Angel
by Arty

Chapter 1

Nowhen
======

The blackness was complete. Somehow I wasn't afraid, though
I felt that I ought to be. I just couldn't manage it. It was
odd. I wondered where I was; the last time I had been in
this sort of situation had been once in a sensory
deprivation chamber. Perhaps that's where I was. I tried to
remember how I had come to be here. Nothing. I couldn't
remember anything. I felt fear then, but it was distant, a
small thing, inconsequential. It was odd, the blackness; I
tried to move my eyes, I may have succeeded, but there was
no change in my vision so I couldn't tell. I tried turning
my head, to no avail; for all I knew my head could have been
revolving at 45 rpm, but the blackness gave me no clue. A
vision of my disembodied head spinning on a turntable came
unbidden to me; at least it was something to look at. 

I waited. 

I may have slept, though I don't think so. How could I tell?
Everything was black. I did the things that one does to open
one's eyes and there was no difference as far as I could
tell. I was bored. To relieve the boredom, I tried once more
to remember things about myself. There was nothing. I became
discouraged and gave up. This made me angry, what else was
there for me to do? I tried another tack, if I couldn't
remember personal things, what could I remember? I cast
about for something basic, a beginning. An idea came began
to grow, something about first principles. And suddenly
there it was, fully formed and complete: 'I think, therefore
I am.' This was not my idea, I knew that. How did I know
that? Frustration grew and for a time I wallowed in it. 

I think, therefore I am. 

What am I? Who am I? The questions multiplied but I ignored
them, trying to find the answers had failed before and only
led to further frustration. I shelved them and thought about
thought. I pondered how I knew the meanings of the words
that I was thinking. Meanings. Abstract words have abstract
meanings; perhaps if I thought of something more concrete I
could get further? What concrete concepts should I think of?
Now that I had an approach to my problem, I felt happier,
but my problem was now a different one. My situation did not
encourage anything more than cerebral concepts… 

'Cerebral', that was a concrete word. Well sort of, what did
it mean? Of the brain or something like that. The brain was
certainly concrete. I remembered a diagram I'd seen once in
a biology textbook. 'Book', another concrete word; I loved
books. I shrugged aside the question that this begged.
'Library', shelves and shelves of books, just waiting to be
read, bliss! Bloody hell, stuff was just pouring out -
associations were fanning out from the central concept too
fast for conscious recollection. Typical! You wait for half
of eternity for a concrete concept then an infinite number
of them arrive at once! 'Bus', big red things, that carried
many people and travelled in convoys. 

I remembered sitting on the rear seat of a bus with a girl.
Kissing. Groping. Now this was more like it! I couldn't
remember the girl's name, or mine for that matter, but the
kissing was nice. More than nice actually; I drifted and let
the memory play out. I could almost feel her tongue as it… 

The vision faded and I was left with the memory of a memory.
Still it had been pleasant while it lasted. My mind fizzed;
I remembered that this was how I felt sometimes when I woke
from oversleeping. Perhaps I was asleep and this was all
just a weird nightmare. 'Horse of the night', 'lady of the
night', sex. Every train of thought seemed to end in sex. I
tried again, 'Road', surely that was innocuous enough?
'Road, 'car', 'backseat', … all right, I knew when I was
beaten. I wondered at my preoccupation with the three-letter
word. Jesus! Now I was thinking in euphemisms! 'Purple
prose', I wondered at the derivation of that phrase. I
recollected something about a period of American history in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I seemed
to recall it being called the 'purple period' but was
'purple prose' named after the period or vice versa. I
mentally shrugged my shoulders. 'Shoulders', 'body', … yeah,
yeah! Enough already. 

All of a sudden, I could feel my thoughts becoming
disconnected and random. Vague associations skittered off in
all directions and I felt myself fade away. I wondered
vaguely if I would be back. Sleep. To sleep, perchance to
dream… 

Blackness, a familiar feeling, I wondered how long I had
slept. If this was a nightmare, it was taking an
extraordinarily long time to play itself out. Now that I had
opened the floodgates, as it were, odd memories would pop
into the forefront of my mind. A game of cricket played
between the upper and lower 6th. It had been a balmy day,
we'd imported a ringer, he was our age but he'd left school
a couple of years ago. He played in his spare time for the
county 2nd or 3rd team; even so he was the fastest bowler
I'd ever faced. While we waited for the lower 6th to arrive
he'd persuaded me to face him while he bowled a few
looseners. I don't think I saw a single ball, I heard them
though; they fizzed, the air over the lines of stitching
made a noise that I had never forgotten. 

I remembered a running catch, with the ball coming from
behind me over my shoulder. I knew as I ran that I would
catch it, the ball seemed magnetically attracted to my
hands. The cheers of my team were wonderful. The vision of
the game sat, jewel-like, in my mind. As was proper, the
older team beat the younger team, and we all repaired to the
pub across the road from the playing field. Underage
drinking was tolerated there, even though the police house
was less than fifty yards away. Actually, most of the upper
6th was eighteen or over anyway. We'd reflected that, now it
was legal for us to drink, we spent less time in pubs than
we had the year before! 

I remembered the feel of being held between soft breasts… 

Uh oh! Back on that track again. Since I'd failed to
remember anything personal by directly trying to remember, I
tried sidling up to some memories, using the cricket match
as a starting point. This approach was marginally more
successful, though I remembered nothing specific. I seemed
to have the impression that, for most of the players, my
presence was barely tolerated; the cheers when I made the
catch were special because I rarely received such
approbation. Unfortunately I couldn't remember why. 

I waited some more. 

Blackness. Try as I might, I could discern no variation;
wherever I directed my attention, the uniformity of the
blackness was absolute. It was almost as if I had no eyes. I
became alarmed as I wondered if I was blind. Again, the
strong emotion was distant, almost as if it were happening
to someone else and not to me. While I was contemplating the
thought of blindness, I noticed a difference in the
blackness. 

There, in the corner of my view, was a change, a tiny
scintillating dot of light. I was entranced. For I don't
know how long, all I could experience was a monotonous,
monochromatic view, and now there was something different. I
was afraid to concentrate on it, in case it vanished, like
so much of what I experienced here whenever I tried that.
Eventually, I could resist the temptation no longer and
focused directly on the point of light. To my relief, the
light remained. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that
it was doing nothing interesting, apart from simply
existing. However, in my sensation-starved state, I was not
complaining. 

Even so, it was a long time before I noticed that the light
was changing. Slowly, it grew. First it was a point, then it
became a line, and finally, as it approached, I could see it
was like a string of pearls. Each bead glowed with an
opalescence that was the most beautiful thing I had ever
seen. The beads continued to grow larger. It occurred to me
that maybe the beads were stationary and it was me that was
moving. No sooner had this thought crossed my mind, than I
began to feel the sensations of falling. Like my fear
earlier, it was muted and distant, but it was enough for me
to reinterpret my current reality as a flight towards the
beads. By now they filled my whole field of view; they were
not so much beads as bubbles. Inside the bubbles I could see
people; I yearned to join them, to have some contact with
another person. By the time I'd thought to count the beads
or bubbles, I was too close to see them all; I seemed to be
headed for one somewhere in the middle. I was just starting
to wonder about this when I slid through the surface of the
bubble I had been approaching… 

1994
====

Angela was crying. Like this was something new. She was
always crying when I was around. Of course, whenever I was
around, she always seemed to get hurt and her mother blamed
me. Angela's crying became louder and I looked down at her
arm where I was gripping it tightly. I let go and I stared
at the bruises starting to form. I'd really done it this
time! Angela was inconsolable; she seemed to delight in
getting me into trouble. I waited, resigned, for the
inevitable. 

"What have you done to her this time? You wretched boy!" The
strident tones of Angela's mother reached my ears at about
the same time as I saw her face being pushed close to mine.
Her expression was angry. She grabbed my ear and turned my
head so she could point out the marks I had made on Angela's
arm. I said nothing, there was no point, and anything I said
would only prolong things. I was the villain of the piece. 

"Look at those bruises on her arm, what have you got to say
for yourself, Mark?" 

I stood mute, the evidence was damning and incontrovertible;
I'd hurt her 'little angel'. I remembered the sick horror
I'd felt as I watched Angela walk, without looking, straight
into the path of the car. Time had seemed to slow and I'd
felt as if I was striding through molasses. The grip I'd
taken had been tighter than I needed, but I could take no
chances, I would only get the one attempt to drag her
backwards out of he way. 

The car had passed, missing Angela by inches. For a blessed
few seconds the silence had been absolute as the world had
seemed to hold its breath. For those fleeting moments I'd
entertained the idea that this time would be different; that
this time even if I did not receive approbation, at least I
would not receive abuse. My hopes were dashed when Angela
began to cry. 

I'd waited, wondering what would happen this time; debating
silently on whether it worth extending the torment by trying
to defend myself. For a moment I contemplated telling
Angela's mother about pulling Angela out of the path of the
car that had driven past, the driver oblivious as he chatted
with his passenger. A fresh bout of crying from Angela
distracted her and I waited for the rest of the scene to
play itself out. The flat of her hand, as it cracked across
my face, was as shocking as it was unexpected, and I fell
bonelessly to the ground. My face reddened in embarrassment
at being knocked down in this way. 

"Let that be a lesson to you. Stay away from my daughter."
She turned away from me in disgust and carried her daughter
away. I lay on the ground, my ears ringing from the noise of
her hand on my cheek. My face burning with the humiliation
of being so ignominiously dumped here, like so much rubbish.

Angela cried fresh tears; I wondered at this, she hadn't
been slapped, had she? Why was she crying still? I heard her
mother speaking comforting words. Crooning to her daughter,
she continued talking. She turned to glare at me and her
words became distinct and understandable; they were as much
for my benefit as Angela's. 

"Don't worry darling, he won't hurt you any more." Her sobs
continued but getting quieter as her mother carried her
away. She must have turned back towards me as the next
phrase was obviously directed at me. 

"Why don't you pick on someone your own size, you cowardly
bully?" Unjust as the accusation was, my ears still burned
with the shame of being labelled a coward. I felt tears
starting to leak from my eyes. This was all so unfair… 

"Why didn't you say something?" I looked up to see Susan
holding out her hand to me. I took it and allowed her to
pull me to my feet. I wiped the tears from my eyes, angry
that I was crying in front of Susan. 

"She wouldn't have believed me. She never does. I don't
understand it, she hates me and I don't know why." 

"I'd have backed you up." 

"I didn't know you were there. She always turns up when the
danger is long gone, and all she sees is 'her little Angel'
crying her eyes out and me nearby. I'd swear sometimes that
Angela cries on purpose." 

"Oh Mark, it's not fair!" I found myself enveloped in a hug.
Susan, at fourteen, was older than I by three years. Even
so, she was the youngest of four girls and she'd adopted me
as the younger brother that she'd never had. Angela, the
little brat, was three years younger still. We were all next
door neighbours, in and out of each other's houses, though
relations between my mother and Angela's were getting a
little strained. Susan pulled back from me. 

"You said, 'she never does.' And 'she always turns up…' What
did you mean?" 

"You didn't think this was the first time this has happened
did you?" 

"How often do you save someone from almost certain death?" 

I thought for a while. "Counting today, I'd say five times."

"Five!" 

"The first time was when I stopped her pushchair from
running down Coopers Lane. She'd been left outside Turner's,
the butcher, then this dog ran past and knocked the
pushchair; the brake slipped and off she went. I grabbed the
pushchair as it went by. Of course by this time Angela was
bawling her head off and I got accused of trying to kidnap
her or something. No one else saw anything and I got shouted
at. I must have been just seven at the time." I stopped to
think. "Next was when some dickhead pushed a shopping
trolley down Coopers Lane. I caught hold of it before it hit
her; of course I couldn't stop it completely, so she got
bruised a little. So she cries and her mum turns up to see
me holding the trolley that has just run into her little
Angel and she puts two and two together and gives me grief."

"Didn't anyone else see?" 

"They may have, but you know how loud Angie's mum is?" I
supposed it came from being a single mum and having to do
everything for herself. "They probably reckoned that they
didn't see what they thought they did." Susan laughed at
this. 

"That's three, what happened next?" 

"Then when I was nine, about year and a half later, she fell
off the climbing frame. I saw her start to fall and managed
to get underneath her. Somehow, her head hit my nose and
broke it and I split my head open on the concrete. Our
little angel decided that her head hurt where she'd hit mine
and ran off crying to mummy. This time I managed to get away
without being noticed." I'd had blood streaming from the
back of my head and my nose hurt and was bleeding too. Mum
had rushed me to casualty, where an unsympathetic nurse had
straightened the fractured cartilage of my nose with little
ceremony and much pain on my part. 

"So that's how your nose got broken! We all thought you'd
been beaten up." 

"I didn't see the point in telling everyone what really
happened, it seemed easier to let you all make your own
stories up. Anyway, a week later, that kid from out of town
fell and fractured his skull, they pulled the climbing frame
down after that." 

"And number five?" 

I was starting to see a pattern; I'd never listed all these
incidents one after the other before. "That was last year.
She got caught in some weeds when we were all swimming in
the river. If she hadn't panicked, she could probably have
got out by herself. Anyway I dived down and managed to get
her untangled. But by then she was hysterical and her mother
sees me with her little girl who's crying like she's being
murdered and jumps to the wrong conclusion again. I didn't
wait for the repercussions, I just swam off." 

"So that's what the fuss was all about. You never said…" She
interrupted herself, "But then you wouldn't would you?" 

"What's that thing my Dad always said about good deeds?" 

"No Good Deed ever goes unpunished." 

"Yeah that's the one. I never understood what that was all
about before." 

"I don't think it has anything to do with what's happening
to you." She grabbed me again and hugged me to her teenage
breasts. I'd had a crush on her for ages and this was just
heaven. The hug finished far too soon for my tastes, but the
consolation prize of a gentle kiss from her sent me floating
away on a cloud, the sting of my cheek forgotten. She smiled
at the effect that her kiss had, had on me. She knew the way
I felt about her. Then she turned and walked back to the
cheering of her friends. 

.oOo.

The blackness was back. 

With nothing to distract me, my mind became a positive hive
of questions buzzing angrily in search of an escape. 

Shit. What was it all about? It seemed familiar and, while
it was going on, I knew I'd lived it before, but it was like
I was a spectator or something. Was I in some sort of
super-duper VR machine? If so, why couldn't I remember
anything? I mulled over the details of the scene I'd just
been in. Angela: our little angel, something about her
nagged at me. And the other girl, Susan; she'd felt like my
older sister. I knew she loved me, but somehow I knew I
didn't have an older sister. It had all been so clear when I
was in the scene. Why couldn't I remember things now? 

I knew that my Dad had died. He'd been a hero, saved a kid
from being run down by a runaway lorry, but couldn't get out
of the way himself. The pain from that seemed muted and I
surmised that it had been some time ago. Was I the kid? I
didn't think so, but I couldn't remember the details. 

The enigma of Angela's mother remained, why did she hate me
so much? Why did she always see the worst of any situation
with me in it? What had I done to deserve it? The questions
buzzed around in my mind, never alighting long enough for me
to think coherently about any one of them. The sting of the
slap on my face still seemed to throb, but it was fainter
now. Just the echo of a memory of a memory… 

I felt a ghostly acceleration and then I was turning and
diving into the next bubble in the string… 

-Continued-

-- 
http://www.asstr.org/~arty