the sky has become other.
It is a particularly cold day in December when Angel decides itās finally time.
He doesnāt know it, but heās decided, long before this point, that he was going to do it.
He remembers the sky was once a pale and dull blue with smudges of white and grey. It isnāt like that anymore, but people like to pretend it still is.
Angelās window shades have a particularly artistry to them in that matter, because they have a large disparate black stain down the middle of it.
Coffee that he spat out that one faithful morning, when he looked toward the ground like he always did and saw something he didnāt expect. He never quite managed to scrub it all out of the fabric.
Usually, he only goes outside to take the tram to work. Itās a blissfully cold and sightless experience since the new carts have been introduced. They have screens instead of windows, you see.
Of course, there are still glimpses of it sometimes. There's always going to be. But a mere glimpse wonāt do anything too damaging.
His first glimpse of the new sky was that day, actually.
The sky writhing with ghastly tendrils that thread through the cloud line. The view of colors and images you canāt quite recall when he turns his head downward again. He doe not want to recall it.
There was a woman. She ran back across the pavement screaming that it had spoke to her, that it had said something important. There was so much panic in her eyes that one of the neighbors called the authorities. They took her away somewhere, after that.
Itās this small bit of information that Angel finds himself turning around in his head like a puzzle ever since. When he looks at the ceiling of his little apartment at night, instead of sleeping like heās supposed to.
He wants to know what it really looks like. He wants to know what it sounds like, too.
So on a weekend that wouldāve been like any other, he goes outside.
The streets are almost painfully devoid of other peopleāhe supposes that must be a good thing.
Heās glad nobody else has decided to do what he is doing. Glad nobody notices him doing this. He doesnāt want other people to know. The sky is not looked at for a reason, after all.
It is here Angel stops, in a park that he often walks through. There are little painted stones in piles across the ground and flowering bushes trimmed to be as equally low. Itās nice to look at, if nothing else.
The center pavilion is nothing more than a small circle of grey pavement off to the side of the path. Thereās still a premade hopscotch grid left to the other side of it. Heās seen children go through it maybe once or twice since they also go through the park on the way to schoolānot much else besides that.
Angel takes a deep breath.
He looks up to the sky.
He freezes.
It doesnāt sound like anything. Or, well, it's more like thereās no sound accompanying the information. It simply exists by itself.
It simply is.
THE END IS NIGH.
TIME CONTINUES FORWARD.
IT WILL KILL YOU TOO.
HELP ME.
HELP ME.
HELP ME.
HELP.
I DONāT WANT TO DIE LIKE THIS.
PLEASE.
And maybe Angel underestimated just how sad that could be.
He doesnāt realize heās started crying until he starts to breathe again, and his shirt feels wet.
Because that isnāt how itās supposed to look like. In the same way a mass of nerves and muscles does not look like a human being. Heās looking at a person without their skin, mushed up and turned into something it is not supposed to be.
There is an overwhelming sense that this was never supposed to ever happen lodged deep within him. Something that whispers to him exactly how it was supposed to look like. He cannot un-know that it is real.
It hurts to look at.
Angel has never known anything like it in all twenty-something years of his life.
And.
And itās his age. A little younger, actually.
Angel thinks heās going to be sick.
It was supposed to be beautiful. It was beautiful, oh so very long ago.
Thereās nothing he can do about it.
Thereās nothing he can do to help.
Thereās nothing thereās nothing thereās nothing he canāt do anything why did this happen why canāt this be fixed
PLEASE.
Heās sorry.
God, heās so sorry.
