angels

“Did you know,” she says, “that the average person can endure less than five minutes of direct exposure to Her before their timeline is completely overwritten?”

You, bound and gagged on the floor of the temple's airlock, can only nod in response. Everyone knows that.

She grins at you. “Unintelligent matter is rewritten faster, of course, and living wood endures surprisingly well—that's why your rebellion was so excited when they found the asteroid forest, right? Sucks for you that we got here first.”

Fleeting waves of mirage haze sleeting across my eyes like rot's reeking spore, each flexing the world's bounds further still—walls bow against absent pressure and cracks grow into gaping doors, and all the while the shimmering gem of aura's heart eats and eats and eats—

That brightly lit not-mouth, an angel dancing at the center of my vision; it's odd how similar a mouth and a wing and an eye can look, you know, how feathers are just teeth seen by someone who's still waiting to be taught how to be a victim.

Angels eat just the same.

The poultice stings as it presses against her splitting flesh, as the cool liquids inside seep out into the painful heat radiating from her back. She does her best not to scream, not to wince, and her failure is rewarded with a Look, disappointment more potent than any fist.

She buries her face in the bed, hides her tears as the second poultice presses against her shame, against the burning red streaks stretching and tearing her skin as they swell and throb inside the small of her back, as lances of Wrongness skewer her to her bed.

It goes on easier than the first, spreading numbness stealing its bite; no new tears mar her eyes, though they are already red and bitter, her carefully formed mask ruined by the knowledge of what she is.

Feral angel girl sitting in the basement, far from her flock's nests, filthy light splintered by broken windows falling all around her.

It reminds her of her halo, in a way.

Letting it fill her senses feels the same as the Thing used to feel in her mind.

Years ago someone dragged a whole-ass payphone into the basement, just pulled it right out of the ground and tossed it down. It still sparks form time to time.

Angel doesn't know why, for all the time she spends looking at it, but it's convenient that it's already here.

Stones slipped just beneath the skin, smooth surfaces pressing against dermis, soaking up subcutaneous warmth; opals and moonstones and quartz, agate and topaz and jade all shining in the body's light, chunky beads filling skin with texture beneath your touch.

Once you asked why she went to so much effort, all those tiny cuts and carefully treated scars, all those beautiful things hidden away for no one to see. She always healed so quickly, but she still felt pain, and it always seemed like one or another of her gems was infected.