• Angel Falls
    By: Joey Nicolella


    Zane Aggelos climbed over the moss covered boulders, slowly making his way to the thundering boom of the water far above. His hands were shaking feverishly, and the damp moss under his fingers didn‘t help his grip either. He finally gave a pull upward, planting both his feet a three inch cliff. He reached over and felt smooth stone for at least a foot. He pulled himself up, and collapsed on the moist rock face.
    He had made it; he had climbed the legendary Angel Falls, the world’s highest waterfall. Zane stood on strong newly born knees and looked over the dense tropical forest, 3,212 below.
    The Venezuelan forest was visible for miles, filled with nature’s most beautiful and dangerous beings, but one ancient legend spoke of one more powerful than all of the leopards and jaguars, one being swifter than even the falcons and eagles, one more sacred and holy than the Catholic priests that told of them.
    Angels.
    Legend told of winged men who had saved the local villages from natural disasters; silenced thunderstorms, settled earthquakes, and soothed the winds. They would appear suddenly to a select few, each describing them the same way; faces like lightning, eyes like flaming torches, arms and legs like polished bronze, and a voice that was many. Each person claimed that they flew just above and before the town, stopping the catastrophe before it would do harm.
    Angels.
    They were something Zane had lost belief in. To him, they were just another gimmick of God. He had lost all faith in the alleged Father, for Zane had gone through tortures in his life, tortures no one should have gone through. He was only twenty, yet he had lost his mother and father to a car crash, his older brothers to a hurricane, and his baby sister to an evil man.
    He was alone, all alone. No aunt, no uncle, no grandparents alive. He stood at the three thousand foot cliff and looked down. The wind pressed against his body, desperately trying to push him away from the cliff, knowing way he had came here.
    Zane had spent his life savings to buy a ticket from his native Rome to fly over six thousand miles to the Venezuelan city of Tumeremo, just to go another hundred miles to the waterfall. He had selected this area for one reason; it was his little sister’s dream to climb the mountain. He had done it, all to do one four letter word.
    The wind began to blow harder, defiantly trying to stop him. He took another step towards the cliff; he was on the edge now, barely standing from the power of the gust. He took a final look down, noting that in just seconds he would be free. He turned around to face the river that constantly fed the hungry cliff. He closed his eyes and raised his arms wide on both sides. He felt the wind tear at his back in what now must be a tornado. He felt his tears fly off his face and become part of the river, his river, his tomb. Then he did what he had wanted to since he received the news of his sister five days ago.
    Zane leaned back and fell. He couldn’t help but open his eyes in a brief wave of panic. He glanced around, but didn’t falter in his spread position.
    He noticed he seemed to be falling slower. He saw the ragged cliff that had once held him, the furious waters that were just beside him, and a man.
    The man had large wings, both white and laded with feathers. He was dressed in a white tunic, laden with a golden belt and sandals. He had dark hair that hung around his face in a matter that defied the wind. The wind that he was making.
    His wings were beating much faster than what must have been necessary, sending a typhoon towards the cliff Zane had just departed. He had been the wind, Zane though as his tears poured out; He had been the one thing trying to defy me from jumping. The one thing that stood between me and open air.
    Zane smiled faintly, and then his mouth fell into a startled O. The angel turned his back to him. The brief truth of knowing there were angels and possibly a God turned his back on him.
    Then the angel glanced over his shoulder to see Zane, slowly plummeting towards the water over three thousand feet below. His eyes were teary as he saw Zane’s face. Then he turned to face him completely, his wings ceasing their burdened beating, and following a gentle smooth pattern. The angel’s lips moved, and Zane knew it should have been impossible to hear his voice over the thundering boom of the falls, but still he heard his voice.
    “Zane,” the voice was first a small child’s, not much older than his sister, “You have made this decision. Correct?”
    Zane nodded as he approached the nearing jagged rocks below.
    “I did all I could to stop you with out revealing myself, but you still jumped,” he said in the voice of a teenage boy.
    Zane’s eyes began tearing up once more, the thick sorrow of truth washing over him.
    “I will let you fall,” his voice was now an old man’s, “Unless you change.”
    Zane had never been an exceptionally holy person. He went to church until his parents died the first blow to his faith. He had prayed with his brothers at dinner before they passed. And he had prayed with his little sister before bed each night, until she too was taken from him. He had prayed, and gone to church, but it had all been meaning less to him.
    He sinned way more than what he thought one should in a day, he drank after each death in his family for weeks until the remaining snapped him back into reality. He had even smoked some things in his teen years, after his parent’s death. He had lied, stolen, cheated, been disrespectful, hated, and gotten involved in some horrible things.
    Zane thought he didn’t deserve a second chance. He looked towards the jagged spires that he would soon meet. He was halfway there, half way down the waterfall. Halfway to death.
    He looked at the angel and said softly, “I don’t deserve to live again; I don’t deserve to have a second chance.”
    The angel smiled, “Not many do. But I still offer.”
    Zane didn’t say anything. He wanted to say, ‘yes help me!’ but he knew that he did nothing in his life to back it up.
    He just looked to the oncoming rocks and cried. He would be in the water in just a few more seconds. Falling from the three thousand foot drop onto the water below would be the equivalent of jumping off the Empire Sate Building and landing on five stories of solid concrete. He closed his eyes once more and felt no more pain as he hit the water.

    Raphael flew down gently with Zane, staying within ten feet, just in case a last second redemption was going to occur. When Zane hit the water, Raphael shed tears for the boy. He was so young for such a death. Many of the more barbaric South American Tribes would sacrifice people from the cliff top, and Raphael would always save them, they wouldn’t know it, but he would catch them and carry them miles down the river to a safe town. They would just wake up on the shores of the river, thinking that they had been the luckiest person alive.
    Raphael landed softly on the rocky river bank, just twenty yards from the waterfall. The limp body of Zane Aggelos floated slowly to him, facedown. He willed the body closer, using a bit of his miracle working powers to pull him onto the shore.
    He stood over Zane, looking carefully at the boy’s features as they healed. He had been renounced by the Hebrews as the archangel of healing for his talents. He carefully mended Zane’s broken bones and healed his flesh.
    Raphael looked down at the perfect form of Zane. He looked identical to the same Zane that stood at the cliff, but was merely a body now. Raphael knelt beside the limp body and inched towards his face. He exhaled deeply, his warm breath flowing into Zane’s lungs, allowing them to expand and collapse once more. They in turn started his heart’s beating, which then spread through Zane’s entire system.
    Suddenly a sharp beating sounded from just above Raphael. Gabriel landed gently just a few yards away, his wings tucking back as he relaxed them.
    “Raphael,” he said in the natural angelic voice.
    “Gabriel,” Raphael responded in the same voice as he too stood.
    “Michael is upset that you revived this human, regardless of his wishes. He says that you threaten to expose our world!”
    “Zane wanted to have a second chance; he just thought it wasn’t something he deserved. I gave him his life back, and within an hour he will awaken in a hospital in Rome, where he will be told that he passed out at a dedication ceremony for his sister,” Raphael said as he lifted the now warm body closer to his chest, “As for the exposure, the whole world has heard of us archangels. I believe you Gabriel, appeared to Mary, Zacharias, and Daniel.”
    “Regardless, you disobeyed the human’s wishes. You violated the Angelic Creed by doing an act of God against the target’s will.”
    “What are you going to do? Cast me down like Lucifer? What dose the Father think?”
    Gabriel seemed taken aback by the final request, “The Father…” Gabriel wrapped his wings around himself and vanished in a storm of feathers. Only the Archangel of Messages possessed this power, but it was in Raphael’s opinion overrated. He’d much rather fly than just warp back and fourth.
    Just a few seconds passed before another rush of wings sounded and Gabriel landed before Raphael, a look of embarrassment about him, “The Father says that he would have done the same.”
    “Exactly,” Raphael said as he took flight.

    Zane awoke in a white room to a man wearing a matching white suit with a clipboard standing in front of him. The view from his window told him it was late, and a distant bell confirmed with twelve loud dull dongs.
    “Ah, your awake,” the man said in Zane’s natural Italian, “You passed out at a dedication to you sister at the middle school. Your body was holding back an incredible amount of stress, causing an excessive amount of pressure on your cranium, which slowed the blood flow to your head and by doing so made you loose consciousness.”
    Zane looked at the man, toughly bewildered. Hadn’t he just a few days ago flew to Venezuela and climbed the world’s highest waterfall? Had he not jumped? Had he not talked to an angel? He looked down at his hands; they were calloused from his climb.
    “Um…thank you Doctor,” was all he managed as he stared at his only proof.
    “You were requesting this in your sleep,” the doctor said as he placed a thick Bible on his bed side table, “I believe that this experience has revived your faith.”
    “Sir,” Zane asked, “did I say anything else in my sleep?”
    The man smiled, “You said you were flying with angels.”
    “Thank you doctor…”
    “Dr. Raphael,” the man said as he stood.
    “Thank you Doctor Raphael,” Zane said as the man left the room.
    The man exited the room and walked towards the double doors at the end of the long hallway. He pressed the doors open and closed his eyes tightly for a split second, and the doctor’s uniform shifted into a classic white tunic.
    Raphael spread his wings wide in the cool night air. The wind sifted his dark hair around his face as he jumped up and took flight.