[WP] Suddenly across the globe, large, feathered, rotted corpses begin to drop out of the sky. They are soon identified to be Angels.

I was never inclined to believe in anything really. I've always taken a humanist view in life. I believe we make our own fate, we right our own wrongs... When my daughter was seven, she asked me “Why do bad things happen to good people?” I told her that the world was often unfair and we had to do our best to make things better for the people around us.

This seemed to satisfy her. I wish I could have told her something more fulfilling. That there is a benevolent force that plans these things out and will make them even out eventually. That when something bad happens to someone good that it is only a test and that things will be wonderful them as a reward for them being the best person they knew how. I couldn't say it though, I never believed it... but now... now, I'm starting to believe something...

The first reports came in a few months ago, dead people falling from the sky... possibly jumpers hitting birds on the way down... feathers, there were always feathers involved. It was creepy as hell but in a world where con-men and professional liars run congress and pastors molest children... you never think too much about what's going on outside your little sphere. To do so is almost overwhelming, especially when you have kids. Every day I ask myself how can I make the world fair, how can I give a better world to my daughter? 

I've also started on anti-anxiety medication if that gives you any indication of how well this is working out for me... Anyway, I didn't really pay much attention to these weird stories, I saw a pic on /r creepy of one of these “sky people” and it just looked like an androgynous woman who had jumped and landed on swan or something... Weird as hell but viral copycats pop up everywhere.. I just assumed some psychos had taken to posing corpses in some fucked up way because everyone else was doing it....

How I thought about these things changed on day as I was staring out the window. I run a restaurant and for the most part Sunday mornings are pretty uneventful. We're near a university and the kids are mostly out Saturday night so I look forward to the relative calm of the next morning. I was in auto pilot that morning. The sun was streaming in, making smokey shafts toward the carpet. I made a mental note to have my assistant get the window cleaners out more frequently as I saw the smudges on the window, when something streaked downward at the corner of my field of vision. I looked over to see a figure hit the side walk... The building we are in is about five stories and I thought to myself, “Jesus, someone jumped.” I yelled back to my staff “Call 911, someone jumped off the building!”  I saw my assistant manager put her hand to her mouth and run for the phone.  I ran out the door.

I wasn't sure what I could do but I've had some first aid training. I thought somehow maybe I could help. What I saw on the sidewalk was not what I was expecting, it stopped me in my tracks. It was a man... or... maybe a woman. He/she was lying on her back and she looked just like the picture from Reddit. She was coughing up something black, like blood but dark as ink. She struggled to stand up and as she did I saw where the feathers came from... Wings...  Delicate, bird like wings... broken and torn from the impact. The struggled feebly underneath her as she tried to rise. The sense of pity I felt shocked me out of my paralysis. She was this badly injured and trying to get up. I rushed over to her, kneeled beside her and said “Paramedics are on their way, don't try to get up. You're too badly hurt.” 

Her eyes locked on mine, they were the same shade of lavender that my daugther's eyes were when she was born ( They became more blue after a week or so but I remember the color vividly and it was the exact same shade).  She lifted her head and through black blood gurgled some words, I'm still not sure what she said but it sounded like “Aa'loh... G'oyozah... Lampiad'oa acon'oa B-byet...” Then she went limp. The paramedics arrived seconds later and pushed me away. The police asked me what happened... I don't remember much of it. I went home with the lavender eyes and the words echoing in my head. 

I spent the rest of the night searching the pictures like what I had seen and trying variations of the words she spoke. I put it up on for discussion in a languages forum and someone said it sounded like it might be Aramaic and if so, it  could mean something like “God failed, light is home.” but they warned me that the average person would likely be babbling after a fall like that. I found more and more sightings of the winged people on the internet... I wasn't sure what was going on yet for some reason I searched Why do bad things happen to good people?... and it auto corrected to  Why are bad things happening to bad people? And thousands of articles of corrupt CEOs and politicians, brutal dictators, child molesters, and mass murders... hundreds of people that had been beyond the reach of true justice dying in freak accidents, heart attacks, car crashes, several slipped and fell in the bathtub... I kept seeing them, all over the world, starting about the time the sky people started falling...

On another impulse searched God and Light...  The first thing that popped up was Lucifer... so I followed that. When you search something like that in the US you get a million Christian nut jobs screaming about the end of days. People talking about sin and “The Fall” not much actual research into folklore, just a lot of people taking an old story as truth and nothing anyone who went to church once doesn't know... But... twenty or so pages deep I saw a simple blog, someone claiming to be a biblical scholar... He said, “The war in heaven was not because Lucifer was jealous of God and mankind's free will but rather because it cared for humanity and felt this to be too great a burden. It believed that God's actions were cruel and unjust. Lucifer's name means the bringer of light and the implications of that are what light implied to the writers of the bible. Light brings truth, goodness, and justice. God was creating a world where these things did not occur on their own and out of compassion for humankind it challenged its creator.”  And I asked myself... “Why do bad things happen to good people?” And then the thought changed. “Why are bad things happening to bad people?” 

I got up from the computer completely brain-fried and numb.  I walked down the hall to my daughters room. She was fast asleep on her back, her angelic little face framed by her fine blonde hair spread out on her pillow. I kissed her on the forehead and said “Be good, sweet pea, and the world will get better...” I went to bed that night with less anxiety than I had had in years. 

-- I'm normally just a lurker but I decided to contribute. This is my first writing prompt so be gentle. =)

/r/WritingPrompts Thread