Short Fiction

The Mower

By Christian Mueth

It was late a late Friday night when I pulled my silver-rimmed sports-car up through my expansive driveway. Crickets hummed with my engine. When my driveway was young and newly paved, I used to hum along with them. My humming had long since died.

It took me three minutes to reach my oversized garage. I counted each one on my watch— time was money, and I’d grown a slight obsession with keeping myself punctual. There was a point when my drive through my driveway was more punctual. Back then, I’d used my sports car as I should’ve, and flew through my driveway in a mere minute. However, by tonight such recklessness had seeped from my soul.

My feet pattered as they climbed the wide and well-polished steps up to my front porch. My hands clung tightly to the ebony railing, to the point that my knuckles went white. That is, they clung to the railing until it snapped.

I groaned. When I was younger, I probably wouldn’t have noticed such a flaw as this. I’d never had any need for the railing, since I hadn’t put so much thought into my personal preservation. Though, now I noticed— and I was unhappy with it. In trying to put myself out of danger by leaning on my railing, I’d put myself in danger.

“This is what happens when you leave your house for a few months,” I muttered under my breath as I shoved my key into my front-door’s crystal knob. “Now I have to repair it— probably with an unsightly metal, so as to make sure that this doesn’t repeat itself. It might be a blight on my elegant and varied house design, but dangerous risks are far too costly now… My career takes precedence over senseless thrills.”

Opening my door, I walked into my marble entrance-hall. The place was the crown jewel of my town. It acted as my own mini castle.

“I’ve been away from you for far too long,” I muttered, staring at its polished walls, its porcelain ornaments, and its painted ceiling.

The painted ceiling was probably my greatest pride. Years ago, I’d had guests come over and gawk at it. It was a mimicry of the painting Michelangelo had made in the Sistine Chapel. The reason I think that everybody found it so marvelous was because of how unique it was. There was nothing quite like it. It was one of a kind.

Beautiful as it was, I felt like there was something missing to it. My feet pattered against the floor, leaving behind muddy footsteps and a dull thud. I’m not quite sure why, but I sensed a din in my gut. Perhaps it was caused by the void of a friendly voice, a happy smile, or a joyful squeal of a baby. I’d once thought that family would await me when I was younger, and setting off for my first business venture.

“It’s probably just the lack of my butler,” I said with a raspy grunt, as I shoved a pipe in my mouth. “But, I knew what I was doing when I fired him. He was a waste of cash. If there’s anything that I’ve learned in my years of oil-mining, it’s how to be savvy.”

A breeze brushed against my back, and I looked behind myself to find my door ajar. Savviness was certainly among the many strong traits of mine, but a strong memory was among the overwhelming amount of traits that I lacked.

As I shut the door with a shuffle and a growl, I caught sight of my lawn. It had grown unruly in my past few months away from it.

“I’ll mow it next week,” I said to myself. “I don’t have time to do it right now. I’m far too busy to occupy myself with such trivial things right now.”

I walked into my house with a feeling of triumph. However I heard the unattended lawn call back to me. I couldn’t stand it— I turned around, to heed its call. Upon a second viewing, I saw what a disgrace it truly was.

“Nobody else in town has such a travesty of a lawn…” I said. “I can’t just leave it like this…”

Then, I shook my head with a knowing smile.

“What am I worried about?” I said, with a chuckle. “I’m the richest man in town. I’ll just pay for the most visionary and original landscaper out there to make my lawn look like everybody else’s! There— problem solved.”

I slammed my door shut with satisfaction.

As I treaded back to the bed that I’d abandoned for four months, I scanned my surplus of mini-monuments. I had rich tapestries, expensive silverware, and carefully sculpted busts placed along all of my walls.

“It’s so strange to think how such hollow things can give me a thrill,” I said, staring at a statue of Aristotle, which echoed whenever a rapped my knuckle against it. Then, I looked at the clock and felt my heart flop. “But, time is slipping out of my hands. I can’t just lie here and be idle— I have eight hours of sleep before me.”

With a smile plastered to my face, I went up into my chambers, slid into my silk bed, and fell to sleep.

I awoke from my bed at the crack of dawn. The light was dim and muddled, and I felt the same. Walking down the steps and into my kitchen, I almost thought that I was still within a dream. It was as if I wasn’t in my own body, and my legs and hands were being pulled by something other than myself.

I prepared myself a sparse meal of bacon, eggs, muffins, and thickly buttered toast, making sure to prepare everything with the time in mind. I was on a very tight schedule that morning, having been readying myself to head into town that morning. I allowed myself no leniency. My food was shoveled into my mouth with haste, and it wasn’t until I reached my front door that I put on my socks, pants, and shoes.

Upon opening the door and stepping outside, all of my plans dipped into the ground. I saw a sight that made my jaw drop— the lawn was perfectly mowed. If I hadn’t seen it the night before, I could’ve sworn that it had never been overgrown in the first place.

“It can’t be…” I said. “I must be dreaming.”

Upon first instinct, I ran to my garage to where my lawn mower was kept. I found it to be in the same exact condition as it’d been the night before, when I parked my car. However, I noticed one slight difference. When I went to study my lawn mower, I found that it smelt of freshly cut grass. There were even a few remaining blades of grass on it, which were still green.

At first, I thought that I must’ve been robbed. Though, the garage door had been locked when I went to open it, and there wasn’t any other way of accessing it. The only person with keys to my house was myself.

“Could I have done this while sleepwalking?” I asked myself, brainstorming all of the possibilities.

Nothing added up. What I saw before my eyes couldn’t have been reality.

And yet, it was.

Seeing that I must’ve been dealing with some sort of master criminal, I ran toward my front door to my telephone. I reasoned that this befuddling event was a job for the police. Though, when I reached my front door I found a slip of paper on it that nearly made me hit the ground in fright. It had a scrawl put into it that read—

A job done by your personal helper Angel. To find me again, you must go back to St. Peter’s church.

Best wishes,

Gabriel

P.S The job was extremely exhausting. Next time could you provide me with food?

I didn’t know what to think of it. On one hand, something supernatural was the only way to explain what had happened. On the other, the letter seemed too mundane and commonplace to be from something otherworldly. My mind felt muddled and confused. There was too much strangeness and not enough clarity.

“I’ve spent about three-hundred fifty-eight thousand and three-hundred sixty hours on this earth and traveled throughout all of the 50 states— but I haven’t found anything quite as odd as this,” I said to myself.

Although, the oddest thing wasn’t the perfectly mowed lawn, my used lawnmower, or even the fact that the piece of paper claimed that the job had been done by an angel. The oddest thing was that the letter told me to go to St. Peter’s church— the same church that I’d gone to when I was still in my early twenties and trying to make sense out of the confusing world.

I hadn’t gone there since I’d left to mine oil. Unlike most churches in town, it was old, musty, slow, and mostly empty. Its brick foundations were already beginning to crumble into dust, and all of the people who went there looked as if they were about to do the same.

Since the church was so abandoned, it was unlikely that a random person would be willing to recommend it. It almost seemed as if the person who wrote the letter had known I’d once gone there.

“Could it really have been an angel that did all of this?” I asked myself, with a scornful scoff. Even as I said the words, I didn’t believe it. “Please… This must’ve been setup by a group of punk teenagers.”

Despite this, I stayed standing in my yard for half an hour. Pacing around, I searched for something. What it was, I didn’t know. Yet, I didn’t cease.

Having wasted my time and discovered nothing, I hopped into my sports car and drove out of my driveway. By the time the hour hand turned to ten, I strangely found myself standing in front of St. Peter’s Church.

Twenty-five years prior, I’d sworn to myself that I’d never find myself standing in the church’s parking lot again. Although, fate had found a way to trick me back there.

While I might complain about how fate had fooled me, it had been far worse to the church. Its steeple bent toward the ground, with a missing chunk making it look as if a large bite had been taken out of it. The windows were so tainted by grime that sunlight would no longer reflect off of them. The entrance doors, swung open, hung limply and looked as if they were about to break from their hinges. In its entirety, the only thing that didn’t appear ancient was its ebony steps. They retained a polished look to them, and appeared as young as they had when I’d last seen them.

“Who am I kidding?” I thought. “Nothing here is young. I’m clinging to nostalgia…”

I beheld the surrounding dead trees and its barren lawn with disgust. The place looked as if it had been abandoned for years. For all I knew, it might’ve been.

I turned to leave. Although, just before I opened my car door, I caught sight of a single green blade of grass still sticking from out of the ground. Maybe I was being overly optimistic at the time, but the sight was proof enough for me that there could still be life remaining in the crumbling building.

“A short look won’t hurt. I could be wasting my time— but I’m already here, so I might as well make the most of my visit.”

Once inside the musty entrance, I was reminded of why I despised it so much. The walls were adorned with hideous furnishings, cheap curtains, and a peeling layer of paint. I could smell dormancy and complacency all throughout the hall. Dust swirled about, and smothered my lungs.

I entered the sanctuary room and became sickened. The pews were empty and many were chipped. Some of them even appeared to have a slight mold growing on them. At the end of the rows of pews there was a stage. Though, that was just as decomposed as the pews. There was also a lack of a podium, microphone, or even a bible. All that was on it was a single chair, an elderly man dressed in a crisp suit, and a bible seated upon his lap.

“Pastor Brown…” It thought to myself. “The man who cautioned against me pursuing my career. What a fraud…”

To say the least, I wasn’t amiable concerning this man. I looked upon his charcoal black suit, refined poise, and silvered face with disgust. It seemed that everything about him was positioned to create the image of perfection. I couldn’t find a single blemish about him, save the unkempt church that surrounded him.

“Is that you, Mr. Tic?” he asked, with his beads for eyes staring at me, from under a canopy of bushy brows.

He cupped his hand around his ear, and then glanced the silver watch around my wrist.

“Ah…” he said. “Yes, I’d recognize that ticking watch from a mile away.”

I nodded with slight reluctance. There was an extent of myself that shared the same amount of shock as Pastor Brown for our confrontation. Not only had I thought that the church was empty, but I’d also thought that Pastor Brown’s aging heart would’ve given up on him by now.

That was still from only an extent of myself. Most of my reluctance came out of something apart from shock. It came from hate.

I still felt an overflow of hatred that was devoted Pastor Brown. He was the sort of person who relished in self-righteous piousness. He had the gift of appearing as some wizened and majestic being. Though, I don’t think he knew how to speak without conjuring some overcomplicated supernatural concept. He acted with unmatched skill when he needed to spit up appealing words— but, that never changed the fact that his words were simply spit-up.

Since I’d nodded my head, he hadn’t made a movement of acknowledgement. I couldn’t tell if it was out of his forgetfulness, his slowness, or his arrogance that he ignored me. Maybe it was all three.

To make sure that he heard me, I raised my head and said, yes. Still no response. At this point, I was infuriated. If Brown’s seeming ignorance was intentional, then he was far savvier than I’d thought. He kept his head covered by his bible, and I watched him remain indifferent. The only things on his body that moved were his mouth, which were silently uttering words, and his glasses, which steadily slid toward the tip of his nose.

“Ah!” he finally said, after his bony fingers had turned another page in his oversized book. “Luke!”

His eyes then stared at me, as if expecting me to give out my own joyous shout.

“Sir… My name is Ski Tic, not Luke…” I said, letting out a thin grumble.

“I meant what I said. Luke! Luke 15:4— ‘What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?’”

For a moment, I was left with a reddened face and an unnerved spirit.

“Of course he was referring to a book in the Bible,” I thought.

Although, I was quick to jump back to my wits. Brown was clearly manipulating me, and trying to make me feel as an unknowing fool so that I’d listen to him. He’d used similar tactics in all of his sermons. Yet, I knew better now. I wasn’t going to let him trick me. I couldn’t. I was now fully aware of every possible strategy he could come up with.

“What does that verse have to do with anything?” I asked. I glowered. I scowled.

“I always knew that you’d come back here, despite you becoming lost…” Brown said. There was a strain in his voice. It might have been from his ancientness. It might have been from his act. Though, at the time it seemed that it came from a sort of reverence he was directing at me. “I always knew that you’d return, even amidst your rejection…”

“I’m still rejecting you, Brown,” I said. “You lied to me.”

“That was long ago…”

“If the man who represents the supposed ‘word of God’ is willing to steal from a poor youth, then what else might he be willing to do? What else might he be hiding behind his veil of flawlessness? You might worship that book on your lap— but I know that it’s empty. Or else, you wouldn’t be the man that you are.”

Perhaps I was angrier than I had any right to be. The man whom I was yelling at was frail and defenseless. He might have wronged me in the past— but his sagging skin and tired eyes testified that there was far more weighing on him than I knew.

Although, I was letting out a bottle of rage that I’d been keeping inside for decades. I couldn’t stop myself, even if I’d wanted to. My bitterness championed my better nature.

Continuing to let my wrath barrel down, I said, “You want to keep your past mistakes quiet, don’t you? You want to think that if you cross your fingers and wish on a star that you can make them go away— and become a perfect man again. Well, your senseless divinities are wrong!”

“Please… Stop…” Brown said, clutching his heart. “I remember when you were a child, and you looked upon the world with a wide-eyed eagerness. I remember when you had—.”

“When I had no time to lose? Well, that’s gone! What’s done is done!”

“Then, what are you doing here? If ‘what’s done is done,’ then why did you bother coming back?”

“I’m going to make you remember how you tried holding me back— how you took advantage of a kid. You fooled me into giving you control over my funds as my ‘personal accountant’, and let me think that you’d keep it safe. Instead you stole it all— you acted as a thief!”

“Please… I can’t hear any more of this…”

Brown pulled himself from out of his chair, walked down through the pews, and neared the exit.

“You never even used the money you stole to fix this church!” I shouted at him. “Where did it all go? Ah… That’s right… Into a big house. Well, where is it now? What did it all leave you with?”

“Humility…” Pastor Brown said, almost whispering. Despite the word’s quietness, I was somehow still able to hear it. “Tell me, Mr. Tic… Why did you bother coming back?”

“I already told you why.”

“I know you, Ski. You might be petty— but you’re not petty enough to waste this much time on me. I saw the shock in your eyes when you first laid eyes on me… You never expected to see me, and I never expected to see you. So, tell me— why did you bother coming back? For a man who worships wealth, you’ve come to the most unlikely of places.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“I’ve spent the majority of my past sixty years in this church. I’ve seen plenty of things that most people wouldn’t believe.”

I normally would’ve laughed in his face— but there was a grave sincerity to the surrounding conversation that I couldn’t pass off. The pastor then slipped a piece of paper into my hand— a schedule for the next month of his Sunday teachings.

“Make sure to be here at those times,” he said, waltzing out of the room with his bible at his side.

I still felt furious at the thought of the pastor’s name. Yet, something had changed in the din of my gut. After receiving the slip of paper, a part of me had clicked back into place. I didn’t know how or why. Though, I knew that I needed to keep coming. Whether it had been planned out by divine angels, or taken place because of a mere fluke, returning to the crumbling mess of a church had made me feel better. It had filled in a hole that had felt empty for years.

After returning to my overlong driveway and enormous house, I began to question the entire meeting that had taken place between me and Pastor Brown.

What if everything had simply been an abnormal hoax? What if I was allowing a strange occurrence to drive me into an undeserved idealism?

Upon recollecting the conversation, I noticed how Brown had seemed to know that something strange had happened to me. However, I still couldn’t quite tell was if his unnaturally poignant questioning had been innocent, or if it have more to it than he would’ve liked me to believe.

“Look at myself,” I finally said, passing the strangeness off with a chuckle. “Of course there’s nothing wrong. The oddities of this past day are driving me into nonsense. Everything is just a coincidence… Just several flips of a coin that created the right combination.”

Stubborn as ever, my skepticism lingered. Most of my life, I’d had all of the answers— and when I didn’t have them, I found them. Though, today I didn’t have them, and I couldn’t find them. It was driving me wild. So, no matter how hard I tried driving it back, I instead found it driving me. It wasn’t until the sun had faded behind the horizon that I stopped and realized that I’d spent an hour standing in my yard.

“An entire hour…” I muttered, staring at my watch with a boggled gape. “I need to start spending my time on more productive things— such as reorganizing my silverware, and dusting my portraits. I don’t have time to keep wandering in my yard…”

I reached my front door and turned my key to open it. However, I was halted by the note that remained plastered onto it.

Seeing that it was the only possible solution to my quizzical state, I tore it off and scrutinized it. The light outside was dim, and I could hardly make out the words. Yet, I still pressed my nose up against the note paper, as if I’d discover some clue that would act as the key to everything.

Of course, my search was inconclusive. I was looking at nothing more than blots of ink. I tried making myself feel better by telling myself that a detective couldn’t have done any different. Like usual. I was lying to myself.

Unsatisfied, I read the note one more time. My eyes glued to the sentence, “Next time, could you provide me some food?”

“Next time…” I said.

I recalled how I’d entered my house the night prior— by declaring what part of my yard needed to be fixed up. Looking around, I caught sight of the bushes around my yard.

“My bushes sure could use some trimming!” I said, shouting to the point that I could hear my vocal chords starting to stretch.

Within another five minutes, I had a bowl of bread and microwave vegetables set out on my front porch. Admittedly, it was an embarrassing attempt at a meal— especially when my surrounding flaunting of wealth was put into consideration. However, the quality of food that came from my house had dwindled with the firing of my butler. My sparse platter was the best that I was capable of making at such a short notice. Besides— I wasn’t willing to waste my finest meal preparations on a potential thief. Especially if that potential thief might not even bother to eat my prepared food.

“Angel or not, I suppose that the results will be interesting…” I said, as a shut my door behind me for the night.

Following my usual schedule, I awoke myself at the crack of dawn. While on a normal morning I’d do so begrudgingly, this time I leaped out of bed. For once, I didn’t feel a lumbering grogginess behind my eyes and down my throat. A newfound energy flowed within me. To a certain extent, I felt like a child on Christmas morning. Giddiness pumped through my veins. My imagination was coming up with all sorts of outlandish possibilities for what might have happened in the night.

“Maybe the mystery mower finally revealed themselves,” I thought. “Maybe it’s the pastor. Maybe it really is an angel. Maybe they’re just a common prankster.”

This was only a sample of the flurry of ideas that were going through my head. Despite this, I still hadn’t the slightest idea of what to expect. In fact, my ceaseless pondering had only pushed me further away from any clear guesses. All I knew for sure was to shovel down my breakfast, jump into my clothes, and charge out the door.

To say the least, my fantasies were blown out of proportion. All I found was an empty bowl of food and newly cut bushes. Opening my garage, I found a leafy pair of bush-cleavers. Although, that was all that I found. There wasn’t any other definite conclusions that I could make.

“I can’t even tell if they ate the food or not…” I said. “For all I know, some animal could’ve gotten to it first.”

I was wrong about the animal concept. When I returned to my front door to lock it, I found the note again. Except, this time it had a new addition:

Thank you for the food,

Sincerely,

Gabriel

“I came here for a vacation, and all I’m doing is work,” I said.

Although, I said that only half angrily. I was overjoyed to have such a mystery on my hands. There had never been a time in my life where I’d encountered something so odd.

I’d been planning to head to the mall that morning. Although, I found myself hopping in my car and heading to St. Peter’s Church. I’d realized that it was Sunday.

My car treaded back over the church’s muddy parking lot and its web of tire tracks. I heard rocks and pebbles crunch beneath my car’s floorboard, sounding like a hailstorm and feeling like a miniature earthquake.

If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve thought that God himself was sending me some sort of message.

A week ago, I would’ve howled in laughter at the concept of going to church— especially St. Peter’s Church. Though, I was much weaker than I thought. My current puzzle had broken the impeccable reserve that I’d accumulated over the years.

Somehow, I found myself sitting in the pews without any recollection of how I’d gotten there. It was as if I’d been turned into some sort of phantom, merely wandering upon the earth. I hardly even noticed the voice of Pastor Brown, the staring eyes, or the blinding light that came through the church’s stained glass windows.

When I’d finally come out of my trance, I noticed that the church was mostly empty. There were only a handful of people that I could count, and even less that looked like they were able to walk without the aid of an able cane. In fact, most appeared to be half asleep.

Meanwhile, Pastor Brown stood in front of his podium, rambling some sort of nonsense about the “Evangelist” Ben Franklin’s teachings on being, “wonderfully mad.”

“He was referring to the misprints of our words that we need to embrace,” Pastor Brown said, in a low drawl. “We constantly err. And only in doing so can we be made wonderfully mad!”

I wasn’t quite sure if he was joking or serious. It wasn’t an easy task to interpret his intent— especially when I put his shoddy history with me into consideration.

So, I put up with the man’s inane sermon for the next two hours with the same willingness of somebody who puts up with a whining toddler. I wasn’t pleased with the scenario, but I knew that enduring it was required of me. I’d allowed myself no other option.

When the sermon’s nonsense finally stopped, a new form of nonsense came in its place. The church began tumbling over itself toward the exit. While most of its attendees were elderly, they moved toward the way out with unmatched speed. It was clear that even they weren’t pleased with the sermon.

That is— all of the attendees had rushed out, except one. It was a tall man. He eyed me with a fixed gaze, and didn’t allow it to leave me. Amidst the uncomfortable staring, I tried moving toward the exit. Although, he followed me there too, with a slight shifting glance, and a shuffling that could’ve caught even the most skilled of ears off guard.

Not knowing what to do, I let him come to me.

“The name is Jack,” the man said, giving me an awkward hand.

“I’m Mr. Tic,” I said, before taking a glance at my watch. It was a quarter after ten— if I was going to have my conversation with Pastor Brown, I’d need to do it quick. “If you’re interested in doing business with me, my full name is Ski P. Tic. My phone number is—.”

“I didn’t want to talk about doing business with you. If I was interested in that, I would’ve talked to you by now— I know who you are.”

For a moment, these words took me aback. I hadn’t thought that anybody in the church would know my name, let alone recognize me.

“Why do you look so surprised?” Jack asked. “You’re probably the most prominent citizen in town. Everybody knows who you are!”

“I just didn’t expect that people in such a small church to know who I was,” I said. “So, what did you come to talk to me about?”

“I know that you’re a wealthy man— so I was just curious about how you were doing. I heard that you came here yesterday without any clear reason. I’ve also heard stories that you used to come here, before deciding to leave for good. What made you come back? Everything alright?”

I looked at him curiously. He knew too much— especially for a stranger.

“I forgot to tell you…” he said, nervously. He must’ve caught my inquisitive glare. “I’m an officer. As you already must know, this town is full of crime, and the sparse amount of wealthy people are a major target. I’m simply making sure that everything is alright.”

He smiled smugly, and stuck one of his hands in his pockets. I expected him to pull out a badge to ease the awkwardness and reassure me— but neither a badge nor his hand came out of his pocket. A word didn’t even come out of his mouth. He simply stood there, maintaining an expression that was as unnatural as a tree growing upside-down.

“You sure are asking a lot of odd and inappropriate questions for somebody who serves in the line of duty,” I remarked, with a hint of anger.

Catching on, Jack left the room without so much of a wave. He was so fast that he practically scuttled away.

“Things are becoming foggier each passing moment…” I said.

Though, the moment I said that, I regretted it. I had the ominous feeling that my current confusion was only a sample of what I could’ve been dealing with. Compared to the potential oddities in the world, my current experience was but a template for how much stranger it could become.

“Hello there Mr. Tic!” Pastor Brown said.

As he walked up to me, I started to feel like a revolving door. People were coming in and out of me.

“I didn’t think that you’d actually come,” he persisted. He didn’t seem to catch or hear my huff of annoyance— and if he had, he did an amazing job at ignoring it.

“Perhaps ignoring things is his greatest skill,” I thought. “It would explain how he could keep returning to this dump after years of its decay.”

“Did you enjoy my sermon?” Pastor Brown asked, with a flash of excitement coming out from under his wrinkled eyelids.

“I can’t say that I’ve ever heard a sermon quite like it,” I said, repeating an age-old line of subtlety. Thankfully, Pastor Brown didn’t catch it. He was no doubt repeating his own age-old trick— ignorance.

“I’m very glad,” he said, bowing his head into his hands. “I put my every essence into it, in order to ensure that you were convinced into entering the faith.

“Let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

—John 5:20”

“Cute verse…” I said. “Heard it a million times…”

“You might call it cute, but I call it ultimate truth,” Pastor Brown said.

I held back a scoff, and shot my eyes toward all of the eroding parts of the church.

“Ultimate truth…” I repeated, with a sarcasm.

“People these days are taught to expect miracles the size of mountains,” Pastor Brown said, scooting to the front of my eyes so as to hide the church’s blemishes from my focus. “Everybody looks at the world as if it should all be some bloated light show… And, while Bill Jacksphere once said that “all the world is a stage,” there’s more to it than just playing a part— doing a performance. It’s about touching people, and making them different from when you first met them.”

I nearly laughed at the uttering of the words, “Bill Jacksphere.” Although, something clogged the laugh, and kept it from draining out. My flippant view of Pastor Brown suddenly left me. The words that he’d spoken in the past ten seconds seemed to have more meaning to them than anything he’d said behind his podium. I had to take a second look at him just to be sure that I was in the presence of the real Pastor Brown.

“That’s quite the speech,” I said. “Have you been practicing for that to?”

Pastor Brown gave a smirk, but maintained his usual composure.

“’Those who have ears to ear let them hear…’” he said. “Mark 4:9… I was simply trying to provide you my view on the world. Would you like to give me yours? Clearly you think that you have something more intelligent to say. But, I suppose that all of you intellectuals do…”

“I didn’t come to you for a battle over worldviews,” I said. “I just— I just wanted to talk to you.”

“I know what drew you back,” he said, with a knowing nod. “You wanted me to enlighten you. Everybody who crosses my path eventually does…”

I nearly opened my mouth to give a fiery rebuttal, but caught myself just in time. I was aware that nothing I said could change the old man’s wooden way of looking at things. He hadn’t gone around the world and gained a rarified taste like I had. He hadn’t tasted the worlds’ culture. So, like the astronomers and philosophers of old, he still looked at the Earth as if it were the center of the universe. He still thought that a man’s monotone from a dead building could make the world rotate backwards and the time turn from night to day.

“We have our differences, Pastor Brown,” I said, uttering the word pastor with a disgust and reluctance. “And we’ll never see eye to eye. I just want an answer to a question— what do you know about angels.”

“Angels?”

Pastor Brown’s eyes had widened to the size of bowling balls. I regretted giving him the satisfaction of asking for answers. Though, I also felt a strange sense of my own satisfaction— the sight of a crotchety old man lighting up like a firecracker, all from a few words that I uttered, was empowering.

I couldn’t quite understand why I felt this way. Pastor Brown was a pitiful creature, and I held nothing but contempt for him. Despite this, my satisfaction remained. Against all evidence to the contrary, a part of my mind thought that I’d done something right.

“Angels,” I said, again. Surprisingly, my mouth didn’t foam of revulsion this time. My eyes didn’t dilate in fury. Rather— I felt an odd warmth when uttering these words. I felt as if I and the world around me had just shed twenty-five years of history. I was back in a place of comfort that I’d long since left. “I— I wanted to know what you knew about them. I particularly wanted to know if you could recall any angels by the name of ‘Gabriel’.”

The Pastor cocked his head to the side and looked at me with a funny expression on his face. I’d seen other old men make similar movements before. They were usually followed by a wizened and all-knowing gaze. Though, Pastor Brown didn’t have such a follow-up to the tilting of his head. Rather, he instead offered a dopey slump of the eyelids and a lazy slackening of the jaw.

“Gabriel… Yes, I know much about him… But, what on earth would make you wonder about such a thing?” he asked me. “If I’m not mistaken, your bible has been coated in dust for the past twenty-five years.”

His dopey eyes pierced into my soul, and told my heart to let everything out— every secret it harbored.

I didn’t listen to it.

My car pulled up into my overlong driveway that evening. I viewed my Sunday to have been another failure in my week. The conversation with Pastor Brown had been nothing more than a waste of time. He knew very much about angels, and the angel Gabriel. However, he didn’t provide anything about them that I found useful. In fact, what he told me only further confused me. The angels that he described didn’t seem to be anything like my mower— that was clear to me. However, he didn’t give me any way to tell if I had in fact met an angel. His explanations all seemed very unclear and jumbled. He’d given me a monologue about nothing.

There was something to the conversation that intrigued me, though. It was as I left for the church exit, disappointed and disjointed. Pastor Brown ran up to me right before I opened it and entered the parking lot. I was shocked to have seen him running. Although, that wasn’t what I found to be intriguing. Atop the old man’s feat of strength, he grabbed my shoulder and said something to me in the most earnest way that I can conceive anybody to say something.

“Ski. I need you to keep coming back here, to my church. I might not be the wisest man you know. I might seem dumb and quite uneducated in your eyes. And, this church clearly doesn’t compare to the mansion that you currently take residence in. However, I think that I can give you something that you haven’t been able to find anywhere else. I think that I can give you a sense of purpose and meaning.

“You ask me about angels— the heavenly beings that preside in the spiritual. There’s only one logical reason to why you’d ask of them. It’s because you feel a need to become like them. I can teach you how to become holy and cleansed, Ski. I can teach you how to be a better man than you currently are. Make sure to come back here tomorrow.”

I smiled as I opened the exit door and finished thinking back on what Pastor Brown had said. He’d almost begged me to listen to what he had to say. I had a terrible history with the Pastor, but my latest experience with him had changed the direction of the tides. He seemed to be a changed man now, dedicated to improving the lives of others.

I was still thinking about this once I’d driven back into my all-too familiar driveway. As I stepped into my house, I began battling over whether or not I should go back to the church the following Sunday. It wasn’t until I caught myself marking my calendar that I knew going back was the right thing to do. As I headed up to my room, I nearly forgot to put the food out for the mystery mower. Thankfully, my restless eyes reminded me of him, and I found myself placing another platter of vegetables on my porch— along with a note, which read—

“Repair broken railing on steps.”

My porch greeted me the next morning with a fully repaired railing and another empty bowl of food. I normally would’ve looked upon it in glee, but I was in far too much of a rush. I ran down to my car, and rode back off to the church.

Everything proceeded as usual, and I felt as if I was merely reliving the past few days. Though, contrary to what one might expect, the feeling of reliving seeped a bit of life out of me. Everything began to appear monotonous and drab. Staring at the world was like staring at a palette of murky grays. When staring at such a palette, one knows that there’s a world outside of it. Although, their eyes feel stapled to the grays anyway, and the thought of compromising their gaze comes across as a tiring task. Everything comes across as a tiring task.

The world surrounding me was unique and full of life. In spite of this, I saw it as having nothing unique or full of life.

My feet stepped out of my car and brought me onto the crisp carpet of the old church. The church was dimly lit, but I couldn’t see that. It all smelled of rot and mustiness, but I couldn’t smell that. My senses were trapped in the day before. Everything of mine was trapped in the past. That’s why I’d come back. That’s why I’d bothered listening.

“Mr. Tic!” Pastor Brown declared, as jovial as his aging vocal chords allowed him. “I didn’t think that you’d return!”

“And I didn’t think that you’d be so surprised,” I said. “You had me come back here. I figured that it was for—.”

I paused mid-sentence, and saw that Jack, the supposed police officer, was there— staring at me.

“— I figured that it was for a reason,” I said, both to myself and to Pastor Brown.

I took a seat in one of the pews, and listened to Pastor Brown as he began to drone on. The only thing phenomenal about his monologue was that less people had come to listen to it than the day before. Other than three seniors and a person sent to accompany them, the place was empty.

I was only half aware of my surroundings that day, so I couldn’t, and still can’t, remember much of what Pastor Brown had said. All that I can recall was that it had something to do with breaking bread, and how doing so would break bodies, or some nonsense along those lines. I strained to listen, but I couldn’t. I didn’t really care. I wasn’t really invested. I felt as if I was wasting my time away— and yet, that’s what I wanted. When I saw the empty room, I saw that only a select few people came to this church. I saw that coming here was something different— something that nobody else was doing.

Though, there was a reason that nobody was doing it, and I was becoming keenly aware of that fact.

Once Pastor Brown’s shaky echoes failed to meet my ears, and a silence began to grip my surroundings, I stood up and headed to the door. I heard Jack follow me, but I didn’t make eye-contact. To my surprise, he walked off without giving me any notice. It was as if he’d lost interest in me.

Pastor Brown was the one who gripped my shoulder this time, and stopped me from leaving.

“Did you like my sermon?” Pastor Brown asked me.

“My answer is the same as it was last time you asked me that question.”

“Good… Because, I wanted to know how you felt about my words on sacrifice— on how I spoke about the meaning behind giving, and taking. What did you think about Acts 20:35— ‘It’s more blessed to give than to receive.’?”

“It— it was a very deep and meaningful message,” I said, trying to assuage his questions.

If I’d been honest, I would’ve revealed that I hadn’t listened to a word that he’d said on those subjects. My head had been too clouded by the dullness of Brown’s drawling speech patterns.

“You know, an act of giving— however simple— can change the way that a person views the world,” Pastor Brown said. “It can show that not all people are cold hearted. It can show that, secreted in our souls’ sweeping scope of self-absorption, there’s still a part of us that can feel and recognize the world around us— still a part that can feel and recognize the world around as something more than an expendable extension of ourselves.”

I was baffled by Pastor Brown’s sudden prolific outburst, and I even studied his face to see if there was a glimmer of a smug smile remaining on it. There wasn’t even a slight curvature of a lip. His face had taken on a perfectly symmetrical composure. At seeing this, I was convinced that Pastor Brown was speaking from some divine source— that his words were spilling from some other force that was beyond my own sight.

Then, I remembered what he said about a simple act of giving. This gave me a passing thought, lasting but a moment, that maybe— just maybe— Pastor Brown was the mower. A burst of shock weakened my chest, and my every joint went loose. I couldn’t believe that proposition— and yet, it all made sense.

“Do— do you need any sort of help, Pastor Brown,” I asked.

He gave me a puzzled look.

“Help?”

“Could I help you financially,” I said. “This church is falling to tatters. Wouldn’t you like to have some sort of financial assistance?”

His face lit up for a moment, just like it had the day before. Suddenly, my joints didn’t feel so loose.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve been needing to make all sorts of repairs on this building, but I’ve never been able to get around to it!”

“Good. You can meet me at my house tomorrow, and we’ll work out the specifics.”

I turned away from him. Though, just before the knob on the exit door had made a full one-hundred and eighty degrees, I shoved my hand into my pocket and pulled out a check. Grabbing my pen, I scribbled out a number that had several zeroes trailing behind it.

“Here,” I said, placing the check into Pastor Brown’s hands. “There’s no point in waiting to give you something until tomorrow. You can put that in the bank, and keep that for yourself.”

The man looked dumbfounded.

“Don’t look so surprised,” I said. “And before you get any ideas, I’m still expecting you to come to my house tomorrow. This church isn’t repairing itself.”

He smiled— and I found that nothing in the world could stop me from smiling back.

I walked back up to my car feeling a new sense of purpose, and entering my driveway with that feeling of purpose still remaining. I’d never quite felt the way that I did then. The whole world seemed to have opened up to me, and abandoned its grays and blacks. All of its color and life had begun to spill out, like water does from an exploded water-balloon.

I went to bed that night having forgotten to set anything out for the mower. However, it didn’t matter anymore. I had all the answers that I‘d needed. The mystery of the mower had been solved— and I felt satisfied in knowing the truth.

Since deducing that Pastor Brown was the mower, I stopped paying attention to time. However, time keeps ticking whether or not one wishes to pay attention to it. Several weeks had passed by the time I’d realized that.

The exchange between myself and Pastor Brown began as a cordial and communal relationship. We each respected one another, and everything went easily. Pastor Brown soon had the money he needed to reconstruct the church, and some personal money.

I started coming to his church regularly, and I noticed that his sermons became more lively and cheerful. The rooms had been painted brighter colors, and he himself was dressed in cleaner garments. It seemed that the entire church had been pollinated with beauty, and its bloom was now waiting to emerge.

Though, that was the problem— the church was only pollinated. A week passed, and a bit of that pollination had blown away in the wind. More parts of the church crumbled into dust. The roof continued to slump inward.

I watched Pastor Brown become less interactive with me. Instead of confronting me at the end of his sermons, I had to start confronting him— and he became unwilling to make eye-contact. Instead of trading words with me, he only traded mutters.

In spite of his vocabulary seeming to have been downgraded, his overall persona had begun to express new improvements. He gained a fuller face, a golden watch, expensive shoes, and he drove around in a new car. His posture had straightened, he looked cleaner, and he smelled of a strong perfume.

He kept improving, but the church didn’t. I watched it stay the same as it had always been. As Brown appeared to become more varied in his branches the wealth, the church was falling into the cycle of decomposition.

It was a cruel irony that Brown couldn’t see. In trying to prove himself as a rare and unique human being by flaunting a new quantity of riches, he’d proven himself to be like any other human. He was stingy, lying, and corrupt. He hadn’t changed a bit in the twenty-five years since I’d left him.

I started to think that Brown had been wrong about what he’d said about giving— about how it could change a person’s view of the world for the better. From what I could tell, my view was only becoming worse. I saw Brown for who he was, and he was nothing more than a cheat.

“Brown, we need to talk,” I said, with a hint of anger behind my words.

It had been four Mondays since I’d given him his money. The church had just emptied out, and the only people remaining were me and him.

“What is there to talk about?” Brown asked, innocently.

“You haven’t done anything with the money that I gave you!”

“You must be blind… Let me give you sight. Look at what I’m wearing. Do you think that I could’ve done this without your money?”

“I didn’t give you the money so that you could use it for personal indulgence. I gave it to you so that you could repair the church— your place of livelihood.”

“And— and I am repairing the church. I actually called some contractors a week ago. In fact, I think I’m supposed to be speaking with them today.”

I scowled. I couldn’t stand the man. He was oozing with falsehoods.

“Thou shalt not steal…” I said.

“You gave me the gift. ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?’ Matthew 20:13-15.”

“You’re a hypocrite.”

“The Pharisees used to claim that Jesus retrieved his power from, ‘Beelzebub’… Who was right in the end?”

“If you’re the type of person that the great ‘Jesus’ produces— then the Pharisees.”

I knocked the bible out of his hand, and left the room. The book hit the ground with a loud thump, but was drowned out by the thumping of my feet. I didn’t look back to see if Pastor Brown was following me or not. I didn’t slow down to let the old man catch up. It didn’t matter anymore. I knew the man for who he really was— a monster. He might’ve been in the form of a tottering old man. He might’ve seemed harmless at first glance. However, that’s the thing about monstrous creatures— the worst of them are the ones that manage to hide in plain sight.

I rode back to my house in a fuming rage. I felt cheated— betrayed. The entire reason that I’d returned to the church was to feel better, and to fill up a void that had been sucking me dry. In spite of this, I came out feeling empty inside. I hadn’t felt so duped in years— the last time being when Brown stole all of my funds.

The signs were clear that Brown was a swindler. He hadn’t ever proven himself to be anything other. Though, I didn’t see the signs, because I didn’t want to see them… I didn’t want to believe that the man I’d grown up looking up to was a cowardly liar. I didn’t want to believe that his entire goal in life was to leech fools dry of their livelihood.

“That was the mistake I made,” I thought. “Thinking that we humans can get anywhere beyond our selfish confines.”

I once again went through the menial pattern of parking my car, and trying to unlock my front door. However, before I did, I felt my yard call back to me— and I looked behind myself. It had been a little over four weeks since I’d last mowed it, and it had become untamed and unruly.

I gave a cynical snicker.

“That’s how this mess all began…”

I took another glance at the yard. It was going to be a chore to do on my own— surely a task that would take several hours.

“I suppose that I should give angel Gabriel one last call…”

I went inside my house and prepared a plate that came along with a note.

The note had one word that came along with it— mow.

Daylight flooded into my eyes, and I rolled tiredly out of bed. I checked my watch to find that I’d overslept by three hours. Having no time to spare, I skipped breakfast and headed out the door.

“I can’t be late” I said, taking a hungry glance at the breakfast table.

Although, even in the rush that I was in, I was willing to stop for the unbelievable sight that I found on my porch— an untouched dish that was still full of food.

I took a look into my yard, and not a blade of grass had been cut. The savannah was as wild as it had been the night before.

“This isn’t possible… He’s never failed me before!”

I ran to my garage, and opened the door. Inside, there was a man. His skin was pale, his body was thin, and his lips were a deep blue. He was sprawled across the floor, flat as a mat. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t stop staring. A dead man was in my house.

I ran to my front door to my telephone to do the thing that I should’ve done before the entire charade had begun— call the police.

A police car rolled up into my driveway 37 minutes later. I counted each of them on my watch to distract me from the ghastliness that surrounded me. I knew that if I looked up from it— even to relieve myself of a cramped neck— I would wish that I never had.

When the officers stepped out of my car, I recognized one that caught me by surprise— Jack, from St. Peter’s Church.

“I had a feeling that you’d call us eventually,” he said.

I immediately remembered the awkward conversation that he had with me.

“Do you know the man who invaded my house?”

“I have a feeling that I do… But I’ll need to see him for myself before I make that judgement.”

“Termites,” he said, once in my garage.

I looked at him, completely bemused.

“What?”

“Termites,” he said again. “Your house is infested with them. That’s how this man made it in here. He broke through your garage’s wooden walls.”

“That’s nice to know, but that’s not the question that I wanted answered. Do you know who this man is?”

“Gabriel— Gabriel Magnolia. He’s a criminal that recently escaped from prison. He was locked away for robbing a few houses several years ago. We haven’t been able to catch him until today, but the man has had a few close calls already— we’ve caught him hanging around St. Peter’s Church several times. That’s why I was around that dump so often, in case you’re wondering.”

I cringed at the thought that the mystery man who had helped me— the man who I’d fed— could’ve also been such a criminal.

Jack bent down, and opened the man’s— Gabriel’s— sickly, clenched fist.

“Huh… That’s strange…” he said, lifting up a watch. It was a silver watch. My silver watch.

“That’s mine,” I said, taking it from his hand.

“He must’ve gone in your house and nicked it from you then… Did he try taking anything else?”

“No,” I whispered. But I was hardly paying attention to him. All that I could focus on was the time that my watch had been turned to— 5:20.

“Crazy crook…” Jack said, walking off. “Probably just acting out of his mind from being so starved…

“What caused his death?” I asked him, right before he left the garage.

“Just look at him! I bet you could count every single one of his bones! He’s starved. Probably serves him right though— he was a criminal.”

I looked at Jack, square in the face.

“This man is many things— but a criminal is not one of them. I know that for a fact.”

“Those aren’t the exact words that I would use to describe a man who led a prison escape and was convicted of multiple robberies. But hey— you’re the guy he tried robbing. If you want to make him out as an angel, you can put it on his tombstone at his funeral. I’m sure that nobody else will be attending it…”

I didn’t argue with him. As I looked down at Gabriel’s lifeless body, I didn’t have the guts to say a word.

Though, as Jack walked off, I managed to whisper, “Let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

—John 5:20”

Those words still are written on his tombstone— and in my gut where I once felt a din.

End