Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 40901 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40901 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Guards rush up beside us, pointing their useless weapons at me. I notice that in addition to the guns pointed in my face, they all have quivers on their backs and compound bows mounted alongside them. These guards absolutely bristle with weaponry, all in my honor.
I don’t care about the guns, nor am I impressed by the general display of weaponry. They can’t kill me. I am the point of this entire facility. All these millions of dollars, all these jobs of cruelty and control. They all exist because of me.
“I never expected you to make this easy, Katie,” he says, using the bastardized version of my name as his blood drips through his beard and soaks into the desert soil. “But making it hard on me will only make it harder on you.”
He says all of this in gruff and stuffy tones thanks to the situation with his nose. I’ve broken it. I am certain. I could not be more pleased with myself. He may have me captive, but I have drawn first blood.
“Put her in her cell,” he says to the guards. “And be careful. She’s dangerous. And precious.”
Aw. How sweet. I’m precious to him.
Sheriff goes to get his nose fixed, I presume. It’s bleeding rather profusely, and there’s no way he can intimidate me while being slowly exsanguinated through his nostrils.
I am lifted up to my feet by guards who immediately begin to struggle and curse to one another with the effort. I let my limbs go limp and become a dead weight, just to make their jobs that little bit harder. Their guns are in the way now. Someone hasn’t thought this through. Sheriff Starlight wanted to make an example of me to me, but he has made his employee’s lives harder.
They start to bicker almost immediately.
“How’s she supposed to walk in all these chains?”
“Don’t know. Carry her?”
“How are we supposed to carry her in all these chains?”
The logistics of this operation have clearly not been completely considered. Getting me here, building this prison, forging the chains, they all made sense individually. I may have the blood of angels in my veins, but my body is still that of a woman, and ninety pounds of chains make me pretty much unmovable.
“Take them off,” one guard says.
I have to work hard to stop myself from laughing out loud. They begin to unlock the chains and lug them off me, each and every link relieving me not only of weight but of the oppression that kept my angelic powers under control. Either Starlight did not train them to understand what exactly they were guarding, or they are incredibly stupid.
Either way, they are about to witness something they will never forget. They are about to understand what it is to be in the presence of the divine. I have been physically cramped for a long time, but there are other parts of me that have been cramped too, parts that also demand freedom. They burst free now, viciously, aggressively. Bright light, far brighter than the sun, streams from my back as my wings spread, each one of them as long as I am tall.
“Holy shit!”
They have the first part right. Divine energy flows through me, a pure kind of vitality more intense and perfect than any the mere humans around me have ever experienced.
I like to imagine that all souls know what this sensation is, but people, once shrouded in human flesh, can only chase this feeling with their drugs, their cocaine and their amphetamines, and other such chemical delights that fail to deliver the pure experience. I am transcendent in this moment. The darkness of the previous hours and days falls from me as I rise in light.
The guards fall to their knees. It is the right and proper response of men to a creature like me. The desert light casts a shadow against my feathers, silhouetting me over their little human forms. They are so pathetic, so absolutely unsuited to guarding a creature like me.
I beat my wings and I rise into the air.
They built a prison for men, though I am an angel. It will not hold me, because I cannot be contained. Not ever. I am stronger than even the sheriff imagines.
I rise into the sky, taking to the heavens. I wish, sometimes, that I could fly up to the heavenly realms and be reunited with the forces that made me, but I cannot. I can fly through physical space, but the metaphysical is as closed to me as it is to anyone else.
There is a certain loneliness to being of angel lineages. It’s like never truly belonging down there, but never being able to truly ascend up there. I am trapped between two worlds.
As I leave their presence, it suddenly occurs to the guards that their prisoner is getting away. Such is the transitory nature of revelation.