman’s mind.  He couldn’t afford to lose the use of valuable intermediaries to mankind.  “Approach me, my cardinals, yet not too close.”

“Yes my lord,” one breathed, eyes bulging.  His brothers followed, not quite as disturbed in aspect, and all knelt in a piteous heap at the further reaches of the room.

“We must all take care in how we speak.  You know by now that I am the angel of your world, and to see that world set right, I have come to restore the Mandate of Heaven.  It belongs on the brow of a man, and to that end, I will entrust its care – ultimately – to one of your number.  But first there are things that must be set in order…”

The chapel was a shambles, cracked and scorched from gun battles and celestial chaos.  The pontiff remained there, hideously dead and attended by a febrile woman.  All of the soldiers were white in the face, wracked with sweaty terror, staring at the ground to avoid losing their own precious minds.  The cardinals cowered like children who had been found guilty of murder.

But at the heart of this horror, a greater one sat in triumph.  The beautiful man with his glossy black hair, well over two meters tall, the wings of a colossal eagle folded awkwardly at the sides of the throne.  His full nudity was that of an Olympian, with birth-moistened skin of rosy marble.  What need did an angel have for a belly button?  For male genitals?  For nipples?  Michael was the manifestation of all that made no sense in scripture.  He claimed to have come to restore the Mandate of Heaven, but that papal crown sat upon his head wreathed in ghostly white flames.  Might he actually destroy it?

“…First, do not call me ‘lord’.  Our only lord is our God.  You shall address me as Pontiff-Regent Michael del Cielo”

“Yes, Pontiff-Regent!,” they cried.

“Most people are quite good and holy, striving to live in grace and light.  Would you not agree?”

“Yes, Pontiff-Regent!”

“But even these good people have forgotten that the Will of God is a living thing, to which all must pay proper respect.  We will teach them, and this begins with finding the ones who struck down your true pontiff – and making them to know.”

“Yes, Pontiff-Regent!”  One cardinal crawled free of the others and flattened himself to the ground, held both hands over his head to avert any possible wrath.  “But forgive us please, oh angel, for matters of violence have become strange to us!  We know not how to find these murderers, to our very great shame!  Please!”

“Rise, good fathers.  Come not near to me now, for I am not yet accustomed to this earthly form, and you may be harmed by it.  But for this one prohibition, do not fear me.”

They looked at each other in hope, still heavily laced with terror, then rose on shaking legs.

Michael continued, “You have the divine science of your forefathers.  Use this above all other methods.  For my part, I will attempt to find them with my own powers.  Ten thousand years I have not had need of such devices, and so much as using my voice can do you grievous harm in my present state.  This is to say, I will help you find them.  I will help you punish them.  But you should take your dead and your living from this temple, before I begin.”

He stood up and everybody quailed away instinctively – even the babbling doctor.  His nudity shone magnificently, but the power inside him was too terrible to admit any possibility of lust.  Then the mortals set themselves in motion, knowing again the living Will of God.

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