Chapter 2

Not just any angel, but a real one, made of flesh and blood and beauty. So much of life is ordinary, monotonous, that it is the sweetest of feelings to see something so wondrous. Until today, I had almost begun to believe they didn’t exist, these miracles of nature. But there she was, standing above me, dressed in white, directing my future with little more than a sentence and a gesture.

She’s not pretty, the angel. The true ones never are. But there’s something about her that screams beauty. The flow of her hair, the pink flush of her cheeks, the red stain of her lips; it all calls for attention, demanding the mortal man to stop, look and admire. So few appreciate the glow she gives, lighting the way in the darkness of the world they are born into. Like sheep, they simply follow the blind Shepherd, never once taking a look at the landscape they so wearily tread: at the fox, and the bird and the bee that watch them from the sidelines. They never truly see life.

I know I have been ill. The chart on the end of my bed tells me as much. An elevated temperature, a hastily repaired wound. These are not the marks of a healthy man. If anything, they are signs acquainted and on friendly terms with the foul figure known as Death. And yet, I seem to be making progress. Life isn’t leeching from my weary bones but pouring back in. As though the strip-lighting that shines down on me with cold fluorescence fills me with such energy. My blood thrums in my veins, making such a clatter that I fear I can hear nothing else save the regular pounding of my own heart. I am getting better, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Death is merely knocking on my door. It seems he has not yet found the key. And I am reluctant to let him in.

Perhaps that is why I’ve seen her, this angel.

I’m not a religious man. God, for myself, is nothing but a social reflex created by an overbearing conscience. And my conscience is oddly quiet, bound and gagged by my instincts. But I can’t help but wonder if this is more than a coincidence. If there truly is something out there. If my future has been written into the fabric of history.

Angels are messengers of fate after all.

I lie back on the bed, thinking of angels and the demons that stalk them. The mattress is hard beneath my back, and it digs into my spine at just the wrong angle. Beside me, in cots much the same, lie the others. Men and women who time seems to have forgotten. Sick with disease and illness, they groan in their sleep, their bones clicking in all-too-fluid joints. Even the air around me is cloying with sickness, the tang of decay still perceptible under the heavy perfume of disinfectant and TCP.