Runaway Angel

Chapter 1

Ethan examined the empty bottle concealer in his hand before discarding it in the blue waste basket. He turned in the mirror, pale chest catching the light, to examine his back. The black marks on his back had faded into his skin colour. 

He smiled bitterly, satisfied at his job, and remembered a time when the swirling, inky marks had been gold. They had glittered off his pale skin like diamonds. Now, the designs took in no light. They didn't look like tattoos, rather black holes that curled like rose stems on his shoulder blades. 

He covered them up everyday in this set of lifetimes. He could never expect when mark would ask him to take off his shirt. 

These designs crawling over his back branded him as a fallen angel. They were the angels who had disobeyed their sectors archangel and had been banished to an eternity on the Earthly Plane. They could never return to the Real Plane. 

Ethan pulled on a tank top and brushed through his brown hair with his hands. He marked another day off the calendar. He collected them, piling them under the bed and lamented the crumbling pages from the earlier ages. He had started his collection in 1859, long after he had first been introduced to Earth. It was the year he had moved to South Carolina and lived on the streets for a year with a charcoal pencil and scraps of paper and drawn the abuse he had seen  under the baking Sun. 

He pushed his way out of his apartment and the warm weather of a LA summer. He started his walk under the watch of the Sun, gently peaking its head over the rows of hills that stretched into the distance. Traffic had already consumed the highway, one of the reasons he had decided to walk.

He found his way into a coffee shop, the ceiling covered in green plants and the walls in art work. Ethan bought a coffee, just for show, and continued his walk. As he neared his office, he paused less than half a block away. He swung his head both ways, catching sight of both Mark and Kat's cars in the small lot. There was no sight of Tyler on the road. He ducked into the side door of a gardening shop, snaking his way, as he had for a year now, towards the back of the store. He opened a dark, blue door quickly and shut it behind him. He climbed the stairs at a run, throwing open the roof door. 

There leaning over the edge of the flat roof was a child wearing an old school uniform, mossy hair pulled back in tow plaits that spilled over her back. As he watched, she slowly tipped over the edge of the building, doing a silent nose dive. Ethan continued his leisured walk to the edge of the roof, sipped his coffee and immediately regretting the taste. Angels had no need or desire to eat. 

As he approached the edge, a small girl's figure, hair pulled back and school uniform fluttering in a ind invisible to Ethan, appeared beside him. 

"Hello,' the girl said in a tired voice. "Did you..." She trailed off, knowing the probable answer.

"I'm sorry, Lucy," Ethan replied, walking in a slow pace next to girl as she approached the edge of the roof, five stories from the ground. "I'm trying so, so hard." He bit his lip. They were about twenty feet from the edge. 

"I know," she said with a dismissive sigh. "It's more than I can ask for with you already coming here every morning." Ten feet now. 

Ethan took a sip of coffee and immediately made a gagging noise. He had just needed something to do with his hands. 

Lucy smiled at him.er lightly flickering form waved through the coffee. "Why do you put yourself through such things. Just pour it over the edge when you leave."

"I think I will." 

They had reached the edge of the roof. "Are you leaving after I go again?" she asked. 

"Yeah. Bye, Lucy. I promise I'll figure out a way."

The small figure left the roof and spiraled toward the cement. Ethan turned and left the roof. 

Lucy was one of the many souls trapped to the Earthly Realm. She was stuck in a moment for years, an eternity even. She had been dead since the 1960s. Ethan was trying to help her pass on to the Real Realm to be judged, but he hadn't found the right way. He had visited her every day since the previous December when he had saw her body spiraling over the roof repeatedly. 

When Ethan got to work, Kat and Amy were laying on the couch. Mark was in front of a computer. Tyler besides him. Amy looked up as he arrived and dumped his now empty coffee cup into the trash. 

She beckoned him over to the couch, her and Kat sliding over to let him slide into the space between them. "You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah. Fine. Why?"

"You just haven't said a thing yet. No yelling at Mark. No snarky comment."

"I'm fine." He cast his eye towards Mark. The man had swiveled in his chair, pushing Tyler aside. He stood, spreading his bare arms in a grandiose motion. 

"Ethan! Come here and listen!" Ethan walked over to the computer and let Mark put the headphones on him and work had begun. 

He smiled.