Matt and James looked to each other, but remained silent over the rest of dinner. They didn't speak of it again, until a year later, when they found me in the bathroom, blood streaming from the slits on my wrists.
"God, Azrael, what have you done?" Shouted Matt as James rushed for the surgical glue he kept in the cabinet.
"I'm just trying to get out. I don't belong." I cried, "Come here, you don't either. I'll help you escape." And I waved the razor, slashing towards him, until they held me down and sealed me up.
The next morning, they had two pills waiting for me on a plate.
"Azrael," Said Matt, "These are for your own good. Take them. They'll stop the feelings you have, stop the harm you want to do in yourself and others."
"But I don't want them to stop."
"It's ok, honey. You'll understand one day." He said, and I took them.
And he was right, the feelings have disappeared. And since I've grown up, Matt and James have sent me on all sorts of vacations. They're such loving parents.
They sent me to New Orleans, to New York City, to Haiti, and to Indonesia among many other locations to become more cultured in my teenage years. And I know they think I couldn't tell, but sometimes I noticed one of my pills tasted different. Sugary. It's funny- maybe I shouldn't have drank so much when I partied, but there are entire days I can't remember.
But that, that was all long ago. I've learned so much since then. And I've done so much- now that I'm older, I remember some of it, some of the times they've let me exercise my old emotions. But I've always taken my pills.
Until today. I had just arrived at an eight hour layover at the airport, on my way to a new trip.
When I took my pills, I accidentally dropped one onto the floor, right in front of a pet carrier. Before I could react, a skinny snout reached between the familiar bars, and the terrier inside ate it.
It took two hours for the owner to realize their dog was, in fact, not taking a long nap. But by then I was gone.
Chapter 2
"There are many types of poisons," my tutor said, speaking through his beard, "but today, we will focus on sedatives."
I nodded, sneaking another white berry off the table from the display of poisons he had gathered as he spoke. Ingestion of just five of them could cause death, but the fifteenth one I popped into my mouth tasted just as sweet as the first.
"Sedatives," He continued, unaware of my chewing, "Can be used to temporarily disable someone. But you must be careful about dosage. Give too much, and a sedative can kill. It's important to adjust the strength based upon the what you want to put to sleep or paralyze. Different organism have different tolerances."
I nodded again, swallowing the next berry. And I forgot about the conversation until several years later, after I returned from one of my trips, and heard Matt and James talking long after I was supposed to have gone to bed. My pills had run low, and I was due for a new batch, one I could hear them making from within the basement when I went to the kitchen to find a glass of water.
"We're just lucky as hell we found her," I heard Matt's voice say, "Can you imagine the consequences if we hadn't? She was four years in that orphanage. Still can't believe she was right under our noses- last time, it was halfway across the country!"
"I'd rather not think about it," Answered James, "I'd rather not think about this whole mess. You do remember that her past twelve caretakers died by her hand, right?"
"Yes, but we have better medicine on our side now. Those were years ago. Careful, not too much of that. Remember, one pill to sedate her, to keep her from killing. The other to make her forget, to forget who she is, and keep her content in that human body. Each time she tries to escape she ends up killing herself. And make sure you don't mix in the sugar pills with that batch, we can't afford to let that happen again."
"And thank God it hasn't happened yet," Said James.
"You do have to admit she's been useful, though. Made the boss a bloody fortune throughout the years."
"A tame lion is still a lion," James answered, "And I don't want to be around when the collar comes off."
I'm not sure why I kept taking the pills after that. I think it was curiosity that did it. A fear that I might commit suicide before knowing the answers to Matt and James' conversation, a conversation that didn't make sense.
So I set out to find my parents.
I snuck out during the night, jumping from my third story window to the ground and landing in the soft grass. I couldn't drive yet, being only fourteen, but I was fine running, my night gown streaming behind me, and my bare feet against the pavement. It didn't take me long to get to the orphanage, only ten miles from our house, or to shimmy up the tree outside and break through the window.
But when I searched their files, there was nothing to be found under my name. So I returned home, with several hours to spare before the coming dawn.
I tried the city records the next night, checking for any clues to my heritage. At first I found nothing, searching for any indication of a couple killed, leaving their daughter Azrael behind. But I did find something peculiar, something worth investigating.
There had been a thirty five year old Azrael alive fourteen years ago in my city. An Azrael that had died on my birthday.
So I ran, seeking the address on the file, coming before an old house, its boards rotting away, and its yard unkept. The door was locked, but I shoved it open, splintering the wood with my shoulder until it gave way.
There wasn't much to explore. There was a single bedroom, and a kitchen. And there was a living room, with three dark stains on the carpet.
And on the countertop there were two bottles, both half filled with pills.
Chapter 3
Since visiting the house, I’ve wanted to stop taking my medication. But I can’t because of the possible outcomes.
Both pills are identical. They’re capsules, white in color, and not particularly large. They come in manufactured orange bottles, and I receive a fresh refill directly after each trip, meaning for each set of bottles, there’s only one sugar pill.
Each day I take one of each pill without knowing which is which. I do, however, know their effects.
When I’ve been dispatched by Matt and James, I lose control once I stop taking the sedative. An animalistic part of me takes over, and I cease to be cognizant, rather following instinct alone. There is only the drive to complete the mission, to follow my urges, to bring death to those before me. To rip souls from their bodies, wrenching them away from the physical world. To deliver the message of death to the masses.
The first possible outcome is if I don’t take the sedative but still take the memory pill, resulting in a loss of self control. I’ll be subject to my emotions, amplified thousands of times over. And when James and Matt discover the murders, they’ll keep a closer watch on me, maybe never giving me the chance to try again.
Should I refuse to take both pills, I'll likely commit suicide, which will never satisfy my curiosity, nor give me freedom. According to Matt and Jame's conversation, they’ll only find me again in the future, giving them another chance at keeping me subdued- letting them be more careful this time.
By that logic I have to take the sedative only. I need to remember who I am, while my emotions are suppressed enough to still be able to think clearly. And if I take one pill without correctly identifying them, there's only fifty percent odds of getting it right.
For years now I've been waiting for my chance to separate the pills correctly. At the airport, by no choice of my own, only one pill had entered my system. I could only hope that the pill that killed the terrier was not the sedative, but the one that makes me forget.
But in case it the opposite was true, I would need to leave to airport, rushing somewhere where Matt and James couldn’t find me in order to delay them and buy myself future time.
Sprinting, I left the airport, casting my unused plane ticket
s in the trash bin beside me. Behind me I heard security guards shouting, but already my hearing had begun to change, the sounds acquiring a dreamlike tone as my vision began to blur and I reached the exit.
I crashed through the revolving door, glass shattering in a mist around me, raining down onto the sidewalk outside. And as I felt the sunlight reach down and touch my face, I began to remember.
Chapter 4
“God Dammit, Luke, do you want another Bubonic? Shoot her!”
I heard the shout before the vision materialized, my memory sliding in front of my mind’s eye. Part of me was still at the airport, frozen in the center of the car pickup lane, scores of shocked faces gawking at me from the crowd of travelers eager to get on with their day. The other part of me was in the house I had investigated earlier, staring at two men in black, one holding a gun outstretched and aimed at my forehead.
“Now’s no time to get soft, Luke,” the voice shouted again, and I realized it was the man without the gun, shaking a finger at his counterpart.
“We raised her, Philip. I can’t… I can’t,” the other stammered in response. Sweat trickled down his forehead, and outside came the boom of thunder, rattling the house to its foundation.
I knew why they had come. They had heard about the disappearing pets in the neighborhood around my house, then the men, then the families. They had suspected the worst. And they had been right.
“You damn well can! I don’t know what went wrong, but it’s time to end this before it gets out of control!”
In front of me the man named Luke quivered, the gun shaking in his hands, his eyes following down the sights to where the bullet would enter my brain.
Oh, I know what went wrong, said a voice in my head, a voice I realized that was my own, You were lazy, gentlemen. You forgot about tolerance to medication, and mine has been building, ever so slowly building. And now I stand on the brink.
I laughed then, my voice shrill, my shadow lengthening over both men though no light shined behind me. Light bulbs in the chandelier above shattered, popping like a line of firecrackers, raining sparks down onto the carpet where they smoldered among the fibers, filling the room with a haze of smoke.
And in front of me, the trigger of the gun clicked as Luke closed his eyes. But no bullet came.
“Who are you?” I shouted as they both backed against the wall,each making quick glances towards the exit that I was blocking, “Who are you to contain me? To cage my spirit within a mortal body?”
Thunder boomed again, and a wave of hail slammed against the roof above, some breaking their way through the shingles and onto the floor where ice joined fire. Philip paled, raising his hands in front of his face.
“Please, Azrael,” He yelled above the growing commotion, “Please. We’re just following orders!”
“Orders of who? Of men? Using my power for your own purposes, for your petty wars?”
“We don’t favor anyone,” he said, now sobbing, “You go to the highest bidder. We’re just here to manage. Please, Azrael.”
“Simony!” I raised my hands, and my hair rose around me as static filled the room, “Sinners, abusers of divine power!”
And I reached out to the storm around me, the storm created by me, the storm that was me. I felt its power building, my own physical figure inflating as the men before me shrank, cowering in their fear. In their fear of the Lord, which should have entered their hearts many years before, and was now too late to save them.
The lightning exploded into the room through the window, a forked rod that disobeyed physical laws, skirting the house’s lightning rod and metal siding in favor of human flesh. Their bodies erupted in fountains of gore, instantly liquefied, staining the ground beneath them and leaving an indelible mark upon the carpet. And I held onto that lightning, drawing it towards my own body, annihilating my cage in fruitless hopes of an escape.
When I died, the storm subsided, the hail melted, and the carpet fires went out. All that remained of the event were the stains, and a single memory locked deep in the brain of a young girl that had just entered an orphanage.
But now, at age twenty eight, I remember who I am.
I am Vesuvius, the volcano that scoured Pompei from the surface of the earth, burning civilization to ash.
I am the Kamikaze, the typhoon that laid waste to Mongols in their route to Japan, and spared none in my wrath.
I am Smallpox, the annihilator of the Americas, desolation carried from across the sea.
But I now know what I must do to escape my physical cage. I know that it is not enough to kill myself, to remove only my body. I have to end something far greater.
And in the car pickup lane of the airport, I shouted, raising my voice to the heavens as my hair began to rise and my feet sank into the concrete like it was a shallow puddle.
“I am Azrael, Angel of Death. Earth, I come for thee!”
Chapter 5
Since the birth of man, there have been those claiming that the end of the world is just moments away. They stand on street corners, calling for repentance, warning of the doomsday to come. And they’re dismissed as lunatics and quacks by the rest of the population, men whose minds have fallen ill with madness or fanaticism.
But part of me wonders if they’ve just been able to sense my presence.
In the airport pickup lane, I laughed, my eyes lighting up as men, women, and children backed away. And I reached out to nature around me.
Underground, I felt the gnashing of continental plates, and the supervolcano that is Yellowstone begging to be released from its imprisonment of stone. And I began picking the lock, coaxing the magma forth that would bury the world.
High above, millions of miles away, I felt a meteor lumbering through space, its size nearly half of that of the earth,. And I began to push it, ever so slightly altering its trajectory, bringing it into an arc to meet the very spot that I now stood, and to give to mankind the fate that had befallen the dinosaurs.
To the left of the meteor, I felt the glob of gas and radioactivity that had given life to the planet, and that could just as easily take it away. Just under the surface charges began to build, vast currents of electrical energy whirling in tighter and tighter whirlpools, waiting to release the gamma radiation that was the cosmological equivalent of the inside of a kitchen microwave.
I felt all these things, and more. I became them, and my earthly body acted in response.
As I cracked stone deep in the bowels of the earth, I lifted cars above, flipping them into the street.
Where I shifted the meteor, I altered the flight path of planes above, dragging the aluminum back down to the ground where it belonged.
And as I pulled at the solar flare, my very skin began to glow, and the headlights and streetlamps about me shattered, cell phone batteries erupted into flames, and a radio tower in the distance began to smoke.
I could barely hear the screams over the rush of sensations that flooded over me, each clamoring for my attention. I knew not how many fled my appearance, or who fell to the ground, praying to the God who had sent me.
My memories continued to flood back throughout the experience, and I remembered the moment I entered this earth, the moment I was sent by the Lord from my heavenly chair. I remembered his words as he spoke, and the intentions behind them.
“By eating the apple, mankind has brought death into the world. You, you are death, the remainder of their grave sin. I dispatch you to live among them, until their final days.”
And I, the Angel of Death, have finally understood the Lord’s commandment. Until their final days. Which I am destined to bring.
If there is something that I, the Angel of Death, have come to realize about humans, it is the frailty of their bodies. There are countless ways quench their lives- from poisons to disasters, from age to dismemberment. Under Matt and James, I practiced all of these, and became all too aware of their ease.
But I, forgot of my own confinement to a human body in my moment of triumph
.
And I, the Angel of Death, heard only the sharp crack of a gunshot before I was taken by my own purpose.
* * *
Across the country, televisions displayed the nightly news, with the words “Terrorist Attack Foiled” flashing across the bottom of the screen. Behind her desk, a blonde news anchor straightened her red jacket, then the stack over papers on her desk, before looking to the camera and starting her rehearsed speech.
“Just this evening, terrorists attempted to attack the O’hare international airport, aiming to disrupt radio communications coupled with a ground attack. Authorities believe a new form of supersoldier, a genetic mutation, was at the front end of the assault force. It is with great honor that the President himself has awarded Blake Stevensen, an armed policemen on the scene, for a calculated shot that saved tens, if not hundreds of lives. As further information arrives, stay tuned to channel six, your dependable source of news heard first.”
Then the camera shifted, continuing to sports.
But twenty years later, a woman sat alone in her apartment, watching that news report that had taken her hours to find on the internet based on a dream that had come to her the night before. The screen turned blank as the video finished, and the woman looked down at her hand, where two white pills were in her palm.
Taking a deep breath, she dropped one down the drain.
Be sure to read Leo’s full book, The Bridge, Coming Early 2017
A starship is struck by an asteroid on its way to colonize a distant planet. Now, hundreds of years later, the inhabitants must learn to survive deep space without technology or perish.
The full novel The Bridge is coming to the Amazon Kindle Store in early 2017. Sign up at this mailing list to receive a notification of when it arrives!
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Find Leo’s Amazon page at https://www.amazon.com/Leonard-Petracci/e/B00JZC24TO/
Allen, The Rogue AI Page 4