World Changer

His name was Michael. He had no other given name, and that suited him just fine. It fit his image—basic, uncomplicated and tough. Yes, just one word was easier. Michael liked to drink beer and smoke unfiltered Pall Mall's. He cursed, preferred his music loud and his women simple like his name. He was thirty-four, never married and didn't want to be. He knew he was smart—his high school algebra teacher told him he was most likely a genius based on his test scores. Michael, however, wasn't interested in being an intellectual. No, that would only complicate his life. He lived in a one bedroom, rat infested basement apartment in East Hanover, New Jersey where he frequently gambled and had on more than one occasion pulled a knife on his then best friend Reggie. He liked being the bad boy outsider—it made each day easier when dealing with the absurdities both life, and death, had already dealt him. Michael knew he wasn't typical for his kind. Michael, you see, was an angel.

Michael was more than a common outsider. Birthed in a shack near a sea of cornfields, Michael entered the world not fully human. From a tryst between a renegade angel and a homely farm girl of 18, Michael inhaled his first gulp of oxygen, unaware that what lay before him would be both horrific and heroic. His destiny, unwritten thus far, might forever transform the way the universe - and its innumerable sentient entities - perceived good and evil. Michael would, in fact, become a world changer.

"A world Changer", Michael muttered to himself under his breath, "that'll be the fucking day". As he walked down the main street in East Hanover he recalled the first time he heard 'the voice'. He was standing in his faded green boxer shorts, having just lit a cigarette from underneath the stove burner. He reached up to open the shelf without a knob when he heard movement near the barred window. He moved slowly toward the noise—not too concerned, but picking up a frying can from the counter anyway—it was probably a rat. He was far from being Mr. Clean, but he didn't care for them in the kitchen. He stretched his neck forward to see over the furthest edge of the table, and stumbled backward, hitting the left side of his hip on a kitchen chair, letting the frying pan fly and eventually landing hard on his side-the back of his skull knocking into the center of the oven door. "What the Holy Hell was that?" he yelped. Still on the ground, he looked up at the table where a bug [a cricket to be exact], about the size of a grown pigeon slowly crawled, almost sauntering into view. "Hello Michael", it said in a raspy, nasally and unusually sedate voice, "I'm James. We have much to discuss, you and I".