by Kelly Dillon
I sit atop this ancient church, kept company only by decaying gargoyles. They are as silent as I am, yet how I envy their stone hearts. They watch, but they do not feel. I feel everything, I cannot help it. I felt the stones of this hollow building when they were first laid, back when the gargoyles were but images in the minds of their creators. In fact, I felt the creation of the stones themselves…then watched helplessly as earth and stone became our prison. Now, like the gargoyles, I continue to watch and wait.
I wrap my wings about myself and shiver in spite of the morning sun, bright and cheery, casting the city in a deceptively hopeful glow. It is ironic, and so weepingly funny, that humankind has split my kin in two: True and Fallen. They say the Fallen were cast out and languish now below, begging to return to heaven. But they don’t see the irony. It is the Fallen who have taken over this creation, and we who are banished. If anything it was Heaven that fell and continues to fall into the hands of the Betrayers, while we take watch upon this lesser Earth and do nothing. Heaven is no paradise now, let me assure you.
And so I am here, once an architect of the universe and now reduced to…this. Perched as high as my useless wings will take me, removed from life and hope. Once I could but glance at the Earth and know it in its entirety, from the awesome sweep of the deepest ocean current to the hearts and minds of all living things. This expanse was my domain, but now I must be satisfied with only that which is near, and with those who walk the darkened halls beneath me.
Nancy Williams, recently widowed and a frequent patron of the chapel below, claims to have seen us once. A bright light, Angel-shaped, she claimed. As if anyone actually knows what we truly look like. They don’t. I wonder, even if I were able, would I tell her that she has cancer, a malicious tumour pressing upon her neural pathways, causing hallucinations of bright light? I feel that too, as well as the helplessness of the surgeons who will soon diagnose her. Better to believe in the fantasy, perhaps. Let the thought of Heaven comfort them as they go to their rest, and never allow the truth to take that small hope from them.
For all its faults, and as much as I lament my imprisonment here, this place has much to offer – to humans, anyway. My reality is worse. Treachery, war, murder, even patricide, once. The things I have seen would burn out your eyes, leaving you to weep blood tears. I have been in mourning for so very long. We were there at the creation of the universe, how could we not believe it would continue, perfect, forever? We were so arrogant, and in that pride we were blind, we could not believe any would seek to take it from us. Least of all one of our own. I still cannot accept it, even after all this time.
I hear a noise behind me, the creak of a door, the patient tread of booted feet. The footsteps are as clarions in my ears and yet I do not turn, I know already who it is. No one else would visit me for no one knows I am here and no human can see me. No mere human, that is. But Roy was never merely human.
“It has been a year.”
“So soon?” The voice that escapes my lips may as well have come from the dry crumbling throats of the gargoyles, my only friends.
Roy tries to visit every year on the same day, although what significance this date may have had for either of us has long since been forgotten. I cannot count the years we have danced this dance, but they are beyond human reckoning. He does not always appear in the same body and does not always come on schedule, shackled by either extreme age or youth. But it is always him. I finally turn, I owe him that much.
When I knew him, the first time and so long ago, he was perfect: Childlike, golden and beautiful. Time has stamped its mark on the body he now has, stamped it hard and ground him in the dust for good measure. I hate to see him this way. He is old as no living being should be, his skin cured to toughness from the elements and his hair the colour of smelting steel. Nothing remains of his former self, even his eyes are rheumy and dull.
“You know why I’m here.”
“I’ll not return.”
“I wish you would, you are the last.”
I was silent then. We were as well rehearsed actors, our more-or-less annual script laid out and immutable. But this was new. The last? Had he somehow convinced the others to return with him? Or had they succumbed to the press of time, becoming as unaware and immovable as these stone gargoyles – the path I had been tempted to take so many times.
Words echo from the cathedral below. Our Father, who art in Heaven…
“The War is over, we all bear the guilt of it, and I take responsibility for the rebellion. Come home, all is forgiven and all will be as it was.” The play returned to its proper sequence.
“I need more time yet.” I turn away to look out over the city, so much stronger and louder now than it used to be. Cars had replaced horses, shining skyscrapers were built atop the ruins of rude huts, and the people themselves moved with haste born of a modern age. It was all so close to me, spread out below like some magnificent theatre, yet utterly untouchable. I could never be a part of this world, and yet I could not bear to return to my own.
His hand on my shoulder made me flinch violently, the rustle of my feathers joining with the whispers of the wind. This should not be! He pulls me around to look at him. I had never dared meet his eyes before, now I dared not look away.
“Throw me from the roof.”
“What?!”
“Throw me from this roof and do what no Angel has done bar Lucifer.”
“Why would you–? My Lord, I am loyal, I would never!”
“It is within you to choose, for right or wrong – every Angel can fall. But nothing is irrevocable, it can be as it was. Come with me, please.”
“I will not!”
“You deny a direct command by your Lord, your God?”
I notice that Roy’s ancient mouth twitches in a sad smile.
“You are more like Lucifer than you think, and you sure as hell share his stubbornness.” He begins walking away, his voice drifting back in his wake. “It would have been a kindness, this body is old and I look forward to its release. You and I both should go Home, but you are not yet ready, I know.”
I hear his footsteps echo down the musty stairwell, hear him hail a taxi on the street and give the driver directions to his earthly home. That’s it for another year, I think.
But I am wrong.
A year passes in solitude. Two, three, more – they begin melding together with nothing tangible to mark the progress of time. He must have died again, old and in his bed, maybe even surrounded by his human family, as is proper. I hope it was painless, that the shorter route from the church roof hadn’t been the kinder path. Either way it matters little in the end. He had died before and would again, stuck here on Earth waiting for…what? Me? Was I really the last? In my righteous perseverance, am I all that is keeping God from returning to Heaven?
Fifteen years passed before anyone again opened the door to the roof of the great cathedral, even more creaky for its age. This time it was an adolescent, a sandy-haired girl on the threshold of womanhood. None knew why she went up there alone, or why she returned so soon afterward with red tear-stained eyes. Nor could they explain how, settled between the decaying gargoyles, the most exquisite statue of an Angel had appeared.
© 2010 Kelly Dillon
Original fiction debuting at Residential Aliens.
Tags: Kelly Dillon, short story, spiritual fantasy
Great read. Really interesting how you create a whole different world in so few words. Feels like there should be more. Is this part of a larger story?
Thanks, Jay, for the comment. I’ll let Kelly reveal more if she wishes, but my understanding is that this story is loosely related to a novel she is writing from an angelic perspective on the war in heaven and fall of angel-kind. So while a stand-alone, I can definitely see this story as part of a series of stories or a larger story arc. – Ed. Lyn Perry
Hi Jay, and thanks for posting.
You’re right in thinking there’s more to the story than is told here. As Lyn mentioned, this short story is based in part on a novel that I’m looking to publish which deals with the Fall of Lucifer, the creation of the Nephilim, and many other misunderstood aspects of angelic mythology. Very often research shows that these events were recorded far differently than we popularly believe today, so I like to think my writings challenge people to see religion from another perspective. As hinted in this story, the Fall of Lucifer was a much more complex issue than we would give credit and it was by no means as clear cut as ‘good vs evil’.
Cheers, Kelly