Magenta Monster

I was raised in a celestial sphere, they are nothing special it is just that those on Earth forgot what they were. Mine was where those who were not wanted were sent, a small bubble of self containment we slipped along our rail in an egg of shame. Orphans, children of begger’s and the results of prostitution. Some of us were so sick and though medicines existed to cure us we would not receive them, it being seen as part of our punishment for the audacity to be born.

Those who ran our sphere however were kind, Nana a large woman would done her pressure suite and skim from sphere to sphere in the hunt for funds to keep the little orphanage going. After all we needed food, bedding and cloths and Rast a tall gangly man would attempt to teach us our words, letters and sounds. I did well, I was healthy and robust and I had a tendency to think unlike alot of the others who knew their place in the grand scheme.

Sometimes people would came and take some of us away, adoption it was called, sometimes Nana and Rast were happy about this and sometimes they would look grave for days. One day Nana awoke me, she was all bright smiles but they seemed somehow brittle, someone had come for me she said, this seemed strange, normally when adoption happened you all got washed and dressed and stood together for the people to choose and no one ever looked at me. I was a girl but I was not delicate, I would have been good as a boy but no one wanted me.

Nana hushed my questions and led me out were a group of large men stood, they scared me and I wanted to hide from them, they were all muscle and shining armour and on their backs great feathered appendages. I’d seen birds in the picture books in the play room, they did not look like cuddly ducklings. Nana pushed me forward and I stood trembling staring up at them. I had known my time at the orphanage was running out I was growing up but Rast thought that with my ability to read they could get me some sort of job.

‘This is the girl?’

Nana nodded, ‘she has the nubs but I didn’t think you abandoned your children?’

The speaker engulfed my arm in his large gloved hand, it hurt and I began to squirm, to try and escape. ‘Hush girl you will only hurt yourself.’

I stopped and glared at him, he turned me round, and touched my back, I flinched, it was sore, it had been sore for days but random bits of me were growing and sore all over the place. ‘She is a halfling,’ he growled and the other monsters muttered and looked at each other.

‘Let me go!’ I cried and ripped away from him. I went and cowered next to Nana fearful of what my disobedience would result in.

‘Woman do you have a children’s suit to fit her?’ he rumbled, I looked at Nana, tears in my eyes I didn’t want to go with them.

‘No, people normally bring their own for adoption,’ her large hand swollowed mine and I began to relax, ‘if she is a nephilim what do you plan to do with her?’ Nana could sound like steal, I clung to her, what was a nephilim? What were these creatures?

‘She will fit in better with us than with humans you know it is so, she is still… an abomination, but the spheres have moved on, there is room for such as her now.’ Nana seemed to be trembling, I looked at her and tears were rolling down her cheeks. ‘We will be back within the hour with a suit and a donation to your… establishment.’ The man turned his eyes on me and I wanted to look away, ‘you will pack what ever is yours to take and will be ready to leave when we return.’

And then Nana was shuffling me out of the room.

Nana helped me pack, ‘what are they?’ I asked fearing the answer.

‘Angels, celestial warriors, and you my dear are… half human half angel, a nephilim…. you are forbidden fruit.’

‘What is going to happen to me?’ I asked quietly. Nana’s large eyes stared at me as if I was already not there.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

And so I was fitted into a suit that was too big and shunted out of the life I had known.

I had never been outside of the sphere, there was no gravity here and the pressure suit pressed coldly on me, I saw the ice points of stars burning holes in the darkness of space, I was flanked by two of the large men and they gestered to show me how to move myself along the line to their little sphere ship. I wanted to cry, I knew there was nothing other than a bit of metal and rope between me and the forever vacuum. Frustrated with my progress the man behind me grabbed my waist and pulled both of us along, I noticed through my terror that his wings helped him move and that they were not within his suit. I marvelled that they did not explode.

I was man handled inside their sphere ship and though my helmet was removed I remained in the pressure suit, I was pushed into a seat and buckled in. Their sphere ship unlike our celestial sphere was not permanently tethered to the cords of heaven and so we bounced and juddered and to my shame I threw up. The man opposite sneered at me and I could see the contempt in his brilliant eyes, he looked away. The man who had spoken to Nana cleaned me up and settled in the seat next to me, he had a finely cropped red beard.

‘Where are you taking me?’ I asked.

‘To Heaven, to the first Sphere.’

‘What will happen to me there?’

He sighed and looked down at me, ‘I don’t know but you will have a life, humans can be unkind to angels if they get hold of them.’

‘She is tainted!’ came a voice from behind me, ‘it would be kindest to space her.’ I gasped and squirmed in my seat to see who had said this. Green eyes glared at me from bronzed skin.

I spoke before I thought on what I was saying, it was a tendency that had often caused me issues with the other children, ‘So angels can be just as viscous, you are simply big men with wings.’ The blow knocked little white and red stars into my vision and a trickle of blood ran down my face face from my eye brow, the eye itself was beginning to swell.

‘Do not utter such blasphemy! Do not speak to me!’

‘Touch her again Joshua and you will know my wraith, she is fore most a child untrained and nieve about our world.’

‘Yes Arch Angel,’ the man muttered.

‘And you,’ he said not bothering to look at me, ‘will remain silent for the rest of the journey.’ I nodded and looked and the mountian of a thigh next to me, they were do big, they could have crushed me with one hand.

I sigh and wondered what heaven would be like.

Posted: Thursday, November 29th, 2012 @ 11:12 pm
Categories: Short Stories, The Punks World.
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