Annabell Lee

~

The sounds of the concert ebbed around the crowd and swirled as words poured from the singer’s lips. The words felt drowned out as the singer pointed his finger at a girl in the crowd, half for the performance and half because he wanted to. The girl gave a questioning gesture causing the singer to nod his head yes. He felt happy as he stared at the girl while he sang, entranced with her young face. Her face changed after he nodded, her eyes turned mean and she turned and stormed off through the crowd, his eyes losing sight of her. A few minutes later into the performance and the group that the girl was once in began looking around, as if trying to find her. He watched as a few split from the group and headed in three different directions, to the restrooms, to the entrance, and to the food stalls. When they return empty handed they start calling out and he hears the name over the performance, even though he is the one singing. A loud crack rings out and stops him, and everyone turns to the left of the crowd to see a tree fallen on the ground. Standing next to the tree was the girl from earlier, looking deadly. She watched the crowd as her arm shot out and connected with the nearest tree trunk, making a loud sound like crunching that many people mistook as bones breaking.

The tree began to wither around her hand, splitting in two and falling just as a woman pushes through the crowd yelling, “Stop Anna!” Anna turns slowly toward the voice and then her eyes harden and her face twists into an evil grimace as her head turns unnaturally fast toward the singer standing on the stage. She breaks into a run towards him and everything slowed, shots began to ring out as they made contact with the girl’s body, flinging her back into the trees. A man stood behind the woman who had yelled and said simply, “Never hesitate to shoot.”, as if that was something he commonly told her. A guttural growl came from the trees as the girl emerged with coal black wings holding only a few white feathers. She immediately started flying towards the singer, causing the woman and man to scream, for she was going too fast for them to stop her. The singer was struck with fear that rendered him unable to move as her young and beautiful face contorted with rage swam toward him in this sea that was the sky.

A second before she reached him a bright shine came from above and, at the same time, the stage below his feet began to burn up and melt away, causing him to jump a bit. Panic seared across the face of Anna, but she still continued, even as she felt herself fading away. Then her body connected with his. She shoved the singer out of the way as her body erupted in pain and pleasure. The bright shine flashed down from above as a ray to heaven and the fire beneath her surged higher as hell broke open upon the Earth. The angel flapped her wings as she tried to escape her newly found prison in this fiery light. Everyone in the crowd could see as she raised herself higher, trying to escape the fire that lapped at her feet, but it was a futile effort, for the more she raised herself the higher the fire followed.

She stopped flying higher and the fire lowered a bit, the light retreated upwards a few feet, until she was in plain view. She was unsightly. Half of her body was a different creature entirely, a horn curling out of its head, and its limbs were those of a ram, hooves for hands and feet. Its mouth was turned upward in a sneer and its long black feathers flapped to an unsteady beat. Her other side was her normal body except it was much larger than that of a human and her body was moving painfully, her white feathers faltering multiple times, lowering her down into the fire.

As she falters further her face disappears more, engulfed by the ram that is Lucifer. As her body battles, demons begin to climb out of hell below her, attacking those of the crowd who are closest to the stage, ignoring the singer laying on the stage staring up in wonder.  Meanwhile, angels slowly begin to come down from heaven, reluctant only because of the demons lurking below.  The angels flew down to protect the humans being attacked, only the largest of them staying behind.

While the angels and demons warred, the largest of the angels began to yell something down to Anna. On the other hand, there stood eight demons looking up at Lucifer screaming. The screams and yells began to mix with each other until you could only hear the difference in how elegant the sounds were.

This goes on for only a short while, more and more of Annabell disappearing until she was completely gone.