‹ Prequel: Eyes of the Devil

The Angel of Death

Chapter Three

I stayed there for a long time because I was really tired. A lot of that stuff was around me…I think Dad had called it blood. It smelled funny.

When I finally felt like I could get up again, I started crawling in the direction he had gone. It didn’t look as dark as before, and I found him a few minutes later. I scrambled over to him, even though it really hurt and I was still tired.

“Daddy, what did you do to me?” I asked, trying not to sound as scared as I really was.

He looked up at me, raising one eyebrow. “Hm?”

“What did you do?” I repeated, turning around so he could see. “I have weird thingies on my back.”

“Oh, that,” he said, sounding bored. “You said you didn’t have wings, so I helped you out. You should be thanking me.”

“But…but what do I do with them?” He never had told me.

“Simple. You fly. Out of here. And back to…wherever you came from,” he said, motioning with one hand.

“How do I do that?”

He sighed, and I was almost sure he was annoyed at me by then. “You just do. It’s easy.”

“Not if I don’t know how!”

He glared at me, then stood up, looking a lot taller than I thought he was. Giant black things appeared on his back – wings, I guess, since that’s what he called them – and he jumped into the air, going in a few circles before coming back down and standing in front of me.

“Simple.”

It couldn’t have been that difficult. I jumped into the air, expecting to stay there, but I fell back to the ground and landed on my face. I really didn’t want to move after that. “See?”

He sighed. “You’ll get it eventually.”

“Fine.” It seemed like he didn’t want to talk to me anymore, so I left to go practice. Maybe if I could get better at it, he would be happy and smile. Not the scary kind, either.

I found a rock I could jump off of, high enough that I could get a few feet into the air but still small enough that I could land on my feet…after a few tries, anyway. My wings started moving sometimes, like they were twitching or something. Whenever that happened, I would stay in the air a little longer. Smiling, I ran back to my dad to show him.

“Daddy, I can do it now!” I cried.

He looked bored. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah, look!” I climbed onto a big rock I saw and jumped off of it. My wings twitched a few times, but a few seconds later I started falling again. Just as I was about to hit the ground again, he caught me, looking as surprised as I felt.

I smiled up at him, hoping he would smile too. “Thanks, daddy!”

“…uh…sure, kid,” he said hesitantly. He looked a little scared. I hoped he wouldn’t drop me. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Mommy calls me Angel,” I told him.

He cringed. “That’s so…stupid.”

“Really?” I asked. I didn’t think it was stupid.

“Yeah. I’m not calling you that.”

“Then what are you gonna call me?”

He thought for a minute, then smiled that really scary smile again, showing almost all of his teeth. “Death.”

“…Death?” I asked. “That sounds funny.”

“It’s more evil,” he insisted.

I frowned a little. He wasn’t making any sense. “I don’t think Mommy wants me to be evil.”

“‘Mommy’ doesn’t have any power over me,” he answered. Something changed in his face for a second, like he wasn’t mad anymore. He looked sad, actually. But then it went back to normal.

I shrugged. “Okay, daddy,” I said with a smile.

“Stop calling me that. It sounds strange.”

“What do you want me to call you?” I couldn’t really think of anything else. I didn’t like saying his real name…

“It doesn’t matter, since you’re going to be gone soon anyway,” he said quickly. I looked away from him so he wouldn’t see me start crying like I thought I was going to.

“Okay, Da- …okay.”

He put me down on the ground, running a hand over one of my wings. “Is that really only as high as you can go?”

“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “Why?”

He looked confused, kind of like he was thinking about something. “Hmm…”

He picked me up again and jumped up into the air, soaring higher and faster than I thought I would ever be able to go. It got lighter as we went, and just when I saw a whole bunch of gray clouds floating everywhere, he threw me towards them.

“See ya, kid!” he yelled as he disappeared back into the darkness. I closed my eyes tightly as the fog flew past my face, and a few seconds later, I fell back and landed on solid ground. I didn’t want to move for a few seconds, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t hurt, so I slowly sat up. My back felt really sore. I looked around, hoping he had taken me home, but nothing looked familiar. I sighed. It seemed like I would never get home.