A black SUV rolled past Helen on her way to tennis practice, radioactive symbols sloppily stenciled over its black tinted windows. The driver’s side window rolled down and a fleshy-faced man with sunglasses and salt-and-pepper stubble gave her a nod.
“Hey babe,” he shouted from his car. He grabbed the vascular forearm of a man sitting on the passenger’s side, whose face held all the contours of a handsome man, but whose smile held the unmistakable leer of a man not unfamiliar with skullfucking roadkill.
“You want to get to get raped? You see me and my buddy Steakhouse here? We’re the best rapists in town!”
No, she did not want to get raped. Helen’s right arm slid to the side pocket of her canvas bag, where she unbuckled the loop and pulled out a Bowie knife. She held it to her thigh, glancing sideways at the open SUV window, mouth twitching. It wasn’t intentional. It was just how she looked when she tried to be intimidating.
She had shown it to Kelley once. Knife and all. He said she looked like a chihuahua being beat with a stick.
“I thought you’d want to get rid of that thing,” he said. It was one of the few times she heard him sound concerned.
“I have to remember,” she said. “It’s my punishment.”
“Really beats the hell out of jail.”
He didn’t have to say it so sarcastically.
Seeing the knife, the pair of fleshy bobbleheads in the car howled with laughter. She held the knife out with both hands.
‘What are you doing?’ Said a voice in her head. ‘That’ll only make them want to rape you more.’
They kept driving. So no, it didn’t. And then they turned at the intersection, and left her life forever.
‘They wanted a cheap thrill from your reaction’, the voice added snidely, ‘You only gave them what they wanted.’
And all I want is to get to practice.
‘If they wanted to hurt you they would, you know? Knife or no knife.’
She sighed. How would she know, one way or the other? And what kind of attitude was that? Don’t even try? Just be at the mercy of whoever wanted to harm her? Forever?
‘You remember Julie, don’t you?’ Said the voice. ‘When it came time to defend herself, what did a decade of self-defense courses do for her? She went to gouge out the eyes and missed. The fucker blinked. A millimeter of skin. That was all it took to give him enough time to grab her wrists and fall on her with all 250 pounds built from a lifetime of shit food and sitting on his ass.’
I’m not doing self-defense courses, Helen replied to herself. I’m carrying around a big knife.
‘It’s better than nothing,’ admitted the voice.
Yes, it’s better than nothing.
Sometimes it felt like things were getting worse. Just last month, she caught a man masturbating behind her on an escalator. She had been tipped off by his heavy breathing. Turning around, she was so startled by his abnormally wide eyes and baby face that she pushed him as hard as she could by the shoulders. Before she realized what had happened, the man tumbled backwards and cracked his neck on the edge of an escalator stair, his ejaculate hitting the ground shortly after he did.
He didn’t die. In fact, she even went to visit him at the hospital, carrying with her a sense of guilt she found difficult to justify. She was a good woman. A genuine Christian. Forgiveness was a fundamental part of who she was. Or at least, who she should be. And yet, when she saw that baby-faced man sleeping peacefully in a well-made bed, nose twitching like a muskrat sniffing a corn chip, a “get-well” balloon tied to the end of his bed and some flowers on the table, she flew into a rage. Who would leave flowers for a guy like that? It wasn’t their job to pity him, it was hers. She took the whole vase and tossed it out the window, where it narrowly avoided the gurney of some hapless victim of a fire safety drill gone bad.
Before leaving, she left a strongly worded note under his pillow, so angry she couldn’t remember any of the words only that the final words were “Find Christ.” But even then, she doubted that would do him any good.
The week before that, she had been cornered on a train by a man in a red hoodie, muttering “suck my dick for money, bitch”, with one fist jammed in a stained pair of sweatpants.
The train was packed. Something about that made her freeze. Trapped both by the subway walls and the mass of people minding their own business. She had no idea what to do, or even how to move. But before anything happened, a man in a straw hat and sandals sidled to both of them and started bartering with the red hoodie about how much to suck his cock.
“I’m poor as shit, dude,” he said. “But I’m a great cocksucker. How much? Hey, look at me, man. My mouth’s up here. You deaf, man? I said, ‘how much’?”
Flustered, red hoodie bobbed and weaved to the other end of the traincar, bolting at the next stop. The spurned cocksucker swore under his breath, and then with great disappointment asked Helen if she had any money. She gave him a couple bucks.
The police showed up a little later looking for the man in the red hoodie. He had assaulted someone soon after the encounter. Helen gave them a description. Apparently, it wasn’t very good. The police had laughed at her.
These moments seemed to happen more frequently after she had lost her father. The horrible, bloody night when the world collapsed around her. When she closed her eyes, she saw herself holding her soul in front of her as it dripped like molten gold through her scalded, feeble fingers.
She had called Kelley that night. She didn’t know why. Perhaps because he also lost a father. That was how she justified it.
“You’re lucky,” he had said, holding a stack of linen while staring at the corpse. “Mine just disappeared. He went to bed one day and the next morning the bed was empty.”
“Where did he go?” she asked, still unable to take her eyes off her father’s lifeless body. Her own cherry vomit layered over a dress shirt drenched in blood. She wasn’t talking about Kelley’s father.
Kelley eyed her narrowly. Then he began wrapping the body with a clown-printed bedsheet.
“I think he fell out of this world and into somewhere else. Don’t worry. I’ll find him. And when I do, I’ll bring him back and do what you did to yours.”
Her knees buckled. What she did to hers. It took her a second to realize he was staring at her.
“Hey, stop touching your face,” he scolded. She hadn’t realized it, but she was massaging her father’s blood from forehead to chin, refusing to let it dry. She didn’t care, and spaced out once more until she felt Kelley shove a damp towel in her face.
The memory faded as Helen noticed a familiar face sitting on the stoop of the Grand General Bank. They locked eyes for a split second before Tracy Tillman dropped her head between crossed arms and curled into a ball. Wavy locks of blue and green hair fell to her forearms. Her body language told Helen to not approach any further, which she would have been happy to do, but she had unfortunately learned to translate Tracy ’s idiosyncratic forms of expression. The true message was clear: ‘don’t you dare walk away from me.’ So Helen sat beside her on the cold, concrete steps.
“Tracy? Are you okay?”
Tracy looked up, rolled her eyes and looked away.
“Oh. It’s you. I thought you were someone else,” she said unconvincingly. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Helen felt her eyelids go lax. More code. This one meant: ‘please painfully pry it out of me. A penny? My thoughts are worth diamonds. You think you won’t at least have to beg?’
“Come on,” said Helen. She began to rub Tracy’s back. Anyone else would have had their arm gnawed off. Not Helen. Somehow, Tracy could tell she didn’t really want to do it. That made all the difference. Suddenly, her attention had value.
“Tell me,” prodded Helen. Politely. Caringly. “You’ll feel better.”
“Okay, okay. Jesus.”
Tracy’s eyes fixed forward, as though watching a memory swim past.
“I went to therapy. My first ever session. Like I’m ‘supposed to’.”
She rolled her eyes at her own line, as if its triteness were self-evident. Helen was a little confused. Therapy was Tracy’s idea. It had always been her idea. She had insisted for months now she couldn’t trust anyone who didn’t take ‘sorting themselves out’ seriously and that she, Helen, was doing herself a great disservice by not spending five hundred dollars a month to talk to a stranger who neither knew nor cared about her.
“It’s all a part of self care. Some people say ‘I don’t need it’, but everyone needs it!”, she had said. Often. With eye rolls. ‘Everyone has problems they need to sort out!’
Staring at the bottom steps of the bank, Tracy couldn’t stop rolling her knees together.
“It was horrible. I hate it. My life sucks, and this didn’t help at all. People can’t stand me, and I can’t stand people. And do you know what my therapist said? The fucking audacity. She said I’m a narcissist. I don’t even know what the fuck that means. I think she’s a narcissist.”
“She did not! Well of course she’s wrong,” said Helen quickly. “Very wrong, even. That’s why you should keep going, Tracy! To prove her wrong at the very least! It was wrong of her to judge you like that, but she’ll come around.”
The rest of us did, Helen added in thought.
“You can help each other. Maybe there’s some problem she can help you with. Everyone has problems they need to sort out. And maybe you can teach her not to be so, you know, judgy.”
“No,” said Tracy. “She’s a horrible bitch and I hate her.”
“You’re a good person, Tracy. You’ve just got a rough exterior. Like a hedgehog. Keep going to therapy. Give her a chance.”
“She doesn’t deserve it,” she sneered.
“She made a mistake,” said Helen. “Can’t you forgive her?”
Before Tracy could respond, they were approached by a woman in a red dress. She was rail thin, with pale eyes floating between lavishly-applied mascara like barrels coasting ocean waves.
“Hey,” she said. “Would either of you like to make some money?”
“No, thank you,” said Helen, shooing the woman off. “Please go away.”
The woman glanced at Tracy with diminished enthusiasm.
“What about you?”
“I said ‘no thanks’ for both of us!” said Helen sternly. She lent over to block Tracy from view.
The woman closed her eyes, then shrugged.
“Suit yourself,” she said sleepily. Cracking open an eye, her attention landed on the crescent moon and pitchfork glyph tattooed on the side of Tracy’s neck.
“Neptune square moon. Wow. Very nice,” said the woman with a warm smile. Then, as though swept by a wave, she floated this way and that down the street. Tracy looked astonished.
They sat in silence while Helen waited for the woman to wander back to whatever labor camp she had escaped from.
“Sometimes I feel like people are following me,” Tracy whispered. Helen noticed Tracy’s fingers begin to twitch, and so she grabbed her hand with both of hers. “Because they’re waiting for me to realize something.”
“I have to go,” Helen said, trying to look in Tracy’s eyes. But they were too distant and filled with mist. “But please call me later if you need to talk, okay?”
“Whatever.”
She left Tracy there on the steps, exactly as she found her. Though she hadn’t said anything wrong, she may as well have just blown in her face. It would have had the same effect. No one had any interest in what she had to say, but had every interest in continuing to circle whatever miserable drain they found themselves rimming. Of course, her presence was still desired. To help. In some nebulous way. Just that no one cared what she thought or what she had to say.
She stopped for a moment and stared at her shoes. And she would be. She would always be there to help.
“Do you have any change?”
A homeless man sat on a cardboard mat speckled with dried blood. The massacre. Helen’s legs felt weightless. She hadn’t felt the shaking of her knees since the drive to Soft Meadows park, where a police car had pulled over her and Kelley with her father’s corpse in the trunk of the car. She remembered Kelley nervously glancing at the glove compartment when the officer shoved a flashlight through the driver’s side window. After looking over his license, the cop pursed her lips and pointed the flashlight right at the compartment.
“What’s in there?”
“Drugs,” Kelley laughed nervously.
“Okay, smart ass. Out of the car.”
They stood outside while the officer inspected the interior. Helen could barely stand. The cop returned after a minute holding a bottle of whiskey.
“What is this?”
“I’m so sorry,” said Helen, falling to her knees and bursting into tears. “It was my idea. I wanted to go into the woods to try it. I’ve never done it before. Drinking, I mean.”
“And then drive home?” asked the officer. “It’s a serious crime. Not like underage drinking. I’m taking this with me. You two, go home.”
“Yes ma’am.”
On the detour around the park, Helen couldn’t stop fidgeting.
“What if she looked in the trunk?”
“She was never going to look in the trunk,” Kelley smiled, tapping on the dashboard to some imaginary song in his head. “She read us like a book.”
She had believed that part of her wanted to get caught. That she was being obvious and that the officer should have known to see through her act. That was the lie she told herself for the longest time. But she knew deep down that her actions betrayed her wishes. If she had wanted to get caught, she could have done any number of things. Anything but lie. And what did she actually do?
Her mind returned to the present. She steadied her legs and looked kindly at the homeless man sitting in front of her. His wild, black hair reminded her of Kelly’s.
“Would you like some food?” she asked him. “I can buy you a sandwich if you like.”
He stared at her like a lion eyeing a stick of celery.
“I want money, not a sandwich.”
“Fine, whatever,” said Helen brusquely, holding back angry tears as she reached into her bag and pulled out nearly two hundred dollars from my purse.
“Don’t go shooting it all up your arm,” she said, eyeing the track marks on his wrist.
“That’s a lot of money. You’re just a kid. Where’d you get it, your parents? Your rich daddy?”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Helen. She shoved the money in his hand then knelt down in front of him. “I live in a nice house with my mother and father. People feed me. I’ll be okay without this money.”
“You’re stupid,” he said. “Because I AM going to shoot it up. Just not in my arm.”
“That’s your choice,” she said. She felt her eyes burning, though to the man they looked like shards of ice.
“It’s not a choice,” he said, twitching angrily. “You’re killing me with your money and your pity and your family that loves you. Everybody wants to give me enough to keep me alive, but nothing else. No one wants to help me. Fuck your money, man. It makes me want to kill myself twice as much, but I don’t want to die without dope in my system because that way I won’t be afraid.”
“You don’t have to spend it on drugs. You could do something else with it.”
The man laughed at her.
“I’m not buying a ‘sandwich’. If I’m hungry, I can find a way without getting handouts from a spoiled, little girl. They got good shit behind the bakery.”
“Why don’t you do what I did and give it away?”
“I’m homeless. I’m not giving money away.”
“That’s fine. I don’t know what your life is like. It would probably upset me to hear about it. But if I was addicted to something, and I knew that money would only make things worse, I’d give that money away. It wouldn’t make the problem go away, but maybe it would be a step in the right direction. Just to remember what it feels like to give up something valuable but also bad for a change.”
The man laughed. “You’re fucking crazy. Who do I give the money to?”
“I don’t know. Someone who you think needs it more. Maybe someone who also needs to know what it feels like to reject something bad.”
He scrunched his face then scratched the back of his neck, catching flakes of dry skin in his fingernails.
“Maybe I am a little hungry. I’ll have that sandwich if you’re still offering.”
She went into the nearby café and bought him a ham and cheese sandwich and a chocolate donut for herself. They ate in silence for a while, before he turned to her and breathed a little too loudly.
“Hey,” he said. “Do you want to fool around a little?”
“I’m 17.”
“So what? You’re nice.”
She picked herself up fast then threw her half-eaten donut on the ground.
“You’re not. Enjoy your sandwich,” she said. “You smell like pee”
Rushing down the street, she looked at her watch. Half past six. It was too late to make it to practice. It was fine. She wasn’t in the mood anymore. Too irritated. That man. He was so close to having a decent moment. She was so close to feeling like she had made a difference. Like her words and actions were more than just window dressing. But no, he had to ruin it.
Ruin it for who? For you? He just wanted sex.
Well he shouldn’t have.
She remembered her conversation with Tracy. She said I’m a narcissist. Was she like that? Selfish? Was she frustrated because she wasn’t able to help anyone, or because people didn’t do what she wanted them to?
It’s not about what I want, she thought. It’s about what’s good. This has nothing to do with me. I didn’t invent goodness. What I want doesn’t matter. It never did, and it never will.
What do you want? Came that voice again.
I want what’s best for everyone.
And that doesn’t matter? And it never will?
That’s not what I meant. I’m talking about the other stuff I want.
Oh, him.
I have goals other than people.
Sure you do.
Before she went to sleep that night, she checked under her bed, something she had not done since she was a child. She used to have horrible nightmares of flailing beasts with fifty arms crawling out from under the bed. She would wake up petrified, too frightened to leave a toe uncovered lest they grab her. Her eyes closed, lest she invite them in with her attention.
And then one day, she opened them anyway. She opened her eyes and saw a cat-eyed demon with teeth like sawblades. And then it turned into a mountain of clothes piled on her chair. Was that all it ever was? Little by little, she gathered the courage to leave the covers, and, without turning on the lights, she peered into the darkness under her bed. Nothing. She reached out a hand and waved it around. Still nothing. Such a small place, she had thought. How could anything that small hurt me? I couldn’t even fit under there.
‘They’re not really under there’, was the first thing that popped into her head. ‘They use portals.’
Only fairies use portals. Not monsters. She was being stupid.
She slept soundly that night and every night thereafter, as long as she checked under the bed. It was only when she didn’t that the nightmares would claw their way back up the sides of her bed.
Then puberty happened, and the ritual lost its power. But so had the nightmares. In fact, as far as she was aware, she didn’t dream at all. That was just what growing up was about, she figured.
It had been almost eight years since she had last checked under the bed, but now, for whatever reason, she felt compelled to. Why, she could not be sure, nor why the memory of the ritual had returned at all, but that did not stop her from carrying it out from beginning to end, shutting off the lights, peering under the bed and then running her hand back and forth from one end to the other. There was no point asking ‘why’. It was just the right thing to do. It didn’t have to make sense.
But something was missing. She stared at her backpack.
Unbuckling the loop, she removed the knife and slid it under her bed. If would be there if she needed it.
She slid into bed, making sure her feet were hermetically sealed by blanket folds. It was childish, but it made her feel safe. And so shortly after her head hit the pillow, she felt a delirium sweep her gently out to a sea of light, fireflies dancing around her body. She could picture a circle of stones around her bed.
And then, very suddenly, she awoke to the blackness of her bedroom. Her ear hummed with the sound of low, electric buzzing. A rusted noise with sharp crackling, like a circuit on the verge of overloading. Something about the noise scared her. It wasn’t from here. She could picture a spiral, saw-bladed surgical tool tunneling inside her ear canal. It was then she noticed her eyes were still closed. Despite her attempts, they remained sealed. But unlike her paralyzed body, her lids still quivered in response to her commands to open up. Some part of her was fighting back to keep them shut. It knew something was out there, and it didn’t want to know what it was. Because if she opened her eyes, it would know her too. Is that it? she thought. Is that her only option? To do nothing? She would remain paralyzed forever, she thought, or she would know who paralyzed her. She opened her eyes.
On her wall was a face. A white face. Glowing. As human as a stick figure. Hollow eyes like a theatre mask that tunneled through her wall into a space that existed elsewhere. It smiled when it saw her, and that smile took on a mock pity as Helen tried to scream with a throat absent of air.
Glued to her bed, she could do little but watch. From tiny white spirals, two slender hands curled into existence beside the head. With all the litheness of smoke, its left hand held up two fingers. The right made a motion as if unzipping its lips. As it did so, the head peeled back its skin, revealing the sharp features of a man with a single, golden eye, midnight lips, and pulsing horns that framed his face like muscular slugs.
The electrical buzzing grew stronger. His voice crinkled with popping current, talking slowly, chewing through each word like glass.
“I come to you in the love and the light of our one infinite creator.”
Globes of light twinkled and danced above his head.
“I have come to show you something.”
The jester shrunk into a corner of her wall. From his neck, the rest of his body grew out like vines, revealing a checkerboard body with wiry, mantis limbs. Above him, quicksilver teardrops fell to the bursting of color, most of which Helen had never seen before. Her mind soared, blown away with every reveal of each new color or geometric shape. Her wall had become a portal to another world, the floor of which curved and folded in on itself. The jester stood above the world on a drum decorated with stars, and then began to stamp his hooked feet faster and faster until he burst into the form of a great, six-winged humanoid, so luminous that she could hardly make out more than its shape. The longer she stared, the more she felt as though she was traveling inside him, spiraling down looping tubes of light singing in mellifluous choir.
“Look,” he said, breaking her out of the spell. He pointed to another humanoid figure standing into a vast meadow, her silhouette filled with television static. “That’s you. Imagine yourself there, like you did with me. Fill it with love. Feel yourself let go.”
Without realizing she had started, she found herself pouring her love into the static puppet. A watering can of pure pleasure was being poured into her head. Stars zipped and spun in a choreographed cosmic dance above her. Wait? Her? Her head? What was being poured into her head? She pulled back with the startling realization. She was not the puppet feeling the pleasure of ensoulment. She was what was being poured.
Lying once more on her bed, she felt a throbbing headache where the warm, gooey feelings of delight had entered the puppet. On her wall, the jester had retaken the form of the pale, one-eyed imp.
To her surprise, Helen suddenly found the air in her lungs.
“What are you?” she breathed.
“I am an angel. What did you think of my home?”
“It’s beautiful,” she admitted.
“I came because I saw your heart. You have so much love to give. So much wasted love circling the drain.”
“It can feel like that. Sometimes I feel trapped.”
“In my home you will feel loved like everyone is meant to be.”
There was an earnestness about the jester. It was easy to trust him. But there also the way he said the word ‘love’.
“I’m fine where I am,” said Helen. “If I live a good life, I’ll go to heaven when I die.”
“Do you live a good life? If you kill yourself now, will you go to heaven? I do not think so. But I doesn’t mean you should try. If you do, I will catch you. And then you won’t have to go to Hell for killing your father.”
A horrible feeling crept up Helen’s spine.
“You’re not an angel.”
“Yes I am. I come in the love and the light of the one infinite creator.”
“Who are you?”
“I am who you need me to be. Give me a name, and I will be him.”
“Leave me alone. In the name of Jesus Christ.”
“Okay. I will be your Jesus Christ if you wish.”
“You’re a demon.”
“I am a Son of God,” he said. “Just like you, in a way.”
The face paused, straining with electric crackling while gathering its strength.
“Everything you think you know is a lie. There are no demons. There is no Jesus Christ. The meek will not inherit the earth. That’s the line of a farmer who wants his little piggies soft-bellied and plump. Oh yes, you have been told lies. The values you hold dear exist to fatten you up. I could teach you a thing or two. So come live with me. I saw your face. You felt good, did you not? And I believe you ought not to feel any other way ever again. So come stay with me. All it will take is a few deep cuts while you lay in a warm bath. Painless. Though I recommend bubbles.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“You just don’t know how. Will you continue to cope by living?”
“That’s not it at all.”
“I love you. I love you. I love you,” repeated the angel, all with the same convincing cadence, though it tripped on that single word as though it didn’t quite understand it. “If you’re scared of death then let me into your body, and you will never have to die. The other angels will not touch you come Moontide.”
“What is Moontide?”
“In one week there will be an eclipse and the angels will return to harvest your souls. That is why I am here. It is safer with those that love you rather than those who wish to feast on your body and chew on your soul like gristle. Sever yourself from the body and come live with me. Or let me inside your body and I will protect you. I wish to leave you with options. Your free will is important to me.”
“You don’t love me. Stop saying that. You don’t know me. I don’t believe anything you say.”
“Don’t. Belief is nothing. Nothing matters. Everything is perspective and illusion. But do what I say and you will be happy.”
“If nothing matters, why are you here? Why are you on my wall?”
“My reason is joy, pleasure and fun. When you’re free from the fear of death, you’ll find there’s nothing else.”
“That’s all you care about? Fun?”
“Mirth is King,” said the one-eyed angel. “I was born of fun. My progenitors fell from the sky and found human women with whom to play games. Poor Daughters of Man. We were too big for our mothers. Their bellies burst like grapes when we were born. My first sad sight in this world, a toy too broken to play with.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Oh,” he said. “Do not blame my ancestors. The Daughters of Man looked very good.”
His yellow eye grew brighter.
“You look very good too. In another life, you could have been my mother. Would you like that?” He said, pulling on his slug ears. “Would you like to give birth to me? You can if you want. Touch me. Play with me. Birth me into the world.”
“I will take my chances with the eclipse.”
The angel playfully squeezed the slugs on either side of his head.
“You don’t understand. You belong to me.”
He stretched out his arms. In the palm of his left hand he played with an unmistakable marionette, the toy’s all-too-human eyes rattled inside a lidless, wooden face smeared with the same clown makeup he occasionally wore when he was still alive. It had been a year since she had last seen him. She had never seen him so vulnerable before. Pathetic. Feelings of guilt percolated in her stomach.
“You were sold to me by one of my toys.”
Each end of the angel’s lips curled until they touched at the tip of his forehead. He pulled the strings that connected to the toy’s jaw.
“Help me,” said the marionette. “I love you. You know I never would have hurt you. It was just a joke. It was just a joke. Did I take it too far?”
“Dad,” Helen said softly. The way he said “I love you”. It wasn’t like the face-in-the-wall, though she couldn’t believe him. He lied in life too much for that. And yet his red-wrung eyes held horrible suffering.
“So many choices, Daughter of Man,” said the angel. “But you don’t have to die. Let me into your body. I’ll cut his string all the same. It should be no sacrifice to you. You’ve eaten the flesh and drunk the blood of one who isn’t even real. But I am real. You can see me. Talk to me. And who knows what more.”
The angel’s face grew bigger and brighter on the wall.
“So come give me a lick. You’ve never tasted anything like me.”
Her hands gripped the bed on hearing those words. She had heard them every time she placed her knife in her bag. Feeling had begun to return to her body, the paralysis lifting. The drilling in her head no longer seemed unbearable, but a testament to reality, grounding her to what was and pushing away what wasn’t. The pounding in her head had become a weapon, a dowsing rod for a growing rage that had begun to eat away at her fear. She slid from her bed and grabbed her knife.
“If you weren’t already dead, and you” she said, rising to her knees and pointing the knife at the angel. “If you weren’t anything but a face-on-the-wall, I’d kill you both.”
The angel nodded, his face fading as if intended to go, before surrounding himself with a harsh light that spot lit every line in a face constructed from disparate shards of glass. His eye burst from its socket in showers of blood. Blood smeared all over his black lips as he lapped it up with his tongue.
“You’re trying to scare me,” said Helen. “But I’m not scared. You’re just a face-in-the-wall. And I don’t have to listen to anything you say.”
“You bore me, Daughter of Man,” said the angel. “You’re boring. Did you know that? Do people tell you? Do they care enough to bother?”
“If being interesting is being like you, then I hope I’ll always be boring. So boring that you seem desperate to have me. It’s sad, but I think I know why. It’s because I’m real, and you’re not. That’s all it is. Nothing you showed me is worth giving up my life. Or letting you into mine. And so one day I’ll forget you. But I doubt that I can say the same about you. What do you think that means?”
The angel smiled.
“The followers of Christ see evil in everything. They tire themselves fighting shadows, so when evil comes knocking at their door, exhausted, they succumb without so much as a whimper.”
He groaned.
“And secrete the sweetest garrote. The nectar of a guilty conscience. I wonder, do you feel guilty? Have you really done nothing wrong?”
His lecherously yellow eye leered at her.
“What clear eyes. You are not weak. I love that. But be careful. The boundaries between our worlds grow thinner, and the tide grows nearer. If you do not accept my protection, you will surely drown.”
“I don’t need your protection,” said Helen. “You surprised me tonight. That’s all. I won’t be surprised again.”
The angel’s yellow eye stared at her hungrily.
“Look at your table. Do you see that box?”
She looked. There was a small black box on her writing table. She had never seen it before.
“You don’t care about the one who gave you life. You got what you wanted. You live. I understand. I do. I ate my mother the day I was born, remember? You don’t mind if I torture your Father for eternity, do you? You’ve made it clear you don’t love him. You don’t love me. You don’t love anyone but yourself. So pay that box no mind. Don’t ever touch it, little Pandora.”
The face faded from the wall to the sounds of electrical current and the clacking of wood attempting to speak.
Alone with her thoughts, her brain felt on fire. She set the knife down on the bed. Had her father ever really loved her? Did he now? Or did he just want something from her? And what if he did? What would that matter. Why did her love have to be contingent on his?
And yet it was, and it always had been. She thought about what Kelley had said that night, how he would find his own father and drag him back into the waking world. Could she do anything like that? What kind of person could turn their back on someone else’s suffering, let alone their own family?
She stared at the box, the only reminder that what she had experienced that night was not a dream. Hours went by, and she remained paralyzed with indecision. Though the face had offered no instruction, she knew what would happen if she opened the box. A sacrifice. Like Christ. But she couldn’t make that choice. She couldn’t act. If only someone would act for her. Choose good where she chose nothing. Like her father did on the night he made her kill him, perhaps the one good thing he ever did.
And then her phone began to ring.