Evil Angel
PG. 03/28/2005.

On the first anniversary of the loss of his sons, Giuseppe is visited in his chambers by a white lady, beautiful and silent in the dark.

It has been a hard long year for him, though he was once well-liked and blessed with good fortune. All his old friends, his allies, his peers, tell him his sons are dead, and in the tomb. Only he has faith. Giuseppe saw his youngest returned to him, three days after Stefan was laid to rest at his brother's side. The servants' fear drove him away into the night, before his father could welcome him home.

The stone has been rolled away. These are the end times, and the dead are rising to new and eternal life. Giuseppe has seen it, and no clever words from evil priests can turn him from the path, now that he has been set upon it. He will soon see the Kingdom of God, and his beloved wife and sons shall be at his side once more. The Lord in his mercy will forgive the boys' sins, in return for their father's devotion.

Oh, but when the Evil Angel comes to him, in a guise so fair as to break his heart, he knows he has one final test to pass, before those happy times.

The loss of the lady Katherine, within days of his sons, is another that weighs heavily on the old man's heart. Only in these final days could such things have happened, could an innocent maiden be torn from the protective arms of her weeping servant and carried off by gypsies into the unknown parts of the world.

The Evil Angel knows the fears that lie within him, and uses them to expert effect. Here is the lady Katherine as she must be now, gaunt and hungry in naught but a tattered shift, her young smooth flesh white and cold as frost. Yet the guise does not fool him, for the Angel glows with the light of the morning star.

It freezes him with fear.

"I will take you to my heart," it says to him, "as I did the faithless, fair sons of your house." Its hands are touching his thighs through the coverlet. The Angel's eyes are pale as death, but when he looks in them he sees the very fires of Hell, and is consumed with infernal, frozen, fire.

So quickly, and already the Psalms escape him. He cannot recall even the Lord's Prayer, nor a single Novena, nor the Ave Maria. As the Evil Angel's hair unfurls around him like wings, and its head lowers over his face, he claws desperately at those cold, cold arms, using all his force to reject what they offer. "Get thee behind me, Satan!"

Yet, though the creature flinches at his whispers and his nails dig deep into its unyeilding flesh, he is smothered by its body, and talons pierce the skin of his throat.

He struggles, making up his own prayers, and the solid world falters and melts around him.

The Evil Angel's face hovers above Giuseppe, disembodied, lips as red as a fairy-tale's poisonous rose. "Perhaps I shall not share my gift with you, after all," it intones, "for you are bitter where your children were sweet."

The fierce pain returns, but in time, fades. Perhaps that means his trial is over, and Paradise waits for him. Perhaps the foul creature lied, and Damon and Stefan wait for him just on the other side of the Heavenly Gates, holding their mother's hand. Perhaps...

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