The Place of Angels

“Be careful,” said the robot. “There are angels here.”

“I don’t know any angels,” said Jenny, stepping through the blue and the green and the brown of the swamp. “Perhaps I’d be happier if I did.”

It was cold and clumsy, and all the leaves seemed to weep into the stagnant water like fading old ladies, clutching at their umbrellas to guard them from the gathering mist that hung like smoke in the breath and the lungs, thick and clingy like lumpy custard in the air. Oh, whispered the leaves. Oh, but it would be so much nicer if everything weren’t so wet and dark. Oh, whispered the leaves. Oh, but it would be so much nicer if it weren’t so quiet and dull. Oh, whispered the leaves. Oh, but it would be so much nicer if things were different.

Everything felt very strange, as though she were in a dream. She couldn’t feel her heartbeat. It was like there was a film over her eyes and she were nearly asleep but still awake like a waking dream or a sleeping wakefulness. She heard an angel in the distance like an elephant’s tooth and shivered.

“Here,” said the robot, in that strange robotic way it had of speaking. “It’s just over this ridge.”

“Thank you,” said Jenny. “Are you coming?”

“No,” said the robot. “I cannot.”

Jenny walked up through the weeping leaves and the blinding mist and the waking day and the waiting bog and all the trappings of life and death around her, stomping up the hill with her tired legs and her tired eyes and her tired head and wishing everything would disappear around her.

There. The top of the hill, green and blue and brown like the inside of a baby. She thought she might like a baby. She should’ve liked a baby with Laura. She didn’t think she wanted a baby now, though. She couldn’t see the sky; there weren’t any clouds. Actually, she didn’t think there was any sky in this place, just thoughts and broken things and wishing leaves and dead paving stones seeping blood beneath the cool green leaves as wet as silk in water. This was the Place of the Angels (not to be confused with the Place of the Angles, that was quite another matter), and it slurred and slipped between universes like soapy water. She was at the top of the hill, and she could see the dead ship, sitting comfortable down in the valley with the mud and the screaming plants and the insects, sunk into the darkness like a light.

She made her way down through the wetness and the black and the blue and the green to where another woman was sat, by the wreck of the Lotus Prime. The other woman was her, slipping in and out of sleep like a slipshod guru.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” said Jenny Everywhere.

“Everything the same?” asked Jenny.

The Jenny who had been there before her stretched out her arms.

“Yes,” she said. “Thanks for coming. I’m very tired.”

“Get some rest,” said Jenny,

“Thanks,” said the other her, and disappeared into infinity.

Jenny sat down on a rock amidst the green and grey and blue and listened to the angels crying in the night. She watched the dead ship she had once sailed across the worlds and wondered how it had come to pass that it lay here in the place of angels in the green-grey mud amongst the whispering plants and trees which quivered with the breathing of the thick dull air and drowned in life and death. She wondered why there was always one of her waiting to guard it. It seemed like a strange thing, to wait there guarding for ever and ever. Weren’t angels supposed to be good?

She felt that the trees were laughing at her. It was a very illogical thing to think. They were strange trees; they loomed at once in manners at once familiar and off-putting. She could feel her breath strangling her throat, creeping, sliding in and out like a great slug.

She wished there were an angel there. It would be company. It would be comforting. But perhaps she didn’t want company, anyway. Yes, she didn’t think she wanted company, otherwise she wouldn’t’ve come here. The wreck of the Lotus Prime was not a place for company. Nor was it a place for solitude, but there you were.

She looked at her hand. She was very tired. What was she doing there? Watching for angels. Why was she watching? Because of the ship. What was the ship? It belonged to her. Had belonged to other hers. They looked after their own. It was important to watch the ship, she knew. She had to. Bad things might happen if she didn’t. But then again, they might not.

Jenny looked at the green and the grey and the black. The leaves wailed to her. Their songs were dreadful to contemplate, so Jenny didn’t contemplate them, she just listened and listened until her eyes went blue. It was as though an elephant was sitting on the bridge of her nose. A most disagreeable state of affairs. Or perhaps it wasn’t. It didn’t really matter, anyway. Nothing really mattered, except watching and waiting. She had to watch and wait, in case there was an angel. Or something worse. What could be worse than an angel? She didn’t know. She wondered what could be worse than an angel. She’d met gods before. Maybe they were worse than angels. Maybe they were better than angels. It didn’t really matter. Nothing really mattered but the watching and the waiting in the grey-black landscape of the night in the place of the angels. The watching was very important. Something might happen if she didn’t. But then again, it might not. She couldn’t really be sure.

Oh, whispered the leaves. Oh, but it would be nice if there were some light.

Oh, but wouldn’t it? Or would it, rather? Oh dear. Maybe it would. The black-blue darkness was something. Perhaps it was something nice. It didn’t really matter. Nothing really mattered but the watching and the waiting. She wondered what she would do if there were an angel. Run, perhaps. Hide. Speak to it. Sing it a song. Do a silly dance. It didn’t really matter.

She was very tired. She wished she wasn’t. She didn’t care to sleep. Or rather she would have liked to sleep if it hadn’t meant stopping and sitting and thinking about things, lying in bed with your head on the pillow staring at the ceiling and the grey-black, grey-blue light and thinking about your dead girlfriend and how it would have been nice if she were alive and what she smelt like and what she felt like and what her touch was like on your cheek and how long it had been and her movement and her song and how she wasn’t there and how strange that was and how you might have liked to have a baby, some day, only now you couldn’t, you couldn’t look at the child and know that it was both of yours, and she was gone and you could never look at the face again and never never never look beyond the green-grey, black-blue night and the screaming leaves and the blackened lotus blossom lying dead on the ground beside you because you’re watching and waiting and waiting for an angel to come, just it case it does, but it might not, you don’t really know, but it doesn’t really matter. Nothing matters but the waiting and the watching in the green-blue stagnant air and the emptiness in your arms where a baby isn’t.

“Hello,” said an angel.

Jenny looked at the angel. It didn’t look much like an angel ought to look.

“I thought you were supposed to be made of light,” she said.

“I am,” said the angel, simply as daylight. “Isn’t everyone?”

Jenny felt this was somewhat dubious, but couldn’t be sure.

“I suppose,” she said begrudgingly.

The angel was white in the green-grey or maybe he was blue in the grey-white or white in the grey-green or black in the black in the black and he said “You didn’t answer me.”

Jenny felt very calm, and not a little bit wary, just a little like she wanted to cry, but that didn’t really matter. None of that mattered now. There was only the angel that took up the world.

“No,” she said. “I didn’t. How perceptive of you.”

“I’m a very perceptive angel,” said the angel.

Oh, said the leaves. But it would be nice if it were less cold.

It was indeed very cold. Jenny had her big puffy coat and her biggest scarf on, though, so it didn’t particularly matter. It might have mattered to the angel had it not been an angel.

“May I drink your blood?” asked the angel.

Jenny thought for a moment. This action seemed very difficult, and she did it languidly. That was alright. She had all the time in the world. The ship was already dead, and it would be for ever and ever in the grey-black, black-white night in the place of angels. It would never move again; its petals were withered, its captain long-gone.

“No,” she said.

“Okay,” said the angel. “I will kill you, then.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” said Jenny, who was in a very strange state of mind, where everything seemed delirious or maybe something else.

The angel paced up and down a bit. It couldn’t actually pace up and down a bit, but it did it anyway, because it was a very clever and cultured angel and could do clever and cultured things like that.

“You’re making things very difficult for me, you know,” it said.

Jenny pouted slowly, as she felt in a pouty sort of mood, like a child, or a black-white cow in a grey-green field, ruminating moodily on its grass. Everything was thick and slow. She couldn’t breathe, or maybe she could.

“Well I’m sorry,” she said. “But I quite like my blood, and I quite like my life, as well, for what it’s worth. It’s fucking horrible, but there we are. I don’t know. It is what it is.”

“I quite understand,” said the angel, who was white as a feather or a leaf or something. “It doesn’t really matter.”

And its head fell open and all its teeth arced up to the sky screaming twelve infernal hymns like David on the mountain, singing to the sky like a dying child, and on its teeth were written the secrets to life and happiness and death and many other things but they were so long they could not be read, so long to the teeth as they drift to the heavens. It may have had a tongue or it may not have. There was blood spilling out of its mouth, anyway, like a fountain, so pretty in the night-time light of white and green and blue and the murky eyes of the leaves that whispered how long it had been since they had seen the light and how terrible a day it had been yesterday and would doubtless be the next and the coating fell off of the angels like the cloak of a shepherd and it stood naked in the cold dark night in front of the dead ship and the infinite woman whose ship it was and the weeping leaves and everything but nothing really mattered but the watching so she watched and she looked and she saw like a child or an old man or a chicken and everything fell away or towards or behind and there was running and laughter and screaming in the place of angels and the strange trees hummed strange tunes in the rising night that rose like white-grey-green-blue-black air and the smell of burning asphalt and the cry of children murmured together with the whispering of the leaves of the plants, who commented on how cold it was and how the voices sang and what the angel looked like what did the angel look like it didn’t look like anything.

“Be careful,” said another Jenny Everywhere. “There are angels here.”

“I know,” said a different Jenny Everywhere.

This was across time, you understand. Or beyond time, or behind it. It didn’t really matter, except for the green-blue magic in the trees, the strange trees, the wailing trees with human eyes suddenly or always.

“Hello,” said the angel, and it was the same angel, but different.

“Are you still here?” asked Jenny Everywhere, who was sitting on the grey-green rock in the cloying mud and the plants as she always had done and would continue to do until another one of her turned up, and then would continue to do for all eternity.

The angel looked down at itself.

“Yes,” it said. “At least, I think so.”

“Oh,” Jenny said. She had been hoping the angel might have gone. At least she thought she had. It was difficult to be quite sure, with these things. With anything. She thought she might fall away from herself or the world, then, and this thought frightened her somewhat, though she would never admit this, so she grabbed onto the rock on which she sat and held on very tight. The rock was well-worn, carved into a seat by successive sitters waiting watching at the door of the dead ship. She wondered how many of her had sat in that same seat. “What are you?” she thought at last to ask the angel.

“I’m an angel,” said the angel.

Jenny wanted to say something else, but she wasn’t sure what it could be.

“Oh,” she said again, as she hadn’t anything else to say.

She thought suddenly that the angel looked an awful lot like a baby. She looked at it again and thought, well, maybe it didn’t. But a third look yielded the thought that it was quite a lot like a baby.

Well. It didn’t really matter. There was only the watching and the waiting and the wanting and the weeping leaves run ragged by water. The smell of water was everywhere. Water-nymphs sat in it, only they were so invisible you couldn’t be quite sure that they did sit in it. They were very pretty, at least she thought they were, only she couldn’t be quite sure, what with them being invisible and all.

Jenny Everywhere was very tired. She wished very much that she wasn’t tired. She wished even more that sleep played no part in tiredness. But no. Wishful thinking had never gotten anyone anywhere, except for all the people it had gotten places.

It was very cold. Sitting and waiting made one cold. It would have been nicer if she wasn’t cold. It would have been nicer if a great many things were different. It might have been nicer if a great many things were the same. She couldn’t hear the whispering of the leaves and the trees with human lips. Perhaps they were silent. She didn’t think they were, somehow. It didn’t really matter. Nothing mattered but the waiting. Perhaps something would happen at some point. Perhaps the angel would eat her. Perhaps it would make love to her. Perhaps they were the same thing. Perhaps she would stay here forever and ever with the angel and nobody would come and nothing would change for a second minute hour day week month year decade century millennium ever. That would be fun. Or maybe it wouldn’t. It was hard to tell. It was hard to tell anything. It was always hard to tell anything. Especially with people you didn’t know. That was the worst.

She wished it weren’t so cold. She wished she could see Laura again, her Laura. She wished things were different. She wished there weren’t angel staring at her with teeth that went up to the sky and blood pouring from an ethereal finger, drip drip drip into the blue-black water-mud of the swamp-forest, drip drip drip, splash splash splash, splurt splurt splurt.

“I’m quite alright,” said the angel. “This just happens from time to time.

“Oh,” said Jenny for the third time that day. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what to say. There was only the angel and the waiting and the dead ship and the trees with human lungs.

She wondered why she’d come here. She always came here. Oh. She’d come here to watch for angels. Or maybe other things. There was an angel here, anyway, and she was watching it. It didn’t seem to want the ship. Perhaps it did. It was always kind of hard to tell with angels. That was the worst thing. Not knowing. Or the best thing. One of those.

She wished she knew an angel. She thought it might be nice to know an angel. She thought it might be nice to know anybody but herself. She wasn’t sure what it would be like to know herself. It might be like something, at least. She wasn’t sure, as she said. Or didn’t say. Whatever. It didn’t really matter. Nothing really mattered except the blue-green mud and the white-black sky that wasn’t there except when it was and the mist like lungs and the lungs like custard and the yellow eyes and the angel rutting against a tree like a deer or something, maybe, or something else.

“Do you know how the story ends?” whispered the trees with human genitals.

“No,” said Jenny, sitting on her rock by the dead ship.

“Nor do we,” they said, and blood was on their grey-black branches and blood was on the mouth of the angel and the teeth like eyes stretching up to the sky seemed to say that everything was alright except for when it wasn’t which was always or possibly never one of those but it didn’t really matter nothing really mattered but the watching and the waiting and the insects and the swamp-forest-mud-bog-thing and the wailing of the waiting leaves and the waiting of the wailing leaves and the wanton waiting eyes falling out of the mind like heads or bowling balls or something like that. It didn’t really matter.

It was very cold. It would have been nicer if it wasn’t so cold. A great many things could have been nicer without the white-green cold, the cloying cold, the cold cold.

“Oh,” said Jenny again, and she had teeth on her eyes covered in blood. They felt funny. They tingled oddly. Everything looked strange out of her mouth in the blue-green black-green grey-green light that wasn’t there. The teeth got longer and longer and sharper and sharper and grew towards the sky. The blood fell against her eyes and tickled them, screaming, and her neck arced backwards and upwards and away or towards or something like that and the teeth got longer and longer in the black-white night.

She woke up. There was an angel in front of her. There were teeth in its eyes and teeth where its genitals weren’t. Long, white, sharp teeth.

“Hello,” it said.

“Goodbye,” she said, and the angel went away, leaving her sitting on a carved-away rock by the long-dead ship that once she had flown and now in the black-green grey-white blue mess of the mud and the swamp and the forest with whispering leaves, sitting there waiting in the place of angels.

Happy cough cough Saturday! (Yes, I know I’m slipping. It’s fine.) This was supposed to be just a very short thing after the last one of these, but it sort of grew, so it isn’t any more. It’s a bit strange, but then all the best things are, I think. Or maybe not. Whatever the case, hope you enjoyed, and I’ll see you here again next week!

The Lotus Prime was created by Alex Hernandez and is available for use by anyone.

The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition: This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, that others might use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.

All characters and concepts original to this story are hereby made available for use by anyone, with attribution welcomed but by no means necessary.