ANGEL
Of all men there is none more forlorn than this: than the man who lives in death, death as his life; the bleakness soon shadows him, away from the death-life that he so treasures: that life in death is none other but a death in life, never to become a life in life, but rather a death in oppressive death. The lunatic who treats a cat as a mouse or a dog as a wolf could not be more disturbing; and yet, who is more common than this man? Drugging his spirit and conscience with death’s life, he continues on in life’s death.
Let us turn to the darkest leaf of this storybook: it fell off a dying tree outside the pale house. He watches it through the window, observing, waiting, thinking. His head rests in his hands, his eyes are glazed and his pupils soft: the bluish evening light cast on his face highlights his worst features, every sad wrinkle and pore. The sun sets far behind a thick row of dead trees, destroyed some months ago by an unknown disease, yet to be removed.
From behind a door opens. A wave of gray light fills the room: but the man does not turn. The bleakness of the room is filled with a soft ring of light: she has entered, the White Angel. She steps with delicate feet near the man, embraces him as he sits still, cradling him in her soft arms, touching his cheeks with her fingers. The man leans back slightly, but keeps his gaze on the dead trees, and the fading sun behind them.
She caresses his ear with whispered songs. Her little breaths tickle him, and he is involuntarily moved to duck his head and scratch his ear. When he is done she is gone, but only for a few minutes. Again her ring of light fills the room again with its dull brilliance, as it always does; and she caresses him again and sings him a love song, softly, but this time louder, loud enough that you might think it was the breeze outside.
He lets her run her hand through his disheveled hair, as he almost unconsciously leans back on her chest, the fabric of her dress soft and uncannily smooth, almost like milk in its texture and color. It rustles in the darkness. She asks him:-
“Have you any ice cream in the fridge?”
He nods slowly, grunts, “Yes, in the freezer.”
Happily she goes to the kitchen. He can hear her open the fridge, take the ice cream box out, close the door, grab utensils. He can’t help but chuckle a little bit. What a childish thing. Ever since her arrival, his budget has been destroyed by the ice cream costs. But submissively he waits in the room, staring outside. The sky is getting bluer and darker - almost too dark. He can no longer see the smears on the glass.
Presently, she comes back. She touches the back of his head with her lips. They feel cold but soft. He shudders, but can’t bring himself to stand. She hugs him. He looks down at her hands on his chest. They are beautiful, so beautiful and white, but also seem slightly skeletal. She pulls him to herself tighter, contracting her arms around his chest, and her breaths, warmth, and clothes were so close the man stands, turns and looks at her.
He gazes at her bare feet on the ground, traces the lines of her slim legs and figure up to her chest. She is clothed in a surreally wavy white dress. He examines the bare arms, the grand, fluffy wings on her back; and the faint, foggy halo of light. The light surrounds her and illuminates her beauty, bringing her to the most sublime form of loveliness: but he daren’t look at her face. He could never look at her face, for he never knew what he would see there.
But every other part of her he is willing to devour, to objectify in his personal painting of pleasure, the stuff in his wildest dreams and most fantastical imaginations, and as he clasps her hand he takes the lead and leads her in a light dance throughout the house, leading her closer and closer to his own body, where her warmth and beauty excites his heart. He presses her to the wall and clasps his hands to her neck, his lips to hers. He will annihilate her essence, annihilate that holy heart beating inside her: this he tells himself, with every unholy thought.
Finished, he is on the floor, her hand in his, him lying down and her kneeling, and as he looks at her body he wishes to turn it into a piece of glass and destroy it, and is angered that he hadn’t done so already. But she holds him down, almost sternly. He is moved, accidentally, to look at her face. It is as a shadow in a pit, and the instant smell of sulfur he senses chokes him like smoke. He presses his back to the floor, eyes wide at the sensation; the mouth is red and fanged with rotted teeth in unnatural places: the uvula, the palate, even on the tongue itself. The skin, if there is any, appears dotted with breathing holes, and the eyes are enormous black pupils, like staring into the abyss of depression, and her halo hovering around her head is scarlet red. In the eyes he seems to see himself as he was earlier, depressed, looking into twilight, the awful bluish highlights of his despised appearance, waiting for an animal to crawl up to his feet and wither at his command. The eyes seemed to be judging him, even arbitrating the worth of every last discolored speck.
A drop of saliva secretes from the mouth and drips on his chest. He looks down on it. By itself it is nothing more than another bodily fluid to fit into his weird fantasy: with the knowledge of its origin it becomes hateful, so he spurs his mind and represses the image, focusing on the drop on his chest as it is in itself. Further still he can hazily see her legs and lower body, bent over him. He pushes her up quickly, roughly, in a frightened frenzy, afraid of his vulnerability against this thing. He bends his body down and faces the ground in profound terror. Then, she steps back, and is gone, the light disappearing. She has left him bent over on the laminated floor, in which he thinks he can just barely see his reflection: a human, an observer, or at least a blurred ghost of one. He cannot get rid of the image of his own exceedingly lonely visage appearing deep inside those abyssal eyes, the eyes that judge, the eyes that objectify, the eyes that devour, and annihilate.
The destroying life in him dissipates, and he is left destroyed in the cloak of night. The spit drops on the floor. He touches it with the tip of his finger, then recoils in disgust. He stands and looks: though the Angel is mercifully gone, the hollow eyeholes seem to be painted on the ceiling in the corner of his vision, waiting, looking, judging his nakedness, pouring all the essence of shame and weakness and depressed distraction into the air … Tomorrow cannot arrive sooner, the illusion of Time and Time’s diligent progress, to hide this life of death, the death in life.