Achaiah needed a vacation. Eternity is a long time, and none of the other angels would miss him if he descended to earth for a few days to go fishing. After all, what is a day or two mean to a being that lives outside of time? So he grabbed his fishing pole and hung up a sign outside his cell door that said, “Gone Fishin’.” He glided down from Heaven and found a secluded lake. Sitting under a sleepy willow tree, Achaiah cast his line, leaned back, and closed his eyes.
Humans amazed him. They were incredible creatures, he thought. They had solved every riddle he had ever conjured. While Achaiah stumped all the other Seraphim with the Big Bang theory, humans figured it out. Newton and Leibniz proved to be more than capable students of calculus than Virtues and Powers. The Cherubim thought Achaiah mad when he came up with the riddle of evolution, but it made complete sense to Charles Darwin. DNA looked like nothing but strands of yarn to the Thrones and Dominions, but humans saw in it the basic building blocks of their nature. And now there was the Higgs boson. Achaiah thought of it as a joke, really. Even Michael the Archangel thought Achaiah had gone too far. “There was no way that humans could figure it out,” he remembered the Archangel telling him. “It was too much for their finite brains.” Achaiah had learned not to underestimate humankind’s ingenuity and imagination. Those were two things that humans had over angels. Humans were second only to God in that regard, and Achaiah knew that was why God loved humans so much.
Of all of humankind’s inventions or achievements, none amazed Achaiah as much as fishing. Achaiah gazed out over the glassy water of the lake as the willow whispered a gentle breeze. He watched a cormorant struggle to gain flight as the other birds cheered him on with their songs. Achaiah thought of Heaven, and surely this was the closest humans would get there while on earth. Achaiah leaned back against the willow, closed his eyes and began to think of another riddle to confound the human mind for another generation. Achaiah wondered if he would run out of riddles to satisfy the insatiable curiosity of these mortal creatures.
“Hey bro, I should have known you’d be here.” Achaiah could feel Punk standing over him. He smelled the familiar burnt charcoal and felt the same oppressive heat settle upon him. Demons loved to torment people’s senses. Some demons played with light and shadow to create a sense of despair. Others used grotesque visages to create fear. The more imaginative demons used cold and silence to confound their prey. But not Punk. Punk was wholly unimaginative. He embraced the cliche. He smelled of fire and brimstone. He wore old, patched blue jeans cut off at the knee and a sleeveless Misfits t-shirt. A red-and-black flannel shirt was tied about his waist. A spiked mohawk concealed the tiny horns protruding from his scaly scalp.
Punk took a drag from his cigarette and flicked the butt into the lake. “You, know, your Higgs trick was totally mobbed.”
Achaiah sighed. Punk was scaring the fish away.
“Seriously, bro, I don’t know what you see in humans. They’re a bunch of yoinkers. Half of them aren’t down with your tricks; they think they’re blasphemy. And the other half think it proves we all don’t exist. They’re yoinkers, man, every last one of them.”
Punk lit another cigarette. He knelt down in front of Achaia and blew the acrid smoke into his face. “That kind of makes you a yoinker, too, doesn’t it?” He stood up and laughed. “Check out this mad shit from my tricktionary. I’m tellin’ all the sheep that the Higgs boson disproves creation. I’m even goin’ hardcore on this one.” Punk gently noggled his crotch. “I’m telling ‘em that the Higgs boson is the new golden calf. That’s why they call it the God particle–so they can worship it. If I pull it off, it’ll be diamonds, man, totally diamonds, and the Dude will be stoked. I’ll get major props. ”
Punk finished his cigarette and dropped the butt on the ground. He grabbed Achaiah’s fishing pole from out of his hands.
“What the hell are fishing for, anyway?” He reeled in the line and grabbed the hook. “Gnarly, man!” He laughed with the unpleasant, throaty scorn common to Demons, a laugh that shook one’s soul and drove courage from one’s heart. “You’re not using any bait! You’re such a pusher, man.”
Punk threw Achaiah’s fishing pole to the ground. He lit a cigarette, took a long drag, and exhaled a cloud of smoke from his pierced nostrils. The smoke drifted along a gentle breeze, taking Punk with it. The cool breeze caressed Achaiah’s face, and the birds returned to singing their simple praises to God. Achaiah picked up his fishing pole and cast the line back into the lake. A robin landed and picked at the remnants of Punk’s cigarette. He looked at Achaiah and chirped.
“I know, Brother Robin. I think that’s why God threw the Demons out of Heaven. They make too much damn noise and leave a horrible mess.”
THE END
The Moron Quotient 