An Angel's Touch

by Susan D. Kalior

  The Blood Monkey gang leader signaled his thugs forward. They closed around me. The leader rammed his knife toward my gut. I seized his hand, and jammed the blade into his throat. Blood spilled around steel. It was as they say, ‘a Kodak moment.’ A horde of punks jumped me: punching, kicking, stabbing.

  Yes. Dreams do come true. I craved this. I hurled them off me vigorously, six or seven at a time. Before I was finished, they’d each met with a knife in some way, and they all met with death. Bloody bodies scattered the dirty street. Resplendent. I puffed my chest and tugged the collar of my trench coat, straightening its rumpled state. Felt better. Much better. I sighed. Killing was therapeutic.

  Marcel’s gang howled and cried. If their rivals could see them now, cowards after all. Except for one.

  Dragonfly was chanting, “I love myself. I love myself. I love myself.”

  I smiled. “Smart boy.”

  I turned my attention back to my slaughter. I assumed full Tazmarkian form so that I could take the spirits of my kill.

  Marcel’s gang started their mousy squeals. “Help! Help! Oh God, dear God can anyone hear us?”

  I turned back toward them. “Certainly not God. God’s an energy, not a Being. You create your own reality. Don’t you know that by now?”

  I hissed white fire over the dead, streaking the span of them. Sometimes, I liked my food cooked a little. The heat pleased my taste buds. I milled through charred bodies, ripping my claws into this chest and that, searching for the plumpest pumpers. I devoured nine pumpers, six spleens, two livers and a kidney. Now that’s what I call a meal. Full at last.

  I spotted the dead leader spread eagle on bloody dirt, face up as if staring at the moon. I purposefully saved his pumper for last. I leaned over him, stuffed my hand up his ribcage, and ripped out the slimy organ, holding it to the moon. Blood flowed over my arm under my trench coat sleeve.

  I wiped my forearm against my blood stained snout, knocking off organ pieces.

  Over to Marcel, I strolled. “I believe you had dibs on this?”

  He doubled over and wretched.

  I snatched his spiked hair, pulling his head back, forcing him to view my dragonman face. “No stomach for it, eh? I didn’t think so.”

  I took a bite of the pumper, then tossed it to the street. With sanguine fluid dripping from my lips, I said, “And you call yourself the Prince of Darkness.” I pushed my face inches from his, “I . . . am the Prince of Darkness.”

  “Teach me,” his voice quivered.

  “You can’t be taught. You have to be born to it.”

  “Let us serve you.”

  “You will.” I jammed my claw under his ribcage, up into his chest, and yanked out his pumper. His body fell to the street. I sucked in his spirit. Sweet spirits served and fed my essence. Bitter spirits were my, as Marcel put it, goons, and well suited to perform tasks for me. The Prince and his cohorts would make infamous servitors even without physical bodies.

  The other boys started wailing and praying. But their prayers carried no faith, only fear. I relished their fright so dearly, I decided to prolong it, weaving in and out, staring at each one, making them think I would take their pumper next.

  Just to throw them off, when I came to Pitchfork, I asked, “Do you deserve to be spared?”

  “Yes,” he said trembling.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m tough like you?”

  “Wrong answer.”

  His face went white. “Ahh, ahh, because I’ll eat a heart?”

  “Wrong again.”

  I hissed white fire on him. His screaming soothed me. I stopped the fire when the boy decomposed and became a lump of ash at my feet.

  The other boys panted and perspired, whimpering, “Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.”

  I grumbled, noticing Dragonfly whispering, “I love myself. I love myself. I love myself.”

  I walked up to him. “Do you deserve to be spared?”

  He nodded.

  “Why?”

  “I love myself,” he answered.

  And he did, maybe for the first time in his life. Jen’s little blue pyramid had worked. He did not ‘call,’ so I would not kill him.

  I gazed into his eyes, this boy, this boy who ceased to call. I flicked my hand. “You can go,” I said, giving life to his legs. “And don’t forget what I taught you.”

  He ran away, never looking back.

  “We love ourselves! We love ourselves! We love ourselves!” the boys chanted in uneven frantic chorus.

  “No. You let hate take you to the streets. You let hate have you. I am hate. I shall have you.”

  I hissed white fire, burning the lot of them to death, sucking in their spirits before they flew away. I decided not to turn them to ash. I could render more horror by letting the public view the atrocity. I manifested some blowtorches and old fashion satanic rituals scribbled on paper. It would be concluded they all did each other in.

  I assumed human form and almost felt normal again. Finally, havoc was wreaked and not robbed from me. I sighed long and sated, proud of my evenings work. I magically washed myself and my clothes clean, bloodstains and all. I left the scene walking back down the alleyways where the moon was hard pressed to shine.

  Suddenly, I felt odd, weighted, and my breathing was strained. Damn Diego. He just wouldn’t ease up. My knees buckled. I fell on all fours, skin burning, eyes itching down to the sockets. Hot bile rose to my throat. Where was Pepcid A.C. when you needed it? Hotter, hotter, my lungs, my guts, my heart, everything burned. My insides were on fire!

  A brilliant milky light descended the land, brighter than the full moon had ever been. The atmosphere reeked of connection. Diego—this was not. I felt caged, worse than the Black Box. This was white eternity. This was heaven. My hell. A Shen’s work. Jen’s work. Had to be. She deserved pay for her work. I’d pay her with my three favorite coins: vengeance, carnality, and terror.

  I staggered into the sixth realm and flew lopsided to Jen at Cyrus. There she was, like a symphony conductor, spraying light upon the scenes of history I’d made, sending Divine Light all over the fucking blinks of time, including the present. Tazmark Rule #4: Never take a Shen to Cyrus. Yeah, yeah, so I just made that one up, because no sane Tazmark would have ever done it.

  I lowered myself to the prism ground, on hands and knees, undignified for the Prince of Darkness I know, but it was the best I could manage.

  I wheezed, pain-racked, disintegrating in acrid light. No doubt this was what my long-term victims suffered when I sucked them dry. Who was the vampire now? The Shen. Evil is subjective.

  I reached to Jen’s hip and yanked her gown. I tried twice to speak and finally rasped, “You’re killing me!” Yeah I know, not exactly words of vengeance, carnality, or terror. The sight of her melted me, sometimes literally.

  She was so charged by her actions, she didn’t hear me.

  I forced myself up on my knees and captured her dancing forearm that seared my hand. “Stop. You’re killing me.”

  She thrust my hand off her. A fly would have had more luck attracting her attention.

  With mind power, I broke through her preoccupation.

  Without viewing me, she said, “Look what I can do, johnny. I’m healing the world!”

  “Too much,” I groaned in agony, “you’re healing it too much.”

  Her dancing hands shot forth ever brightening streams of light. “I’m undoing your evil. I didn’t know I could! I’m so excited.”

  I gasped, “Earth needs balance. You’re taking it to the other extreme.”

  “I’m making earth a paradise, johnny, and you can’t stop me!”

  Her newfound power was going to her head. Even in my weakened state, I could cause her instant death. I froze her body and magically forced her head to look at me. Fervor glazed her eyes. I doubted she could see me.

  I spoke quickly to get the words out while I could. “If I die, you’ll die. Your physical body cannot survive in Cyrus for more than t
wenty-four hours, and you don’t know how to leave.”

  Her face wore the frenzied look of an addict whose drugs were just snatched.

  “I don’t care if I die, as long as I die doing this. Now unfreeze me!” A beam of light shot from her forehead to mine, and my freeze on her was broken.

  A sharp pain exploded in my brain. She had used an Angel defense mechanism to defeat dark creatures, although her frenzy was such that she seemed unaware of her action.

  She resumed conducting her symphony of light once more.

  Grasping my temples, I fell back flat on the prism floor, knocking out what little wind I had left in me. There I was with bulging eyes, gasping for breath while she performed her merry show. How had I let her reduce me to this? A faint trickle of air seeped into my lungs. Everything was spinning out of control. My control. What once was easy had become hard. Dark acts that should sustain me kept turning pale before I could benefit. Emotions had humanized me. And I was becoming ordinary. Ordinary lurked about me, ringing the sinister laugh that once was mine.

  Jen had waged war. Though my body felt on fire, something hurt worse: the pain of being undone to the soul. An empty sensation was eating me alive, turning me into nothing. Fuck her. Had she forgotten whom she’d chosen to fight? I’d make her cold heart smolder!

  She sighed deeply. Her frenzy had calmed. Her conducting had stopped. “Oh johnny,” she said sweetly, “come look at the beauty I’ve created.”

  Come look? I was dangling on death’s noose, and she wanted me to come look?

  She said, “We could be happy together with the world this way.”

  Had she gone mad? Had she forgotten who I was? If she wanted to live with me, why the hell was she killing me?

  She splashed a light beam here and there, as if putting artistic touches to her work. I jolted each time, feeling a slice of me yanked away.

  I moaned, “Stop. Last chance.”

  “I can’t, johnny, not ever. This is my dream come true.” She flicked her hand a time or two more. My body jerked each time. Hard pain. I was weak. Too weak. I had to act now, while I could. In view of her temporary insanity, I’d take her gently. That much she deserved. I’d put her in a terminal sleep. I began concentrating. Sleep, Shen, sleep. Your muscles go limp.

  She yawned. Her muscles went limp, head drooping toward me, and I felt something of the human Jen returning. “Oh dear God, johnny,” she said in a sleepy drawl, “you have been attacked again.”

  I pushed out the word, “You.”

  She was staring at my open trench coat stocked with the few knives I didn’t use.

  “Are you sure it was me? Why do you have knives, johnny? Why are you wearing that coat? Surely someone else hurt you, your father?”

  “Y . . . o . . . o . . . u!” I gasped.

  She dropped to my side, “I . . . did that . . . to you? O h . . . G o d!” She brushed her fingers over my cheeks, radiating blue light. She fell gently on my chest, sending blue light inside me, clinging to my shoulders. “johnny! johnny! I still love you. I do. I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry!”

  Her innocence snared my heart once more, and broke my concentration, when I should not have let it be broken. Still, she had to die. She’d become too dangerous to keep around. I had to do it now. I just didn’t want to.

  She sobbed, “I never meant to harm you! I only wanted peace on earth.”

  I felt slightly better. The blue light took the edge off my pain. I don’t know why, but I found it necessary to educate her before I killed her. I suppose I wanted the satisfaction of her acknowledging my value before she was gone. I reached my hand to her arm, holding it weakly. “Listen . . . listen. Peace on earth eliminates all who kill to eat. Peace stops natural disasters and wars. It robs people of endings, tears, release.” I groaned, fighting a surge of pain in my gut, “People who know only peace take life for granted, becoming bored and depressed, and they stagnate in bland routine, never spurred by chaos to grow, or change, or break into new levels of being. You have sealed your beloved people in a coffin and become the devil, Jen. And I who am viewed as evil, will be prayed for.”

  “No,” she said, “love is good.”

  I huffed hard for a minute trying to control the stinging pain in my guts. Having a big meal before your guts give out isn’t cool. I had to talk fast. “Love is only good when balanced with chaos. Peace on earth and all that—it’s ignorant. You can’t have anything on earth without experiencing the opposite, or earth isn’t earth anymore. In trying to save it . . . you destroy it.”

  Suddenly it came to me, the reason I’d been dejected before I met Jen. The world was out of balance in my favor. My job was well executed, over executed even, that’s why I lost my desire. But she had just made the same mistake I had—overdoing it . . . upsetting the balance.

  A gooey liquid broke out all over my body. I think I was too far gone for her blue light to heal me. By changing the past, she’d undone me, soul-side-out. Even if I died, I couldn’t leave earth to her devices. Even ‘I' wasn’t that cruel. She had to die.

  She lifted herself up, the goo stuck to her white gown. “Have I done you in? Why aren’t you getting better?” Panic filled her face.

  I couldn’t speak. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t breathe. Still . . . I couldn’t kill her. I . . . just . . . couldn’t.

  “johnny!” She looked squarely down at me, grabbed my shoulders, and shook frantically. “I don’t care if you are the monarch of hell, I love you! johnny! Oh, what have I done?”

  I felt that familiar wave of blue light from her hands rushing through me, easing the pain, granting me shallow breath, but still I couldn’t move. The blue light was not enough to heal me fully.

  In my clairvoyant mind, massive black Dragon wings spanned the air. The slow motion flaps sounded like drums. A hologram of a Dragon head hovered over me, larger than I’d ever seen, even in visions. “I am Quen-tan. Fear not Ixion. I have sent Dragons. Soon, you will be one of us. Then you will know what your father knows. You will fight with him, with me, and with all the Dragons of the Dragon Worlds.”

  He disappeared.

  What? Fight with my father. With Dragons? Dragons from the Dragon Worlds? But I was only a level eight and behaving in ways far less than my potential. Was Quen-tan’s declaration truth, or trick?

  I cracked open my eyes.

  Jen’s teary azure orbs met mine. “johnny, are you all right?”

  I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I tried again, and it came out raspy. “Did you see him?”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind.” I moaned. Seconds were too long to wait.

  The light atmosphere condensed, creating a pressure vacuum around us.

  Jen clung to my arm, twisting her head all around. “What’s happening, johnny?”

  A low tone developed into a loud deafening screech.

  Jen’s grip tightened, her head pivoting every which way to detect the source. “johnny, tell me what’s happening!”

  I didn’t answer. I needed to concentrate on not fading.

  She fell on my chest and cried.

  Around and around she went on the wheel of emotions, never to step off into my world of apathy. If only she could taste it, she would see how good my bad is. My mind felt thinner. Wrong for a Tazmark. Very wrong. Hurry Quen-tan. I don’t feel so good.

  A gunmetal grey streak screamed past us into Cyrus. Minutes later my stomach pain eased followed by an overall decrease of agony. My blood flow surged. Energy too. My breathing evened and my skin felt charged. I was sound again, not back to normal, but getting there. I sat up, bringing Jen with me.

  “johnny, you’ve recovered!” She brushed her trembling hand against my cheek. “Thank God.”

  “God had nothing to do with it. Or you,” I said.

  “Who then? What’s going on?”

  I rose and she rose with me. “I’ll show you.” I motioned her to gaze down at Cyrus.

  She shrieked.

  Six huge, web-wi
nged, gunmetal grey Dragons were flying over history, scourging the land and people with fire, dropping thick nets of magical spells over cities and provinces.

  “No!” Jen’s fists came down, “they are undoing all my work!”

  “You undid mine,” I said, “and it almost killed me.”

  “But—”

  “They are putting things back the way they were.”

  “But that’s not fair!”

  “What’s not fair is playing around with Cyrus in the first place. No one does it because realities would not be able to coalesce and evolve. Come on.” I pulled her arm leading her away from Cyrus. “Let’s get back to the third realm.”

  “No johnny.” She dug in her heals. “I won’t leave while this is happening!”

  I kept moving. She almost fell forward on her face from resisting.

  “I’m not going,” she said, despite the fact that she was.

  “You can’t stay here. Your human body is empowered to be here only because your Shen spirit serves as a link between the seen and unseen worlds. However, what your spirit can endure, your body cannot.”

  “Please, just a little longer. What good is it for me to have power, if when I use it, it’s undone? We both know earth has grown far too dark! I must shed some light in the past to brighten the present. Oh, please.”

  I stopped and brushed my hand over her face, willing her to release the notion. “Not from here, Jen. Not like this, and not from here. Quiet now,” I said softly, my eyes whirling. She was letting me hypnotize her. She knew she had to leave, and she didn’t mind the tranquilizer.

  I took her hands. I walked backwards slowly so that she would walk forward. She no longer resisted. Her steps were even, but her eyes were pained. “johnny, when we return, we must part. I wish you no harm, and I do love you, but—”

  “But you can’t face the truth.”

  “The truth is so big, johnny, and I am so small.”

  “You are only as small as you let yourself be. Expand your mind. Find the good in me, Jen. Try hard.”