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They say that Raphael is an angel of healing – they’re all right, always. All right like the words it’s going to be alright, spoken with soft mouths covered by soft hands. He’s going to be alright. Healing. Everything that he has ever wanted to be carved into one word. Healing. Healing. Healing. Holy.
“Raphael,” he says, twelve years old and bones. “Ra-ph-ael.”
The word, on his tongue, feels like being holy. Being good.
And how beautiful is that? Being good. Looking at yourself in the mirror and thinking holy, looking at your hands and thinking that they can create instead of ruin. Looking at your stomach and feeling everything but hunger. Everything in your body. Everything pure, running through you so beautifully that your wings begin to tear through your back and you transcend and—
Not yet.
“R…”
Now it feels like blood spilling from the insides of his mouth, the pinkness of it all starting to stain like – like how every story about holiness goes. You have something good and intact and it burns.
“Raphael,” he spits, this time in anger.
He will never be Raphael. He will never be close to that light.
//
Every night before bed, he goes into the bathroom, looks in the mirror, and whispers Raphael.
Every night he can almost believe it. Almost believes that he can heal. But—
He’s sixteen and there is a boy.
Somewhere in the depths of town, in the darkness of the morning, there is a boy. He bumps into him on his way to school, runs right into him like something bad. Familiar.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I didn’t see you there.”
“It’s absolutely fine,” the boy replies. Their eyes meet, statuesque. “I think… I think I’ve seen you before. What’s your name, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Raphael,” he says, and oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no that’s not right. His name is not Raphael, not holy. His parents gave him a name, an unholy name, and he is a liar. Punish. Punish. Punish.
“Raphael, huh? That’s a beautiful name. I’m Michael.”
Michael, he thinks, like the angel. Against Satan. This is wrong.
“I should get going,” he says.
“See you around.”
He runs. Runs and runs and runs. To school, past school. This is wrong.
//
When he sees Michael again, it is like torture. Standing outside of the market with a cigarette in his mouth.
He runs, again. Or: tries to. He’s stuck in the middle of the sidewalk, melting right down. Statuesque. There is something beautiful about this whole situation, about the whole of Michael and the angels and everything against Satan.
It’s – wrong. It’s so wrong. He is not supposed to feel like this. He is supposed to look at Cynthia, who is older than he is by a year and cruel, like this. He is supposed to look at Judith, who rebels and rebels and rebels, like this. He is supposed to watch the girls in his school and feel like this.
“Raphael,” Michael yells, and the whole world turns to look at them, the earth stops and the sun stops and the moon stops and everything just stops, leaving him paralyzed. Statuesque. He is frozen and will be desecrated, because he is deserving of it and Raphael isn’t his name and—
“Hello,” he says sheepishly. Bites down on his tongue, imagines scrubbing at his skin. Hello, I’m wrong. Hello, I will ruin. Hello. Hello. Hello.
“Are you going to stand there forever?”
If I could, he thinks, oh, I would. I would stand here until the earth consumed me. I would stand here until the world ended. Until someone from above looked upon this world.
What he does is walk forward, into the beginning of his downfall. Falling right down like being cast out. He should be running. He should be running. He should be running. But: it’s inevitable, isn’t it? Falling, when you are like this.
“I didn’t think you’d recognize me,” Michael says, and oh. Of course he would. Of course. Who wouldn’t recognize the end? Who, in this world, wouldn’t recognize their own pain, their own bones?
“I didn’t think you’d remember me.”
“Our first meeting ended too quickly,” Michael says, “in my opinion. Can I tell you something?”
“Anything,” he says, like a betrayal.
“I lied, when I said you seemed familiar.”
“What?”
“I live across the street from you. I knew who you were. I was just too shy to ever talk to you.”
The words make his heart pound. Again: he should be running. He will be taken away. He is a good person, and will heal, and maybe he can call himself Raphael.
His name is Raphael.
“Oh,” Raphael (who is) says. “You didn’t have to lie.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t… be sorry,” Raphael tells him. Another betrayal. Just another betrayal from his mind. Sick mind, unholy mind. “We can talk now.”
“Alright,” Michael says, and they say Raphael is an angel of healing—
“Tell me about yourself, Raphael. Fill me in on what I’ve missed.”
Raphael swallows down, and tells Michael a story about a different boy.
//
It is dark in his house, every time Raphael visits. Dark and cold. But Michael’s bedroom is always warm, and Michael is always always always full of light.
He’s been talking to Michael for – hm, six months now. Every single day after school. There’s always something eating Raphael up when he visits Michael’s house, when he sits on the bed, when they touch. Eating him up like – like a monster.
He ignores it. There’s something else that he’s ignoring, probably, like the paleness of Michael’s skin. But the end of the story is always this:
He’s quite good at ignoring.
//
When Raphael graduates high school (they didn’t think he would, see, something about him being a problem—), Michael shows up in his front yard, holding a small box.
“Hey, Raph,” he says, and no one has ever called him Raph, no one has ever taken such a holy name and made it holier. “Graduation present.”
Raphael, inside, soars.
He takes the box, opens it—
Oh.
Oh oh oh oh oh.
Inside there is an angel. Well. A pin with an angel on it, golden, but this means that he is an angel in the eyes of someone else. That the name Raphael fits him. That he can heal.
“Thank you,” he says. “This – this means a lot.”
“Feel like coming over to celebrate?”
“Sure,” Raphael says, and stops running.
(He puts the box in his pocket, imagines burying himself in it. The wholeness of him as an angel. Imagine.)
//
(He doesn’t have to imagine.)
There is no one in his house. It’s even darker, this time. Maybe Raphael should be running again—
“That wasn’t the whole present,” says Michael, voice low and low and low. “There’s something else, if you want it.”
He’s looking at Raphael, in a way no one has ever looked at him before. It’s like — holiness. A holy look. A look that could make angels fall.
“What is it?”
And then Michael grows closer and closer and closer and Raphael reacts like something unholy, like an animal, like something disgusting and driven and his name can’t be Raphael it can’t be it can’t be:
He takes his best friend – the closest term for what they have, what they are – and kisses him.
And of course, like a story, he kisses Raphael back, against the wall and then on the cold floor and then, before Raphael (who isn’t) can dream of being an angel again—
There’s something in his neck, sharp. Sharp and sharp and sharp.
Sharp and sharp and pain, pain, and—
And—
A—
//
HUNGRYHUNGRYHUNGRYHUNGRY
Raphael –
That’s his name, right? That’s his –
HUNGRY, HUNGRY—
name, isn’t it? Raphael is his name. Or: hungry. His name could be hungry, his entire life could be hungry, his entire future is going to be hungry.
The world around him is violent. The world around him is bright, and—
HUNGRY, HUNGRY, HUNGRY –
painful, and it’s going to eat him—
HUNGRY
Hungry.
Until it doesn’t seem like a word anymore, and then he’s starving, just starving. Starving. Starving.
STARVINGSTARVINGSTARVINGSTARVING
ST—
Oh. There’s –
God, there’s blood in his mouth. All over his body. Ruining him. Ruining him. Ruining him. And – God – there’s a body in the dirt. A body. A body! It’s not his body. It’s someone else’s body------
IT’S SOMEONE ELSE’S BODY
(S T A R V I N G)
HE HAS BLOOD ON HIS HANDS. Blood and blood and blood and blood. He hurt someone, killed someone, ripped them apart with his body, his unholy body he can’t be named Raphael he isn’t named Raphael – that’s the name of an angel and he’s everything bad but he
can’t remember any other name.
He sinks to his knees and prays and prays and for a moment he can hear a whisper:
Monsters must be punished.
//
Years and years and years later and he’s saving someone. Finally saving someone! Like – almost like –
No.
Well. He’s saving someone, Simon Lewis with teeth in his mouth. Beautiful mouth, tainted by teeth, oh. He wants to tell Clary Fairchild to let Simon go, that being a vampire will only hurt him, that he will wake up every morning and look at the sun like longing and think: I am an abomination. No one deserves this life. No one should live like this. No one deserves to suffer like this.
But: it’s her choice. Simon is hers, and it’s her choice. Raphael wasn’t given a choice, isn’t familiar with the concept of it. But he can be good. He can be good, statuesque and fake. He can at least pretend that he can do good.
He had cleaned the blood off of Simon before bringing him to Clary, and carried him like they were their own Pietà. Statuesque. And now Simon’s crawling out of his own grave. Raphael remembers crawling out of his grave, an angel falling from grace.
Simon will hurt. Simon will hurt.
He throws the blood down for Simon (like falling). When you’re reborn, he explains, you emerge hungry.
He was hungry, once. Not anymore, though.
Predictably, Simon runs.
(“I’ll look after Simon,” he tells Clary. The words have more meaning than he knows.)
//
“You’re a monster,” Simon hisses.
Monstermonstermonstermonstermonsterm—
He’s right. He’s right. Here is what Raphael is:
Unholy, impure, grotesque, disgusting, abhorrent, monstrous. He does not deserve the name Raphael, and so he’ll come up with another name. Something normal. Impure, to fit him.
Monsters are not named Raphael. Monsters are not named after angels. Raphael is a monster. Has the teeth and the claws for it. He’ll be underneath Simon’s bed, waiting to attack-or-ruin-or-haunt because all that he knows is how to hurt, and hurt and hurt and hurt and be unholy. Broken, shattered halo. Wings ripped right off. End of this story: amen. Beginning of this story: amen.
He deserves this pain, and Simon is right:
Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Mo—
//
Every time that Simon says Raphael, says his false name, it burns.
Simon blackmails him, because this is how his life goes and every time that he tries to atone, everything is brought back into that horrible blinding light. God, just let him atone, let him find peace. Let him find something to hold on to.
There’s something beautiful about it all, however, something statuesque. He feels like he was made for this, for Simon Lewis. For helping. Maybe this is his atonement, what he can hold onto. Maybe Simon will give him his name back. Maybe.
“Stick around,” he tells Simon. Inside of his mind, it’s a plead, but out of his mouth it sounds like a demand, which means he’s horrible—
Simon stays.
//
See this picture: he’s ruining Simon with those hands, tearing his name from him like tearing wings off of a dead animal, and Simon is ruining him back with that mouth. Simon breathes, “I have wanted you, for so long.” Simon breathes Raphael, even though he doesn’t need to breathe, even though his breath was stolen from him by a monster. By Camille. Raphael did not hurt him, Raphael saved him. Raphael saved him. Raphael saved him. They say that Raphael is an angel of healing and they’re right.
It’s going to be alright.
“I love you,” Raphael breathes back, and he loves Simon, oh, all falls into place and he loves, love filling him to the brim, love spilling out of him like blood. He loves Simon. He has always loved too much, but right now he has Simon and love and Simon, and the world can be good, he can heal, he can be something Better. Better than he has been. He can be safety. He can be love. He can be everything that isn’t a monster.
“I know,” Simon says back, mouth on Raphael’s neck like something too familiar.
I know, Raphael thinks, and then Simon stops him from thinking with that mouth of his, beautiful.
Statuesque. They will make sculptures of this, make holy books. Raphael is Raphael and everything is beautiful.
//
Simon betrays him and his name is not Raphael, he does not heal, he only hurts, he is monstrous and monstrous with big black claws and thick red-stained teeth and he only hurts and hurts and hurts and hurts and—
He excuses himself to his room, folds his hands together, can’t form any words. Forgive, he thinks in his mind, over and over like Simon’s repetition of his name when they—
Forgive.
And he hears it again, that voice:
You are a monster, and monsters must be punished.