• She’s yelling at me again. The tones in her voice are, as always, suggesting the form of a bottle. It could be green. Could be brown. Could say the word ‘beer’ or the word ‘ale’ in blazing letters on its front. The liquid inside the bottle is being poured down her throat again. I can tell from across the hall because she paused in her screaming, and that’s the only time she ever does.

    I don’t deserve to exist. It’s true – I’ve been told that very thing my whole life. Must be a pretty inefficient God up there if He let me be born. I’m a bad, bad, girl. I should be thrown in jail for all that I’ve done. No, not jail – Hell. That’s what Mommy’s saying, through the perpetual bottle-shaped slur.

    It’s what she always sounds like, though it’s very different from what the people on TV sound like. The TV’s always on, stuck on the same channel. It may play different shows, but it’s still, in another way, always the same, like how Mommy may drink from different bottles, but they’re really all the same.

    Mommy’s still yelling at me. I shouldn’t be ignoring her, but then, if Mommy’s to be believed, I am a bad girl, so why would I be doing what I should be doing? Still, even if I’m not paying attention, the heightening intensity of Mommy’s voice makes me clutch the carpet with my small fists. Mommy’s not small like I am. Not many of the people on TV are, either. Maybe it’s a mark, a curse, saying to the world that I’m not supposed to exist.

    I get up from my position near my doorway and walk into my small room that smells like the whole house does, smells like a bottle. The odor is lighter in here though, and the lightest under my bed. That’s my hiding place for those times that Mommy gets a weapon, of course a bottle, and decides to do something about my unrightful existence. But what do you know, I’m selfish. In order to save my beyond-worthless life, I often crawl down there, to that dank place and pretend I don’t exist, pretend like Mommy finally won, like the universe has been set right again.

    There are spiders under there, but I don’t mind. I think that’s the only reason Mommy doesn’t come down to get me under the bed with all her broken pieces of bottle, why she doesn’t just scratch off my neck and be done with it. So the spiders are the ones who protect me.

    Mommy is right now heading toward the door with uneven steps that are the prelude to a fall that will be all my fault. Everything bad is my fault. Mommy’s going to open the door now, and I don’t know whether it’ll be slow or quick. Slow for beer, quick for ale, and either one for whiskey. Turns out it’s pretty quick, so I know she didn’t drink beer. Not that it matters.

    She says I’m the Devil. That’s new. I’ve heard all the truths about how bad I am, and how much wrong I’ve done, but now that I find out that I’m the Devil himself – though I’m a girl – I think I know why Mommy hates me so much. I would say that I’m sorry, but I’m not, because the Devil’s never sorry. So I say nothing and prepare for her to grab something that, this time, is not bottle-shaped, and hit me with it. My old scars are fading, anyway, so it’s about time to add some new ones.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Ω~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    I cannot helplessly look down, at the world below God’s Heaven, at Earth. The sinners run rampant, destroying all in their wake, scratching away the vestigial morals of those who were once God’s people. The Lord wanted to leave humanity alone for a while, wanted to see if they would chose the right path. They did not, and the Devil’s power grew. Earth needs God’s guidance, needs the love only he can provide.

    God. He is more than anything else. He is more than everything he has created. It is thus impossible to care about anything more. All beings feel a white-tearstain love for their creator, even if now most do not know it. Even the Devil loves God more than life, more than freedom, more than his ‘wife’. For even in all of his efforts to defeat The Lord, the Devil cannot even bring himself to hate Him. This is why, if the army of God truly tries, we can defeat the Devil and extinguish sin forever.

    His warmth. The taste of purity dancing on my tongue. The sound of His soundlessness. The Lord approaches and I am rendered helpless by his mere presence.

    He asks me to go down. He realizes that the good in humanity must be saved, the sin extinguished. The second war is coming, and I, the highest Seraph, will be among the first to descend to Earth.

    The second I know these are his plans, they integrate into my mind as if they were my own pledges. I cannot disagree with God.

    I descend, summoning my holy fire, flying down through the clouds. The cold tries to bite at my six glistening white wings and fails.

    I will extinguish the unrighteous.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Ω~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    There’s still blood dripping from my back. It’s not a strange thing to me. Of course bad, bad girls like me would be beaten. That’s natural. I’m sitting on my bed, trying not to move, because it hurts to move after being beaten. I stare at my not-so-plain wall that I’m sure was once a pure white or beige, but is now stained with the blood of the Devil, the blood of me.

    The TV’s turned on downstairs. Mommy might be watching it, but I doubt it. She usually falls into a deep and unshakable sleep after she gets so mad, so bottle-scented, that she beats me. Many times in the past, this was the time when I crawled downstairs to sneak some food from the cupboard, as Mommy never gives me any food other wise. I’m the Devil, after all, I don’t deserve it.
    I consider doing the same now. I also consider being a good girl for once and not doing it, but isn’t it too late for that? I’ve already done so much bad. One good act wouldn’t change anything, and besides, it’s in the Devil’s nature to be bad.

    I get off of my bed with a groan. My wounds burn like the flames of Hell, but I’m hungry. I’m pretty much always hungry, because times like this are, after all, the only times I can get food. I feel like there’s an equally hungry vulture tearing at my back as I walk towards the door. Still, I try not to make too much noise, in case Mommy’s still awake to do her job and keep me, the worst thing on earth, from doing anything bad.

    Speaking of Mommy, I hear a groan which is not my own. Mommy’s awake down there. I have to get back to my room. I turn around and head for my door, only a foot or so behind. Another noise. An incriminating squeak. I’ve stepped on an area of the floor that maybe I shouldn’t have stepped on. I hear another high-pitched noise, an angry, fiery, bottle-shaped screech.

    A storm is coming up the steps, a storm of one angry keeper of the Devil. I need to get into my room, now. Mommy’s running fast, so I run fast too. I get into my room, but I am immediately followed. Her mouth is foaming, and she’s cursing. I swear her eyes are red, burning with hatred for the deformedly small person in front of her. There’s no time to run under the bed. She swings, fast and deadly. Then, before she hits me, her entire body swings – downwards. Mommy fell asleep again.

    I stare at her for a second, making sure that’s she’s really out. I grab her arms and start dragging her out the door. I head for a closet across the hall, which has a slightly bloodstained door from some of the times that Mommy caught me sneaking downstairs. There used to be a lot of flies there, because flies like blood, but there aren’t anymore. I wish there were, so that I could use my Devilish powers to order them to destroy Mommy. I’m a bad, bad girl.
    I stuff Mommy into the closet, and block the door with not only several chairs, but a couch I managed to drag out. Hopefully she’ll stay in there for a while. I wipe my hands and laugh, at first quietly, but then louder and louder, until the entire house is filled with my laughter.

    I hear someone coming up the steps, but it’s not Mommy. It’s my puppy. His fur is raggly as always, stained with fresh blood. Mommy must have beaten him just before I came out into the hallway in the first place. Despite the icky red goop, I pet him. He shows his appreciation and sticks his tongue out.

    “Let’s escape,” I whisper. I laugh again.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Ω~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    I laugh. A stripper is asking me what’s she’s done wrong, clearly not seeing the answer in front of her face, the answer that is her face, her disgustingly oft-viewed body, her teasingly revealed legs. I do not speak to her, for her question is not one that is answered verbally. I bring my flame to my hands and look directly into her eyes that mirror the flame around her. She struggles to look away, trying to hide her head in her hands. She cannot face her own death.

    I graze the shining white fire down her sinful legs. She gasps in surprise as she feels the sin burning out of her body. She is in more pain than she has ever been in before, but she does not scream. They never scream. Her soul is being separated from her body and forced into Hell, another prize for the Devil, and another good riddance to the world.

    Someone is behind me, watching me in horror. A teenage boy. He asks me why I’m doing this, why I’m slowly burning this whole building to the ground. He truly does not know? This world is truly so bad that he does not know? He does not see the wings on my back? He does not see that I am involuntarily radiating God’s light into this forsaken place? Maybe he cannot. Maybe he is blind to God, like far too much of this once-righteous world.

    “It is God’s will,” I say simply, turning around to face the boy. Looking at him much closer, delving into his soul, I add, “You’re the same as everyone else in this damned building. You are not a perpetrator of sin, but rather an indulger. These other sinners would be nothing were it not for people like you.”

    The boy blinks his eyes, which are focusing intently on my face. He sees for the first time the fire in my eyes, the cold, merciless, cleansing fire. I step toward him, slowly and deliberately. With my flaming fingers, I touch his eyelids and he begins to feel sorry for his disgrace to God.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Ω~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    “Where am I?” I ask myself quietly. I got out of the house, but that doesn’t help much if I’m lost. The sun has set, so no one’s around, and even if there was someone out, I wouldn’t ask them for directions, because who would give the Devil directions? It’s hopeless, really. I should have just stayed inside where at least it’s warm.

    I sit down on the sidewalk, looking out at the grass immediately in front of me, and the unfamiliar houses further ahead. Inside those houses, I’m sure there are all kinds of happy people who at least deserve to exist. I think I hear laughter from one of those houses. And on every house on this street, there are multicolored lights, exclaiming to the world ‘We don’t care if you see us, because we have nothing to hide’. I, on the other hand, have everything to hide: my deformed size; the blood on my back as well as my puppy’s; and the simple fact that I shouldn’t exist at all, except maybe in Hell.

    I sigh and lie down on the sidewalk which, no matter how I try, I cannot possibly pretend is soft. I look up at the stars that seem to portray the same message as the lights do, the same message I myself can never give. Somewhat expectedly, tears start rolling down my face, giving the impression of rain on the part of the sidewalk I’m laying on.

    With a yip, my puppy licks away each and every tear, and once they stop coming, he looks me right in the face and yips some more, asking for attention. I agree to his proposal and pet him, holding on to him like the last hope he is.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Ω~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    I fly over a neighborhood, on my way to more sinners in other foul and forsaken places. Without warning, I nearly drop out of the sky, my wings tilting downwards as I feel a burning, not clean and pristine like my fires, but defiling and dirty. Mud for the soul. Alcohol, the scent, sight and being of the sinner in the house directly below me. The ale clings to her hair and clothing, though she has not had a drink for a while now. Her throat is black and wasted. Her fingers trace in the air the scars she has inflicted on the daughter she didn’t even bother to name.

    I scream into the night, wanting to kill her, wanting to send her to Hell and away from this Earth and from her powerless daughter. And I will. Flame bursts out from every point in my body. I am a shooting star descending to the house of the sinner.

    Upon landing on her front yard, I smell someone else who has been through her door very recently. Her daughter has managed to escape with her puppy, likely armed with a self-created name of her own and a vague plan of where she will go. She and her puppy were stained and scarred by blood; a consequence of the sinner’s beating. The sinner beat a puppy. I roar with the promise of retribution, knocking a nearby tree down. With my hands trembling and my eyes crying fire, I stomp to her door.

    Blood. The imposing taste of the liquid is all over the walls, echoing the screams of the child. My senses are overwhelmed with it. The sinner herself is nearly hidden in her child’s blood, so close to impossible to detect.
    I run toward the sinner, locked in her own closet, only half visible due to the chairs and couch in front of it. The child’s touch, painfully pure in such a dirty place, is all over the furniture. She trapped her mother in here in order to escape.

    I knock down every chair and the couch without effort and tear off the door of the closet, something that should scare anyone, but the sinner just looks at me, still deeply intoxicated from several hours ago. I can hear the alcohol running through her veins and I can see it as tainted brown clouds in her breath. I, still flaming, walk toward her, looking her in the eye. She begins to make incoherent noises and tries to stand up, but falls down, a bottle rolling on the ship of sin. She cannot escape out of her small closet, her tomb.

    I drag her all the way out of the closet and touch her throat in a way that would have been gentle if not for the fire. She doesn’t even notice at first, and just stares into my eyes blankly.

    Then the alcohol burns away, cleansed into nothingness. She asks, whimpering, who I am and why I am doing this, my flame visible through her eyes. Her eyes which have something else creeping into them, her eyes which have understanding. Despite the pain coursing through her soul, the alcoholic smiles and bows her head down to me as she is extinguished.

    Once again I have fiery tears in my eyes.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Ω~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    I think the cold might just take me, might just let me be done with my undeserved life, might just return me to the Hell whence I came. I haven’t bothered to move for a long while, and I doubt I will anytime soon. I’m curled over my puppy, keeping him warm as he does not deserve to die. I’m facing the ground, knowing that it is my destination. Not even when I hear laughter almost as Devilish as me, not even when I hear screaming that has the same chilling effect as the snow on my back, do I flinch.

    I’m being a good girl this time, you see, not fighting the punishment I deserve. I shouldn’t have escaped, it was a selfish thing to do, and now instead of being beaten to death, I am freezing to death. I guess God does exist after all.

    I hear what sounds like an eagle, or other large bird with gigantic wing beats, come my direction. I see a white blur out of the corner of my eye. I don’t pay attention. Then the movement stops. The eagle must have dropped out of the sky, iced over and unable to fly. Maybe the eagle was as bad as I am. I don’t look over to it.

    “What’s wrong?” I hear someone speak. My ears must be getting good to hear people talk from inside their houses.

    “Do you have a name?” I’m waiting to hear the other side of the conversation. It doesn’t ever come.

    My head is lifted up. Suddenly I’m looking into the eyes of… of…I don’t know what. His or her – I can’t tell – eyes are crystalline, pure, glistening white even in the darkness. Skin that must have never been touched by anything or anyone. Hair longer then my entire body. This is not someone who should be talking to me. I break free from the person’s grasp and lower my head.

    “You can hear me. You can talk. Do you have a name for yourself?”

    I choose to respond, though quietly. “What makes you think I deserve one?”

    “What makes you think you don’t?” The eagle asks with a slightly menacing undertone to the voice. It is now that I look up at this being’s entire body. My eyes are again immediately drawn to its eyes, however blinding they may be. But I manage to fight my way to look at the rest of it, and I suppress a scream. Wings. Six of them. This is an Angel I am dealing with, which means I’m going to die a radically different way.

    I stand up so I can try to run away, my puppy dropping from my lap. The Angel grabs my wrist before I can take a step. Its hold seems soft, so I try to pull away, but I can’t even wiggle my wrist around in its grasp.

    “Let go of me,” I whisper, my voice utterly betraying my fear.

    “No,” It says back in a whisper that is barely audible yet so loud it almost breaks my ears.

    She wants me to tell her why I don’t have a name. I’ll do that, and she will see how wrong her contact with me is.

    “I don’t deserve a name,” I whisper toward the eagle-angel, “Unless you count ‘the Devil’. My mommy was trying to be good by protecting the world from me. But I’m a bad girl. I escaped, and I deserve to die,” I say, and then add in a whisper, “So just kill me now. You’re an Angel, after all.”

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Ω~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    “Kill me now.” The girl repeats again, truly convinced that she is the Devil. I of course already knew that she was the child of the sinner I just smote, already knew she was never given a name by her mother, already knew that she was told she was a horrible little girl who deserved to go to Hell, already knew her mother recently told her she was the Devil – but even I didn’t guess that she actually believed it.

    I keep my hold on her tight, though it would feel like a caress were she to stop struggling. I want to help this girl, something I normally wouldn’t bother with. And so the Seraph took on the job of the Angel.

    “You’re not the Devil,” I whisper, knowing that anything louder will set her off. “That was a lie your mother told you. She was an alcoholic – I know you sensed the bottle-shaped scent that was constantly on her – and she was the evil one.”

    “Then how do you explain my deformed size? Mommy always told me that was the mark of the Devil.”

    “You’re a child,” I whisper lovingly with the slightest hint of a surprised screech to my voice, “Humans start out life very small and then grow as they get older. Dogs, like your puppy here, do the same thing, as do every other animal on Earth.”

    She looks up at me wide-eyed.

    “Really?”

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Ω~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    “Yes, really.” The Angel says.

    I blink a few times, trying to realign the world I live in with this new piece of knowledge. This means that I do deserve to exist, a possibility never before entertained. I’m just a normal – what did the Angel call it? – child. Like my puppy who also remained nameless. I was aware of names on TV, but I never really considered having one, or at least giving the gift of a name to my puppy.
    I now look downwards at the golden fluffball yipping at me. I kneel and pet him lovingly, trying to think of a good name.

    “Sunshine.” I say to my puppy, now named Sunshine for his golden coat. He yips approvingly.

    I look back up to the Angel, who is smiling at me.

    “What’s your name?” I ask the Angel, curious.

    “Omnis Eredriel,” Omnis says, and then adds playfully, “And what’s yours?”
    I think for a little while only to realize that I have no clue what to name myself.

    “You name me.” I request.

    Omnis pauses to think.

    “You shall be known as Theadora,” Omnis proclaims.

    Omnis outstretches a smooth hand to me. “Grab Sunshine and come here,” Omnis whispers.

    I pick up Sunshine and walk toward Omnis, who wraps comforting arms around me. I hear the same wingbeats I heard when Omnis first came to me, and I watch as Omnis takes me higher, over all the houses, over all the neighborhoods.

    Even though I’m as high up as I am, I don’t feel scared. I am safe in Omnis’s arms. We travel for some time, and eventually Omnis makes a landing, softly, by an orphanage.

    Omnis lets me go but keeps a comparatively soft hold on my hand. Omnis walks me toward the friendly white door of the orphanage.

    Omnis knocks on the door, and a light-haired woman, with an Omnis-like caring in her eyes, likely the owner of the orphanage, opens it. Upon seeing Omnis, she gasps and looks very confused.

    “Take Theadora and her puppy in,” Omnis orders the woman, “Make sure to treat her well and no matter what she must be adopted into a loving home.”
    The woman agrees, stuttering and averting her eyes from Omnis.

    Before I walk in the door, Omnis gives me a necklace with a glass pendant on it, filled with a beautiful white fire.

    “Remember the grace of God,” Omnis whispers to me, and then flies away.
    I walk into the orphanage and am greeted by an array of children, some of whom are girls about my size. I finger the warm pendant and I am home.