7. The Soul Files

Deep in thought, I was. My journey back to God's temple was excruciatingly painful - thoughts were running amok, it's a miracle I did not get lost in the process. The journey back was longer than the initial one.

I made it back in one piece, albeit very tired. "where were you?", the Almighty enquired. I honestly didn't know how to answer said question, my mind was still trying to process all this. Every day felt like the first. And of course, one other reason that stopped me from answering the question was the Lord's omnipresence - He is said to be everywhere and anytime, simultaneously. I knew, because of this, that He knows the answer. Was He trying to test me? See if I'm loyal or not?

Luckily, I saw through that trick, and instead chose not to say my whereabouts.

The world of the living is governed by a strict policy that binds a soul to his or her own guardian. From conception, the very first moment the sperm reaches the egg, an angel is crafted from divine ash and moulded in God's image. Angels are made, rather than born. They are known to bring luck to amthe assigned individual. After the human gestation period, when the baby is being delivered, the Angel moves out of Heaven and guards the kid until death. They cannot be seen by the naked eye, so their existence is still a debate back in the human world.

When the human succumbs to death, the Angel dies too, and fades away into nothingness, for it has served its purpose.

A few moments later, a contradiction emerged: the angel assigned to me finally showed up. How was this possible? "The fact that I'm in Heaven meant that I had died, consequently, it meant that my guardian angel had also ceased to exist, so how come my it was still alive?", I thought to myself. This whole situation raised some flags. "I know what you are probably thinking, child It may come as a surprise to you as to why, or rather, HOW I'm still alive.", so said the Angel. Never would I have thought I'd hear such an immaculate voice coming from someone else other than God Himself. I delayed my response, my mind was too busy admiring the literal angelic voice.

Eventually, I snapped out of it, and said the following: "how are you still alive? I thought your kind dies as soon as the living vessel dies". To which he replied: "Well, there is only one explanation for all of this. It might come as a slight shock so I'll just go ahead and say it: you are not DEAD!" A slight shock? A SLIGHT SHOCK! For three months I had made peace with the fact that i was dead, and now this? I suffered in hell for three months, which felt like THREE YEARS!

"What do you mean? If I'm not dead, the how am I in Heaven right now?" I said this, hoping for a reason that mortal self would understand. "Well...", said the guardian angel as majestic as ever, "Every single being has a file. This file records three events - birth, life and death. These are known as The Soul Files. The birth part of filled automatically when one is born; The life chapter is the largest file, which records all that one does in the world of the living, and this is the one which determines whether one goes to heaven, hell or limbo; them the last file, the death file, is filled out when one dies. These files are kept by the Grim Reaper, the Angel of Death. As soon as I heard that yhu had died, I personally paid Death a visit. He's the one that facilitates all that has to do with crossing over to the other side. I enquired about your death, but he told me that your death file was blank."

All this was shocking for me. The talk about death, crossing over and files. I honestly couldn't cope, buy I managed to get a point across: "I think we should pay Death a visit, maybe this time we'll get an answer". "We can't just bother death like that; he's a busy man. Probably the busiest being in existence. Hundreds of people die each day, and he is responsible for all of those souls. He has to make sure that everyone crosses over to their respective realms".

"Come on. I'm sure he can spare a few minutes for us. We need to get to the bottom of this whole charade. Don't you want to know the reason behind this anomaly?" I knew that the last sentence would ignite a thought of curiosity in my guardian angel. He couldn't resist the urge to find out what went wrong exactly. "Okay, fair point. We'll head on to the Grim Reaper's domain. A realm outside space and time. But ne warned, this is Death we are talking about, one wrong move and he could wipe us out of existence".

I let off a huge gulp, but I wasn't ready to give up. I heard stories about the grim reaper as a kid, never would I have figured that I would one day meet him. And not because I deemed myself unworthy, but because I never for one second believed he was real. "Ok, let's do this", I said. "Before that, we have to ask permission from the Almighty first. We can't just up and leave", the Angel said. I did not resist, we went to God to ask for permission. We got to his quarters and found Him doing something I never thought a beimg such as He would do - meditating. Before we even asked for permission to leave, He gave us the green light. At exactly that moment I was sure that He truly was All Seeing.

I used the same formulae that got me here to open a portal that would lead us to Death's realm. We went through the portal, and made it to the other side. The moment we got there, an overwhelming voice said to us: "Who dares enter the realm of The Reaper, the bringer of death, the ender of life?". Nothing scares me more than a voice emanating from an unknown source.