The Ordeals -Short Story Collection

The Ordeal of Heaven

The angels came. First, they just talked, but after many nights their wispy white figures danced through window of her room. Some were women, tall and elegant; others were just little boys, clumsy and curious. One little girl bumped into her bedpost. As she drew back the curtain, she could see her big, round eyes water for just a moment, but she just looked up at her and giggled. Her laugh sang through the room like ringing church bells. Her little gown flowed down to her bony knees, but faded slowly, like gentle floating snow.

The priest had always said that angels were strong men with flowing white robes and giant feathery wings, but he was wrong. There were men and women, children of all ages. Some of them were old, some barely a babe, and they all had wings. They glittered in the moonlight, more like those of a fairy than a bird. There was not a feather to be found in the morning, but the girl didn't need any token. She lived and remembered, as she was sure that they would live and remember her.

The young girl smiled at them and for days and nights after, they came to her by the moon and the stars. The angels listened to her stories and in return they kept her company through the long nights of December. All spring they played in the blossoming trees, hiding in the leaves and playing peek-a-boo with her through the foliage. In early summer, the apple blossoms began to bloom pink and white. The young ones came to her bearing rings made of water lilies and reeds. They gave her other gifts too, carved figures of wood and crowns of flowers. She played with them all night, yet just before dawn rose and lit the sky, the women tucked her into bed, stroked her hair and sang her lullabies in languages unknown.

She always woke to find them gone, the room put to its state before her friends came visiting. Her trinkets missing and the songs muddled in her brain, recalling nothing of the night except their presence in her chamber in the dead of night.

After years of their visits, trinkets and songs, the girl told her parents. As a young teen now, her very rich, very busy parents assumed she was just lying, or talking of something her friends had said. After more tries, the parents agreed to see these magnificent angels their daughter spoke of. After nights and nights of no visits, trinkets or songs, the parents concluded she was dreaming it all. Under no possible circumstance would they believe her. The girl began to tell her friends and they grew cold towards her. She grew lonely and decided she was best alone with her angels.

As the months went on, the girl found herself getting lonely. Day by day she was more and more alone. Soon enough, she was solitary for all the hours of sun and darkness. Her angels visited less and less often. The girl began to draw out into the world again, for fear of spending the rest of her waking minutes within the confines of her own four walls, and soon enough she found herself a man, for want of a companion in life and to never be alone.

A few years later, it was done and they were married, but seven tragic months later, he died. It was claimed as an accident, but she thought it not to be true. The woman fell into despair and her angels began to comfort her, but nothing they tried could quell the deep sadness that lay in her heart. She stayed in her chambers for weeks, refusing food and drink and passage to anyone except her angels. Their presence awakened a deep longing in her chest that boiled up through into her fingers and down into her toes until she was nothing but a furnace of want and wish.

She began to profess these wishes to her angels but they shook their heads. They begged her to stop, to not wish for that hateful vengeance that she longed to take. Yet she was numb to their cries and forged ahead in a path of blood. She begged the angels to look at what she had done. They shook their heads and covered their ears, shaking in their skins. Mouths stretched like elastic bands until they filled the space of a carriage wheel. Their white feet melted away and they flew on dark and reddening wings around and around the candlelight glow. Aberrations grew from their bodies and filled the room with screaming and howling until blood poured from her ears and her cries could no longer be heard over the roar of the monsters. She fled to the corner and curled under the side table, drawing the cloth around her head and arms, wrapping herself tightly, if only to block out the noise and the sight that haunted her mind behind closed lids. Their leathery wings flew by and sliced through cloth and flesh; their touch burned her skin and melted through bone.

Her screams were heard through the courtyards and the corridors of the large stone building and the doors flew open to the sight of a table tipped with the cloth balled under it. Glass had broken, candles snuffed out, ornaments and pots and other decorations lay smashed upon the floor. The ball lay motionless under the table in a human-like form. Crimson and ruby stained the surface and bled its life into the rug and down through the planks of the floor. Slowly the sheet fell. An ear, a finger, and piece by piece the young woman was revealed to be dead, suffocated under the sheets, bled with glass and burned by candlewax. Her angels had broken her as she had broken herself.