GIVE ME WINGS, GIVE ME WINGS.

“Yes. I would.” He’s merciless. He hates miserable things. “If it’s for me.”

He wants something to squeeze.

No, that ship has sailed. The time has passed. He knows all things are meant to die. Like humans, and stars, and the home he grew up in. Nicholas noses his hair, dark and spun by the legs of shiny black spiders, and keychains their bodies together, both rapidly generating and losing heat. One day, he’s going to blow. They’ll have to declare an evacuation zone.

“Then show me,” he tells him, holding Lemuel face-to-face.

He lets go.

Somewhere in the world, another Nicholas has just begun to stir. A tangy burst of sunlight maneuvers past his blinds, finalizing his form as a yellow zebra. He’s cocooned under the covers, performing in-place cat stretches and savoring life, when he unglues his eyes to two 8 balls. This Lemuel smiles, whispering good morning. This Lemuel had watched him sleep, now immune to him knowing, and pulls the covers up over their heads to warm in shared thermal energy. They have never heard of OLAM.

Somewhere else, a village burns down to carbon, a mother hiding her baby in the dog. A bishop sucks the red out of a cruet before slapping the milk marble floor, his body smallpoxing with new eyes. A man in white steps out onto a balcony while his sister fuses with the altar, expanding her nervous system. He gives his first homily.

Here, they are out of the tent.

Nicholas Teague stands among the trees, black like an open door in the night, and away from Róisín. The moon is a peephole and God is looking in.

It throws silver rays onto Lemuel’s armor, and he glows.

⠀⠀⠀𝐇𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐲.

⠀⠀⠀The dene was awash with moonlight some hundreds of years ago. Its soil was entirely ensanguinated—purple, thick and saturated with blood and bitter tears of anguish. A once thriving valley was reduced to a pulsing mass grave of the brutally murdered. Bodies strewn atop bodies, endless carnage and limbs indistinguishable. At the center, beneath the horror, the bloodied earth curdled into a fetal mass of suffering incarnate. It wailed unceasingly with none but the Moon to hear its cry.

⠀⠀⠀She watches over them now, indifferent. Her pearlescence veils over their shoulders as the Angel holds fast to Nicholas wrist.

⠀⠀⠀His greed and desire already belong to Nicholas. It will be none other but Lemuel, himself, and all the awful things that burrow in the desolate place below his heart. His temper, cowardice, pain and loathing will be laid bare.

⠀⠀⠀The latch bursts.

⠀⠀⠀Agony.

⠀⠀⠀As if from an egg, his body expands endlessly from inside the cuirass. Searing, maddening agony guts him. Perimysium is laid to waste, muscle tears into threads. A shrieking moan pierces through the night, not human nor animal. The content chirping of insects and misty eyed amphibians ceases entirely in response. All life holds still bearing witness to the creature manifesting before them—Suffering incarnate.

⠀⠀⠀Its grotesque annelid form spirals out from its silvery egg. Malignant arrays of winglike appendages are scattered over its form and layered between tumor-like growths resembling defeathered fowl and fused insect bodies. The teratomata bear broken wings still harboring patches of meager wet plumage.

⠀⠀⠀In its pained desperation, the Lumbricine Angel writhes against the grass leaving bare patches in its wake. Its own tufts of chitinous fur stain green. It writhes and backs away from Nicholas in terror. It will not touch him; it cannot. It knows no tenderness. Its pathetic, ugly moans gurgle as it continues its cautious retreat. Lemuel barely remembers himself. It remembers Nicholas and all that he is and that he deserves, and so it cannot bare to impart its rot upon him. The Lumbricine Angel was made only to kill. In this moment, it wishes for nothing more for some end to this torment.