Angel's Touch {1/3}

[onlythemediocre]

Title: Angel's Touch
Part: 1/3
Word Count: 2,163
Summary: Once she radiated life... and now she's taking it. A live lived in the darkness of night, she is an angel. An angel of death.
Author's Note: My second story in this format! This is definitely a lot longer then Collide was, as this is a three-parter. Although the formats are generally the same this also uses a lot more strikethroughs. The quotes at the beginning at the end come from a quote said by Oscar Wilde. Enjoy!

‘Death must be so beautiful.’

———

Her designer boots click against the wet pavement and her buoyant hair moves in the wind. She doesn’t look like anything but a well-dressed adult; perhaps wearing a little too much black, but she knows for sure she doesn’t look suspicious. The only colour she wears is the red of her lipstick and of her scarf. She walks with purpose into the damp night.

(Sometimes, she wonders if they think she’s just walking home, like any other person would do at this hour. Walk home, settle on the couch and order some take out.

She doesn’t, of course.)

/

Her sense of direction is always perfect and she’s never been to the wrong house before. She couldn’t tell you why her inner GPS works so well. A mask of neutrality has settled over her features and it doesn’t shake as she steps into the small apartment on the third floor, where a guy who looks to be the same age as her is passed out, still clutching a bottle of booze.

(His breath smells of alcohol, but even in disturbed sleep, he seems so young.)

(A pity, really.)

/

She wraps her first finger and thumb around his wrist. Generally, some of them flinch at this point, but he’s so out of it that he doesn’t move at all.

It’s like he’s already dead.

She squeezes.

/

She sees a blue light, getting darker towards the edges as if it was decaying. It rushes out from his chest, a little ball that’s finally being freed from its maltreated cage –

And disappears into the dark night as the man becomes a corpse.

/

She’s an Angel of Death.

/

The first time she saw a soul leaving a body, she cried.

(It was the best kind of soul – beautiful and golden and right in the middle it was just white. It seared itself into her eyelids and she could see it even when it was gone forever.)

She never saw one as beautiful ever again. But targets age with her, and all souls decay with age.

/

She doesn’t glance at the man again. He’s already going cold.

(She’s saved his soul from rotting. She’s performed the inevitable, and there was more to save this way. There’s no need to cry, or to mourn.)

She turns the light out for good measure – it’s good for the environment, and it’s not like anyone needs it anyway – and walks out.

The apartment turns cold, just like its owner.

/

That’s her only job for the night.

With a target that was destroying his sense of self and her saving it before it was too late –

Tonight’s a good day in her business, all things considered.

/

She wasn’t always like this. She knows that for certain. There was a time when she could hold someone’s hand without promising them a quick and painless death. She knows that she was once beautiful. She held herself with pride, not like she was leaning against a steel rod. She used to have a bounce in her step. Her hair used to be glossier. Her skin, now sallow in sharp light, used to glow.

(She used to radiate life.)

/

(It’s hard to remember before. It’s hard to remember a time when you were so happy and carefree and know you’ll never be like that again.

Memories like that are better repressed or forgotten.)

/

Her life is measured in nights.

It’s a safe time for someone like her. No one will ever really notice her, fixed in drunken stupors or focused on the promise of a warm bed waiting at home, perhaps with a spouse in there as well. (When people get a good look, the streetlights always mar her features. She can become almost ghoulish. They flatter no one, not even dark angels.) She’s free to walk around, tracking her targets, boots clicking against concrete as she does. She likes the sound of her boots against the footpath; it beats in a rhythm and keeps her head clear when she’s going after targets.

The stars are always out to accompany her, watching her the way the sun never will. Sometimes the beautiful moon accompanies them, glowing above her with knowledge she’ll never have. She watches the moon go through its cycles and the stars sparkle as they’ve done for millions of years as she travels to inspire death.

/

The thing about living in the night is that the darkness bleeds into each other and it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish one night from another.

She’ll never admit it, but it makes it harder to distinguish targets from each other, and the horrors blend and morph into a single entity.

Sometimes, she feels a lot older than she is.

It can feel like she’s living in a nightmare that never, ever stops.

/

Sometimes, there’s something significant that breaks through the pattern of the bleakness.

Once, there was a meteor shower that left her awestruck. She watched, jaw slack, at the rocks dancing around in the sky, before realising she was fifteen minutes late for her target’s date with death.

(The light of the first soul she freed always stays in her head, but she doesn’t think that counts; it was the beginning, before anything really began, so it never really broke up the darkness in the middle.)

And there was one time where her whole world seemed more radiant than the moon and stars combined. It hadn’t been expected, though. It’s hard to expect anything in this line of work.

/

The job begins just like the rest of them – a small note, engraved with an address with a name. She nods and dissolves into pure aura, as she travels throughout the dimensions and reforms on a spot not too far from the address.

(Rule #1: Never arrive on a doorstep or less than a block away from the address.

It never ends well.)

She lands on gravel. It makes it hard for her to collect her thoughts because she’s annoyed by the crunching sound under her feet. Her heels aren’t stable and she wobbles slightly. She doesn’t like to wobble. So she stretches herself to her fullest height and ignores the shifting of the ground underneath her as the small stones move under her weight.

(It could’ve been a sign, but she hadn’t been taking it as one.)

The address is a small house – townhouse, it looks like. She deduces the target’s probably one of those ‘aim high’ type of people, who work so hard they don’t even realise that their life is slipping through their fingers. They lose it all before they understand that they had something to lose.

Second chances aren’t given to those who will never learn.

She’s going to be saving a soul tonight, she knows. A soul corrupted by society, to love money over life. She always hates those types of people. They never understand how lucky they are to have what they have.

Life.

/

It’s well past bedtime for most people, but there are floorboards throughout the house. Besides, if the target’s a workaholic, there’s a chance that they’re still awake, typing away on a computer, trying to figure out how to seal a deal that they’ll never see to fruition.

She treads silently, a feat in boots with heels that click.

/

In the business, there are many unspoken rules.

But one of the main ones is that you have to remain detached from your work. It’s of no good to you or the target if you delay the inevitable through feelings. You get there, you commit the act, and you leave. You don’t form any connection with the target at all. That’s why it’s known as a target.

Building up personalities and expectations is considered a breach. It provides thought and brings feeling for a person only met for a second.

She can’t help but break the rules, because what else is there to entertain her?

/

The thing about assuming and having expectations for a target is

Sometimes, they are completely different to what you think they are.

They surpass your low expectations.

They surprise you.

/

She finds him in the bedroom. (This surprises her already.)

He’s tucked into his twin bed and he doesn’t look like he’s wearing a shirt, because she can see his shoulders. He’s snoring softly – softly – and his mouth is open slightly. He seems relaxed, like most people do in sleep. She supposes that he could have lines in his face when he’s awake and life wears him down, but in sleep, he doesn’t. Not many people do, but she’s never seen someone her age so carefree, even in sleep.

There’s a small dog lying at the foot of his bed, sprawled out lazily in its corner. Usually when she made her appearances and dogs were in the area, they would start barking to alert their owners. She always got them before they woke, though. She tried not to hurt the dogs, either. But the one on the bed continues to lie there, not even opening its eyes. It looks… content. Safe. It assumes no harm will come to its owner.

For some reason, it makes her sad that she’s betraying the poor dog’s trust.

/

There’s no use dwelling on a man who has pleasantly surprised her, though.

She still has to kill him.

/

Things are made more difficult when she realises that he sleeps with his hand underneath the blankets. There’s a chance she might disturb him and the dog if she moves them. The hand tucked underneath his chin isn’t free enough for her to grip it.

Slowly, painstakingly s l o w , she moves the bed covers.

/

They

don’t

stir.

/

(It makes her feel even worse for what she’s doing and she still can’t pinpoint why.)

/

His hand is dangling over his hip.

It’s an awkward position, but it’s reachable. She can do this.

She sighs in quiet relief, thanking the universe for not making her job even more difficult than it already was. There’s enough space for her to grasp his wrist without touching anything else. She wouldn’t know out of personal experience, but she’d guess being jarred out of sleep while you were being killed was an unsettling experience.

She can tell he’s well-built and probably goes to the gym enough times to be toned, but not enough to be bulky. But that’s all she can see in the moonlight. And it’s not good to stare.

(Detachment is the key.)

/

Slowly, v e r y s l o w ,

Her hand makes its approach towards his wrist.

She needs to get out of here, and fast.

/

Her finger snakes around half of his wrist;

Her thumb slides across his pulse.

Her fingertips

touch.

/

A beat.

She waits for the flinch.

/

There’s no flinch.

(Not the flinch she expected, and she thinks that’s what makes it worse.)

There’s movement in his face, and she’s drawn to it. That’s when she sees he’s scrunched up his nose.

/

She needs to hold on tighter.

She needs to finish the job.

/

His face relaxes, and she thinks she might be alright now. Her mind finally clear, she changes the force she’s applying minutely –

/

His nose scrunches up again.

/

She lets up on the force she’s applying. She’s caught off guard.

/

The air in front of her – the air in front of his chest – burns white.

She was wrong about the soul she saw the first time, burning golden like the sun. It was radiant, but it wasn’t what this is.

The bright light is laced with silver, as if it had come from the moon itself. It’s white, bright, and nowhere near golden, but there’s no comparison. It’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. She can’t keep looking at it. She can’t. There’s too much guilt there, knowing that she’s separated the two.

She thought she was saving a soul, but a soul this beautiful could’ve done wonders for the earth.

It’s when her eyes are snapped shut that it does the strangest, most magnificent thing. While white light explodes behind her eyelids, the memory of it still fresh in her mind, it disappears, just like all the rest of them.

When she opens her eyes, blinking away the white spots, it is gone. The man’s pulse has slowed. She quickly brings away her hand from him. The dog stirs for a moment, before going back to sleep.

She doesn’t walk out. She runs.

/

What she didn’t see:

The light, instead of disappearing into the night, sinking back into its host. It intends to stay.

What she didn’t feel:

The man’s slow pulse, continuing to beat away.

/

She’s failed.

/

He’s a miracle.

———

‘To lie in the soft brown earth… and listen to silence.’

/tbc./