Angel
Angel
I sat with my back against the tub, those familiar tears in my eyes. ‘How did it ever come to this?’ I asked myself in but a whisper to no one, because I already knew the answer.
I remember the first day I saw her in the Tube. She was wearing that red lipstick she’d left on my bedside table a while ago now, the one that’d left stains on the collars of some of my favourite shirts whilst in bathroom stalls, elevators, and the like of other secret places for people to share such a moment. I picked it up and popped the cap, before drawing a thick circle about myself as I brought my knees up to my chest to fit inside. She’d walked onto that train in the worst of moods, I remember, and left only a little bit better off. I wanted to believe I was the reason for that but really, I was only kidding myself.
“What’s your problem old man?” she’d hissed as she passed an elderly man seated on the bench beside the train. He’d been smiling at everyone that passed him, bowing his head to those that smiled back. “Are you some kind of paedophile!? Don’t you look at me like that.” I felt a little sorry for him, sure, though his smile hadn’t faltered for but one moment. The abusive woman scowled and walked off, and onto the same carriage as I.
“What’s his problem?” she repeated, as she sat in the spare seat by my side. “How can he smile at people like that, as if they weren’t people at all; as if they weren’t the same scum as both you and I?” I hadn’t been offended. I wasn’t sure why then, but it became more apparent over time.
I fell for the attitude of the beautifully fierce woman sat by my side as she flipped her lighter open then closed again and again, her varnished nails beginning to look a little tacky at the edges. I watched as her chest heaved with the sigh she let out as the trip was taking longer than usual, and thought for a moment in panic that she’d noticed my stare. She liked to be looked at I came to find, and she knew she was beautiful, but even that never came to annoy. Her eyes caught mine and I felt my cheeks heat up as I quickly looked away, though knew she’d seen me regardless. Painted lips, painted nails, painted eyes – she was the exotic kind of woman, that was for sure. I was an exotic kind too, if you’d call it that in a man.
My eyes were fixed straight ahead then, though I was still fearful that they might wander. I found myself looking through the front window of the train at the tracks as they buckled in places, feeling kind of disappointed that not one of these buckles sent the train off the tracks and hurling into the concrete walls. I’d fly through the air for what would seem the longest of times, and then –
“Why have you got candles?” Her voice in my ear pushed me back into my seat.
“Hmm?”
“You bought candles,” she repeated, peering into the plastic bag sat at my feet containing my groceries for that fortnight. “No one uses candles anymore. Are you poor or something?” I had indeed bought candles that day and had intended to use them for the same purpose I lit them earlier, their little flames dancing with the shadows in the bathroom as still, I sat, my chin resting upon my knees as I let myself weep for a little while longer. I didn’t tell her the occasion, and she soon lost interest. To be honest, my heart was only really half in it at that point in time.
“I like you.” She rested her hand on my knee then, and I felt that blush return. “We should hang out.” She didn’t even know my name but gave me her number anyway, before she got off at her stop a couple before mine. I almost smiled at the digits written on the back of my hand, the place where directions might sometimes be found, but I couldn’t let myself be that hopeful about the whole thing. For all I knew, these directions wouldn’t even lead to her.
But they did, in far less time than anticipated, and we went out. We went out together every weekend until our end and after that, I never knew what to do with myself. Was I to go out anyway? I never did. I knew it’d never be the same. Life without my Angela, Ange, my Angel, was something I often couldn’t remember living and on the odd occasion that I did, it wasn’t with good spirits.
A part of me knew she was never serious about us, but a much larger part of me told my tired mind that this one, that this Angel of mine, was the one. I was unable to believe she’d hurt me intentionally, that the little white baggies of powdered fun she sold me would affect me the way they did. She wasn’t to know I’d become so reliant on them, that they’d become my only other desire besides her lovely self. Though once she found out, she kept selling them to me anyway. I couldn’t hold that against her, though, as I knew I would have begged her for it if I’d had to, on all fours, like the animal I was. I’ve changed a little since then, in that I’m recovering from that addiction. From one of them, anyway.
I watched as the candles flickered in the breeze that passed through the room, the little lights smearing across my vision through the tears my eyes contained. Things looked somewhat magical if you ignored the fact that I was still there leaned up against the tub, the grotty bathroom tiles making my butt hurt as I’d been sitting there far too long now. I remember the last time I’d been on the bathroom floor for that long, though for a different reason. I’d taken too much, and fallen too far. I was lucky to be alive, really, as they tend to say. That was one of the last times I’d seen her, her tears burning straight through the little self-worth I had left and confusing me as she stood over me and kicked at my side. I had bruises the next day and she never apologised for it, but I never apologised, either.
They say that nobody believes in the Devil anymore, but you could smell him everywhere that night. He was all about the place as she dragged me from the bathroom stall and through the club, where people danced and drank themselves into oblivion, out onto the curb and into a cab. I wasn’t sure what was happening at that point, but the smell was still there as she handed the driver a sum of cash and he drove me to the hospital. I was lying outside the emergency room for a while before anyone realised I was there, and then the smell was on me.
That smell was about me now as I sat on the bathroom tiles, hugging myself because no one else would do it for me. It wafted in through the curtains of the small window I never bothered closing and made me cringe as it shot up my nose. The hinges of the window were rusted and my apartment was on the third floor, which was far too high for any criminal to bother with just to steal my TV set. They’d not get it back through that tiny window, anyway. Besides, I figured I owed it to the bathroom to at least keep the air fresh and the mould out, if the scum was something I never personally wanted to deal with. The smell floated about the room and disturbed the peace of the candles, and of the water still fermenting in the sink as I’d forgotten to wash it down after shaving and didn’t care to do it right now. It sent the smell of dried up blood like copper to my nose as I found the razor I’d left on the floor from a couple weeks ago, examining the shine it took in the candle light on the parts that were still clean.
That weekend a couple weeks ago had been the weekend I’d gone to see my parents. They were the kind of people who could afford to have their heating running all throughout winter, but as I’d asked them for a couple hundred pounds the whole idea of it seemed impossible. I had a feeling they’d heard the news from someone, somehow, that the money wasn’t going towards rent, and it was evident by the weight I’d lost that it certainly wasn’t going towards food. They’d helped me with my addiction much more than any stupid compulsory rehab session had, and they hadn’t even cared to. They asked me if I still had that girlfriend of mine and I told them yes, just to save from talking about her. They liked to believe that I had my life sorted out, and that the place I’d found myself in at present wasn’t the real me at all. If I had a girlfriend I had a future, and that was as much as they cared to know.
She wasn’t ever even my girlfriend, this fallen angel of mine. Angela had never once referred to us as an ‘us’, per se, though she never objected whenever I’d done it. She seemed far too immersed in her own little world to care for what was happening in mine. She never asked, and I never told. We got along well until that night I came crashing down, and she had to bring me back up. She hadn’t liked that, she’d told me, and in more words that just those few. More tears pricked my eyes as I remembered her that night and the words that she’d mumbled with no sympathy at all, her lips pressed against that glass as if the heavy contents inside were keeping her alive. Though, she’d been right in calling me the things she had, because almost the instant I was out of the hospital I was back on the floor once more. I could see her looking down at me through the haze of things, her eyes like the ocean peering right into my very soul as I lay there lost and slightly dazed somewhere in London. I imagined as she said, ‘they’re just blue, Brian’, as she always did. ‘They’re just fucking blue.’
That night as I lay at home a cab ride and several faded conversations later, I got to thinking about all of this again. I remembered things before Angela, and of how I’d wanted an angel to enter my life. It was kind of funny that one had in the end, though not how I’d expected. She took that place for a while and let me know I was of some value to someone; I had a soul worth wanting to whatever extent it was that she’d wanted me for, which was more than most others had in the past. I smiled, though it probably looked tragic, and picked up the piece of paper I had in front of me. I’d written it the night before whilst I was really in the mood for it, and as I knew I’d leave out something rather important if I were to do it in the moment. It wasn’t on virgin parchment or anything of the sort; it was just the back of last week’s shopping list. I turned it around to read the rather short list, where bread and jam seemed to dominate. It’d have to do, though. I also didn’t have a hazel wand or blood stone, whatever that was, but I had not the budget nor the understanding for such things. I was following the vaguest of instructions as I failed to properly recall them, and I didn’t care for the specifics. I needed to feel wanted, to feel useful, and to feel that my soul wasn’t as worthless as I’ve been led to believe. These were my only cares.
My voice echoed throughout the tiny room as I first coughed, then recited the words I’d practiced again and again in my mind. I’d been ready for weeks; it’d been my nerves that’d held up the process.
“Oh, great Lucifuge Rofocale, demon of the underworld and servant of Satan. Appear before me now in human form to witness the signing of this pact!” I proclaimed over my better judgement, and watched the colours melt around me as my tears flowed heavier down my face and soaked into the fabric of my jeans. “Appear with no trickery, appear now, or I shall torment you forever and ever!” With the razor I picked up earlier I sliced, and a crimson ‘X’ was signed at the bottom of my pact which I dropped just outside the circle around my shaking form for him to take.
I stopped then and listened to the drips of rain on the windowsill, and then to my lungs as they filled with one large breath and held it there. Then, down the narrow hallway of my tiny apartment sounded a sound that stopped my blinking eyes and froze my shaking limbs. I listened as the thud of cloven hooves atop my wooden floorboards got closer, until they stopped just outside my bathroom door left slightly ajar behind me. The screech it made as it was pushed open was deafening, but I couldn’t hear it over the thoughts that were racing through my mind. I wasn’t ready for this. Was he to take my soul already, right at that moment? I thought I’d have a little time to live knowing I was of worth to someone, someday, perhaps twenty years from now. In the sheer terror that overcame me in that moment, I screamed, and I watched as my breath escaped in a cloud of white fog that I thought for a moment to be my soul; to be everything that it was to be me. But the air was cold around me, and I was quite warm, and I realised I’d probably worried too soon before a weight found my shoulder, and I passed out right then and there.
“Brian? Brian?” My eyes rolled open but quickly shut again, because someone had turned the lights on. “For fucks sake, Brian!” A swift kick to the ribs seemed all I needed to wake once more, and to find who had stolen my soul for themselves. Angel, she came back, and when she smiled that smile that said we were up to no good I knew the Devil was here to stay.
I remember the first day I saw her in the Tube. She was wearing that red lipstick she’d left on my bedside table a while ago now, the one that’d left stains on the collars of some of my favourite shirts whilst in bathroom stalls, elevators, and the like of other secret places for people to share such a moment. I picked it up and popped the cap, before drawing a thick circle about myself as I brought my knees up to my chest to fit inside. She’d walked onto that train in the worst of moods, I remember, and left only a little bit better off. I wanted to believe I was the reason for that but really, I was only kidding myself.
“What’s your problem old man?” she’d hissed as she passed an elderly man seated on the bench beside the train. He’d been smiling at everyone that passed him, bowing his head to those that smiled back. “Are you some kind of paedophile!? Don’t you look at me like that.” I felt a little sorry for him, sure, though his smile hadn’t faltered for but one moment. The abusive woman scowled and walked off, and onto the same carriage as I.
“What’s his problem?” she repeated, as she sat in the spare seat by my side. “How can he smile at people like that, as if they weren’t people at all; as if they weren’t the same scum as both you and I?” I hadn’t been offended. I wasn’t sure why then, but it became more apparent over time.
I fell for the attitude of the beautifully fierce woman sat by my side as she flipped her lighter open then closed again and again, her varnished nails beginning to look a little tacky at the edges. I watched as her chest heaved with the sigh she let out as the trip was taking longer than usual, and thought for a moment in panic that she’d noticed my stare. She liked to be looked at I came to find, and she knew she was beautiful, but even that never came to annoy. Her eyes caught mine and I felt my cheeks heat up as I quickly looked away, though knew she’d seen me regardless. Painted lips, painted nails, painted eyes – she was the exotic kind of woman, that was for sure. I was an exotic kind too, if you’d call it that in a man.
My eyes were fixed straight ahead then, though I was still fearful that they might wander. I found myself looking through the front window of the train at the tracks as they buckled in places, feeling kind of disappointed that not one of these buckles sent the train off the tracks and hurling into the concrete walls. I’d fly through the air for what would seem the longest of times, and then –
“Why have you got candles?” Her voice in my ear pushed me back into my seat.
“Hmm?”
“You bought candles,” she repeated, peering into the plastic bag sat at my feet containing my groceries for that fortnight. “No one uses candles anymore. Are you poor or something?” I had indeed bought candles that day and had intended to use them for the same purpose I lit them earlier, their little flames dancing with the shadows in the bathroom as still, I sat, my chin resting upon my knees as I let myself weep for a little while longer. I didn’t tell her the occasion, and she soon lost interest. To be honest, my heart was only really half in it at that point in time.
“I like you.” She rested her hand on my knee then, and I felt that blush return. “We should hang out.” She didn’t even know my name but gave me her number anyway, before she got off at her stop a couple before mine. I almost smiled at the digits written on the back of my hand, the place where directions might sometimes be found, but I couldn’t let myself be that hopeful about the whole thing. For all I knew, these directions wouldn’t even lead to her.
But they did, in far less time than anticipated, and we went out. We went out together every weekend until our end and after that, I never knew what to do with myself. Was I to go out anyway? I never did. I knew it’d never be the same. Life without my Angela, Ange, my Angel, was something I often couldn’t remember living and on the odd occasion that I did, it wasn’t with good spirits.
A part of me knew she was never serious about us, but a much larger part of me told my tired mind that this one, that this Angel of mine, was the one. I was unable to believe she’d hurt me intentionally, that the little white baggies of powdered fun she sold me would affect me the way they did. She wasn’t to know I’d become so reliant on them, that they’d become my only other desire besides her lovely self. Though once she found out, she kept selling them to me anyway. I couldn’t hold that against her, though, as I knew I would have begged her for it if I’d had to, on all fours, like the animal I was. I’ve changed a little since then, in that I’m recovering from that addiction. From one of them, anyway.
I watched as the candles flickered in the breeze that passed through the room, the little lights smearing across my vision through the tears my eyes contained. Things looked somewhat magical if you ignored the fact that I was still there leaned up against the tub, the grotty bathroom tiles making my butt hurt as I’d been sitting there far too long now. I remember the last time I’d been on the bathroom floor for that long, though for a different reason. I’d taken too much, and fallen too far. I was lucky to be alive, really, as they tend to say. That was one of the last times I’d seen her, her tears burning straight through the little self-worth I had left and confusing me as she stood over me and kicked at my side. I had bruises the next day and she never apologised for it, but I never apologised, either.
They say that nobody believes in the Devil anymore, but you could smell him everywhere that night. He was all about the place as she dragged me from the bathroom stall and through the club, where people danced and drank themselves into oblivion, out onto the curb and into a cab. I wasn’t sure what was happening at that point, but the smell was still there as she handed the driver a sum of cash and he drove me to the hospital. I was lying outside the emergency room for a while before anyone realised I was there, and then the smell was on me.
That smell was about me now as I sat on the bathroom tiles, hugging myself because no one else would do it for me. It wafted in through the curtains of the small window I never bothered closing and made me cringe as it shot up my nose. The hinges of the window were rusted and my apartment was on the third floor, which was far too high for any criminal to bother with just to steal my TV set. They’d not get it back through that tiny window, anyway. Besides, I figured I owed it to the bathroom to at least keep the air fresh and the mould out, if the scum was something I never personally wanted to deal with. The smell floated about the room and disturbed the peace of the candles, and of the water still fermenting in the sink as I’d forgotten to wash it down after shaving and didn’t care to do it right now. It sent the smell of dried up blood like copper to my nose as I found the razor I’d left on the floor from a couple weeks ago, examining the shine it took in the candle light on the parts that were still clean.
That weekend a couple weeks ago had been the weekend I’d gone to see my parents. They were the kind of people who could afford to have their heating running all throughout winter, but as I’d asked them for a couple hundred pounds the whole idea of it seemed impossible. I had a feeling they’d heard the news from someone, somehow, that the money wasn’t going towards rent, and it was evident by the weight I’d lost that it certainly wasn’t going towards food. They’d helped me with my addiction much more than any stupid compulsory rehab session had, and they hadn’t even cared to. They asked me if I still had that girlfriend of mine and I told them yes, just to save from talking about her. They liked to believe that I had my life sorted out, and that the place I’d found myself in at present wasn’t the real me at all. If I had a girlfriend I had a future, and that was as much as they cared to know.
She wasn’t ever even my girlfriend, this fallen angel of mine. Angela had never once referred to us as an ‘us’, per se, though she never objected whenever I’d done it. She seemed far too immersed in her own little world to care for what was happening in mine. She never asked, and I never told. We got along well until that night I came crashing down, and she had to bring me back up. She hadn’t liked that, she’d told me, and in more words that just those few. More tears pricked my eyes as I remembered her that night and the words that she’d mumbled with no sympathy at all, her lips pressed against that glass as if the heavy contents inside were keeping her alive. Though, she’d been right in calling me the things she had, because almost the instant I was out of the hospital I was back on the floor once more. I could see her looking down at me through the haze of things, her eyes like the ocean peering right into my very soul as I lay there lost and slightly dazed somewhere in London. I imagined as she said, ‘they’re just blue, Brian’, as she always did. ‘They’re just fucking blue.’
That night as I lay at home a cab ride and several faded conversations later, I got to thinking about all of this again. I remembered things before Angela, and of how I’d wanted an angel to enter my life. It was kind of funny that one had in the end, though not how I’d expected. She took that place for a while and let me know I was of some value to someone; I had a soul worth wanting to whatever extent it was that she’d wanted me for, which was more than most others had in the past. I smiled, though it probably looked tragic, and picked up the piece of paper I had in front of me. I’d written it the night before whilst I was really in the mood for it, and as I knew I’d leave out something rather important if I were to do it in the moment. It wasn’t on virgin parchment or anything of the sort; it was just the back of last week’s shopping list. I turned it around to read the rather short list, where bread and jam seemed to dominate. It’d have to do, though. I also didn’t have a hazel wand or blood stone, whatever that was, but I had not the budget nor the understanding for such things. I was following the vaguest of instructions as I failed to properly recall them, and I didn’t care for the specifics. I needed to feel wanted, to feel useful, and to feel that my soul wasn’t as worthless as I’ve been led to believe. These were my only cares.
My voice echoed throughout the tiny room as I first coughed, then recited the words I’d practiced again and again in my mind. I’d been ready for weeks; it’d been my nerves that’d held up the process.
“Oh, great Lucifuge Rofocale, demon of the underworld and servant of Satan. Appear before me now in human form to witness the signing of this pact!” I proclaimed over my better judgement, and watched the colours melt around me as my tears flowed heavier down my face and soaked into the fabric of my jeans. “Appear with no trickery, appear now, or I shall torment you forever and ever!” With the razor I picked up earlier I sliced, and a crimson ‘X’ was signed at the bottom of my pact which I dropped just outside the circle around my shaking form for him to take.
I stopped then and listened to the drips of rain on the windowsill, and then to my lungs as they filled with one large breath and held it there. Then, down the narrow hallway of my tiny apartment sounded a sound that stopped my blinking eyes and froze my shaking limbs. I listened as the thud of cloven hooves atop my wooden floorboards got closer, until they stopped just outside my bathroom door left slightly ajar behind me. The screech it made as it was pushed open was deafening, but I couldn’t hear it over the thoughts that were racing through my mind. I wasn’t ready for this. Was he to take my soul already, right at that moment? I thought I’d have a little time to live knowing I was of worth to someone, someday, perhaps twenty years from now. In the sheer terror that overcame me in that moment, I screamed, and I watched as my breath escaped in a cloud of white fog that I thought for a moment to be my soul; to be everything that it was to be me. But the air was cold around me, and I was quite warm, and I realised I’d probably worried too soon before a weight found my shoulder, and I passed out right then and there.
“Brian? Brian?” My eyes rolled open but quickly shut again, because someone had turned the lights on. “For fucks sake, Brian!” A swift kick to the ribs seemed all I needed to wake once more, and to find who had stolen my soul for themselves. Angel, she came back, and when she smiled that smile that said we were up to no good I knew the Devil was here to stay.