Mythangelus

by Storm Constantine

  He was older than me, yet seemed younger. We met when he strayed into my lair, and after a few warning shots of snarls and aggressive gestures, realised we were not enemies at all. He was like me: a runaway from the theatre of luxury. His mother had been a pill-head, who sometimes had not even recognised him, while his father, a scientist, had hardly ever been at home. I tingled with empathy as he described his former sterile environment: the ceaseless hum of domestic appliances, and the automata who kept the place running, while his mother lolled on the couch, living in some better world. He explained to me the phenomena of why people like us ran away. ‘We know it is over. Society is dead, but some of us know we can still exist beyond it. It is like a sinking ship. We have to jump overboard with faith and hope, otherwise we’ll just be dragged down with the wreck and drowned. This is the age of the individual; the age of the hive has passed. We are all floating in the sea, clinging to our bits of wreckage, but eventually we’ll become sea creatures ourselves and learn how to breathe its element.’

  How could I not love a person who spoke like that, with such passion and optimism? He did not know about my difference - especially the physical aspect. I did not want to tell him because he was my first real friend. If he knew, it would change things. He might be disgusted or, worse, full of pity.

  Some girl he knew gave him a flask of alcohol. We flavoured it with the remains of a bag of sugar substitute we’d found in our basement, and one night sat across from one another and drank it. It felt shamanic, the rhythmic passing of the flask from one to the other. We both knew we wanted to be drunk, for there was business between us that the barriers of a sober mind inhibited. I was acutely aware that before the night was over he would know about me. I felt nauseous with nerves, eager for the intoxication that would free my tongue and allow me to speak the words that must be spoken.

  He began to talk about the future again, rambling on about some faraway utopia that could be constructed from hopes and dreams.

  Something about his vision made me uncomfortable, and I said, ‘This is the end, not change. We are dying.’

  He crawled over to me then and put an arm around me. ‘No, no, you are wrong. This is not death at all. You are living in the past. Look forward, not back. Don’t let the past become your future.’

  I wanted to believe, and partly did, unaware of how he spoke the most ultimate of truths. He put his head against my hair and said, ‘I have to ask you something. Don’t answer if you don’t want to but... are you really a girl?’

  I laughed a little, more out of embarrassment than amusement. What could I say? The answer was neither yes nor no. ‘What makes you think that?’ I asked.

  I could tell he wished he’d never spoken. ‘I don’t know. The way you walk and talk. Just body language, I guess. I’m sorry. You must think this is just an excuse to...’

  I touched his arm to silence him. ‘I am what you say.’

  He grinned in relief. ‘I knew it. You want people to think you’re a boy because people will leave you alone then.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry. That sounded patronising.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, don’t apologise. The thing is, I’m male too.’

  He frowned. ‘In your heart, your head?’

  ‘No. In some ways, that would be more simple.’

  ‘Then what do you mean?’ The puzzlement had swept back; the tide of delight and anticipation had receded.

  ‘It would be easier to show you,’ I said and stood up.

  The only light came in from outside, but then we of the wilderness rarely craved artificial light at night, other than a fire for protection. I peeled away all the layers of my tattered clothes, feeling as if each discarded item represented a year of my life. It was all being sloughed away. When finally I stood naked before him, he sat with his chin in his hands and said, ‘You look male to me.’

  I squatted before him and took one of his hands in mine, guiding him to the truth of the matter. He didn’t say anything then, but kissed me. I felt his fingers digging into my shoulders like spikes. I could feel his heart racing. He’d wanted to do this for some time, and now felt he had been given sanction. I welcomed it too, but some part of me became annoyed that he looked upon me as a female and took it for granted that I must be dominated. Did women ever feel this way? It might sound like justification, but I feel that he was partly to blame for what happened to him. We should have come together as equals, but then I didn’t know he was not equal to me. I was stronger than he was, and forced him into submission. It was only a game, I swear. I just wanted him to realise what we were, or could be.

  It took him a day to die. I was helpless. I tried everything, but whatever mutant substance lived in me was poison to him. Not all the water in the world could wash away what I had done to him. My essence ate into him like acid, devoured his being. The only blessing was that he did not realise what was happening to him. With my hands, I was able to stroke away most of the pain. With my thoughts I willed his mind to a far place, that idyll he had spoken of, and there he died.

  I set fire to our home and emerged from it into the night against a backdrop of flames. I had been right and he wrong. Humanity was dying and I was one of nature’s weapons. I could never love, for to love me was to die. Could anything be crueler than that?

  If only I had known the truth then. He could still be here now. The one who discovered that truth with me was but a pale spark to his radiant sun, but perhaps that was all part of it, the great lesson I had to learn.

  For days, perhaps weeks, I roamed the wilderness, feeling more drunk than I had on that hideous night. I truly wanted to die, and sometimes climbed the high, broken towers to think about throwing myself over, but even in my grief I was too afraid of being broken, dying slowly. I kept seeing his face, hearing his laughter, and then an image of his death would come to me, the terrible writhing, the whimpers. I was more of a monster than even my mother had imagined.

  I came to an area that had been inexpertly flattened; a plain of rubble, from which rusting spikes rose like the bones of dinosaurs. Here, I collapsed and stared up at the sky, watching the colours change and the stars reveal themselves. I could move no further. Here, it would end. I felt strangely at peace, and numb. I could not feel my body.

  When I saw the stooped shadow gliding towards me over the stones, I barely raised my head. Death had come for me. It loomed over me, breathing heavily, and dark greasy hair brushed my face. I saw a glint of metal and heard muttered words. ‘Be still, my pretty. Do not fear. I shall come to you without pain.’

  I did not know he meant to eat me. I just thought of sex and murder, but he opened a vein in my arm and began to drink, nibbling the flesh at the edge of the cut. He was a modern vampire, human and reeking, not at all the romantic vision I’d seen in old movies. As I lay there, feeling the pull as my blood pulsed into his diseased mouth, I was not sickened or afraid, but amused. It is not easy to find food in the wilderness, and some will do anything to live. If my death meant the life of a debased creature like this, then so be it. There was some justice in it, I thought.

  But I did not die. I found myself awake with raw morning light falling down upon me. Beside me was a wretched creature who squirmed upon the ground, clutching his belly. His hair had come out in clumps and lay upon the stones. I felt weak, but also vital. As I looked at him, I laughed. Not only was my touch death, but it seemed I was also very difficult to kill. Part of my new role, I decided, was to stay with my victims until they found peace in death. I would do what I could to ease their agony.

  Unlike my beloved, this one did not die after the first day. Sometimes, he was raving and hallucinating and became violent with a preterhuman strength. At other times, he wept and mumbled about his childhood, his fingers over his face. His body was hot and bloated. He must be strong. How long would it take him to die?

  After two days, it began to rain, and I dragged him into a ruined office block. The rain itself can be toxic. Here, I built a small fire, and then went foragin
g, killing four bedraggled pigeons. I came back with two birds, and some welfare rice I’d haggled for with a band of oldsters I’d come across. My attacker, my victim, could not eat, but I cooked the pigeons and watched him as I fed. There was no feeling within me, merely a faint sense of curiosity. His skin was peeling.

  On the morning of the third day, I woke up and found myself alone. I thought my companion must have died in the night, and some scavenger had come in and taken the body. Then I heard the words, ‘what am I?’ and turned to see an angel in the doorway. As his skin had peeled, so had all the filth. He stood before me, holding out his arms, looking at his smooth flesh. I could not give him answers. There were none. I felt that I had made him into something more and above me. He shared my difference. I had birthed a daughter-son.

  I had thought him the most degenerate of beings, yet I quickly learned that he blazed with vitality and intelligence. Perhaps this was just another aspect of the change he had undergone. He asked me questions constantly and experimented with the force of his being. Unlike me, he was curious about the way he could affect reality; make inanimate objects move, heal pain, hear the whisper of others’ thoughts. He was proud of what he’d become, and did not hide it, but the shadow community to which he’d once belonged were now afraid of him. They did not want his healing power, his radiance. They saw not an angel, but a freak.

  Unperturbed, he became almost evangelistic about our condition. ‘We must make more like us,’ he said.

  I was appalled and shook my head. ‘No. You are a fluke. It is not meant to be this way.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  We were not easy companions, yet our similarities, and the fact that I had made him the way he was, kept us together. He had changed so much from the wretch he’d been. We lived in the office block where he’d undergone his transformation. One evening, he made me climb a nearby hydro-tower with him, where the rusting shell harboured clear water. He took off his clothes and dived in, summoning me to join him. ‘We are not part of the filth now.’ He sluiced my hair and rubbed the grime from my skin. ‘I want the grief to run from your body with this water. You must be renewed, like I am.’

  I think the transformation had affected his mind. He needed a religion to run.

  ‘How did you do it?’ he asked. ‘Tell me. Tell me.’

  ‘I don’t know. It just happened. You were trying to devour me.’

  The light in his eyes was like that of the stars; cold and distant. ‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘Yes.’

  I should have known he’d act independently. One day, he took me to a building near our lair, and here revealed to me his twisting litter of children. I was horrified, yet also amazed. Twelve people, both male and female, shivered and whimpered at my feet; all of them infected with his blood. I had seen myself as an avatar of death, but remote and accidental. Here was someone who was an active instrument of it, only he did not realise the fact. He thought he was a god, with a god’s powers. If I’d done something to end it then, what would the world have been like now?

  Of the twelve, only four survived, and all of them previously male. We tried to soothe the agony of the others with the healing power in our hands, but the experience was harrowing. ‘I think this process cannot be conducted with females,’ my companion said, with scientific detachment. ‘But we must try it with others.’

  ‘No!’ My protest went unheard.

  I would not help him, other than to attend to his victims as they suffered. I didn’t even think about killing him, or trying to stop it any other way. At the time, it just didn’t enter my mind, but now I think it was because part of me knew that what was happening was preordained. My companion saw it as a cleansing ritual for the world. He loved the creatures he made, marvelling at their beauty. I saw them as perverted homunculi; as lovely as the angels of hell. Yet, despite this, they were also part of me and I was part of them.

  I under-estimated the regard my companion had for me. He did not set himself up as a leader of our developing clan of beautiful monsters. That privilege he reserved for me, even though I shunned it. ‘It is your responsibility,’ he told me. ‘You began this.’

  ‘Only because you were hungry,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Can’t you see the potential here?’ he demanded. ‘This is the beginning of something. It is what comes next.’

  I could only look down at the corpses of those who had not survived. The cost of the selection process was too high. ‘This is murder,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘You are right. We should give people the choice.’ As an inducement, he now had seven successful transformations to parade before the eyes of the desperate.

  I never became involved in his recruitment drives, and for many years no other human tasted my blood. I cannot say that I wasn’t affected by my companion’s enthusiasm, and grudgingly I had to accept the benefits of being part of a community, something I had never previously enjoyed, other than those few weeks of running with the girl-pack. This was different though. With the girls, I had been a tolerated outsider. Now, I was part of a group of individuals who all shared the same attributes. It was both scary and exciting.

  Although we could not effect the change in women, a few of them, through persistent entreaty, still joined us. In many ways, we had more in common with them than with men. From our sisters, we learned about the wildest excesses of adorning our bodies. We became tribal and developed our own rituals connected with the inception of newcomers, or the simple celebration of our estate. Sex became sacred, yet less taboo. There was so much to explore, and so many delights concealed in the labyrinth of our dual gender.

  One night, we undertook a rite to name ourselves, opening up our minds with the effects of narcotic fungi. My companion became Orien; a name he felt held power. As for me, I wandered the star-gleam avenues of my mind, until I came to a place where a white shrine glimmered against a backdrop of stars. It stood upon the primal mound of creation, guarded by two pillars, and surrounded by the waters of life. Here, I learned my true name, the person I was to become. I am Thiede. The first of all. And the name we took for ourselves as a group was Wraeththu; a word that held all the anger and mystery of the world. The visions told us the truth: we were no longer human and must forget all that we had been before.

  We were close-knit, and did not merely co-operate with one another. Laughter was spontaneous, and in our wild nights of dancing, as new recruits struggled with the process of transformation, I learned about the fulfilment that close friendship brings. I was intrigued by the way the different personalities within the group interacted with one another; the partnerships that developed, the enmities. We weren’t above petty squabbling, but if anything from outside threatened our group, the ranks would close and seal as tight as a steel door. We were not afraid to kill to protect ourselves, and sometimes that was necessary.

  Various human clans and groups heard about us, and some were afraid, and thought we should be eradicated. We were seen as vampires, as predators, who stole people away in the night. In fact, that was not true. We hadn’t resorted to such measures since the first days of my companion’s explorations. We had to keep on the move, but even so, humans would often sniff us out and come pouring over the ruins, holding flaming brands aloft, intent on burning us alive. Then we would rise up, howling, our wild hair flying, our faces striped with the colours of the night.

  We never lost a single brother in our skirmishes. In our unity, we were immensely strong.

  Everything that begins in the world starts small, be it a mighty tree from a seed, or a deluge from a single drop of rain. A cell becomes a child becomes a king or queen. The greatest concepts are based upon the most fleeting of ideas. Such it was with Wraeththu, the race that I spawned from my fear, my pain, my ignorance.

  I stand upon the pillars of the world, and look down to see the carnage perpetrated by the human race that had been its guardian. I am amazed that humanity, with all its cruel selfishness, ever rose to prominence, and that the world itself all
owed the situation to continue for so long. We are the exterminators, who will rid the palaces of the earth of all its vermin. We have no choice in this role; it has been decided for us. We are the true messengers of the gods. The howls of slaughtered innocents rise from the ruins, the whimpers of the bereaved, the snufflings of the betrayed. I stand as a colossus above it all, looking down. There is a star in the sky that is the soul of my lost love, and my own soul has fragmented into a thousand parts, into each of my children. But I do not grow weak from it, only estranged. There is much to explore about myself, and for this I need a real wilderness, where all the devils of the earth and the angels of the air can come to tempt me and teach me. I cannot make the inward journey here in the city debris.

  Last night, Orien came to me, worried that some of our brethren had split off to form a separate group. I tried to assuage his fears. ‘This is the way it will go,’ I said. ‘We were the catalysts, nothing more. We must not interfere with the growth of our child.’

  He thought I was mad, or damaged, and spoke softly. ‘The time will come, soon, for us to move toward the city core.’