Ellen Datlow - Off Limits

The gray sky became strangely pixilated, as if all its atoms had expanded to an inch in diameter and were randomly dancing and jittering over him. The clouds thickened like marshmallow puffs, then grew skittery, too. The vibration in the air became more palpable. Frank looked back down.

His angel was standing beside the woman. They weren’t speaking with their mouths, but it was clear they were deep in conversation. The woman began disrobing. Frank felt himself go ramrod hard watching. When the woman was naked, he saw she was built just like his angel, and that she had deep long scars where her wings had been removed. The two of them embraced, their hands slowly tracing over the other’s body. Frank shuddered, ejaculating in his Sunday slacks.

After regaining his composure, Frank got angry. He’d made it clear to his angel that she was going back with him, but since witnessing this relationship, his doubts grew.

He’d just be patient. Yes, that was it. Once the meeting was over, he’d go in, introduce himself, and they’d leave. He might even have to be a bit forceful. Females required a firm hand, he thought.

The itching worsened, reminding Frank of how his nose felt when he brushed his teeth. The sky grew darker, gradually, until it was as dark above the trees as it was below. When he looked at his angel and the woman, they were staring at him. His angel gestured for Frank to come closer. She reached out to him, but it was as though his head was stuffed with cotton. What she wanted wasn’t clear.

Sluggishly, Frank walked toward them. His angel’s wings were beating a waltz rhythm in the air behind her. She was absolutely beaming with happiness, her body aglow like neon in the night.

He could almost hear his angel as he stood at the edge of the clearing. He thought he heard her call to him, “Come stand here.” He stepped closer, into the ferns.

He yelled to the other woman, “She’s my angel! I’m taking her back with me when you’re done.”

The woman shook her head, pointing to her back. Then she put her hands together, touched them to her lips, then to his angel’s, as if to pray.

Frank understood. God. God was coming to take this woman up to heaven to return her wings. It was as his mother had said, after all. The woman was an angel—a fallen angel. And his angel was her guide back. It would be up to him to wait for his angel to return. God would smile favorably on that. On his patience. Not one of Frank’s virtues before. But a virtue God wanted for all His children.

The faint sound of a choir filled Frank’s ears. The two angels seemed to hear it too, and gazed up. His angel reached out and took the other in her arms as a beam of white light thrust through the darkness like a fist. The light engulfed them. A corona of orange light cascaded down around the white.

Frank looked up, his hands together, his eyes full of tears, his heart full of reverence. The light was so intense he couldn’t see God. Still, he spoke to Him.

“Lord, I’ve been reborn. I never believed in you before. Not really. It was just to please my mother, and because my father told me to always listen to her. But, you’ve sent me proof. I’ve been saved. All the bad stuff I’ve done? Never again.

“I know maybe I should tell the truth, and go to jail. Do my penance. But, wouldn’t it be better if I just go forward and do your good work now? I hope so.

“Me and my angel. For you. Anything.”

Frank glanced over to the fallen angel, now wrapped in his angel’s arms in the center of the white light. His angel’s wings built speed until she lifted them both off the ground. The orange light seemed to pulsate around them. His angel scanned him, her black eyes glinting in the light. He heard her say loudly and clearly, in his mind, “Good-bye.”

“NO!” He screamed, racing toward the light. “I want to be with you! With God!”

He fell to the ground on his knees, arms outstretched, weeping.

“Please, God, please.”

His angel disappeared up into the light. Frank felt a deep sorrow. He didn’t know if it was his sorrow or hers, or both.

The very next feeling he had was of warmth. Radiant, soul-soothing warmth. It’s God’s hand, he thought. God, I’m ready.

The orange light swallowed the white, then intensified, focusing on Frank. He knew then that God had chosen to call him. Knew it in his very bones. Knew it, even as the light turned every molecule in his body to dust.

Often I don’t know the origin and inspiration for a story until after it is done and sent off to an editor. “His Angel,” on the surface, is a tale of a madman who seeks a twisted redemption in the saving of an angel, and finds his just reward. The more I thought about the story, I realized it’s about the power of faith, hope, and a belief in God, about the sexual component and profoundly sick compulsion in the serial killer’s act, and lastly about the question of whether we are visited and studied by aliens or guarded by aņgels. Each of these things on its own fascinates me, and as happens during the magical process of creation, an interesting mix that became “His Angel,” was born.

Neil Gaiman has been writing professionally for almost thirty years. He won the Newbery Medal, the Carnegie Medal, and the Hugo Award for The Graveyard Book . He won no awards of any kind for A Walking Tour of the Shambles , his little book with Gene Wolfe, but is ridiculously proud of it anyway. He has three children, two dogs, and about half a million bees.

INT. WEBSTER’S OFFICE. DAY

As WEBSTER sits reading the LA Times, MCBRIDE walks in

and tells in

FLASHBACK

how his SISTER came

to Hollywood eleven months ago

to make her fortune, and to meet the stars. Of how he’d heard from friends that she’d “gone strange.”

Imagining the needle, or far worse,

he travels out to Hollywood himself

and finds her standing underneath a bridge. Her skin is pale. She screams at him “Get lost!”

and sobs and runs. A TALL MAN DRESSED IN BLACK

grabs hold his sleeve, tells him to let it drop “Forget your sister,” but of course he can’t…

(IN SEPIA

we see the two as teens,

a YOUNG MCBRIDE and SISTER way back when,

giggles beneath the porch, “I’ll show you mine,”

closer perhaps than siblings ought to be…

PAN UP

to watch a passing butterfly.

We hear them breathe and fumble in the dark:

IN CLOSE-UP now he spurts into her hand, she licks her palm: first makes a face, then smiles…

HOLD on her lips and teeth and on her tongue).

END FLASHBACK

WEBSTER says he’ll take the case,

says something flip and hard about LA,

like how it eats young girls and spits them out,

and takes a hundred dollars on account.

CUT TO

THE PURPLE PUSSY. INT. A DIVE, THREE NAKED WOMEN dance for dollar bills.

WEBSTER comes in, and talks to one of them,

slips her a twenty, shows a photograph,

the stripper—standing close enough that he could touch her (but they’ve bouncers on patrol,

weird steroid cases who will break your wrists)—

admits she thinks she knows the girl he means. Then WEBSTER leaves.

INT. WEBSTER’S CONDO. NIGHT.

A video awaits him at his home.

It shows A WOMAN lovelier than life

Shot from the rib cage up (her breasts exposed)

Advising him to “let this whole thing drop, forget it,” promising she’ll see him soon…

DISSOLVE TO

INT. MCBRIDE’S HOTEL ROOM. NIGHT.

MCBRIDE’S alone and lying on the bed, He’s watching soft-core porn on pay-per-view.