Killer Concepts

N Part 2 The Angel's Mercy

          In the hospital N tried to tell his parents about the Angel. How she had come to take away the suffering of the dying children. His parents insisted the angel was nothing more than a fevered dream his frightened mind had concocted. It made them angry hearing their child talking such nonsense. Two children had died during his stay but they had been terminal cases, expected to die at any time. They blamed the hospital for his delusions; for putting him in a room full of dying children in the first place. No matter what anyone said to him, N knew she was real.

          His parents to him home soon after his fever broke. It was the same neighborhood, same house, his same bedroom room. Nothing had changed in the time he was away. But N couldn't return to the same life he used to live. The words the Angel had spoken stayed with him. Those brief words effected how he now saw the people around him .

          He lived in a fairly good area but just a few blocks away was a whole different story. Almost like a different world. All the times he had to walk though this area to reach school, he never saw it. He never saw how poverty and deprivation was ravaging the area and the people living here. He had been so concerned with injured dogs and cats that he didn't see there were people starving around him. It made him wonder where the Angel was. Where was the mercy these people so desperately needed?

          It was the children living in these conditions that tore at his heart most. He would see them peeking at him from filthy alleys; dirty, desolate faces that disappeared back into the shadows if he caught their eye. Where were their parents? Why wasn't there anyone taking care of them? He was just a kid himself but he knew people shouldn't have to live like this. What would the Angel want him to do to help?

          He went back to his old habit of stealing food. He tried to give it to the younger children he saw. The ones he thought needed it the most. That only worked if no one else saw what he was doing. Too often he would turn to go home only to hear the sounds of the child he had given the food to being beaten and the food stolen away. It wasn't just the older children doing the steeling either. This left the child he was trying to help worse off than he was before.

          It also angered his parents, especially when winter set in and N began to give away some of his own clothes. That winter was exceptionally bad with temperatures were dipping well below freezing as soon as the sun set. Hats, scarves and gloves repeatedly disappeared from his wardrobe. His claims that the items had been lost at school didn't fool his mother. N was too conscientious a child to keep losing his belongings like that She knew where these things were going. She got nowhere whenever she tried to talk him out of what he was doing.

          "But the Angel would want me to help," N would insist whenever she tried to discourage him.

          "Then let her buy you your next pair of gloves," she would scold. " We can't afford to keep replacing them."

          Against his mother's protests, N continued what he was doing. When his mother stopped replacing his "lost" clothing, he took odd jobs around the neighborhood to make extra money. He was determined to continue the mission of mercy he thought the Angel had set for him. He used the money to buy cheap clothes at thrift stores to give away. He went so far as to ask the neighbors for donations of old clothing and spare food. His father put a stop to that the minute he heard about it. Angel or no Angel, he wasn't about to have their neighbors think he couldn't provide for his family. He grounded his son until he could "come to his senses".

          One night in late December, N was walking home from dance class. School and dance classes were the only times N was allowed out from under his father's grounding. It still early but this late into winter, it was already dark. He was swaddled in his warmest clothes with a thick scarf wrapped around his face. With all that, he could still feel the icy wind penetrating to his skin. He decided to take a shortcut through an alley near his house to cut down on the time he spent outside. As he walked further into the shadows he heard the sound of crying. He followed the sound to a small boy squatting next to a trash can.