Fallen 

                                                                                                               

                                                                                                                    By

                                                                                                          Jeffrey Thomas

“Angel of flight, you soarer, you flapper, you floater,

you gull that grows out of my back in the dreams I prefer,”

– Anne Sexton

       He made his escape under the cover of rain, I  realized later. And before he invaded my apartment, he  firstpracticed his escape by invading my dreams.

     The dreams were of soaring; above great forests,  pastures, ancient villages and modem cities ...above  landscapes totally alien, as lovely as strange-colored seas  or as hideous as bloody canyons tom in the flesh of a  living planet. I saw through his eyes, experienced the  freedom and the ecstasy of flight.

     But in one recurring dream, while he rested between  flights in some secret place, the men in black robes  appeared, and cursed him, made signs to bind him, converged  upon him with daggers and chains and incantations. I would  start awake, as if I were the one stabbed and bound, their  evil faces still floating before my eyes in a dispersing  vaporous residue.

     I attributed these dreams of flight and freedom to  some deep subconscious yearning. As a young girl I had been  struck by a car while riding my bike, my legs so crushed I  was lucky to regain the ability to walk. On cold damp days  I had to use a cane, even at my still youthful age, and the  scars on my legs were still so profound that I never wore  shorts or a bathing suit. In fact, I was even ashamed to  let a lover see them, and preferred the safety of darkness  for lovemaking. Not that this was a frequent concern. My  scars prevented me from even letting lovers approach me.  They never had a chance to be repulsed; I was repulsed for  them.

     On that night of rain, I heard a crash from the parlor  of the third floor flat I masochistically rented, and I sat  up in bed to listen. I heard my cat Virgil hiss and spit,  then scamper into another room. Afraid now, I slid  stealthily from bed, pulled on sweat pants and a tee shirt  and advanced shakily toward the murky parlor, picking up a  flashlight from atop my bureau as I went, as much for a  weapon as for light, though I didn't yet thumb it on.

     Only the darkest light filteredinto the parlor, but  still I hesitated to turn on the flashlight, let alone a  lamp. Was anyone in here? If so, was I as invisible to them  as they were to me? I strained my hearing, but only ended  up listening to the rain, or was that the surf of blood in  my ears? At last, unable to stand the thought of being  studied from the shadows, I pointed the light at the door  to my apartment and switched it on.

     He crouched there, close to the floor, his curly dark  hair plastered to his head, his eyes wide and frantic.  Naked – and his flesh glaringly pale in the harsh light,  which was unkind to the wounds in him, the hooks in his  bruised flesh.

     I screamed, and before I could turn to run or even  move the light I saw him fling himself at me. In so doing,  wings spread wide from his shoulders, and they were broad  and black and it was as though a great wave were falling  upon me.

     When I awoke, I was back in bed, and the being knelt  beside me, gripping my hand in both of his. I couldn't see  him well, and I cried out again, jerked my hand free,  fumbled for the bedside lamp. When it came on he shielded  his eyes. His wings lifted a bit but did not unfold again.

     "Oh my God," I remember saying, sitting up, hugging  myself, "who are you? Who are you?"

     He looked up at me, his eyes pained and beseeching. I  had time now to better take in the severity and profusion  of his wounds. Though his body was as beautiful as that of  a Greek sculpture, it was cruelly pierced with barbs and  hooks, some still attached to chains which he had wound  around his arms or waist. His white skin showed scars that  were whiter still, and raised symbolic designs that had  been branded onto him. His wings were particularly  mutilated, their joints and where they joined his shoulders  bearing awful scars, and pinned with black metal clasps to  hinder or prevent movement, these also hung with weights.  The sleek black feathers of his wings held an oil-slick's  iridescence, and still dripped rain drops to the hardwood  floor.

     Cautiously I crept out of bed, and only his eyes  followed me. Moving around him, I was able to see his wings  more clearly, to prove to myself that indeed they grew out  of his shoulders, that the scars were not an indication of  some bizarre surgery.

     "My God," I said again, but softly this time; and  again I said, but in awe, "who are you? Who are you?"

     I knew only one thing about him. That he had visited  me in my dreams so as to prepare me for this night.

     I went to the parlor, put on one light. He had broken  the chain of the door. I locked it with the bolt instead.  Turning, I saw that he had timidly followed me into the  room, and was reaching out to pet Virgil, who gave a  warning growl and flicked his tail but reluctantly allowed  his head to be stroked. The being looked to me, and smiled.

     The bells of the old monastery at the end of my block  tolled midnight as they did every night. I was not  religious, had no idea if this were a common practice for  such a place or what significance it held. But the sound  terrified the creature. Before I could protest he came to  me, and held my right hand in both of his hands. His grip  was strong, painful, but it wasn't meant to restrain me, I  knew. It was an expression of fear.

     I did not go to my classes the next day. How could I  leave him here alone? In the morning my landlady Mrs.  Hanson, who lived on the firstfloor of the old tenement  house, phoned to ask if I had had another of my awful  nightmares last night. I told her I had, but that  everything was all right now.

     I made coffee, and the seraph sat at the kitchen table  watching me, smiling whenever I met his eyes like a stray  dog appealing for some kindness. His hair and wings had  dried at last. I considered offering him some sweat pants  to wear to cover his nudity, but the thought of so exotic a  being in so prosaic a garment seemed beneath his dignity.

     His wounds troubled me more than his nakedness, and at  last I could stand it no longer. I set down my coffee, dug  under the kitchen sink for the tool box my father had  assembled for me, though only he ever used them when he  came to make a repair for me or for Mrs. Hanson. I found a  small set of bolt cutters in there Dad had used to trim the  branches that had been scratching at my bedroom window at  night (though now I wondered if it were the seraph,  reaching for me in dreams). Gingerly, I approached him at  the table.

     Rather than assume a defensive attitude, he bowed his  head, submissive, inviting me to shear away his painful  tethers.

     I started with a thin chain holding a weight to the  clasp in one wing. I grunted as I forced the handles  together, and the weight thumped into a nest of bath towels  I had set underneath to dull its fall. Encouraged, I moved  on to the other weights.

     Now I examined the barbs in him more closely and  realized that they were wed with his flesh so intimately  that I didn't dare try to snip them, so the best I could do  was cut the chains or remnants of chains depending from  them. In order to do this, I couldn't help but touch him,  and the first time my hand brushed his skin we both  flinched, but he did not protest, and I went on to finish  my work.

     When my arms grew too tired he gently took the cutters  from me and broke the last few chain fragments off their  hooks himself, then handed the tool back to me with a smile  of gratitude and a relief so deep I nearly broke into  tears. I had to look away from him, go back to pour a fresh  coffee. I offered him a taste but he raised a palm to  decline, and declined all nourishment I offered later,  including water.

     After a few sips of my coffee, however, I set down the  mug and offered him my hand. He rose, and I led him into  the bathroom.

     I filled the tub with steaming water but he seemed  hesitant to enter it, and I didn't want to alarm him, so  delicately I urged him into a kneeling position, and then  knelt down beside him. I soaked a large sea sponge, and  then began running it gently along his folded wings,  washing layers of dried blood out from under and between  the feathers, so that the floor tiles pooled with pinkish  water. I didn't care. And as I bathed his wings, he made a  great effort to unfold them. I could tell it agonized him.  The bathroom was also too small to contain them. I made him  follow me into the kitchen and kneel down once more, and I  filleda plastic basin with soapy water. This time he spread  his trembling wings to their full span, and remarkably they  filled the room, nearly touching opposite walls, majestic  and black, narrow and tapered like those of a falcon. His  shoulders shook with the strain of holding them aloft for  me, and in reverence I stroked them with the sponge. And  then I realized that his shoulders were shaking harder  because he was sobbing. Whether he was sobbing in pain or  in gratitude I could not know, but I put down the sponge  and began to smooth his feathers under my bare palms, as if  I thought this alone might balm his pain somehow. Without  really willing it, I began to run my hands down to his  back, where I caressed his marred white flesh.

     He rose, turned to face me, tears streaking his face.  They were tears of blood, making the whites of his eyes  glisten red as well. But I took his hand, and followed him  from the room.

     I didn't reach out from the bed to shut off the light.  I didn't care if he saw my legs. I was too intent on seeing  him.

     As we made love some of the barbs still in him  scratched me, even drew blood, but in our passion I didn't  care, and it only made me feel closer to his pain, closer  to him, merged as we had been in dream. He raised himself  on his arms to look down at where our flesh was joined, and  then stared down at my eyes, and again his great wings  spread, almost to their fullness, making a canopy over us.  I kissed the brands on his chest to cool them, licked his  nipples despite the rings pierced through them, slicing my  tongue on their edges. When we kissed he sucked the blood  from my tongue, and I in turn licked the blood from his  face, kissed the blood from his eyes. Then he arched his  back and moaned in climax, the first sound I had heard him  utter. When he collapsed upon me, spent, his wings covered  both of us in a blanket.

     When at last he stirred he lay half over me, his face  almost shy with reverence as he stroked my breasts, my  belly. Moving off me further to stroke me lower down, at  last he noticed my legs, and I tried to take his chin and  angle his face away. Instead, he gently slipped out of my  fingers and shifted to the end of the bed. Bending over my  legs, he lightly kissed my shattered knees, and then slowly  began to trace his tongue along the white scar that wound  up one thigh. I put my hands to his head to move him away,  but then they held him there instead, as his tongue moved  from the source of my pain to the source of my pleasure.

     I did not go to my classes for several more days.

     After those several days, Mrs. Hanson called to check  in on me, since she hadn't seen me about. I told her I had  a slight bug. She asked if the brothers had come upstairs  to see me. "Brothers?" I asked.

     "From the monastery, I think," she said. "I think they  were monks. Priests, maybe; they had collars. They wanted  to know if I'd seen anyone strange around the yard. I guess  there's a brother they keep locked up because he's ill or  something. I don't know why they don't have him in the  hospital but I guess they'd rather care for him  themselves..."

     "Did he escape?" I asked, my heart blundering through  its actions."

     "Yes, the other night when it stormed.”

     When I made love with the seraph that night my passion  was clouded with fear for him. Lying in bed beside him, I  begged him to talk to me, to tell me his story, to tell me  about his former captors, the monks. And after a while of  coaxing, he did try to tell me, but he spoke in tongues.  Not in a frenzied rapture, however; his voice was deep,  somnambulant, like a single voice lifted from a Gregorian  chant. It was both weirdly beautiful and terrifying, and I  put my finger tips to his lips to stop him.

     I couldn't avoid my former life forever, despite my  fears, and after a week I returned to my classes. The first  day was difficult, and I returned to check on him several  times, but he was fine, either looking through the pictures  in books or napping or stroking Virgil in his lap. The  monks would believe him gone from the area by this time, I  thought, and my unease lessened.

     And then one evening I came home to find Mrs. Hanson  dead on the landing outside my apartment door.

     She was unmarked, but her eyes stared upward, glassy.  The door frame was splintered, and I burst into the  apartment with my blood roaring through my head.

     At first I thought my vision was blackening, until I  realized it was the blood sprayed and splashed upon the  walls, Virgil sitting on the backrest of the couch  contentedly licking the blood that matted his fur. I  stifled a scream at the carnage strewn on the floor of the  parlor. These two ruins appeared to have once been men, and  appeared, from their shredded black garb, to have once been  clerics of some kind. My seraph still crouched over one of  them, the corpse's head cradled in his lap. Alarmed, he  lifted his head with a lupine snarl, his teeth coated  thickly in gore, and I knew that this was the sight that  had stopped the old heart of dear Mrs. Hanson.

     Trembling, relieved and horrified at once, I pulled  the door closed behind me and managed to bolt it. Despite  my terrible nausea, my feverish dizziness, I was not afraid  of him. And he, also, stopped his savage growling when he  recognized me. He lowered his head, as though ashamed, and  lowered the mauled red ball of the monk's head to the  floor. I saw a dagger near this corpse, and a bottle of  holy water spilled by the other, soaking into an already  red-soaked throw rug.

     He helped me drag Mrs. Hanson into the room, and by  then I had arrived at the only decision I could come to. I  helped him wash the blood from his hands, his body, his  wings. This time he consented to a full bath, and it seemed  to calm both of us.

     I packed several suitcases. I selected a sweatshirt  and some sweat pants I thought would fithim until I could  buy him some clothing of his own.

     From the generous tool box my father had lovingly  equipped for me I raised a hacksaw. I showed it to the  seraph. I moved it in the air to demonstrate its function.  He sat on a chair and bowed his head in understanding,  submitting to a cruelty worse even than those inflicted  upon him by his captors. But we had no choice. In order to  be free, both of us, I had to cut away the very symbols of  his freedom...

     And while I sliced them away, awash in his angel's  blood, I shook hard with sobs just as he did, tears  blurring my vision like the tears of blood on his beautiful  face...agonized, as if it were my own wings I was severing.