And two weeks later, I was Joshua again. With all three of my eyes open, including the red one on my forehead, I cried three red drops of blood into the pool. The first person to judge was a child who had accidentally killed his brother. They were playing near shallow water, but his brother was getting on his nerves, so he pushed him and his brother cracked his head open on the rocks in the water.

Already, I didn’t know what to do. I found anger creeping up on me along with panic and confusion. Vengeance would kill the other brother; Justice would probably find a way to send him to jail. I on the other hand… I waved my hand over the pool of water.

Next on the list was a girl named Heidi… Heidi was a girl born twenty-five years ago, and I had always watched her from above and admired her. She was one of the few mortals I enjoyed watching.

As usual, when I was Joshua, I found I just couldn’t do much judging, even though it meant I would fall far behind on my list. Instead of judging, I pulled myself to my feet and walked across the red clouds until they gradually became black, and the sky became stormy and windy. I was moving so fast I accidentally ran into my brother, Death.

At first I smiled, as it was the polite thing to do. But, we’d been distant for years, and he didn’t smile back. I made many mistakes in my lifetime, and he helped me to understand that they were wrong. I don't know what happened to us. My brother rarely said anything, but he had gone from speaking to me somewhat often to purposefully distancing himself from me. There was also a subtle change in body posture that I noticed that told me he was not the same person. He looked upon the mortals far more often than I did, even when he didn't need to. I found that strange as he didn't have Justice and Vengeance to protect him from the terrible things in the world like I did.

I knew I had lost him for sure when he told me to sign the death warrant of someone who had done no wrong and who wouldn’t be on my list for judgment in many weeks. From then on, he seemed to like making mischief more than he liked doing his job. Perhaps he had lost his mind, perhaps he was disgusted by mortals… or perhaps he was simply bored. The cruel mortal woman he was infatuated with wasn’t helping either; she fed his cruelest desires and caused only misery to others. Regardless, my life became that much harder without him.

I looked up at my brother, who was a whole foot taller than me, and that was saying something since all Gods were about ten feet tall. I wanted to ask him why he hadn’t spoken to me in so long, and why he had become so cruel lately, but he made me nervous of late.

We Gods rarely changed expressions, and were all very withholding where emotions were concerned. It was for the best, of course, but it made confrontations like this all the more difficult.

I hung my head, not able to meet his eyes. My brother had what I liked to call ‘dead eyes’, which was exactly what it sounded like. They were lifeless, void of emotion, and so creepy you could fall into them if you stared at them long enough.

I stepped around him without a word, hunched over and depressed.

…Joshua, Death’s voice came through clearly in my head, you are pathetic. You have nearly stopped judging as yourself entirely.

“I can’t help it, Mr. Smalls…” That was the mortal name he chose to go by. Mine was Joshua. Why he chose such a funny name was a mystery to me, but that’s what he chose. “I just don’t want to, well…” I trailed off.

You don’t want a repeat of what happened before. But if you don’t even have a use for this personality of yours, you may as well be rid of it…

I felt a little sad that he didn’t even care enough for me now to want me to keep the only personality that could be considered a real person.

“I see…” was all I said. I kept on my way.

A year later, Heidi was still the kind mortal I knew her to be. I watched her often as Joshua did. She was an interesting mortal.

But this paticular time, I didn’t like watching her so much. First, I had to watch her father smack her in the face, and in return she shoved him angrily and ran to another room in their house.

I didn’t like her father, I decided. I watched him for a bit. After a moment, he left the house and met with a man out in the woods. The man had brought his daughter, and appeared to owe Heidi’s dad money. Heidi’s dad demanded the money, and when the other didn’t get it out, he pulled out a knife and threatened the man.

I watched with increased interest. The man who owed him money threw up his hands and promised he would get the money somehow. But that wasn’t good enough.

Heidi’s father grabbed the man’s child, putting a knife to her throat. The child’s father took out every gold, silver, and bronze piece he had and put it down in front of him.

Heidi’s father moved forward to grab it, moving the girl with him when—

My eyes widened and my heart was seized with worry—which was an alien feeling to me of late, and I didn’t like it—Heidi’s father had slipped on mud in front of him, taking the girl down with him and accidentally slitting her throat.

I waved a hand hurriedly across the water and the image was gone.

I was horrified. I checked my list and was even more horrified to learn that as Vengeance, two days later, I would have to judge Heidi’s father and I would have to kill her as recompense for her father killing the other man's daughter.

But I couldn’t. Heidi was too interesting to kill… I would have to cheat and judge her as Joshua. The problem was, if I got caught, I would be stripped of my powers and forced to live among mortals for at least a year.

That would be unacceptable.