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I'm still too far ahead. So I'll go back further. I haven’t introduced myself, my name is Azrael, I am an Angel of God, and I will continue to be your narrator throughout this story. It’s my pleasure to meet you few survivors who may be reading this, and my sad duty to relate to you the very true story wherein the primary obstacle is the systematic destruction of the human race at the hands of our creator the one true God.

The story revolves primarily around a teenage girl: Maya Rosa Woodrow. Named Maya for Maya Angelou (and for her Mayan heritage), and Rosa for Rosa Parks, and probably Woodrow was the name of some distant ancestor’s slaveholder, whose own ancestors were rowers of wooden boats or something like that. I don’t keep track of how mortals get their names, and I’m definitely not a genealogy buff. Some Angels are into that stuff. You should read some of Gabriel’s work if you are curious about that. He will go on and on about it. “Begat” is his favorite word. I’m getting sidetracked, and I apologize.

But Maya for the most part, never thought of it that way. She thought of it as her father's name. Her father gave her all her names in fact, as her mother couldn't give her any. She died, delivering Maya from the warm comfort of her womb, and into the cold, bony, rubber gloved fingers of some doctor working in Presbyterian Hospital that night. At least that's how I imagine it felt. It’s not really an important part of the story. I forget what Maya’s mother's name was (as had Maya, otherwise I might have it on hand [I have a tendency to get into the minds I write about, as you may note]), or why they never discussed what her name would be before she was born.

Maya speculated on this sometimes. Maybe they expected a boy. And why did she not have her mother's name? Maybe it was ridiculously stupid, and her mother insisted no child of hers ever carry the name. Perhaps: Bodeesha. (No offense to any surviving Bodeesha's out there, but I am in agreements with Maya’s thoughts that that was, and still is a very stupid name. [It is perhaps some kind of tragic miracle that someone with as stupid a name as yours survived the apocalypse. {Further disproof of Darwinism. What a silly old man, he was.}])

Anyway, the major point was that the Maya Rosa Woodrow that we are focusing on in this instance, in this specific moment in time, knew the answers to these and many other frivolous or spiritually relevant questions once, and she was not a forgetful person, either, but Maya found that the little things quickly seemed to flee from one’s mind, as the whole world goes up in flames around you.

I'm sorry. Again and again and again I jump ahead. It won't happen another time, be assured. I'll get on with it now...on with the telling of it. On...to the day of the apocalypse.

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(skipping 13 with forethought)