The Truth About Angels

Please Note: This story deals with themes of mental illness, particularly depression, abuse, and death (in the form of murder). This material is not suitable for all readers.

A touch of chill hung on the tendrils of wind as it weaved in and out of the open window. Grey skies loomed above, threatening rain and thunder. A tattered book sat on the couch, its spine bent and the words on the pages smothered against the maroon corduroy cushions. From the kitchen, the clanging of dishes sounded: a clink of glass against glass, a sloshing of water, a thud against the counter.

Beep. Beep Beep. A boy with a black hood pulled up over his shaggy brown hair carelessly threw leftover lasagna onto the stove, still steaming from the microwave. His nostrils flared as he took in the rich scent of spiced sausage and melted cheese. Pulling out a fork, he leaned against the counter to devour the food. Forkful after forkful, the food disappeared, and just as the last steaming bite came to his lips, he dropped the load quickly. It clattered loudly to the floor, splattering red sauce across the wooden floor and the base of the walls.

Muscles taut, he pressed his palms hard against his temples as whispers laced through the creases and folds of his brain.

“Stop,” he grunted through clenched teeth. But they didn’t stop. They taunted him, cursed him with pain and poisonous words.

You’re not good enough. They attacked. You’d be better off alone. An eternal ringing had taken up behind their assault. He wished the noise would make his ears bleed, cleansing the voices in scarlet streams down the sides of his face.

The fog of horrid whispers continued as his mother rushed in, a look of panic on her face. “Honey, what happened?” Her voice had a calming effect, but her eyes spoke measures. She neared him as one approached a hurt dog, afraid of being bitten but drawn forward by compassion and curiosity. She pulled him cautiously to her chest, kissing his head with startling delicacy. An odd image of a mature boy being cradled in the arms of his mother like an infant.

His silence echoed as an answer. He couldn’t bring himself to part his lips, for fear he would voice the utterings of his mental villains. She released him and pulled a rag from the drawer, but he didn’t stick around to see her clean up his mess.

He rushed from the room, passing his favorite book, where it lay broken and bent on the couch, the last leg of its life hanging from the binding. With a savage pull, he propelled himself out the front door.

The crisp air smacked against his cheeks, stealing the breath from his lips in a swift strike. He huddled further into the fabric of his black jacket and moved forward. Twenty minutes passed in silence, the air grey and constant, the stream of vocalizations creating a sort of Purgatory around him.

Good. He belonged there.

Upon passing the plain brick store that separated his neighborhood from the stretch of commercialism beyond, his restless mind found something to land on, and quiet flooded his thoughts.

Golden locks circled the face of a cherub like a halo hanging low. Creamy skin cloaked in a white sweater and blue jeans. Uncharacteristically, this creature’s arms were crossed, eyes squinted in a scowl, and a cigarette hung limp and forgotten between her lips. A bright angel wounded by the grey day.

He took a step forward, then hesitated. The dark recesses of his mind would only stain the golden aura. But he took another step forward, drawn from the shadowed corner to a source of light.

Her eyes flicked to his approaching figure, and a light smile painted her canvas cheeks, highlighting the inevitable asymmetrical features of the artist’s brushstrokes.

“Hey,” she chimed. “Dave, right?” She uncrossed her arms and took a drag on the cig before throwing it onto the already trash-covered ground. Gracefully, she smashed the remnants into the concrete beneath her running shoe. “I’m Angie.”

He didn’t answer. The silence of his thoughts stunning him.

“We go to the same university,” she prodded, rocking on her heels.

“Yeah,” David managed, his voice growling. He didn’t recognize her. He would have known if he had seen her before. She nodded, regarding him with a look of brevity and expectation.

“Well, it’s nice to officially meet you.” Her voice rang through his melancholia like a lighthouse through the fog. He managed a half-smile.

“Yeah.” He shrugged and walked past her.

“You have such a way with words,” she snickered, and he couldn’t help but chuckle too. Such a strange sound. It started at the back of his throat and came out airy and unused.

“Yeah, I guess I do.” He shrugged again and pulled open the door to the small store. He wasn’t planning on going in, but something about the girl made him want to linger in the area just a little bit longer.

She stayed put, watching him with those light eyes.

He wandered around the aisles of the store, picking up various types of candy, then setting them back down. The brightly colored packages seemed at odds with the world around him. Everything was grey except the sweet and sour candies and the girl.

He was particularly interested in a bag of sour gummy worms, squishing the sticky treats between his fingers, allowing the crinkle of plastic to echo through the aisle. Then he felt a familiar ache pulse through his brain. He jammed the bag back on the hook, tearing the tiny plastic hole, and pressed his palm to his forehead, as if that would stop the floodgates of taunts. You will never be good enough.

Baring his teeth, he struggled to find his way to the door once again. As soon as he pushed the handle, rain had finally broken loose from the clouds and stung his skin; the voices cleared.

There stood the girl. She hadn’t moved an inch, but now she looked at him with wide eyes, concerned. The droplets that fell weighed her hair down, darkening it in places, but it didn’t seem to stop glowing.

“You alright there?” she asked.

“Yeah. Just needed a little fresh air.” He pushed his hands into his jacket pockets and looked at her squarely. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, and before he could stop himself, words came tumbling out.

“Do you want to go out sometime?” He kicked himself over how lame that sounded, but her blue eyes sparked.

“Depends on where we’re going?” She smiled a beautiful, crooked smile.

______

They went to the beach. The rocky shores of the Oregon coast were chilly, but not cold enough for either of them to change their minds. The entire week leading up to the event, David felt ill with the voices. They had changed somehow. Instead of asking him to harm himself, they moved to others. Every glimpse of his mother sent horrible thoughts racing through his mind.

He cringed away from the thoughts, but the voices cried out in glee at the images they planted. You know you want to. They prodded.

He didn’t. He couldn’t. The only reprieve came when he shared brief phone conversations with Angie.

The moment he met eyes with Angie on the beach, his mind cleared as if someone had wiped away the steam from a mirror, and he could see himself clearer. He would never do the tasks the darkness in his mind dared him to do. The thought of even having such monstrous thoughts brought shame to his cheeks as he walked up to her.

“Hey.” She smiled ear to ear, and a lightness took hold of his heart.

“Hi.” He smiled back. Without a word, they both turned to face the shore, the waves beating the sand senseless, but gracefully. The entire sight was serene, and David felt at peace.

With hands shaking slightly from nerves, David reached over and clasped his hand in hers. He wasn’t the type to make a move on a girl he knew so little about. Hell, he wasn’t the type to make a move ever, but somehow it felt right. Her hand was cold and clammy.

The sunlight peeked over the horizon, patterning the water with pinks, oranges, and reds. Birds called from up ahead, shouting to friends and family of dangers and wonders. David wanted to feel what it was like to be a bird. What would it be like to have a life so simple, with nothing but the wind beneath your wings and endless travel to occupy yourself.

Angie’s grip tightened on his hand, bringing him back to the present.

“So, Mr. Oh-So-Quiet, tell me about you.”

David’s cheeks tinged scarlet, but he chuckled slightly. He surely couldn’t tell her about the voices. She would easily call him insane.

“There’s not much to tell.”

“I don’t believe that.” She stopped and moved in front of him. “You’ve got me out here in the cold, you owe me at least some of your secrets.” She lightly punched him on the shoulder. “I’ll tell you some of mine.”

The invitation was enough to tug at his insides, pushing him to spill facts he had never told anyone. He told her his favorite book, A Game of Thrones. She told him hers, Eleanor and Park. He told her about his overprotective mom, and she told him about her alcoholic stepfather. And it went on like that. They told each other everything.

Except for one secret of which David couldn’t let go. His shame. His burden to suffer alone.

______

Two months had passed in a push and pull that nearly made David sick, whether with happiness or paranoia, he didn’t know. Every day, he would collect Angie from her house, and they would spend hours in silent bliss, both of them talking, just them, no one else. Angie knew him better than anyone, even his mother, who had made it her business to memorize every molecule of her son.

It was the time when Angie and David separated that became unbearable. His own mind revolted, begging him to commit horrible, bloody acts against himself, against his family, but most of all, against Angie.

Their anger at Angie burned brightly and seared David’s heart to where he almost believed he hated her too. She was the source of the pain, because each time she locked the voices away, the louder they became when they were apart.

One day, Angie left David alone on the couch in his dimly lit living room to fetch them some Pepsi from the fridge. He could hear the faint conversation of his mother and Angie cheerfully joking with one another. He wanted to smile, but they were closing in.

He couldn’t stop it. A salty stream of tears slid down the banks of his face. He tried to stifle the sobs, but his body just lurched each time a wave of sorrow crashed against his chest.

Angie rounded the corner only to quickly set down the cans and rush to his side. Her own hands shook with concern as she grasped either side of his face. Her skin stuck to the tracks of tears on his cheeks. Her breath came out fast, as if afraid.

“It’s alright.” The reassurance sounded more like a plea.

He didn’t know whether she was assuring herself or him. She captured his eyes with her own, the tension thick between them.

“You’ll be alright. I love you”

Without prodding at the source of his breakdown, she lowered her lips to his, stealing the saddest and most loving kiss he would ever experience. The voices had nothing to say by then.

______

Six more months passed.

Things only grew worse.

On Friday, the air buzzed with electricity while lightning threatened to crack open the clouded sky. Swirls of grey shook droplets from their coats and splashed onto the world below.

David stared out the window, watching drops race down the pane. His eyes followed the ultimate demise of the droplets, their fate of crashing into each other and disappearing once the glass ended.

You know what you have to do. His brain whipped out against the silence of the room. He pressed his forehead hard against the stinging cold of the window. There was no relief.

A heavy weight settled in his chest, and David pushed himself out the front door and began to walk to Angie’s house.

He passed the store where he had first met her and stopped for a moment. Staring at the spot where she had stood so brightly. He took a step forward, wishing he had been that cigarette she had eagerly thrown to the ground and stomped out. If only she had turned him down then.

With a shake of his head and the insistence of his invisible friends, he continued to walk towards his final destination.

David didn’t bother knocking; he hadn’t needed to for four months now. Angie sang loudly from the kitchen, and the house smelled of spice cakes, Angie’s specialty. He inhaled the cinnamon swirling thickly through the air and walked into the kitchen. He never told her he’d always hated spice cakes.

She stood with her back to him, her white dress swirling lightly around her legs. She didn’t have to look behind her.

“David! I thought I heard someone come in.” She ran her hands under steaming water to remove the flour from her fingertips, then flounced around the counter and planted a warm kiss on his cold cheek.

She didn’t make it around the counter again before he lunged for her, pushing her slight frame to the floor.

The pools of golden curls laced through his fingers as he held her throat firm, her pulse drumming quickly against his palms. Tears mirrored in their eyes, blue against brown. Choking back a sob, he squeezed tighter, as if with every breath she exhaled, never to regain, sucked out his apologies, his sadness. The guilt curled around his temples like wet curls that refused to dry, refused to leave. He sucked in a breath, forced down a sob, and watched the life drain from her eyes.

He thought back to their first date, hand in hand, smiles gleaming. This wasn’t fair to her. It wasn’t fair to him. He wanted to move his clenching hands from her neck, wrap them around the back of her head and cradle her close to his chest. He wanted to feel her heartbeat in tandem with his. He wanted to suck her sweet breath into his mouth as their lips met and melted together. He looked at his dying lover and knew he’d never feel again. Not the way he did when he looked into her eyes, now bloodshot and wide.

A small choking noise edged its way from her throat. He swallowed the lump in his.

The voices that whistled in his ears, that sang to him horrible yet beautiful melodies, would finally cease.

Take her, they hissed in his ears. She’ll be happier away from the sins of this world.

Tears slipped from the rims of his eyes and pelted her pink cheeks, forming small puddles of apologies.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered as the last spasm of movement fled from his lover’s core and out of her fingertips, taking the voices with it. Her arms were spread out, fingers splayed, hair still glowing from the crown of her head.

He was saved.