keyword: loose, title: it's a life in misc. flash fiction

“That’s impossible,” Phil heard a familiar man’s voice saying, despite being nearly asleep, “that can’t be me.” “It is, Philip,” he heard a second voice, unmistakably female, authoritative and yet kind, powerful but sweet as the rushing of a river made out of pure honey, “he’s who you would have been had you not worked so hard, had you given up easily.” He couldn’t place her voice at all, but he was certain of the other. It was his own.

“What?” Phil asked as he opened his eyes, raised his head up out of his bed and there the woman was, an angel, a literal angel, radiant, literally radiant inside of loose diaphanous robes, skin like polished bronze, eyes beaming the very stars, sheaves of platinum hair, wings of translucent fire, the whole schmear. And standing at her side was himself. But not himself.

Himself if he could afford to dress better and stood up straight. Himself if he were fit and always well-shaved. Himself, the way he looked inside the bathroom mirror before he put his glasses on.

“Well,” the angel said, “this is awkward.” She wore that singular look of consternation you only see on someone not only unsure but hasn’t been unsure in so very long they don’t even know to be unsure anymore. “You aren’t supposed to be able to see us,” she admitted, “no one has ever been able to see us before.”

She went onto explain to Phil, to the Phil in the bed how his other self was a politician who’d lost an election and was considering giving up on public service. Which could not be allowed, the world needed him too much, so the angel Laurelai was sent to instruct him on the error of his way. Even to angels, though, the future is unclear “…this isn’t Dickens…” so she was skimming him through time, through alternate pasts to show the congressman what things were like in the worlds where he had given in long ago.

This Phil, for example, in his bed in a small cluttered apartment, with the gut and the job in the call center slowly eating out his soul. This Phil who had been unsure at a couple of points in his life where the other Phil had instead shown resolve and pushed forward, taken a few more risks.

This other self who needed to see what he would have been if he had let other people convince him he wasn’t good enough, this was what happened, he couldn’t let a rigged election bring him down like that, either. Unlike this guy, with the tiny apartment redolent with weeks-old cottage cheese containers and broken dreams.

It worked, of course, this terrified the congressman right back onto the path, he didn’t want to be that at all. “Is that all I am, even to the heavens, a pathetic object lesson? A negative example?”

“See it another way, child,” was all Laurelai could muster, “at least you’re useful for something.”