Transfiguration

Eleven

I thought I might have an inner ear infection, the kind that sets you just the slightest bit off balance whether you're standing up or lying down. The nurse checked my ears and asked me if I had any pain, and I said no. She asked if I had any nausea and I said a little. Her tone changed when she asked if I was under any stress, if perhaps one of my classes was giving me trouble or if I'd recently gone through a breakup. She recommended I get plenty of sleep and—her words, not mine—"take time for my relationship with myself." I barely made it out of the office without throwing up in my mouth.

Still, I didn't feel great. Lilli put her hand on my head and said I looked like I'd lost weight over the past couple of weeks. Caleb bluntly asked if I was depressed when I passed up an invitation to a cuffing party at the ski captain's apartment in favor of boxed wine and solitaire.

"I'm not depressed," I scoffed.

"At least then you'd have an excuse for being lame."

"Go fuck yourself."

I did have an excuse, a sort of private preoccupation. Ever since I had walked in on the boy in the red down jacket those few weeks prior, the image of his swollen shoulder blades intruded on my thoughts a dozen times per day, maybe more. I imagined them pulsating as I sat next to him in Macro, mutating under the surface. Curiosity got the better of me and I started looking up earth-angels in my spare time. First it was just the basics of the fledging process—I'll admit there was a certain morbid fascination driving me then—but it ballooned quickly into a convolution of history and science and theology that left me with more questions than answers.

The Tincture, alchemically perfected by top theologians at the Department of Spirituality, is administered via syringe to those who feel they must transform their human bodies to match their seraphic souls, explained one source. The Temple has been refining the Tincture for over a decade, compelled by a growing body of research confirming the complex nature of divine identity.

I ranged through statistics on earth-angels in society, though the record was shallow; until recently—within my own lifetime—there was little acknowledgment of people living in this way outside the psychiatric literature. The suicide rate was astronomical, the crimes committed against them sobering. They cropped up in photo series focusing on the fringe, some quite grainy and old; it was both comical and depressing, the lengths they would go to, donning feathered armatures and fake wire halos, lacquering their skin with melted lard to make it shine. Worse were the medical diagrams depicting individuals mid-Transfiguration. As my fascination deepened, so did my nausea.

I just couldn't look away.