Chapter Text
All of my life, people were adamant that Christmas was supposed to be the most ‘wonderful time of the year’. The snow, the decorations, and the family get-togethers all sounded like fine staples to a Christmas. Even if many lacked one or more of those elements, usually most people had enough to be able to have a fulfilling Christmas season.
I had all three: It was set to snow for the entire week leading up to Christmas, ripe with fun things like making snowmen or going ice skating with my brother. The decorations that filled the entire neighborhood were delightfully Christmassy, with enough literal holiday magic to put some holiday cheer in almost anyone. And my family was one of the best in the world! I was lucky enough to have well off parents who didn’t mind that I’d spent 6 years at university and still didn’t have a degree to speak of.
But all of that wasn’t enough. Despite having what seemed like the world, everything felt gray and empty and worthless. All I wanted, more than anything else in the world, was too terrifying to truly wish for. And because of that, because I couldn’t just open my mouth and tell everyone the truth, the world continued to dim around me.
Every day that I played the role of a man was worse than the last, but the idea of losing all that I had was so much more awful that I couldn’t tell anyone. But staying silent burned. Hearing a name that wasn’t mine, or being referred to as someone’s son, felt like knives being stabbed into my heart over and over. It was to the point that I chose the winter snows and biting wind over the warmth of the fireplace with my family.
I hated that.
The street was almost pitch black in the night, with the only real lights coming from the rare street lights or the dozens of windows filled with light across the neighborhood. It was enough to make me wonder that maybe this was where I belonged. Maybe I could just blend into the dark and never come out, never have to face the world again.
Maybe I could…
Before I could finish that thought, my world exploded in brilliant, radiant light. I turned my eyes away but it wasn’t enough, wasn’t fast enough. Everything burned. Even with my eyes shut tight all I could see, all I could think of, was light.
I closed my eyes and tried to ignore my hallucination, but the light didn’t fade. And maybe it was stupid, but after a moment I opened my eyes, trying to catch sight of whatever it was that practically flashbanged my street.
“Ah!! Ahh!!!” I shouted at the top of my lungs as some thing glowing like the fucking sun and covered in thousands of wings and eyes stood on the street beside me.
“Be not afraid!” It shouted, with a voice that sounded like a million angry crows threatening to rip my eyeballs out.
I did not waste a second before running like hell from the monster, the thoughts I dwelled on temporarily forgotten. I needed to go anywhere else, anywhere that thing wasn’t.
“Wait! I’m here to- oh, shit. Is that still on?”
Did… did the glowing crow eye monster just swear? It was almost enough to keep me from running further, but I wasn’t about to be the victim of whatever remake of Friday the 13th come to life this was.
“Wait!” A voice — a woman’s voice? Shouted after me. “I’m here to help!”
“No fucking way!” I shouted back, not sure why I even bothered speaking to that thing. I didn’t even bother to ask myself why the extraordinary light vanished, or why I could hear a woman’s voice in place of the sound of ten thousand angry caws.
I ran across my neighborhood as fast as I could, crossing street after street with reckless abandon. My legs kept moving until I felt like my heart was trying to claw its way out with a chainsaw. Only then, once I was safely as far away as I could get, did my legs give out from under me. I collapsed into someone’s snow-covered lawn and quietly prayed for someone to deliver me to safety.
But then she was there again, leaning over me as if she, too, hadn’t just needed to run through the entire neighborhood. Was she actually some sort of eldritch monster, come to swallow me whole? Was that the way I was going to go out, unceremoniously swallowed by a creature that nightmares feared?
“Need a break too? Good, I’m beat.” She said, before taking a seat in the snow beside me.
I tried not to dwell on why or who or what this woman was as she looked up at the stars above us. If this was some sort of horrifying monstrosity intent on playing with its food, the least I could do was not have a panic attack and make her job easier.
Weirdly, though, she no longer looked like anything scary. There was a complete absence of infinite eyes, wings beyond counting, or a voice that made Cthulhu shudder. If anything, she just looked like a normal, adult human person. In fact, the more I looked at her the less intimidating she seemed. Her black hair was messily cut, like someone told a four year old with scissors to go wild, and the white robe she wore looked like a discount bathrobe from Walmart.
But then her golden, glowing eyes met mine, and any hint that she wasn’t just some regular person vanished from my mind.
“What are you?” I asked, as soon as I could breathe enough to consider speaking.
“You didn’t recognize me?” She grinned, in that cocky way some people do when they know something you don’t.
I tried dwelling on my thoughts, thinking of where I could have met someone like her, but at every avenue I came up blank. In the end, I shook my head. Whoever this was supposed to be, she wasn’t ringing any bells.
“Do I need to do the thing again?”
I shook my head much faster.
She sighed, before standing up and offering me a hand up. Fear of whatever she was convinced me to take her hand, and I just barely managed to ignore how loudly my legs screamed as they were forced to work again.
If I probably wasn’t dying, working out sounded like a good plan for the future.
“I,” she began, before making a dramatic flourish with her hand, “am called Cass, your guardian angel. Here to protect you from blah blah blah. Boring bullshit aside, I’m here to help.”
What? “W-what?”
“What? Want me to bring the other mode back?” Why did she sound almost excited to do something so horrifying?
“No, no no, God no.” Wait, was using God’s name in vain okay?
More importantly, I needed to wake up. This nightmare had taken the craziest turn, and every part of my body led me to believe that it was real, but this was all insane. Angels didn’t just show up out of the blue and talk to people, and they certainly didn’t talk to folks like me.
“Alright, let’s go. Heaven is addicted to keeping to their timetables,” Cass offered her hand again, which only confused me more. What timetable was she talking about?
“Um, no.” I said, as firmly as I could. I was terrified of everything going on here, but nightmare or not I needed more information before I was doing anything with this person.
“Why? Look, like I said, we’re on a timetable here. I’m supposed to be gone and get you home by midnight, and it’s already eight-thirty.”
“On a timetable for what?” I finally asked, my frustrations outweighing my fear. “Why are you here, for me?! I’m nobody! Aren’t you supposed to be teaching rich people to be more kind, or something?”
For a moment the angel seemed completely taken aback. Did she really not expect me to ask about this? “Fuck. Forgot that part. Alright, long story short I’m supposed to show you what the world would look like without you in it as a way of showing you how loved and valued you are. And you are, by the way, you’re incredible. Now please, take my hand.”
I needed a second to dwell on that, but the look on her face told me that I wasn’t going to get that second. Seriously, what was the big deal? Was Heaven so short-staffed that she couldn’t afford to give me some time to think? When was I going to wake up from this dream, anyway? It was just getting more and more weird.
I took her hand just as she cleared her throat to get my attention.
And then the world exploded.
Brilliant lights filled every direction until my entire world was nothing but light. I instinctively closed my eyes tight, trying to stop myself from feeling pain, but as soon as I opened them I realized there was none. The light wasn’t painful in its radiance, it was wonderful. Like tea and dessert with someone you love, or physical affection from a pet.
And then, slowly, the light faded away. I held tightly to Cass’s hand as the world came into focus around me, and it was…
Home. My home. With Mom and Dad and my brother, all gathered around a Christmas tree and trying to celebrate. There were presents all over, and the tree was just as decorated, but the mood was so somber. It looked like all of them, even Dad, were near to tears.
I tried waving at them, and shouting to get their attention, but nothing I did even notified them of my presence.
“What happened to them?” I asked, fear evident in my voice, as I turned to Cass. What made them refuse to recognize me?
“Grief. If you disappeared, they’d never recover. The loss of their daughter, whether they knew you were their daughter or not, would haunt your parents for the rest of their lives. Your brother, too, spends much of his life wondering what he could have changed, if anything, to keep you around. Ariel, the people in your life love you more than anything in this world. Ignoring everything else, don’t let them mourn like this.” Cass monologued with a surprising lack of impatience or swearing. And, as she spoke, it was like the light in her eyes dimmed ever so slightly. “This is the world without you, Ariel.”
I didn’t know what to say. Was there something that could be said?
Eventually, I wasn’t sure how long it took, I found the ability to say something. “How’d you know my name? I… I haven’t told anyone.” It was a dumb question, practically unrelated to anything, but I needed to ask it all the same.
“Like I said, guardian angel. I knew your name before you did. Not much longer, mind. I’ve technically only been your angel for four years or so, but the math checks out.”
“I… I believe you, I think. I’m sorry, can you do away with all this?” I asked, motioning my hand to my somber family, “I can’t handle seeing that more.”
With a wave of her hand, the scene vanished. For a split second we were back in the light space, before the world built itself up around us. Within moments a small, cozy looking room filled the white space. There was a couch, a soft recliner, and an already lit fireplace filling the room with a pleasant warmth.
The best part, though, was the dog. A small pitbull was curled up in front of the fireplace, with a tiny, golden halo hovering just over their head. It took me only a moment for recognition to set in: that was Scout, a pitt that had been part of my life since I was a baby. Even with my severe depression and dysphoria locking away my ability to cry, I felt tears of joy form in my eyes.
“Scout?” I whispered, the same way that I remembered doing a thousand times over when I was a kid. Tears distorted my voice, causing it to crack ever so slightly, but that didn’t stop me.
First her ears perked up, and in an instant her head followed. She crashed right into me before I’d even reacted to the rest of her body moving, her jumps and licks causing me to giggle as my heart was filled with joy. “Hey, girl. Hey,” I said, as I scritched her on her favorite spot behind the ears.
She kept licking in response, until she worked through most of her excess energy. I gave her the best hug I could once she finally stopped moving, and only let go when she started trying to move again. “I missed you so much, girl.”
I wasn’t sure how much time passed in the amazing living room. Emotion overwhelmed me every time I took more than a passing glance at my best friend in the world. It had been so long since I lost her, I’d almost forgotten what it was like to hear excited bark when she wanted to play, or how it felt when she rested beside me.