"You can't save her Paul. You need to understand this. No matter how much you want it to happen, no matter how hard you try to make it happen, you can't stop it. Clara can't be brought back. This is not what I'm offering you. I'm sorry."
Paul sat on the sofa and leaned forward burying his face in his palms. He breathed through his fingers and then sobbed once...but his tears had dried up long ago. He was spent and raw inside. He curled his hands into fists then rapped his knuckles against his forehead, at first with light taps, then with audible, punishing thumps. He wanted to feel something, anything that would jar the blockage in his skull.
Yet there was nothing.
He opened his eyes and stared into the blackness of his living room. He had spent the last twenty-four hours practically unmoving from his sofa. Night had come and gone and come again. Just outside his front door, he had heard the mailman deliver more cards and letters of condolence that he would never bother to read. He had long before yanked his answering machine from the wall and, even if his cell phone hadn't died, he still wouldn't have checked his voice-mail or inbox.
Across the room on a shelf stood a row of picture frames. They were shrouded in shadow cast by the glow of the light that manged to seep into the room through the drawn curtains. Still, Paul could envision the images of the people in the photographs as plain as the days they were taken. They stared through the bleak darkness and right into his heart. He thought he could even hear them whispering to him. Or maybe it was really just him wishing they could whisper to him, tell him some secret to clear his jumbled mind.
He poured himself another glass of wine, the darkness making the red of the Merlot swirl into the glass like oil. He slugged it back. It wouldn't have mattered if he had sipped it; the liquid still would have tasted sour.
With a weary sigh he fell back against the sofa and lolled his head to the side. On the side table, a clock ticked steadily. Paul squinted at it. 11:50.
Michael would be there in ten minutes.
* * * * *
Twenty-four hours earlier...
Paul never was one to pray to angels. He was more interested in tangible things: the sweet taste of fresh grilled sirloin on his tongue, the thrumming vibration of his car around his body, the tender softness of his lover's inner thigh against his hand. Life was about what he could see and touch.
But now he felt like he was falling forever into an endless void, his arms and hands grasping and flailing in the air, nothing to see, nothing to touch, nothing to hold on to. He felt totally lost in a vacuum as he sat by himself on his sofa in the dark.
"Clara". Paul had no need for angels, yet he said her name like a quiet prayer. Even stranger still was his muted response when his prayer was unexpectedly answered.
"Paul," a voice steady and crisp like the wind through the trees called to him.
Paul looked up with a remarkable calmness unexpected of a man confronted by disembodied voice calling his name. Yet he watched in perplexing silence as strands and puffs of white light appeared in the middle of the room as if seeping through a hole in the darkness. They floated and pulled and tangled in the air before him. He felt warmth from their light. Not like the warmth of a fire, though, more like fingers of electricity dancing on his nerves, seizing him to attention. He knew this wasn't dream, yet he didn't feel anything like fear or panic.
As the light continued to ebb and flow in front of him, an unexpected feeling of acceptance settled into Paul. His lips drifted apart and he forced a breath out, uttering the name, "Michael."
Though he must have across the name hundreds of time during his life, it never had any personal significance to him. Yet when faced with something indescribable, when feeling a hungering need to put a frame around an impossible shape, "Michael" was what came to mind.
The entity didn't take any exception to being christened by Paul but instead said, "I know you're hurting."
Paul swallowed and shuddered.
"I know you miss her."
"Oh God, I miss her so much,"
Paul thought.
"I want to offer you something."
Paul held his breath, a rattling pang of anticipation grinding in his gut.
"I'm giving you the chance to relive a moment with her again."
He didn't care if he was drunk or if he was hallucinating or even if this was just a dream. Paul hung on Michael's every word like it was a rope twisting in a hurricane. He wanted to believe so much. Anxiously he asked, "I can see her again?"
"A moment in your life spent with her," Michael said, his light shifting and curling, "For one hour you can experience it again, be with Clara again."
Clara.
When Michael said her name, it was like a spur against Paul's ribs. He sucked in air with a gasp, covering his mouth. His mind whirled. To be with her again, to touch her, to hold her, to smell and taste her...
Paul suddenly sat up, a thought igniting in his head. With a wild look of realization in his eyes, he leaned forward and said, "I could..."
"You can't save her Paul."
Paul froze. He let the words sink in like an injection of ice water into his veins. "I-I can't..." his lips fluttered, "Why?"
"You can't save her Paul," Michael repeated, "You need to understand this. No matter how much you want it to happen, no matter how hard you try to make it happen, you can't stop it."
Each word felt like a hook pulling at his heart. Paul wanted to scream and yell but he couldn't find the words.
"Clara can't be brought back. This is not what I'm offering you. I'm sorry."
Paul sank back against the sofa. In his heart, he knew that he had accepted what he was being told even before Michael finished. He closed his eyes, defeated.
Michael filled the silence with instruction. "I want you to recall every moment you've spent with Clara."
