Demon Stories: Vol. 2

Beau: The Devil in the Wings, 1900, New York City

Beau

The Devil in the Wings

1900, New York City

There are many visitors to the museum today. I go here every day, to clear my thoughts and observe the many throngs of people excitedly looking, shyly observing, sitting along the walls and sketching to themselves. It is a quiet place, a place of reverence and of where the past has passed and now all which remains are along the walls and in the middle of the floor, sculpted and painted.

As I walk, there are many visions. Priceless visions, obscured slowly by moving bodies. Children cry, men talk amongst themselves in mutters. Mothers hush their babies and the brushing movements of skirts make plushing mutes.

Yet I am here for one reason. My eyes raise skyward and observe a hall, framed with many amusements in a dark tone. They are quiet images, powerful but easily missed.

Religious relics. Winged creatures, golden halos. Helping man, touching them, playing. There are winged cherubs, tumbling about and blushing rosy. Naked bodies covered in cloth or not at all. The pure beauty otherwise not forbidden.

I stand in the middle between two benches full of people. Others mill about quickly, few linger.

I have been here for three hours. I can tell by the sun flooding the room. Yet I cannot stand to leave.

A winged creature stands over a man before me, brushed in devastating detail. He could be standing in the room with me, his large white feathers spread about. He could be over any one of us, yet he chose this man in the painting. I've read all of the plaques. I know the stories. The stories have been known for thousands of years in one form or another. Always changing.

Five other winged creatures, small ones, frame a woman with closed eyes. More, another hovers over a man with no wings but the robes fly up as in flight. There is another behind me, a massive image of a woman in Roman robes with such enormous white wings. This one I find peculiar, as in lore angels can only appear as male. I'd studied it for an hour, then moved on. It seems one out of place in this room, but it matters little. It is merely a sign the story is changing, once again.

What matters are these paintings. How I never noticed it before.

They are paintings of angels. Bursts of color and light. So many people, as untellable from those in here, who have painted images of ones with wings. Where they heard of such creatures does not matter. Stories from far off places, in every culture almost. Every religion has winged creatures, claims of sightings and more stories. Every form of creature from horses with wings to men to beautiful women and children.

How did they come to imagine such creatures? Did they see them? Are they so different from anyone who may have seen one? Painted it with blood and gold, with crushed pearls and berries? A winged creature they could not have imagined, yet drew with fervor, with panic and madness?

Why did these people not die for this sin? Putting such a creature on paper, canvas, vellum? What is so different?

What is so different from him...

In silence, I leave the room. It is enough for today. Too many memories. Too many people. So much sunlight illuminating the untouched angels, drawing in the humans to paint what is impossible to capture or recreate.

Too much time to remember a moment. A moment where one such smiling angel tried not to laugh as a madman sketched his picture one day, a sin unlike one he could have ever imagined. A sin which haunts my words, my touch, my everything.