The Angel Cries for God

Chapter 5

Charlotte 

"P-payment?," she thought back to the many times he had threatened to take her ear, reaching up and tentatively touching the already crusting cut. It still stung.

The boy followed her movements, one side of his lip curling up in a jeering sneer. "It's not your ear if that's what you're thinking. No, I can get another one of those easily," he grabbed at the grass, pulling up tufts with a muted riiip! "What I can't get, however, is a partner."

A partner? He was falling apart at the seams, literally, and he wanted a partner? She shuddered at the thought, wondering what kind of business he dealt in. But from the extracted body parts it wasn't too hard to guess.

"And I'm not talking about the 'loving' kind, so don't get any ideas." He looked over his arm, eyes scanning every inch covered in raw stitches. He laughed. "But then again I'm not too sexy now am I?" He cackled again, an ugly, guttural sound that only furthered the disgust she had for him. She scanned the lonely graveyard for any signs of life, human or undead she just prayed that someone would enter her field of vision, noticing the poor girl pinned to a stone with a monstrous boy blocking any way of escape. The cold was becoming unbearable and she wanted nothing more than a warm blanket to quiet her quivering legs. 

The boy leaned on his side, getting comfortable while Charlotte squirmed like an insect in his presence. He seemed to enjoy it.

"Now I know my appearance must be giving you some ideas and let me tell you, you're right on spot. Yes, I am a boy made completely of other people's body parts. But did I take them from unwilling participants? No. They all agreed to give me something in exchange for my 'services' which are of the utmost quality." He studied his fingernails, blowing them over with the mannerisms of a teenage girl. He was a strange one, if his looks didn't make that point clear enough. Even his speech was off, much too eloquent for a fourteen year old but still snarky enough to make him seem his age. The more time Charlotte spent with this guy, the more her head ached. She felt her temple lightly.

"So I deal in trades, right? But I need someone like you for the final....ascent, for lack of a better term," he peered up at her from under his eye lashes. "And in return I can give you anything you desire. Anything." 

Sure she desired things, but enough to hang around with Frankenstein's baby for however long? No. No, she didn't want to hang around this...this thing any longer than she had to. She felt along the stone behind her, searching for a grip that would give her enough force to propel herself up and hopefully give her the burst she needed to bolt. She was tired of this. 

"So what do you say?"

She said nothing.

Instead she braced her hands against rough granite, deciding in a split of a second to thrust her body foreword and into the shattered remains of countless people. She was surprised to find that he was fairly solid, curious about how he didn't come flying apart as her body contacted with his own. Her concentrated burst of energy sent them both tumbling down the small embankment of the hill, knocking and mingling their limbs in a torrent of flashes of skin and worn-down shoes. She felt the chill of his skin, felt it mush and squish beneath her like putty. It was sickening.

Finally they reached the end of the hill, coming to a stop in which each of them pulled sharply apart, sprawling on the ground as gravity yanked them down to earth. Charlotte's chest pounded sporadically, her heart pumping blood in heaping gallons that crashed through her veins like pounding rivers. The lingering touch of the boy's skin on hers made it shrivel and crawl all over, her mind rationing that it was still on her even though she knew he had long since left her presence.

Then in a moment of clarity she realized she now needed to run. She forced down the raw feeling in her throat and pushed up on her elbows, gathering the last of her strength to make her limbs move as much as her mind willed them to. Her knees were bruised and bloodied but that only made her adrenaline that much more potent, giving her the extra kick that finally made her grudging legs oblige to the command to run.

She sprinted at full speed, covering large distance while still feeling that she was moving in place. Fear gripped her heart like an iron clamp, crushing down on her ability to think clearly and properly plan a route of escape. She was running of instinct at this point, the fear of being caught and the worry that her legs would soon give out making her pump forward all the faster.

The iron gate of the cemetery loomed forward like a glorious black opening to salvation. Hope lifted her spirits ever higher, the idea that she might actually make it filling her with a new feeling of happiness.

But that was short lived.

She hadn't even heard him. Hadn't any idea that he had even been trailing her at a speed much faster than her own, which seemed impossible with the poorly constructed layout of his legs. But with an inhuman athleticism he had strode over to her in a mere twenty seconds, arms extended and ready to grip tight to whatever he pleased. 

He tackled her to the ground, wrapping tight around her and squeezing the last traces of breath from her lungs like a boa constrictor. She fell face-first, jaw colliding with hard-packed soil and swallowing some of it in the process. Her torso took the impact of the fall, a giant hand smashing deep within her and crushing her lungs like fine china. She couldn't breathe, a heavy weight tugging her throat tight until nothing could escape or enter it. She gasped like a fish out of water and lay flat under the boy.

"So you want to do it the hard way, huh?," he growled harshly in her ear, completely unfazed by the fall that had left her immobilized. "Well okay then, we can do it the hard way!"

She heard the rustle of cloth and then the hard snap of metal ejecting. The knife.

She demanded her body to move, to do something other than wait there defenseless and vulnerable. A deer caught in headlights. She tried to shout but nothing came out except a small, pitiful squeak; the final point that told her she would not be getting up anytime soon. She could only wait. A backstreet driver to her own life.

Then she felt the blade. It sliced into her arm, a quick but extremely painful movement that added to the growing panic trapped inside her chest. He pulled it out swiftly; an expert in the art of cutting body parts. Tears spilled silently onto her cheeks and slide down onto the dirt cradling her head, staining the earth. It hurt. It hurt really bad.

He cupped his hand beneath the fresh cut, dark red blood pooling into his sewn palm. When he seemed satisfied with the amount of liquid gathered in his hand he slowly brought it up to the very top of his shoulder. Where a collar bone should've ran through, there was only empty space and he slowly poured the newly collected blood into the opening. Charlotte expected some sort of echo, a pitter-patter inside his body that proved her vase theory.

But there was nothing like that.

The blood coursed in but no feedback came out. He had swallowed it somehow. Had made it apart of himself like the many parts of people he had taken. A part of her was no inside him and she loathed that fact. 

"You see? You made me do that. We could've been friendly about all this but you had to go and ruin it." He panted hard but no breath left his lips; a feign of humanity. "Now we're bound, you and I. You can't leave my side until I say so and believe me, that won't be for a while."

Charlotte let out trembling breath, finally regaining some control over her body. But it was too late. It always had to be just too late. 

"Why me?," she whimpered, curling her fingers into the dirt as she imagined herself melding with it  as a final form of escape. 

He chuckled.

"Because the only other angel I know is absolutely devoted to my worst enemy. That's why."