J King - Angel of Death

Azra stood there, small and naked, framed in the surreal snow, in electricity and fire. Now she could move. Grabbing up a pair of robes, Donna ran for the front door. “I’m coming!” she heard herself shout stupidly. “I’m coming!”

The deadbolt stuck, frozen because of the blizzard. How did Azra get out? She kicked the door with her bare foot, receiving only a throbbing bruise for her efforts. Growling in frustration, Donna turned to the bay window where the love seat was. She clambered over the stack of books by the love seat and flung up the sash. The storm window grated upward, and cold and wind and snow sluiced into her living room. She scrambled out that streaming space. With the robes still clutched in her hand, she rolled over paving stones and two inches of new snow.

Beyond, sparking wires danced, fitful and violent. The truck had turned into a flaming geyser. Its burst radiator spewed steam into the night. A regular apocalypse – Ragnarok, night of fire and ice. Azra was there. His young face flashed and disappeared in the orange glare of the engine fire. He stood just beside the place where the dead man burned. Fitful flames now and again belched out over him. He was insensible to them. He was a small boy before an open furnace.

“Mother of God, get back!” Donna shouted, catching his arm and pulling him away from the wreck. “He’s dead. There’s nothing you can do.”

Azra’s voice was husky. “I know.”

She drew a white robe around his shoulders, cinching it at his waist, before she took the time to put her own on. “Come inside. It’s a blizzard-”

“I’m not cold.”

She glanced at the blazing truck. “Doesn’t matter. Come inside. There’s a thousand ways to die out here.”

“I know,” Azra said, relenting to the tug of her hands. He trembled.

“You’re going to be okay.” Clinging to each other, they walked back toward the dark house. Its open window spilled heat into the night. “I’ll call the station house, the fire department – there’ll be twenty volunteers here soon. We’d better get dressed.”

“I’m hungry,” Azra blurted.

“I’ll heat water for cocoa-”

“I’m hungry.”

“We’ll have cinnamon bagels, too.”

“He wasn’t supposed to die.”

“I know-”

“No, I mean he really wasn’t supposed to die. I should have been there sooner. I should have been able to stop it.” Fat flakes of snow shambled down all around him. In the white robe, he seemed a paladin of old, or a priest of some ancient and very good god.

“You’re only human. You did everything you could.”

“But not everything I should-”

“You saved my life. Whatever you did with that tree, you saved my life.”

“You weren’t supposed to die tonight, either.” His hands and arms were strong, framed in the flashes of fire and spark.

“Thanks to you, I didn’t-”

“That tree shouldn’t have fallen. That truck shouldn’t have struck it. That man shouldn’t have died.” A hurt light shone in his eyes.

“Let’s get inside. I’m cold.” They stood before the window. Radiator air, as warm and as wet as blood, gushed out over them. Donna leaned toward Azra and gave him a quick kiss on one cheek. “I’ll go first, clear away the books so you can crawl through.” She stopped, assessing him. His eyes were far away. “No, you go first. Push the books out of the way. You go first.”

He bent obediently into the dark window and climbed through. Crime books cascaded before him. They slapped the floor. He left piles of snow on the arm of the love seat as he crawled across it. Wet feet crushed the books. He stepped from them and stood, waiting for Donna to come after him.

She followed, fitting more easily through the space, and turned to close the storm window. Her fingers were frigid in the aluminum slots. The glass grated downward. She closed the sash, too, panting in the darkness. Azra stood beside her, stony.

“How about some light – if the accident hasn’t taken out our power?” Donna said. She switched on the floor lamp that curved over the love seat. Comforting gold illumination spilled across the pillows. “We can hope the phone lines are good, too.”

Azra looked diminished, now, standing in a woman’s robe, puddles forming around his feet. The snow that haloed his hair was quickly melting into it.

“Sit down, Azra.” She kicked the crime books aside. Her feet trailed water on the floor. “I have to call the station. Sit here.” She guided him to sit. He did. A resigned whuff of breath escaped him. She blinked into his staring face. “You’re going to be okay.”

“Everything’s coming apart.”

“You’re going to be okay.”

“Yes.”

She turned on the TV. It crackled and set up a highpitched keen. The screen glowed to life. WGN was showing a movie version of Tennessee Williams’s Period of Adjustment. Two men stood on a porch, snow spitting fiercely down outside their cave of light. Donna had retreated to the kitchen. She stood at the phone, speaking quietly and urgently into it. “Yes. Just five minutes ago. The driver’s dead. Nobody else in the truck. It’s on fire. We’ve got a downed tree, too. Yeah. There’ll be power outages. On Fish Hatchery Road. Yes, just across from the conservancy. Yeah, they get going pretty fast down the hill. I’ll stay on the line. Yes.”

She drew the mouthpiece away from her lips, snatched a white-enameled kettle from the stove, flipped the faucet on, and began filling it. In moments, blue flames licked the drops of water inching down the outside of the kettle. “Something to eat,” she murmured, wanting comfort. Cradling the phone between shoulder and jaw, she pulled out a pair of plates, a bag of raisin bagels, a tub of spread, and her jar of cinnamon and sugar. She waited for the water to boil, waited for the operator to respond.

Steam coiled above the chipped ceramic mugs. Floating mounds of cocoa powder sank and dissolved in the dark water. Donna glanced at the man sitting, small and crouched and silent, in the spot where Kerry used to sit.

“Hello? Operator? Yes. I’m still here. I won’t hang up, but I’ve got kind of a crisis I need to take care of. Yes, shout if you need me.”

Donna slipped the phone into her bathrobe pocket, unfolded a TV tray, and arrayed the food and drinks before Azra. She sat down beside him.

“Here. You’ll feel better. Have some cocoa.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Have a cinnamon bagel.”

“Thanks.”

They both drew halves of a warm, buttered bagel from the tray and watched the TV flickering in front of them. The men in the show were inside now, in a living room decked for Christmas but devoid of any cheer except the drinks they held in their hands.

“You’re going to be okay,” Donna said to Azra.

“You’re just shaken up. Me, too. The volunteers will be here soon.”

“Everything is falling apart,” Azra said. His hand trembled as he held the half-eaten bagel. Donna leaned in toward him and took his hand. “No. Everything is coming together.”

He turned to her. At last, the distant focus had gone from his eyes. “Did you ever have one of those times when you feel like you’ve suddenly changed, and you don’t know when or why, but you know that what you were isn’t what you are anymore, like you’ve been given somebody else’s memories and somebody else has taken yours?”

“Sweetheart, it’s just this one crazy night. Just this one night-”

“It’s enough to make you crazy. You can’t rub two thoughts together. All the words you know don’t apply any longer and you have to learn a whole new language before you can even think.”

She sipped her cocoa. It was still too hot, and the liquid drew a scalding line along the curve of her tongue.