Angel in My Pocket

Down below, far below, desires stirred through concrete canyons, whipping into a heady froth when the buildings grew close and crowds gathered, rising steadily over the bars and brothels, higher than it would have seemed possible. Up to the top of the tallest of the towers. And with those desires, came snatches of conversation.

First, a young women’s voice, trying to cover some frustration, “It’s like, once it rains, everyone forgets how to drive.”

The other voice, another woman, older, clearly relishing the comfort of wisdom for youth, “It gets greasy...y’know? Tired...and people get sleepy. We are a nation of sleep deprived people...”

She went on, piling needless detail upon shallow observation. Just a typical conversation, but to him it was like a young wine, bursting with sunshine and fruit. As intoxicating as desires that came with it.

In the penthouse suite of a building described as a gleaming knife plunged into the heart of downtown San Francisco, He stood above it all, continuing the conversation in an otherwise empty room, “There are other deprivations, my dears, things you would never imagine.” He was staring down to the rain smeared neon far under foot, something like love working the edges of his good eye, “I think you’ve all suspected, in some sense, at least that there is something missing from your life. From all your lives. Many people have enriched themselves pretending to fill that need, but the best any of them could hope to muster is but the faintest echo.”

He paused a second, waiting for additional bits of conversation to come his way, but the winds must have shifted as none would come. He continued nonetheless, “You could say that it’s the one thing that unifies us all. Loss. We all arise from the fall.” This last was spoken in a near whisper, only for himself.

He was a tall wrinkled man in a wrinkled white suit. Hard to really say where the man stopped and the suit began. He could be anywhere from 30 to 300. A white patch covered his left eye, just a shade off the pallor of his skin.

Duncan Flint’s left hand came up and rubbed his right eye, the normal one, a bout of sudden dryness disturbing his calm. His hand continued along the top of his oddly wrinkled head, pulling the wrinkles taught which also had the effect of shifting his features up his face. There was something hollow in the way it moved. Something clearly wrong.

Despite his best efforts, the pain lingered. He had clearly seen too much tonight. He knew he should be using lube, just like any old whore, but his vanity prevented him. Painkillers were out of the question as anything he could hope to score wouldn’t stand a chance against his metabolism and the acquired resistance that comes from decades of frequent and varied abuse. He needed something to take his mind off it.

He produced a white moleskine from his coat pocket and made a quick review of his schedule, nodded, and put the notebook back in his pocket.

Pausing for just a beat in the hopes of another windbourne diversion, He closed the window, turned, and walked away from the floor to ceiling smartglass sheets that served as the south wall, across the wooden floor of the austere suite to a heavily padded door set in the opposite wall. There were many other doors in the room, but only one door looked like this one.

To the left side of the door was a pedestal ashtray, the kind you used to see in high end hotel lobbies back in the day. Flint clamshelled open the copper dome on top of the ashtray, under it was a white porcelain dish with a central depression filled with a thick, greenish liquid. Tiny shapes looking like pale newborn rats reclined along the liquid’s edge. Closer study revealed small black bat wings and curious hairless monkey faces with bright blue eyes filled with wonder and simple wisdom. Flint reached down and picked one up, heedless of it’s tiny plea of mercy.

They were called Quizzlings and the majority of those who knew of their existence thought their presence long passed from this world. None of this mattered to Flint. The only thing that did was that Quizzlings were the smallest, gentlest creatures known to have a soul.

He gingerly placed the creature in a small chamber set into the front face of the lock, and shut the tiny door, securing it with a latch, produced key carved from some ancient ebony bone, and inserted it into the hole set below the chamber. With a quarter turn to the left, a loud clatching sound came from the lock, almost muffling the Quizzling’s death cry.

The door opened on silent hinges, revealing an ancient darkness.

Flint took a small control unit from a shelf next to the door and entered the room. The door closed silently behind him. The darkness was maddening and complete but Flint didn’t seem to notice, speaking casually as he walked in a wide circle, an even foot away from the walls, “Good morning. I trust you’ve slept well?”

A rasping, muffled sob arose from all around him.

A smile slid across his face, teeth bared and very, very sharp, voice sickly sweet, “Oh, right. I’m sorry, I really had planned to let you rest longer, but you just can’t believe the demand we’re facing. You’ve really created quite the sensation.”

Notes bloomed within the sobbing, beautiful and fragile. A plea.

“Of course not. You really should know better than that.”

Frantic now, trills that called to mind the flight of the buck from the hunter, but still, a plea for mercy.

“Well, enough chat. Time to get to work.” He thumbed a center button on the control.

The room bloomed with light. The room was smaller than you would have thought, a windowless box 15 feet on a side. The walls were covered with thick, black foam coating, a large plasma display was set into the floor, pointing straight up. It was covered with a clear plastic sheet strong enough to stand on. On top of the sheet was a crystal bowl.

This all served to highlight the room’s occupant. It looked like a plump, pink toddler of unclear gender, crowned with a shining mop of blond hair, clad in a white gown, tiny white, feathered wings folded along it’s back, hanging spread eagled in mid-air. The display was set to a vacant channel, medium blue prisming off shining cords made of braided angel hair which secured it to the walls by chubby wrists and ankles.

Flint moved in closer, lower, tilting under it so that he could look the cherub in the eye. The cherub, for it’s part, tried to chew through the gag made from the same hair as the cords, eye’s flared with panic and hatred. It’s fear smelled like roses too long in the vase.

“Oh, come now, it’s not that bad.” Flint regarded the cherub a moment, fondness softening the lines that marked his face. Eyes locked, the cherub’s blue to Flint’s pale gray. In that instant, Flint felt the pull of decency and surrendered himself to it. He saw the person he could be, if only he wished. Such was the power of the image, that it flooded Flint’s body with an unfamiliar warmth; intense and electric.

The shock of this backed him up a step. He looked down, cherishing the feeling, the connectedness to the greater plan of the universe, the peace. He breathed in deeply, raised a quarter-sized tarnished silver hoop to his mouth and exhaled slowly and completely. Flint finally placed the now black hoop in his pocket and stood again, his voice a bit unsteady, “Thank you...thank you so much, I’d forgotten...” Flint’s voice drifted off, clearly lost in thought. Ancient eyes narrowed, sensing an opening.

Too bad for Cupid, Flint snapped out of it. “Well, look, I’ll be back in a few hours to check in. I...” his voice broke for a moment, seeming to age in hundred years in an instant, “Thank you. Really.” He thumbed another button on the control, the blue was replaced by garish flashing headlines, blaring horns, and military drums. The words, FOXNEWS flew across the screen in regal serif.

Cupid’s chubby body sagged against it’s bonds, eyes now staring unblinkingly at the screen like a rabbit hypnotized by oncoming headlights. In the corner of each of it’s perfectly blue eyes, a perfect tear gathered, grew, and dropped into the bowl, ringing with a tone straight from the celestial choir. The first of many.

Flint backed away, closing and locking the door behind him. He paused a moment, straightened himself and his suit with a graceful pull, put the control back on the shelf, and returned to the window. Perhaps the wind had changed.