Seeing the Angel of Death

2 Kings 19:35English Standard Version (ESV)
35 And that night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies.

Isaiah 37:36New International Version (NIV)
36 Then the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies!

From the movie "Prophecy"
Thomas Daggett: Did you ever notice how in the Bible, when ever God needed to punish someone, or make an example, or whenever God needed a killing, he sent an angel? Did you ever wonder what a creature like that must be like? A whole existence spent praising your God, but always with one wing dipped in blood. Would you ever really want to see an angel?

Gabriel: I'm an angel. I kill firstborns while their mamas watch. I turn cities into salt. I even, when I feel like it, rip the souls from little girls, and from now till kingdom come, the only thing you can count on in your existence is never understanding why.

White wings, white face, with a red mouth, and every time she spoke, she looked like an alabaster statue speaking, a weeping angel, but you could see her statue face, red eyes, open mouth with blood inside, I will never ever forget that face when she spoke . She was smoking a cigarette when she spoke, and I knew if I smoked from that cigarette I would instantly die for the cigarette was pure poison, filled with tar, ammonia, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen cyanide. When she would speak, her mouth would reveal red like a tongue, or a tongue filled with blood, and when she looked at you, you would shudder because she should have been a statue but she was moving and her eyes were the eyes of a living being, filled with red and darkness. . .

She had great big white alabaster wings that would tower over you with the tips of the wings reaching all the way to the ceiling, no matter how high the ceiling was, and she had this darkness all around her, and when she laughed, it made your back tingle and sweat would pour from your pores, because you didn't want her laughing about you.

If she touched you, you knew you would die; if her hand hand brushed against yours, you would die, and all you wanted to do was get away from her, never look at her and walk away quickly, hoping she didn't notice you, because if she did, she would grab a hold of you and stare you in the face and being turned to stone was better than when she picked you up to stare at you. The touch of her hands would kill you, but the look from her eyes would steal your soul, and it wasn't the blank stare of the Weeping Angels, it was the stare of a living being whose sole purpose was to kill you and everyone you knew.

I ran away the moment I saw her. . .I never looked back, and I'm alive because of that. Don't ever look her in the face because if she catches your eye, you'd wish she could just turn you to stone.It was the screaming from the people she would grab that made me run so far so fast- she would pick up someone and stare at them and the scream was that of a person going straight to hell. What they saw in her eyes when she would look at them they never got a chance to say and I would run away before I could watch them scream.

Originally from Bandung, Indonesia, Jean Jones received a BA in English in 1986 from UNC-Wilmington, and an MFA in Creative Writing: Poetry in 1988 from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. Jean currently teaches Basic Skills at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, North Carolina .

Find more by Jean Jones in the Author Index.

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