“I’ll tell you tonight,” she said, then began walking away with Tadeo’s mother, humming along to the song blasting into her ears and leaving the young man there sighing and shifting, looking down at the ground.
“Your mother is looking well,mijo,” said the priest chirpily.“Is she on new medication?”
“No,” Tadeo replied quietly, and he listened to a child cry nearby as a mother wrestled with him.“No, I just hope it’s been my prayers.”If only she could have a miracle, the way Tadeo had.
With a polite farewell, Tadeo headed off, walking.He tended to travel on foot, just to ensure that the streets he patrolled were safe.He turned his head in every direction, catching some soldiers and their tanks, but they didn’t confront him.They didn't do that very often, anymore.To himself, Tadeo often hoped that some of the soldiers thought highly of him, appreciated him culling their ranks of the corrupt, but it never felt that way.Like the locals, they knew who he was.Surely, there wasn’t a soul in town that didn’t know what he was, except for those who had the misfortune of stumbling onto his territory.Like Father Ángel, perhaps.‘He smiled too much,’ for a priest, however beautiful that smile was.
Some teens pointed him out, murmured to one another, and one old man shuffled by quickly.A child in the back of an old car on the wide road perked up at the sight of Tadeo on the sidewalk and waved excitedly.At times, Tadeo wondered why he was a secret, but if the locals couldn’t stand talking of the war, they probably couldn’t stand talking of the end of the war either.And that was what Tadeo was — the end of the war.The town was cleaning up.More innocents wandered around after sunset.There would be less fear soon.Tadeo hoped the people would stop fearing him too, soon.Whispers around corners and in alleys only spoke of a terrible monster, who killed terrible people.
An hour later, the resurrected young man arrived at his destination.A one-story home with graffitied walls and overgrown trees that had invaded through the gaps of boarded-up windows; it’d belonged, surely, to a family, once.There were a few children’s toys left behind in the yard that Tadeo, pushing open a fence gate, was stepping over.And there had been a mass exodus, ten years ago, maybe more than that — thousands of families hurrying to cross up north or scurrying down to a safer city.What would those who lived here think of what their home had been used for in their absence?What did all those who’d left think of this place?Tadeo hoped they’d return one day.‘And it can all be like none of the war ever happened.’Approaching a door, skewed to the left and hanging on by only the top hinge — Tadeo pushed it aside gently and strode in.Narrowly, he missed the shards of a beer bottle on the ground, and his sneakers crunched on the dirt over the tile instead.He allowed the door behind him to half-close.
One of Tadeo’s hands went to his waistband, and he gripped the handle of his pistol for comfort.
Dust sprinkled the dark air, with the only light streaming down from gaps in the old ceiling.It was a living room before him — the couch from the last time he’d been here remained, and so did all the wrappers of junk food on the coffee table.A crucifix and a candle dedicated to Mary were there too, but the candle was tipped over.It hadn’t been last time.Slowly, Tadeo flickered his gaze back up, and he exhaled slow through his nostrils, and he listened.One of the trees that’d invaded was shaken by the wind, banged into the window, but otherwise, there was silence.‘But something is wrong.’He could sense it nonetheless.‘Someone was in here.’Maybe it hadn’t been a trafficker, maybe just a burglar; Tadeo didn’t hurt burglars; he only killed killers, abusers.‘Maybe it’s nothing.’Even still, Tadeo could feel monstrous limbs restlessly moving beneath his skin, his jaw aching, wanting to sprout new teeth, his joints wanting to bulk, his back aching with the want to spread wings and grow eyes.
It was always a pain to transform into a beast, though; he didn’t like walking home naked.
Tugging out his pistol, Tadeo stepped toward the open kitchen area with its dead appliances and empty space where a fridge had surely been stolen.As he did, however, he noticed a feather on the litter of the floor — among soda cans, food wrappers, and roaches.Tadeo approached quickly, crouched to grab it, then lifted it.It was long, definitely too long for any local birds.Could it be exotic animal trafficking?Tadeo had never come across that, but he supposed anything was possible in this bizarre world.
As if to answer his muse, a sudden force struck him from above, at an angle, throwing him harshly over a pile of trash and making Tadeo drop his gun and snarl at the weight over him.“Get the fuck off!”Tadeo yelled, ripping an arm away from whatever, whoever, was trying to hold him down and turn him onto his back.Talons burst out through the skin of his fingers, as well as a partly winged appendage at the forearm.Eyes, too, began to tear open in a bloody spectacle all along his arm.Just as Tadeo flung the attacker away with inhuman strength, he saw them through a flaming eye at the back of his hand.
“Ah!”cried out the creature, slamming into a kitchen wall, then crashing into some wooden cabinet, taking two plates down with them in a deafening clang as the attacker flailed, white wings flapping erratically behind.“Ow, ow.”Over their head, they had been wearing a fabric like lace, but it was slipping down to their neck, revealing dark hair, much of which had fallen over their speckled face.His long robes were white, or rather had been, but smudges of brown had stained the entire outfit beige.He could have been a human, but when he faced the recovering, standing Tadeo, he was suddenly, unimaginably, beautiful.And he breathed in a pretty, soft voice, “You… It’s you.”
One of Tadeo’s arms was still a living, trembling mass of talons, eyes, bubbling skin.It burned, screaming out in agony that Tadeo clenched his teeth and bared.“What are you?”He staggered back, but he didn’t humanize his arm yet.“Who are you?”
“You’re… Tadeo.”The creature moved onto his hands and knees, trying to set a bare foot down.“It’s you.You’re Tadeo.”The young man in question narrowed his eyes, he saw some of this creature’s wings dragging against the litter, and he cringed as if he could feel every sticky, textured trash tangling with each feather.“You’re him, aren’t you?You’re the one who died and resurrected.All of your wounds were healed.”
Hesitating, Tadeo drew in breath after breath.He wasn’t stupid; it looked like an angel before him, not too dissimilar to those he saw in church, in statues, on candles.“Not all of my wounds,” he corrected quietly.With his more human fingers, he touched the bandages over his right eye.“This one, this part — it’s never healed.”The shot that had killed him.“But who are you?How do you know?”
“I’m an angel.”
“Angel.”Lowering his hand, Tadeo shook his head but not in disbelief.“Did— Did God send you?”He took a step back, reaching for his beast hand with his human one, trying to soothe it now, the pain so great it made the rest of him tremble.“What are you doing here?”
Dina’s eyes were silver.“I must help you,” he whispered.“I know what’s going to come.”Slow, he rose to stand tall, his lips parted in an almost childish wonder.“The world is going to end, Tadeo.”
Tadeo blinked, then flickered his gaze to his ruined arm, each eye slowly shutting, talons cruelly shredding their way back in.‘It’s true then,’ he thought.‘God did this to me.’Outside, he could hear the sounds of his town again, and the heavy tires of army trucks rolling by.‘It’s all true.Fuck, it’s all true.’His heart was heavy, and yet it rose, scratching its way up his neck and pulsing beneath his only eye.“The end of the world?”
“Yes.”The angel was nodding, though Tadeo only saw it from his peripheral vision.“I’ve come to… help you.”
The young man felt a fear creeping along his skin, so cold that he felt like a boy again.“The world already ended,” he found himself whispering, taking a step back in the terror beginning to rack its claws up his body; shock and fear and confusion in one crude mixture always did remind him of that morning he’d found his father, that year of his life, those days that his town began to crumble all around him.His gaze flickered back to the angel, and Tadeo said, “The world ended ten years ago.”
CHAPTER6
‘Apsinthos, tell me what you’ve done now.’
‘What you have been too much of a coward to do, Kimah.’
‘You will stop speaking to that angel.’
‘I’ll end this eternity of suffering at last, and I won’t wait for the blessing of any of the other stars, not even you.There are trillions of me burning in the sky with you.I’m shattered across all of the darkness.Can you feel me?Some stars hold pieces of you, pieces of me.Do you ever feel me burning against you and think of the Uri you so loved?’
‘The prophecy is not true, Apsinthos.There will not be an end of time or suffering.The only thing you might end is man.’
‘If only man will end — then why do you stop me?Let me be so gracious by slaughtering every last one of them to end their misery.’
‘Now you pretend to be noble?Now you say you are ending them to bring them salvation from suffering?Your only concern is you.’
‘My only concern is me?I am hardly me.There is no star in the sky that is me alone.If it were not pain enough to burn, it is even worse to never know quiet, to have once been whole, to have split into trillions of pieces over billions of years.Time is endless, you tell me.Pain is endless, you tell me.If that’s so, I’ll create end.End in its entirety.It’s the only manner of destroying myself.’
