It was hunting season, which is to say, Advent, so my brother Noah and I drew out the Remington and shot down angels by the creek. The angels could sense the temperature dropping, and flocks of them came out to bathe in the Christmastime sun. We dressed in black and hid behind trees, aiming slowly, carefully. Noah put his fingers over mine and guided my barrel. Click, thud. The angels fell from the sky like prodigious birds. We would hike there at dawn and lug back the carcasses by evening.

Afterward, we drained the blood into canteens and then washed our hands of our sins. Noah sold liters of it on the black market to chapels and research teams in exchange for food. In my mind, we hunted only to survive.

“Scalpel,” Noah said.

I scanned the row of blades that were laid out on a napkin and passed him the scalpel. He carved out the heart.

“Bag,” he said.

I handed it to him. He sealed the organ and stashed it away. At times, I think he collects what he cannot possess.

We were going back through the day’s haul when Noah extended his finger toward one of the angels.

“I like this one,” he said. “I’m going to keep it.”

He taxidermied the angel for us as a Christmas decoration. He displayed it across from the dining room table and prayed to it every night at ten. I dressed it in an old sweater and jeans I had fished out of the closet. He said it looked better the wild way.

“I’m a proponent of idol worship,” Noah told me, touching the angel’s arm. “Gives me something to feel. Something to believe in.”

Noah replaced the stuffed angel’s eyes with 8-balls, black and cold. I thought it was kind of crude. It still looked alive.

“Lord have mercy,” I said, starting to cross my chest before shaking my head. I think it was last year when we decided that we were done waiting for Jesus. We said that Jesus could have resurrected and died about four hundred times by now.

Mom used to tell me to read the Bible. We were a Bible family. By the time she died, I had only read Genesis. It was Noah who really read it, and when he told me that the Bible said to move down by the creek to hunt angels, I had no bones to pick. Even so, I found myself thinking about Genesis. In the chapter, there were two brothers: Abel, shepherd of the flock, and Cain, tiller of the ground. In a bonfire, they made sacrifices to God. I wondered why God praised the lamb of Abel but not the fruit of Cain. Did God not make Cain to tend the fields? Then Cain bludgeoned Abel to death, and God banished him to wander forever. They say God gave Abel dominion over the lamb, so that he may slay it. But Cain didn’t believe in dominion, and he knew the lamb didn’t choose to enter the fire. He killed Abel to protect. To protect what was God’s.

When we were younger, we ran out on the lawn and pretended to be the brothers. Noah chose first and chose Abel, naturally. I was left with Cain, and I wadded the grass into my fists. I laid down the bundles and collected them on a tree stump. Mom came out and saw the lawn as broken sod. She saw that the grass was uprooted, disrespected. She called me inside.

Beside the kitchen, Mom had a small wooden altar. She told me to kneel alone on the pew and pray.

“God, give him some reverence,” Mom said.

And so I prayed for reverence, and somewhere within me, it took flight.

The next day, Mom let me outside and I joined Noah. I was still Cain, and I watched my brother wave around a branch to guide his imaginary livestock. I saw him frown.

“A good shepherd has real animals,” he said.

I ignored him until, the following evening, he placed a dead possum on the stump. I would not have assumed it was dead before I saw a dark pool form under its body. Noah’s hands were twitching when he asked me to help him hide the branch.

I relived the memory as I came over to the living room to set the table. When I ran out of knives, I put down the scalpels we used to dissect the angels. I retrieved two plates, the bread, and a bottle of red wine. I felt a newfound solitude in the absence of gazing eyes. In the absence of 8-ball eyes. Then I realized that the stuffed angel was gone.

Upstairs I went to check up on Noah, wine bottle still in hand. I heard a low cackle from the room and opened the door to find Noah surrounded by jars of angel hearts. They were stacked in rings around the bed. The frozen angel lay there splayed, and Noah was bent over it with his dissection tools in hand. He was laughing. The face of Cain flashed in my mind, the image of the burning lamb, and I realized I did not believe in dominion either. I gripped the bottle with both hands and brought it down shattering over his head. With wine staining the floorboards, the angel poised unfazed at what looked like a murder scene.

“You and I, we’re family now.”

Quietly, I carried the angel back downstairs. I broke bread at the table and offered it to an empty seat.

I reached to open the curtains when the angel moved. It extended a hand toward me and latched onto my arm. I was suddenly pulled, flung out of the window and into the air. Above the roof and through the trees. I heard wings beating as we rode the saddle of the clouds, rejoining the sky. I turned to see the angel’s face. It—she—with her 8-ball eye, winked.