Iris was sitting in the office in Heaven filling out her required paperwork. Both her and Lisha shared the same offices and neither of them were big cleaners, so both sisters just pushed papers off of the big desk when their week was up. It led to a lot of papers littering the floors and sticking out of filing cabinets.

Bored out of her mind by the monotony, Iris was doing the busywork that her job entailed. Suddenly, the pen slipped out of her hand and flew behind the desk. Iris groaned and put her head down on the desk. She took out her phone and texted Lisha.

“Lishaaaa can u do my work again?”

“I already have my own to catch up on”

“But im tired and lost my pen”

“Go get ur pen”

“later”

“U better not put it off”

“id never”

Iris put her phone down and sighed. She whirled a glowing hand around and snapped. A copy of Iris split out of herself, which ducked under the desk and picked up the pen she dropped.

“Here you go,” the copy said.

“Thanks,” Iris groaned.

“What’s wrong?”

“You know what’s wrong. This stupid paperwork.”

“I think I know what you should do,” the clone smiled. “Go take a fly and enjoy yourself! You’ve worked enough for today and need to get out of this stuffy office.”

“But Lisha will get annoyed again if I don’t finish my work…”

“I’ll do it for you,” the copy said, plucking the pen out of Iris’ hands. “I’m a copy of you, so there’s nothing bad about it.” Iris smiled and jumped to her feet.

“You know Iris, that’s why you’re the best,” she complimented her clone. “You’re kind and have an amazing work ethic.”

Iris was about to go out the door when she got another text from Lisha and looked down.

“And dont make ur copy do it again”

“Ugh,” Iris groaned. She snapped and her copy disappeared. “Fine… I’ll do the work myself.”

She slumped back to her desk and went back to work. Soon enough though, she started paying closer attention to her work. An oddly close attention. Something about it was wrong. New angels were coming into Heaven, but… the numbers were off. There were less angels in Heaven than there should be. It made Iris pick up her phone a third time.

“Hey do ur numbers look weird down there?”

“How weird?”

“Smth about the number of angels not matching the amount coming in.”

“Nothing like that down here. Paperwork error?”

“Maybe…”

Iris knew the paperwork wasn’t wrong though. It was never wrong. She counted again just to make sure and yeah, a couple dozen angels were missing. Angels don’t go in or out of Heaven without leaving some kind of documentation, but… they were just missing numbers.

“I guess I do have a reason to go out,” Iris mumbled to herself. “Alright Iris, let’s go see if it was just a paperwork mistake.”

*   *   *   *   *

Iris flew over the golden streets of Heaven, peering down at the lives of angels. They all looked so peaceful and friendly, smiling and laughing while they caught up on recent times or took a fly. Many angels stopped and waved at her while she flew, wishing her a nice day. This is why Iris preferred working in Heaven to Hell. The people were just nice.

“Have you seen any angels go missing?” she asked one.

“If I had seen them, they wouldn’t be very missing, now would they?” he laughed.

“Listen, do you know anyone who hasn’t been seen in a while?” Iris asked again, more pressingly. The angel’s expression fell.

“I heard some angels in the 7th district might’ve gone missing, but I don’t know. If it is true, then maybe it’s worth looking into.”

“Good enough for me,” she said, dashing away to the 7th district of Heaven.

Iris landed and spent her time asking around about missing angels. It turns out this had been going on for a couple weeks. Lisha hadn’t filed her paperwork wrong after all. The numbers must’ve just been different from the disappearances.

The sun had just set in Heaven as Iris decided that’d be enough for the day. She had enough to ask Lisha to help her find out what was going on. Right when she was about to take flight though, she heard an odd noise. Something down an alleyway between two tall buildings. It was a weird clicking sound. Iris stood on guard and walked down the way.

“Hey!” she called out. “Any angels down here?”

Suddenly, Iris screamed in pain as she felt something rip into her left wing. A sharp set of claws tore into the feathers as she fell to the ground. It made her feel sick. She could feel the blood running down her wing.

As Iris collapsed to the ground, she saw a shadow scurry off in front of her. The darkness made it impossible to identify anything definite about them, but she could see their tail. It was oddly skeletal and had a sharp point at the end.

“Oh Temple…” she cursed. Iris guessed that whatever was taking her angels just slipped between her fingers. And it wounded her. And now she needed a doctor…