The Origins/ The Darkened Angels

The Origins

1.

And then there must be mankind. So from the soil laden with life, they took form. He was thick slabs of dark flesh covering large bones, and she was fire crowned and shapely. Alone in the lavish paradise, they dipped their faces in the running water and dried in the boiling sunlight. Now they were nourished and relaxed, a final need was still to be met. As she lay, hair splayed on the ground, he stood over her blocking the sun with his head and becoming a faceless silhouette. He loomed closer preparing to barrage her with his weight. She noticed her elbows digging into the dirt were stained red. Flecks of ruddy-colored earth the same as his lips. As hers. It was the same rouge, which came from the ground, that stained her cheeks and that pinked his tongue. They had been made from the same earth, and yet he was illuminated by the light, a golden aura resting on his fringed hair. while she was soaking up the mud in the shadow he cast, darkness curled around her. So, as his palms rested beside her head, she turned and rolled and stood. Who was she to be beneath him? Creatures made of the same earth, they were equal. She faced off against him and once his mouth formed words of protest, she ran.

And so the first woman left the garden and headed into the barren wastelands. Bare feet became shredded on a ground that was no longer soft as she broke through the haven’s barrier into the true world. Pain shooting from her bloody feet and empty heart, she transformed. Her shoulder blades broke in half and punctured the skin on her back, growing until they arched over her head. Then they sprouted feathers, long, black, and mysterious. Winged and cloaked in darkness, she took flight into the stars and to the rest she became the monster of the night.

But who was man to be alone? The first had fled so They tried again. This time, learning from mistakes of the past, They cast her mold from his rib. And so from him, she appeared, with a likeness all too similar to the first. The only difference was her paleness; devoid of all color from the earth, she was as white as the bone that made her. Her slender body cowered. Now they were not equal, and the man of the ground and the woman who was given the breath of life were together in paradise.

For days the winged woman flew—her escape, no destination in mind but a continuous urge to run. Eventually, she came upon a sea crashing on eroded cliffs that marked the end of the desert wasteland. The sun was hot and the breeze from the water was cool. With closed eyes, she sighed in the open air, finally shedding the weight she carried from the garden. Before she could open her eyes a tugging started at her crown, and when she lifted her lids a man was beside her, his fist clenching her long red hair. He yanked at her hair pulling her close to him. She saw the details of his face, the hard lines of age on his brow and his blue eyes of fury. With a screech, he pulled a knife from the satchel by his waist and dug it deep into her wing. The pain radiated from the center of the stab sending waves of throbbing through her back. Her wing stopped moving as she turned to face the man and caught his self-satisfied grin. No words came from her lips as she lost her place in the sky, about to plummet to the ground. The man, who she realized had wings of his own, held so tight to her hair that as she fell backward, gravity winning without her wings, she felt a sharp sting as the strands he held came out from her scalp. He smiled as he looked down at the fistful of them.

The wind did nothing to slow her fall and all but a moment passed before she plunged into the waters below. She gasped as her lungs filled with water. Screams lost in the sea's void. She sank deeper, arms and legs flailing. She was still close enough to the surface, though, to watch the opal-colored rivulets of light reflected by the water. They cast geometric shapes across her exposed body. As she followed their patterns, she watched as with a flash the man was back before her, this time accompanied by two others. The three men each looked similar. Their white wings still fluttered beneath the water. Mischievous grins and eyes in varying hues all radiated the same degree of malice in their dilated pupils. She thought these must be the demons that scavenged the earth.

Demons. It was the one who stabbed her that spoke. Had he heard her? Us, demons. No. He laughed at the thought, throwing his head back. It is you who is the demon. I am Sense and we are here to bring you reason. We will see to it that no child of yours shall live. She thought it strange since she had yet to bear children but he continued nonetheless. You will kill each child you mother upon birth. His words dissipated with the current of water but the look on his face was clear. They would haunt her all her life.

Sense came towards her again and kicked his foot into her chest, knocking the final bit of air out her lungs.

He quickly took hold of her injured wing and tore the knife from her wing, dragging the blade in a long scratch down from the original hole as he removed it. He rejoined the other two men. He stared in her eyes as he pocketed the knife back in his satchel before the three angels blinked out of the water and existence. The wound was bleeding freely now without the knife to keep it in place. Ribbons of blood snaked through the water, turning the sea red. Somehow she managed to move enough to surface, head emerging from the water with a cry of anguish. She only had time for three large huffs of air before a serpent locked his tentacle around her ankle and pulled her back into the depths, claiming her for the place under it all.

Back in the garden, the second woman was restless, curious, and searching. Man, though, was sated and content as always. She paced and he napped. He plucked and counted each piece of grass before turning to her. He grabbed her hips and swayed with her to the wind’s song. She let him pull her and twirl her close, but still, she was aching. Days were endless and the night she craved was elusive. Darkness only lasted moments, moments she could never catch, before dawn set in. She waited, wondering about the stars while he hummed, his nose in the hibiscus flower. Of course, when night came to the garden she leaped for her headfirst.

After her breath of air, wing still bleeding, she was drowned. Burrowed through the earth, and then forged in the fire, eyes reflecting the light like stars. They called her Lilith, meaning night monster, for the darkness of her wings, and finally she rose again. She found the garden easily, the only patch of brightness in sight, and landed just beyond the edge of the walls.

On the other side, man was dunking his head beneath the stream, trying desperately to catch a fish as he saw the birds do over and over. He choked on the water as birds kept flying by next to him, reaching in with their beaks before pulling out their prize with ease. He growled and his stomach rumbled as they flew away with his food. The woman grew bored of watching him and wandered off, her appetite taking her to a blossoming tree on the edge of the land. As she came to grab a fruit from the tree, she saw Lilith's head peering over the stone ledge and into the garden. Frightened, she jumped backward landing on her back. Lilith crawled over to her, kneeling by her feet, looking into a face exactly like her own. A mirror perhaps, but no, paler. Hair a spun-gold lace, not ruby red. Her skin white like a swan, but not covered in feathers. She had no wings, just dainty sloping shoulders, two small hills that framed her head. She reached for her back and felt around as if hoping for wings of her own. There was nothing but unblemished skin.

Who are you, Lilith whispered to her. The fair woman pushed forward, kneeling now as Lilith was, while she reached her hand out to trace the black feathers of Lilith's wing. She leaned even closer, their noses touching before she brushed her lips gently over the scar from Sense’s knife. She kissed down the wing following the line of scarring until she hit the skin of Lilith's neck. Eve, the wind blew her name with valor. The woman drew back again staring into Lilith's eyes. I’m Eve, she spoke.

And then the two were one. They spent their nights together. Tumbling intertwined down daffodil-spotted hills. Breathing in each other while having a midnight snack, they bit into fresh fruit blooms, mouths tingling with sweetness. When they were finished, they dug the seeds from the core and used sticky fingers to burrow and shove them into the ground. With those dirt-coated fingers they dreamed of the tree that would one day stand in this spot that they did. They daydreamed, lusting, and sharing secrets under the sun. One particularly clear night they lay under the stars connecting dots and searching for meaning. Don’t you wish you could touch them, longed Eve.

Lilith turned over to face her. We can try, she said and suddenly she hoisted Eve to her feet and gripped her arms tight and took off into the air. They rose as Eve shuddered. Silent else for their racing hearts and Lilith’s flapping wings. As the air thinned and grew cold they stopped for a moment to admire the shining orbs above them. Then Lilith closed her wings and they fell. The descent cloaked them in a tunnel of wind and darkness. The ground was encroaching. They were about to hit. A second from the ground Lilith reopened her wings and they flew, gliding through the garden, their elated sounds echoing. Lilith looked back at her wings. Wings that had been nothing but a painful reminder of her ruin, punishment for her rebellion. Yet here they were guiding her through the place she once escaped from, the perspective from above letting her see with clean eyes what a pretty paradise it really was.

And then there were the two first women. Pale of dawn and dark as the night that began the world. Soaring on a breeze they skimmed the surface of everything.

These Darkened Angels

2.

There is a group of them sitting outside. It's warm for November, sharp with the heat of the earth's illness. Faces I recognize from classes over the years. I am surprised by the warmth as they greet me. Some even slide over and make room for those of us who have just arrived. I take an open spot and inventory of the circle. I know everyone here. Most are just figures I pass in the school hallways. I know their names, how smart I thought they were, and whom they liked to sit with at lunch. Nothing more. Some, though, are more familiar. I watch Tate in her red petticoat. She’s perched on an Adirondack chair above the circle of people who sit on wet grass at her feet. She rises above us in the caliginous night. Her legs are crossed and her posture slouches forward, shifting her weight onto her knees. She holds a cigarette to her mouth. The faintest glow from the tip illuminates her charcoal-lined eyes. She is one with the darkness. Laughing as she blackens her lungs. I watch closely as she blows smoke from her red lips. Tate puts the cigarette back in her mouth. Red cinders almost touch her lips but she doesn't waver. She is the fire. The sparks will not hurt her, so she chats casually with her disciples while the ashes fall on her shoes. She twirls her helix piercing. Her hair is as black as her pupils, yet stringy and unkempt. She is still so attractive though her features aren't pretty. Her forehead is clunky, nose bent, her jaw like a man's, but you wouldn't notice them. You would see the inky shadows she lives in. Dark curls that flow around you and make you long to know what they hold. You desire them, her. And so in your longing, she becomes beautiful. Tate passes her box of cigarettes to Ilsa, who crawls over the lap of a ginger boy to grab one off the top. The ginger boy looks thrilled to have Ilsa’s body stretched over his legs. He stares at her waist, mesmerized; his eyes grow wide in protest as she slides back to her seat leaving his lap empty. Ilsa is the opposite of Tate. Pale freckled skin, pearly white teeth, and yellow blonde hair. Ilsa is tall and slender, light and giggly, and yet they are so fitting together. There is something deeper that they share. Something inside them that is eclipsed. I watch them with a pang in my chest. I think back to the last time we all were together like this.

Tate, Ilsa, and I were sitting in Ilsa’s well-lit basement, lounging on the floor among half-done craft projects, passing back and forth two green glass bottles. I took small, but brazen sips, tilting the bottle all the way back to exaggerate the motion of the swig, yet letting barely a drop of the liquid slide down my throat. We were laughing as we drank, throwing our heads back to dramatize the movement. Girls showing off, though there was no one there to see it. They were the kind of girls whose smiles would draw stares from strangers on the street, bewitching their minds with lust and burning. Their flowing hair was thrown over tall shoulders, long and luscious locks twirled in their fingers. They wore clothes pre-shrunk to reveal indented waists, curved hips, and belly buttons stretched to ovals from skinniness. Seductive like sirens in the night luring sailors across the seas to bloody deaths. I longed to be like that. The clarity of the darkness beckoned.

Ilsa drew close to my face with a grin. Her head tipped into mine, our foreheads pressed together. Braces gripped her teeth; she was still a child, I expected the smell of bubblegum, but the air around her was stale and acrid. And yet, her smile was contagious and one spread on my face as our noses touched. Tate was beside us, her back against the wall and legs crossed at the ankles in front of her. She made a face, mouth pursed and eyebrows raised, as she held tight to the bottle. With a small shake of her head, she passed the bottle off to Ilsa who gladly chugged the remainder of the contents and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. I grimaced, hardly able to take the bitter taste. Ilsa was beaming. Her eyes were radiant and I wanted so badly to be radiant, too.

“I’m hot,” Tate said as she rose from the floor, shedding her sweatshirt and tossing it carelessly on the floor. Ilsa and I stood too, only she jumped up and started to race up the stairs. I turned my eyes to the ceiling, past brick, to the sky.

I see them moving now. Music I don't listen to blares from a cell phone. They get up from the circle on the grass and move to the center. Their bodies move to the rhythm. Ilsa shakes her head, blonde locks catching the light from a nearby window. Tate’s red petticoat sits on the chair. She throws her shoulders back carving the air with her motion as the beat drops. Ilsa throws her arm around Tate's neck and pulls her close, yelling the lyrics with certainty. Everyone around us is dancing. I try to dance too, but I feel foolish. I look like I’m seizing, though I am trying to mimic the graceful sexy moves of the rest of the girls. A new song comes on and the boys cheer with throaty growls. They knock each other on the back and huddle together. They bop with gusto, jumping in unison. The grass vibrates with the weight of landing, feet crushing the green sprouts. I hear Ilsa’s voice above the loud music galvanizing a short brunette girl off the ground and into the dancing fray. Her words hold power. Dance, she would say, and dance they would. I catch her eyes as she does so. She smiles at me with genuine happiness in her eyes.

“C’mon!” Ilsa was already halfway up the stairs when she called down to us, “Let’s go!” We followed her blindly through her house. Prints and paintings filled the walls entirely. Couches, clocks, and postmodern sculptures decked the room. We were running past them, evading the clutter before we climbed the next set of stairs. At the top Ilsa rushed straight ahead and swung open a door. I expected it to hold her bedroom; instead, it was a beige tiled bathroom with a white porcelain sink and a polka-dotted shower curtain. Tate and I stood there while Ilsa worked. She lifted a chair from the hallway and brought it into the bathroom. She placed it against the wall and under the window. She stood on the chair and with a bobby pin expertly unlatched the screen from the window frame. She popped it out and placed it under the chair beneath her. She shoved the glass open all the way and bent her back into an arch, sticking one leg then the other through before bending her torso and head through the portal on the wall. She was standing somewhere on the other side.

“Meg taught me this,” she shrugged “But she’s out tonight so we can hang here.” I wondered where her sister was, but Tate was already on top of the chair and with one leg through the window, flying out. I followed suit; the windowsill brushed my calf as I maneuvered through the hole. I felt the flat ground under my foot. Relieved, I quickly guided my body in its escape from the bathroom desperate to get out. I found myself on the roof of Ilsa's house. A flat portion about fifteen feet above the ground. It was too low to see the neighborhood beyond the trees, but the glow of a streetlight broke in slits through pine branches. The air was fresh and freezing as we huddled together on the roof. We lay together, heads pressing, hair tangling into one knotty mess as we stared and amused ourselves with talk of nonsense. Our loud words got lost in the night around us. I watched them disappear and followed the wisps from our tongues get sucked into the sky. Something in the dark came alive, waiting for the moment to take hold inside of us. The cold of New York winter eventually chased away the warmth we had built huddled together, so we unbraided our limbs and tumbled back through the window to the bathroom, cured by the warmth and the light inside.

I stopped being curious that night but I knew somehow Tate and Ilsa only grew more eager. They went off on their own. They’d dance in the night with strangers, swaying hips to music only they could hear, passing around bottles and joints. They would flirt and relish in looks of desire thrown their way. They would be magnets captivating the room. Everyone near them spellbound. They lusted for that life. I was an outsider, and though I loved them, it would not make me one of them. And now it had been three years and they were in front of me again.

“How are you, Rach?” Ilsa asks me, pulling me into a tight hug. I wrap my arms around her neck and pause for a moment struck by the familiarity of her embrace. Tate follows close behind hugging me, too. I smell the ash in their hair. The night air is hot, but goosebumps rise on my skin. Shivers run down my side as their onyx shadows caress me.

“We’ve missed you,” Tate says, her head tilting to rest on Ilsa's shoulder. I tell them I’m good. We converse casually for a few minutes. I long to ask them more. I want to ask them where they have been. If things got better with Tate's father. If she still lives alone most of the time. I want to ask Ilsa how Meg is. How her parents are. I want to ask Ilsa if her mother still makes her crepes. The ones she made Ilsa and me early in the mornings when I slept over. My mouth waters with the taste of the sweet pastry. But I keep my questions to myself. They may have forgotten I know these things. I wonder if they remember the secrets I told them once.

The night finishes fast. Small groups of people steadily file out of the yard and venture home. I watch Tate and Ilsa hop into a car together. A small white Prius I know Ilsa calls the tampon. As they drive down the road into the black night, the darkness swallows them whole, claiming these two girls as their own.