Angels - Prologue

Cold tile prodding at shoulder blades. A feeling that no human would rate as particularly comfortable, but one that most have experienced at least once. The urge to lie down on a very possibly unsanitary, most definitely not cozy bathroom floor is provoked by a surprisingly high number of scenarios. A man wakes up at an ungodly hour with the stomach flu, and ends up staked out, intermittently spending his time leaned over the toilet bowl and lying on the ground hoping the chill will break his fever. There’s a sleepover in the dead of August, and to escape the heat that even the best AC can’t beat, a group of giggling girls end up in the master bath carrying pillows and reading the corny jokes that came on their popsicle sticks. In a house with 6 children, the floor of the bathroom is the one place where they can get solitude, where he goes after a little one breaks his Xbox, or where she goes when her first serious boyfriend breaks up with her, and she’s sure one more game of house will kill her. Siblings always assume if one’s spent enough time with the door shut, they must be taking a deuce, which keeps the coast clear long enough for the chill to numb the hurt. But out of the all the needs, physical or mental, that could incite a person into a position that screams of lacking composure, the one of the people that crave the cold and solitude to rouse the opposite of numbness, the ones who crave the awareness of that unpleasant prodding, is the saddest.

Feeling is a diverse thing. It can be an emotion that sweeps over you, or a sensation your body experiences, or the texture of an object you touch. A person can feel so many different things, in so many different ways. “Too much of anything is a bad thing,” is a common proverb often thrown around. One that is written off as cliche, despite it being far too often true. Feelings can be exquisite. Joy, ecstasy, and relief can all be felt deeply, and can alter a person in such a positive way. Unfortunately, rage, pain, and grief can strike into the core of someone as well, and they can leave a person in their wake that is nothing but a physical shadow of who they were before. An outward appearance that itself is still susceptible to changes made by this new person inhabiting it.

What a menace the human psyche can be! The very thing that we need to have a fulfilling life, is also the most challenging enemy. They can’t be seen, they have constant access to their prey, and they can’t be destroyed without destroying their target in the process. The war waging inside, the balance between positive and negative, is enough to overwhelm anyone, and some, it does. The person goes into panic mode, drops a nuclear bomb, and instead of waking up to peace, they have a world of smoke and white noise.

It’s been scientifically proven that loud sounds, such as blaring music, damages our vision when looking at distant objects. The buzzing in the heads of those who have self-destructed has a similar effect. The numbness is all-encompassing, leaving no ability to concentrate on anything but the nothingness inside. Every goal is faint and short-term, performed by muscle memory, and directed by by simple, clipped commands. Get up. Clean. Eat. Sit. Shower. Sleep. Long-term goals are forgotten, obscured by the haze. Thoughts are still made, but they hold no emotions or strong opinions. Just obvious facts and general observations. Colors are dull, sounds are muted, and taste is bland. The body is receptive to the world around it, but the person inside rarely takes notice.

The living human body is warm, if it were to lose too much of that warmth, it would die. So, it seems that when heated skin comes into contact with a temperature that threatens its own, the body involuntarily sends a reminder of one’s humanity, and consequently, how fragile that makes us. If someone walks outside in the middle of winter, their breath typically gets labored, blood rushes to the surface of any exposed skin, eyes water as they’re assaulted by the bitter air, and then, after a while, fingertips and noses begin to prickle, as the beginning stages of frostbite before the numbness kicks in. Most make it inside before any damage is done.

Those sharp, basic reminders of life, are imitated on a smaller scale when a human body lies on a tile floor. Chill bumps are called upon, the pressure of gravity makes breathing a chore, and the parts of a body that touch the ground scream in protest. The shock the body experiences when put in contact with the chilled stone makes the thump of one’s heartbeat obvious in the quiet room. These unavoidable signs of life are what call the barren of sentiment to the solitude of a claustrophobic room. To feel again, even if all they can bear to concentrate on in those few minutes of clarity, before their body heat warms the floor under them and the mist gathers again, is the feel of their body doing physically what they failed to do for themselves emotionally.

The girl usually focusses on just that on the nights where she finds herself staring up at the complicated network of lights, that her past self often complained were too expensive to waste on a bathroom. She’s found herself here increasingly often as the commands that kept her busy began to not be enough anymore. Clean. Sit. There is only so much to clean, if it’s being done every day. Her mind works so simplistically now. If there’s something to do, it gets done. Procrastination doesn’t exist when the person is blind to distractions, and distractions would be nearly impossible to find even without the mental wall with a routine as unwavering as the girl’s.

The downside to letting her body control her actions rather than thoughts, was that it was entirely focused on keeping itself in the best order it could manage. Meaning that she couldn’t spend all of the time that was left over sitting on the couch, watching colors flash across the plasma-screen, an activity deemed by herself to be safe not to pick at the scab in her head. Her shell consisting of bones and muscle and skin, one the other hand, only allotted a certain amount of time in front of the TV before it forced her stagnant mind to produce an alternate plan.

Once, a couple weeks after the girl’s… transformation, she had came upon her first period of free time, and tried to occupy it with a jog. It was a bad idea. It was already a warm day in September, and her body, which had until recently been regularly exercised, heated up quickly, building with sweat. Her heart rate sailed through the roof, her muscles ached, and she was forced out of her alternate reality for the first time. It was like her mind was a bathtub, the haze was the soapy water, and the plug had just been yanked from the drain. It was only a second, but her senses were ravaged. The shriveled leaves cascaded down from the trees, crinkling and poking holes in her vision with their vivid color. The ever-existing traffic blared in her ears, as if she could hear every vehicle in a half-mile radius. A biker sped by her, the blast of air and shouted apology making her jump. The smell of exhaust mixed with sweat burned her nose. Panic set in, and before the real dangerous things could pop up, the memories with their unwanted emotions attached, her body reset itself. She passed out.

The biker helped her back to her townhouse he’d seen her come out of before, mumbling about how sorry he was and how she hadn’t made it that far from home and once, at the end, about recognizing her from somewhere. The boy, that had at one time been her boy, had been coming home for lunch, a rare occurrence, when they approached. She didn’t remember much, by that point she was concentrating on the mist that was building up, and in the moment, she felt a tiny flash of annoyance at it’s slow arrival, before it once again buried her. Her memories did contain a faint clip of him picking her up fully, sending off the biker with a distracted thank you, and a brief picture of him giving her a look that would’ve roused curiosity in her, in earlier days.

When she later on discovered herself on the bathroom floor, she recognized the clarity coming on that she had experienced in that first, horrible incident, but it wasn’t nearly as jarring, so she didn’t move. It wasn’t nearly as bad in the enclosed space in her own home, where there was no unexpected movement or sound. She could be content in those minutes of being alive, of being awake. The girl’s body apparently welcomed the break also, because again and again, she began finding herself back in that position. Although she never acknowledged it, on some subconscious level, she knew that these moments were simply for contentment. She could never risk trying to feel anything else, because feelings are a package deal, good and bad, with too high a cost. She never tried to prevent her mind from reverting back when the contentment started to fade. She preferred the cold over the heat, any day.

Once a week she went to the same grocery store, and once a month, she visited the same gas station. Her answers were polite, but short when the curious check-out attendants tried to strike up a conversation at the register. She never questioned in return. She nodded back and smiled when waved at by the workers who recognized her, some from her frequent visits, some knew who she was before. Occasionally, a customer in the store would see her and compliment her old work, ask what she’d been doing lately, sometimes even get a picture. The girl always thanked them, and gave vague answers. It didn’t give her any personal satisfaction, but she never said no to a picture either. Who knew what people were going through, and who’s to say her rejection wouldn’t be the straw that broke the camel’s back, and turned the person into a shell like her. None of this meant anything, just like everything else she did, the reactions were muscle memory, and the appearances routine.

Today, though, something was different. Despite her careful depersonalization of everything around her, she couldn’t escape facts. There are always loopholes. That’s a fact. 6 months. A simple fact. Today is 6 months. She forgot that some facts can be tied in with personal things. The exact personal things she tries to avoid. She’s had slip ups before. None nearly as bad as the jogging incident, but still, they were there. Walking outside to her car, a smell from a nearby restaurant wafts by. Before she can figure out what it is or why it stuck out, she’s back to “normal,” and blindly following her simple commands. Shop. Gas. Or again, watching TV. A baby cries on screen, the sound sharp in the girl’s ears, but there’s no time for her pulse to spike or to place the reason for her anxiety, as her eyes glaze right back over. I will sleep and today will no longer be 6 months. Another fact. But what she forgot to account for was the inevitable, predictable future. If the fuzz hadn’t damaged her ability to see what was coming next, if she hadn’t repressed her ability to think, if she hadn’t given up control to her body and muscle memory, maybe the girl could’ve prevented what happens next. But then again, what happens next wouldn’t have happened if those things had been present in the first place.

She lies down once again, not apprehensive in the least, not able to anticipate that her months of careful composure and building barriers has all been in vain. The familiar steps take place. The pressure in her head starts to slowly fade, like a balloon deflating. The buzz in her ear dulls. The lights above turn from a blurry mass to a defined mix of art and appliance. When the last of the smoke evaporates, instead of leaving the barren wasteland that has become a familiar getaway for the girl, it leaves behind the sinister disguise for the ticking time bomb that has been laying in wait in the depths of her mind. 6 months. The shock wipes away her disposition go numb, and instead she feels something. Desire. Desire to escape what she now knows is fast approaching. She scrambles to the sink, but the time is takes her to get there was all she had. No time to even attempt to prevent the pain, no matter how in vain that attempt may have been. It explodes at with all the force that has built up over the course of 6 months. Each and every memory, feeling, thought hits her hard, like a physical blow to the stomach. So she stands there, arms clutching the counter for dear life, bearing the onset of what she senses is only the beginning. And despite the newfound revival of her senses, the girl is unable to place if the Second World War to rage inside her mind will ever come to an end. Despite the complex pain writhing through her, she manages to, in the very edges of her mind, despair not over the memories, but of what it will mean if he finds her like this.