Paper Wings

I said my goodbyes to Elizabeth and started on my way to my studio apartment. It wasn't exactly the cheapest, but I could afford it, with a view that overlooked the entire city, and whenever I dreamt of him, I'd move to the window with my blanket around my shoulders and just stare at the view and think. 

It was on my way home that I happened to look down the narrow alley I'd overlooked every time I'd passed by it and saw the silhouette of two men ganging up on another. I froze in my tracks as they finished whatever it was that they were doing, looked at each other, then looked straight down the alley - straight at me. 

A little noise slipped from between my lips and I started off at a run, sprinting away from the alley as quickly as I could. I glanced behind me to see them already standing in an alley way, staring after me - two men, one with light brown hair, the other with dark, curly hair. I pushed my own brown locks out of my face and started across the street just as the pedestrian sign changed to a man walking. I sprinted across the street, trying to avoid the people crossing (and failing miserably) and just as I was about to turn back my phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket and answered it with a breathless hello as I reined in the speed and turned back to see if I was being followed. 

"Rose!" someone shouted in my ear, dragging out the "o" in my name. I flinched and held it away from me slightly, already knowing who it was, as I looked for my pursuers. 

"Kind of a bad time, Charlie," I said, finding them nowhere. They weren't even at the foot of the alley anymore. They were just gone. 

"Never a bad time for your favorite researcher!" he said, the volume of his voice never dropping. "Come on by. I think I've got something for you."

I rolled my eyes and started walking again, this time in the direction of Charlie's "laboratory," a fancy word for his mother's basement. "I swear, Charlie, if it's another genetically mutated rat with a bow on it's head you're going to become best friends with my fist." 

He snorted. "Oh, will it hug me like you used to? Just get over here."

"Yeah okay. I'll be there soon." I hung up and glanced around warily. All I knew is that I didn't want to run into those two men from the alley way. I drew up the zipper on my windbreaker, tucked my hands into my pockets, and made my way to Charlie's mothers house. 

You'd think that being twenty four and having a degree in engineering would get the natural ginger out of his mother's house, but not a chance. Maybe it was that he was overprotective of his mother, or he couldn't cook or clean to save his life, or he just wanted to be a kid still, or all of it. I didn't mind because she always had cookies when I went over there. The only part I didn't like was when she insisted that Charlie and I went on "dates."

True to her nature, Mrs. Cooper offered me a batch of cookies ("Freshly baked, just waiting for you and Charlie to devour them!") and asked me if Charlie and I would go on a date that night. I just smiled, took the plate and moved down to the basement, where Charlie sat at his desk studying a series of books - some fiction, even the bible. 

He looked up at me and grinned. "My favorite kind!" He stood, bounced over, grabbed one and moved back to his desk, munching on it. I smiled at his childishness and sat in the chair across from him, kicking my feet up and resting them on the desk, eating cookie after cookie. 

"So I did some reading," he started, and I snorted. It was hard to believe Charlie ever read. I don't even think he ever studied for his exams. He gave me a glare and pulled a fictional book into his lap, leaning back and propping his feet on the desk like I was. "I did some reading about the angel you saw in your dream."

Naturally I'd already told him about the dream from last night; Charlie hardly slept and when he did he woke up easy, and he told me to always call him immediately if I had a dream, and I did. To be honest, they scared me, and when I told him that, he resolved to put an end to my fears. He was like the big brother I never had. 

"Nowhere in the books is there a grey winged angel," he went on, flipping through the pages of the book in his lap before tossing it on the table and holding his hand out for for another cookie. I handed it to him and he got that look of concentration as he nibbled on his cookie. 

"I mean, in all the old paintings the angels have white wings. And when they don't have white wings, they have black wings. But I've never come across a grey winged angel."

He stood, holding his cookie between his teeth, and moved to his computer, typing in what seemed like a million things at once before pointing at the TV screen at the other end of the room. I looked over at it as he bit into his cookie and started talking again. 

"There are no screeching angels in the stories; well, maybe a few of the fiction books." He moved over and grabbed the bible, except it wasn't the bible. "Book of Revelations," he said. "Single copy. Angels are tools for vengeance and destruction. Not those cherubs you see in the paintings."

I bit my lip. That was creepy enough, but the angel in my dream had screeched. Most definitely. Like, like a pterodactyl or something. Oh god, I'd just compared an angel to an ancient bird. 

I rubbed my forehead as Charlie continued. "Now, none of it made sense, until I found this." He typed something in on his computer and an article popped up, followed by a picture of a being with long black wings holding onto a woman about ten feet in the air. 

"This was really hard to find." He stepped closer to the television screen. "The original creator of this article managed to erase everything he'd ever posted about the existence of angels... Except what he didn't know was that a journalist three times less the fame had copied his article and posted it on his own website trying to get famous. He was just mocked, but he eventually forgot about it and left it to rot..."

I read the article quietly. Angels with black wings, angels with white wings, angels plotting against the world and angels forced to fall because they were tortured and their wings broken...

My hand flew up to my mouth as I read the gory details of what was likely to be the torture of an innocent soul: long scratches across his back, wings broken, feathers clipped. If it were true, he must have gone through so much pain. 

When I read over the part about the angel screeching, I stood and stepped closer, but the article stopped there. I looked up at Charlie, who was staring at it. His eyes went wide and he rushed to his computer, cursing and screaming. Eventually, he let out a very frustrated and long stream of curses and moved back to his chair. 

"The article was found and it was erased. There's nothing left." My shoulders sagged and I moved to sit down across from him, staring at the plate of cookies. I was so close to understanding this mystery, and now nothing. 

I thanked Charlie and took the plate upstairs, asking Mrs. Cooper if I could take the cookies to my apartment. She obliged, packing them carefully in a container with the batch she'd just made tucked under them, then handed me the whole thing, smiled and sent me on my way. 

I walked to my studio in silence, staring at the cement under my feet. These dreams were beginning to scare me; they'd started out just studying each other, then at some point he started holding onto me and vice versa, and then all of a sudden they were dark and we were running and he was holding me and was he crying? Then, there was the dream from last night. I wasn't sure I could take it anymore. 

I walked into my apartment, set the cookies on the counter and walked over to the bed, pulling the blanket off, wrapping it around my shoulders and moving to the window, staring out of it in thought. Just one night where I didn't have to watch him so helplessly in my dream...

I was silent for a long time, stuck in my reverie, so the thump I didn't make made me turn around and my eyes zeroed in on the mocha colored man suddenly on his knees next to my couch, but my eyes didn't linger on him for long. It was the ten feet wide wings on either side of him that drew my attention, broken, with feathers clinging to them for dear life. 

Gray wings.

I rushed forward as he started to slump and grabbed him in my arms, feeling his solidity. Either he was real or this was a very vivid hallucination. 

He looked up at me, touched my cheek, then promptly passed out.