Judgement Day is approaching and it’s the brightest time of the year. Prayers are coming up in multitudes and everyone is gleefully sharing out annual hosanna bonuses and planning their holidays for the dead period right after. Everyone but Melchior.

Saddled with the actual bureaucracy of the thing, stuck in a windowless office with literal billions of records to update, Melchior is feeling anything but gleeful. In fact, he is seething, so engrossed in self-pity that he starts referring to himself in the third person. A sure sign of wallowing. He briefly considers making a fresh goblet of ambrosia but decides against it. Even his breakfast manna is sitting untouched in its Charlie’s Angels lunchbox which seemed ironic when he got it but now looks pathetically lame. Melchior is miserable.

“Buddy, you’re doing such a terrific job,” his superior said to him the other day. “Really stellar, you keep this up and I bet there’s a promotion in the books for you. Get it? In the books?” And he proceeded to laugh obscenely at his own lousy pun. Meanwhile, Melchior sulked since he knew no promotion could ever come. No sucker would take his place and the work would simply not be done.

Melchior hates humanity. It has to be said. Can’t stand the thought of them. How they live down there, getting a free pass to start anew every year, whatever they’ve done, just as long as they remember to send up their levy of prayers ahead of Judgement. Of course, such is the law, and he can do nothing directly to change it. Only humans have changeable laws. Trust them to invent something so weaselly. He wishes he could just write them all into the bad book and be done. Take his first vacation in millennia. See the world beyond the impeccably white walls of his cubicle.

His back aches. It’s from sitting hunched over the books all this time, plus, the wings are so heavy, and he always forgets to do the stretches prescribed in the ergonomics pamphlet in his desk drawer. “Melchior, you’re looking pale, is everything blessed?” someone calls out to him from beside the ambrosia cooler, eager, no doubt, to collect fodder for gossip behind Melchior’s back the moment it is turned. He won’t react, won’t give them the satisfaction. Nobody likes him here.

Every year, HR sends out a Universal Love training video. It is interactive. The very word makes Melchior shudder. Such an earthly-sounding concept. Year in and year out, he has to watch the same scenarios of humans and colleagues being supremely annoying. At key moments, the video freezes, and he has to answer some stupid question to get it moving towards the end again.

“In this scene, what would be the appropriate response to the human throwing a tantrum?

a. Kick in its head.

b. Banish it to eternal condemnation in Gehennom.

c. Understand it is frustrated with how small and insignificant it is and ignore it.

d. As above, but console it lovingly.”

Ugh. And to add to the humiliation, his superior makes him send along a screenshot of the completion slide, with its eight-bit confetti and canned congratulations text—every time. By now, Melchior can chant right along with the video. He does so in somber Latin evoking the Inquisition under his breath, for kicks. There are so few kicks in his job.

The training video doesn’t work. Melchior despises humans. He is revolted by their smallness, their softness, their constant whining. The way their prayers are all about demanding and complaining most days of the year, and only when Judgement is coming up, they remember to thank or apologize. It’s not that he doesn’t understand. Maybe it is because he understands too well that he is so repelled.

In the books, each of them is listed by name. No other information, just their name, alphabetically. It is Melchior’s job to check the prayer register one by one and make sure they are recorded in the appropriate book for the year. He huffs and leans over the list of names again. He spreads his wings a little, maybe to relieve the back ache, or perhaps so that nobody can come up from the back and see what he’s doing.

Meanwhile, the humans are at prayer. Time rolls over the globe like a slow flood of custard, and wherever it hits the correct hour, the humans get to praying. All across the globe, room after room full of men and women chant the same age-old words. Ahead of Judgement Day, the words are full of repentance and entreaty. Some manage to put feeling into them, maybe even genuine; others do it because of the date on the calendar.

As the wave of prayer follows the wave of time, engulfing the planet, humans everywhere begin to squirm. Something feels off to them. This year, it is as though Divine inspiration fails to descend. It is as though nobody is hearing them. Normally, they easily manage to persuade themselves that the prayer is being received, that they are bringing something down or opening something up through their supplication. Not so this time around.

They do not mention it to each other. What could they say without sounding ridiculous? “The prayers don’t seem to be working?” Preposterous. It’s not like every other time they have prayed, a mechanical “clink!” sounded and a receipt fell out of the sky. It’s just a feeling. Surely it isn’t worth noticing. Maybe mild indigestion. For the first time, every human feels very much alone in their prayer.

Judgement Day approaches, and humans all around the world are in the throes of anxiety. The usual motions they go through to soothe themselves around this time of year are not doing their job. The polished phrases they utter have lost their potency. And still, there isn’t much to be said about it, so they fret quietly to themselves, repeating the formulas with growing desperation.

Melchior hasn’t done anything to cause this. Surely, the law is such that there is no way he could have. With a smile that could be interpreted both as beatific and malevolent, he rises from his desk, stretches his wings, and finally goes to eat his breakfast manna. When he looks at the box, he chuckles. It was an amusing choice, after all.