Dastardly Tasks

 

I would use the phrase ‘I woke up to another cold, dark morning in the Below’ except that I did not wake. I did not wake because I did not sleep, and I did not sleep because no one sleeps here. I also did not have breakfast or shower or anything of that sort, because I didn’t need to. Down here, no one could see anything but darkness, no one could feel anything but cold, and no one could smell anything but Fear. Fear liked it that way.

There were also no mornings here. There was only the endless darkness of night, which would forever instill terror into the minds of those that dwelt in its foggy depths. Those of us in the Below knew no time. Since there was nothing to measure night, the dawn never came.

There was a knock at the door of my rickety abode. It was strange how she would still knock every time she came, I thought as I stood from my wooden chair. I always knew it was her; no one else would dare come by here.

“Hello, Niyma,” she said in her soft, whispery voice when I had answered the door.

“Hello, Iliree,” I answered.

“May I come in?”

I nodded my head once. “Of course.”

She stepped inside and her wings were set at rest.

All of the Night Angels had the same wings " black as death, cold as ice, and still soft as silk. The color was what made each kind of angel stand out. The Twilight Angels had wings of velvety red, the Dawn Angels’ were of gentle pink, and the only angel that someone such as you has likely heard of has wings of the purest white.

The Light Angels. One letter made all the difference.

“It has sent for you again.”

“Has it?” I asked conversationally. I crossed the small room to the stove and set a rusty tea kettle on it.

I heard one of the chairs creak as she sat. “Yes. For rounds.”

“I see.”

We were silent for a long moment as I readied the tea. Every one of her visits went the same. She would knock, I would answer, we would have tea, and she would leave. She was a messenger and usually had quite a few tasks to complete. She was assigned specifically to me, but that did not mean she was by my side every second. She never actually needed to be. We had a strong bond together and could communicate without words. We only ever spoke aloud to be polite. The tea served the same purpose. Drinking it never made any difference to us; we used it as sort of an excuse for company.

Iliree was perhaps the best messenger of the Below World. She knew this place better than she even knew herself, and that was exactly why she had been assigned to me. We were, together, the strongest team of the Below, and perhaps even the Above. We were nearly unstoppable.

And that was why we were Chosen.

“It wants to see us after you’re done. It has a task for us.”

“A task?” I inquired. If I had been able to experience emotion, as I very well knew Night Angels could not, you might say my tone would be interested. Surprised, even.

“Yes, a task. An important one.”

“I see,” I said again as I poured the tea and handed her a cup. She thanked me, and I continued. “And what, pray tell, is this task?”

“It wouldn’t say.” She sipped the tea carefully, as if she could feel the warmth of it. She couldn’t.

The rest of our visit was in silence, and I put the dishes back on the stove when it was finished. I did not need to wash them, since we were the only ones that used them and this the only thing we used them for. Besides that, I had nothing to wash them with.

“It said to be quick. No dawdling,” Iliree said as she stood on the threshold. “I’ll meet you there when you’ve finished.”

Then, she spread her black angel wings and flew off into the darkness. I stretched my own wings and was soon enveloped in complete nothingness, just as she.

The first crevice I approached was occupied by its usual tenant. She was not moving, and so I landed beside her. “Girl?” I inquired.

“Take me, angel,” she pleaded, barely breathing. “Take me to where you take the rest of them. Up or down " I don’t care. Just take me.”

“I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Is it soon?”

I shook my head. “Not for you. Not yet.”

“Why? Why do you do this to me, angel?”

“You do this to yourself,” I answered.

I did not give her a chance to respond before I flew off again, checking on the others. Most of them would plead with me to take them, but I knew there would be no saving this time around. I was ordered to be quick, and I would be. There were two who’d fallen farther along and one who’d escaped. He was not here long, I noted as I took his body down to the furnace. He was one of the luckier ones " killed in the Above.

When a person was in the Below, they were in a state which even they themselves could not begin to describe or understand. They were suspended in the nonexistent space between life and death, where they were not considered completely gone but didn’t have enough left in them to go on. They were still in the Above, but they lived in the Below. They hardly had control of their Above selves, and sometimes, Night Angels would possess the Above ones to keep them going. These angels returned to the Below when their job was done, and then they would move on to the next.

The only humans that ever knew about the Below were the ones that currently resided there. If someone got back to the Above, they would not remember any encounters they had in the Below. All they would remember was ice and blackness. Eventually, they would get on with their merry little lives and soon forget about the Below completely.

The concept of the Below and Above is a complicated thing " one I do not expect you to understand. I will explain as best I can for you, but you will never truly comprehend it unless you have been there. Unless you are there, right now, at this very moment. Then and then only would you know what it means to be surrounded by Fear, so suffocated by it that you can feel it trickle through you with every breath you take.

But until then, you must read on.

I thought of nothing at all as I flew down to the very bottom of the cavern. It was not the real bottom, of course, because the pit was truly endless, but it was as far as any of us, even Fear itself, dared go. I could feel Fear condensing in the air as I continued my flight. I was very close now.

“Niyma? Is that you, my dear?” a chilly voice asked.

I shivered. The voice came from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. “Yes, it’s me,” I answered.

“Come,” said the voice. “I have been waiting for you.”

Carefully, I descended on the jagged ledge that protruded from the cavernous walls. Iliree was sitting cross-legged on the edge, looking as if she were barely holding on to sanity. I sat next to her and grasped her hand in mine. She gripped me just as tightly, and we both turned our faces upward as Fear’s voice sounded again.

“No troubles with your rounds, Niyma, I presume?”

“None, thank you.”

There was an eerie chuckle that made me shiver again. “Well, you are the best.”

“I am,” I agreed confidently.

“Yes, and that is why I have chosen you and Iliree for this…special task.” It seemed almost to contemplate something before it spoke again. “I am sending you to the Above.”

***

“Are you ready?” Iliree asked as we stood mere inches away from the veil between Below and Above.

Needless to say, that was a rather ridiculous question. Perhaps I should explain why.

Even without our mission being dastardly and near impossible, the Below had been my home for as long as I could possibly remember. Although it was dark and cold and I was forever surrounded by Fear, it was where I belonged. I was a Night Angel, and that was where all of us belonged. No Night Angel had ever been in the Above in their true form " and with good reason. The mere sight of a Night Angel would scare any mortal straight into the pit of insanity. …Well, if they weren’t already there.

We were really only made up of shadows. Once you sold your soul to become a Night Angel, you were no longer human. It was quite a gruesome sight, actually. You would be literally torn apart at every seam, and darkness would envelop your soul. We did have some human attributes, when we wanted them. The darkness would do what you coaxed it to " form hands and feet, even clothes and faces. All the same, we were never truly anything but an illusion. We didn’t even need wings, really, but we proudly showed them. It gave us some sort of idea of who we were; made us feel like we had purpose.

“Niyma?”

“Yes. I am ready.”

She nodded. “All the better, then. The Twlights come.”

I could see them in the distance, sweeping through and destroying the light that the Dawns had taken such care to spread and replacing with their own light. It was not really light, I suppose, but then again it was not really darkness, either. “So they do.”

And as they finished, they entered the Below. A figure that I’d presumed was their leader approached us. It was a man, I believed, one not so shadowy as a Night but still not anywhere near pleasant.

Nights had always been considered superior to Twilights, just as Lights were superior to Dawns. It was mainly because the Twilights were not composed of only darkness. They were basically seen as a seed of light that had been tainted with dark, thus the name Twilight. The Dawns decided they didn’t like assonance, so they got their name because they rather enjoy whining.

Not that I harbor any hostility towards them. It’s simply a fact.

“You are cleared,” said the Twilight. “And good luck to you. You’ll need it.”

Both of us nodded in acknowledgement, and he flew from us. I looked at Iliree. She took my hand in hers, and together we took off into the night of the Above.

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