GIVE ME WINGS, GIVE ME WINGS.

A latch pops.

Lemuel shudders.

Pop.

He moans.

Slowly, the tin around his chest pried by a can opener. The sound of screeching tea kettles. His body begins to bloat—curdled pus beneath a red boil—and it bursts sour into Nicholas’ nose: the wet, rotten tang of smoke and acid buttermilk. Now, Lemuel slaps the ground shivering. The grasshoppers go silent. His face congeals and he spills out of his armor like a half-transformed caterpillar, twitching his hundred limp, useless wings with his limp, legless body. Silver streaks of steam zip through the air.

Metamorphosis complete, mummified in an egg white sheen. He squirms with clicking gurgles, sprawling through the nettles.

silence. the wind buzzes like flies in your ears. you taste a metallic wash in your mouth and your capillaries swell watching him writhe like a massive tongue—pitiful and grotesque.

‘go. away.’

Nicholas had stepped back. Nicholas balled his fists. His eyes are blown fortune-teller wide, his pupils squeezed into pinpricks.

“Hello, Lemuel.”

He always ran. The first was to a monastery. The second: on his tip-toes, brushing his lips. The next: on top and inside a tent. Now he worms to the shadows. Nicholas has mirror eyes that see all or nothing and Nebuchadnezzar, and he reaches for him.

“If you run, you’ll hurt me.” He emits static charge, the air vibrating. “And you promised you wouldn’t.”

He touches his head. A branch snaps.

⠀⠀⠀𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐭𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝 wanes turmoil for a moment. The Angel’s wildly writhing thoughts calm to a slither. It tethers itself to Nicholas’ hand. Inklings of coherence, thoughts beyond fear swim just against the murky surface. It barely recognizes its own name—the word meaning nothing or worse. “Lemuel” is little else than blood, bones and waste. He is Blight. Capable of little else than decimation. Blood pools in the imprint of his heels. Every step is evidence of the bane that has steeped for centuries inside him.

⠀⠀⠀Its verminate form spirals around the Priest brushing over him as it moves. Half feathers riffle through Nicholas’ hair. Though disheveled now, he remains unmoved as masses brush against against his shoulders, his hips. The Lumbricine Angel’s tymbal reverberates with curiosity and a gentle frustration. Neither hated nor feared, the Angel’s purpose becomes unclear.

⠀⠀⠀From beneath a mass of feathers, fur and iridescent scales, a golden mask catches a glint of moonlight. Embedded beneath failed wings is the serene smile of Olahem the Merciful.

⠀⠀⠀A voice rasps gently—viscous, warm and clear—deep within the Angel’s mind drawing its stomach into knots. The voice falls upon its simple ears like hot wax. A visceral flinch rattles the creature.

You are drawn to him for his worthy oblation, you leashed thing. You will take from him his propitiation as you always have, as I had ordered you. You will give to Me and to none other. I Am that which governs you, protects you, made you. I Am all that you are and ever will be. I Am Clemency, Eternity, your Purpose and your Guarantor. You are as I made you, and you will take. Not for you, not for another, but for Me. Bring him to Me.

⠀⠀⠀With a pained shriek the Angel's spiraling comes to a sudden halt. It falls in wide rings around Nicholas. Gurgling and murmuring, it grinds its black head into the ground.

⠀⠀⠀Confused, it lances upward. Mandibles stretch toward the sky with a shrill cry. Its jaw unhinges and red drool froths from between its jagged teeth. Another horrific whine tears through dead of night as the Angel now lunges toward Nicholas. Mandibles press into his head, its jaw unhinged. Endless rows of teeth line the cavern of its throat. Slobber slaps into the soil as it pants.

⠀⠀⠀He promised he wouldn't.

⠀⠀⠀Its breath sounds all too human when it retreats, jerking back with a sudden quickness. The force at which it slams into the ground is enough to send tremors through the earth. Human wailing resonates from the vacuous creature as it continues its destructive percussion. Over and over it grinds its body into the earth until the mort helm crumbles to gold dust. Shards of it pierce into its body.

“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.