How the angel died

For years she refused to turn on the lights. When they asked her why she knew not what to say. Why was it, indeed, that she was so afraid of the light, especially when she walked into her bathroom? Soon as she stepped inside and onto the marble floor, she would turn her gaze down lest she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. When she was certain that the door was closed, however, she would lift her head once again, standing upright and proud. She had gone through this ritual more times than she could count, a habit that came with its own unique perk: now that she had lived voluntarily as a blind person, she had memorized in her mind every nook and cranny of her bathroom, of which there weren't that many to begin with. On top of that, she had become accustomed to a sort of boredom that blooms only in the dark, and that boredom led to minutes and sometimes hours of introspection on the toilet. It had also made her realize that this was the only place where she could escape the noise that constantly attacked her from every direction. Even the walls outside the bathroom seemed to have something to say, telling her to put down the bottle or how to live her life. But one day, despite the comfort she took in status quo, she decided to rebel against her own nature and turn on the light in the bathroom. And with that action came immediate regret. In the mirror she saw a face that people would associate with that of an angel's: skin pale but luminescent, eyes the color of cactus and sapphire, harsh and tender, hair lush and long with a hint of fire, and in the mirror she thought that she could even spot her own heart, beating to the rhythms of a song that came through the glass panel. Yet that was all it took to make her horrified of what she had seen. Just another human being, wretched, the face of whom she had not scrutinized in years. Just a pale disk made of flesh with two little holes carved in its center. "Even if I have a soul", she thought, "the power of flesh is much more overbearing". And after that painful moment of contemplation, during which she measured the worth of her existence by looking at her reflection, she decided that she was too afraid to kill the beast in the mirror, but she could at least try to erase it from memory. Thus, she picked up her hairbrush and threw it at the light bulb that hung from the ceiling, and she danced underneath the shattered glass that rained upon her as the glass shards lacerated her skin.

And that day, unbeknownst to her, an angel had died.