Angel Radio

by A. M. Blaushild

  It was nice to know even my subconscious didn’t care about my problems. I left the radio still running on the shop floor, and as expected, their voices followed me without a falter.

  “Do you intend to even broadcast today?”

  “Is there even a point to it anymore? Like come on, it almost seems mean.”

  “We are heard, you know. For someone so willing to dismiss Ada, you’re about as downbeat as she was last time we did this.”

  “Don’t lie, you know exactly how I’m feeling right now. Something about the weather lately… I don’t know. But it isn’t good. You can see it in everyone, everywhere you look.”

  Everyone? There were no people here, only angels. And I suppose in that way what Naomi was saying was right: they were restless and tightly packed. And the weather had been terribly dull as of late.

  “I know of it, but I do not feel it. You shouldn’t let yourself become so overwhelmed. Soon we won’t have to worry about this sort of feeling again. It’s just a matter of patience.”

  “We should really speed the process up a bit. I don’t know why it’s taking us so long.”

  “Patience, please. We’re doing our best. When everything’s done and cleaned out, we’ll finally be able to live in peace and comfort, and the community will be whole again.”

  My subconscious was really working up a storm of confusing dialogue today, that was for sure. But, especially since I still thought of myself as sane, something was sounding very real about the radio’s words today. Obviously it was still playing in my head, but that was something I was willing to excuse for now. There was no way I could confuse myself with words I was making up in my own mind, right?

  Actually, thinking it over, I was very capable of confusing myself. I was doing it right now. But still—I hung on to the conclusion that Angel Radio was somehow real.

  “Should we go look for her? Ada, I mean,” Naomi said after a moment of silence. “It’s dangerous out there.”

  “It’s dangerous out there for us too. Do you want to get in trouble? The Cherubim will get us.”

  “I can keep safe.”

  “You’ll be spotted instantly. There’s nowhere to hide up there.”

  “I’ll be fine. I just want to check on her—I know exactly where she’ll be too. She has a very predictable pattern of interest.”

  “You were calling her a rat just a couple minutes ago.”

  “It’s not like I hate her. Or even like her. I have every right to worry about her well-being either way.”

  “Ho hum,” Emil said. “You best be on your way, then. Be fast.”

  “No one says ‘ho hum,’ you idiot,” Naomi said, and then there was the noise of several things moving about and something like footsteps.

  The microphone, it sounded like, was moved across a wooden desk. “Well, there you have it. How about that?” Emil said. Then there were a couple electronic noises, before he started to speak again. “The weather today is looking to be dark, and it might get a bit stormy. We haven’t had a thunderstorm in a long time folks, and with any luck, we won’t for a long time to come. But keep yourself preened and your eyes forward.”

  I was suddenly aware I could tune Emil’s voice out, and I did so. I continued to pace the city streets, idly exploring with little mind for what I saw. This waiting game was boring me already.

  Still, I felt like something had to happen soon. It was something about what Naomi had said, about going out and hiding from the Cherubim. And Emil had said to be wary up there, about the danger and the few places to hide.

  Could it be possible, somehow, that they were underground? Maybe all the humans had fled there. There could be a whole city under the earth!

  The logistics behind that thought seemed highly unlikely. How would they get food or water? It’d have to have been set up years ago, and while I could imagine such a bunker existing below Washington, DC, there was no way there was a secret city under a place like this.

  I was, however, on edge. I heard something fall to the ground, and I spun around to meet the gaze of a many-footed angel perching on an old apartment roof. It folded its wings at my glare and shifted its weight about.

  I kept walking and watched my shoes. New boots, nice and shiny but not at all worn in. They didn’t match the rest of me at all—my hair had grown a couple inches, to a length I was quite unused to. It sat poorly on my head, something not helped by the oil and dirt that had accumulated. My clothes were a mess too. I hadn’t bothered to replace them, and after all this time they had become quite terrible.

  The river, the same one from the lake, ran right through the city. I had passed a bridge a while back that connected the two halves of the city, and I went back to it. It was low-lying, just a couple feet above the river, and long. From the very center, the river stretched wide and relatively still.

  It was all quite serene, especially without the angels—they clung to the edge, but none dared to follow me onto the bridge.

  I stripped slowly, not even in the sensual, dramatic way but instead like a frightened rabbit. I took off my jacket one sleeve at a time. Taking many pauses to look around and listen hard. I first dropped it, but then I stalled for time by folding it.

  By the time I was naked, it was far later than it needed to be, and the night had become chilly. I shivered, and struggled to climb over the fence. It wasn’t that high up, but it was a bit higher than I had thought, and I was suddenly reexamining if it was worth the effort to walk back to the shore and get in slowly instead.

  I gripped the steel bars of the fence and leaned over the water again. I probably should just get it over with, I knew, but the water was going to be ever so unpleasant.

  “Hello,” a voice said, and in my surprise I fell right into the water.

  For a moment everything was dark and cold.

  But I have yet to master swimming underwater without plugging my nose, and the icy water filled my nostrils. I flailed to the surface, gasping and coughing heavily. I couldn’t properly swim with so much water still stuck inside me, and I struggled to reach one of the concrete support pillars.

  The water wasn’t too deep, and once I found a place to hold myself against the pillar, I coughed until my lungs ached. The tiny bit of adrenaline I had gained from falling wore off very quickly, and I started shivering soon after.

  I desperately wanted to get out, dry off, and investigate. But I also couldn’t let this go to waste, and I quickly ducked under the surface of the water again and ran my hands through my hair. I probably should have brought some sort of soap or shampoo with me, actually. And certainly I should have brought a towel.

  Climbing out of the water slowly did nothing to prevent me from getting goose bumps as I cautiously peered around on top of the bridge to see who had spoken. Gavreel was recognizable at a distance. He stood very still in the center of the bridge, likely having not moved since speaking to me. I wanted to move slowly, but I had been shivering ever since I had stripped, and was in a great hurry to pile on my layers of clothes.

  “Hello,” he said as I walked closer to him.

  I ignored him and got dressed, using one of my coats to poorly dry myself off first. I was still uncomfortable as I slipped, slightly damp, into my clothes.

  “Why are you back here?”

  “There’s a couple complications I’m concerned about.” He wasn’t even trying to address me, instead keeping a solid stance and watching the river. I had to stand in front of him before he bothered to briefly meet my gaze. “And a few loose ends as well, I’m afraid.”

  “What is it?” I said, catching my head in my hands and sighing with exhaustion. The last thing I needed was a request from him of all things.

  “Was Midori… harmed in some sort of way, when you were with her? We did not always have vision on her, and there have been… problems. Solutions are best found when you understand the sort of problem you are facing.”

  Of course this was about Midori. “Harmed? Definitely not. I was the only
one out there who actually did any fighting.”

  “There is something wrong with her, that is certain. Surely you are aware of this in some way? An observation? A secret?”

  Well, if there’s one thing I’d learned about Midori, it was that she did have a number of secrets—and one of them was probably the same sort of precise knowledge that Gavreel was missing, the sort of thing he couldn’t know. It was before his time.

  But I wasn’t about to tell him about the angelic creature that had used to haunt her. He had, after all, told me to burn down what might’ve been a human camp. And we hadn’t quite parted on good terms.

  “No. We barely knew each other, you know.”

  “That is most… terrible. We need her. If it fails, I suppose we’ll be forced to turn to you. But you’re less than ideal. Ah. Well. We will keep our efforts ongoing.” He kept steady, but started to rock ever so slightly on his heels while he talked.

  “Is that it?” I said, but then he was gone, faster than I could really see but with a short afterglow of heat.

  I wrung my hair out for a couple of pointless minutes, brushing it neatly before putting my hat back on. It was really much too cold for any of this.

  I had to question, though, where was Midori now? Did they have her in some sort of a cell? They needed her, of course; she was the chosen one. So was she living in luxury right now?

  Did she have heat? Was she cozy?

  It did not matter what state she was in, because either way I was going to have to burn a house down to get warm again.

  And that, I decided, was not an exaggeration. I wanted to burn something. There were plenty of houses around, and if I didn’t torch them, they’d probably become dirt in a couple hundred years anyway.

  I had matches, and it turned out that was really all I needed. I found a suburban home for myself, a nice little two-story place with white walls and lots of curtains.

  The rugs were a good place to start. I placed a match on two corners and pulled up a rocking chair, watching as the fire slowly spread.

  I was all set to get out. I just took my time. The fire took a bit to get on anyway.

  I took new clothes while I was there: a long, heavy coat, some tall boots, an exaggeratedly large scarf, and one of those thick fur-lined hats with earflaps. I looked ridiculous, but at least I was warm.

  My movement was a bit constricted, though, and I contented myself with the idea that in any time of great danger I would be dexterous enough to unbutton my coat in time.

  The angels scattered from the flames, hypocritical beasts that they were, and pretty soon the neighborhood was clear of all but one, a particularly lanky angel. Its arms were about twice the length of its body, and they folded above its head as it sat.

  It had hair too, or at least something a lot like hair, which fell over its face entirely, like a lampshade. What must have been its neck emerged from below the hair, long and skinny and perfectly straight.

  The body below that was like a dead tree mixed with a human. It had a sort of vague dark purplish tint to it that almost came off as real, though the sudden spots of black and white it had laid over its rib cage gave it the semblance of a corpse.

  Standing by the street corner, it turned around to face me.

  I turned around and went the other way.

  22

  THE ANGEL followed me. It took its steps slowly, one hand at a time before letting its feet follow, but the sheer length of its body made it hard to outmaneuver.

  I wasn’t feeling up to any sort of fight, and I was just hoping the angel would leave me alone if I ignored it for long enough.

  I was getting pretty bored in this long-named French town, so I figured it was about time I left for Montreal. This angel wouldn’t follow me the whole way anyway—from what I’d seen, most of them were like pack animals, unwilling to stray.

  However, as I took my last customary look back at the city, once I found the highway out, the angel was still there. And it had shifted shape into something slightly more human.

  It was never going to be perfect. I had always assumed the only reason Gavreel and Fex came off as real was because they were high-ranking Seraphim, so it made sense that this lower angel couldn’t get it right.

  But it had come close. Its body kept the same odd color, and though it was squashed down to a human size, its arms were slightly longer than they had to be. It was skinny, but not like the human skinny at all—instead its stomach was like a crevice, and its ribs almost looked bare. Otherwise its body looked female—it was naked—but it was so distorted I could not think of it as so.

  Its head was still covered by long strands of hairlike substance that blossomed perfectly from the top of its head. And there was something very weird about its feet—and I realized as it walked closer that they were hard and shiny, like hooves in a foot shape.

  It was moving faster now, and I let it approach with a heavy feeling in my stomach. But it wouldn’t harm me, right? They never did.

  It paced left and right as it moved forward, a sort of meandering walk that gave the impression of a halfhearted awakeness. It stopped about ten feet from me.

  I waited, thinking it might speak. But it kept standing. I cautiously moved a few feet closer.

  “Hello?” I tried.

  It was moving with a sort of twisting motion but little more. It didn’t even appear to be breathing.

  I took a couple more steps closer. It stilled.

  “Hello?” I tried again.

  I knew what was going to happen before it did. Its hands dove forward, large enough to envelop my head, and it pulled me right against its body.

  I closed my eyes in anticipation but found nothing else happening. Its nails dug into my back and cut into my face—I imagined it left a scar—and they held me firmly in place, but otherwise the creature had stopped all movement. I opened my eyes and found it had thrust my head through its layer of hair and into the cavity behind it.

  And yes, indeed, it was a cavity. There was no head or even neck in that space. Its legs and hands emerged from the hair itself, and its center was a simple and rancid space.

  I tried struggling out of its grasp, but its hold was too strong. I twisted my head around, and met the gaze of the closest thing to a face the angel had—a masklike feature that held up the hair. It was also pale gray, though chunks of its flesh had been dug out, leaving black marks in their stead.

  There was a sudden noise, high-pitched and whiney, and after it ended, I found myself deaf. I tried talking, and found all I could hear was the blood rushing in my ears.

  My hearing started returning after thirty stressful seconds, and then the noise happened again—this time it lasted a bit longer.

  “Stop it,” I said weakly.

  The noise stopped again, though it may have been a coincidence.

  “What are you trying to do?” I said, maybe too loud or maybe too soft as I started to flail about. The angel dug its nails deeper into me.

  I still couldn’t hear when the noise happened again. I only knew it was there from the rumble of the base. And then there was a voice.

  “This is rather inconvenient.” It was a small and even voice, and it sounded like it was whispering in my ear.

  “Isn’t there an easier way to talk to me?” I realized my hearing was still gone—I could hear the angel’s voice but not my own.

  “I don’t have the ability in this form to speak in the frequencies that you can hear, I’m sorry to say. Please excuse me.”

  My hearing started working again, and its voice started to fade out. Immediately there was the same high-pitched sound.

  “I’m going to suffer from serious hearing loss at this rate.”

  “Not my problem. Have you seen my friend?”

  “What?”

  “She has long been interested in you. She has been missing, and I think she must be around you somewhere.”

  “You’re talking about the deer-angel?” I said after another burst of white noise left
my ears burning.

  “I do not know of this deer thing. Have you seen her? Her name is Adauzial.”

  I sighed. It was always going to be this, wasn’t it? It was always going to be some bullshit angel seeking my help and messing with my life. And talking in my head, with a semblance of humanity.

  “You’re Naomi.”

  “That is the short of my name, yes. She may be harmed. I am worried for her. The world isn’t safe for us right now.”

  “Your kind is everywhere. I just saw Gavreel a little bit ago. You know him, right? I can’t see Ada getting harmed with him around. He’s always watching.”

  “I am familiar with him.”

  “Please let me go before I end up deaf,” I asked Naomi as my hearing started to surface again. It was still dulled, and I became afraid that my ears were bleeding.

  She did let me go, eventually, but she didn’t leave me alone.

  “I can actually hear you without being constantly in pain when you just broadcast into my mind or whatever, you know.”

  She didn’t stop and go back, or whatever I had been expecting. And it wasn’t like she could answer either.

  “I would love an answer about all that, by the way. Way to make me feel insane. Why me? I mean, I feel pretty stupid right now, actually, just whining to you like this. You can’t answer, and I don’t want you to, because I happen to value my hearing. But you know, if you’re psychic, maybe you should just talk to me like that.”

  There was nothing. I tried to see if I could tune into Angel Radio, somehow expecting Emil to offer me answers, but found myself unable to.

  “Please leave me alone. I haven’t seen Ada, if she is the deer-angel, for days. Your presence is not really welcome. I don’t mean anything by it, I swear, but you really weird me out.”

  She finally turned around, falling back to her proper shape as she did so. I realized then as I watched her run away that she didn’t have any wings—or even eyes.

  I was really hoping she wasn’t anything other than an angel or a demon, though, because my life was already complicated enough.

  As soon as she left, I turned around, intending to continue walking.