Mavobella: The Angel Of Death

Chapter 2

Remember what they say about seeing stars after being given a hard blow on your face? They lied. All I saw was darkness. A solid reason to be mad at Disney. Within the suffocating darkness there were flashes—flashes of who I could have been, blurry like an old film reel, flickering in and out of focus.

Lights followed—blue, yellow, green, you name it. They blended like a kaleidoscope, yet stabbed my eyes like torches. There were faces—shadows I couldn't discern. There were voices—voices that drifted in and out of focus, merging with the wind, and disappearing the more I tried to reach them.

My mind was like a broken projector that betrayed me every time I tried to run a clip. The memories were shattered like glass, every piece too jagged to form an explicable picture. I felt like a sheet of paper being erased clean of words. Every call down the deep recess of my mind went unanswered. But the flash of the Imperium guards’ armor—a shade of white that was impossible to mistake—stood out clearly in the murk of my disoriented mind.

Even in the deepest states of sleep or torment, an angel could always recognize the unmistakable iridescence of those armours, their stripes glinting with angelic dust, as rare as it was powerful. That recognition seared through me like a brand, a memory I couldn’t fully grasp. Then, as if a veil had been dropped, the connection severed, leaving only pain—a burning ache that consumed my thoughts. This felt worse than being kicked out of the world’s best-selling book: the Bible.

The pain wasn’t from the punch. No. For all know, mortal blows or any other physical hits, however heavy, never lasted long on beings like me. But this was different. It wasn't physical, at least not in the usual way. It was as though the very fabric of my existence had been bruised. My face throbbed with a raw, unfamiliar ache, like something deeper had been damaged—something vital.

I lay there, my head resting against what felt like a mound of earth, possibly grave soil. My skull pulsed with the intensity of the damage, the sensation too foreign, too invasive to ignore. Yet, despite the pain, there was a strange clarity. They hadn’t destroyed me. Not yet. Whatever they intended, I wasn’t broken, not fully.

The zombies, however, seemed indifferent to my suffering. They dragged me through the dirt, pulling me by my feet, my back scraping harshly against the cold ground. Every part of me screamed in protest. But damn, did they care? They spread my legs apart—which they weren't doing for all the right reasons—as they dragged me, a grotesque parody of helplessness.

What an irony: just when I could feel my limbs, I couldn't use them. Whoever said that life was a walk in the park sure hadn't been to Jurassic Park—or, in this case, a zombie-filled graveyard.

Ye was silent, betraying me when I needed her most. As much as I stretched my hand, she did not answer my call. My angelic traits, too, had sided with her. Right now, I could really use a pair of wings. I would rather be everywhere but here, circumnavigated by a decaying smell and eerie luminous green glowing pairs of zombie eyes.

The fear of the unknown made my heart rave off. I was surprised I still had one, but it was throbbing in a tempo I wasn't quite acquainted with for a very long time: fast, violent, pushing my blood faster. Somehow, it made my breathing change. It was now short, intermittent, and heavier, exhausting all the air around me. Even though my body hairs had nothing to do with the suffocation, they stood alert, like those of a spider in alarm. I couldn't fathom what my body wanted, but it wasn't ice cream and candy bars.

I wished I didn't care, but I did. Where were they taking me? Why? And most of all, how did I get here in the first place?

“Help,” the word scratched out of my throat. The angel of death calling for help. Wonders never cease. I probably looked like one of them. So, the idea that anyone could help me was as crazy as it seemed. Look, it was not my fault that I look like a mental asylum escapee.