Where That Angel Maybe Waited

Billy’s parents were fighting again, voices ping-ponging around the house. One would lob an accusation, and the other fired back immediately. It was unclear whether or not they actually heard one another – though it didn’t matter: Billy knew it was more important for them to have the final word.

Tonight was especially bad. That morning, Billy’s father refused to drive him to school. Billy had woken by himself and made breakfast; dressed and cleaned his room. He knocked on his parents’ door once, twice, three times, before going downstairs to watch TV. He was used to this. His mother rose before sunrise to go to work, while his father usually slept off his hangover from the night before. In this brief period when there was finally a little quiet, Billy would sit and enjoy whatever was playing in front of him (a morning talk show; mindless, violent cartoons) without the threat of being pulled into their endless battles. He could pretend for a moment he was one of the bright teens being interviewed by the coiffed anchors with their surgical sharp faces, or one of the spandex-clad superheroes who always seemed to be ready with a quip – unlike himself, who grew tongue-tied when accosted by bullies on the playground.

Billy waited, enjoying a segment about dolphin sightings in the waters off of far-away New York, until finally, when the room was filled with morning light, and his father had still not yet come down, he went upstairs to fetch him.

The blinds were drawn and a fog of sour-smelling body odor hung over his parents’ bed. Gum wrappers and scattered aspirin littered his bedside table; a deflated pillow and tangled blanket evidence one of his parents had slept on the floor. Billy’s father lay on his stomach beneath a bunched-up comforter, communicating to his son through a small opening.

“I can’t drive you to school this morning, kiddo.”

“Why?”

“Why?” His father let out a mirthless laugh. “Because it’s not worth it. You, school. I’m not saying this to be mean. I’m just trying to be honest.”

He told Billy he had a vision of the future, one in which his son amounted to nothing. He had seen it the previous night, he said, drinking at a bar with friends. The vision came to him like ones from the Bible. As Billy’s father went to the bathroom to piss, the tiled walls above the urinal opened up in front of him. A great light burst through, accompanied by an angel. The angel was the most frightening thing the man had ever seen. Because how on Earth could you describe something with eight eyes, a plethora of cocks and vaginas, and two massive, bloody wings?

Billy asked his father if he had been smoking again.

“No, Billy!” his father cried. “I have not been smoking again.”

The angel, according to his father, led him through the opening into the future. The future, it seemed, was similar to the present – save Billy was an adult, and his father was dead. Billy lived in the same house as he did now, the house his father had lived in since he was a child. Billy was married to a woman who didn’t love him, same as his father. Each night Billy would go out with his friends after work (same as his father) and come home so drunk he threw up the next morning (same as his father.) Billy and his wife fought the same fights about matters large and small.

“Like money… and purpose.”

Billy knew nothing about money; his parents rarely had any. And purpose was a word he heard used if his father did something wrong: did you do that on purpose?

“You should disappear son… become a ghost.”

In his mind’s eye, Billy saw his father drape him with a white sheet. He rose through the ceiling, towards the clouds above, where that angel maybe waited.

After his father suggested it again though, Billy decided that he had enough. It was pasta day at school. He went downstairs and called his mother at work.

Billy arrived home after school to find his parents sitting in the living room, glaring at one another. His father hadn’t removed his soiled clothes from the night before. His mother was dressed in her work uniform, a bright pink jumpsuit with her name emblazoned across her chest. They looked less like people than life-sized figures in a diorama. Billy waited for them to say something, ask about his day, but then realized that if they did, he would be obliged to answer, and regardless of what he said, they would use it as an excuse to resume fighting.

So he ran upstairs as quickly as he could, and locked the door to his room. Yet it didn’t matter: his parents resumed fighting regardless. Sitting on the floor, desperately searching for his iPod, Billy reminded himself these fights weren’t even about him. He was just an empty husk they had around to fill with their anxiety and confusion. They didn’t so much want Billy to be his own person as their person, someone they could mold into the adult they hoped and failed to be.

He began to pray, lips moving wildly, a dance of desperation and pain. He didn’t know what to say, or if anyone was listening. He didn’t particularly believe in Heaven, and hated when his class went to church. It was weird, all those faded paintings on the walls of that poor guy with the long hair and beard being tortured by the Romans. Why was the price of eternal bliss so much suffering? And it seemed so far away, Heaven, like his grandparents’ house in Florida. A vacation dangled in front of him so that he would remain compliant. Eat your vegetables, or you won’t get into Heaven. If you get good grades, maybe you’ll go to Heaven. You’ll never get into Heaven with that attitude!

Yet Billy realized this dread, striving towards what you knew you couldn’t reach, wondering if you wanted to reach it in the first place, was the point.

There came a crash from downstairs. A door slammed; his mother screamed. Sounds of his father storming off down the street. The neighbors in all likelihood were watching by now, drawn like flies by the commotion. The men would be standing in their yards, drinking cans of beer, while their wives watched from inside, shooing their curious children away.

Finally having found his iPod, Billy climbed onto his bed, slipped his headphones over his ears so that he couldn’t hear his mother’s muffled crying. He was about to press play on The Beatles’ ‘Blackbird’ (“take these broken wings and learn to flyyyyyy”) when he heard a voice from right beside him. It was a woman’s voice, soft and mellow, comforting as the murmur of a light rain.

///

Billy’s father found his wife waiting for him later that night. She sat on the stairs with her head in her hands, dirty blonde hair spilling over her face. All the lights in the house had been extinguished; in the dark she looked like some sort of wraith. He shut the front door as quietly as he could, then lowered himself to the floor. Neither husband nor wife spoke.

Finally his wife stood and said they would figure out what to do in the morning. This was how these sorts of days usually finished. Neither wanted to leave the other, despite what Billy might think. He was young and unable to understand yet that when two people loved each other, really loved each other, it meant they would be together until death.

Nevertheless, the two adults were vain and fickle. Life had treated them poorly; it was important the child took their side. Billy’s mother stopped by his door on her way to their room, knowing her husband watched her closely down below. A thin wave of light spread out through the crack by her feet. She would take any movement or breath as an excuse to enter, as she and her husband took the sound of Billy’s doorlock as permission to keep fighting earlier that day.

Billy’s mother heard nothing though, save the low buzz of her son’s bedside lamp. He must have fallen asleep without realizing. She imagined his small form tangled in his baby-blue sheets, the whites of his feet kicking against his blanket like fattened worms. Best to leave him, she thought.

Billy’s father waited for his wife to shut their door before coming upstairs.

He would spend the night in the spare room. The spare room wasn’t so much a room – at least not a room in the way Billy’s was, or the one his wife slept in. It had been pitched as a ‘half’-room when they first moved in; “perfect,” the realtor had said, “for an office or escape room.” The woman never clarified why they might need an escape room, and since Billy’s father and his wife did manual labor for work, there wasn’t much need for an office. What there was a need for was a place the man could hide whenever he had done something wrong.

And the spartan contents of the room certainly fit this mission: its only piece of furniture was a mattress dotted with specks of blood, aftermath of one of Billy’s classmates sneezing a clot during a sleepover. That and a grated opening, too short and narrow to be called a window, at its side.

Later, as Billy’s father lay on the mattress, tossing and turning, trying to find a bearable position for his ache-wracked body, he dreamt his angel appeared to him through that opening. For some reason he knew the angel’s name was Beth. She was no longer as frightening as she had been at the bar. She looked beautiful in the moonlight. Her long golden hair tumbled in waves down her shoulders; her eyes gleamed like precious stones.

When he tried to speak, the angel Beth lifted a finger to her lips. All of a sudden Billy’s father found himself outside the room, floating above the front yard alongside her. For a moment the man tried hyperventilating, swallowing large lungfuls of air in an attempt to wake himself. The angel watched, her smile blossoming into a girlish giggle. Billy’s father grasped and pulled his neck, unable to open his mouth. He could see the neighborhood unfurling below, amorphous blobs rising and falling, before giving way to darkened yellowed vistas in the distance. It was clear to father he was dreaming – the man was not so much a drunk as to idly hallucinate – but also, not.

Because when he followed the angel’s gaze he saw his son asleep in his room.

Yes, there was his son: lying in bed, limbs akimbo. His father wanted to call out, ask the angel if he could snuggle up besides him, just as his wife had wanted. Whisper sweet nothings that the boy would never hear.

Perhaps the future Beth had shown him was one of many, he thought.

The man turned around, intending to inform his angel about this revelation, when he noticed she was no longer by his side. She had somehow entered Billy’s room, crouched now like an animal at the edge of his bed. Billy’s father watched in horror as she crawled closer and closer to his son, until her massive body covered his own. The angel looked up and met his gaze. Her beautiful face was gone; the horrific one from the bathroom had returned. Her wriggled genitalia wrapped itself around his son’s body, drawing him closer to her many snapping holes.

As the angel swallowed Billy’s head, his father woke up on the bloodstained mattress, crying.

///

Immediately upon waking, Billy’s father hoisted himself off his mattress, tip-toed out into the hallway. His wife’s snores erupted like foghorns from behind their bedroom door. He allowed himself a sigh of relief: no woman could sleep soundly while their son was getting eaten alive in the next room! It had been a dream, he told himself, just like his vision of the angel in the bar.

Right then he made a promise to be better. Stop drinking, start exercising, become the man he hoped he’d always be. He would take an active interest in his son’s life, an interest his own father had never given him. He would stop daydreaming about killing his wife. Sure, they had no money (their house was on the verge of being repossessed), nor family or friends they could rely on (they had done their best to alienate them), but as long as the family had each other, they could survive anything.

Billy’s father walked to his son’s door and knocked once, twice but there wasn't any answer. He was about to knock for a third time when he heard his wife behind him.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Waking him up for school.”

Billy’s mother blew air between her teeth to show she didn’t believe this. Yet his father didn’t care. There had been enough talking.

“Billy, I’m coming in–”

The door was stuck, however, as though something heavy had been pushed up against it. When Billy’s father couldn’t force it open after several tries, his wife pushed him aside, gave it a go. When that didn’t work, both rushed forward, using their combined weight.

The door finally burst open with a loud BANG, sending husband and wife tumbling to the floor.

“Billy, you better be sleep–”

When they crawled to their knees, they saw Billy wasn’t there: no impression of his body on the bed, no iPod tossed wantonly on the floor.

Yet his window was open. Had it been so in my dream? Billy’s father could have sworn he watched through dark metal bars as his son was eaten. Save now the sash had risen, and only thin mesh kept the world outside at bay. Lilac-colored curtains kept fluttering in and out, gesturing to the cloud-covered sky above.

Then he noticed something on his son’s bed: a tiny, blood-spectacled feather, light and ephemeral, which flew out the window as he tried to grab it, drifting towards a destination neither he nor his wife would ever reach.