Fell the Angels, Joslinne Morgan [free novel 24 .TXT] 📗

tiny spirit lanterns that surrounded them in the open, black water.
Without either of them lying down, there was just enough room for two. The boat continued to glide at the same pace. They were constantly surrounded by a thousand or more little boats, headed in the opposite direction.
Every now and then, the spirit would lift her head and glance over the side of the boat.
“What are you looking for?” Amy asked curiously.
“Anyone I know,” the spirit replied quietly.
Amy nodded her acceptance of this, and looked away.
“Who are you?” The spirit asked suddenly. “And why am I here? Why did you pull me out of that … place?” it shuddered at the very thought.
“Amy,” the angel replied. “I’ve told you.”
“Yes,” The spirit replied dryly. “But who are you, and why am I here?”
Amy couldn’t meet the spirit’s sorrowful eyes. She couldn’t bear it.
“You don’t know me. You never really knew me. I was in charge of you when you were in mortal earth. You might say I was your guardian angel.”
The spirit was stunned into a long, cursed silence that dragged on for an eternity.
“Did you ever know my father?” the spirit asked, some hours later.
“No,” Amy sighed. “I never even knew what he looked like.”
The spirit glared at Amy accusingly. “How can you be a guardian angel and not even know who my father was?”
“I was focused on other things,” Amy admitted. “Like helping you get by in school. I thought that if you did well in school then your mother would be happier, and you would be happier. And since your happiness was my main goal, that was where I put all my energy.”
“Ah, school,” the spirit sneered. “The bane of my wretched existence – that’s where I met Brandon, you know. I guess that’s where all your plans went spiraling downhill.”
“I thought Brandon was good for you,” Amy admitted quietly.
“Until he hit me?” the spirit goaded. “Was it the first, or second time around that maybe changed your mind? Or was it when the pregnancy tests came back positive that you decided that?”
“The what?” Amy asked, completely shocked. “The what came back what?”
“You’re the worst guardian angel ever.” The spirit snorted. “So there is something else you didn’t know. Yes, I was pregnant when I had my little … accident.”
“You … never … said anything,” Amy faltered, staring at the spirit in disbelief. “Not to your mother, not to The Almighty…”
“Do you think either of them were listening?” the spirit snapped. As soon as it spoke, its features slackened, as with defeat, and it sighed. “Neither God nor mother cared too much about what I wanted, or what was going on in my life. God had better things to do. Mother couldn’t support a goldfish much less an extra human in the house. I didn’t know how to tell her … I didn’t want an abortion.”
“So you killed yourself…” Amy shook her head, and looked at Heather’s spirit sadly. “Heather, did you really want to die?”
The spirit bit its lip, and shook its head, closing its eyes and pressed its forehead against its knees. “No,” the answer was barely audible. “I just wanted mom to notice me.”
“I failed you,” the tears sprung to Amy’s eyes. “Can you ever forgive me for it?”
“No,” Heather’s spirit spoke through clenched teeth. “I can never, ever forgive you. Not after that, not after you failed.”
It was like an icy dagger had been plunged straight through Amy’s chest. Forgiveness was one of the most important things in the universe, it was one of the values that the world revolved around. The Almighty weighed forgiveness and love on the same scale. That was why she was here, after all! If he didn’t temper justice so well with mercy, she would be in her own little hell and would never have had a second chance.
Neither of them spoke to each other any further for the remainder of the trip.
Eventually, they banked. Their boat hit land and barely gave them a second to remove themselves before it sank back into the sand. Had they been of more substantial flesh and blood, they might have been pulled over. As it was, they went unscathed.
The gloriously beautiful Pilot angel was waiting for them on the other side. Even as he approached them, a procession followed his path, bearing a body on top of a heavy stone slab with many hooded men following behind, each bearing some sort of earthly treasure. The procession made a beeline for the abandoned boat, and Amy stepped aside obligingly so as not to be in their way.
“Welcome back, Amy.” The Pilot angel greeted her. His voice was deep, rich, throbbing, and dark.
“It’s so good to be back,” Amy breathed. She could sense that they were nearly upon the mortal universe. It pollution hung hot and heavy in the air. Not simply the toxins and the chemicals and the smoke, but also the sins, the emotions, the fleshly odors and the smell of decay. All of them slowly dying, their bodies slowly decaying over time, and they could not even know.
The Pilot angel nodded and glanced at Heather’s spirit. He regretted not getting to her in time. There was nothing he could do about it now.
“Where to?” He finally asked, tearing his gaze away. “The Almighty has given me express orders to drop you off wherever you need to be.”
Amy had a few ideas. But before she could express any of them, Heather’s spirit interjected.
“Home,” it said. “I would like to see my home.”
“It has changed,” The Pilot angel warned. “It’s been several weeks since your death. And your mother doesn’t live there anymore.” The bird of God didn’t believe in mincing words.
“Still,” Heather’s spirit said unflinchingly. “I would like to see it. I don’t even have to go any further than that. You can just leave me there. I don’t want to see my mother anyway, I don’t know what I’d do if I did see her.”
Amy looked at the Pilot angel helplessly. He just shrugged, indicating it was her battle. The spirit looked from one to the other challengingly, as if daring either of them to say ‘no’. Finally, the Pilot angel gave in.
“I’ve no objection,” he was used to humoring the dead. “Amy can go see Linda when you’re finished. I care not.”
Heather’s spirit clenched its jaw and nodded, going up to the grip the Pilot angel’s hand. Amy sighed and went up to grip his other hand. They were surprisingly soft. From a distance, he appeared to be carved out of marble. Up close, he was soft and amazingly warm.
Moments later, a searing pain shot from her abdomen to her head, and she screamed as he pushed them through the fine lining that kept the two dimensions separate.


Chapter Six: Paradise Lost

It had been mere hours since her brother had been pronounced dead. The body had been discovered in his bedroom. The door had been locked, but Marianne’s father had a master key to all the locks in the house. Everyone knew that. Marianne knew nothing beyond that when her father attempted to wake her brother up he discovered that the boy was quite dead. He had been twenty-two. They didn’t tell her anything beyond, “Your brother is in hell now, he was given life and he abused it. Let us all keep this moment as a reminder that none of us are immortal. And death comes too quickly, even to the young.” Her father’s striking green eyes fell on her, his thin withered lips pulled into a disapproving line. “You could be next. What is to exclude you, child? Look well on that corpse and put yourself in its place. That could be you. Make your peace with God now, you might not get another chance.” And then he walked away.
She was seven years old.
Her father was the only pastor in the small town, and he would not preside over the funeral. Her mother, who was a worshipper of men and a strong believer of males leading the household, did not disagree or try to persuade him otherwise. Her brother was buried quietly and with little ceremony. Only his friends mourned for him. His family was forbidden to shed a tear.
And Marianne did not. Not once in her life did she ever shed a tear for her dear, dead brother. He was a sinner, he deserved his fate, was her path of reasoning. She had taken a look at the corpse only once. How tired he looked, how distressed. The worry lines were etched deep into his forehead and around his mouth. His face was set like stone, his skin had turned ashen. How worn he looked, and sad. How very much he no longer resembled Mark.
She didn’t know he had committed suicide until his friends told her at the funeral. They pulled up the sleeves to his suit jacket and displayed the ugly red scars running up the length of his arm. Not just one, but many, and deep. They had been sewn shut by the mortician, but even he could not hide the fact that her brother had died a long and painful death.
“Suicide,” his best friend, Brian, said disgustedly. “Look what your fucked up parents have done to him. This is their fault. He hated them, he beat himself up for it, and now he’s dead, and it’s their fault!”
Marianne didn’t believe him for a second. She had run away then, hiding behind an old tractor. She curled up, bringing her knees to her chest and burying her face. Her parents were not … whatever that word was that Brian had said. They loved her… or maybe ‘love’ wasn’t the right word. They cared for her. They certainly cared enough to warn her against the dangers of allowing oneself to succumb to temptation.
After Mark died, they didn’t have any other children save her. So all of their energy was directed towards purifying her soul. She was a perfect child up until she turned fourteen. When she hit that one rebellious year, her father took a rod – a literal rod – and switched her legs, shouting the entire time and threatening to have her exorcised. It scared her enough that she never talked back again, and the welts on her legs the next day were humiliating enough that she never strayed again from the righteous past.
“Spare the rod, spoil the child.” She could remember her father saying very clearly with each hit. The rod smacked soundly into her flesh, and was accompanied by a sob. “Spare the rod, spoil the child. Spare the rod, spoil the child. Spare the rod, spoil the child!” over and over, like an incantation.
But she learned, by the time that she was seventeen and had met Arthur, she knew how a woman should behave. Arthur was the kind of man who needed a leader, he wasn’t the kind of personality that could figure things out on his own. He was very needy, and needed someone in his life to take care of him. Marianne was the woman he needed, for she had a very strong character. No beating could take that out of her. But she hid it so very well. She supported him no matter how bad a decision she felt he was making, and she stuck to him when the results came out exactly as she predicted they would. He should have been grateful to her. But then he had