Kill All Angels

by Robert Brockway

  I’m about to prove them wrong.

  I hitch into a strand of energy. It’s like plucking a single thread from a worn sweater. You work yourself in there slowly, sifting and sifting until you’ve finally isolated just one little piece, you grab it gently, and then you pull.…

  Got it.

  The siphonophore’s network is scattershot. The farther you get from the energy source, the more diluted it becomes. That’s protection. Random encryption. It thinks it’s immune from destruction because there are no common factors that link the whole thing together. But that’s siphonophore logic. There is a common factor. Life.

  We’re all wildly different. Fucked up, confused, angry, horny, gassy, hungry—a billion different beings with a billion different impulses. But way, way down there at the base of it, we all have one thing in common. We had life. Until they took it from us.

  And that pisses us off.

  Now that I’m spliced into the strand, I pour that emotion—pure and undiluted from a source from inside the network itself—right into the siphonophore’s veins.

  Remember what it was like to be alive.

  Remember sun on your face. Skin touching skin.

  Remember the hollowness of an empty stomach. Remember the suffocating unease of heartbreak.

  Remember the good things. Remember the bad ones. Remember waking up.

  Remember sleep.

  Whatever it was to be alive—pain and glory and humiliation and desire and confusion and laughter and fury—it was ours. It was never theirs.

  Help me take it back.

  There’s so little of you left. I know. I know it’s hard. You feel small. You feel scattered. You don’t even remember who you were. But you remember that you were. That’s all you need. Just a little reminder.

  I felt parts of me filtering through the angels, picking up remnants of their hosts—of what used to be people—as they went. The emotion building in strength. The more it gathered, the more it could gather. The siphonophore felt it now, a corruption in its veins. A rough-edged, tumbling, screaming stream of pure emotion. Utterly human, and utterly impossible for it to process. Humanity spilled out from the intersections of those unnatural angles; it flooded the angels, spreading variegated roots across pristine white surfaces and pulling them apart.

  Through the strand I’d seized, I felt the thrum of an infinity of angels, dying.

  It felt good.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  }}}Carey. 1984. Los Angeles, California. Koreatown.}}}}}}}}}

  I love my crash spot. Koreatown is home for me. Always will be. It’s a good middle ground—halfway between the ghetto and the beach. This is where L.A. hides its working class. People with actual jobs. Tasks that don’t require putting on makeup first. They ain’t pretty, and they ain’t happy, but they keep this city running. They understand when they see somebody on the skids. They understand you don’t need help or pity. Just beer money. On the east side they’ll kick you to death just for … well, just for kicks. Over by the beach is worse: They call security. Some mope with an innie-dick and a bicycle threatening to involve the real police if you don’t get moving.

  But in Koreatown, tucked away in my little hidey-hole behind the butcher shop, nobody bugs me. Well, nobody except for Zang. But he’s basically nobody. Every couple of weeks he’ll poke me awake in the middle of the night. Tell me the fight needs me. That I’m wasting time like this.

  “It was just a girl,” he’ll say. “Thousands like her die every day. They have died before you came along. They will die after you are gone.”

  Always the middle of the night with that guy. Nudging me awake just when the liquor’s wearing off. Mouth dry, bladder burning, head spinning—I feel like such shit that I can only think about how shitty I feel. I tell him to piss off, and he stands there for god knows how long, staring at me silently, and then in the morning he’s gone.

  It’s lucky for me, that he only comes in the middle of the night.

  When the hangover fades to a dull roar and I’m capable of forming thoughts that aren’t “Jesus Christ I wish I would just die already,” I might listen to what he’s got to say. Sure, I’ve got all this guilt and loathing and disgust sloshing around in my guts—mixing up with the Jim Beam and the street tacos to form my very own special brand of acid, eating away at my stomach lining—but the hate is still there, too. And unless I drown it in booze, the hate is stronger. Every minute I’m sober I think about Randall. About Jie. About Meryll and Rosa. I bounce back and forth between what an asshole I am for doing the things I’ve done, and what assholes the angels are for making me do them. I think about taking Zang up on his offer. Spilling some blood.

  But he doesn’t come around until later. And I’ve got time to kill, so I scrounge up liquor money and start drinking.

  Then it’s the middle of the night, and I drank away the hate so all that’s left is self-pity and self-loathing and a bitch of a headache. I tell Zang to piss off, and we do our little dance again.

  TWENTY-NINE

  }}}Carey. 1985. Los Angeles, California. Koreatown.}}}}}}}}}

  You know what’s great? Hard liquor!

  You know what’s not great? Everything else!

  Where’s that god damn Chinese bastard? Haven’t seen him in months. Always ambushing me when I’m down. Can’t face me now, when I’m at peak don’t-give-a-fuck and about to get honest with everybody. He’d be good for that. Just stand there like a post and take it.

  Some of these other bums, they’re too sensitive. I tell ’em about how the world really is and they tell me to shut up. I tell ’em what I really think of them and they tell me that if that’s how I feel I don’t have to share their booze. That’s fuckin’.…

  That’s censorship, is what that is.

  I don’t need ’em anyway. I got my hidey-hole. I got Koreatown. A cozy little alley. Just big enough for me. Nobody else allowed.

  THIRTY

  }}}Carey. 1992. Los Angeles, California. Hyde Park.}}}}}}}}}

  I should not have puked in the fireman’s helmet. He’s probably gonna be mad at me. The bastard.

  THIRTY-ONE

  }}}Carey. 2012. Los Angeles, California. West L.A.}}}}}}}}}

  This rat and me—we’re thick as thieves. That’s how that saying goes, right? What does that even mean? How are thieves thick? Like fat?

  “You fat fuckin’ thief!” I yell at the rat. Used to scurry away when I yelled at it. Now it just kinda looks at me like I’m the crazy one.

  “You’re the one that eats garbage,” I tell it. “You fat garbage-eatin’ thief.”

  I think about throwing my bottle at it. But it might take that personal. Might not come back. Don’t want that. Don’t wanna be alone.

  Besides, the bottle’s not totally empty. I mean, it’s empty, yeah. But if you leave it alone for a while a few drips flow down the walls and pool at the bottom. Then you tip it upside down, wait for the trickle of rotgut, and repeat. This bottle’s on life support. I’ll stay with it ’til the end.

  My sleeping bag smells like piss and I can’t tell if that’s because I pissed in it or if that’s just how it smells. It’s hot, and I don’t wash it a lot. Costs quarters. Then you gotta buy those little fun-size boxes of detergent.

  “That’s how they get you,” I tell the rat.

  My head is heavy. Keeps falling down.

  “I should give you a name,” I say. The rat looks intrigued. Probably. Who can tell with a rat?

  “Rat … well. Ratwell Rattington the Eighth,” I try. I scowl. “Too pretentious. Pretentious bullshit!”

  I laugh. Get little flashes of somebody I used to know. Don’t want that. That’s no good. I tip the bottle again. Fewer drops every time.

  “Pat,” I try again. “Pat the fat rat. Patty Boy!”

  I raise my empty bottle to him. He glares at me. Probably.

  I throw the bottle. He runs.

  Good job, man. Now you got nobody to talk to.

  “Ah, well,” I say, strug
gling to my feet. “Gotta yell at somebody, and they’re not coming to me.”

  I forget what I’m doing. I guess I’m out in the street now? That’s weird. I was just laying down with a bottle a little bit ago. Figured I was done for the night. But now I’m out here, so I roll with it.

  Had to move the ol’ bag and bottle collection a while back. Koreatown didn’t like me anymore. Got so the shopkeepers knew my name. Knew how to deal with me. Hustled me away before I could get a word in edgewise. But the great thing about L.A. is, it’s real big and nobody talks to each other. When somebody gets wise to your shit, you just walk a few miles and start slingin’ shit again.

  I’m crashing in West L.A. these days. Over by the 405. It’s nice without being too nice. Pretty girls here with short-shorts and titties that still bounce. Haven’t gotten the implants yet. Still trying to make enough money to get ’em. The implants are inevitable. Pretty dudes here, too—not that I’m into that (unless I’m high, and they’re buying)—but they still got visible tattoos. Haven’t had to scrub them off yet. For a role, they all say. Gotta do it for a role. Gotta become blank slates to project characters on because they ain’t got—

  “Personalities of your own!” I scream, right at a pair of ’em walking past me.

  The assholes jump and hustle up a bit. Looking back at me. Laughing. Probably. Who can tell with an asshole?

  “Go ahead,” I say to nobody. “Laugh. I’m fuckin’ hilarious!”

  There’s this taco truck in the parking lot of a Rite Aid. If I get there late enough, just before they close up, they’ll give me leftovers. Good folks. Good food. The best food’s out of a truck. Used to be it was just the Mexicans and us güeros that knew the score. Then everybody caught on. Some dick-burn in a knit scarf probably put up a review on the internet, and now my taco truck is always crowded. Mostly white people. Young. Kinda drunk. Happy.

  Assholes.

  What a bunch of holes in asses. Filthy, unwashed, puckered up old—

  “Hey,” one of the assholes says. “Come on, man.”

  “What?” I say.

  “What do you mean, what?” he says. Good-lookin’ skinny white kid. Got one of those wooden disks in his lip that used to be cool. Even I know they aren’t anymore. Guess it’s ironic now.

  Lip Disk turns to his friends for confirmation, like he can’t believe this is happening. Gotta run it by the experts first.

  “Why you screaming in our faces, bro? Calling us assholes?” Lip Disk says. “We don’t even know you. We’re just waiting for our tacos de pollo.”

  This bastard’s whiter than my bare ass and he’s sittin’ there faking the accent, talking about his tacos like he was born in the barrio and his crib was an old washtub.

  That’s it. That’s all I can take.

  I step back to send a vicious dropkick his way—make him eat that stupid lip disk—but I guess I went back too far because now I’m on the ground. It’s funny, so I laugh.

  “You okay?” a girl’s voice says. It’s nice. It’s a nice sound.

  “Mmm?” I say. My eyes wanna stick together. I force ’em open.

  “I don’t think you can sleep here,” she says. Blond girl. Yellow tank top and blue shorts. Not my type. Got broad shoulders and calves like she could kick through steel. But I can see up her shorts a little from my position, so hell, maybe I can change my type.

  “Not sleepin’” I say, but I look around and I guess I was. I’m sprawled across the whole sidewalk. Taco truck is closed. Means it’s real late, or real early. The L.A. light pollution makes it impossible to tell.

  “Okay,” she says. “Just checking to make sure you weren’t dead.”

  What a god damn sweetheart.

  I hold out my hand for her to help me up. She does not look happy about it.

  Can’t blame her.

  But she takes it anyway. How about that?

  Been a while since I touched anybody. In a friendly way, at least. Skin is nice. Clean and warm. You don’t realize you miss it ’til you have it and then it’s like you’ve been drowning and just caught a lungful of air.

  There’s something off about her grip—familiar, but off—and it takes me a while to place it. I turn my hand so hers is facing up. There it is.

  Sixth finger on the left hand. A little thing—not fully formed. Like an extra pinky. She sees me looking and pulls back real quick.

  “Take care,” she says, and jogs away.

  Guess that makes it early, then. Pretty white girls don’t jog in the middle of the night. I feel like shit that’s been scraped off the bottom of a shoe. But at least I’m not on the shoe anymore. I slept through the worst of the hangover. I feel around in my socks for my emergency booze money, but it’s gone. Maybe I got rolled, or maybe I just spent it while blackout drunk.

  This is bad.

  Already I’m having thoughts.

  What are the odds you meet another six-fingered girl while passed out on the sidewalk?

  There’s gotta be a reason for it.

  The universe is telling you something.

  You can’t waste the opportunity.

  It’s probably nothing, anyway. The extra digit doesn’t always mean she’s special.

  But maybe she is. Such a sweetheart, too. Could be in danger.

  They could be watching her.

  Maybe you should be watching her, too.

  Not to use her. Not to teach her. Not like Meryll and Rosa—

  Don’t. Don’t think their names.

  This isn’t like that. It’s not about that.

  You’re only following her—

  Crap. I am following her.

  You’re only following her because you need booze money, and it just so happens that her jogging route runs up a street where it’s garbage day. Everybody’s got their cans of free money out for you.

  That’s all this is.

  Just another garbage day.

  THIRTY-TWO

  }}}Kaitlyn. 2013. Los Angeles, California. Costa Soberbia.}}}}}}}}}

  I was floating through black and dreamless sleep. Somewhere far away, I knew my body was cold and uncomfortable. It lay right where it fell, its head on a thin layer of damp old carpet and chilled concrete. That place stank like burned meat and mold with just a hit of ozone. I didn’t want to go there. So I didn’t. I just tucked myself into a nice dark place where I was allowed to be nothing.

  Somebody coughed and cleared their throat in the grossest way.

  I felt brief but seizing panic, like waking up the morning after a drunken one-night stand only to find they’re still in your bed.

  I trudged reluctantly toward consciousness. I opened one eye so slightly that I could barely see through the curtain of my own eyelashes. A blurry shape squatted in the corner.

  The angel the Empty Ones not dead dark ruins danger—

  I startled awake, gasping like I’d just had an apnea. I scared the hell out of Carey.

  He’d never admit it.

  Memory came back in a flood: the sunken city, the tar men burning, the Empty Ones clawing at me, the static chimes of the angel.…

  “Welcome to the land of the living,” Carey said.

  “How long was I out?” I asked. My mouth tasted like cotton. Soaked in stagnant hot dog water.

  “No idea,” he answered. “But it must be afternoon now.”

  He gestured up at the sky. A spot of glaring white bleeding into opaque crystal blue. The sun was directly overhead. Not a cloud in the sky. And even still, the light barely filtered down here, only rendering the sinkhole in gloomy twilight rather than impenetrable black.

  I blinked, trying to get my super-senses back, but the effort just made my head hurt.

  Carey was on his heels, knees tucked up against his stomach, back against the massive fireplace that dominated the abandoned lounge. The only signs left of the Empty Ones were some charred spots in the carpet and burn marks on the walls. I looked to where I’d last seen Zang and Jie. A coal-black stain eating through th
e soggy gray floor.

  Carey saw me staring.

  “Zang?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “And Jie. Last time I saw them, he had her pinned right there. I guess they went up in the blast when I took the angel. I’m sorry.…”

  “Don’t be,” Carey said. “That’s all he ever wanted.”

  “I meant I’m sorry for you. I know he was your friend.”

  Carey laughed.

  “I guess so,” he said. “Shit, how sad is that?”

  I didn’t have an answer.

  Oh, crap, what about—

  “Jackie’s fine,” he said, guessing my intent. “When it got light enough to see, I helped her back to the trail. Told her I was coming back for you. It was a bitch, convincing her to go on without you.”

  I smiled, even though it made my face hurt.

  “I told her I couldn’t help you both up the cliff, so the best way for her to help you was to head up with the others.”

  “The others?”

  “Indian fellas,” he said. “The dot-head kind, not the scalping kind. You didn’t see those two? Seemed pretty all right for homos.”

  “Jesus, Carey.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Wait—two guys? Not three?”

  “I took some pretty good hits back there, but I can still count to two.”

  The bearded guy didn’t make it.

  Was that my fault, or the angel’s? Would he have lived if I’d done something different? Tried to contain the blast when the angel collapsed, like I did in Mexico? That would have left the Empty Ones alive and waiting for me when I emerged. Would they have spared him? Or was it all moot? Was he dead before I ever went in?

  Fingers knit across his face. Light spilling out from the spaces between.

  Don’t worry, Kaitlyn. You’ll only have the rest of your life to dwell over questions like that.

  I heard a strange click. Metal on metal. Purposeful, like something engaging.

  Maybe I wouldn’t have that long after all.…

  I tried to scale up my vision again. It still hurt, but the pain was diminishing. Now it was just stretching a muscle I’d overused, rather than an agonizing cramp. The visibility rose like I’d raised a dimmer switch on the world.