by Eryn Allange
I am an old one. One of the oldest, They say, when They say anything at all, which, admittedly, is hardly ever these days.
I descended when the land was obscure and untouched, enshrouded in mists of the unsettled dust of new life and formation, and I stepped through it as civilizations rose and fell, ebbing and flowing with ages of prosperity and darkness. Warm blood dashed across my wings as Abel fell, and the taste of the sea sprayed my lips as Lot’s wife turned to a pillar.
See, I did many things, once. When His eye was turned upon Us, and We stepped among the creations to inform, to direct, to influence. To act. But I now sip flat beer from a green bottle, its label peeling in my palm, and I am an old one, yes, but I am no longer what I once was.
I no longer know what I’m meant to do. I have been forgotten here.
The trailer creaks and groans as I take the handful of steps that bring me across the kitchen and into the living room. It is small, and rotting from the outside in. I have not opened its door in seven years. There has been no Word in seven years. There is one beer left in the dented and rusting Frigidaire that came with the trailer, but when I open it again there will be more. For through it all, I do not want, save for guidance and answers.
Oh, God. Outside the window, through the slit of glass between the frame and the tilted, dusty window unit, the creations – their laughter and motion, their innocence and sin – make noise. The absence of Your voice rings like eternity in exile. Without You I am lost, for I am Your Hand. Your Blade. They make too much noise. My eyes, which once knew only light, narrow as I glimpse through the broken blinds, but still I carry on. Have You anything for me to do? I am, as always, Your most humble and faithful servant, but I-
“Ew!” A child shrieks. I smash my bottle against the wall, the dregs and shreds of glass spraying my face. The noise outside subsides. Again, He says nothing.
***
Rocks, sharp and dull, paved the trailer park in place of concrete or grass, and they dug into Krys’s legs as she knelt beside the others. Stuckey flicked the hard lump of flesh between his fingers, and Krys watched as Reese leaned forward to get a better look. She kept a close eye on her cousin’s face, and she winced as Reese curled up her lip and feigned a shudder.
“Ew!” Reese shrieked. She gagged, a fake motion that turned her face momentarily ugly. She moved to shove Stuckey’s hand away and froze as the glittering sound of shattering glass rang out from the trailer behind them. “What is that?”
Quietly, Stuckey said, “Haven’t you ever seen a wart before?”
“Not that.” Reese shook her head. Her voice was lower, too. “The sound.”
“I dunno,” Krys said. She eyed the neighboring trailer and hoped a fight wasn’t about to break out. “Sometimes the neighbors get loud.”
“Who lives there?”
“Who knows? No one ever comes in or out.”
“Never?” Reese raised her eyebrows and stared hard at the decrepit travel trailer. Stuckey flicked the lump again, and she smacked his hand. “Would you stop that?”
“Yeah,” Krys said, glancing to Reese for affirmation. “It’s gross. Put it away.”
“Like you don’t got any, either,” Stuckey stuck his chin out at Krys, but he lowered his hand all the same.
Warmth spread across Krys’s cheeks, the rush of which made her want to knock Stuckey off his heels and push him into the dirt. She didn’t get to see Reese often. Reese lived across the lake, the big one with the two long bridges that took what felt like hours to cross, and she had lived in the same house her whole life, one with a yard and an above-ground pool and a trampoline, and she had friends that rode bikes up and down the block and whispered secrets to each other and never moved away.
Krys didn’t have a house like that, and she didn’t have friends like that either. She and her folks and her sisters lived in a two-bedroom trailer in a small trailer park by the levee, and for friends she had Stuckey, who lived two trailers down. She didn’t have new clothes like Reese had, and her mom wouldn’t even buy her razors to start shaving her legs either. As she knelt beside Reese, the sun creeping past noon as the air hummed with heat, sweat trickled down her thin, hairy legs. Reese’s legs were smooth, her skin shiny but dry.
“This is boring,” Reese sighed, and she tilted her neck, red hair splaying across her back. Krys memorized the motion. The elegance of it, like something she’d seen on tv. Her cousin was always doing that sort of thing. Those little gestures that were just… better. Krys liked them, and she hated them too. She wanted them for herself. Without meaning to, Krys mimicked the movement.
“We could walk the levee.” Stuckey knelt beside the dusty ice chest beneath the deck and used his fingertip to chase a pillbug through its plastic grooves. His heels smashed down the back of his off-brand sneakers, their rubber ripped along the toes, and he dug them into the soft mud.
Reese rolled her eyes. “We already did that.”
“We could go watch tv?” Krys suggested in vain. They would never be bored at Reese’s house. Reese had cable with all the channels, and a karaoke machine and an air hockey table and board games with all the pieces.
“No. Wait.” Reese grinned. “I know what we should do.”
“What?” Stuckey asked without looking up.
“Krys should go knock on the door.” Reese’s eyes glimmered with mischief as she turned them from Krys to the neighbor’s front door.
Krys shook her head. “Are you crazy?”
“It’s something to do.” Reese shrugged. “But if you’re too scared, let’s run inside and watch the Price is Right with your Mama. Again.”
“I’m not scared.”
“You sound scared,” Stuckey said.
“Well, would you want to do it?”
“Hell no. But she didn’t ask me to do it, she asked you.”
Krys glanced at her cousin and remembered all at once why she never liked her to get bored. Because if you weren’t amusing Reese, she was going to find a way to amuse herself with you. Krys sighed. “Y’all really gonna make me?”
“No one’s making you. Right, Stuckey?” Reese grinned and elbowed the boy like they were the friends. Like Krys was the guest they were playing pranks on.
Krys wet her lips and looked back at the neighboring trailer. It hadn’t been pressure washed maybe ever, and since it was a travel trailer it didn’t even have a deck. Just a cracked set of three concrete steps leading up to the front. There were no flowers or trash cans or spare tires set around the front, like some of the other trailers, and there were never any lights on. She only knew someone lived there from the sounds. The shifting of the trailer as someone walked inside. The clatter of dishes being moved. The glass shattering. Whoever was inside could be a drunk, or crazy. They might answer the door with a gun, but as Krys looked back at her cousin suddenly none of that seemed as bad as Reese’s mockery.
Krys rose, dusting the dirt and loose rocks from her legs, and made for the trailer’s steps.
***
If Hell is only the absence of God, then how is that not where I find myself? It has been millennia since last I danced with Lucifer, before his fall, and yet he feels near to me here. Nearer than He. Will there ever be Word? Or can the Word no longer penetrate this place?
The creations outside have quieted themselves, and for that I find gratitude. There are only the small things left in which I can experience gratitude. For my thankfulness used to be bound to His command, to my place in His planning. Am I a relic of a time long past? A tool that technology has since moved past?
I did not use to muse so much, mind you. For what did I have to muse upon? When one’s actions are sanctioned by God directly, they require little contemplation. But now I mull over my own inaction and—
There is a knock on the door.
I hear it, but I do not understand it. There is a knock, a sound, a question on… my door? No. My door has not opened in seven years. My door does not open. I wait, inside this shell, and I will wait until He deigns speak with me again. And not until then. Be this is a place of birth or a tomb, it shall not—
The knock persists. It is small, timid, and uncertain, yes, but it persists.
I hesitate. I step through the damp carpet, the broken glass painlessly piercing the skin I wear, and I stand before the door. It is thin. Cheap. Even in this form, I could blow it down if I gave it a good try.
I open the door, and a child looks upon me. I look right back. She blinks once but does not scream, and I curse this false form. Would she stand so brazenly before me if I were to unfold myself into what I am, truly? Which eyes would she choose to meet? Could she remain standing and look upon the ram, the lion, the man, the seraph? Would the bands of flesh and iron encircling my wings and body, blinking and bleeding, terrify her to repentance or inspire her to proselytization? I have seen both happen.
“Excuse me— “
She speaks! She finds her tongue amidst my holy presence. I could bless her. I could damn her. I know her, too well, too soon. They are so easy to read, but this is no Word. This is an intrusion. For as quickly as she finds her gall, it is lost. Her words vanish in a frightened exhale, and I meet her gaze. The others behind her giggle and run.
I find the words she might understand, in the tongue in which she speaks. Yes? I might have said. Or rather, May I help you? But what I think I say is, “What do you want?”
And there it is. A jolt in her eyes, a clarity. Beneath these human words, my own voice shines. The child is captivated, terrified, contemplative. I kneel to her level.
She is young, of a common breed, and she does not know how yet to hide her longings. Her own seeds of jealousy are reflected in my eyes, and she sees how these seeds will sprout and grow as she does. A thousand paths she might walk upon, and all of them with those roots taking hold in her heart, choking it, blackening it with a sin that spreads in self-loathing.
“What do you want?” I ask again, and her choked response is no human declaration but rather a soul in anguish and realization. She sees herself, in tatters or jewels, in sickness or prosperity, and in every scenario a black heart, eyes affixed to others, always seeking, always assessing. She will weigh her own worth in the hands of others as surely as she judges them for her own failures.
In my eyes, she sees no happiness in the path of her sins. I could show her the other paths, the better paths of healing and wholeness, but I do not. For my door has not opened in seven years. My Lord, am I to let them make a fool of me?
But I am still what I once was. They can only learn if they remember. I brush my hand upon her arm as she turns to run.
***
Krys flew down the broken concrete steps so quickly that her feet hardly touched them at all. She did not stop or slow when she heard the trailer door slam shut behind her, or when the incline of the levee rose so sharply that her lungs ached. In the cover of the tangled, low-branched live oak trees, Stuckey and Reese waited.
Stuckey gave a panicked laugh, and. Reese giggled so hard she grabbed her stomach. “Oh, my God. What happened?”
Krys shivered. What had happened? She wasn’t sure. Her mind was blank, but the encounter turned something within her like a nightmare lingering the next day. She ran her hands over her arms, and her heart sank as, just beneath her elbow, her trembling fingers brushed against a hard lump of skin. A protrusion.
A wart.
Reese looked at her expectantly, but suddenly Krys only wanted her to go home.
A self-proclaimed “Katrina Kid” who was born below sea level in New Orleans, LA, I currently live a mile high in Denver, CO where I am completing my MFA in Creative Writing with the University of Denver in spring 2023.