The Stories - A collection of shorts

006 - The Fallen Angel

When an angel falls, it is seen as a very sad occasion, for it is a creature of light that has succumbed to the darkness that threatens us all. It is also the closest we will ever come to seeing whatever god that may be up there getting hurt, and it shows that if exploited, everyone has a weakness of chink in their armour that can be used against them to allow the darkness in. Even angels.

However, for the sake of this story, I will tell you of a singular angel, one who no longer has any name, but even now he still walks the Earth until the day the sun collapses and life ceases to exist and beyond.

On a day so long ago that nobody is able to remember the story, there was a young angel who was the embodiment of promise and potential. He astounded his peers on a daily basis by the sheer amount of progress he made, and very quickly rose to the top of the ranks as an angel. Rumour even had it that he was being considered for a position within the Archangels, a heavily sought after position. But this was all very quickly turned to dust after a single night.

The angel had wished to go to the human realm, to see what it was that so many others had claimed to be beautiful and breath-taking, when his Fall had begun. All the angel had done was to step through the barrier that separated the angelic world from the human world, and already the darkness was seeping in. For such a pure creature who had never once experienced the darkness of man and his hatred, it was a tough thing to cope with, no matter how powerful he may or may not have been.

He realised that he was fed up of being angelic, for lack of a better term, and actually allowed himself to succumb, deciding he could have far more fun in the human realm than he could ever have in an eternity in the angel realm. He thoughts began to darken, his destructive urges began to show and became harder to control, his heart blacked and rotted until he was a shadow – quite literally – of who he used to be.

The angelic realm had noticed, however, and decided he was no longer worthy of being called an angel, and so he was called back and exiled after a trial.

They threw him out immediately after, watching with blank facades as he fell through the clouds, his hair whipping around his face, obscuring a pair of most likely hate-filled eyes. The shadows reached up from the ground as he neared impact, latching onto his pearlescent wings, staining them silver, then grey, then charcoal, then the purest black that was deeper than the night. The shadows broke his fall, encompassing him so he suffered no damage and felt no impact.

When they retracted, he had changed.

His once sandy coloured hair was now a dark, rusty mix of red and brown that often obscured once icy blue eyes that had darkened to a deep blue, deeper than the sea. Monstrous ebony wings stretched high above his corpse-pale skin, and the shadows followed wherever he walked, eager to serve their newly appointed master.

He rose from the ground, not even bothering to spare a glance back at his previous kin who had cast him out, and instead walked. He walked for days on end until his feet bled and were healed by the darkness, until he could no longer find the strength and had to rely on his shadows to transport him to where he wished to be. On and on, he moved and travelled, leaving a trail of broken and mangled bodies in his wake, letting the blood drip from his fingers as he waded through it, a dark sneer on his face all the while.

He walked until he finally came to a door.

It was a simple wooden door, grooves and dents showing the abuse it had gone through, and the now fallen angel traced his fingers along the grooves, almost imagining the story they told, the secrets they knew, the darkness they held. With a chuckle and a smirk, he opened the door and entered.

The manor was old and dusty, empty for years and all but forgotten. But to the angel, it felt like home. It felt like he was always destined to walk through the door and inhale the musty air left behind, closing his eyes in pleasure and lifting his arms in a strange sort of praise. It felt as though the darkness that lurked in the corners called to him whispered things, told him how great he could be, the damage he could do, the power he could wield. It was like everything he needed was within that manor, just waiting for him to grasp it, waiting for him to find it, waiting for him all these years.

And he did.

Now, that manor is known to be haunted. No one who has ever entered has ever made it out... well, that is, unless you count them making it out in a body bag with blood leaking through the zipper. Even though there have been multiple investigations, nobody has ever really found out why there is such a death count on the house. Even real estate agents refuse to sell or advertise the house anymore. It's considered the foulest taboo among them to even speak or think of the house.

So, knowing this, would you like to see the manor?

I hear it has positively angelic décor.