Evelyn stayed for about an hour more, but it felt like much longer. Not many words were exchanged between us after that, and I was almost stone-cold sober, so it made the silence between the sounds of the TV so much louder and so much longer. I almost felt bad feeling as relieved as I did once she left, but since that look she had given me, or rather the look I thought I saw on her face, she set me on edge. It seemed that I could feel her presence and her true emotions towards me after that, and it just felt so malicious and evil. I wanted to write it off as just some sort of paranoia; I was really good at making myself paranoid about things that weren’t actually there. Maybe I was just being extra-sensitive and trying to make things more exciting by creating this stupid conflict.
My go-to coping mechanism was avoidance.
I shook my head and got up to go to the bathroom. My parents would be out late that night, it so it would be a while before I got to interact with anyone else. Nochi was resting now in her little bed in my parent’s room. She had stopped her quiet growling once Evelyn had left, and maybe I was right to feel the way I did, but maybe I wasn’t. She really hadn’t done anything
to me.
“You’re not being paranoid,” someone called to me from the living room, and I decided I wasn’t going to drive myself crazy like this, being cooped up in the house. I sprinted back to the living room, looking around wildly knowing I was the only one in there, but no one was there.
The TV was on, as I had left it, and the blanket was still tousled, and the mug of hot chocolate was still staring at me, waiting to be washed, and the empty plate was still there with all of its pizza crumbs.
“Who’s there?” I called out, looking around suspiciously, eyes wide and searching, but I got no answer. The only thing answering me was the TV, talking about the latest development in cancer research. I looked down the hall to Nochi, who was still napping quietly.
“You heard that, didn’t you?” I asked her, crazily. Her ears perked up slightly, but she continued resting peacefully. I wish I had her sound state of mind. Sighing, I thought I was actually losing my mind cooped up in the house, so I went back to the bathroom to do what I had needed to do in the first place.
“No, you’re not losing your mind, either,” that same person said to me once I was in the bathroom. I jumped and nearly pissed myself, completely caught off guard by the person who was standing there, but she wasn’t actually there. She stood in the mirror, looking at me from behind the glass.
“Holy shit!” I cried as I stumbled back, losing my footing and falling against the wall.
“You’re not losing your mind,” she said, and I stopped to stare at her for a moment, recognition forcing me to pause to place her face. Blonde, willowy, oval face, ocean-blue eyes.
She was missing the triangle.
“Are—are you Madison?” I stammered. “Are you Madison Grier?”
She pursed her lips in an odd, awkward smile, said, “Yeah, I’m Madison. It’s nice of you to see me, Ama.”
I took a deep breath and curtly turned around, said, “Nope. I am not having this right now.”
“Wait, what?” she called after me. “What do you mean ‘you’re not having this right now’?”
“Exactly what it sounds like!” I yelled back as I climbed the stairs to the second bathroom closer to my room. I hadn’t been in my room all day. Maybe if I rested and relaxed somewhere familiar, my world would actually normalize itself. I really wasn’t in any sort of mood to deal with this potential psychotic episode.
“You can’t hide from this forever!” Madison called back up to me. The bathroom next to my bedroom had a vent above that insulted my ears with its insistent groan. I ruminated quietly on my life and reflected back on my dreams. Madison Grier was the last person I’d dreamt about, and before her was Donovan Cole. His story had been a sad and tragic one, with an abusive mother that wouldn’t stop her ceaseless barrage of not just physical, but verbal abuse until he was eighteen. It was a surprise he didn’t fall into that cycle, but I remembered he had risked it all for his sister, both in getting her out and protecting her until the end of his life. His last regret was that his death meant it would force her to go back to their mother, as she was the last living relative they had.
“You really can’t hide from this for very long,” a man said over the angsty whirring of the vent. I jumped on the toilet, felt a hot wave of irritation as I snapped, “Can I get some privacy or something?”
“Yeah, do you,” the man said, the mirror still reflecting the wall of the bathroom.
“My god, I must be losing my mind,” I muttered to myself contemptuously.
“It always seems that way at first,” the man said quietly, his voice sounding more like a whisper of wind. I didn’t want to believe this was happening. Even though I saw him standing in the mirror, just behind me as I was washing my hands, I blinded him from my vision and tuned out his voice, even after he raised it higher to get my attention.
“I’m not having this,” was all I said, looking him squarely in the eyes.
“You don’t have a choice, Ama,” he said pointedly as I shut off the light on him. I collapsed on my bed and turned on the TV in my room so as not to be plagued by these sounds that I refused to validate in my waking life. It was one thing to dream of other people’s lives, but to hear them when I was awake . . . I must have been losing my mind. Glancing at the pill bottle on the nightstand beside me, I popped another one. My back wasn’t hurting as intensely as it had before, but they were effective sleep inducers, and sleep was something I wanted to deal with now.
My thoughts began to wander aimlessly as I listened to the TV with the purest form of apathy I had felt yet. Why was I like this? I could really only think that my mind was playing some weird and terrible trick on me, because there was no room in my reality for this kind of fantasy. That had been made startlingly evident to me whenever I had tried to tell my parents about the other “people” I’d seen in the house. I know I’d always had a sort of sensitivity to the things that people couldn’t really see, but after years of being told it was just my imagination, that I really shouldn’t talk about people and things that others couldn’t see, I guess I’d sort of grown out of the ability.
The dream I had that night was of the angel again. This time, I was sitting on some palace steps. The sun was low in the sky, but gave off just enough light to cover everything in a gauzy golden glow. I looked around, a content smile on my face, and I saw other angels, all robed in various colors, walking around and conversing with each other and laughing happily.
Everyone was happy here, and though I was content, I was not happy.
“Come on, we are late!” someone yelled at me, and I looked up to see my brother. He was tall and dark and massive and looming and maybe I’d be scared of him if he wasn’t my brother, but he was, and so I loved him and respected him very much. He had a white triangle pointing down on the middle of his forehead; the mark of a Destroyer. His hair was long and thick and curly, and his eyes were a deep violet color. He was looking at me now with a slight look of disappointment.
“Did you hear me? We are late!” he yelled again, and then it registered to me what he said. I jumped up, and we took off sprinting towards the Shell.
“You are always in your head. What were you thinking about?” he asked quietly as we approached the Shell. The Shell was a massive structure that looked like many pavilions I’d seen in my waking life. This one in particular had rows of marble steps that served as individual seats.
Down at the center was a low dais with a tall, wide, and curved wall. It was engraved with images of what looked like more angels in various battles against creatures I couldn’t quite describe. They moved slowly, and despite the quiet murmuring that spread through the crowd as we approached, I could hear the tiny cries of a hundred angelic soldiers. The image was
moving in real-time.
Cassiel was already reading off of a light stone slab, sent to her by Omnis. She cast us a dark, disappointed look, and I shot her an apologetic smile. She rolled her eyes and sighed, said, “The Fallen have again tried to recapture the Promise Land. They have already begun to surge on the border of Atlantis and Athens. So far, it seems they’ve destroyed a sizeable amount of the land, but the Praemin were able to evacuate the constituents of those villages. The Fallen have now occupied the land and must be removed.
“Abaddon, you will lead the Destroyers. This will be an assault mission, so either force them out or kill them all,” Cassiel said gravely as she stared intently at Abaddon. “Being as there are two different fronts, you may delegate the load between yourself Artiya.” Abaddon nodded his head, and he stood and said, “Where is my brother?”
“I am here, brother,” Artiya said, standing instantly. I’m not sure when they’d arrived, but they’d snuck in and sat behind us. I turned around to look at them. For a moment, I couldn’t help but think how different they were from Abaddon. Artiya was tall and lean and pale. Their hair was almost white, and their eyes were of the nearest, palest gray I could make out. They had a black triangle facing upward that sat on their chin. They were very quiet and withdrawn, and I often found them talking to themself, but I loved them, too, and I respected them highly.
Abaddon called to them, “I name you my Compreacept.”
“I accept,” Artiya responded, making a fist and placing it over their chest, bowing at the waist. Cassiel nodded and said, “I will leave you to devise your plan. We trust that you will not fail.”
“Ovomnis,” Abaddon saluted.
“Ovomnis,” Cassiel responded as she spread her wings and soared high into the sky.
Abaddon looked around to the angels left in the Shell and commanded, “Destroyers, stand.” I, along with half of the angels in the Shell stood instantly, and he looked around and said, “Artiya will lead the Atlantean front, and I will lead the Athenian front.”
He went on to rattle off a list of names, each of which an angel that I knew well and loved dearly. He told them they would stay with him and fight for Athens, and then he rattled off the rest of the names, including mine, and said we would fight beside Artiya. I knew he said my name, but I hadn’t been paying attention to the sound of it. I had, instead, been focused on how upset I was that I couldn’t go with him. I liked to be near Abaddon. I felt safest next to him, and as a Destroyer, to be beside Abaddon, the Hero of the Favored, meant we could only succeed. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Artiya, but Abaddon was simply my favorite.
When he dismissed us, I pulled on his arm and asked, “Why can I not go with you?”
His face softened as he looked down at me, and I felt a rush of anger. I wished he wouldn’t look at me that way. I felt like an angry, bratty child when he did. “Do you not trust me? Am I not a skilled enough Destroyer?”
He responded, “No, my dear sister. You have not fought alongside our brother since we were born. It is time you see how others fight and how to be the best Destroyer. It is nothing against you and your capabilities, sister. It is time that you train alongside someone else.”
“But why? I do not want to fight beside Artiya. I want to fight beside you!”
“Why do you want to fight beside me?”
“Because I know we cannot fail!”
He smiled and leaned down to kiss my forehead, seeing right through me, and he said, “We will not fail, sister. Whether you are beside Artiya or I, we will never fail.”
I made a face, and he pulled himself away, said, “Do not fret, dear sister. It will be over shortly, and you can go back to dreaming in your head again.”
With that, he laughed and flew off, and I turned around in a huff of anger, and standing a ways behind me was my other brother, Artiya, and I felt my heart drop. Their face was emotionless, but I’d read those pale yellow eyes of theirs enough times to realize when they’d been hurt, and I opened my mouth to say something, but they held up a hand and said, “I understand, sister. It is different than with Abaddon. It will be different, but understand that this is necessary.”
“I meant no harm to you,” I cried hastily.
Artiya gave me a wan smile and said, “Do not worry, sister. I understand. We will be departing soon, so I think it is best you take the time to prepare. The Fallen occupying Atlantis are different from the ones you’ve encountered on the main lands.”
“Artiya, I am honored to fight beside you,” I offered with a weak smile, but looked off anyway. They gave me that same wan smile and approached me. They put a cool hand on my head and said, “And I, you, sister.”
“Stop,” someone cut in suddenly. In the blink of an eye, I was no longer standing in the walkways leading from the Shell. Instead, I was in a dark and quiet cave. I flinched, looking around, but there was nothing but endless darkness. There didn’t appear to be any light, and it was empty, but it somehow felt very familiar.
“Get out of my head,” someone snarled at me, and I whipped around, trying to find the source, but there was nothing but the darkness. That vague feeling of familiarity was quickly replaced by alarm and fear. This place, this person, was going to hurt me, and soon.
“Get out of my head,” she snarled again, her voice echoing all around me. Without warning, something bright and impossibly fast barreled down on me from above, and just as this thing—it reminded me of a star—was about to slam into me, I happened to slam back into my own body. Just before falling back into my own skin, my eyes were able to distinguish that it was a person who had come down on me. I was sitting upright in my bed, then, and breathing hard and unevenly.
“Artiya?” I asked myself quietly, putting a hand to my forehead. “Abaddon?”
I’d heard of those angels vaguely, but I had never known who they were. All the ones that mattered most, that I could remember, were Michael, Gabriel, Metatron, and Azazel. My phone quietly buzzed then, and I reached over to see who’d said what to me at two in the morning. My face actually lit up. Vance was asking if I’d like to go on a surprise two A.M.
date for milkshakes.
Sleep probably wasn’t going to find me soon, especially considering the last part of the dream. It had thoroughly disturbed me. I hadn’t felt such hostility in . . . ever. She was so angry and resentful and just . . . angry, and the thing was that she wasn’t just angry at any random person. She was specifically angry at me, and I couldn’t understand how or why. The image of that person standing before me, all fiery and brilliant and amazing and simultaneously terrifying and eerie popped into my head. There was something about those inferno eyes that stood out to me, but I couldn’t quite understand what it was. They couldn’t be the same person, could they?
I sighed, sent a quick text back to Vance, and I decided to put some clothes on. At least going out with him at that moment would take me away from the dream, but in the meantime, I figured I’d take to the internet and try to figure out who Artiya and Abaddon were, and Omnis.
Rolling my eyes silently to myself, I probably already knew who Omnis was.
The internet gave me a lot of information I didn’t know if I could actually take as credible. Abaddon was apparently some angel of death, and Artiya was an angel of some other major religion. The only thing that meant something was the information I found on Abaddon, and even he was just a distant Hebrew lore. Before I knew it, my phone was buzzing, and Vance was outside waiting. I hopped up excitedly and quietly sprinted out of the house.
Inside the car, I immediately reached over and gave Vance a tight hug, not knowing how much I had craved human affection and touch until I’d seen someone who could give it to me. My parents had gotten home, but probably not until after I’d fallen asleep. It was easy for me to go days without seeing either of my parents or interacting much with people if I wasn’t in a position to naturally run into them, like with school, but it was also just as easy for me to forget how starved I could get for that need to socialize. Creature comforts and all. Vance didn’t say anything but wrapped his arms around me, and we sat like that for a few moments before I pulled away, worried it might get awkward if I held on for too long.
“Hey,” he said with a warm smile.
“Hi,” I said back, buckling the seatbelt in place.
“What’s up?”
“I kind of just woke up a little bit ago, so there’s that,” I answered, stretching in the seat and leaning back as I rubbed at my eyes. The painkillers had carried on into this part of consciousness.
“Oh, yeah? How did you sleep?”
“Mm, it was weird, I guess. I had a weird dream,” I said, thinking back to how vivid the dream had felt. I could have almost felt the sun on my skin then, and the warmth of that world.
It was uncannily warm, actually, and I’d felt a sense of completeness, of belonging, that I’d never really felt in my waking life.
“Are you going to tell me what it’s about?” he asked slowly and with a laugh. I chuckled and told him a quick explanation of the angels, of this war or battle we were all in, of my “brothers”.
“Hm, that is weird,” he said, pulling up to a bright diner.
“It’s all so strange how coordinated it is, ya know?” I asked as I gazed absently at the bright lights of the sign.
“Most of your dreams are like that though, right? What makes this one so different?”
“I don’t know. I guess, there was this odd feeling. I felt, like, really young. I felt like everything was really new to me and that I was just learning so much.”
“Like when you were actually young?”
“Well, no. Not really. When I was actually young, I didn’t feel quite like that. I always had an idea of the world. I don’t know. I’m weird,” I said quickly, actually listening to myself for a moment and catching how odd it sounded.
Vance just laughed and said, “No, you’re not weird. You’re an old soul, Ama. Old souls feel weird because a lot of people are new. You get it.”
I looked at him for a long moment, and asked, “How do you know that?”
He smiled sheepishly before answering, “I feel like I’ve known you my whole life. “You don’t get that feeling with just anyone.”
A slow and strong smile spread across my face, and I forced myself to look away as something fluttered in my chest.
“Come on, let’s go inside,” I smiled to my hands. I didn’t look up to see his expression, but I knew he was smiling, too. Vance and I stayed until about four in the morning, and by that time, I was forced to go home. My father was an extremely early riser, and though he didn’t mind Vance too much, I knew he wouldn’t be thrilled knowing he’d whisked his only daughter away in the dead of night. Reluctantly, Vance and I left the small, quiet diner. We’d had a long, fun, and interesting conversation about things. I loved talking to Vance. He was probably my favorite person to talk to, next to Jo and Bond. I really did have a very big crush on him. I humored this crush as often as I dared, but it was the presence of other girls in his conversation that made me think he really wasn’t interested. Maybe I was just trying to keep myself safe from him because I knew I could love him very, very deeply.
My mind flickered to what he had said at my house. You tell me when. I guess this wasn’t really a matter of if he returned the affection for me; it was rather could I bring those emotions to absolute light? The issue was that I didn’t have an answer to that question. I didn’t know when I’d ever be able to bare myself to him like that, or even if I could. I was never the type to wear my heart on my sleeve or express my lovey dovey emotions, and now here this beautiful, amazing person was, waiting for me to tell them what I couldn’t even say in the silence of my own room.
Vance had driven me back to my house, but we’d sat for at least another half hour, having an interesting heart-to-heart about where life had taken us, and the funny realization that it really hadn’t taken us far. It was always in the quiet space of his car that he learned the most about me, about my struggle with it a malfunctioning brain, the self-harm, the isolation I had felt and sometimes continued to feel with my family about it. It was in the quiet space of his car that I learned the most about him, about his anxiety, about his self-harm, about the hearts he’d broken and how his had been broken many times before (by the same horrid wretch), his family and his isolation and his struggle. It was in this quiet space, which seemed to be only ours, that I felt the closest and most vulnerable, most exposed, and it was only with him
that I felt this way.
With great reluctance, I gave him a long and lingering hug goodbye.
“Our conversations always give me life,” I murmured into his shoulder.
“Me, too. We should have another one soon,” he said back. I pulled away, beaming and said, “Definitely. I’ll see you later, okay? You should come by soon.”
“I’ll come by as soon as I can,” he smiled back placing a hand on my cheek. “Now go pretend to be sleeping before one of your parents gets mad.”
I giggled and darted to the house and silently let myself in. I turned around to wave at him, and he waved back in the pale blue light of the early dawn. I smiled to myself, feeling this warmth flutter across my chest, and I had a morbidly pleasant thought: if I could die right then and there, I know I would be happy.
“Where have you been?” I heard my father call from the kitchen, and my heart sank. The dog was already in the kitchen waiting for her food, so I couldn’t try to play it off as if I went to take her for a walk, and they’d banned me from midnight walks months ago. There was no way I’d be able to try to lie myself out of this or make any type of good excuse.
I sighed and said, “I went to get milkshakes with Vance.”
“Ama, I know you like this boy,” my father said in a slightly disapproving tone, “and I don’t mind it, but don’t let him get you in trouble, okay?”
“He’s a really nice guy,” I protested, making my way to the kitchen.
“Yes, he’s a very nice guy, I know that,” he said, pouring some powder into a shaker bottle. “But even nice guys can mess up nice girls.”
“He’s not gonna mess me up, Dad,” I pouted. “Besides, I’m not even in school right now.”
“It’s a good thing you’re not, otherwise you’d be in a lot more trouble,” he said, looking at me in that way that he does that makes me shrink. I looked away and said under my breath,
“I probably wouldn’t have gone if I was in school.”
Then I said a little louder, “He wouldn’t have even offered it to me if I was in school right now.”
“All I’m saying is don’t get carried away, Ama. Don’t make these little midnight dates a habit,” he sighed, putting away various shaker bottles into a big, square-like bag.
“I won’t, Dad, I promise,” I said, looking back at him. He came up to me and kissed my forehead and said, “Alright, Princess. I’m going to work now, okay. Have a good day.”
“Thanks, Dad, I love you,” I responded, kissing his cheek.
“I love you, too. Go get some rest before your mother wakes up and nags you, okay?” he said, winking at me. I laughed quietly and said, “Okay, Dad. I’ll see you later.”
With that, he waved at me and left the house, and I trudged upstairs, suddenly very tired. I supposed the night was catching up to me. Again, I collapsed on the bed, and I let myself sink into the tiredness of being awake at a time you shouldn’t. Sleep, again, found me and cradled me silently.
I was in Donovan’s life this time. Something was different about this dream. Besides being out of order, it was a different view. In all of my dreams of all these different people’s lives, I was always living them as if they were mine. For once, I was watching from the outside, like a movie. I was watching Donovan’s final moments again, and I felt the terror as vividly as I had when I was him. I saw Donovan as he had woken, in his bed and in a hot, inescapable sweat. The scene was so blurry that I could really hardly make him out, but I could still feel everything he felt. Smoke had filled the entire room. It was thick and suffocating and alive with
the fire of a quickly growing inferno. It hadn’t started in his room, though, he knew this. Despite the heat and the encroaching flames, his chest grew tight as he realized that the fire was not in here in his room, but rather right next to him, in his sister’s room.
Stumbling out of his bed, he stayed low to the ground, covering his mouth with a shirt he found on the ground and squinting past the inky grayness of the growing smoke. Tears filled is eyes as the smoke burned against them, and the floor was hot to the touch. He could feel the skin on his back slowly scorching in the heat of the room, and it was really all he could do to not to cry out against the pain.
He focused on Angie, sweet little Angie. Angie was his little sister, and she was only eight years old. She’d already started life on a shitty leg what with that sorry excuse of a woman they called “mother”, but he would make sure she would have a shot at becoming something, and he’d be damned if he let this fire take away all those chances for her. She was already showing out to be a bright little girl with a lot of potential. He would protect that at all costs, and that’s what forced him through that smoke and the fire and through the door, even though the knob burned his hands.
Over the raging flames and the symphony of destruction and a life shattering– their life shattering– he could hear her little voice whimpering and sniffling along with someone else’s. He had foolishly allowed her to bring over her friend, Elena, despite this terrible feeling he’d had mounting for weeks. He had hoped it was just something he was being overly paranoid about, but it seemed this was what it was all really coming to, this fire. He followed the sad, terrified sound through the room, trying desperately to keep his wits about him as the smoke fought to invade his lungs, the heat on his back and covering his body. The wood splintered all around him, and he could hear parts of the apartment giving way as it slowly began to spread to the rest of the complex. Before him, Angie’s bunk bed suddenly splintered, quickly losing integrity as its supports gave in to the fire and the entire structure collapsed, sending a spray of angry embers into his face and burning his eyes.
Donovan immediately covered himself with his arms as he stopped moving, the bunk bed now collapsing and breaking in front of him. Donovan had had a special ability in life, kind of like premonition. He often saw what would happen moments before they happened, but he was able to feel the sensations of it every single time, and this time, it took a large amount of willpower to push past that remembered pain he had never actually felt. He made his way around the wreckage of her bed and made to the bathroom, still following the sound of her voice, which he was convinced was his gift continuously working to bring him to her. He knew he otherwise wouldn’t have been able to hear her through the raging fire. Her tiny whimpers brought him to the bathroom, which he hoped he had prepped her enough for in this case. The apartment complex was very old and made mostly of wood, still, and the wiring was just as outdated, if not worse. The whole structure was a fire waiting to happen; he just hadn’t expected it to start in their apartment, or while they were actually home. He’d envisioned this terrible thing happening while they were away, when one of them accidentally left a light on in either of their rooms or the kitchens, but even then. Donovan had drilled into Angie to be responsible about their life and their home since it was all they had now.
Either way, he had told her that if a fire started, she needed to wet as many towels as possible and cover herself so at least that way, she had a chance of lessening her own injuries. At the door that led to the bathroom, he turned around and kicked it with his bare feet, losing sense as the room became unbearable to be in. The fire was getting worse. Air was being eaten at an alarming pace and he was having the hardest time breathing, let alone trying to find his sister in the terror. To his surprise, the fire hadn’t reached their bathroom, but it was full of the inky black smoke, and he peered in, through all of the tears and the burning in his eyes, to see that Angie was huddled with Elena in the tub, covered in a half dozen wet towels. For a moment, he felt a bubble of pride that she had listened to him, but he quickly scrambled in, coughed out, “Angie! Are you okay?”
“Donnie!” she cried, her tears choked in her throat with the smoke. “Donnie, I’m scared!”
“I know you are, Ange, but you’re going to be fine!” he cried to her as he scrambled to the tub. “We’re going to get out of here, and we’re going to be fine, okay?”
“That’s not what I’m scared of!”
“What? What do you mean?” He asked, confused and caught off guard, still feeling the heat on his back as it tried to pour through the door.
“There’s a man out there!” Elena cried.
“There’s no one out there,” he scoffed impatiently.
“Yes, there is! He’s big and he’s scary and he has yellow eyes and he started the fire!” Angie yelled.
Donovan’s heart sank. Had someone really been able to break into their apartment? He’d taken extra measures to make sure they were safe and secure and that no one would be able to break in, but had someone really managed to get in? Who would try? The area Donovan had chosen to move to was very bad and full of all sorts of crime, and it terrified him to think that his sister might have to be alone out there, but he made sure she was as safe as he could manage. It was better than being with her. Despite all of that, who would want to start a fire in their apartment– on the third floor? There was no point.
“Donovan!” Angie screamed, “He’s right behind you!”
Donovan whipped around as the door flew open, hungry flames spilling in and eager to destroy, and at the doorway, silhouetted by the intensity of the fire, was a man, but he wasn’t really a man. He was standing there, all tall and dark with glowing yellow eyes, but he was just a silhouette. The fire was bright and blinding and hungry and an endless void of destruction that painted everything with red and yellow and orange light, but this man just remained the black figure of a man with yellow eyes that shone brighter than even the fire.
Donovan pushed himself back against the bathtub, horror striking his heart and bringing it down to his feet as he stared, terrified, into those yellow eyes. The man– this creature– took a step towards them, and something about that step, something about the sound it made silenced the destruction outside, and the figure smiled a slow, disturbing glistening smile at him.
“Hello, Donovan,” the figure said, its voice ringing clear in the sudden silence. It wasn’t a voice that he could really quite . . . understand. It was brassy and light and shrill all at the same time. The figure looked male, but he couldn’t tell if the voice was male or female, and the longer he stared at him, the longer he turned into it as their body slowly morphed between shapes, shortening and widening and contracting and getting taller. Donovan was speechless, watching in horror as it changed and stared and smiled and continued to make its way to him. Angie and Elena were silent behind him, or seeming to be silent as it approached, the heat muffled by the ice he felt running through his veins.
His gift normally worked when he was in the most danger, but now it was just him and this creature and the constant moments that would inevitably come next.
“How are you doing?” it asked as it crouched down before him, and he flinched, pulling in his legs and arms so as to not allow any part of him to touch it.
“Oh, why treat me that way, Donnie?” it crooned, its eyes filling with false hurt. “Don’t act like I’m a monster. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
Donovan was still silent, paralyzed in fear as he stared back at this creature, who gazed unwaveringly into his eyes. It repeated, his voice slowly changing to one that was sickeningly familiar, “We’re friends, aren’t we?”
The face followed, as its skin lightened to a pale cream, nose straightening outward and lips thinning. Cheek bones raised out and a familiar mole grew at the corner of his mouth as a poof of curly black hair sprouted from his scalp. “Right, Donovan?”
Horror struck, Donovan whispered, “Eli?”
“There we go, you remember me, right buddy?” he asked, his body remaining unchanged and his eyes staying that glowing yellow instead of a dark blue.
“Eli?” he repeated, feeling the beginnings of a surge of rage start to ignite his cold body.
“Whoa there, old boy,” he said, shoving a hand through his chest. “We can’t have that now.”
Donovan looked down at the arm protruding through his body, not quite registering what was happening just yet. It was one of those things that was too unreal and just didn’t fit with your reality, one of those things that couldn’t possibly be real here and so seemed to be covered in some sort of distortion of the air. It was evident it wasn’t real, it couldn’t be because this creature couldn’t be real. However, Eli’s hand was surely grasping Donovan’s heart, and it was this pain that hit him a moment later, forcing him to the reality that this was real.
“Do you feel that? That right there, Azazel?” Eli asked softly, Donovan feeling, more than anything, the beat of his heart in the palm of Eli’s hand. “This is the feeling of betrayal. I want you to remember this forever. No matter how many times you are reborn, I will keep coming back to you in every single life. I will always find you. I will always support you. I will always be there for you. I will always give you everything you need, and I will always take it all away. You will always trust me, and I will always betray you. I will never stop killing you in every single life you live, no matter how many years you are bound to this world. You will always get a nagging feeling that someone is there, that someone hates you and wants to kill you, and I promise you that no matter how many people you come across, none of them will ever hate you as much as I do. I will always be the last face you see before you go back to that place. I will carve myself into the history of your soul,” it was then that Eli decided to close his hand around my heart, a spray of dark blood shooting out from my chest and up Eli’s deformed arm. My jaw dropped open, slack as I tried to register what had happened in the few seconds I had before I died. My eyes welded to Eli’s face, he stood, his black body glistening in the fire light, and my blood dripping down his arm. There were a few specs of blood splattered across his face. An oily tongue slithered from his lips and licked up every bit, gave me a terrifying smile.
Flicking his hand, he stared deep into my eyes, my vision blackening at a frightening pace, and he said, “You will never forget me, Azazel.”
At the end of his speech, I was awake in my bed, clutching at my chest. Almost feeling as if I were still pinned to the bathtub, I stayed in the bed, making sure my chest was intact. I could still feel the echoes of the jagged hole that Eli—that wasn’t Eli—had left. I was soaked in a freezing sweat, staring up wildly at my ceiling. Fear paralyzed me, kept me in place out of danger that moving might somehow make it real, might somehow drag me back into Donovan’s life and his death, or even worse—follow me back to this life. I looked around my room, breathing hard and rapidly, trying to steady my heart rate. My room was just the same, still and quiet as it had been when I had went to sleep. My paintings were still on the wall, my closet and dresser still the same, the clothes on the floor unmoved and unchanging, the pale curtains still closed.
I let a few more moment pass by before I took a deep breath and rolled over in the bed, burying my face in the pillow. Azazel. He had called me Azazel.
Azazel, Angel of Destruction.
“Fitting,” I murmured to myself, feeling an odd emptiness bring itself to life.
“It’s one of those days, hm,” someone asked in the bleakness of the room. Without turning around, I murmured a sound of agreement. It was indeed going to be one of those days, and it was going to be difficult to get through it if I didn’t have anything there to distract me. It was now the weekend. I was supposed to go back to school by Monday, and it was only Friday.
Today was going to suck, and I wasn’t going to stand for it.
Turning around and sitting up, I reached for the bottle of melatonin I kept nearby to help me sleep when insomnia kept me awake and tormented me with, demons, a flurry of wayward thoughts, or both.
“Is this really going to help your case?” the voice asked. It was Madison.
“Doesn’t matter right now,” I murmured, swallowing the pills dry.
“You can’t keep running away from this.”
“Yes, I can,” I responded, flopping back on the bed and letting myself sink into the gravity of sleep. “My reality is my own.”
“Bide your time, Ama. It’s coming,” she said, her voice sounding faint as the warmth of sleep crept up on me.