Another Dogma thing. This one's serious. My ultimate goal is to have a post [-Dogma events] piece for every character, let's see how far that goes.
Please R/R.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, and you should be smart enough to realize that by now.
***
Pain is a funny thing.
For example...you could have a chasm of a wound, gushing blood like a squirt bottle, and sometimes, if you don't realize it's there, you don't notice it. I once read about this woman who went grocery shopping one day and then came home without ever realizing that she had a knife plunged deeply into her neck. It's inexplicable, kind of impressive in a macabre way, that you'd never notice that sort of thing. But when you finally *do* notice the wound, the pain is immeasurable. Overpowering.
Another kind of pain is the embarrassing little kind that comes from hitting your shin against the table, or stabbing yourself with a pin while sewing, or biting your tongue or the inside of your cheek while talking or chewing. It's not so much the pain, although it does sting more than it ought to, but the humiliation for feeling any pain at that simple little wound.
There are other kinds of physical pains, lots others. Some of which are so incredible that no one could ever begin to understand them. No human, at least.
Like wings.
If you had wings...oh, God, if you had wings, you'd be on Cloud Nine, figuratively and literally. They're the most brilliant and most wonderful of God's creation, let me tell you. To soar free, without a care in the world, your body the emperor of the skies when its prime function is to be a prisoner of the land...it's amazing. I could wax poetic for hours on end about the gargantuan joy that flying provides, because I think it's the most wonderful thing imaginable. But like everything, for every pro, there is a con. And for every subtle nuance that you can take for granted, you cherish and miss desperately when you lose it, a nail in the coffin of your soul.
My wings were cut off. It hurts to say that, to even think that, because they were as much a part of me as any other limb, but it hurts on an emotional plane, too. To have my wings cut off was degrading, to say the least. I was an angel; an exalted one. (A fallen angel, yes, but a celestial being all the same, no one could deny that.) I was one of the Heavenly choirs, kneeling on the bitterly cold pavement, in front of a church, for Christ's sake, while my best friend shot at me a few times --with my own gun-- then carving into me like I was a damned turkey dinner. I still shudder thinking about it. The stumps are gone now, bloody, pitiful, painful, ragged fragments of flesh and bone and feather when they existed, but the scars, two diagonal flesh wounds, remain, pinkish and stark against my skin.
But physical pain, and I speak from the truest of experience when I preach, no matter how great, no matter how extreme, no matter how much you scream and cry and beg for death, is simply no match, no comparison for emotional turmoil.
It's been years. I could give you the exact day it happened. Time passes so quickly when you're immortal; decades are like days, days like minutes, hours like mere blinks in the face of time. When you're human --alive, dead, it doesn't matter-- the time is agonizingly slow. Like God is just standing over your head, swinging a stopwatch, taunting you cruelly.
I still remember every detail. It plagues me every time I close my eyes. I'd lived through it in a drunken haze, cloudy and uncertain, but every time I reflected on it, it was a crystal clear vision, a fact that makes it all the more painful to recall.
Bartleby was smiling at me. I could see in that smile the old Bartleby, the one I knew, the one I was friends with, the one I'd spent eons with and would spend the rest of eternity hanging around with. The new, crazy, vengeful Bartleby didn't exist at that moment, merely a shadow in my mind. I convinced myself then that in that second, scary Bartleby didn't exist.
I smiled back at him, albeit shakily. His face doubled before my eyes, then slowly settled back into one as I tried to sober up. He was talking to them; I could only make out every other word or so. Talking to her, Bethany, the Scion --the one he hated. He was talking to her, but he was looking straight at me. Smiling at me like an old friend would --and had. Touching me slightly. His hands were warm and intimate on my skin as they touched my arm, my shoulder, my back, the back of my neck, all in rapid and confused succession. He leaned in, his forehead pressed to mine, talking in a nice, soothing voice. I had always been an awful drunk; couldn't handle alcohol at all. I was tipsy at that moment, unaware, uncaring of anything but that vision of Bartleby only I saw; the one lurking behind, within, the Bartleby standing before me.
And then with explosive power, there was heat pooling at my side. I felt for it, touched the source, and my hand came away, warm with pain, sticky with blood, fresh blood. My own blood, mingling slightly with dried trails of those we'd killed earlier. As every nerve ignited with pain like I'd never felt before, my mind sobered up just in time to realize that he'd gutted me.
Bartleby.
My best friend; my only friend.
My partner.
My soul mate.
He had deliberately stabbed me. He knew what he was doing, he knew what it would do to me, and he had *done it anyway*.
I could have called for help. They would have helped. The apostle, the muse, the Scion, even the prophets. They would have helped. They were good people, good souls, who couldn't bear to see a senseless death such as mine. But this brutal murder, as the torrents of pain declared it, was as surprising to them as it was to me. Probably Bartleby hadn't even planned it. In their eyes, though I was still just barely standing, I was already dead.
So I did not call for help. Not out loud, at least. In my mind, as the colors blurred together and faded into blackness, I summoned enough strength to do the only thing that made sense, and I apologized, feebly but sincerely, to Him.
And I fell.
Everything past that was hazy in my memory. My angel body, once that didn't know pain or blood or wounds, had been immaculate, perfect. My human body lived on, holding the same svelte shape, the same angelic features. The bright blue eyes, as blue as Heaven's skies. The halo of dirty blond hair, once lit and made golden by a real halo, one they would hide when I went on missions, one they'd taken away forever when I'd first been sent to Earth. Physically, I was the Aryan poster boy. What people conjured in their minds when they thought of angels. Everything was the way it'd always been, except now with human features. Genitals, as finely tuned as Adam's had been, and a digestive system, though both were currently of no use. Then of course were the scars. Three scars; three permanent, disfiguring, but easily hidden scars. Two for wings, one for memories.
I was in Heaven now. I was an outcast here, not quite angel, not quite human. A human with an angel's past; an angel with a human's body. My old friends, if you could call them that, were friendly enough, but wary all the same. In short, I was a pariah.
Bartleby was elsewhere. Waiting outside, waiting forever. The eternity that he had imposed upon us both unjustly, but that I had somehow saved myself from, leaving him to face it alone. He'd been right about one thing. Humans did have consciences. That was how I'd come to be here. Because my death had been unjust, and in the short-lived course of my humanity, I'd been utterly sinless.
I thought of visiting him. Multiple times a day, an obsession, I thought of dropping by, saying hello, maybe even telling him I forgave him. I toyed with the notion at length. At first I hadn't been sure he was worthy of my forgiveness. But I hadn't thought I'd been worthy of God's forgiveness, either, and yet here I was.
Someday I'd go over. Someday, I'd poke my head through the Gates and say hi. Maybe I'd even sit and commiserate. He was my soul mate, after all. And no one had more confused and elaborate souls than we did.
First there would need to be time to heal.
Please R/R.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, and you should be smart enough to realize that by now.
***
Pain is a funny thing.
For example...you could have a chasm of a wound, gushing blood like a squirt bottle, and sometimes, if you don't realize it's there, you don't notice it. I once read about this woman who went grocery shopping one day and then came home without ever realizing that she had a knife plunged deeply into her neck. It's inexplicable, kind of impressive in a macabre way, that you'd never notice that sort of thing. But when you finally *do* notice the wound, the pain is immeasurable. Overpowering.
Another kind of pain is the embarrassing little kind that comes from hitting your shin against the table, or stabbing yourself with a pin while sewing, or biting your tongue or the inside of your cheek while talking or chewing. It's not so much the pain, although it does sting more than it ought to, but the humiliation for feeling any pain at that simple little wound.
There are other kinds of physical pains, lots others. Some of which are so incredible that no one could ever begin to understand them. No human, at least.
Like wings.
If you had wings...oh, God, if you had wings, you'd be on Cloud Nine, figuratively and literally. They're the most brilliant and most wonderful of God's creation, let me tell you. To soar free, without a care in the world, your body the emperor of the skies when its prime function is to be a prisoner of the land...it's amazing. I could wax poetic for hours on end about the gargantuan joy that flying provides, because I think it's the most wonderful thing imaginable. But like everything, for every pro, there is a con. And for every subtle nuance that you can take for granted, you cherish and miss desperately when you lose it, a nail in the coffin of your soul.
My wings were cut off. It hurts to say that, to even think that, because they were as much a part of me as any other limb, but it hurts on an emotional plane, too. To have my wings cut off was degrading, to say the least. I was an angel; an exalted one. (A fallen angel, yes, but a celestial being all the same, no one could deny that.) I was one of the Heavenly choirs, kneeling on the bitterly cold pavement, in front of a church, for Christ's sake, while my best friend shot at me a few times --with my own gun-- then carving into me like I was a damned turkey dinner. I still shudder thinking about it. The stumps are gone now, bloody, pitiful, painful, ragged fragments of flesh and bone and feather when they existed, but the scars, two diagonal flesh wounds, remain, pinkish and stark against my skin.
But physical pain, and I speak from the truest of experience when I preach, no matter how great, no matter how extreme, no matter how much you scream and cry and beg for death, is simply no match, no comparison for emotional turmoil.
It's been years. I could give you the exact day it happened. Time passes so quickly when you're immortal; decades are like days, days like minutes, hours like mere blinks in the face of time. When you're human --alive, dead, it doesn't matter-- the time is agonizingly slow. Like God is just standing over your head, swinging a stopwatch, taunting you cruelly.
I still remember every detail. It plagues me every time I close my eyes. I'd lived through it in a drunken haze, cloudy and uncertain, but every time I reflected on it, it was a crystal clear vision, a fact that makes it all the more painful to recall.
Bartleby was smiling at me. I could see in that smile the old Bartleby, the one I knew, the one I was friends with, the one I'd spent eons with and would spend the rest of eternity hanging around with. The new, crazy, vengeful Bartleby didn't exist at that moment, merely a shadow in my mind. I convinced myself then that in that second, scary Bartleby didn't exist.
I smiled back at him, albeit shakily. His face doubled before my eyes, then slowly settled back into one as I tried to sober up. He was talking to them; I could only make out every other word or so. Talking to her, Bethany, the Scion --the one he hated. He was talking to her, but he was looking straight at me. Smiling at me like an old friend would --and had. Touching me slightly. His hands were warm and intimate on my skin as they touched my arm, my shoulder, my back, the back of my neck, all in rapid and confused succession. He leaned in, his forehead pressed to mine, talking in a nice, soothing voice. I had always been an awful drunk; couldn't handle alcohol at all. I was tipsy at that moment, unaware, uncaring of anything but that vision of Bartleby only I saw; the one lurking behind, within, the Bartleby standing before me.
And then with explosive power, there was heat pooling at my side. I felt for it, touched the source, and my hand came away, warm with pain, sticky with blood, fresh blood. My own blood, mingling slightly with dried trails of those we'd killed earlier. As every nerve ignited with pain like I'd never felt before, my mind sobered up just in time to realize that he'd gutted me.
Bartleby.
My best friend; my only friend.
My partner.
My soul mate.
He had deliberately stabbed me. He knew what he was doing, he knew what it would do to me, and he had *done it anyway*.
I could have called for help. They would have helped. The apostle, the muse, the Scion, even the prophets. They would have helped. They were good people, good souls, who couldn't bear to see a senseless death such as mine. But this brutal murder, as the torrents of pain declared it, was as surprising to them as it was to me. Probably Bartleby hadn't even planned it. In their eyes, though I was still just barely standing, I was already dead.
So I did not call for help. Not out loud, at least. In my mind, as the colors blurred together and faded into blackness, I summoned enough strength to do the only thing that made sense, and I apologized, feebly but sincerely, to Him.
And I fell.
Everything past that was hazy in my memory. My angel body, once that didn't know pain or blood or wounds, had been immaculate, perfect. My human body lived on, holding the same svelte shape, the same angelic features. The bright blue eyes, as blue as Heaven's skies. The halo of dirty blond hair, once lit and made golden by a real halo, one they would hide when I went on missions, one they'd taken away forever when I'd first been sent to Earth. Physically, I was the Aryan poster boy. What people conjured in their minds when they thought of angels. Everything was the way it'd always been, except now with human features. Genitals, as finely tuned as Adam's had been, and a digestive system, though both were currently of no use. Then of course were the scars. Three scars; three permanent, disfiguring, but easily hidden scars. Two for wings, one for memories.
I was in Heaven now. I was an outcast here, not quite angel, not quite human. A human with an angel's past; an angel with a human's body. My old friends, if you could call them that, were friendly enough, but wary all the same. In short, I was a pariah.
Bartleby was elsewhere. Waiting outside, waiting forever. The eternity that he had imposed upon us both unjustly, but that I had somehow saved myself from, leaving him to face it alone. He'd been right about one thing. Humans did have consciences. That was how I'd come to be here. Because my death had been unjust, and in the short-lived course of my humanity, I'd been utterly sinless.
I thought of visiting him. Multiple times a day, an obsession, I thought of dropping by, saying hello, maybe even telling him I forgave him. I toyed with the notion at length. At first I hadn't been sure he was worthy of my forgiveness. But I hadn't thought I'd been worthy of God's forgiveness, either, and yet here I was.
Someday I'd go over. Someday, I'd poke my head through the Gates and say hi. Maybe I'd even sit and commiserate. He was my soul mate, after all. And no one had more confused and elaborate souls than we did.
First there would need to be time to heal.