“Excuse me, I don’t know the procedure here. But you are obviously an angel and I’m obviously dead. I hope you can explain the next steps to me.” The speaker was slim, manicured, self-possessed. He was trying hard to look as directly towards the angel as he could.

The angel shone so brightly.

The angel spoke. His voice was very human. Warm even. Which made the angelic note in his voice even more obvious; it was something that made him sound very remote and intolerably close at the same time.

“You are dead. I am an angel. Glad we got that out of the way.” The angel grinned. “Let’s see, Ethan McGuire, brand engagement director . . . quite a successful one, I see . . . tepid husband of one wife, tepid father of 1.3 kids . . .”

“I had two kids,” the man said.

The angel chuckled. “Just checking to see if you were listening. To be precise, you had one kid and one stepkid.”

“I always treated them the same,” the man said.

“Yes,” the angel said. There was a pause.

“I judge,” the angel said, “that you never did any good.”

“I donated some to charity and wore rainbow pins,” the man said.

“Yes,” the angel agreed. “And I judge you had no morals.”

“I had ethics!” the man protested.

“Yes,” the angel said. “And I judge you did just enough to satisfy your society’s elite consensus. You checked the boxes required for a successful career. You had the right opinions and said the right things.”

“You make that sound like a bad thing!” the man cried.

“Yes,” said the angel. “Worse, you were meant for greater things.” A hint of loathing crossed over the angel’s face. The force of it blasted the man to the ground. The angel was very much an angel now.

The angel was not shouting. But he was now speaking as an angel. His words did not need volume to be loud. They settled on the man like weights.

YOU WERE MEANT FOR GLORY.

YOU SETTLED FOR SUCCESS.

YOU WERE MEANT FOR POWER.

YOU SETTLED FOR MANIPULATING RULES.

YOU WERE MEANT TO DARE.

YOU TOOK PLEASURE IT PLAYING IT SAFE.

YOU WERE MEANT TO LOVE.

The man was huddled, curled up into a ball.

After a long time, the man looked up. “Am I going to be punished then?”

“Yes” the angel said.

The man cried.

“Fear not,” the angel said. There was real kindness in his voice.

“Heaven’s punishments are full of joy.”