Angel Number

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I was coated in a membrane of my own sweat. My hand fell over my throbbing forehead. I kicked off the linen blankets. How I despised the bipolar nature of England's weather- damp cold by night and swelteringly hot by day.

I didn't bother looking up when my door was kicked open with a loud scream of its yellowed hinges. I knew that it was Āyí. "You dare leave your elders to break their backs cleaning while you sleep!?" She said in Chinese. Her voice was hoarse, her leathered face crinkled with fury.

Silently, I slipped on my bamboo slippers, shifting my sweat-saturated tank top down to the waistline of my adidas shorts. My hair was sticky to my head, laden with both sweat and grease. I was reminded that my wings had re-emerged when I felt the swats of Āyí's newspaper against their ruffled feathers, a reminder that I was condemned to indentured servitude for I was different, and therefore I owed them something for simply being kept under their roof. As I swept the leftovers from my lice-ridden cousins, I supposed I was grateful for anywhere to stay at all.

"Faster, the C-P-S will be here soon," chided Shūshu (my uncle). He wasn't as cruel to me as Āyí, but he still made sure to prod at me at least thrice per day. "Yes sir..." I grumbled, keeping my voice low so he couldn't hear the defiant edge to my courtesy. Āyí's diamond shaped nose pinched upwards in distress. She wrapped her iron-like fist around my wrist, jangling me forward. My slippers thumped against the rocky stone steps as I panted to keep up with Āyí's pace. Her hands grappled over me, before finding my shoulders and propelling my flailing body into the dark storage space of the basement. I watched as she frantically accelerated up the stairs, creaking the door shut. This wasn't the first time I was crammed into this space. It was an occurrence that happened every 5 months when CPS came. I wasn't permitted to be seen. Even so, the disgust that violated me still burned. I crinkled my face at the leaked water, murky with gunk and dead, turned over bugs that sloshed between my toes. A dank smell pulsed with microbes in my nose. Out of the dark crevices of the rocky walls, creatures pinched their tiny jaws at me. The basement was alive with bacteria and disease, slinging its tentacles through my hair and invading my personal space that I treasured so.

I fumbled through my pocket before finding the now creased envelope- an invitation for the test to get into Cross Academy. Unfortunately, Cross Academy was an "elite" school that only accepted angels who passed their test. My brain quickly ran through the topics- flying, mind puzzles, stealth, and dueling abilities. You were to compete with another angel, and the angel that reaches the destination faster is the one that would receive the wand, thus narrowing down the attending freshman class of 'o4 to half the applicants. Growing up in a human family, I doubted my abilities to defeat my chosen opponent, even with the meticulous training Delilah had put Melody and I through. But if I missed this test, I was guaranteed a life in a human high school. This was my only chance to finally be free. But first, I had to escape this basement. I quickly got to work on the lock mechanism of the windowsill, using a bobby pin to ease it out of the notch. Upstairs, I heard the muffled echo of voices.

There was the deep drone of a CPS officer, the rhythmic thump of his feet as his eyes surveyed our shabby yellowed walls, the tattered floral sheets flung over bamboo mattresses, the open box of peanuts and the dusting of salt that nested it, and the random stains that flecked the walls.

My wrist paused its workings as a pin-prick of pity bloomed in my chest- I pictured my aunt in her red vest, her skin glistening in the morning sun, her eyebrows curled upwards in fear, her eyes struck with confusion and anxiety as she clasped her knobby hands together.

I tightened my jaw. Nonsense. To my satisfaction, the tiny lock complied to me. I heaved the dust encumbered windows open, ignoring the cobwebs and brown flecks that gathered under my nails. The cracked sight of blacktop glared at me through the open window. I flexed my fingers, readying myself for my climb up. My palms seared against the hardened tar, and I swung one leg onto the pavement followed by the other.

I flipped open my Nokia phone, allowing my fingers to rest between the plastic gems I had tacked onto the phone's pink exterior. I began to type a text into my group chat dubbed "angelzzz" with my girls, Melody and Delilah.

Heading to the catacombs!!!

I couldn't fly anywhere in broad daylight, so I'd have to walk to the catacombs. Working diligently, I uncorked the pendant resting compliantly in the hollow of my sweat ensued collar bone, and extracted a single fay egg, feeling my breath thrum faster at the sight of its orbed blue. I sucked in my breath, feeling my throat retract in preparation for the pain I would soon endure. In one swift motion, I let its jellied body slide down my throat. I felt it bloom in my stomach, and in 30 cataclysmic seconds, my wings had embedded themselves into 2 caverns in my back.

I unfurled the handwritten map made by Delilah, scanning the route etched into the scroll's moth eaten exterior. Angels were known for their superior intelligence, and Delilah's advanced map was a pure demonstration of it.

𓆩♡𓆪