Isabelle woke up light-headed. The ceiling wavered as she tried to determine what the splotch on it was. All Isabelle knew was that the splotch resembled a gray eye peering down at her in her white cotton nightgown. The art student rolled over and gently tapped her radio alarm clock until it ceased playing. Isabelle never laughed when characters axed their alarm clocks in classic cartoons. She liked the sound of Claude Debussy in the morning. 

The girl pulled her gown off and wandered to the sink. She gazed at the lavender bags above her cheeks, wishing they formed thanks to a long night of studying art history textbooks. She sighed, seized the strand of dental floss hanging from the edge of the sink, and dropped the string into the trashcan. Her boyfriend never remembered to clean up after himself. After letting the faucet run for a couple of seconds, Isabelle splashed some water into her mouth. She swished it around and then spat it out, ignoring the blood that swirled down the drain.

A moment later, Isabelle stood before her closet. She fingered an old, lace blouse and wondered when its threads would finally break.  It should have become a moth’s tender feast by now. Once she slipped on the blouse, Isabelle grabbed a pair of faded jeans and danced into her sandals. Then she slid her sketchbook into the purse hanging on the front doorknob and left. She did not lock the door behind her.

The elevator usually took several minutes to reach the thirteenth floor where Isabelle lived. She smiled when she thought of how some places did not label their thirteenth floors, instead calling them ‘the fourteenth.’

“How primitive,” Isabelle whispered to herself and let out a small breath of air she wasn’t aware she had been holding.

The elevator chimed and Isabelle stepped inside. Out of habit, she immediately pressed the button, even though no one approached the doors. Isabelle scrunched up her nose and wiped her fingers on her pants. Someone had smeared a sticky substance across the button.

Once the elevator doors opened, Isabelle stepped out. As usual, she failed to acknowledge the half-asleep security guards as she passed the front desk. She pushed through the exit and sprinted to the bus stop. 

The bus was just pulling up when Isabelle arrived. She flashed her student I.D. without smiling at the driver and plopped down. On this Easter eve morning, Isabelle was the only passenger on the bus. She crossed her legs tight and then turned around to observe everything the bus lapsed. Seven bicyclists, three dogs, and four flower patches later, Isabelle pulled the cord and jumped off the bus. The driver started to say something to her, but Isabelle fled much too quickly to hear the sentence completed. 

Despite her heels, she whizzed by the library, the campus art building just barely in sight. Fluorescent lights shone through its windows.

“Please be open, please be open,” she muttered. When sweat started to grow on her skin, Isabelle finally came to a halt and caught her breath. Then she fished out her phone to check the time. It was barely eleven o’clock. Isabelle rested her hand on the birch tree beside her and bit her lip. “Why did I think it was so much later?”

Suddenly a storm of children rushed in Isabelle’s direction. She darted behind the birch, before realizing the children were trying to talk to her.

“If you died today, would you go to Heaven or Hell?” the oldest of the dozen, no more than about seven years old, challenged her.

Isabelle blinked but when she opened her eyes, the children hadn’t vanished. She took the pamphlet one of the children gave her and flipped through it before responding. It was an evangelical publication printed by one of the city churches. “I’m not sure anyone knows. That’s a very big question.”

The children remained, all cocking their heads at her, as if they had rehearsed their reaction. To sunder the awkward silence, Isabelle cleared her throat and asked the children what their church was doing for Easter.

“We got an Easter egg hunt today,” a tiny boy with a backwards baseball cap answered. “Wanna come?”

Isabelle smiled politely. “What’s your church doing tomorrow for Easter?” she repeated, this time turning to one of the older children.

“Nothing. We just got our egg hunt today.” 

Just then, a thirty-something man came up to the children and placed his hands on one of the taller boy’s shoulders. He wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the church’s name and the words, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” The man stayed silent.

“Okay, thank you.” Isabelle stuck the pamphlet in her purse and continued walking toward the art building. The children shouted at her in their sweet timbre but she could not decipher what.

Isabelle’s heels clicked against the sidewalk, although the sound dulled as drizzle began to fall. She picked up her pace slightly to escape the April rain she knew would come. Eventually the art building no longer appeared like a speck in the distance. She rounded the corner to get to the main entrance before skidding to a standstill.

Ten or fifteen—no, thirteen, she counted—golden songbirds littered the sidewalk. At first Isabelle mistook them for toys, they were so perfectly preserved, not a feather out of place, not a drop of blood on their bodies. But upon closer inspection, she saw that they were not made of wax or wood. Something, maybe fright or poison, had killed them. Isabelle bent down and removed her sketchbook from her purse, yet she did not have a chance to touch pencil to paper. 

Suddenly a monsoon crashed from the sky and washed the birds down the sidewalk and into a black alley. The storm appeared so swiftly and heavily that Isabelle was already completely soaked by the time she managed to retreat to the building seconds later. But Isabelle’s sketchbook remained outside, ravaged by Heaven’s tears. It, too, washed into the alley as her drawings smeared to death.