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Azriel stared up at the fan blades that
slowly twirled through his hazy field of vision.
They passed through the stale air silently, cutting
slices out of the soft yellow light that spilled from the
fruit of the mechanical flower. The angel-no the fallen-lifted
a hand towards the fan, but paused when the appendage rose
into his field of vision.
Red lines formed a barbed bracelet on his wrist.
At least the handcuffs were off today.
If it was day; it was hard to tell with no windows.
His hand was trembling.
He lowered it to his stomach, and then grimaced as he
unintentionally pressed it into the bruise that stretched
across his skin. The
purple thing seemed to never end, and he began to wonder if
his skin had turned that terrible shade, a few large patches
the only reminder that he’d ever been another color.
Azriel brought his other hand, blackened
with blood blisters, to his left eye, which was mostly swollen
shut. He tested
the skin gently, but couldn’t separate that particular wound
from the draining ache of his entire body.
Nothing hurt that much anymore.
He couldn’t remember if he screamed anymore when they
hurt him. He had
stopped begging them to stop; they would never stop.
He would stay until they grew old and died.
He would have to wait, while they made him dirty over
and over again, because he would not be saved down here in the
dark. This was his punishment, she
was his punishment.
Azriel wanted to laugh at the irony of
his situation, but only started shaking more, his whole body
vibrating against the stone of his cell.
The chain attached to his collar rattled, but just a
little. When she
had found him among the garbage, freezing and hungry, he had
thought she had somehow remembered him and was just returning
the favor. She had not recognized him, but he was certain now,
that even if she had, he would still be lying here on the
floor, staring up at a ceiling fan in a windowless room.
He missed the alley cats that he had met
when he fell. Even
the ones that hissed at him and tried to eat his fingers.
Because when it snowed, they came back, curling around
him, so that they could all keep warm.
Azriel let out a stuttering set of small
squeaks. He tried
to swallow them before they turned into liquid and spilled
down his cheeks, but there were just too many.
He buried his face in the crook of his arm to muffle
the sounds; he didn’t want to risk attracting their
attention by making any noise.
He didn’t want to hear the door creak
open, see the ceiling fan blotted out by Jener’s sharp
smile, he did not want to feel-
Azriel didn’t know where he had found
the energy to scramble into a back corner of the room, making
himself as small as possible.
He was pulling air into his mouth, but it would just
come right back out, never quite managing to make it to his
lungs. He grabbed
at the metal around his neck, scratching it, dragging his
blistered fingers across the smooth, cold surface.
He wanted to stop the frantic twitching, but his hands
did not obey him. He
was coming he was coming he was coming
Eventually, Azriel became aware of the
fact that he was watching the pale light on the floor being
chased around by a dark bar that moved like the hand of a
clock. Slowly,
Azriel’s naked body relaxed; shoulders drooping, breathing
slowing, but he did not uncurl from his huddled position.
The burst of energy panic had given him, evaporated
into the stale air.
He was hungry.
He felt sick with the need for something beyond the
putrid air to fill his stomach.
It was the first lesson he’d learned about his
physical body when he fell: even though he didn’t need to
eat to survive, the gnawing ache made him acutely aware of the
elemental imbalance. He
had been eating dirt when she found him, unable to bring
himself to sift through the sour smelling garbage bins as he
had seen humans do it.
Mishu did feed him occasionally: water,
and bits of bread. Sometimes
she would make him sandwiches, or let him eat until he puked.
At first he thought she was being kind, but she really
only did it to remind him of what he was missing.
After those binges there would be indeterminable
stretches of time where he would feel his flesh cage dying
over and over again from starvation. He had begun to fear the
days where she would let him eat.
Reading the goose bumps on his arms with
the tips of his fingers, Azriel tried to recall how he could
have ever felt new and naked under several layers of clothing.
At first, the contact with the world in his new body
left him vomiting. Every
little touch: brushing up against a building, the feeling of
the clothing he wore, felt like he was wading through sewage.
Now he felt naked and helpless without clothing; how
could those simple little things felt so painful?
There were much worse sensations.
She had touched his wings.
Azriel clamped his hand over his mouth to
help hold back the bile that rose, stinging his throat at the
thought. Even his
wings, the core of him, had been dulled by her probing, harsh
hands. She could
invade even that secret, special part of him.
Azriel shook his head, trying to jostle his thoughts
loose so that they could fall back into the forgetful
darkness. The
darkness did open up, burning black stars in his vision.
Think of something nice, something
nice… Heaven. There
was a time when he had been not awake and Morpheus had visited
him on the edge of his realm.
He had kissed Azriel on the forehead and the
White
City
had risen out of the darkness to glow around them.
The city was eerily quiet, but its light burned away
the dirt ground into the fallen angel’s skin.
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