13.5

 “You could be right. I never thought of them as something that changed over time. I just thought you either had them or you didn’t.” She nodded silently, the movement caught by the lights of the taxi idling outside the casino. “I like the idea that there are angels inside us, though. That’s quite poetic.”

“If they’re angels, then you should have one too. And me.” Roisin looked back at the gallery door. The faint glow behind the glass flickered, as though the lights inside were struggling to stay steady.

The assistant followed her gaze. “We should go. He gets upset if he thinks we’re spying on him.”

Roisin didn’t move. “Do I want to know what he does to someone he thinks is spying?”

The assistant’s voice dropped. “Nothing good. I never see them again, anyway.”

Roisin felt a chill crawl up her spine. “What do you mean, never sees them again? He’s seen you before tonight, hasn’t he?”

“Yes,” she said. “But he’s never taken any interest in me.”

Roisin swallowed. “Why not? I mean, you don’t have the flickering either, which must mean you’re special, too.”

She hesitated, shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he knows I’m part of the gallery. Maybe I’m important in some other way.”

Roisin’s breath trembled. “Would you tell me if you knew? You’re not exactly a font of information, are you? I don’t even know your name.”

The assistant took Roisin’s arm gently. “Come on. We need to get away from here. We can talk more later.”

Roisin let herself be led down the street. The pavement glistened with a thin sheen of moisture, reflecting the streetlights in fractured halos. The night felt heavier now, as though the air were thickening around them. She felt hollow, as if there was something missing from inside her, and not just food. It was a clawing feeling, like there was a threat connecting her to the artist and was pulling taut. She had the urge to vomit, shit and wet herself all at once as this theoretical fishing line yanked on her… on her what? Her soul?” She staggered a few steps and stopped. “Wait.”

The assistant turned. “What is it?”

Roisin pressed a hand to her chest. “I feel… strange.”

The assistant’s expression tightened. “Describe it.”

Roisin struggled for words. “Like… like something is inside me. Like I’ve eaten a live bird that wants to fly away and my body wants to expel it any way it can.”

The assistant exhaled sharply. “That’s the spirit inside you. Not that you’ve been in close proximity with Him, it wants to be with him. Join him.”

Roisin stared at her. “Join him where?”

The assistant shook her head. “I don’t know. But the feeling will fade the further away you are. It’s probably why he told you not to return; the feeling of separation gets stronger every time.”

Roisin felt her breath quicken. “How long does it last?”

“The first time?” the assistant whispered. “An hour or two.”

Roisin’s stomach dropped. “And after that?”

The assistant hesitated. “More and more, until you can’t bear it, and then you kill yourself. Or someone else, just to make the feeling go away.”

Roisin felt the world tilt. “You think I’m going to—”

“No,” the assistant said quickly. “No. That’s only if you see him several times. I don’t think that will happen after just seeing him once.”

Roisin swallowed. “How are you so sure?”

The assistant looked at her with a mixture of fear and awe. “Because he spoke to you.”

Roisin didn’t know whether to feel relieved or terrified.

The assistant stepped closer. “Listen to me. You need to go home. You need to rest. And you need to stay away from the gallery for a few days.”

Roisin shook her head. “I can’t.”

“You have to,” the assistant insisted. “If you see him again too soon—” She stopped.

Roisin’s voice was barely a whisper. “Then I kill myself?”

The assistant looked back at the gallery door.

The emergency lights flickered again.

The assistant’s voice trembled. “Or someone else. You must have heard of murder trials where the killer says they don’t know why they did it, and you can tell it’s true, despite all the video footage which shoes them doing it.”

Roisin felt the cold settle deeper into her bones. “Of course. All those had seen…” She used her thumb to indicate behind her.

The assistant nodded.

“You’ve seen him several times. How is it that you haven’t started killing people?”

“How do you know I haven’t?”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chapter 1.9

  "You want me to write a story?" She looked up at her aunt with a slight frown. Writing a story seemed like something to do for homework, and she didn't have any homework. Her aunt smiled, "No, not unless you want to. Look." She opened a drawer and took out a palette like the ones they had at school. White plastic with holes like little egg cups all around the outside, only this one was pristine white, whereas the ones she was used to were multicoloured and thick with old paint. Finn began opening the bottles of ink, revealing that each one had a medicine dropper in the lid, with which she drew out some of the colour and added it to the palette cups. And oh! What colours they were! Yellow like the sun on a summer morning; red like the crunch of autumn leaves in the park, and blue like the shimmer of a damselfly flitting over the mill pond. She delighted in the translucency of them, like the glassworker's artistry in liquid form. "You can use anythi...
Read more

25.5

  When the fear begins to subside comes the anger, rising like Vesuvian magma under the unsuspecting twin cities, melting away what’s left of the terror with righteous indignation. How dare the Creator write a role for which she did not give consent? There was no need to drag her away from her humanity into this dance between the immortals. What possible cause could they cite for the theft of her humanity when for thousands of years it was understood they despised the half-caste offspring of mortals and angels, going so far as the destroy all but a handful of people in the blanket destruction of all life on the surface. It was akin to a farmer finding a caterpillar on a lettuce and burning the whole field because of it, and them blaming the lettuce. Not only the Creator, either, but all those angels who thought they could manipulate the world into giving up their souls, for taking them without consent; for the rape of the spirits of humanity for their own personal gain. The Falle...
Read more

Chapter 1.1

  Three Thirty-three AM. She thought that was some train scheduler’s idea of a joke for a train to stop in the deep cutting of Laverstone station at the precise time. She almost hadn’t made it, thanks to the wet leaves on the steep drive of the house causing her to slip and fall. She’d have caught herself with the handrail, only she was on the wrong side of the path, and both her hands were full. Even then, her hands wouldn’t have been grazed to what felt like the bone if she hadn’t been wearing the ancient rucksack her dad had used when he was in the Air Force. Not that he’d ever actually seen service. He’d been shipped to Afghanistan when the British and American governments pulled out and left the Afghans to live or die on their own but all he’d done was oversee the dismantling of several vehicles the RAF hadn’t wanted to fall into the hands of what they called the insurgents. The rucksack, full of clothes and the items she deemed required to keep her on the right line of sanity...
Read more