Broken Angels

By Chris Carroll

A collection of the college era fiction of Christopher Carroll, Ottawa's Friendliest Kink and Crime Writer. A strange but wonderful collection of gods, devils, criminals, deviants and wonderfully blissfully ignorant humans all making ago of this strange little world. Written for various friends for various creative writing classes during his college and university days...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Carroll
• Release date: Feb 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301712885

Chris Carroll

Christopher Carroll is an independent film writer who specializes in horror, drama, suspense, and dark comedy. He is getting his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Full Sail University, and had one flash fiction piece published in Adelaide Literary Magazine. He has a YouTube channel with gameplays, unboxings, movie reviews, and a trailer that he helped make/acted in. He is a comedian at heart who loves to make people laugh.

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Broken Angels

Published By: Christopher Carroll

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 by Christopher Carroll

ISBN 9781301712885

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any for by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording or in any information storage system is forbidden without the written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living and dead, business establishments, events and locations are entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

The Meat Market

The Day My Wife Died

Unity

I’m Fine

The Shattered

Where Were You When the Sky Fell Down

Shadows, Fire, Ice

The Rot

Where the River Crosses the Town

Wings

At the Core

Conscience’s Basement

The Beautiful Ones

Section

Tame Her

The Pursuers

One Last Afternoon in the Sun

The Oddity Charlie Connors

Homing

The Hound

Amongst the Minor Miracles

Elsewhere

Filter

Blood and Fire

Infected

Blood Trail

Venosta, Quebec

A Beautiful Day

Field Test

About the Author

The Meat Market

I’ve never been quite right.

This is something that you should know about me. If they had their way I would have to hand out cards to everyone I interact with. If they had their way I’d have a big frowny face tattooed on my forehead. If they had their way I would be locked away in some dim, florescent lit day room somewhere with a constant IV of thought killers slowly dripping into my blood. I’m not right. There. I’ve owned it. I've said the words. I’m not right by me. I’m not right by you. I’m not right by the girl and I am certainly not right by my father’s gods.

I haven't once understood the nature of things. I haven't once understood how we can exist in a world designed to cause nothing but hate and rage and pain. I don't understand how people can let themselves get so immune to it all. I don't get the stupid people. I don't get the cowardly people. I don't remember things. I don't remember the important things. I don't remember the little things. All I remember are the bad things. My memory is nothing but shock show cinema playing the things that make me angry over and over and over again. They say that I've a busted filter. They say that I need a rewiring. I've seen what they plan to do to me when they get me back in the wards. They like scalpels. They threaten me with scalpels a lot.

Things don’t filter properly for me. I can't remember if they ever have. The say I lack context. They say I lack meaning. I don’t remember the days I spent with you. I've read your accounts. I think you're lying. I don’t remember high school or college or those days I spent in the woods. I don’t remember how I got here.

I don’t remember who you are.

I have moments. Single moments. My world exists only in brief flashes of consciousness. There was nothing before. There will be nothing after. I have this moment. I have the next. I had one a few days back. I remember sitting on fifty pound bags of potatoes with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in my hand. Bruce Springsteen's The Rising was getting butchered through the loud speaker system we use as store entertainment. I remember pushing my cigarette into the paper of one of the sacks and watching a little brown ring start to burn, start to spread.

They give me pills that make bridges between the moments. They give me things to read that are supposed to create context for me and they give me pills that are supposed to make bridges between this now and the next then. But the pills make me weak. The pills make me sick. I hide them under my tongue and spit them out into my palm when no one is looking.

I've never been quite right.

I sit here hands covered in blood packing the meat onto Styrofoam trays and wrapping it up good and tight for shipping. I sit here smelling the dead things used for human consumption and I try not to gag too much. The tang of it coats the back of my throat. The stench of it gets into my clothes and my hair. I know nothing. I know too much of nothing. I know nothing of any import. I know how they import blood and meat to market. I know too much about blood and meat and the way you sounded that last night we were together. I can't handle it. I can't handle it anymore. I'm not meant to be here. There is too much gravity. There is not enough light.

One of these days I am just going to reach my arm as far as I can into the grinder and let you feed on me.

Cause I've never been right.

About my thoughts on you.

The Day My Wife Died

Shaken.

I am standing on the edge of the dock watching the sun go down . I am standing on the dock watching the steam rise. The water is boiling off making the air something thick and heavy that doesn't fill the lungs so much as collapse them. I am sweating. I had removed all of my clothes earlier because I really didn't care for the way they were sticking to my skin. I don't like when things stick to my skin. On the far side of the lake lose brush, kindling and timber have caught fire. Smoke will soon fill the sky. I barely notice the smell.I barely h(f)ear the motion of the animals running. My mind is gone, stolen by a vindictive wind, and I am hurt. I am hurting. There is blood on my hands and there is a gun on the planks somewhere behind me. It's past time. The clock reaches for the thirteen. I have outlived it, in all forms, all definitions. The world is taking one huge step to the left and I will not be able to reckon, figure or survive this new configuration. I have outlived the clock. It's shattered remains are on the ugly green carpet that covers the bed room floor. They say that in the last moments you get a clarity the likes of which you craved the whole of your life but were never lucky enough to have. The answers to all the questions, the final reveal, a final moment where at long sainted last you get THE POINT OF IT ALL. I have lived my life not believing a word they say so

I let that one go. I have known for a while now that it was coming but I blinked, I turned and I got distracted and now... now instead of glowing and burning brightly and laying waste to this incomprehensible night I stand here more then a little broken waiting for the end to come. Once upon a time, she once whispered to me, everything ended in fire.

The smoke hastens the night, covering what's left of the dying sun.

They are coming. And I am not ready.

They are coming. And my time is up.

****

We are lying there trying to figure out what's wrong. This is our night time routine these days, lying in the dark trying to figure out which cog broke off of which wheel and why machines that used to run so smoothly are now spinning so wildly out of control. Wheels within wheels. Something was off it's base and cutting through the gray matter inside my head. She could see it in the way I no longer blinked and how my face seemed to have lost the ability to smile. We lay there in the dark, the television muted, the world blocked out by the black out curtains. I smell smoke and marijuana and I thirst. Somewhere, something is chained down over stone. It fears the rusty manacles are infecting it's skin, infecting it's blood. I have forgotten where it is. It must be getting hungry. It must be getting angry. It must be getting... ripe? Is that the word I'm looking for?

Maybe it's the city? she offered. Maybe we just need to get out of here. You've never been a fan of this place and, well, now it seems to be taking your disdain for it and throwing it back in your face. Think that might be it?

I love this girl. She tries so hard. I hate myself for taking advantage of that, of not at least MATCHING her enthusiasm. A magazine I read while sitting on the john the other day went on for at least six pages about emotional vampires... about those people who, by their very design, take more then they give. I am not saying that I am one, but there are moments... you know... in the dark where she's pumping so much love towards me trying to wear down the walls that I can't help but think about it.

And she could be right.

The city.

I hate this fucking city. I hate the people in it. I hate the progressive ideals that they tout while they stomp all over civil liberties. I hate that without the mandate of the duly elected federal government, the approval of the social order or even common sense you can set yourself up an empire in this place. I hate that I owe incompetents and jackasses money that I do not have.

I hate that she brought me here.

I want to go home.

And as if reading the thought... Maybe we can go North. Your place in the woods?

She was laying on her side, her head on my shoulder, a bare breast on my chest and her horny little hand still bravely making an effort to bring life to the little guy but nothing was working. There was something wrong. Not just wrong, but WRONG. There had been a time when my wife naked, or close to naked, or ever offering to get naked would have had me hard as a rock and unable to keep my hands off of her. Yet here we lay, once again with my eyes on the dark ceiling and my mind wanting to be anywhere else and, as much as it hurts to say, with anyone else.

I know she's showered six, seven times now but I swear to God I can still smell him on her skin.

****

I am lying flat on my back in a heavy duty metal dumpster, trash bags leaking some sort of obnoxious fluid onto me and barely breathing as I hear their footsteps running towards me. I close my eyes as they slow, bite my lip to prevent from screaming when they bang their cudgels against the flat metal front of the dumpster. I lay there, slowly dragging breath in over my teeth, trying not to feel, trying not to breathe as the lid opens and they look for me.

This is the last time I run. I swear to god. No more of this sneaking about.

From this day forward I am going to be a man. I am going to stand up in front of him and I am going swing my fist into his face and, even if that earns me the worst beating of my life I am going to have the satisfaction of putting my fist in at least one place where her hand had touched him. I don't care who he is. I don't care what he has done. I don't fucking care if it causes his minions to draw sticks or guns and I don't care if it gets me killed. So help me God. I am done with this running, hiding, sniping.

I can't be angry at her. I love her. He's responsible. It's him that I need to hurt. It's him I need to kill.

There is no way I am rooting through that shit. a voice says.

He could be in there.

No one in their right mind would hide in there.

The boss would want us to be sure.

Fine. You do it.

Fuck that. I have a date tonight.

So where does that leave us?

With this...

I hear a click, a breath pushing out over teeth and then three deafening roars. I add to the smells in the dumpster as he fires his weapon, point blank into my hiding place..

SON OF A GOD DA..

****

I put both my hands to the metal door. I put my forehead against it.

It's cold to the touch. The entire cellar is made of stone and metal and edges that make you think of pierced and cold flesh. This is it. This is where I had left it. I can hear it on the other side of the door. I am wondering about the defenses. I am wondering if this is far enough away or deep enough down to keep them away. They want it so badly and they can hear it. I can hear it. It is keeping me awake at night. Even in the city, miles and miles away, I can hear it's screams. Everything is moving towards a big black wall. A tunnel collapse and an ignorant subway hurtling towards it's doom. Nothing can be done. This, this sad thing I've done here is my attempt to prevent what is coming, my attempt to prevent the war. I don't think it is enough. I listen to her moving, heading towards her bowl or her bucket, the chains dragging along the stone floor. She has stopped singing and has started talking to herself now. It takes power to sing. Less to mumble. Even less to scream. I don't think it's deep enough. I think, despite my love, despite all that I've done to protect her, I think that they're going to find her.

****

So I believe in God. This you should know. I believe that there is a

God and I believe that there is a devil. I believe in the golden rule and I believe that karma is a bitch and will get you every single time. I believe that karma is God's way of punishing and guilt is God's way of guiding. I don't believe in prayer, of asking him to bend the laws of nature for you or asking for miracles. I should rephrase. I believe that God exists, and created some fabulous machinery to watch over us and then either started getting laid or grew up or found joy in high def television because he has stopped even maintaining the machines years ago.

So many people ask why bad things happen.

It's because it's been a long time since the boy even LOOKED in the fish tank.

I am standing in an alley hearing nothing but the ringing of my ears, smelling nothing but trash and my own urine. Mark a change, I am now kneeling in the alley vomiting against the broken pavement. With luck, she'll be in the safe house by now. With luck she'll be packing our bags like I begged her to and waiting for me to pick her up so we can get the hell out of this town With luck HE will already have found something new to suck his dick and his guys will lie and say they capped my ass and we can just get the fuck out of here, stupid fucking city, and go somewhere in the woods... somewhere quiet where they'll never ever fucking find us.

The envelope I stole is thick against my chest.

The golden rule.

She is worth something to me. You get nothing for free. I don't care how angry you are, or how many guns you have pointed at me.

****

August 17th, 2010

Take Two:

Shaken.

I am standing on the edge of the dock watching the ship go down into the sun. I am standing on the edge of the dock trying to see a reflection of the blast in the thick red waters. I am standing on the edge of the dock listening to the sub sonic screaming of angels chained over tables having their wings cut off. I am standing on the edge of the dock tasting goat's milk fudge, peanut butter flavored and knowing that no matter how good it is, in my mind, the taste is merely a projection. Nothing is right. Nothing is real. Everything is the product of my own mind and the mind that could create something as good and pure as this taste is long gone now. The world is crumbling down and I am standing on the edge of the dock, the edge of disaster, trying to figure out if go quietly or if I go screaming and bloody. I am hurt. There is blood on my hands and there is a gun on the planks somewhere behind me. It's past time. I have outlived the clock. The shattered remains of it are on the ugly green carpet that covers the bed room floor. They say that in the last moments of life you get a clarity the likes of which you craved with every mortal breath. To see truth as it were, to see where you actually stand, to see the veracity of your cause or to see how deep the wound your being duped caused within you. I have lived my life not believing a word they say so I let that one go. I have known for a while now that it was coming but I blinked, I turned, I got distracted and now... now instead of glowing, burning brightly and laying waste to the night I stand here more then a little broken waiting for the night to come. Wait. No. This already happened. I. What? Wait. Please. Don't. Not yet, wait, I.

They are coming.

She took two to the chest and crumpled on her pillow at the foot of the bed, her chained wrist holding her body up at an unnatural angle as she died. Ugly green and now deep bloody black carpet.

And my time is up.

Unity

If it is a diary then he wrote it with the peculiar dyslexia achievable only through pure dyed-in-the-wool shithouse mania. Insanity personified by the use of certain words scribbled upon the page. Dill had dealt with manifestos before. He believed there were no written words that could disturb him. Then there was this. This thing. This monstrosity. This thing was simply BEYOND. Beyond his ability to comprehend. Beyond his ability to deal. Never had he let words scare him before. This was more then he could handle.

This was the worst thing that he had ever come across.

It was formed like a journal except that it went backwards in time from the beating death of the author, through a thousand acts of violence to the one normal day that the author seems to have lived.

April 20, 2000.

The end point, or