“It's time, Rebecca.”

I watch the blonde-haired woman, slivers of silver running through her tight curls, pick the last item of clothing out of the neatly organized closet. Only 43 – such a shame.

It never ceases to amaze me the things that humans want to do just before their time is up on the Earth. Every one of the charges I have ever been assigned has a list. It's part of my job to help them achieve the things on that list.

Mr. Conroy, age 63, died of a massive heart attack. He wanted to go skydiving and visit the beaches of Hawaii. He wanted to kiss his wife under the Honolulu stars.

Mrs. Wilson, age 52, died of lung cancer. She wanted to swim with the dolphins.

Mr. Parker, age 34, only wanted to tell his eight-year-old son and his wife that he loved them one last time. He died in a car accident six weeks ago.

I was assigned to Rebecca the next day.

I still watch over Mrs. Parker sometimes. I never really got over that one.

I grieve for all of them, even though I don't know what it truly feels like to grieve – because I can't.

Rebecca will die today, of a massive brain aneurysm. I know exactly when it will happen. One of the only things she wants is to pick out the outfit she wants her family to bury her in. I'm given six weeks – exactly enough time to prepare them for what's about to happen to them and help them move on to their new lives, but never enough time to get attached.

I get attached to every one.

“I know my family will appreciate me doing this,” she says as she sets the pink and black suit dress across the back of the leather chair.

“Of course they will.”

I say it, even though I know deep down inside that when they receive the news, they'll be so grief-stricken that the last thing on their minds will be what she wants to wear. Her daughter will cry; her son will drink away the pain...even her ex-husband will be lost.

As I always do, I'll take on the extra role of watching over the family, to help them grieve and lessen the pain. It's my job to prepare their loved ones for death and help them move on, but I can't help but feel something for the family that my charges leave behind. I think it's residual guilt.

The problem is, as an angel, I'm not supposed to feel guilt. I'm not supposed to feel sadness. I'm not supposed to grieve. I'm not supposed to feel anything, because it helps me do my job better.

But I do.

“I think I'm ready,” she says, smoothing the fabric of the dress down, and fiddling with the diamond necklace and earrings she placed gingerly on top of it.

I don't want to let her go...but I have no choice.

“How does this work now?” she asks, looking at me.

“You should lay down on the bed,” I say, pointing her over to the four-post bed in the room. “Get comfortable.”

She does so without question. The six weeks I'm given also allows them time to come to terms with the fact that our kind live among them...that angels walk the Earth, exactly as they do. We get close to them – get jobs with them, befriend them, move into the houses across from them, much as I have with Rebecca for the past six weeks – even though they never know who we are.

Not until we tell them.

In the hundred and fifty years I've roamed the Earth, the reactions have varied. Some aren't surprised; some are surprised at first, but it quickly wears off. Some have asked me what took me so long to find them.

Most don't believe us at first or think we're crazy. It happens more often than not nowadays, because people over the years have lost their faith in things like God and angels. I've watched the world change. Our wings aren't visible to them – we drive cars, take buses, and ride in cabs just as they do, so as not to be detected.

We don't tell them right away – it would be too much of a shock to their system. We allow them to get close to us, allow them time to trust us first. It not only helps us, it helps them. When they know what we're here for – to take their lives, in a manner of speaking – they feel comforted knowing that they have someone they can trust by their side.

The ones who don't believe us at first take time to come to terms with it. They distance themselves from us; they watch us carefully. It never takes long for them to realize that deep down, it's not that they don't believe we exist – it's that they don't want to believe what is about to happen to them.

In all the years I've been an angel, I've never had one walk away and never come back. It speaks volumes to the capabilities of what information humans can digest.

I've always wanted a taste of that.

She pulls back the covers, sitting down on the bed. I pull a chair over toward her, taking my place in it and taking her hand in mine.

“Will you be here?” she asks me.

“Until the very end,” I say, giving her a slight smile.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Seattle bustles outside with life. I always notice it. After watching the life leave so many people over the years, it's a refreshing sight to see.

Humans take so much for granted. Stepping out into the sunlight after a big rain storm; feeling the wind on your face; hearing a child laugh. They busy themselves with their jobs and money – both things that they realize, toward the end, never mattered.

That's the most rewarding part of my job. I have the opportunity to give them one last chance to do something they've always wanted to do. To allow them to walk out of this world and into the next, knowing that they've spent the last six weeks fulfilling their dreams instead of wasting their last breath of life away.

To give them something enjoyable to part with.

I duck into the crowded building to take the fifty-floor ride up to the law office. That's how we stay undetected, off the radar – the irony is the best part of it, because no one expects angels to take up residence in a law office.

“Your job is done, I assume.”

Chris has his back turned towards me as I walk into the room, his “office”, staring out the glass window. He can stare out there for hours, watching life happen as I can, and I can only assume it's because he's been doing this even longer than I have. Three hundred years.

“It's creepy how you can do that,” I respond, sitting down in the chair in front of his desk. “It's done.”

“She went well?” he asks.

“Peacefully,” I say. “I don't know if I would describe a woman dying due to a blood vessel in her brain bursting as 'well'. I held her hand, and when the time came, I took away her pain.”

“It's the way life is, Lance,” he says. “Humans are born and when they come up on the list, they die.”

“It doesn't seem fair,” I say. “She was only 43.”

“Justin's last charge was nine years old,” he responds, finally turning to look at me. “Count yourself lucky.”

The room goes quiet. Justin always gets the tough cases – the children. It's because he still looks a little like a child himself, even though in human years, he would be about 20. It's the fair skin, the charming smile, and the tight blonde curls on his head. The kids immediately trust him; it gives him more time to prepare them, more time to work with them.

It's a double-edge sword, I think. Kids are inherently more open to the idea of anything – angels, God, life after death. And it's easy for him to stay undetected to the parents, because if his name is mentioned, parents usually think their child just has an imaginary friend or sees a ghost. We can choose who we show ourselves to, who sees us, and he always chooses to stay invisible to the parents. It would be too hard to explain to them – especially since most of the time, they're already in the process of grieving.

Cancer. He gets it the most. He says the children's hospital is where he feels most comfortable now, because he knows ever twist and turn of the building; he's been there so often, it feels like home. In fact, it usually is. He hides there at night, undetected.

He acts as if he feels nothing.

“You're getting attached again,” Chris says, looking at me.

“How can I not?” I say. “I spend every moment for six weeks with them, preparing them for their own death. I see their vulnerabilities, their tears, their fears, their acceptance. Then I have to let them go?”

“They're not ours to let go, Lance,” he says. “We've been through this before – you don't feel.”

“I feel everything,” I say.

“You're incapable,” he bites. “Angels aren't human – they were never born with human emotions. They can't feel anything – sadness, fear, anger, grief, love. It makes it easier for us to do our calling and move on to the next human. It's all in your head.”

I sigh. I've had this argument with him before.

“I have a new one for you.”

“Already?” I ask. I had expected at least a day...to recover.

I jump as he slaps a file folder onto the desk.

“You can handle it,” he says. “The six-week countdown starts today, so I don't want you to spare a day.”

I reach for the file and read over it, as Chris seems to recite it from memory.

“Cassidy, age 23,” he says, pacing away from his desk. “Lives in the Houghton suburb of Seattle but works inside the city at the Healing Touch parlor. She's a massage therapist.”

“She's young,” I say.

“It's the way it is, Lance,” he responds.

I let my eyes scan over the paper – it includes all the necessary information I need to know, in order to get close to her. The things she likes, the things she dislikes, her childhood and upbringing. That's when my eyes finally land on it – Cause of Death: Suicide.

“Suicide?” I ask. I've only had one before, and had hoped to never have another one.

“Off the George Washington Memorial Bridge,” he responds.

I look further for details, and I'm surprised to see what I see.

“Lover's Leap,” I state.

“She'll fall in love with a man who will deny her,” he says. “Unrequited love. It will be her one and only true love, and he will break her heart. It will devastate her.”

“She's the youngest I've ever had, Chris,” I say. “I've never had a jumper before, much less a Lover's Leap.”

“Well she's your charge now,” he says, and I can tell he's brushing me off. “You have a job to do, and six weeks to do it. You should get to it.”

I take the file with me as I stand and walk away.

“Lance.”

I stop in the doorway and turn as he calls me back.

“Remember the way it is,” he says. “You can't erase it. You can't change it. It's written, and it is what it is. You know the punishment for trying to change it.”

I nod.

“Go,” he says.

I barely catch the elevator before it shuts, sneaking in just in the nick of time.

“You're back,” Justin says as he looks at me.

“So are you,” I respond as I push the base level button, even though it's already lit up.

“Assignment's done,” he says.

“I heard,” I respond. “Nine years old. It's too bad.”

“He was a happy kid,” he says. “He had a good life, even though it was short. Parents aren't doing too good though.”

“I can imagine,” I say. “I don't know how you do it.”

“Do what?”

I look at him as he responds to me nonchalantly.

“Feel nothing,” I say.

“Naturally,” he says. “It's built in to me. It's protection. If we had to do this all the time and feel everything that humans feel, our kind would die out. You have it, too.”

I nod, even though I don't agree.

“Your assignment done?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“New one?”

I look over to see him glancing at the file in my hand.

“Yeah,” I say. “Suicide.”

“Those are pretty easy,” he says. “They usually know it's coming. They're too deeply in a depressive state to disbelieve that we exist.”

“She's only 23,” I say.

He looks over at me.

“There's a reason it's written in,” he says. “It's the way it's supposed to be. They have a new calling. Their time here on Earth is done. They have to move on.”

“What new calling could a 23-year-old, healthy woman have that she'd have to move on to?” I ask. “I watch people die every day, and call it my job. All I'm told is that this is the way it's supposed to be, this is the way it is. No one ever tells me why. It's unfair, and no one ever tells me why.”

“Because none of us know why,” he says. “We're not supposed to.”

The elevator dings, and I step away, but he doesn't move.

“Don't try to change it, Lance,” he says. “You don't want to be forced to make the Fall.”

His eyes are serious, but I walk away without a word through the lobby and out into the Seattle streets.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Alright, Mrs. Renaldi, what seems to be the problem?”

I've just finished washing my hands, and I'm drying them with the paper towels as I turn to her.

“I've got a couple of kinks in my neck,” she says, reaching back to the touch the spot. “Can you work those out?”

“Sure can.”

I throw the paper towels in the trash can next to the sink, and walk over to her. She's laying on the table, face down. She knows the drill. She's one of my best customers.

Some people think what I do isn't a real job. Massage therapy has a reputation. It's mostly due to those scum-ridden storefronts that advertise body massages but really offer...well, a different kind of massage.

Other people think that holistic treatment is some kind of hack, brought to the United States by the hippies of the 70's, their heads full of nothing but peace, love, and bullshit. They trust modern, Western medicine too much to give natural remedies a try for their ailments – even though Western medicine is sometimes full of more bullshit than the hippies.

I'm far from a hippie – but I do believe in the healing touch of the hands.

I always knew I wanted to do this...at least, something like this. My parents wanted me to go to medical school, but spending eight years and hundreds of thousands of my parents hard-earned dollars to learn how to cut people open and fill them full of toxins didn't seem like the best way to go for me. Instead, right out of high school, I enrolled in massage school and never looked back.

They thought I was crazy at first. They thought I would never make enough money to make a career out of doing something that they always thought was done amateurishly in their own homes or sketchy massage parlors with flashing neon lights. It took a while to convince them – but in the end, even if they didn't agree with my choice, they wanted me to be happy and they decided to give me a chance to prove to them that I knew what I was doing.

A year later, they gave me the money to open my own shop – and I've been here ever since.

Like I said, I believe in the healing touch of the hands, so that's what I named it...Healing Touch. It was tough at first, getting customers who would take a chance on a new massage parlor that they didn't know and weren't sure they could trust. After all, getting a massage is sometimes an intimate encounter. Having some stranger's hands all over you isn't always the most comfortable situation, even though one of the benefits of massage is stress relief and relaxation.

It also wasn't easy getting past all the weirdos who would come in thinking we offered more than massages.

But I've been here almost four years now, and I have a reputation. Setting aside modesty...I'm one of Seattle's best massage therapists. And my customers know it.

I work over Mrs. Renaldi's neck, shoulders and upper back for almost thirty minutes. She wasn't kidding when she said she had kinks – she's tied up tighter than prize sow at the county fair. I'm tempted to ask her what has her so stressed, but the whole time she's rambled on about her new boss at work and her mother-in-law's two-week-long visit and her stay at their house the whole time.

I really don't have to ask.

That's what I love about my job – I mean, other than healing people with my hands. My customers love me and trust me. I don't only work the knots out of their muscles. I talk to them about their stresses, their fears, their doubts...everything that worries them from day to day. And I think I'm cheaper than going to the hairdresser or forming a drinking habit.

I'm just finishing up cashing her out at the register when I hear the bell at the door ring, and he walks in.

“Can I help you, sir?”

He's dressed in all black clothing – black pants, black t-shirt, and a long black jacket. It's a high contrast to the rest of him. His hair is a bright, almost bleached but not quite, blonde. His skin is a creamy, soft white – not pale, but I can tell he hasn't spent any time in the sun lately. And the eyes...

When he turns to look at me, the green eyes are piercing.

“Are you Cassidy?” he asks me.

“Yes, I am,” I say. “Can I help you with something?”

I make my way from behind the counter towards him. He has hardly moved an inch from the door, but suddenly he walks toward me.

“I've been looking for you,” he says.

“I'm sorry, who are you?” I ask him, crossing my arms over my chest.

He smiles and holds out his hand.

“I'm Lance.”