Chapter Text
It started with a dream.
I used to dream about normal things, like missing school, forgetting to wear pants, or meeting aliens. Normal things for a kid in elementary school.
Foster care changed all that. Strange adults, strange kids, strange beds. What haunted me most was their eyes. Lifeless, glazed over expressions of children younger than me. They already gave something precious up to the vast cruelness of the world.
My dreams changed.
Their eyes followed me down hallways and hillside paths. Through grassy meadows, up staircases, across rivers, they hovered high above me; silent, heavy , and oppressive, a weight that left my legs sluggish and head light with dizziness. When it started, my heart pumped double-time and my breath came in short pants. I woke in a sweat, limbs heavy with sleep paralysis and fat tears rolled down my cheeks while I lay in a bed of foreign smells, surrounded by strangers.
I learned to ignore the eyes. Habituation, it was called. They exerted their force, a weight that never left my shoulders, legs or mind, but I paid them no attention. I traveled far and wide in my dreamscape, to empty cities and forgotten farms, to dilapidated buildings and dusty museums. No one greeted me at these destinations and no one called out to stop me leaving and journeying on. I was alone with my thoughts and the weight of the eyes upon myself.
Hundreds of dreams passed in this fashion and hundreds of missed opportunities for a family passed the same. I was too enamored by my dreams to care. It was my escape, the only place where peace was found. I slept rather than ate, slept rather than meet families. I dozed and dozed, trying to not snore while life passed me by.
***
A ray of sunlight through the blinds found Keon dozing off with more difficulty than usual. Two older kids argued over whose turn it was to sweep the area around their beds. They kept pushing each other with the broom and tried to jab each other in the ribs. Keon didn’t have to open his eyes to know – he’d been here long enough to be used to their behavior. This time however, they threw insults back and forth until they were shouting. Keon twitched from where he lay in bed, hoping against all odds that he could tune out the noise and fall back asleep.
“Hey!” He finally shouted, bolting up and turning to glare at the boys. They froze, brooms still locked in combat, and stared at him with wide eyes, mouths rounded in surprise. Keon wasn’t intimidating. He was short, younger than them, and “weird.” He was the quiet kid, always in a daze. Likely, they hadn’t realized he was even in the same room as them. Against his better judgment, Keon continued.
“Just shut up and sweep the damn floor or take your bickering elsewhere.”
Twin sets of eyes blinked at him before the boys exchanged a quick look before doubling over in laughter. “I can’t believe it talks,” one of them managed through his giggles. Keon swallowed and gripped the blanket in his lap tighter, palms suddenly sweaty. The boys continued to guffaw like he was a sideshow freak, but it wasn’t long before their laughter subsided into identical grins. It reminded Keon of two sharks that found their prey.
“I have a better idea, Keon,” one of them said, drawing himself up to seem taller than he was. Keon’s arm twitched; he was hyper aware of how the two boys leered at him from across the room, showing off mismatched teeth. They were broad - shouldered teenagers with foul mouths. Keon was just a scrawny eleven-year-old who slept his life away and hardly ate.
He was going to die.
He never heard what the boys' better idea was. He was on his feet and flying out the door before they could say or do anything. He rushed past kids and adults, stumbling over invisible obstacles and deaf to their calls and shouts.
His socked feet hammered down the pavement, his chest heaving in great gasps. Running left him numb even as his body screamed for him to stop. He refused, despite the burning in his chest and legs. Buildings and streets blurred by him. He kept going until he reached the cemetery, whose iron gates were open. Vast rows of tombstones, empty of visitors, greeted him.
He slowed to a walk, stopping just before a bridge to catch his breath. Doubled over, he had a good view of the small stream that passed through the cemetery. Soft trickling sounds floated around him as murky water rushed over mossy stones.
He continued forward, the wooden boards of the bridge creaking beneath his almost-bare feet as he passed over the water. He veered off the path into the grass, ambling along and panting heavily. Without warning, his feet were taken out from under him and he fell backward, sliding down a steep hill and rolling forward when he reached the bottom.
He laid on his stomach in the wet grass, groaning loudly and cursing his bad luck. The sun had been up for hours, yet the sky was gray with clouds and the promise of rain. He closed his eyes against the pain in his chest and limbs and focused on his breathing. Inhale slowly, exhale slowly. Inhale slowly, exhale slowly.
Before he knew it, he fell asleep.
***
He walked along a cobblestone path, mismatched stones of red and brown leading narrowly down the hill. Grass and tufts of spiky weeds grew haphazardly between the stones. The weight on his shoulders told him the eyes were back, ever present and floating above. He peered up into the suspended gaze.
Today there were seven. The largest was green and yellow like dying grass, flecked with black as though paint had been splattered on it. Two tiny brown eyes sat to the left of it, dark like chocolate. To his right was an eye about the size of a softball, blue like the sky on a clear day when the sun shines. The other three were too small for him to make out the iris and they hovered far above. Still, he felt their gazes like a bee sting. Resisting the urge to scratch his neck, he trekked forward.
It was cloudy here too. No sunlight to speak of , and what little visibility there was seemed dimmer than it had in the cemetery. The hill sloped downward at a steep angle so suddenly that he tripped on a cobblestone and fell forward, tumbling to the bottom of the hill. He was grateful it didn’t hurt, but his head swam with disorientation. His eyes opened to a church.
Simple and white, it was a rectangle with a narrow-pointed tower that housed a bronze bell. It was reminiscent of school houses in the early 1900s, the ones in the country that looked more like a barn and only had room for maybe ten desks. A large silver cross hanging above the doorway was the only thing marking as a church.
He stood with difficulty, wondering if this was how astronauts felt when they underwent space training. Gravity increased with the pressure of the eyes , and balancing on his own two feet felt like lifting heavy weights.
The double doors opened with ease, the wood smooth and cold. The slight tang of fresh paint greeted him, along with several rows of pews and an altar atop a raised dais. No pictures lined the white walls, no further religious symbols or crosses, no tablecloth lay spread across the altar, no cushions on the brown pews, nothing. “Worst church ever,” he muttered aloud and from the front of the pews, a head turned.
The scream caught in his throat as his eyes widened. There hadn’t been a person there when he walked in. Shallow breaths reached his ears like the rush of ocean waves and he fought to inhale slowly. Exhale. Inhale slowly. Exhale.
The person – if it was a person, this was a dream after all – was staring at Keon in silence.
“Who are you?” It had to be asked, he reasoned, even if his voice shook as he said it. The stranger’s eyes widened even further, bright blues the same shade as the sky on a sunny day.
Keon’s gaze soared upward to the eyes that were next to him, the ones the same shade of blue that the stranger held. They were gone. He looked up. The green eye, the two brown ones, and the other three were still floating above him, their sight fixed not on him for once, but on the stranger. Keon gaped. He didn’t care how stupid he looked; he didn’t care who this stranger was. Whatever he was, whoever he was, he had managed to make the eyes do something.
Before he knew it, his legs were carrying him quickly down the aisle toward the stranger. They were face to face in a matter of seconds. Their eyes locked, clear blue staring into a similar murky hue. He had been told on more than one rainy occasion that his eyes looked gray as the weather. Keon looked away to find more eyes staring at him. Given the nature of his dreams this wasn’t unusual, yet it startled him. The eyes had floated over to the stranger and were now hanging above his head.
“What is going on here?” Keon whispered. He was trembling, voice and body shaking so badly that the stranger held out a hand to steady him. Fingers gently closed on his arm and he saw it. Silvery outlines behind the man’s shoulders; sloping, feathery outlines of giant wings. Wings like an angel.
“You’re an angel?” he blurted out and the stranger jerked back, hand leaving Keon’s arm like he’d been burned. Pain swam in those blue depths, pain so tangible Keon felt choked by tears. They fell wordlessly and he sat, falling to his knees as though begging forgiveness he was not worthy of.
“Wh-what’s h-happening?” he choked out, wiping his eyes vigorously. Hot tears still trailed down, dripping off his chin and onto his jeans. The stranger – the angel - frowned and he scooted away from Keon. More tears fell and he choked out a sob. It hurt , whatever this was. His heart hurt like it had been ripped out. It was worse than losing her , it was the worst he had ever hurt in his life and all he wanted was for it to stop .
The angel murmured something in a language Keon did not understand. The tears ceased and the overwhelming storm of sadness quelled to a gentle rustle in his heart. He breathed heavily and wrapped his arms around himself.
“Do you know who I am?” The angel’s voice was like music that had lost its meaning. Dry and soft, as fragile as rotting foliage but as beautiful as a stained-glass window. Keon shook his head. The frown and furrowed brow disappeared from the angel’s face. Thin, pink lips tilted upward at the edges into a soft smile.
“I don’t understand,” Keon rasped. It summed up the situation very well in his opinion. Dream or not, this was beyond weird. He had never believed his dreams were real, lucid as they were. This was too real to be a dream, too real to be happening only in his mind.
“The eyes, this church... I’ve always been alone. Why are you here? How are you here?” The angel shook his head slowly, that strange smile still directed at him.
“What happened to your wings?” He didn’t know why the question burst forth from his mouth. It was low on the priority list of questions. Nevertheless, his eyes were drawn to the strange silver outlines.
“I lost them.” Dried foliage, music without a heart, his voice almost hurt to hear as much as it had hurt to feel his touch.
Keon cringed. “How?”
The angel seemed to not care that this was a very personal question.
“I was supposed to protect someone. I failed that duty, so I cannot return. I do not deserve my wings.” The sadness was like a blanket over the angel. It weighed him down, shoulders drooping, face dropping, that stupid smile gone. Keon missed it.
“Are they gone forever?” It was a silly question to ask. The kind that children posed when they didn’t understand a pet had died.
“If I can find the one I am supposed to save, I will be granted my wings. But I do not know where they are. I do not think I can find them.” The angel spoke in a watery voice, though no tears clouded his vision.
“But I returned your eyes to you!” Keon blurted out. Even as he said it, he furrowed his brow in confusion. Why had he said that?
“…That is true. Perhaps with these I can begin to look,” the angel said with another smile. It stretched gracefully across his face; complexion unmarred by the blemishes that would make an average human being unique. In fact, the angel was immaculate in every sense of the word. His bare arms were pale and looked soft, with blond hairs like dust over his skin. The top he wore was thin white cloth crossed over his chest and tucked into a thick silver waistband. Pants the color of snow went down to his knees, coming together above his calves in a silver band of ribbon. He was barefoot.
The boy stared into the angel’s face for a long moment.
“I have to go,” he said suddenly , and the angel nodded. Keon stood up on weak legs and looked to the eyes above the angel. Without a word he turned and walked slowly down the aisle toward the doors. Several weights eased onto his shoulders and he looked up to see the eyes were following him again. Unconcerned, he pushed the double doors open and stepped out into the world.
***
Cold drops of water like needles woke him. He jerked upright, looking around quickly for any signs of the angel. He was still on the grass where he’d landed, next to a gravestone he didn’t immediately recognize. The soft, cold drops of water were picking up speed and the rumble of thunder off in the distance told him he should get home soon. “Home.” What a strange thought. He didn’t have a home. He stood, brushing the grass off of his front and paused to look at the gravestone.
‘Christine Owens
Beloved mother
She will never be forgotten’
The world stopped. His head swam, heavy, and his stomach dropped to his feet. He turned and stumbled a few steps, biting his lip to keep it from trembling. Tears, more real than the ones in the dream, dripped down his cheeks. She had been a beloved mother. Beloved by her only son, who was now in foster care and who dreamed of things that were impossibly real.
At the funeral, he hadn’t paid attention to where her grave was. He knew she resided in this cemetery, but he hadn’t wanted to know where exactly her grave was. He hadn’t thought he could handle visiting her. He was eleven; he was supposed to have a mother and he was supposed to be in school making friends.
Instead, he dreamed of angels and eyes, he barely ate, and he was alone in the world.