The smell was the first thing that he picked up on.

It didn't smell like his apartment. It was not the faintly sour residue of a beer he had left on the windowsill nor the chemical citrus of the floor cleaner the building's maintenance crew used in the hallways, which choked its tenants every damn morning with its potent stench.

It was not the smell that he was accustomed to, which was that of his sheets, which had been in need of washing for the past two years, ever since he had first purchased them. It had nothing to do with his skin odor either, following a long day in a stuffy apartment with the AC on low.

It smelled like nothing.

The fact that "nothing" had a smell was something he was unaware of until that very moment. He had made the assumption, without ever having given it any careful consideration, that the air on Earth was air and that the air was a neutral substrate on which other smells were layered like notes on a staff.

However, a mixture of some kind had always been present, whether it was pollen, pollution, or the smell of someone's faraway cigarette. The chemical sweetness of a deodorant that someone had sprayed too liberally in a subway car lingered in the air.

The summertime plastic breath of his car's dashboard. The city's subtle, ever-present smell is a blend of the aromas of millions of bodies, engines, food, and garbage, all of which add up to the scent of being "here."

There was nothing like that in this air.

If it had a scent at all, it would have been the aroma of uncarved stone, unpiped water, and the air just after a lightning storm... without the heat or rain. The odor was that of a sentence that had not yet been spoken, the one that would have adequately explained what he was attempting to figure out.

Before his brain could catch up, his body began to greedily inhale faster. The air was intoxicatingly clean. Every breath was like the first one. Just as someone accustomed to constant noise might perceive an abrupt silence as an impending threat, his lungs registered the lack of pollutants as an intrusion.

The second thing that attracted his attention was the surface beneath his hand. They weren't his bed sheets. During the warmer months, his sheets had a refreshingly cool and silky texture, reminiscent of polyester and cotton. The fabric beneath him was different; it was fine, dry, and coarse, like sand that gets all over the place and never quite shakes out.

When he pressed down on the fabric, he could feel it slightly give way before it resisted. The cold powder clung to his skin, the corner of his mouth, and his eyelashes as he turned his head and dragged his cheek over more of it.

His eyes opened and...

The ceiling was gone.

He was unable to comprehend that part. What should have been a ceiling was actually a sky. The sky itself was strange. His brain couldn't make sense of what he was seeing. In contrast to the bright stars he had known as a child, the sky above was a deep violet, almost inky blanket.

After finishing primary school at the tender age of thirteen, he left his native home, Tete, Mozambique, and arrived in the United States. He spent his formative years in Houston, and at seventeen, he moved to Los Angeles.

There, the city's lights contaminated the sky, blurring the stars into faint, distant presences. These stars were solid and bright, burning fiercely and steadily. A sky devoid of human light revealed hundreds, if not thousands, of them. He couldn't tell how long he lay there... a few seconds? maybe even minutes.

The stars didn't twinkle. He caught on to this detail following the smell. He recalled a college astronomy elective, a vague memory from a class he barely passed that explained how the twinkling of stars was caused by atmospheric distortion.

The twinkling effect occurs when light bends through layers of air with varying temperatures and densities. No twinkle indicated no distortion, implying an impossibly clean atmosphere free of particulate matter, dust, or industrial residue.

The atmosphere here was unlike anything he had ever experienced on Earth, or so he thought. He had either been kidnapped or teleported to a planet other than Earth (which was impossible to begin with because it bordered on fantasy or science fiction).

As a result, he could only come up with other options that made perfect sense. He was either out of his mind, high on drugs, in a coma, experiencing a hallucination, having or having had a stroke, suffering from an aneurysm, or there was a gas leak from the upstairs apartment; perhaps the ribs were undercooked. His mind worked hard to grasp any understandable reason.

His internal voice was reasonable and calm. He had used it to calm students' anxieties throughout the school year by identifying panic, listing alternatives, and prompting deep breaths.
But his internal voice did not match his physical reaction.

His hand was shaky. He felt it before he saw it, as his phone vibrated in time with the tremor in his grip. He raised the phone to his face. The screen was a spiderweb of black cracks that spread from one corner to another. 'When did it crack?' As far as he could tell, it hadn't cracked.

He pushed the power button. Nothing. He pressed it harder this time, causing his thumb to whiten at the nail bed. Still nothing. He tried it a third time, panic rising as his lifeline to reality failed to respond. Come on, you dumb brick! Turn on. Show me something. Give me a low-battery warning. Anything.'

But still... nothing.

Grit trickled down his thighs and chest as he sat up. He turned to face himself. He was dressed in gray boxer briefs and the white t-shirt with the hole under the left armpit, the permanent coffee stain on the collar, and the fresh smear of barbecue sauce from the ribs he had eaten in a different universe.

Wherever he was, his feet were bare against the chilly, white ground.

"I'm dreaming," he thought to himself with the meticulous clarity of a man constructing a mental fortification.

"This nightmare is a dream. The ribs must've been expired. Damn those bastards; I'll sue their asses hard, huhuhu!"

The thought of millions landing on his lap so easy like that made him chuckle a bit. However that went away quickly in thought of another possibility.

"Or perhaps... the beer must have gone bad. Haaaa! That must be it. What the heck, Alex? How could you not notice it?"

He berated himself at his negligence.

"When I wake up from my dream—"IN"—my apartment, the floor will be where it should be and the ceiling will be where it should be. I went to bed too soon after eating, which is why my brain is making the dream seem so real. Mom had always warned me that I would have nightmares if I went to bed right after eating. I should listen to Mom more."

"Hahaha, ahahaha!!"

He started slapping his cheeks and laughing wildly. Slap! "Wake up!" Slap! "Wake up!"

Tears started to form from the pain as his cheeks flushed. But he was not waking up, no matter how hard he hit himself. However, he didn't stop because doing so would have required him to acknowledge the reality of the situation. Thus... continued,

"Slap! Slap! Slap!"

That is... until he caught a flicker in his peripheral vision.

His hand stopped in its tracks. He remained seated and slowly turned his head like a slow-moving machine. And... he saw it.

The gate.

He would find it difficult to describe the gate to other people. Words like "threshold" and "arch" seemed insufficient, like trying to explain fire to a person who has only seen images. The gate was beyond his understanding.

What he saw was a tear in the air, extending outwards to the sky and seeming to go even further beyond it. On either side stood two smooth white pillars the color of bone, veined with lines of gold that moved when he looked at them. Between them stood an arch of light, structural yet not solid, pulsing slowly like a breathing mountain.

Through the opening, he saw an indescribable green, a color that seemed to hold every shade ever known. It was a sign of a place that had grown since the beginning of time, free of pollution and human intervention. It stung to look at, making his eyes water.

He shifted his gaze to what stood before it. The eyes drew his attention first: rings of burning flames, plates of ember gold, hundreds of them on the wings. It felt wrong in many ways; eyes shouldn't be on wings, that much is clear. The eyes blinked independently, each one observing him from different angles.

The wings themselves were a mystery, folding in ways beyond comprehension, catching light from nowhere. Their number refused to settle.
The being's body was impossibly tall, its dimensions slipping away each time he tried to measure them.

The sword was in what could have been a hand or a wing. It wasn't a sword in the traditional sense, but rather a rotating column of white-gold fire moving in a direction he couldn't follow. It made his molars ache and his vision blur. The air around it wafted in his direction, carrying the scent of burning electrical wire and smoldering fire.

The sword hummed, sending a deep vibration into his chest and unsettling his stomach.

"D-D-DEMON!!!"

He blurted out before he could stop himself. And yet, as if to correct himself, his mind conjured up yet another word.

"Angel!"

The being in question was the angel who wielded the sword of fire. This angel is the one that is described in the book of Genesis in the Bible.

His heart was unable to decide which of the two was true, but it was more inclined to believe the second. Even though he has no idea how he arrived at such an absurd conclusion, he couldn't help but feel that it was appropriate.

Even though it was the only plausible explanation, he couldn't understand how the events from the book he'd been reading right before bed were now unfolding before his very eyes.

The immense pressure that the monster... yes, "monster" emitted... drove him insane.

The contents of his stomach turned inside out, and he proceeded to vomit. First came the pork ribs, followed with the mixture of artificial smoke, then the dark glossy sauce, the beer, the onion rings, the chips, and the four hours of digestion that had been going on in silence while he slept.

All of this now surfaced in a hot, acidic flood that struck the pale grit underneath him and steamed slightly in the frigid, cold air. He threw up again. And a third time.

His grip on the ground trembled, his nose ran, and his eyes welled up with the involuntary tears of a body pushed beyond its sensory limit. After that, he let out dry heaves because he couldn't release any more.

He was crying. He hadn't realized when he had begun to cry. He didn't know why either; all that he knew was that the tears would not stop. His expression was one of terror as his moist face and wide mouth formed the telltale sign of someone trying to scream but struggling to catch their breath.

The sound that was coming from him was not a scream. It was a long, thin, high exhalation. The sound resembled the one a tiny creature might make if you were to step on its tail while keeping your foot still.

Get up.

Commanded the small voice in his head.

...far away.

Get up!

Get up and run far away!!

His legs did not move.

Get up.

Get up and run.

Get up and run.

Get up! Get up! Get up! Get up! Fucking Get Up!!!

However, despite the fact that his brain was screaming at him with all its might, his body did not comply.

His legs just would not move.

The being at the gate had not yet turned its full attention towards him... yet. It was standing guard, most of its attention focused on the green that lay beyond the gate. However, each of the wings' eyes was turning in its own thousand-plus-degree orbit, and they were starting to lock onto him one by one.

GET UP AND RUN!!!

Instead of the usual calm voice that he took such pride in, the voice that he heard this time was more agitated and louder. The monster's leg lifted, and... Thud! A cloud of dust formed around its foot as it touched the ground. Thud! The other foot followed suit.

Slowly, the monster closed the gap between them, dragging its sword of fire through the air. It was very clear to him: the monster had finally noticed him, and it was now out to strike him, and if that thing in its hand made contact with him, he came to the conclusion that he would be incinerated.

In that instant, throwing his hands up was the only thing that naturally came to him. It wasn't a choice; it was an instinct deeply ingrained in his neurological system that overrode any conscious consideration.

With his palms facing forward and his fingers spread wide, he raised both hands over his head.

The universal gesture of compliance. That one he had mentally run through countless times during traffic stops in various neighborhoods, despite the fact that he was a thirty-two-year-old teacher who had never been pulled over before and that both stops had ended without any problems.

All the same, the reflex was present in him. The reaction was older than his actual experiences. This unconscious reflex was one passed down generation to generation, from a nation that had repeatedly instilled in its Black sons the importance of submissiveness to authoritative figures long before those figures themselves requested it.

He didn't have to be told how to react; he had already raised his arms before he even became aware that he was doing so. He had already spread his fingers before he made the decision to do so.

"I'm not—"

The words came out of his mouth in a thin, wet stream, almost like vomit.

"I'm not resisting. I'm unarmed. I'm unarmed."

"I'm not—please don't—please—d-don't kill—m-me."

The Cherubim paused.

They had seen every kind of mortal fear that breathing creatures could muster in their 5,000 years of guarding the eastern boundary, in the long, quiet centuries following Adam and Eve's expulsion and the closing of the way back.

In the past, it had witnessed Adam return and repeatedly strike his fists against the air until his knuckles broke.

It had seen Eve press her face into the dirt and weep for a day and a night. It had witnessed Cain, after the murder, standing at the perimeter of the Garden with the fresh blood still on his hands and yelling curses at the closed Garden until his voice became inaudible.

It had burned every single angel that had ever tried to cross the boundary, including the ones who had fallen and those who had lingered and repented.

Before now, it had never witnessed a man raising his hands in surrender. It had never before witnessed the specific gesture of conformity performed by an unidentified man in response to a confrontation that it had not initiated. It interpreted the hand motion. It came up empty-handed. Thus... It hesitated.

Alexandre was oblivious to this. As his voice grew smaller, higher, and more childlike, he kept his hands raised and did what his body would only allow him to do at that moment: beg for mercy.

The Cherubim seemed to have come to a decision at last. The fire that licked the blade of the sword grew larger. A wave of heat rolled across the dust... dry, clean, and indifferent to everything else.

Gurgle!!

Alexandre foamed at the mouth. The edges of his vision started to become cloudy and white. It began with the corners of his eyes, then moved to the periphery, and finally, the entire field began to collapse inward toward a tunnel that was getting narrower by the single second.

The last thing he was conscious of, before the darkness took him, was a small voice in his head that was very distant and sounded almost apologetic. It said, "The next time, don't make a mockery of the word of God. It is blasphemous."

In the half-second before he lost consciousness, he had the opportunity to contemplate the possibility that this was perhaps God's karma working against him. With his hands still raised, he passed out after his forehead hit the dust.