Roadkill Angel

I hit my first angel on Wednesday night. It appeared on the road like a camera flash. I slammed the brakes—too late. A body slammed against the hood and flew over the roof. Its screech echoed across the lonely country road. My heart dropped.

I stepped out of the truck and shut the door quietly, praying that it was some sort of pale, malformed deer. Dread amassed in my stomach as I crept around to the back. The shape and color were unnatural and even worse in the eerie red glow of my taillight. Whatever I hit wasn’t human or even animal. The milky, translucent body curled in on itself in the fetal position. I struggled to make sense of it. The details—chitinous exoskeleton, six white eyes, protruding ribs, feathers that shone like an oil slick, a frame tall enough that, when upright, had to be at least seven feet tall—didn’t add up.

My first angel almost made me sick, right there on the cracked asphalt. It smelled of ozone and death and reverence. Still, its faintly shining body drew me in like a moth to a flame. As I grew closer, some heavy unknown force pushed me down. I fell to my knees on the gritty road. Shuffling forward on my stinging knees, I saw a silver chain cutting into the angel’s neck: a locket.

My mind tried desperately to find any sort of logic or familiarity in the strangeness. I found it in that locket. It reminded me of my dog’s chain collar. Or, what used to be my dog, before Jessica said I couldn’t be trusted with a single living thing and stole him from me, that bitch. If I had wanted to really, properly hurt him, I had plenty of chances. I never did anything that lasted, and the one cracked rib was an accident. She didn’t understand, and she just had to overreact to everything. Thank God she was long gone; she’d be useless now, hysterically panicking in the passenger seat. I knew how to keep my head and stay logical.

A collar is a collar. A collar has a tag with information about the owner. I opened the locket carefully, avoiding any direct contact with the creature.

With a quiet click, the locket revealed the one thing I couldn’t have predicted: a photo of myself. I smiled out from the silver frame, clean-shaven and bright-eyed. I didn’t remember the photo being taken, didn’t know the clean flannel shirt or carefree smile I wore in it. On the other side, there was a picture of my son, Jackson. I closed the locket much harder than I had opened it.

In that moment, the scattered pieces of information finally added up. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that this was an angel. This was my angel, the guardian that the Lord had sent for me! It carried my photo in a locket like its beloved. It knew my son as well and would surely watch over him after I returned to the Lord. But I had ruined its plans. Now, it was dead by my hand.

What did one do with a dead angel? Bury it, I supposed. A holy creature would deserve a respectful burial, unlike a possum or raccoon left to rot in the road. Those would be easy enough to kick to the side, to watch their body fly and land limp in the ditch.

The old-growth forest surrounding the winding road was overgrown with moss and trees large enough that two people holding hands might still have trouble encircling the trunk. I realized that the forest had gone silent, but it seemed to be a respectful silence—the somber quietude of a graveyard. If there were a place to bury an angel, this might be it.

When I gently took the angel by the wings to pull it to the edge of the forest, it burned my hands. I wrapped my sweater around my hands and tried again. It was a clumsy affair, trying to drag a body respectfully. Every so often, a drop of dark blood would fall on my skin and burn it with a sizzle. After the fourth stinging chemical wound, I gave up on the respectful part just so I could manage to move it.

Once the angel was far enough in the woods for my satisfaction, I came to the awkward realization that I had no shovel. I settled for laying a few ferns over its body. A few stray fireflies drifted over to the body and rested on the ferns. They blinked irregularly like some code I couldn’t understand. I stumbled over the Lord’s Prayer, the words rusty in my mouth.

I left the angel in the silent forest. I returned to my truck, which had taken the damage well: the windshield was cracked and the front was dinged, but it was still drivable. I shifted out of park, and the radio blared back to life. Reflexively, I punched it, my heart racing.

“Shit,” I muttered to myself. “Goddammit.” I turned the radio off properly. My shaking hand stung, but that tingling ache soon comforted me like always. The rest of the drive home was very silent.

When I arrived back at my cabin, framed by the thick pines of the northern woods, I found no rest waiting for me. Instead, four angels perched on my bedposts. They were much smaller, but I feared them just as much as the seven-foot angel. I stopped in the doorway, frozen with reverence and dread, until I remembered a prayer I once recited when I was younger:

Four corners to my bed,

Four angels there a-spread,

Two to foot, and two to head

And two to carry me when I'm dead.

Even if my true guardian angel had died, I still had protection. The thought comforted me. I crossed the threshold of my bedroom. The moment my foot landed on the floorboard, they all fixed their gazes on me. Their eyes were dark and glassy, like cave dwellers that lived generations without once seeing sunlight. Their bodies looked like things from the ocean depths with the delicate, angular fins—or perhaps wings?—extending from their bony, shimmering bodies. And just like some of those creatures from the depths, I knew in my bones that these were not meant to be seen by human eyes.

Their blank yet all-seeing eyes tore through me. Guilt thrashed in my stomach. I relived my sins, starting with the one I had just committed. The angel’s white eyes stared blankly out at me from beneath its burial shroud of ferns. The green of the ferns changed to the green of my brother’s eyes, vivid against the surrounding bruise that darkened his face. My father’s voice reprimanded me for hitting him when I should’ve known better. His voice lowered, gained a Chicago accent, and suddenly he was the policeman who caught me burning down the tiny shack in the abandoned lot. It was just for fun, I told him. It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t mean anything in the same way kicking a dog didn’t matter. It’s just an animal. That’s what I told Jessica every time. I was just playing with him. The angels showed me how my dog winced away from me, curled inward, favoring his side. That was when I cracked his rib. The memory didn’t have any of its usual pleasure, the satisfaction of my boot or my fist meeting flesh. Only guilt remained. I saw Jessica, flinching away from me like an animal, after the first time I slapped her. Her eyes bright, her cheek red, her mouth half-open, she was frozen in disbelief. Her face hardened, and Jackson faded into view behind her, clutching her arm and hiding behind her leg. This was only a few months later, after she’d taken money from our account without permission. She told me she was leaving and taking Jackson with her. She had found the bruises on Jackson’s arms and decided that anyone who could do that to her son was worth nothing.

I was worth nothing. The realization settled over me, and I straightened up with jubilation. The Lord sent these angels to tell me I was wrong. He believed me worth saving, and I would prove him right! I crossed the final few steps to my bed, wooden planks creaking, and swore to myself that, in the morning, I would become a new and righteous man. I would call Jessica and tell her I wanted to be a family again. If she didn’t agree right away, I’d find a way. If I found Jackson’s school and took him to live with me, I’m sure she’d follow. I’d provide for my family, as the Lord intended, and I would be redeemed. My breathing steadied, and I slept with a new hope.

Sharp pain pierced through my arms, startling me awake. My eyes darted to the source of the pain. It was the angels. Their luminous eyes reflected what little light remained in the room, just enough for me to see their translucent, needle-like teeth sinking into my flesh. I swatted at the closest one. It latched onto my hand, and its teeth darkened. Its clear fangs were filling with my blood. I felt the energy of my very soul draining away with it.

These couldn’t be angels. They were a trick of the Devil, sent to destroy me at the moment of my guardian angel’s death! I writhed in my bed and pulled them from myself. Their frail bodies broke easily in my hands, but how they burned! I threw them to the floor, where they gleamed wetly. Shaking, I scolded myself. The Devil and his minions wear many disguises. How could I have thought them angels? No angel would make me feel that guilt, that horror. No angel would make me relive the worst moments of my life. The Lord loved me and understood that my sins were the fault of my imperfect human flesh, not truly my fault. He protected me as one of His children.

In the morning, I brought their limp bodies in the back of my truck to the angel’s grave. In hopes of purifying their bodies, I threw them atop the body of the first angel, shuddering at the wet, squelching sound they made. My guardian angel would protect me, even in its death. That had to be the truth. I repeated it to myself, ignoring the sinking dread gathering in my stomach. I prayed for protection. I prayed for another guardian.

I spent the next week murmuring the Lord’s Prayer under my breath until I could do it without thinking. I began to wear my father’s crucifix, even when I slept. By Sunday night, I was sure my trials were over.

When I left my house the next morning to go to work, something waited for me outside. The sun hid below the horizon, but the being shone dazzlingly bright. The world was as bright as noon on a summer day. I couldn’t see what creature hid behind that light, so I hesitated to approach. Would it be just as horrific as the other things I’d seen? I didn’t have an option to look away. It began to approach me. As it drew closer, I realized that the angel was the light. It was brighter than every city at night, brighter than a flashbang, brighter than a supernova. Whatever the opposite of a black hole was, this was it. I began to back away, but there were no shadows for me to hide in. 

It said my name. Not the name that a human tongue could pronounce but my true name, one that even I had not known. It resonated in my chest, identifying every last piece of me. It saw me in a way I did not want to be seen. My eyes began to tear up uncontrollably, perhaps even bleed, but I could not look away.

“Tell me what to do, messenger of my Lord,” I begged. “Protect me from the false angels, the demons who seek to destroy me.”

“You have seen no demons,” it said. I did not hear the words but rather understood its words as if I had known them all along. The angel did not speak; it communicated.

“They attacked me after my angel died!” Hot liquid dripped onto my thigh, allowing me to look away from the angel. Instead of a clear tear, I saw golden ichor. When I wiped my eyes, my hands were smeared with that same gold mixed with bloody tears.

“Oh, child.” The angel said “child” as if it meant pitied and fool and human and lamb all at once. “That was not your guardian angel. That was Jackson’s.”

“I would never hurt him again, I swear on the Lord’s name!” As soon as I spoke, the angel’s glow increased sevenfold, searing my eyes with its celestial brightness until my vision blurred black at the edges. My mouth burned with pain, and I smelt burning flesh. I screamed with what was left of my tongue.

“You would. Do not take the Lord’s name in vain. Jackson’s angel was seeking you out for justice. He almost succeeded in doing what he must to protect Jackson.”

“It was going to kill me?” I mumbled through the mess that was once my mouth. The angel understood.

“Killing is a sin.” If the angel could smile, it would’ve smiled here. “But purifying a soul with hellfire until every earthly flaw is burned away is not a sin. You shall not die. You shall suffer all the pain you have caused seven times. And, finally, what little is left of you shall be put to use.”

“I repent!” I begged, my final attempt to escape.

“One who does not understand cannot repent,” the angel said sadly. “I have seen you completely, and I understand you. If I were to give you seven thousand more chances, you would still return to your path of cruelty. I must liberate your soul from its earthly imperfections. Then, you shall make amends.”

“God?” I whimpered.

“No. I am Justice.” The angel’s brightness exploded. I felt my eyes finally burst in a shower of gold and crimson, but still I could see its light. No words could describe the pain, but no words could describe the beauty, either. Amidst the agony, the angel’s voice shone through.

“Once you have been purified . . . I believe Jackson needs a new guardian angel.”