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The world is suddenly dark and he feels the fight leave him. Like an animal he is thrown into paralyzing submission and the box closes above him. There is nothing but the dark walls and the nothingness around him. This is how I die, he thinks and welcomes the black oblivion.
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Being woken up by two men manhandling him was the last thing he expected when he went to sleep the night before in the pathetic excuse of a bed he allowed himself to own. The circus had been kind to him in giving him food and shelter, clothes to wear and beautiful paint to illuminate his features with, but he supposed they didn‘t bother with his other needs. If he was honest he was sure many of them thought he didn‘t need sleep. The devil never sleeps after all.
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Swinging from a ladder to another. Turning in the air. The illusion of flying. The illusion of true freedom. Fooling these people into thinking he is free like a bird, free to fly like they will never be able to. Disappearing and reappearing again. Thunderous applause. The amazing, the incredible, the fantastic Nightcrawler. A true artist of acrobats, peak of the show, a young man who dresses like the devil. Until the paint wears off and he shows his true colours. A monster, an abomination. A demon sent to taunt mankind. The applause turn to screams and there are fingers pointing. A man smirks and tightens his coat around him. He is yanked by his clothes and told to go to his tent. He has done enough damage for today. God forbid he shows his horrifying face again. He ought to be in the freakshow. He peaks from his hideout and finds his protector, the ringmaster talking to a guy in a coat with a horrible smile on his face. Money seems to be exchanged. It‘s for the damage he is sure. He falls asleep with a nauseous feeling of guilt.
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When he wakes the up world is still dark and there are men talking, their tales muffled by the dark walls that surround him. Panic seizes him and he starts to move around. The walls make him feel nauseous and he feels like he is gonna throw up. He starts banging on the walls and in the darkness his eyes shift and his anxious attempts to get out are met by silence. The men have gone away. He thinks of his bed and tries to feel for the warmth that always follows his teleportation ability. Nothing. He tries more but the familiar action of disappearing doesn‘t seem to come to him.
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After one hour he stops crying. We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments. After two he stops moving. To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against him. In three hours all fight has left him and he prays. O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; defer not, for thine own sake, O my God: for thy city and thy people are called by thy name. He talks to a comforting presence that doesn‘t care about him. Sleep soon finds him again and when he wakes the second time his back hurts and his mouth is dry. The darkness is engulfing him and the walls feel like they‘re closing in on him. One hour, two hours. He wishes God would send someone to save him. He draws the linings on his face with his blue finger and tears start filling his eyes again. The marks that are to bring him closer to the angels feel foreign.
Suddenly he is moving. The box is lifted and wheeled forward and panic strikes again. His darkness is shaking and brawling. He used to imagine that death would be a light at the end of the tunnel but here is no light. He used to imagine the quiet lullaby of silence. These screams that get louder and louder by the moment feel trapping. The loudness of it all has him banging on the walls again and he is not sure he is even breathing. The air feels tight and it makes him try to disappear again. The amazing, the incredible, the helpless, the condemned Nightcrawler is flung out of the box and all air is knocked out of him.
The light is blinding for a second. Then I lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a certain man, clothed in lined, whose loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz. He blinks to clear his view and his focus lands on a boy who stands in front of him. His body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning-, white feathers surround him – and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and feet like in the colour to polished brass. Kurt blinks. The light at the end of the tunnel welcomes him with an angel covered in blood.
Then the angel moves forward out of the light and his arms and legs aren‘t polished metal nor is his face like lighting but rather are his eyes like the daylight, blue where the clouds part. But Kurt doesn‘t feel the peace that death should have granted him. Instead he is afraid. So he does the only thing his instincts taught him. In the blink of an eye he feels the warmth in the pit of his stomach and he can teleport again. His relief is short lived when he comes to contact with electrifying wires again and again and he falls with a yelp. His imprisonment evolved from a box into a cage. The angel strikes again and Kurt keeps disappearing and reappearing but the angel always finds him again. His movements are those of a warrior, he glides across the cage with elegant but forceful movements. He fights like he has nothing to lose. Another jump and Kurt is up on a high pillar looking down. The voice of his words like the voice of a multitude, the angel said unto him, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words I speak unto thee -
'Fight! Or they‘ll kill us both!'
The words prompt him to turn around and take in the crowd outside of the cage. There are men holding guns and they have them aimed at the cage. He meets the angel‘s eyes and sees something that strikes an electric feeling through his body. The angel is afraid. But not of him. Not of his demonic features or blue skin, his tail or his red eyes. God‘s angel fears humanity.
Kurt grits his teeth. The thought of using his body to fight is repulsive to him. Violence is carved on his body like a painter‘s touch on a dreadful canvas. He has known violence and his body will never make him forget it. When he drew the blade he did it with the conscious promise that the world would never know his anger again.There are great many things he didn‘t mean to happen. The world spins and sometimes it favours you and sometimes it kills you. It‘s controlled chaos, because the abundance of stars, the roaring sky and the spinning dancer are no accident and if it happened it did because it‘s meant to and he is not a sinner if the world doesn‘t favour him. He didn‘t mean to be jumped upon. He didn‘t mean for the first punch to land on his face and the second one in his ribs. And his body didn‘t mean to respond to the shock, the pain. The anger had seeped through him, he heard the taunts and the laughter like his pained cry was a clown‘s joke. He felt it take root at his core and the warmness of it had surprised him. He didn‘t mean for the man to grab his shoulders and haul him up, nor did he mean for the punches to hit him where it hurt, again and again and sometimes the world favours you and sometimes the world transports you to a spot that once held a memory to you and surrounds you with the severed body parts of the dead men who jumped you.
Things happen fast after that. With a growl Kurt jumps and in a second he is behind the angel. His tail grabs hold of him and with a spin and black smoke he has the angel pressed up against the electric fence high in the air. Kurt falls all the way down with him and the fence seems to light up behind the angel‘s body. Kurt lands on his feet and he is panting hard. The people behind him are chanting, they are cheering his name. The angel stands up with a groan and he doesn‘t feel victorious at all. The smell of burnt feathers fill his nostrils and with horror Kurt looks at what he has done. The whole upper part of the boy‘s left wing is scarred and burnt. The angel looks at him and the incredible Nightcrawler winches in on himself, I set my face toward the ground, and I became mute.
'I‘m sorry, I‘m so- I‘m sorry, I‘m-' Kurt starts but his words are interrupted by a sharp ring of a bell and bursts of electric lights. The cage seems to cast lightnings until it stops and he hears the sound of guns being fired. The angel‘s gaze leaves him and with a flap of his abused wings he is up in the air and tearing at the cage. He succeeds in taking a chunk out of it and just like that he‘s out.
And I, Daniel, alone saw the vision: for the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves,- Kurt looks to his left and with the angel gone the reality of the situation hits him. Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me- no, it‘s not true because he sees the men with the guns, aiming at the angel. The angel struts forward and his face is masked with pain. People are screaming and shots are being fired, the loudness of it all is overwhelming. But it‘s real, -and, behold, one like the similitude of the sons of men touched my lips: then I opened my mouth and- the angel is real and and if he stays here any longer God‘s plan would go to waste. In that moment he knows he has to make a decision. He fears the angel and his leather jacket clad grace but he saw something beyond that in the cage. His own fear, mirrored in the angel‘s terrifying blue eyes. He leaves a black smoke in the ruined cage and in front of him is the angel.
'Kom mit mir!' he yells and grabs the blonde‘s hands. He has no time to hear the reply because suddenly someone grabs at his shoulders and as a panicked response he teleports outside, bringing the winged boy and the unknown hostile with him. The angel elbows the man in the face and Kurt winches. Taking in his surroundings he notices that they are not far away from the place they were fighting in and there are still people running out. His heart is still beating like he is meeting his death and he is taking big gulps of breath. The angel bends down and wriggles the unconscious man out of his coat, drapes it over himself to cover his bloody wings and walks off. He seems to be halting.
'Nein, nein, wir müssen.. we have to get out of here,' Kurt says and it makes the boy turn around. He looks at Kurt and then seems to look behind him and the way his face falls makes Kurt turn around as well. There are men pointing their way and running towards them. Kurt turns his face back to the angel and holds out his hand.
'There is no time, we have to get out of here!' He knows his voice is struck with panic and that his eyes look pleading. He doesn‘t need his sharp hearing to know that the men are getting closer by the second. The angel furiously shifts his eyes between the top of Kurt‘s head and his three fingered hand. The seconds feel like a lifetime and Kurt‘s heart threatens to burst out of his chest and when the angel grabs the devil by the hand they are gone in a smoke and the cruelty of man is left behind.