Falling Angel

The Recyke machine was making a series of choking noises: coughing on its cheapness while it went about the task of processing what Jadesola had handed it and conveying the thin liquid to the fridge and into a dry insect disc. The woman wanted to see, so she flicked on a switch and the expanding mass revealed itself behind the door. Life seemingly seeping back to the insects.

When the process was finished, she opened the fridge and gobbled the patty down in one. If it tasted disgusting, she didn’t let on, and cleaned her teeth with a lavish tonguing motion before shutting the door; recasting the room into a dim night. Jadesola wiped her face and started crawling back the way she came – down the long and narrow room. It was the only exercise her body received, if one didn’t count filling the Recyke machine.

Her skin was scuffing against the five-by-five tunnel, described to her once as a “bijou apartment,” when it was clearly little more than a corridor. Although the estate agent had been correct about one thing: it would do all she asked of it.

Now at the back of the room, she reached out with gnarled fingers and gripped the neofiber arms of her chair. The thing that had cost her fifty times the price of the corridor. Dragging herself up its sleek embrace and shimmering texture. A faint mauve emitting from reclining under-lights. Back at the other end, the fridge tried to keep quiet the sound of grinding, Jadesola licked her lips: the appliance had snaffled an ant or something.

Searching below the chair, she drew out a triad of plugs and connectors. The first, she screwed into a corresponding port in her side. A part of her body that had once been considered obliques. The connector made a whirring sound when it was fully located and three soft legs extended from the male end to rest against her skin, protecting the coupling from any wrenching movements. The second plug was a larger and bulkier contraption, a self-guiding waste unit. She turned it on before lifting up her gown.

Jadesola then stared into the remaining plug, checking for discarded lint or dust. She peered intently: her underused yet degraded eyesight having to do as best it could despite the plug’s internal lighting. The woman made a sucking sound, agreeing with herself that the port could have been made with a little more consideration for the elderly, before deciding that as long as she gave it a good clean, then it should be fine. She plugged it into the station, pressed the button for a full service clean and then repeated the action. As she waited, she felt something leave her body, giving her a brief shiver as it went. The Recyke machine re-gurgled from across the way, and to her right, the micro reactor flared into existence. A teaspoon of superheated plasma laser ignited from storage batteries hidden behind the fridge. It vapourised pellets in blinks, supplying the Recyke machine with the power it needed to filter waste and create more pellets for the reactor; which repaid the gift by recharging the batteries with any surplus energy.

Jadesola gave the port a final inspection and pushed it into her skull. It located itself, the locking pins actuated, connections were made to her optical and thalamaic systems. Her eyes rolled back and her body sagged against the chair.

She saw a planet hovering below her; a turning, ochre and blue sphere. It began to grow as she fell, filling all that Jadesola could see. The features becoming clearer. She squealed as she hit the surface: the fear of falling, too deeply rooted in her ancient mirorder. Regaining her senses, she shook herself and came to her knees, reaching out her fingers to feel the ground; the warmth radiating up her smooth arms and into her lithe shoulders. Jadesola stared at the redness and crumbled the soil between her digits. Small flecks of quartz reflected the sun as she slowly examined the substrate in minute detail. The air had a hot yet revitalising feel as she breathed deeply on the trace of the land. She lifted her head, pushing fists into the substratum as she unfolded her wings and contracted her quads to launch her skywards. The muscles across her back flared as she forced her new forelimbs to lift her higher. The air currents rebounding off the ground and flicking her box braids in front of her eyes. Jadesola grinned at the ground beneath her as it fell away. When she’d reached a point where the trees were tiny yet sharp focused forms: she hovered. She raised her arms and let her hands release the soil they were holding. She saw most dissipate, blowing away, while a few clumps had caked enough to plummet. She watched them fall as her wings kept her aloft with ease. Jadesola shut her eyes: hugged herself, and felt her young and supple body beneath her touch. Her breasts held, her stomach stone-like: waist narrow before broadening to shapely hips. She peddled her long legs and didn’t care that it was all a lie. She’d never looked this way – even in her youth. But these were her rules, and if the images that had distorted her young mind had stolen something from her, then they held no sway here. Here was all about giving in to those images – because – who cared.

Jadesola opened her arms and shimmered like a golden cross in the sky. Her eyes picked out elephants in the distance and she collapsed into a kite, spinning as she fell before levelling out and swooping across the landscape. She lowered herself until she could see the ground rushing beneath her. Shrubs and grasses disappeared in a flash: trees loomed and as she arched her shoulders, her wings darted her one way then the other. When she approached the banks of a lake, she slowed her progression through the air, reaching down to kiss the cooling water with her fingertips. She dipped further and lifted up a palm of crystal: drinking some and washing her face with what remained. Both the liquid down her throat and across her cheeks felt incredible as she stared at her equally exquisite reflection. Jadesola laughed at the water. Beneath it, fish swam along with her, breaching the surface as if she’d created a bow wave.

She flexed her wings and the lift increased, pulling her up above the tranquillity. In the distance, she could see the herd had stopped by a baobab tree. The angel landed outside its shadow and walked the remaining yards to where the matriarch was standing. The tree cast a pleasing pattern around Jadesola and the watching elephants. The aged monarch dismissed the calf beside her and lifted her trunk in a greeting. The angel felt the deep ripples of sound beneath her feet and understood the matriarch’s intention. Jadesola reached out a hand and clasped the offered trunk. It’s coarse pachydermia in striking contrast to the supple and delicate feel of her own.

‘Hello Maame.’ Jadesola whispered, hugging the elephant deeper as it responded to her touch. 

‘You know I wouldn’t leave you,’ she told it, as the animal checked her over with its prehensile appendage: breathing in her smell as it went, and making the woman squirm when the bristled surface brushed against her chin. When the two had finished, the elephant patted the woman’s head and beckoned her over to a patch in the lee of the great tree.

The matriarch searched among the fallen baobab fruits before selecting the one she wanted to show Jadesola. The angel reached out and accepted it: pushed her fingers inside with a strength that didn’t belong to her, staring confusingly at the husk of pulp and seeds. She looked up at the elephant, and it motioned the act of eating.

Jadesola picked out some of the seeds, but the sharp draft of effluence made her forcefully throw them aside.

‘I don’t understand?’ she asked, but Maame didn’t have any answers for her.  

Jadesola coughed, and a redness fell into the sand.

THE END.