“Okay, let's not panic but I think they just came home” she whispered to me, her voice filled with wide eyed concern.
I glanced in the direction of the sound and shrugged as I continued to ransack the upstairs bedroom, though quietly now. “It's fine” I said to myself.
“How is this fine?” Her voice was exasperated as she lectured me through gritted teeth, “you know they'll kill you if they find you up here.”
She was clearly frustrated as she watched me continue as if nothing had changed about the situation. I knew that stash was hidden somewhere in this damn room, but it was so damn messy. Who lives like this?
“I'm not going to help you if this goes South” she threatened with an upturned chin as I began going through the closet.
Footsteps on the stairs caused my head to perk up. That might be a problem. We listened motionless as they reached the top. My hand moved to my own weapon. We waited breathlessly until a door down the hallway opened and then closed.
“I can't take this anymore. It's inside the heavy coat hanging above you.” She said finally right before I looked up, unzipped it, and found the stash of heroin I'd been looking for. Simply clipped to the hanger and dangling there. “Will you please go now?’ She was emotionally exhausted.
I could hear the group downstairs laughing and being loud as I opened the window and made my way out onto the steep roof above the front porch. My prize safely inside my Everlast backpack.
“Watch your st…” she began just as an old shingle came loose beneath my foot, causing me to fall and tumble forward. Rolling right off the side of the roof with a low “Oop”.
She rolled her eyes and waved her hand as I landed on the ground just right to prevent me from suffering an injury. She then puffed her cheeks and blew out a long and annoyed exhale while watching me dash down the road like a raccoon and disappear into the alley a few blocks away.
Being my guardian angel was going to be the death of her.
Ironic given her name is Azrael.
The funny thing is that I kinda always knew she was there, I just wasn't able to tell she'd been talking to me until after the fact. Turns out angels can only be heard in hindsight. As best I'm able to tell, she first intervened when I was perhaps 4 years old.
“Don't you want to go out back and play?” She'd knelt down and suggested to me as I sat building with my Legos in literally nothing but a t-shirt. The back door mysteriously open.
Standing mostly naked in the narrow yard with absolutely no idea what to do with myself, I heard the breaking of glass inside the house and my mother screaming for whoever the guy was to stop. That's the moment where the actual memory formed in my bobble head.
I don't know if it had been fear or her sitting to hold me in place that kept me from reentering the house. What I do remember is the damage in the living room and how my mom looked afterwards. It was a good thing I hadn't been there. I don't doubt my tiny body would have fared well in whatever tornado had gone through there, leaving even my Lego house busted to pieces and scattered amongst the broken glass and furniture.
While I'm certain her heart was full for me that day, I'm also confident that she was as increasingly annoyed as she was concerned with each year that went by.
“Don't you dare.” She chided me a decade later. “You turn around right now and go. They don't even know you're here”
My grin grew.
“No! Get back here!” She yelled as I scurried low through the parked cars within the Cub Foods parking lot with a spray paint can and mayhem on my mind.
She almost couldn't watch as I reached the car with the pair of men who'd been following me inside. I popped up next to the driver's side window like a jack-in-the-box, spraying paint in the driver's face while laughing. These bangers had lost line of sight on me and there's a price to be paid for that.
She cringed as I reached through the window and grabbed the pistol that had been laying in the now screaming driver's lap. Punching him in the face with the stock just to add injury to insult, before dashing away like a coked-out rabbit.
With her arms crossed disapprovingly and staring daggers in my direction, Azrael stood on the passenger side door as his partner jumped out to run me down. Tripping over his own feet as he passed her. By the time he got back up she was gone and it was far too late to catch me;
“I just wish you'd think more before you act” she reasoned as she walked behind me down a highschool hallway. “I'm not angry with you, I'm just worried…’ I stopped in front of a locker that wasn't mine. “What are you doing?”
“See? This is exactly what I'm talking about” she exclaimed with outstretched arms as I began jimmying the lock;
“I'm not saying you're a bad person….” She reasoned months later as I barked at the dope boy I was robbing whose gun had been conveniently just out of reach;
“I'm just saying you make bad decisions….” She continued while I knelt on the ground and stared down an officer's gun. Placing her hand in his shoulder to keep him steady against the jump scare that was creeping up behind him;
“You're sweet and considerate when you want to be” she rambled as I walked a mentally deficient old man cell to cell in my prison block so he could trick or treat in prison;
“But sometimes I don't know what to do with you” she lamented sitting next to me on my rack in solitary confinement;
“Some days I feel like I'm just enabling you” she cried as she reached into me to get my lifeless heart beating again;
“Then you go and do something like this,” she cried, for a completely different reason, at my prison chapel wedding;
“So I keep trying in spite of you,” Azrael sighed as she tugged the strings to line up finding my estranged daughter;
“and I keep telling myself we can do this,” she sobbed while holding me as my newborn daughter passed away;
“Because maybe, just maybe, someday it'll finally be enough,” she whispered as I spotted the pair of dope fiends breaking into my van;
“Maybe someday you'll finally get to be happy for once in your life” she finished while walking alongside me down my street late one night.
“I am happy” I said casually to the open air around me as I stopped to light a cigarette under a dirty yellow streetlight. Azrael froze with her mouth agape. There's no way I just responded to her. “You don't know everything.” I continued. It was my turn to speak to her.
“I know you're there and I know I didn't just bumble through life on my own as if everything that had happened had been nothing more than luck,” I chuckled as I exhaled a plume of smoke.
“You're not as subtle as you think you are. It might've taken me a lifetime to find the pattern but once I did I saw you in every detail.”
“I couldn't have done any of this without you, I love you too, but I'm not a job. Stick with me because you want to be a part of this, not because you've convinced yourself I'm your responsibility.” I took a drag before finishing, “You gotta let me do it on my own.”
Azrael was at a loss. She wasn't ready yet to begin to try and reason out how I'd become aware of her, she was too overwhelmed with emotion. She'd never felt appreciated before, never been noticed, let alone loved. It was all so much. Standing behind me, she leaned in and wrapped her arms around me until it appeared as if her wings could've been mine.
“Thank you” she whispered as I began to walk again. She stood there holding her hands to her chest and sniffing back tears. Then she noticed my pace quicken and her eyes wandered to the group of men standing outside a corner store. Watching as my hand slid under my jacket.
“OH GOD DAMNIT!!!”
(Azrael’s name tattooed on my wrist in Enochian script)
This is brilliant.
Has anyone ever told you, you're like, a really good storyteller? 🤭 Loved this!