The Angel Cries for God

Chapter 3

Charlotte 

Charlotte sat quivering against the cold, stone slab, unable to comprehend the sight of the boy in front of her. The frigid, spring rain was beating down mercilessly on her exposed flesh, but that wasn't what made it crawl.

She could only describe him as a human rag doll.

His flushed skin was covered from head to toe in long, ragged stitches that gave off an angry, red color like that of blood. He was a combination of numerous body parts and pieces of skin that didn't quite fit together, making his proportions unnatural and freakish. He looked like a shattered vase that someone had tried to glue back together, but there wasn't quite enough pieces to finish him, so more vases were shattered and destroyed in order to complete the first. But he wasn't quite complete yet. Where skin and muscle and bone should've been, there was only gaping black holes that led into nothing. He was damaged beyond repair.

"You want to tell me your name then?"

She jumped at the sound of his voice, shocked that something with so many stitches could still be able to talk. Was he even alive at this point?

"Hellooo? I'm talking to you!" He said each word in a slow and loud manner, as if he were talking to a small child. It was demeaning to poor Charlotte but she was too terrified to even notice it. All she could focus on at this point was the way the stitches at each side of his mouth unwound with the movements of his speech. It was disgusting to think that they could just slide out of his skin like it was nothing, and even more disgusting to imagine what would happen to his jaw if they completely unraveled.

Suddenly he slapped her. Hard. Right across the check like he was swatting a fly.

"If you don't talk right now then I'll just go ahead and slice off your ear whether you like it or not! And trust me, that won't go well for either of us." He fixed her in a hard glare, eyes like those of two different people.

She gulped down her growing panic and tried to silence her shaking body, gathering up her remaining courage to answer the monster in front of her.

"C-Charlotte. M-my name is Charlotte." She hated how raw and pathetic the words sounded coming out of her mouth, but it couldn't be helped; she was terrified after all.

He seemed satisfied with her answer, giving her a curt nod. "And you're fallen?," he gestured one patched-up arm towards her charcoal wings. She frowned, weren't they white before?

"I-I guess." Did she really even know anymore? She knew she was an angel, sure, but what else? Everything was jumbled inside her head, shaken around like she had just took a trip through a giant blender. Nothing was clear anymore.

"You guess?," he let out a sharp laugh, striding over to her so fast that she didn't have time to get on her feet before he was on her, face so close that she was positive she should've felt his breath. But she felt nothing except his cold stare.

"You don't just 'guess' on something that important, this is your immortal soul we're talking about." He darted his hand out like a lizard's tongue, snatching one ebony feather from her wing with a pin-prick of pain. He examined it closely, rubbing it between his fingers like he expected it to hold all the secrets in the world.

"If you are fallen, then I 'guess' that means you're going to Hell." He let go of the feather with a wide grin. "Such a shame, right? One of God's most favorite creations and He's willing to cast you right into the epicenter of torture and agony. So much for eternal love." He ground the feather into the damp ground with one bare foot, all the while looking Charlotte right in the face with eyes that held all the fire of the world.

She was pinned between the boy's body and a gravestone, the one thing she loved keeping her from escaping this strange boy and his wicked eyes. She could feel the ever growing cold sinking deeper and deeper into her skin, numbing her body no matter how sharp her mind remained. Would she even be able to move or would her legs crumple beneath her at the first step? She didn't want to be here any longer. Being tormented by Frankenstein's monster and the whirring inside her head just made her want to crawl back into the depths of depression, where everything was dark and silent, where the dead were ready to bring her into the sweet release of death. Life was too much.

"Are you listening Angel?" The boy jabbed a frosty finger into her chest, so cold and devoid of human touch that she was absolutely sure he was dead at this point. "God has abandoned you, left you to rot! You have no purpose. You. Are. Nothing." He poked deeper and deeper into her flesh with each word, going so deep that she was sure he would penetrate right into her heart. Her hands braced against the tombstone, no longer comforted by their rough appeal. Instead she felt sharp, grating rock against her skin, sure that blood would be drawn the longer she held on.

She did not matter. Even the boy knew that.

She sunk to her knees, her back fraying against the jagged stone, and held fast to the fragile grass that stained her fingertips. The world was spinning before her, moving at impossible speeds that made her want to vomit out all the bile built up inside her. God had abandoned her to this world of unbearable thoughts and aching limbs, of blackened hearts and steel-clamped stomachs. What had she done to deserve this? Nothing could be so bad as to deserve this. She did not deserve the feeling of a ground-up mind and unrelenting feelings of death. 

Was this what it felt like to be human?

She let out stuttering breaths and crystal tears, watching as everything grew even more blurry and unfocused. The feeling of earth disappeared beneath her as the dark clouds of her own mind pressed against her temples, filling her head to the point of bursting.

"Oh no, not this shit again!" The boy dug his fingers into her shoulders, shaking her back and forth with such force that she repeatedly smacked her head on the granite behind her. "Man the fuck up would you!" He slapped her once more, adding to the already growing red welt on her face. The momentary pain forced her back into reality, giving her a quick enough shock that she shut right up.

"Jesus! Fuck, if I knew you would start whining I wouldn't have said anything." He let out a tired sigh and loosened his hold on Charlotte's flesh, sinking back into the dirt at a sudden loss of strength.

"Listen if it really bothers you that much, I know....I know how to get you back into Heaven." 

It took her a moment to comprehend what he was saying and another to process it. Get back into Heaven? It seemed like an impossible task, Heaven wasn't exactly like a restaurant, there was no secret doorway to sneak in through, no hidden ventilation shaft that would get you past seeing eyes.

God saw all, and he punished all. That much was apparent to Charlotte.

But then again, what did she really want? Did she want to wallow in these menacing thoughts that would drag her down to the point of being buried alive? Or did she want to do something about it, something to ease the cinder block that kept her chest from really heaving and breathing in life? The answer was obvious.

"How are you going to do it?," she asked quietly, wiping the remaining traces of salty tears from her face.

"I'll tell you all that later, but first I have to know that you're really willing to do this." He sat up on his elbows, laying his eyes on her again with a look that made her skin crawl all over. 

"I'm going to need some payment before we begin."