Chapter 1--You Died and an Angel was There

I can’t stop looking at that shelf.

It’s not like I have work today; it’s a federal holiday. I can take my time.

I don’t beat around the bush anymore, so why can’t I clear the “troubling items” from my shelf? I haven’t even opened these scrapbooks in years. I don’t have the heart to even flip through one page! If it’s so hard, then I guess I should throw it all away. But my friends are in there, my acquaintances, my coworkers, my passions! I want to save them, at least. I want to look at them fondly without having to worry about what’s on the next page.

I could do it one at a time. You always have to start small with these kinds of things. You gotta be nice to yourself. I’m nice. I can do it.

I get down on my knees and grab a scrapbook from the bottom row. Christ, this one’s from the early-mid 2020s. This one’s a toughie. I can do it. Just take the bad pictures out as fast as you can and throw it in a pile. I’ll shred all the bad ones and I’ll never have to see them again. It’ll make my apartment, my home, a little more breathable.

I start flipping through the pages. Most of them are filled with crummy photos I took with cheap cameras. I was obsessed with collecting those for a while, shaking the tiny photos as they developed. Can’t find those anymore besides in antique stores, and it’s tough luck to even find one of those. At least I’m still able to collect stickers and ribbons.

Oh, these are from Pepperman’s first gallery! I used a bunch of gel pens to mimic paint splatters on the background here. She was still drawing the pseudo-Cubist figures here. Man, they feel so uninspired compared to the stuff he makes nowadays. I flip to the next page to find a series of photos taken by Pepperman herself. Right, we still had the colored LED-lights back then; he was toying around a lot with those, it seems. I’m the subject in a lot of these—nothing erotic, just a bunch of silly faces. I’d doubt it’d be a sincerely weird way; artists just love their nudity. I don’t think she started dating Vigi at this point.

Several pages have a bunch of photos from Fakey. God, these are so old. They’re still wearing that little chef’s outfit! Okay, a scrapbook from the 2020s is going to be kinda old, but… man did Fakey change. These photos it took are so nonsensical, most of them are blurry or taken in motion. I have a couple pictures in here where I was handling the camera. They’re the only ones where Fakey’s face is fully shown.

I was never really sure if Fakey hated themself back then. I remember showing those selfies to them and they just froze and looked away. Was it just bewildered? Confused? It must’ve been some kind of negative emotion because I ended up promising it I’d keep those pictures private. I know I eventually told them back then that I could never see Peppino in them, I just couldn’t. It was so obsessed with that whole “looking like Peppino” thing for a while. I recall it wasn’t because they weren’t the “real” Peppino, but more like… not being able to fulfill a standard and not knowing what to call that difference. Trapped to look like someone else, and you can’t even do that right.

Maybe it was because of that “failure” that they ended up changing so much. When you’re an outsider, you have to adapt and create your own rhythm. Now Fakey’s one of the bravest people I know, most poetic, the funniest. It’s living its own life now, from what I understand. I still see them from time to time, but it’s never consistent. It used to be consistent. They’re allowed to live their life… but I wanna be a part of it more often, not going to lie.

I turn the page. My heart sinks like it used to. Once I look, I can’t look away. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, perhaps spite is helping me with that, but… it’s been so long. I forgot what it’s like to look at him.

These photos are from when he was still starting his music gig. She used to have a really nice synth back at the Tower, but it got destroyed in the wreckage. I somehow gathered enough money to get him a new one as an early birthday gift. She mellowed out a little once she realized she was non-binary. He got creative, he explored, and I was a part of it. I sang. Sure, she was never as interested in anything I did besides the singing, but we made music. Like, I was a part of a duo, as if we complemented each other. Like it wasn’t a job. Like it was a life.

I’m still glad I left. She wore me down and it just wasn’t healthy. It was better I left and learned to live in a quiet house. Sometimes you need a quiet house. It feels so nice to not have to live for someone else. Of course, I still like to lend a hand, but I have a state of self to nurture, hobbies to develop, stuff like that. Granted, it’s hard not to be curious. I wonder what happened to him when I left.

I’ve had my fill of wallowing. Just take everything out of this section. Maybe I could fill this page with new memories once the bad ones are gone.

I take a couple photographs out of their holders. So those lighter sections aren’t from the glare of my light? I mean, they’re really faint though; I should’ve figured. Maybe there was some light source in the scene I don’t remember. Could be artifacting, too. It’s really nothing suspicious.

It’s making me feel suspicious, though. I feel like I’m going crazy. It’s almost always his right shoulder that has that glow. That photo taken in the morning has really warm colors, and then his shoulder is more dull in color. She’s in almost pitch black here. It wouldn’t make sense for her shoulders to be visible in this shot, but that right one ever so slightly is. I’m right next to him in that one and neither of my shoulders are visible. I don’t think there was anything messing with the light when I was taking that photo.

Why is this bothering me? I’m getting one of those> feelings while looking at them, and that> feeling does not lie. It’s reminding me of something, but I can’t remember what. I’m crazy—but something about this lighting isn’t natural! It just isn’t! Just what> could it be?

Wait. It must be—

A knock at the door halts my train of thought. I head over to the other side of my apartment to answer it. I think smell something rotting—it’s the Doise.

Lo and behold, it’s her, towering over me with her scrawny, rotting figure, eyes bloodshot and blank, as always. If you look hard enough, you can see her lungs twitching inside her rib cage. I guess she prioritized the beanie for her exposed brain over her ribs. Looks like she hasn’t shaved in a hot moment. He usually doesn’t come to my door like this; I’m not even that close to him and his boyfriend. We talk every now and again and give support… but it isn’t really a friendship.

He hesitates for a moment before speaking, maybe trying to catch her breath. I can’t tell. “Dead,” she blurts, “h-he’s dead!” He always has a hard time controlling her breath when talking.

“Who?” I ask.

She hunches over. “Y’know!” She curls inward even more, obscuring her face. Is she frustrated or nervous? He lets out a sigh, “your ex.”

I’m stunned. I really don’t know how to respond. I feel stupid for thinking she’s still alive, even though I haven’t seen her in forever. She never had good health, always smoking. It was bound to happen. Almost three decades ago I would’ve bawled my eyes out. A decade ago, I thought I’d celebrate about this day, but here I am. My god, she’s gone now. She’s really gone.

“She’s dead…” I vacantly remark.

Doise raises his head. “I uh… He’s been dead for like, a week or something. Me and Doisette don’t often have the TV on, but we happened to catch a local report about it out of luck.”

“W-why… why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“The report made me freak out. Bad. Had to thug it out. Uh, I coped fine with it; Doisette helped. I also forgot about it, so I rushed out here to tell you.”

Lemme try my best not to sound mean here. “I uhm, don’t get why you didn’t text me, no offense. It probably would’ve been a bit easier to manage.”

“I’m a cowardly texter. Easier to run away from a phone than a person… okay, p-people are on phones and I’m obsessed with that shit and all I do is that shit—but whatever.”

Lord, does she know that from experience.

She continues, “but uh, yeah. I just wanted to make sure you knew what. Hope it makes you feel safe.”

“I uh… thank you for telling me that, Doise.”

“Alright.” She then abruptly closes the door.

I stare at my door as I register what was thrown upon me. She’s dead.

She’s dead. All I want to do is think the same things I’ve been thinking already. Really? After that news, I feel nothing different? I suppose I was already restless from cleaning out my shelf, but… wouldn’t something change?! I guess the fact that I’m baffled and frustrated is something, but that isn’t really related to the death. My whole life revolved around him at one point, and now I just don’t care? Not even a sadistic cheer of joy?

He’s been dead for a while. Maybe he’s been buried already. Maybe if I give her one last visit, something will resolve.

Alright, I’m here. I guess I could walk from this point on.

Now the something’s bubbling in me. I’m a little nervous what seeing his grave will do to me. I could be as clear as day and then I’ll see something that’ll make me drop the ball. Speak of the devil, I’m already feeling aimless. I should start looking for his grave. It’s okay, Noisette, it won’t be so hard after you initiate it.

Simmonds, Hasselhoff, Lucas, Fox—not around here. Not looking for an Otto, Andy, or Apollo. Bubnov, Keith, Ohta, Martinez, Peters, Gammell—not here. Perhaps she didn’t get a grave. She wasn’t in the greatest financial situation when I left her, so it’s likely that she couldn’t—no no, I’ll try looking a little more.

Not him, no, no, no—

Looks like he didn’t get his named changed legally. Seems like he got an indigent burial as well. I guess I have to confront her now.

No. Don’t make this about her; I came here to deal with some unfinished business.

Where do I even start? Maybe I’ll try pretending like I’m talking to her for convenience. That’s a start…. A tough one at that. I don’t have any other ideas of how I could begin, so I might as well use it.

Hey, Thea. Here you lie and I have to… deal with the shit you left me. I don’t have any clue how you died, and you probably didn’t have a funeral, so your death sorta just… happened. And I don’t know how to feel. You were dangerous, overbearing, and very frustrating—maybe even more than that, but you were never… deliberate about some of the things you did. And you’d usually listen whenever I said no.

That’s the hard part: You sometimes listened. I don’t know if you listened to anybody else, but I know you did that for me. I guess I just didn’t say “no” enough… Besides, I was the one hired, the one created, to be with you. I was made to give you peace and comfort and pleasure so you never left that tower. The blame is on me a little bit, and I won’t hesitate to say sorry.

But I won’t go soft on you. We were together for some couple of years, you had time to improve. I know this shit is hard but you gotta move on.

I don’t even know if she did that. She could’ve gotten better; I cut contact with him way back, so who knows?

My mask. Crazy I still keep this thing on. It’s got a cute design, but I don’t really dress like how I did in my thirties. I could live without it. He’s dead; I don’t have to please him anymore. Besides, the last time I saw him, he still had that damn mask on. Wearing this thing all the time probably is messing with me on a subconscious level. Just lift all the weights off today.

Don’t hesitate, hands. It’ll all be okay. It’s not like we’re revealing something we’ve never seen before. Just undo the knot, take the mask off, and…

It’s in my hands now, that’s for sure. My horns. They’re out. Okay, of course they’re out. It’s just… jarring to feel the breeze hit them. I think I like it. Yeah, I like it.

I’ll just put my mask on top of his gravestone. Not for his sake, for yours, Noisette. There. Looking at it now, it just looks like an old dish rag. The job’s done—sure, it has been done for years and years, but it’s definitely done now. I don’t have to do this stupid job, don’t have to “coerce him into staying in the tower or giving his love to Satan”, or anything. I can change now. I want that, I really do.

I can’t stare at it forever. I should leave at this point; lingering will only make it worse. I should just go back home. It’s alright if I hang my head low as I walk away—just get back to the entrance and you can fly back home like you did coming here.

God I feel like crying… I’ve thought about her enough! This whole visit was a little rough and I should just try to decompress for the rest of the day. It’s okay, one of the hard parts are over and that’ll help everything in the long—

That sigh I just heard. Is it someone sighing? That sound had a weird “crusty” filter to it. Sounded high-pitched, but I can’t tell if was naturally high-pitched or was artificial, whatever that means.

I didn’t walk far from the Noise’s grave. There’s someone there. They’re so short. They look like… No no no, there’s no way it’s her. Well, I can’t leave her, can I? Now you’re really losing it! God, all this tension, I can’t—shit, I think he heard me!

“Are you okay?”

The Noise-like person says this in the middle of turning their head, their weariness deepened when they saw my face, as if they knew me. Looking at their face, they don’t look like the Noise, more like, a weird doppelganger of him. And a crudely drawn one at that with the cape tapers sticking out of their mouth.

“Oh, you’re Noisette, right?” Their face is weirdly gentle.

I blurt out, “Who are you?” They start levitating, and I eventually caught eye to their small, angelic wings that slow flaps in the air.

The individual explains, “Well, around the Noise I told her to just call me the ‘Bo Noise’, but she’s no longer my client anymore so… just call me Bo.”

Their body shifted as they took off their hat to take out the halo and put it above their head and hat, mostly in color. Their skin darkened, their clothes turned white and yellow, and they grow a cat-like tail with a broken heart decorating the tip. You’re real… but you have a blackened outline all around you. Every so often, your proportions ease into some other form, and I don’t think I could tolerate so much of that. I have no idea what other angels and demons feel regarding keeping an inconsistent form, but I don’t know if I could manage all that shifting, all that pulsating, all that throbbing—but you are not me. I know nothing of you and it’s a bad move from my end to even think in this way.

“You said the Noise was your former client… why did you work her, necessarily?” I question with a lowered body.

They fidget with their hands. “I-I was a guardian angel for her. They assigned me for this co-opt thingy for that tower that used to be around—I don’t recall the name; I just know the Noise was in there and I, like you, had to help him.” It’s hard to tell whether the shaky lines around Bo are based on his mood; the little guy is too inconsistent and uncertain.

I, like you, had to help him…

Dammit, of course! It was a guardian! A guardian was making that glow! That’s what was making those photos look weird!

No, don’t get ideas. You certainly had to help him, and your job was very… dubious. I don’t know much about guardian angels—or a portion of angel society in general—but I know how these guardian angel fellas work. They bind themselves to their client’s consciousness in order to find the best way to make them worship God. Same as any other demon job. I’m no better. Nobody’s better so we all gotta do our best.

What is this suspicion worth? We supposedly worked for the same client, so it’d be worth something to hear their experience. But I don’t know….

My face is probably scrunched up in an awful way; Bo looks frightened.

I sigh, “I’m sorry I don’t know how I should approach this, but… in what way did you try to help him?”

Bo hangs their head low, and the hat on their head obscures their face. “Oh, I’m not really the ‘faith-converter’ type. I don’t like it.” I can believe in that. They suddenly heave their head upward and it rolls to the side. Their nose trails into something longer, their forehead as well, and their eyes are doing its best to look at me.

“I uh, did my best… b-but I couldn’t help him in the end. I’m sorry.”

Oh come on, why am I suspicious? Can’t you feel it? There’s something about this guy’s poor composure that’s ringing something awful! You knew the guy and you knew a lot. You weren’t there for a long time, but you know her. She was difficult and exhausting. If you had a bad relationship with her, and Peppino did, and the Doise did, and Doisette did, and Dougie, and Pepperman… then Bo did as well.

I hate that, though. I don’t know why. I mean, I don’t like the idea of her being all pure of heart after I left her, as if I was the problem. The truth hurts. It hurts even when it validates you.

I guess the perfect girlfriend never dies.

Bo cautiously gets closer to me, stepping in the air and they have snapped to a heftier and walrus-like appearance. Their eyes weaken for a moment, causing to look up to the sky in cowardice. They continue walking with a more gentle expression. They stop to share eye contact with me.

“I’ll cut to the quick: I came here in hopes of finding you. He wasn’t a g-great person, so I figured I could… check on you.”

I chuckle nervously, “I got more bearings than I did decades ago, that’s for sure.”

Bo turns their head meekly. “Are you sure?”

I can’t even look at a scrapbook, for Christ’s sake.

Bo continues, “I don’t have all my bearings right now, to be frank—n-nothing really serious but… you’re supposed to go to other people when stuff like that happens. I think I—no, it would be nice if we could help each other out, considering our similar circumstances.”

They seem lonely. I’m probably projecting. I’m feel more lonely even though I see lots of people on the regular. They admitted to not being okay themself. I don’t think any weirdo would be so clear about that—a bad one, that is.

Was I even feeling suspicious? Well, I’m not a saint; I can be mean. Everyone can. There’s no objective truth and there’s no objective feeling. It’s all just perception. But I want to be kind to the truth I’m seeing right now. I don’t know what this underbelly could be, but I want to help. I want to be curious.

No, it would be too invasive to hold their hands; I should do better. Yet I still hold out my hands near theirs as I falter and awkwardly laugh, “Funnily enough, and I want nothing more to help you after hearing a little bit of what you experienced.”

They’re taken aback. I watch as their pupils soak up and consume half of their entire eye, reflecting the gray, cloudy light of the day and re-purposing it into something sentimental. Their outline is becoming much more scratchy now, quaking as well, but their smile deepens. They throw their hands into the air, probably to hug me—but then they hesitate. Still overwhelmed with emotion, Bo ends up hugging themself so hard that they it causes them to tumble and spin in the air for a couple of cycles. All I wish is to do everything right for you, even though you’re a stranger.

Bo let out a relieved sigh, “Hehe... I’m rather touched that this is mutual.” Then their face expressed concern. “But…I don’t want this to be a job, y’know. Life’s all just work for us angels and demons; we work enough already,” they add, adjusting their pose to focus on me. “If you are comfortable with it, I’d like to be your friend.”

A friend. Okay okay, maybe I don’t need to be too grandiose about something like this; it’s not like I don’t have any friends at all. But a friend.

I offer a handshake with a smile. “I’d like to be your friend as well, Bo,” I say warmly.

Bo takes on a more infantile appearance with a larger head as they return the smile. Their hands are small as they shake my own hand.

“Bo Bodacious Beauregard, they/he,” Bo says, continuing to shake my hand. “Okay, okay, that’s not my real name; I just like saying it is.”

“Well you know my name already but…” I pause the handshake so I scheme something. “Let’s just say I also go by Noisette ‘clunk-clack’ Corazón,” I finish with a wink. We stop shaking hands.

Bo asks with a giggle, “Now where did ‘clunk-clack’ come from, per-se?”

Oh, I can’t help it. I giddily pull out my key chain out of my pocket and began shaking it with excitement, my copious amounts of charms and trinkets creating a self-indulgent chorus.

“Hehehe, oh you’re good, Noisette. You’re very good.”

“Aww, I’ve heard a good lot of people say that thing is pretty annoying.”

“I’ve been told I’m very annoying, so you’re not alone,” Bo responds with a gentle smile.

“Shake it as much as you want. I’ve tolerated much worse.”

Admittedly, I’ve still got some tension. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to shake it a little more. I jangle it, and it just goes: clunk-and-a-clack and-a clunk-and-a-clack and-a clunk-and-a-clack…

Bo starts scatting and uses a lot of b sounds while doing so. I don’t recognize the song he’s singing; whatever it is, it’s pretty off-rhythm from my key-chain’s clamoring, but hey it’s charming and it gives me a good chuckle.

“This jam session’s fun, but we’re crazy for doing this in a human graveyard,” I snicker. Bo frowns. They look away as their frown extends outside of their face, their forehead droops and they attempt to hide the distortion in their mouth. They suddenly flip their head up to give a more comforting appearance.

“Yeah, we can’t hang around here. How about we get a bite to eat or whatever and just…talk some more?” I don’t know if they’ve shaken off whatever is on their mind. It doesn’t feel right. I’ll hide my concern; they probably need a friendly environment right now. I sure need one too.

“Of course! Where you wanna go?”

“Ah… I guess I’ve been around here for decades, but you know the whole guardian deal. You go wherever the client goes, and that meant I was stuck at Noise’s apartment most of the time.” They try to be subdued, but their outlines and features started to overlap, and their hat shifts from looking like a sailor hait to some kind of cap with two small points on it. Then again, shame on me since I really don’t know if these form shifts are related to their emotions or not.

“D-don’t worry about it. I know a good spot we can go to, okay?” Hard to not worry about something like that. I still got work to do

“Heheh, alright…” Bo replies, “take me somewhere nice, why don’tcha?”