OTTO AND THE AVENGING ANGEL

There once was a scrawny boy named Otto who, out of boredom, often spied on his fat aunt Mary in the shower. They lived alone in a house full of animal knickknacks, doilies with brown scorch marks, Jesus half-asleep on the cross, lots of afghans, some peacock feathers in a dusty vase, and a very loudly ticking clock on the living room wall, like drops of water on Otto’s head, like Chinese torture.

School was no relief: The capital of Alabama is Montgomery, the capital of Alaska is Juneau, the capital of Arizona is Phoenix . . .

Otto was actually afraid of boredom. You could die from it, he knew. He passed out from boredom once, in his room. He hurt his elbow when he fell.

Aunt Mary always showered at exactly six in the evening, then afterward cooked their dinner: pork this, pork that. She never locked the bathroom door. She trusted Otto. He would wait until he heard her singing in there:

“Old MacDonald had a farm . . .”

Then he would carefully open the door and step into the bathroom. That was always the scary part, the stepping-into-the-bathroom part, so he would silently say to himself, Otto opened the door and stepped into the bathroom, as if he were in his room reading a story about a desperate boy named Otto stepping into the bathroom to spy on his overweight aunt in the shower.

The bathroom was already quite steamy.

“And on this farm he had some ducks . . .”

From his aunt’s blurry form behind the milky curtain he could tell which way she was facing and he would tiptoe to the other side.

“With a quack-quack here and a quack-quack there . . .”

Then he would pull back a tiny bit of curtain, just enough for one eye, and stand there for a full ten seconds gazing in amazement at her glossy fatness: big fat back, big fat butt, big fat legs, and sometimes, if she turned a little, one of her big fat wobbly boobs.

“And on this farm he had some pigs . . .”

Then he would quickly tiptoe out of the bathroom, hurry to his room, collapse across the bed, and laugh and laugh at how fat and pink as a pig she was, singing away like that, no idea her dear little Otto was there. That was what tickled him the most, how she just kept singing away:

“With an oink-oink here and an oink-oink there . . .”

Then at dinner while his aunt blabbered on about this and that, he would sit there politely nodding and smiling, as if he were listening.

But then one evening as she cut up her pork chop Aunt Mary said to him, “You know, Otto, you’re getting way too big to be spying on your fat old auntie in the shower, don’t you think?”

Otto sat there with a forkful of mashed potato halfway to his mouth, having turned to stone.

“Would you like to know what happens to boys who behave like that?” she said. “An angel with a sword comes to their room at night and chops off their head. He chops . . . off . . . their head,” she repeated, then ate and ate.

Otto didn’t really believe an angel would come to his room and chop off his head, or even come at all. But as he lay in bed that night he stayed awake just in case, because if an angel really did come he wanted to see it, because that would be interesting, an angel.

After an hour, no angel.

After another hour, still no angel.

Just like everything else halfway interesting, there’s no such thing, he thought bitterly, and turned over, facing the wall. He was on the brink of sleep when a quiet voice said, “Otto,” and he flipped over.

An angel was standing there.

It was holding a broadsword at its side, its huge white wings slowly opening and closing, lifting it up and down a little. It had a soft-looking face and long, curly golden hair, but its arms were powerful looking, so Otto wasn’t sure if it was a womanly man-angel or a manly woman-angel.

“Did you know,” it said in a soft man-or-woman voice, “the name ‘Otto’ is the same spelled backwards?”

Otto sighed and said of course he knew that and asked the angel if it knew that carpenter ants can lift forty times their own weight.

The angel said that was very common knowledge and asked Otto if he knew Our Lord Jesus was a carpenter.

Otto asked the angel if Jesus could lift forty times His own weight.

The angel said of course He could, being the Son of God.

Otto asked the angel if it knew “God” spelled backwards was “Dog”?

The angel said, “Look, just quit spying on your auntie in the shower.”

“Or else?” Otto prompted.

“Or else I’ll be back.”

“With what, another warning?”

“That’s right, mister.”

Otto gave a contemptuous little snort.

“Don’t push me,” the angel warned.

“You don’t scare me,” Otto told it. “You bore me.”

“Is that so? Well, how’s this for boring?” said the angel, lifting the sword in both hands above its head.

Otto turned onto his back and spread his arms. “Go ahead,” he urged. He didn’t care. If even an angel from Heaven was boring, there was really no hope, in this life or the next. “Do it,” he said, and closed his eyes, hoping it wouldn’t hurt very much.

After a minute went by and his head was still attached, he said, “Problem?”

There was no reply.

He opened his eyes.

The angel was gone.

On the floor near the bed was a tiny white feather. Otto picked it up. He studied it carefully, turning it by the shaft, trying to decide if it came from Heaven or his pillow. What’s the difference? he thought, and flipped it away. It hung in the air a moment, then drifted down and lay on the floor.

Otto returned to his back and lay there staring up at the ceiling, at that set of cracks resembling a monkey on its hind legs flourishing either a bowling pin or a turkey drumstick.

Even here in his room with the door closed he could still hear the living room clock, like a dripping faucet. He wondered what insanity might be like. Might be kind of interesting, he decided, and placed all of his attention on the drops of water falling one by one, smack in the middle of his forehead.