❝ salvation ❞

A little, white oval pill that sat in the middle of my clammy palm as I glanced between it and the circle of strangers I shamefully called friends. Teeth biting at the dried, cracking skin on my lips, my free hand wiping away the lingering sweat accumulating on my palm, I felt myself intimidated by the sight of it. We all sat in a circle on the carpeted floor — dingy, beige, and cleaned once a week — in the basement of our little baptist church everyone by I reluctantly attended. They giggled among themselves, snickering as they exchanged looks between each other and at me, eyes glowing with mischief and illicit intentions.

“Just take it, Ezra. It’ll make you feel so good.” One of them — Ryan — spoke with a carelessly hushed whisper. They were the sort of group who shared boys and girls like they shared drugs, with glee and pupils blown wide with a sugary-sweet high. They came to church because their parents forced them to and hung around me because I was the only one just old enough to legally buy alcohol. They liked their liquor strong enough to make them not responsible for their actions and loathed my mild-mannered consciousness that kept me from joining them in their mindless fun. I “asked to many questions”, they said. I was “to uptight”.

“What even is it?” I used my finger to flip the pill in my palm. I had never taken any hard drugs before, not like my friends had. They liked that kind of thing, drugs that will make them forget past mistakes, make them forgive transgressions against them, give them a buzz that makes life worth living. I only occasionally drank and smoked, nothing of too much insanity. Nothing that a good Christian didn’t do. My dad drank beer every night after the dinner my mom would cook with a cigarette between her lips. “That’s how good Christians let the sin out of their body”, they’d say.

“It’s this new drug my dealer calls Salvation. It’s supposed to be a crazy trip. Make you see shit you couldn’t even imagine.” Ryan giggled with a lopsided smile, her eyes glowing brighter than the rest. They all looked at me with smiles wide and wild and knowing. Something about them unsettled me. They always unsettled me.

I shifted with discomfort in my shirt that was buttoned up to my Adam’s apple. Clearing my throat, I tugged at my collar that felt all too tight around my neck and bit at the dry, peeling skin on my nether lip until it began to bleed. “I don’t think this type of thing is for me.” I reached to hand the pill back to the one who gave it to me but he shook his head, pushing my hand back to me with a wink. “Keep it. Who knows if you might need it later.”

I disregarded his words even as I walked home, but I didn’t discard the pill. I kept rolling it around in my hand so it wouldn’t dissolve in the moisture of my palm. Boots scuffed about on the concrete, my full cheeks dewy and chilled to the touch as the cool autumn wind lapped at my face and bit into my flesh with vicious teeth of ice. I hid behind my scarf, my jacket zipped to the top like my shirt. My Sunday best. It’s been ingrained in me, like my parents carved into my soul the importance of respect when going to church. I went, not because I believed or didn’t believe — that being a matter of its own — but because my parents always talked about the importance of “getting right with God”. I knew I was far from getting into Heaven but it seemed only right that I still try.

Getting home, I hung up my scarf and pulled off my jacket, kicking off my shoes beside the door while Chomper, my cat, ran across my legs with a sweet ‘meow’ and a steady purr. The pill was heavy in my fist as I dragged myself through my dingy little apartment. I kicked clothes strewn on the floor to the side, tossed an old pair of socks on the couch as I made my way to my room. My place was a mess, a scattered reflection of a brain too young and too fucked up to be organized.

I placed the pill on my bedside table, removing it from my mind all together. Or rather pushing it to the side for the time being. My fingers dug through soft curls to scratch the tender skin of my scalp before I fingered open the buttons to my shirt. I was not full yet not skinny, I had just barely enough to eat to keep a figure that was sweet and average. My flesh was red under my brown skin with all the vessels of life. I was always so vigilantly aware of how alive I was, as if I were scared that I wouldn’t be soon. I hummed sweet melodies as I pulled off my pants and swapped them out for sweatpants. They were melodies Mom would sing between smokey coughs and drags of her cigarette.

I collapsed into bed with a sigh, landing on my stomach before rolling into my back. I stared at my popcorn-textured ceiling with a heaviness weighing at my eyes. Not sleep nor boredom, maybe something balancing between the two. Something droning and inexplicable. My head rolled to the side and my eyes caught sight of the pill I had for some arbitrary reason decided to keep. I would usually discard whatever my friends gave me, chalking it all up as simply not being my thing. I’ve received molly, ecstasy, had the powdery lines of coke pushed into my face before I declined.

I was scared God wouldn’t forgive me if I took it. I was scared he’d look at me with every bad decision I made and judge me eternally. I was already queer, my gender a never-ending question on my mind. I removed myself from the binary of man and woman as the Bible defined it. I feared that He was already disappointed in me. I wasn’t even sure He was real but if he was, I knew I was not being saved. So I prayed and I begged and I went to church as if that would make me deserving.

I grabbed the pill off the table and pinched it between my thumb and index finger. “Salvation.” My tongue flicked over my lips and they stung from where I had ripped off the skin. I turned it over, looking for any identifiable markings on it but there were none. I knew better than to take something like this. I trusted my friends as far as I could throw them, which wasn’t far at all. But something about the name struck me in the head. Salvation. I tried it on my tongue again. “Salvation.” It tasted sweet and full, like syrup poured into my mouth and I was being forced to swallow. Isn’t that what anyone ever wanted? That’s what I’ve always been told to want. Acceptance from a Father I wasn’t even sure was there.

It was a split decision to place the pill on my tongue and there was no going back once I did it. It dissolved there quickly with a bitter sweetness, a chalky type of texture left on my tongue after I swallowed it back. I grabbed an old water bottle I had lying on my messy floor and twisted open the cap. The water was lukewarm and not much better tasting than the pill but it was good enough to wash away the remaining gritty residue from my mouth.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew it wouldn’t hit me immediately but I couldn’t know when it would or what it would do to me. So I lied there with my eyes closed, my fingers stroking circles into my dark skin, pinching, poking, and prodding like I was fascinated with my own full-ish, foolish body, unsure of how long I was there. It could have been all of 20 minutes to an hour before I felt anything. I was nervous, afraid of what erratic behaviors I would fall into. But as soon as I have begun to regret my decision, I felt something within my body, foreign and unknown to me.

It was a buzzing at first that started at my fingers and toes and began to spread. It was a creeping feeling, like bugs with their fuzzy, skittering legs crawling all over me. Or spindly, little things in my body taking hold of me. I felt so sick and so incredibly sober at the same time. My eyes fluttered open and I raised my hand to my face. It was like light at my fingertips. It was all so hazy and near magnificent the way my body didn’t seem to move in seamless coordination with my mind. I flipped my hand over and back and let out a gentle giggle, snorting. I never imagined being high to feel so euphoric.

Past my hand, there was a light coming from the doorway, pure and white enough to blind. I rolled out of my bed and fell onto the carpeted floor. The rug burn on my arm went ignored as I leveraged myself up onto my feet and staggered toward the light. The Heaven in my doorway. There was a figure there, bleary and out of focus cloaked behind the light, a vague silhouette, a suggestion of corporeal form. I used my hand to cover some of the light out of my vision and watched as the illusion of a real figure began to form in the expansive nothingness.

It was beautiful, whatever it was. Its lithe body was tall and gorgeous in a way that was almost inhuman-like. Its sweetly defined body was layered in jewelry made of silver and gold, hanging off its hips, throat, shoulders, and arms, slender fingers adorned in bejeweled rings. Its skin was an Earthy shade of brown, eyes were silvery and cold. Everything about it looked so cold. It felt vaguely human but without any of the warmth or life. It was perfect in all its ways, standing there in its white robes and its sepia wings. It glowed like the stained glass of a church window, so many colors converging into one white light. The truth.

My body trembled in its presence. It felt cold and hot all at the same time. A paradoxical swirl of horrific beauty, a bittersweet chill of warmth. My eyes widened, pulsing. I could feel my heart hammer against my ribcage with the knife-pointed threat of breaking through. I could see my breath in the air, swirling around me as if it were the dead of winter, but sweat slickened my brow in filmy layers. My body willed itself to its knees with little say from my mind. I was overwhelmed with the weight of it all. The weight of divinity. I spoke with quivering lips, “What– who are you?”

All of its cool, unfeeling demeanor melted into warmth, into kindness. It moved with elegance towards me, out of the light and into my messy, mundane room. It’s great wings folded into themselves to get through the doorway before spreading out into their great span. I couldn’t bear to look at it. Shame clawed at my chest. I lowered my head to stare at my knees, a feeling of unworthiness touched the feeling of ascension.

“Be not afraid.” Its ringed fingers reached out to touch me. Tapping against my chin, its skin without the subtle give of flesh somehow both freezing and electrifying, it held my chin with its fingertips and made me look at it in all its holy magnificence. Its long locs were tied up with a golden ribbon, features on display. The angel possessed all the features to make it look human — vaguely both feminine and masculine, a broad nose decorated with rings and other piercings, full bi-colored lips — but they all came together in a way that was almost…too perfect. So perfect it was uncannily inhuman.

“I am Ramiel. I am an angel of the Lord.” Its touch lit me aflame and soothed the burn of its divinity. I wanted to reach out to it, to touch it and know that this was real and I was one step closer to God. My heart thrummed along with the rhythm of the universe, my breath expanding with the great inhale of nature, every frequency of my body in accordance with the fabric of reality, as I stared at Ramiel and felt its hand against my face. Like every scrambled piece of my mind finally fell into place, gained meaning, however pitiful it was.

Ramiel folded its wings into itself and came to kneel before me. “I’m not particularly fond of standing over others.” It hiked up its robes just enough to reveal a scant ankle. Oh how I wished to worship that ankle, smooth and nobby but not too boney. I wanted to take its foot in my hand and kiss every last toe. It knelt in one fluid, elegant motion, so close that our knees almost touched. I wish they would touch mine, so that I could feel them through my clothes and its.

“Please touch me again, Ramiel.” I pleaded with tears in my pathetic eyes, whimpering and quivering. “I’ve never felt a touch like yours before.”

And it touched me again, cupping my cheek in one of its large hands. Icy fire all over. I leaned into its touch and felt at home. So entirely at peace that I felt every visage of life drain from me. I stayed there for a long while, silent, with my eyes closed and my breath bated as I felt it all fade away into a void of bland sobriety.

I opened my eyes and Ramiel was gone. My doorway was just a doorway and Chomper was sitting there with his vapid stare begging for food. The high hadn’t lasted very long at all but it was the best thing I had ever felt in my life. The residual buzz still lingered in my fingertips, Heaven still seen behind my eyelids every time I blinked. I was disappointed that it had ended. It all felt like a fever dream, leaving me layered in a thin film of sweat and sickly love.

I didn’t know exactly what Salvation was, but I knew I had to have more. I scrambled across the floor on my hands and knees and took up my phone off the receiver, punching in the numbers to reach Ryan. It rang, once, twice, before she picked up. “Hello?”

“I need more Salvation.”

-

I got a single pill from Ryan’s dealer. Apparently they were hard to get a hold of and in high demand so a thick wad of 20s was the only way to pay for them.

The dealer was said to be reliable but I was put off by his presence. An older, gruff guy met me at the screen door that kept me and him separated. The screams of children in the background throwing temper tantrums and crying about cookies were somewhere in another room. He handed me the baggie with the pill as I slipped him the money. And with a vague warning — “don’t take too many” — he slammed the door shut in my face and the screen door came closed with it. I figured that warning could go with any drug. I cared very little for it.

A beautiful powdery white pill all at my disposal. I was elated. My palms were clammy with anticipation, tongue darting out to lick my dry, trembling lips. Walking home, I fingered at the pill through the small plastic baggy, sweet fantasies of my little heaven in my doorway, Ramiel stepping through and my body being flooded with the shivering warmth like being touched for the first time.

My illicit secret burned a hole in my pocket as I fed Chomper and retrieved myself a glass of water to soothe the dryness of my throat. I downed it all in a single sitting and placed the glass down on the counter before rushing to my room where I locked myself.

Taking the baggy from my pocket, I took the pill and placed it beneath my tongue where it quickly dissolved into its semi-familiar bittersweet chalkiness. I fell into bed and closed my eyes, wringing my hands by my sides, lapping at my lips, hoping — praying — that I’d see my sweet angel. My face pressed into my pillow, my curls tickling my face. Sweat dappled my cold flesh as I trembled. I could feel it taking effect — the subtle loosening of my muscles as they twitched and tingled.

“Ezra–”

Ramiel.

I rolled over in my bed and much to my delight it was standing over me, draped in angelic white robes that kissed umber flesh. Sitting up, I felt weak beneath the burning cool of its gaze as it looked at me with tender eyes and the most unfeeling, warm smile I had ever seen. “Ezra–” Oh how I never knew the beauty of having my name said. Every syllable, a pen scratch on the paper of finite existence. It was so fleeting yet so everlasting.

“Say my name again…please.” I reached out carefully and touched the angel’s hand. “It’s never sounded so beautiful before coming from your lips. You make it sound like it was Godgiven.” My hand grasped it so gently, bringing its palm to my lips where I placed a tender kiss. I never understood worship before this very moment. I was dizzy with praise, sick with religion. This was worship. This was the meaning of God.

The hardness melted from Ramiel’s silvery gaze as I peppered kisses across its knuckles and lavished over every jewel on its rings. “It is Godgiven, Ezra.” It placed itself on my bed beside me, sitting so close our knees touched again. Ramiel placed our interlocked hands in my lap and leaned into me. “Never doubt that. You are not a mistake.” It whispered so close to me I could almost taste the misty coolness of the cosmos in its breath. I took in a deep breath of its air and held it in my lungs so I’d have even the smallest piece of the angel with me.

I could see in its eyes the infinite reality. Galaxies and dying stars collapsing in on themselves, the last fatal breath of a universe before it crumbled beneath itself. It was existence on the edge of life and death. The whisper of demise. I wasn’t sure if I was utterly terrified or incomprehensibly enamored by it.

My eyes flickered to the angel’s lips. They were full and tender-looking. I wondered what divinity tasted like just for a split second. Then I was obsessed with the idea of tasting what the hearts of stars were made of. Ramiel’s hand moved with grace to my cheek, its many bracelets letting put a sharp metallic jangle that ran through the air.

The angel drew me closer and as if reading my mind pressed it’s lips to mine and let me find out exactly all that I had desired to know. The first thing I had noticed was that they were both hard and cold. There was only a slight give to the lips but other than that they were stiff and friged. But Ramiel tried to be soft I believe. It held my face and I felt hot all over. Hot like joy, hot like bliss, hot like fear, clawing fear of something beyond comprehension.

Behind closed eyes I saw flashes of light. Red, then blue, then yellow, then white, blinding white light. There was ringing in my ears, not like bells, like that feeling you get when you’ve fallen and hit your head and you can’t hear a single thing and all you want is to regain equilibrium. It kept flashing, black then white, black then white. Rapid and disorienting.

I saw it between the flashes. Rings of molten lava; eyes… so many eyes, all blinking independently of one another. There were mouths and faces of animals all open and screaming and melting. They sang a terrible song — voices slowly becoming more and more distorted as they overlapped. It was something monstrous, something horrifying. It was the inevitable.

With a gasp, I pulled away from Ramiel. My eyes snapped open and I fell back to my bed. It sat there, looking at me with a smile that didn’t seem to reach its crystalline eyes. “What’s wrong, Ezra?” There was something caught in its voice; something that rattled something within me that could have equally been fear or fanaticism.

My lips quivered, “Was that you?” The angel’s smile never fell. Something veiled behind the faux tenderness. “Go to sleep, Ezra.”

I suddenly felt a heaviness weighed on my eyes and dragged them closed as I fell into slumber. It felt like falling into the abyss — weightless suspension in space but there were no stars and no planets. I was falling upward, toward a blackhole where the universe both ended and began. I was grasping for thin air, desperately attempting to regain control over myself.

I hadn’t remembered falling asleep when I came to consciousness. The room was dark, moonlight spilling between the blinds. Chomper was on my chest, meowing viciously and constantly to be fed. I sat up and he jumped off, trotting away to the kitchen with the idea that he’d finally be fed. Ramiel was gone, long gone. Nothing disturbed as if it had never been there at all but I could still feel the pressure of its lips against mine, the cool solidity of them.

I hadn’t remembered falling asleep, no, but I had remembered what I saw. The heavenly abomination that graced my eyes for just a brief moment but captivated me beyond anything I had ever seen before. I tried to conjure up the image in my head. It evaded me. But I knew I saw it and I knew it was Ramiel.

I was infatuated with the idea of the angel’s true form. Rolling out of bed to go feed Chomper, my body still tingling with the aftertaste of divinity. It was a high I had never experienced before, Heaven in 50 mgs of chalky white powder compacted into a small, oval pill.

It was Salvation. I felt saved from damnation. I felt entirely reborn — trembling, cold, and slick from the womb. I could see the light and I was in love.

-

I jumped between church, home, and taking up more hours at work to earn enough money to buy more pills. I was at the dealer’s door the moment I got my paycheck in cash from the bank. I withdrew from my savings for this. I had enough for 5 pills and it cost a small fortune.

The dealer gave me the baggy and I could have cried seeing these 5 little ovals through the plastic. I practically tossed the money at him as I walked away, staring at my salvation. I was obsessed, desperate, and shaking to my fingertips as I collected myself enough to walk back home with my hands balled into fists. And when I was home, Chomper was already fast asleep. I took a pill as soon as I got through the door. I opened a can of cat food and placed it on the floor instead of scooping it out into a bowl, then I was in my room again.

I wanted Ramiel. I needed the angel. Something was tearing at me from the inside out, peeling my skin from flesh, slithering through my wet, fragile organs and twisting, squeezing. I needed the soothing touch of a being beyond my understanding. I needed its kiss, it’s love, it’s saving grace. I needed to know if what I saw was it. It. The singular meaning of what it means to live, what’s beyond the veil that separated mortality from immortality. The meaning of life.

It seemed that the effects of the drug took less and less time to take hold the more I took it. The pill tasted sweeter than before. Had my mouth become holy with a single kiss from the angel? I wanted Ramiel to make all of me holy. I wanted its lips everywhere. I wanted to peel those robes from off its broad yet delicate shoulders and hold its waist beneath my palms as Ramiel kissed me again. Maybe if I removed those robes the illusion of an uncannily beautiful person would fall away and I’d come face to face with the truth. The truth anyone ever sought.

The act would be holy. It would make me holy.

“You asked me if that was me.” I could feel Ramiel’s presence around me but I could not see the angel. Its voice echoed in my head as I frantically looked about my room for the beautiful, lithe figure of my uncanny angel. “Ramiel?” My eyes looked to the doorway of my closet, dark and shadowed. “Ramiel, show yourself!” I was startled by the elusiveness of the angel of my infatuation.

“It was me.” Its voice was low and distorted in my head. “Are you frightened?” I could see something in the darkness of my small closet, hidden in the shadowy corner on the far end. I could not make out exactly what it was but it was tall and thin and made my heart still. I shook my head and it was the truth. I was not frightened. Reverence was the better word. Worship. I wanted to worship. “No.” I felt my body shake. “I want to see again. I want to know exactly what you look like. I want… I want to worship.”

I could see Ramiel’s face in the darkness. The angel came from my small closet, looking at me with its cold, silvery eyes. I wanted to fall to my knees. My body willed me to do it. I was down to the floor, I was shaking, my face was kissing the hardwood. I was in love and I was terrified. My lips were dry, but I was salivating. My body was wet and dappled in sweat. Is this how I worship? It feels so stiff, like I’ve never done it before. But before, I was worshiping a God I’m still not certain is there. Now, I’m worshiping, blasphemously, an angel that seems like God to me — more than God.

I praised it obsessively, my fingers grasping at the hem of its robes that I so desperately wanted to slip off of its pretty shoulders. “Please, please, please. I want to be holy. I want to know God.” I was losing myself in it as I pressed my face into the soft woven cotton. This is how I find Heaven, by losing myself. By wilting like a dead flower

“You’re not ready.” Ramiel spoke simply, flatly. Its hands joined where its supposed torso met its supposed pelvis. I say “supposed” because I still had a suspicion that those robes hid something far more divine than just a mortal body. My heart withered. I was completely decimated by its words. Looking up at the angel with wide, teary eyes, I pleaded with it to show me more, show me it’s true self, whisper the sweet secrets of the universe into my ear. Ramiel shut me down swiftly. “Your mind could not even begin to understand the gravity of my true form. You’d die a terrible, painful death.”

‘I wouldn’t mind dying. For you, I’d be willing,’ I wanted to say but it got caught in my throat between my sobs and my sins. I was torn apart. I was desperate. I was choking on my own hubris, on my own devotion.

Then my high would fade, as quickly as it came and all my feelings of euphoric despair would come crashing down. I was frantic, obsessively grabbing the baggie for another pill. All I wanted was to get higher and higher, so high my fingertips could graze the Heavens. Then I’d fall, so far, so hard, so fast.

-

I don’t know how long I’ve been locked up in my apartment. A week? Maybe longer? My days blurred together until they were indistinguishable from the other. I had taken all the money out of my savings, drained my bank accounts, and used it all to buy as much Salvation as I could get my hands on. I never left my apartment after that. Not for work, not for church, not for anything, for what could possibly be more important than these sweet little pills?

My highs seemed to come fast and end even faster, a swift tsunami of bliss and devotion that kept me on the hook, always wanting more. Ramiel would come, dressed in white, rattling with chains and jewels, with cold eyes and a presence so hot I could feel my blood boiling in my veins. I was completely enamored. I was in love with the angel that I was so sure could offer me the peace — the salvation — I was so desperately vying for.

I was just coming down from a high where I had worshiped Ramiel just enough to satiate myself but not enough to leave enlightened as I wanted to be, when I heard a knock on the front door to my unit. I considered ignoring it, taking another pill, falling back into another fit of ecstasy, but the knocking became more frantic, more demanding, something that couldn’t be ignored.

I hid away my pills deep in the drawer of my bedside table but not before popping one into my mouth, and rushed to the front door to tell off whoever had come to disturb my serenity. It smelled in the living room, like rotting meat and decay, fresh yet faint, like decomposition just set in. Chomper hadn’t greeted me as I came out of my room. He was on the couch, sleeping, curled up in a ball of black fur. There were flies swarming around him, landing in his black fur before taking flight again. I almost pet him when the knocking at the door became louder. “Ezra? Ezra, are you there? It’s Ryan, open up!”

My fingers twitched as I reached for the lock and twisted it. I let the door open just enough to peek my head through and nothing more. Ryan looked at me, her eyes wide and frightened by my appearance. “Ezra. Oh my God, you look like hell.” She saw the bags under my eyes from my restless nights tossing and turning and talking to Ramiel, she saw the way my skin sagged and how sunken in my eyes and cheeks were. I had a wild look in my eyes, the look of desperation, of a high just beginning.

“What are you doing here?” I wanted her gone. I wanted to be alone with my angel. Was that so much to ask? Ryan’s brows furrowed deeply, concern flooded a gaze I didn’t seem to recognize anymore. Or maybe it was me she didn’t recognize. “Can I come in?” She asked but her tone made it seem like she was demanding. Usually she was never this serious. Ryan has always been the loose, carefree type, too busy getting drunk and high to really be concerned about anything. But she always had her illicit affairs in moderation, that seemed to be the difference between her and me.

My gaze shifted away, I glanced behind me and there stood Ramiel in all its angelic beauty. The angel shook its head. Sniffling, I shook my head too. My body didn’t feel like mine. I was completely under the control of Ramiel and I was more than elated about it. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Ryan glanced over my shoulder to where I had looked. I barely waited for me to finish before pushing the door open and forcing her way past me. Her face immediately twisted with disgust. “What is that smell? It smells like something fucking died in here.” She whirled back towards me on her heels with that look of worry growing more and more evident. “I went back to my dealer and he told me you bought him out of all his Salvation.”

“Lie” Ramiel muttered melodically. “He’s lying.” I snapped.

“You have a problem, Ezra.” She crossed her arms across her chest, her lips pursing into a firm line. “You’ve fallen off the face of the earth for the last week and a half and no one knew where you were. Where are the pills? You need a detox.” Ryan began looking around, tossing my strewn about clothes to the side in search of the pills. I couldn’t believe her. How dare she take this moral high ground like she didn’t give me the very first pill.

“Go fuck yourself, Ryan.” I couldn’t help but spit at her. She paused with a look that was confused and bordered on horror. I had always been meek, quiet, agreeable, never saying what was on my mind for fear that I’d say the wrong thing. “You know nothing about me. I’m finally at peace, finally know what I want out of this bullshit life of mine! You’re still drinking and drugging your way through life trying to pretend you’re better than me because you ‘have a handle on it’. Newsflash, you fucking don’t!”

She looked taken aback, almost betrayed. I continued, “I am good! I am holy! And you are fucking scum!” I was trembling, shaking with fury uncontained. My chest rose and fell with rapid succession. My wrath was divine. My anger was pure. I don’t know why I grabbed her, my grip so hard that I was sure I would leave a bruise. She fought me. “Ezra– let me go!” Her voice was high and panicked, her eyes tearing up with something bordering on fear.

Ramiel laced its lengthy fingers behind its back. “Would you like to be worthy, Ezra? You’re so close to being ready to see my true form.” It looked at me knowingly, like I already knew what I was supposed to do. “This is your chance. To be holy. To be saved” That’s all I ever wanted.

I released Ryan and she stood there. She was petrified with fear, too scared to run away as I walked to the front door and locked it. Maybe she knew before me what I was going to do.

I didn’t want to hurt her but it was an act of God I was performing. My hands were around her throat. She did not fight. She was almost like a lamb, trembling and teary, but barely crying. She accepted her fate and I squeezed and her eyes bulged. I laid her to the ground and knelt over her while Ramiel stood over me with eyes almost and lifeless as Ryan’s. This was good, this was holy.

“Good.” The angel whispered as she slowly stopped clawing and her hands fell limp, twitching. Her eyes rolled back until the red veins in the whites of her eyes showed. I could feel the life escape her beneath my voice grip. This was an act of God. This was good.

Ramiel placed its hand upon my head and stroked my hair gently. “Come now. You’ve done good.” I was shaking violently as I released her, my hands leaving bruises around Ryan’s already cooling skin. I looked up at Ramiel with big, puppy eyes, desperate to please, wanting to be worthy. I got up from the floor and left Ryan’s body there in my living room as I followed Ramiel’s waning figure into my room.

I could feel my high fading. I wanted it to last forever. I went to my bedside table and retrieved the pills to take. I don’t remember how many I took, too many surely. I took them, one after the other and turned back to Ramiel who sat on my bed. The angel revealed a shoulder to me. I worshiped that shoulder, I revered it. Ramiel drew me closer with low eyes and a welcoming smile. “You said you wanted to see the truth.”

I nodded as I knelt before my beloved angel. My heart was pounding so loudly in my ears, faster and harder. I was scared that it would burst through my chest to get to where it truly belonged. In the palms of an angel. A film of sweat layered my body. I stared with bulging eyes at Ramiel as I reached out for its robes. Carefully, tenderly, I peeled them away from him. It was silent, it was intimate, it was so blasphemous the way I worshiped this moment.

There was light where it’s body should have been. Pleasure washed over me. Heat licked my face. I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out, my voice caught in my burning throat. My eyes could not contain the sight of this monstrous thing before me. I could feel them melting out of my skull like molten lava. I fell to the floor, my heart beating violently as I writhed in pain on the floor. I was screaming or maybe I was singing. My fingers clawed at my eyes, hands wet with the blood I was weeping. My body seized and my mouth frothed like some rabid animal.

I could only imagine Ramiel watching me die my slow and painful death. Or maybe Ramiel was never there to begin with. But this death, this…

This was salvation.