Dastrix Slogan
Bluelighter
I awoke to a dull throbbing in my shoulders and the sound of my feet dragging through rusty emptied tin cans, every now and then one jagged piece of metal would snag on a shoelace and the can would come bouncing along over its counterparts for a few feet, clanging even louder. But it was a tired tin sound, as if the tight-pitched noise you would expect somehow had been colored over with the rust and the dull brown clunk was all the cans could muster. They must have sounded better, in days when their outsides were shinier. I felt myself picked up such that my feet found the earth, but as I was put down my legs gave way again and I sunk down to my haunches, like a marionette, strings slumped and half standing. As I fell onto my knees I could feel small rocks digging into the soft skin around my knuckles, one having found its way straight into the joint. I winced, pulled my hand back and opened my eyes. We must have looked a right odd pair, me kneeling in my faded brown suit, brown leather shoes, with my hat still lodged sideways on my head. Man on the left number two in a 50's bar brawl, and the angel standing upright looking down at me.
I could see the city from the high top of the mine dump, filthy orange light was setting as industry vomited flames out of long black breathing tubes, cast high into the evening sky. Far beneath the ground I could hear the beating of its iron lungs, rumbling and wheezing, defiantly hissing and gasping for breath. The smell of sulphur and burnt metal hung in the air, even from way up here. Eyes of many colors and sizes blinked at me unemotionally from across its grey expanse below. There was no malevolence here, but sometimes I couldn't help but feel that lack of compassion was worse.
Yet, once again, I had survived.
"Thank you" I managed to utter, trying to stare through the blood that was running down my face.
"You are most welcome" came the dry metallic response. It was tall, much taller than most men. It watched me with red robotic eyes, from its blue metallic skull, now clearly visible through the lesions on its face. It might have once looked like a man, maybe even a handsom man, maybe it had even looked like me, once upon a time. But now it looked beaten and old. Tired. I watched with sadness as the last two feathers fell from its wings, shimmering silver metallic feathers that drifted slowly down and dissolved into the uneven ground, as if the earth had boiled them up and evaporated them into its depths. The angel stared back as it slowly retracted the bare steel spikes on its back, like someone closing an umbrella with no more cloth.
"What happened?"
"You did"
"I am sorry"
"It is not for you to be sorry" the angel said. A calm voice, that brought ease beyond its rough electric edges. Just enough noise to sound like a machine, just enough human to reach the sides of your soul.
"What happens now?"
"Now, we can no longer fly" it said looking up at the sky, the last of the sun making macabre streaks of deep red reflections in the metal scars on its face. It kept its upward gaze for a few seconds more, as if melancholy at the thought of no longer flying, and then turned and looked at me.
"But I can still catch you"
There was warmth in that, that made me feel that just for this small gritty moment everything wasn't quite so bad, that the pain in my body and the scar on my forehead would fade, and this indeed would not be the last sunset for me, at least not yet. But as the angel turned and started walking away down the side of the mine dump, the sound of its tired grating gears and the visible effort with which it walked told me that one day soon my luck would run out. That there were coming fewer times where I could rush in pig headed, and leap before I look. And a time coming where I must take one last fall.
And I had to make all these times count.
***
I could see the city from the high top of the mine dump, filthy orange light was setting as industry vomited flames out of long black breathing tubes, cast high into the evening sky. Far beneath the ground I could hear the beating of its iron lungs, rumbling and wheezing, defiantly hissing and gasping for breath. The smell of sulphur and burnt metal hung in the air, even from way up here. Eyes of many colors and sizes blinked at me unemotionally from across its grey expanse below. There was no malevolence here, but sometimes I couldn't help but feel that lack of compassion was worse.
Yet, once again, I had survived.
"Thank you" I managed to utter, trying to stare through the blood that was running down my face.
"You are most welcome" came the dry metallic response. It was tall, much taller than most men. It watched me with red robotic eyes, from its blue metallic skull, now clearly visible through the lesions on its face. It might have once looked like a man, maybe even a handsom man, maybe it had even looked like me, once upon a time. But now it looked beaten and old. Tired. I watched with sadness as the last two feathers fell from its wings, shimmering silver metallic feathers that drifted slowly down and dissolved into the uneven ground, as if the earth had boiled them up and evaporated them into its depths. The angel stared back as it slowly retracted the bare steel spikes on its back, like someone closing an umbrella with no more cloth.
"What happened?"
"You did"
"I am sorry"
"It is not for you to be sorry" the angel said. A calm voice, that brought ease beyond its rough electric edges. Just enough noise to sound like a machine, just enough human to reach the sides of your soul.
"What happens now?"
"Now, we can no longer fly" it said looking up at the sky, the last of the sun making macabre streaks of deep red reflections in the metal scars on its face. It kept its upward gaze for a few seconds more, as if melancholy at the thought of no longer flying, and then turned and looked at me.
"But I can still catch you"
There was warmth in that, that made me feel that just for this small gritty moment everything wasn't quite so bad, that the pain in my body and the scar on my forehead would fade, and this indeed would not be the last sunset for me, at least not yet. But as the angel turned and started walking away down the side of the mine dump, the sound of its tired grating gears and the visible effort with which it walked told me that one day soon my luck would run out. That there were coming fewer times where I could rush in pig headed, and leap before I look. And a time coming where I must take one last fall.
And I had to make all these times count.
***
great work! if i head that at a beginning of a book in a store i would buy it immediately 
