if God did not spare Angels

They threw you to the fire because they love you. Lines like this repeat again and again in the minds of those lost.

I wasn’t feeling good, not for a long time. I feel good now, but it doesn’t matter anymore, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter to the people who do matter to me.

I wasn’t feeling good and it started in the summer. Summer is something awful when you’re sick. Sure, winter is cold, but in summer it’s unexpected, at least in winter everyone is ready for the sniffling, the coughing, and if it’s really bad the fevers, the vomit. But I’ve always had rotten luck. That’s what Mom said, always in a way like it was my fault, just a little. Every time we wanted to go on vacation, go somewhere, I would go and get myself sick. Just like that. Rotten luck.

It happened again, anyways. And in the summer, like I said. We were going somewhere, going somewhere away— far away— Dad said, from anyone, from anything, for a very long time. Sounds bad I thought. Times like these we should band together. But Dad wanted to run away, and hide us from the world, so we followed. Maybe it was the thought of it that made me sick.

It was just that at first, sniffling, being tugged along in the heat and maybe falling behind a little. But then at night, laying among the trees and the dirt; wind blowing and the fire all out it allowed itself to grow. Things do that, you know. Where people can’t see, when they sleep, when they’re not looking turned the other way, when they can’t hear. “Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill” or something like that.

So in the night fever came, chills and heat, and didn’t go by morning so they started worrying. Nothing yet, because I’m still their daughter, but moving becomes harder when you’re lugging a solid 100 lbs of girl behind you who with every day just can’t keep keeping. And no improvement shines its sparkly matter on the morning horizon of each dawning day. Fever is the first symptom, a flyer, in Mom’s hand, crumpled from her backpack. Dad had one too, but he lost it, Jodie probably still had one shoved somewhere in his mess, and I can’t remember what I did with mine, but that it burned, and I let it.

A flyer, with the stages. First is fever, people should be wary at this stage I mean in this mess we’re in you can never be too cautious. But nothing is for certain, fever can mean anything. Fever can mean bad food, or bad immunity, head cold or not enough sleep. Nothing is for certain.

Next, if the fever doesn’t break, is throwing up, and lack of appetite, still things that could be attributed to a cold, but the longer they go on the less people try to convince themselves. After that things are indisputable, and irreversible. Not that I think it’s reversible in any stages, I really don’t remember.

So next you start going crazy. That’s number 3. Seeing things, hearing things, remembering things that didn’t happen and forgetting things from moments ago. I think that happened around the fifth day. They were dragging me along, we kept going, they kept attributing my inability to get better to our constant moving. I’d vomit on the side of the trail we cut through the woods until there wasn’t anything left to come up, and we’d keep going. I’d fall asleep walking, and be hiked up onto Dad’s shoulders while Jodie took on his pack.

I don’t know what we planned to do, but we were going. Away. That’s what Dad had said, just away. Away from the moaning, screaming, the sick and the terror and the noise of the city where people who were and weren’t ill alike lost their heads in the madness of reality.

There was a cabin, we hadn’t been in some years, it was out in the woods on the mountain just out of town, and there we’d be away, definitely. Away but not safe. At least that’s what I thought, and I think that’s what everyone else thought, but they wouldn’t say it. Not to Dad, who knew it too, but tried to convince himself so much that maybe he started to believe in it.

I fell in and out of sleep, those days, on the ground with everyone else, or on someone’s back, rotating between Mom and Dad and Jodie. Jodie who was still sniffling a little every day at the loss of Bud, and all the others we had to leave behind, but mostly Bud, until Dad would yell at him to SHUT UP about it already. And then his tears would fall in silence as to not perturb him, but fall they would.

On the fifth day, propped up against the tree in fever, there was nothing left to eat so nothing left to be sick with. They had stopped feeding me anything after about two days, when they realized it was a waste of rations, but now there was nothing left for anyone. Mom was leaning against the trunk, standing still. Jodie was sitting on an upturned root, across from me keeping his distance. Nobody was too close, though each of them had me breathing hotly down their necks at some time during the day.

Dad was looking at me, then he looked away. “We’ve got about fifteen more miles.”

Mom was carving a dove with her knife and a stubby branch she’d picked up on the way “Are you sure?”

She didn’t say it, because she still had some respect for him, but I think she wanted to ask because he had said there was fifteen more miles probably something like fifteen miles ago. Jodie was sweating where he sat. It was a hot day. It dripped down his face so you couldn’t tell if the tracks on his cheeks were sweat or tears. Dad shouldered his bag, setting it down, and himself with it.

“I know.” he said, and then a little louder, “I know, okay?!”

Mom nicked her finger and let out a little hiss. She pressed the bleeding into her shirt, and put the knife away. Dad glanced at me again, I was almost asleep.

“What are we gonna do with her?” he whispered to Mom.

Jodie perked up at that.

“What do you mean?” Whispered mom back, “What do you mean? The same thing we’ve been doing.”

“We’re out of food.” Dad said

“And?” Mom’s voice raised, and then looking at me, she lowered it quickly, “And?”

They probably thought I wasn’t lucid enough to understand.

“She is slowing us down”

“She is your daughter!”

“Not anymore!” “You don’t know that.”

Dad turned away from her hard gaze, her bright blue eyes, angry with him, he could never stand that. He held his face in his hands letting out a deep, deep sigh.

“I think Dad is right.” Jodie said, Mom turned her head to him, quickly, furiously. He curled into himself a little bit at her glare, then straightened up.

“Look at her, Mom.” and she did. “Just look at her,” he repeated.

I must look like something dead and alive, I thought.

Mom sighed, and picked up Dad’s pack, hoisting it onto her shoulder with her own, “We’re wasting time.”

She turned away, waiting for Dad to dutifully hoist me onto his back, for Jodie to sigh and get up, for us to continue on as the day was eaten away.

Darkness fell late, around 7:30 in conformity with the season. We stopped again, it was dark, but we weren’t at the cabin yet. I was set in my usual position, against a tree. Mom stayed by my side, pushing my sweaty hair out of my face. Jodie was getting sticks, his flashlight flickering about in the woods, the batteries were almost out and he kept smacking his hand against it, cursing. Dad was setting up a fire, telling Mom to stay away with his eyes. She heard them.

“Leave me be” she said without looking up, still petting my head. It felt good. Dad grunted. Mom squeezed the flyer between her hands, and then tossed it at him.

“Its not contracted through touch anyways.”

He picked it up, glanced it over and crumpled it into his pocket.

Jodie returned, arms full, a good stock of wood. The land was all warm and dry and ready to burn. He tossed it down into the pit Dad had made and began to arrange it.

“I think it’s dead for good.” He tossed Dad the flashlight, who hit it against his palm once, twice—harder— before dropping it into the dirt and nodding.

“We can start using mine then.” he said, and then, “Won’t be long now, about six miles I think.”

Dad’s lighter still had fluid, thankfully. It wouldn’t forever, but it would get them to the cabin. He gathered some dry grass and leaves for kindling and lit it in his hand, blowing softly, then setting it into the sticks. Mom had moved away from me and closer to the fire. I was further away, they didn’t want me to get hot. But the fire was less for heat and more for light in this weather.

My eyes opened up as the fire began to burn. Little inklings of light dancing around in the sky and crawling on the kindling, feeding itself, grew to small orange flames. It had been blurry before, their faces, and everything else. I was just waking up. But the fire let me see, and pulled my eyes open.

I remember still, it was something I always liked to watch. Fire burning. Its like a dance. Licking up into the sky and back down, it moves differently every time, you never know what its going to do so your eyes follow it in rapt attention.

Dad noticed my waking, how my eyes were wider, no longer tired slits. His back straightened, Mom noticed, and then Jodie, they both turned around, waiting, for something.

I smiled. It was the first time in a while. I hadn’t been awake in so long, not really. I love their faces, lit by the fire like that. I think about it still, all the time. My favorite picture in my mind. There, in the past they are perfect. A little worse for wear, but that’s the way I like it. Not picture perfection, no Hollywood magic. Just them, and their eyes, watching me, smiling a little bit at my smile, waiting to see.

Dad saw it before I felt it, because in a few seconds his knife was buried in my chest, and my arm was outstretched to Mom, just an inch away from her face. He pulled the knife out, and pulled himself away out of reach, tugging Jodie and Mom behind him. It hurt, it hurt so bad.

I looked down, blood oozed out of my chest, thick with the virus. It hurt. Mom was grabbing at his arm to get to me, scratching and drawing blood. “What did you do?! What have you done?!”

He held her back, breath shaking with adrenaline. Jodie stood by his side, waiting to be given orders. They stayed like that, while my fingers came up to the hole in my chest to play with the thick blood there, look at it, dark and nearly purple like dying things are.

It hurt. I wanted to get to her, to go back, to just a little before. I wanted her touch, her caress on my head. Mom. She’s crying. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Parents aren’t supposed to do that. Are they? I just want to fall asleep, next to her. She’d never betray me. Her daughter. Her only daughter. Never.

I’ve got to convince them I haven’t got it. I haven’t got the virus. They don’t need to kill me. They don’t. I can stay with Mom then. So I tried, I tried to stay still. Just go back to sleep, I thought, then they’ll pick you up, and bring you to a warm bed, and pet your head while you sleep and can’t feel.

But the body betrays the mind, and it hurt, so I didn’t want to get up but I did, and I ran again, at them, to her. Dad slashed the knife again and Mom screamed. It cut from my hip to the collar bone this time. I felt it, but my body didn’t.

It was hungry. It was their fault, I thought, their fault they stopped feeding me. But also my fault I kept throwing it up. If they had just kept feeding me I wouldn’t be so hungry. But I was hungry, so my body ran for something easier, and threw itself at the third.

“Jodie!” Dad shouted, diving to defend him. His son. His only son.

The fire crackled behind them, flames coming up to bite. They’re like me, I thought, they’re so hungry. He wasn’t fast enough though, and my hand landed on Jodie’s neck, and we tumbled into the dirt together. I was on top of him, my muscles were so sore, they felt like they were tearing themselves apart with the strength they were using to fight against him, but they kept on. I was ready, leaning down, it was horrible, I was going to be sick, I was going to be saved, satisfied finally after weeks of muddy reality and fatigue, would my eyes be clear now? I wondered.

But he thought fast, and shoved his hand into the fire, screaming as he did it, to pull out a fresh burning stick and jam it into my eye. It broke on impact, but hot coals broke over my face and I pulled back screeching. Why did he do that? I thought. Why are they doing this? I love them, I’m still their daughter, his sister, I’m just so hungry. And at the same time, revolted by my involuntary movement and craving, I wished my body would break and destroy itself so I might burden them no longer and so the pain might stop. Somewhere, distantly in my mind I thought, so I was sick. I really really was.

Then, with a firm kick from behind, landing on my back, I tumbled into the fire.

Dad. Right, he was behind me. The pain was screaming, but the fire was beautiful, my eyes weren’t burned yet, so I could hold up a hand and look as the flames ate greedily along my skin, ate away at my flesh, and I could look out, look out from that fiery curtain on my fleeing family, my Mom’s tears still fresh. But she was no idiot. And she, holding her own pack, clinging to my father, still crying, ran with them.

My hand reached out, on fire, burning up, and seeing her leave my body had the will to roll over and out. Beating itself, the beautiful flames down as much as it could, standing to watch them go. A hot, steaming thing. Little embers in my burned hair, lit up in the dark. 

Fire. They say that is the only way you can kill those who are lost. They knew it, they knew I was lost, that’s why they did it. No other reason.

But I didn’t burn long enough, so the job wasn’t done. Never got to my head, where the sickness lives. They made it, I think. I would never go and see, not like I could. But if I could I wouldn’t either, because then they’d finish the job. And though sometimes being is tiring, being nothing is worse.

I’m awake now all the time. My body is small, smaller than it was. But I feel good. It feels good not to be sick anymore. I don’t look it, passing by. I don’t look awake, just like another of those burned things. A sinner angel that god sent to hell on judgment day. But I am awake, I’m awake all the time.

So I sit, on brittle legs that gave out moments after I first tried to stand, I sit still, against the tree. Nothing bothers me, my rebel body cannot have its way, it cannot satiate its hunger, it cannot hurt me. It cannot move. So I can rest. Animals pass me by, though I still screech and stretch out my arms to them, and they run off quickly.

Leaves fall, it rains, it snows, all the seasons in their beauty and their enthralling colors, but I still miss looking at fire. When I sit, after a long spell of a lot of the same, sometimes I pray for lightning, just to see something interesting again, to see something that could kill me for real should He let it. And sometimes, rarely, if it’s dark, and the moon at the right angle, and I’m paying attention, I can see smoke rising somewhere about six miles away.