The Voice of an Angel

I asked ChatGPT for a writing prompt for a 1000 word flash fiction, and the prompt I was given was:
"The sky cracked open, not with thunder, but with song. No one else seemed to hear it — except for me... and the cat." 

The sky cracked open, not with thunder, but with song. No-one else seemed to hear it, except for me... and the cat. The cat looked at me with suspicion, no doubt wondering how I could actually sing all of a sudden, then it looked up at the sky. It blinked, as if acknowledging that it was right, and that the wondrous sounds were not emanating from my mouth. Instead of yowling and hiding, as it normally does when I sing, it stretched languidly, yawned and curled up to return to its beloved sleep.

 Turning my eyes away from the cat, I looked up at the crack in the sky. Angels were flying out of a rift that formed a schism in reality. I looked around at the people on the street outside and no-one else was looking up. Was it only me that could see and hear this? I rubbed my eyes and looked again. I really could see ranks of angels forming up, singing.

 Glancing back down at the cat, I reassured myself. The cat had looked at the schism. That meant the cat could also see it, so it must be there, right? Right? Shaking my head, I closed my eyes for a second to clear my vision, but my ears were apparently also hallucinating, for want of a better word. I could hear the most amazing song. It vibrated through me on a cellular level, causing a resonance that filled me with, dare I say it, reverence.

 I shivered and opened my eyes again. Angels. Oh, for shit’s sake! Realisation hit me! Did that mean God was also actually real? Oh boy, was I gonna be in for it when I died! I looked back at the angels, determined to enjoy their impromptu performance when one peeled off and flew down, sort of towards me. Scrap that, definitely towards me. Holy shit, it was landing in front of me, staring me right in the eye!

 I gulped. “Er… hello?” I said, stepping back and looked around awkwardly to see if anyone was witnessing me talking to my own illusions. The angel bent over slightly and ran long slender fingers over the cat, which purred and arched its back like the little slapper it was.

“Hello cat,” the angel said. His voice was about as beautiful as you would expect. “Hello… human woman,” he said to me. “You are Michelle, are you not?”

“Oh, er… yes. Yes, I am Michelle.” I stuttered, thinking, oh boy, has he come to smite me to the sound of a heavenly chorus? He just nodded at me, taking his own sweet time about coming to the point.

“You said something which offended me, us, on Facebook,” he said.

“Angels have Facebook?” I looked at him with an incredulous expression.

 The angel frowned. “We most assuredly do not!” he asserted. “We do, however, see and hear much more than you know.”

I gulped, thinking about the many things I hoped he had not seen me up to!

“What was it you said, exactly… hmm?” he continued. “Let me quote: ‘If I were to imagine how an angel would sound, then Dimash Qudaibergen singing SOS would be it’.”

“Ah!” I said, “I see!” I nodded to myself, my mouth going dry. Had he come to mete out divine retribution for me simply saying that? Was he… jealous? Oh dear!

“You don’t actually believe in angels, Michelle, yet you said that? Explain!”

“True. I don’t believe in angels… I mean, I didn’t, but obviously now…” I waved a hand at his seven-foot-two self with the enormous wings that whispered and rustled as he moved. I swallowed that thought down straight away. ‘Don’t think of the enormous, attractive man with wings in front of you when he has come to send you to hell,’ I chastised myself, dropping my eyes and missing the hint of a smile that quirked at the corner of his mouth.

“To put it bluntly, Michelle, we took offence. Can you hear these voices from above?” He gestured skyward.

“How could I not?” I retorted, my usual cheek asserting itself even in the face of potential annihilation. “They are being quite loud about it, after all.”

The angel frowned again, escalating my already high adrenaline levels. “Indeed, they are,” he said.

“I mean,” I continued, my mouth running away with me as usual, “You can’t exactly not hear something that is making even the hair on your arms vibrate, not so?”

“Indeed!” he said again. Was he British, ha ha ha! “Are you British?” I blurted, then slapped the side of my face and shook my head. ‘Mouth, Michelle, mouth!’ I chastised myself mentally.

“British? No, I am not. Offended? Yes, I am.”

“Well, I am sorry to have offended you, all of you that is. But get real! How am I supposed to have known any better when you keep yourselves hidden and segregated, huh? I didn’t even know you were real, let alone how well you could sing; how well you all could sing.” I scowled. They could all damn-well sing like… well, like angels. ‘Dammit! Am I the only one in existence who can’t sing?’ The thought growled in my head.

“Look, it is simply a matter of inexperience.” I continued out loud, “I haven’t experienced your singing, so how could I have known better? Let’s do this: you could send your squadron home, sing me the song yourself, then I acknowledge that your voice is infinitely superior, then all is forgiven, the end. Right?”

The angel stilled. “You want me to… sing for you?”

“Yes. That specific song, SOS, of course, so I can compare, and see the error of my ways.” I explained. In my head, to myself, I added, ‘Sure, yes, sing it to me so I can repent and be saved from being smote… smited… smitten…  smut… oh hell, whatever! ‘

 The angel nodded slowly, considering. With a small flick of his wings, which must have been some secret angelic “go home” signal, the other angels turned about-face and left, float-flying back through the rift, singing all the while. As the last of them faded from view, the angel before me cleared his throat, looking, if I may say so, slightly uncomfortable. I felt guilty at his unease. I realised that singing in a choir is different to a solo, to one person, face-to-face!

 “It’s fine if you don’t know the song…” I began, to give him a reprieve. My words faded away. Suddenly, he was singing. To me. The most exquisite rendition of SOS, beyond anything I could ever imagine. And me, being my usual embarrassingly silly-arse self, felt the tears began to stream down my face.

 “You win.” I said in a strangled whisper. “You definitely win.”

© Catherine Knee 2025. All rights reserved.