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-Nonsensical Works of Fiction and Other Stories-

The angel wasn't anything like what I'd been taught to expect. I found him huddled in the back alleyway behind the studio on a drizzling Wednesday evening, just after sunset, when I was halfway to my car and heard him scream. There's no real way to describe that noise unless you've heard it yourself. Just--imagine one of the most perfect, most melodious instruments known to mankind. A Stradivarius, maybe. Now imagine someone snapping, one by one, each string in the most discordant and sadistic way possible. And then put that in the terms of a human voice.
That's what this sounded like.
He'd stopped screaming by the time I found him, cradling his knees to his chest and wedged between a cluster of trash cans and the dumpster, with his wings kind of hooked over his head as he tried to shield himself from the rain. (the angel told me later that it never rained in heaven.) But he was still shivering like he'd caught the ague, and he had this look on his face--this perfectly androgynous, beautiful face--like he wasn't sure whether he should bite me or just run like all hell had broken out. Not that it would've helped. Dead-end alleyway, remember?
"Hey, are you okay?"
When I reached out to help him up, he actually flinched away--I'd never seen anyone do that outside of movies--and half-raised his hands, like he was scared that I was going to hit him or something.
"Hey," I said again, making my voice gentle. "Look, I'm not going to hurt you. What's wrong?"
I was still holding my umbrella under my arm, and I opened it up over the two of us. It felt like this was going to take a while. The angel sort of relaxed at that; at least, his wings stopped trying to bury his face in feathers so much. He started off soft, husky and a little strained. I would've too, if I'd been screaming like that just a second ago. "I--I'm not in heaven anymore." he whispered.
Well, no s**t, Sherlock.
"I--" He raised a quavering hand up a little further and pointed. "Fell. From up--up there."
I put my head at one side and looked at where he was pointing. "The roof? How the--"
The angel shook his head.
Then I got it.
He was a ******** Fallen.

You would have thought it would have ebbed away with time. 'Post-traumatic amnesia' is the term for it, not one that any doctor gave me, but one I figured out for myself. It sounds cliche--but then again, that's how cliches are born, isn't it? When they so perfectly fit a situation that they become recurrent. It sounds cliche, but it didn't feel that way. I don't remember the precise words he used to get me into his room. I don't remember whether he pushed me down or whether I was already sitting on his bed. I don't remember how I left, afterwards, how I staggered out, disheveled and half-dressed, into my car, and I don't remember how I even got home.
I remember that his mouth tasted like alcohol. Tequila.
I remember that his hands left bruises on my wrists.
I remember that I decided not to scream or protest. Because then it would be rape.
I remember that I locked the door of my bedroom and cried until I threw up.
Honestly, sometimes I'm almost glad that I don't remember much. And sometimes I wish I didn't remember anything at all. Because then what happened the week after, the break-up, would have been just another ordinary parting of ways for an unexemplary couple.
And yet it wasn't, and that's partially what hurt so much.
Because with all that he'd drunk that night, he didn't remember either.

His skin was pale as ivory, blue veins visible against the perfect, unmarred white of his chest. Unmarred, at least, until one's gaze traversed downwards, and the red lines of fading scars bloomed on his hips. Whip marks. I traced one, the touch of my long and lacquered nails making him shudder. I knew he found me desirable still, and I knew he hated himself for it. His shirt was white linen underneath his opened jacket, which I pushed it off his shoulders slowly. I could take my time, after all; he wouldn't dare move.
His skin smelled like incense, masking the smoke of the drugs I knew he'd taken.
He wouldn't have come to me if he hadn't, after all. He still feared me, after all these years.
And sometimes I wondered how it had come to this. How the thirteen-year-old whore I had taken in from a brothel in the Nethercity had become this beautiful and self-destructive demigod, returning night after night to me in order to feel the pain that his cultured, elegant world would never afford him.
I kissed the tears from his lashes when he came, and sent him out into the dark corridors of the Citadel.

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