"The opinion polls from the southern region of Heaven are

out and the results clerarly indicate a sliding majority for the
right wing candidate Victor Perkins. Lets note this is just an
opinion poll conducted by Heaven Broadcasting Corporation and
these results only probably reflect the outcome of the actual
elections Riding on a massive defamation campaign against nearest
rival Rob Maloy, Victor Perkins has managed to sweep the
relatively more conservative southern and eastern regions of
heaven. We know almost for sure whom the people of these two
regions want as their next god. With more news as events
progress this is Kerry Johnson, Heaven News."
Victor smiled as he switched off the T.V.. The past two
years of active campaigning, and even more active mudslinging at
his opponents had brought him to this stage.He was everything
the people of heaven wanted in a leader, he told himself. He had
an effervescent charm so innate that he could turn the most
slippery of situations into something that could boost his
votebank. The million dollar smile that he flashed whenever his
back was against the wall during the Godship debates made
female angels swoon. He spoke like Cicero, commanded respect
like Caesar and projected the stoic image of Brutus. But deep
down inside he knew what he wanted, all he really wanted....
Victor's father was an archangel. He was an elected member
of the council of angels, a parliament of sorts. He had run for God
four times, he never made it. He drank himself to insanity and
they had to send him to hell. Victor had a very distinct memory of
his father. It was when he was campaigning with his father for
the first time as a twelve year old boy. His father had just given
a forty five minute long speech about the empowerment of female
heavenly beings. There were a few noticeable glitches in the
speech. An hour later his father called his sixty five year old
speech writer Nancy to his room and beat her with her walking
stick in front of his own son. Victor realized the ugliness and
deceit that politics was, but he also realized what he needed to
do to gain what he really wanted, power.
" Victor is being raised to be god.", his father would tell his
contemporaries, pointing to the handsome and charming eighteen
year old during social gatherings. Victor was born a leader and he
knew it. His thirst for power was unrivalled by anything else. In
college while his friends would be asleep in the dorm Victor would
stand in front of a mirror and spend hours practicing speeches
and rehearsing the smile that later would be on the front page of
every publication in Heaven. He would lead student unions and
hobnob with the cultural elite of heaven with the same ease. From
class captain to member of interior council of angels, the journey
through the ranks was fuelled by his almost obsessive need for
power. His moderate right wing ideology stuck a chord with the
common heavenly being who had grown sick of having
fundamentalists or hippies as Gods. Victor was living his dream;
he loved the notion of controlling not only the governance of a
billion heavenly beings but the lives of six billion people in the
earthly realm. He could smell victory and was ready to do
anything to taste it.
Victor loved the system. The idea of having one god with
supreme power for twelve years sounded very appealing to him.
But there was a glitch. The final five god candidates would be
randomly assigned a human being on earth whose destinies they
had total control of. They had to be guardian angels to those
human beings for the duration of a month. It did not count in the
final results but the elders believed in this long standing tradition
and Victor would do anything to boost his popularity with the
older age groups.
The day to assign the guardian angels to their respective
human beings had come. Victor drew his lot from a narrowed down
list of twenty. The piece of paper read," Trimis Maragas,, twelfth
avenue, Queen, New York." Victor thanked his stars he didn’t get
assigned to some homeless kid in Africa. He asked his secretary
to make time in his schedule to check up on her. He then had a
light supper and got dressed to give a lecture in the University of
Heaven on the destinies of the children in Africa.
Three days later he went down to Queens to see the person
whose destiny he controlled. He thought of the name of the
woman, Ukrainian he said to himself and entered her apartment
through an open window. He knew he would be invisible to her and
every other person on earth. It was a small apartment with two
rooms and a bathroom. He walked through the bathroom door and
saw a silhouette behind the shower curtain. He waited for her to
finish bathing. He saw the shower curtain being withdrawn and a
woman come out. He looked at her in astonishment. She had the
most beautiful hands he had ever seen. They were slightly
crinkled from the showering but they radiated an almost angelic
glow. Her face epitomized beauty in the heavenly sense. She was
wrapped in a large towel that mocked at him haughtily, teasing
him about the great secrets it concealed. She removed her
shower cap to reveal hair that surrounded her face like a halo. It
was beautiful brown hair with soft curls at the bottom which
glorified the asymmetry that her hair was when compared to the
mandatory straight hair for female angels back home. He turned
away while she dressed fearing something unforeseen might
happen if he looked. She sang as she dressed in a voice that
because of its imperfection made it the most beautiful thing he
had ever heard. He suddenly realized he had been with a lot of
women but this sight would never escape his mind.
A day had passed and he called up his secretary and told her
to cancel all his appointments for the next week. He decided to
stay back on in the human realm, he didn’t tell why, he didn’t know
why. He stood in a corner for nine hours watching her sleep. He
followed her to the coffee shop where she worked as a waitress
and even made an unwitting customer tip her twice the amount of
the bill, just to see her smile. He heard her conversing with one
of her fellow waitresses about how much she loved the rain. He
started a slight drizzle for her the minute she stepped out from
the coffee shop. He realized he had never felt so happy before
when he saw her raise her hands up to the sky and try to catch
the little drops of water falling from the heavens above. He took
an evening walk with her in Central Park where he heard her speak
to her friend who had set her up on a date that evening. He
hunted down the unfortunate man and made him break his leg,
falling from a flight of stairs.
He kept telling himself that what he felt was something like
a teenage infatuation, but then something happened on the third
day of his stay that changed his entire perspective of life. They
were announcing the waitress of the month award at her coffee
place. The winner got a hundred dollar raise and a name tag
carrying the title of waitress of the month. Trimis was the
favorite to win but unfortunately some friend of her who had
been sleeping around with the boss got the title. He looked at
Trimis as she walked up to her friend and congratulated her. He
could sense that she was actually very happy for her friend as
she hugged her. No one is happy when they lose, he told himself.
He wanted to use his powers to undo whatever had happened but
he didn’t. He thought of every victory and loss in his life. He
realized how he, in his raging ambition never sought to appreciate
the basic essence of human relations. He realized that despite
being one of the most popular people in heaven he had no friends
he could call up at three in the morning to pour out the feelings in
his heart. He thought of the futility of every handshake, every
hug and every kiss he gave out, they meant nothing, nothing to
him. The most frightening thought that came to him was that
though he had spent all of his life pursuing the ability to control
people's destiny he never once made the effort to make contact
with a person for who he or she was, until now.
 In eight hours he spent watching her sleep, he thought of
what he wanted to do thereafter. As a child he heard stories of
the angel who fell in love with the human and was banished from
heaven and had to lose all his powers, including his immortality.
He shuddered at the thought of losing his position in heaven;
after all he was going to be the next god. He then thought of the
social repercussions, the death of his ideology and the humiliation
he would have to face from his peers. He wasn’t ready to throw
away all he had for a girl, a human girl, but he shivered when he
told himself that all he wanted was for her to know who he was.
He had made up his mind; he was ready to give up the one thing
every heavenly being was born with, immortality.
The next day he went up to see God. No one ever referred
to God by his real name once he got the title of God, to keep up
the secular nature of Heaven. He told God of his little situation
and of how he was ready to become a human, giving up all he had
worked for. When God asked him why he told," I just want her to
know who I am." God reluctantly told him that he had the option
of either losing all his memories of heaven and starting afresh or
going to the human realm as he was on the condition of secrecy
regarding the concept of heaven. Victor chose the second, and
the next morning found himself with an apartment in New York
and a body and identity of his own.
As he walked toward her apartment in Queens he observed
the people on the streets. He told himself he had done the right
thing. He saw a drunken beggar on the streets beating up his
little son, an old man being mugged and then hit on the head
causing him to collapse and a young boy soliciting sex from a
hooker. He wanted to stop and undo what he just saw but he
couldn’t. He was powerless. He looked up to the skies and saw a
light drizzle falling onto his face. A drop of water mixed with a
tear near his eye. It rolled down his cheek and fell to the ground.
He walked to a flower shop and purchased a bouquet.
 Trimis opened her apartment door and found a handsome
young man carrying a bouquet of flowers. He handed her the
flowers, took off his hat and bowed. As he walked away, Trimis
cried out, "Wait!” He turned back, waved at her and kept on
walking.
Trimis looked at the bouquet and found a note in it. It
read," I don’t want this world to see me because I don’t think
that they would understand, when everything's meant to be
broken I just want you to know who I am. Your Guardian Angel,
Victor Perkins."
Victor knew he couldn’t live with himself any more. He loved
having a body, a human body, he missed flying though. He got
down the subway at Fourth Avenue. He saw the station was
empty. There was a lonely hot dog seller on the other side of the
platform. He went and bought himself a hotdog. Meat tastes
good, he told himself. He handed the seller a hundred dollar bill
for a two dollar hotdog. He walked away and jumped from the
platform into the tracks. He walked into the tunnel and saw a
light coming from the other side. He said to himself," At least I
was God to the Hot Dog guy for today."