Clauss stood at the corner of Henderson and Night, his large black wings folded upon his back. Most of his kind had no such wings, and if they did, they would hide them, or take the form of a human just so that nobody would stare. Clauss was proud of his ability to fly, though. He worked very hard to earn it, committing sins at any old chance. He was still immortal, though, lucky for him.
It was close to noon and the sun was beating down angrily on the sidewalk. Clauss was thinking about what brought him to the Florida city he was residing in. Not more than ten years earlier, a girl fell from the sky, to his home island. According to his people, who were immortal and inhuman, such a thing was supposed to happen. This girl was supposed to, one day, bring their entire race home to heaven where they belonged. No more waiting on hand and foot to serve the human race. He had followed the girl to the mainland United States just to be there when she set off the beginning of the end. Clauss could sense that it was going to happen soon.
He flipped his straight bright green hair, a trait of the angels, over his shoulder and tapped the long wooden staff he had with him on the ground. It was a boring day. Usually, the criminals of southern Florida were running amok, trading drugs and firearms, killing women and children, and blowing things up, but they were being unusually quiet.
That is...until Clauss felt a rumbling, like an earthquake, under his feet. A cloud of smoke appeared on the horizon in front of him, so he took to the air. He could see a small fire a few blocks away. He could also see two delinquents he knew too well. Finally, something to do. He flapped his way over to the spot where the two delinquents were dancing around a fire-engulfed compact car. He landed near the bumper, forcefully flapping his wings at the fire until it went out.
This caused the two delinquents to let out very loud and whiny sighs.
“Hello Percival, Kathulla. Still clowning around without your ringleader?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Yeah, fuck off.”
“Would if I could.”
The female delinquent rolled her sandy brown eyes at Clauss. He was still too ‘good’ to have actual reproductive organs. That was a human feature after all, and angels had to sin quite a bit to become recognizable as those. Similarly, demons like Kathulla and Perry had to commit good deeds to gain human features. Kathulla and Perry were just as bad as Clauss was good, so neither of them had real human features, either, or even human organs. They did not have to eat, drink, or even breathe to continue to survive.
Still, Clauss knew that if he wanted to go 'home', he would have to stay somewhat on the morally good side, so he continued to reprimand the demons causing grief to mankind. He shooed them away and they disappeared into an alley, cackling evilly.
“I could’ve done that myself,” came a voice from behind Clauss. He turned to face the man standing there. It was Caspio LeBlanc, another angel whose body had aged similarly to his. Caspio also had wings, though they were white and not as majestic and large as Clauss’s. Standing beside Caspio was his girlfriend, Chelsea. Chelsea had her arms crossed, and her even smaller wings folded and crossed at the bottom to match. She was always angry or upset about something. “It wasn’t Merrily, was it?”
“No,” Clauss responded.
Merrily, an angel girl born on the same enchanted island as Clauss, had taken up a job as a stripper in the city before Clauss had even arrived. She also had a habit of selling drugs and alcohol to high schoolers, as well as committing arson, which was why the angels assumed she had caused the car fire. She claimed she enjoyed the pain committing such sins caused her, which frankly freaked out Clauss. Thanks to her job and friendship with demon girl Kathulla and demon boy Perry, who both were known for committing petty crimes, Merrily had gone through multiple physical changes alongside the mental ones, including the gaining and losing of features like wings and horns. Now even in her divine form, she looked barely different than the average human. She was on the brink of mortality at the rate she was committing sins. It was a shame, since it meant she would very likely not be joining Clauss and his two friends when the time came to go home.
“I haven’t seen her in a while," Clauss said to the two other angels. "I think she’s been hiding out somewhere with Trudy and David.”
Trudy, the girl who had fallen from the sky, had been missing for a while, as well as demon boy David, a friend of Kathulla and Perry. Trudy was clearly not dead, since that wasn’t part of the prophecy Clauss followed her to Florida to watch unwind. She was being awfully quiet, though. Something suspicious was going on.
Clauss sighed. “Do you guys sense it too?” he asked his two friends.
“Yeah,” Caspio replied. “I’ve been on edge all week.”
Chelsea interrupted with a very unhappy tone to her voice, “I dunno what you guys are talking about. Nothing is going on. Trudy's fine. I mean, obviously she’s fine! Merrily's fine too, she’s just hiding from us 'cause she doesn’t wanna be scolded. She’ll come out eventually. She’s too dependent on other people to hide herself away for so long.” She nodded to herself and looked over to Caspio, a highly expectant look in her eyes.
“She means she senses it, too,” Caspio said to Clauss.
***
“I haven’t heard a word from her all year long,” Allek Branch said to his lovely little wife. “It’s strange. She wouldn’t stop talking last year about her new boyfriend. I thought that maybe she’d be the first of her kind to, I dunno, get married or something!” He had his arms up to further decorate his mood.
Mrs. Branch, a much smaller being than Allek, sighed. “Yes, it’s weird, but you can’t get too worried. She’s immortal. There is nothing that could possibly happen to her that would threaten her life.”
“Yeah, but she’s my kid. She was supposed to stay my kid for all of forever, too. And now look where she is. Livin’ it up in Florida. We should be in Florida.”
Allek had been moved in with his new wife for only a few months. It was an upgrade from the tiny one-person trailer he had spent most of his life in, but her luxury apartment on the island mountainside was nothing in comparison to a Florida beach.
“If you really want to check up on her, just have Caspio find her. He followed her out there, after all.”
“I would have to get a hold of Caspio, first.”
“He won’t talk to you, either?”
“Nope.”
Mrs. Branch raised an eyebrow. “That is pretty strange. Kind of suspicious, too. But they’re kids, they disappear without a word all the time, just to do suspicious things. Trudy is the first of her kind to age to this extent. She’s the first of her kind to purposely leave the island, too. There's a lot for her to explore. She’s just having fun.”
“I miss my baby, though. She’s gonna be exposed to all kinds of crazy stuff out there. She’s gonna give in to temptations. She’s gonna get hurt. I mean, she went through extra pain just to grow up. Most kids freak out about their hormones going crazy. She could be transitioning into a mortal. That can’t be a pain-free process. And you know how Clauss was all givin’ me the prophecy about her being the chosen one or some weird supernatural stuff like that, and then he left to go after her too? Something’s up.”
“Allek, nothing’s up.”
“Professor?”
Allek and his wife turned away from each other to see a small angel child at the foot of their meeting table. “Yes?” they both responded, as they were both professors at the Institute On The Hill for angel children.
“I don’t feel so well. I keep having nightmares.”
“They’ll pass, honey,” Mrs. Branch said before the child could explain further.
Allek stood up, pushed his chair out of the way and stepped on over to the child. “Hey buddy, what kinda nightmares are these, huh?” His wife was more of a punisher than an encourager. Allek was a favorite amongst the kids. Liu Branch was the lady they were sent to when they were naughty.
The child explained her nightmares to Allek, using big hand gestures. She had a reoccurring nightmare of being taken away from the Institute by a person in the sky who she called ‘God’. She explained that it was terrifying and that she wanted to stay with dean Branch, who smirked at Allek, who thought he might’ve been more motherly than she was for a moment.
Allek told the child to hang tight for a second and went back to his chair and leaned over the table to speak to his tiny Asian wife. “Caspio used to have dreams like this too, before he started complaining about demons. Remember?” Mrs. Branch let out a longer sigh than before. “Good. Do you also remember how Clauss and literally every single one of the other natives used to freak out about Trudy being the one that would force all these little angels back into heaven? They feared her. I think little princess here is going through that same thing, except for she can’t possibly know about any of that because she’s not native, so yes, something is up.”
Liu Branch stuck her arms out and cracked her knuckles. “Hon,” she said to the tiny child, “speak to nurse Chariot about this. I’ll be along in a few minutes to check up on you.”
The girl nodded and left, her feathery ear protrusions bouncing freely as she skipped out. When she was gone, Liu turned back to Allek and flicked him on the nose. “Really, Allek? Demons? We’ve done research on this stuff and we can’t find any evidence of the existence of demons, cause they don’t exist. You’re gonna make this kid worse if you go talk to her. We can’t have more of them doing what Trudy did.”
“You miss her too, then. You’re worried about her.”
“A little.”
***
Trudy enjoyed sinning just as much as the humans did, and partook in sinful acts whenever possible. Her current line of work involved many acts that were against her god's moral code. She was a stripper, as well as a dancer, and she had the physical make-up of maybe a fifteen-year-old, which was perfect for all the creeps that visited the strip club.
On her breaks, Trudy spent time out in the back of the strip club with her friend and co-worker Merrily, who was a masochist, injecting heroin and getting high. Trudy was similar to Merrily, except Trudy had seen heaven as a child, and still had fear of losing her immortality.
Trudy’s face, when she was in her divine form, was half black, half a tannish rusty skin tone. She had also grown wings, but unlike the three angels that had followed her to the mainland United States, hers were black, gnarled and asymmetric: bat-like on one side and raven-like on the other. Down at her ankles, there swished a tufted tail as well. Angels normally had black stripes leading down both sides of their faces as a mark of their immortality and general good health or good standing in the eyes of their god. Good angels also did not have wings or a tail; their only feathers were on their ears, always counting six, except for Trudy, who had seven before they burned down to nothingness.
On this dusty summer day, Trudy sat back against her vanity mirror in the back of the strip club, pulling forward every now and then. She could not focus on anything. A recent occurrence was causing her to freak right out. Never before had such a thing happened to her species, and she was pretty sure it was not supposed to happen without dangerous consequences. She couldn’t even tell Merrily, who, right after her boyfriend David, was her very best friend.
Trudy was pregnant. Trudy, an angel, who, not even for a few months, had even possessed female reproductive organs, was pregnant! Honestly, she didn’t even understand the process of eating to stay alive yet. She hadn’t been forced to eat for most of her life. Where her stomach was, there used to be a void. Now inside that lower stomach area there was a tiny life. Was it an angel? Human? Something else? She couldn’t possibly be sure. The father was her boyfriend, David, who happened to be a demon. She knew that she shouldn’t have gone ahead and tested out her new human features, but she loved David. And she truly believed that he loved her. She thought there was no better way for them to prove their love to each other, other than having sex. It turned out that being a stripper had taught her well in that category.
David was born, or one could say, spat out of Hell a demon, but he had committed enough good deeds to be just as horribly deformed as Trudy when he was in his divine form. He had thick, long white horns and random white patches of skin on his light chocolate colored face. His once yellow eyes had turned brown. There was excessive, almost animalistic hair on each and every single one of his joints - elbows, knees, chin, shoulder blades and all. He had grown feathers on his ears, which was a feature of an angel, just as Trudy had grown a tail, which was a feature of a demon. They were both that close to becoming mortal, human.
Trudy hadn’t heard from David in days. He had disappeared. Trudy feared for the worst. She rocked back and forth on her cushioned barstool, the lights circling the mirror bouncing back and forth with her movement. Her stomach and hips hurt. She wanted to hold on to her boyfriend. She thought their pact to become human together, their suicide pact, was their special bond.
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