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Feels like thousands of flies. Hundreds of thousands of flies, on him or in him, dying and hatching under his skin. Humming with human mouths, the voices of angels. A great and terrible chorus reverberating in the skull that isn't, and then is.
Death was nothing. Not when Miles' body can be unmade and made again, when his maker (then unmaker) can do it over and over, for as long as it takes to get the shape of him right.
Death was supposed to free Miles from suffering. From the nightmare that has become his self.
There's no way to heaven but by the cross, Father Martin told him, once.
Miles doesn't want to go to heaven. He wants to go home.
On the front steps of the asylum, he sinks to his knees, then to his face. The early morning sunshine on his back feels like nothing at all. He lies there, half-blind, black blood drooling down his chin. Remade.
“Oh my god,” he sobs, the words like a buzz-saw blade in his raw new throat, his wet cheek against the ground. “Oh, my god.”
He doesn’t sound much like an angel. He doesn’t even sound like a man.