The Other Angels
It is not our custom to justify the steps we take in any direction. However, the refusal to alleviate minor confusion is a nasty piece of rudeness that neither I nor any of my associates want to be found guilty. So I will nurse your perplexity as if it were a troublesome rash. First, a little prep work. In order to come under my care, a certain amount of docility is required. We are not offended by your accusatory prayers. Yet the same God you supplicate for protection sent us for the opposite effect. Angels pacify screaming babies and arrange chance encounters with benefactors, but have you ever given thought to the ones that pace infirmaries? I mean as delivery men, not guards. A feather duster is suitable for dusty bookshelves. Perhaps an elegant French maid would oblige the employment. There is a different type of cleaner fitted with attire that only poison control could love. He bares chemical agents, metal instruments, googles, and will scour the depths of your pipes. Whatever crusted over lime deposits or slimy waste that cakes the unkept tubbing will speckle his coveralls. Be it known unto you that we are not feather dusters.
We have watched and waited patiently for orders. We know about the dinner dates between your judges and merchants. We can match every wire transfer to a killed story. The secret games your officers compel prisoners to play are not secret to us. You have vexed the alien splitting his wages in half like chopped wood. The wondering poor are beaten and sent away shamefully. For this cause they hide in sewers rather than face your hospitality. Women are ravaged for sport fleeing seven different ways from a chapel. They have unlearned marriage from your education. Is there one nation that has resisted your political overtures without a campaign of shelling? And you mean to drive me back with a crucifix of gold? You have made your bed next to soot for years. Will mold spores reach heaven before a swiping cloth finds it? We dim the eye, rattle the cough, and make breath a short work. Never mind our appearance, we have come to clean.
