The Anthem of the Castaway

Admittance of Guilt

I wake up in my angel form laying on the couch on my side. I must've changed when I slept. This time though, the old man is nowhere to be seen, so I sit up, relax, and wait.
After a while, he emerges and sits in his chair.
"Good morning. I see you're feeling better."
"Yeah, I don't really know what happened."
"You were bleeding a lot, so I think you were just too weak."
I wait a moment before responding. "I wish I could heal. I don't understand what's happening. First I couldn't heal, then I grew an extra pair of wings."
"Did they taint your DNA?" He asks, bringing forward a significant idea like it's nothing. I fall silent, thinking of how they could have changed my DNA.
"Not that I know of. They did implant a bunch of eggs that would produce winged humans, but the project failed because none were healthy enough to survive." I tell him.
"How does immortality work, do your cells repair themselves or what? With humans the cells can only replicate so many times before they mutate."
"Honest to god? I have no idea. Mutations don't ever happen with angels though."
"That's interesting. I wish I still had my lab, I'd look at your DNA for you and compare to another angels if you could get it." He says to me. Just as he says lab I shiver habitually, every bad experience coming back to me. The only good lab is the one in heaven. The conversation falls silent for a moment.
"What are you running from?" He asks me. "You never told me."
I lean to the arm of the couch and look out the window for a moment, debating if I want to answer.
"You don't have to answer, but just know that no matter what I would never turn you in." He replies, which doesn't make me feel any better at all. It isn't about him turning me in. It's about pity.
"It's hard to talk about." I respond simply, hoping to buy more time before I am obliged to answer. He leans forward in his chair to listen, so I give in and decide to tell him.
"Abortions are illegal. My body doesn't react well to pregnancies under stress, and so when the prison forced me into another pregnancy it ended up being ectopic. It caused so much pain that I found ways to cause myself to abort. They extended my sentence and tried it again, so I escaped. I aborted another by overdosing on drugs and they caught me. Same exact thing happened over again, but they didn't catch me this time."
He leans back in his seat, stunned into silence. At this point I realize my knuckles are white from gripping my knees so hard and my whole body is tense.
"What put you in prison in the first place?" He asks, quieter than before.
I again hesitate for a moment before answering.
"I killed someone." I decide to say simply, the details of that drug-induced night coming back to me.
"Why?" He responds, seemingly taking the news well.
"Father got pissed at me. Said I had a mission on earth. I had no place to stay so the first place I went to was a bar to blow off some steam. Some dick spiked my drink. They didn't know I was an angel and that date rape shit makes angels go psycho. He tried taking me home, I stole a gun and shot him."
"That's quite a story." He tells me, mixed emotions running across his face. "I still feel like there is something you're not telling me." He insists.
"I feel I've laid out quite a bit in the open." I challenge, not wanting to spill the even darker parts in between.
"You can be honest with me." He says, leaning forward to grab his cup of tea.
"You won't see me as the same person."
"I promise you I will."
"It makes me wonder why Father allows me on earth with His creation."
"Do you kill the innocent?" He asks, challenging my statement.
"Not in my eyes."
"And would they be considered innocent in His eyes?"
"Probably."
"Even if they hurt an angel?" He replies, stunning me into silence. After a minute of quiet, I finally respond.
"I don't know how he sees it. One minute he's proud and the next he hates me." I spat, a bitter feeling or resentment forming toward Father.
"Could he be testing you and making you stronger?"
"Seems quite the opposite. I'm always beaten down and left to rot in a human prison."
"Do you think he sent you here to learn that you shouldn't kill?"
"Sure, and I just kill everyone that touches me anyways. I doubt that would be the idea if I haven't picked up on it in the last thousand years."
"Then if that's not it I think he's trying to make you stronger."
"Doesn't seem to work now that my DNA is so fucked I can't heal."
"So you agree that it is a change in your DNA?"
"I don't know." I huff, angry at this whole debate. "I can't deal with humans fucking up every effort I have to live happy."
"Does Father ever let you stay in Heaven?"
"Only half the time."
"And what do you do in Heaven?"
"I fight. Sword fighting mostly, it's a big attraction. Our sword fights are as popular there as football is here."
"Football?" He asks, his eyebrows raised.
"Ugh, wrong era. Whatever." I respond, rolling my eyes at my own stupidity. A sudden hitch in my breath causes me to cough more, another clump of clotted blood coming forward into the towel I offer. "Life on earth is just a revolving door of wars, fighting, finding out angels exist, fighting over it, killing everyone that remembers, then back to the industrial revolution again. And there's almost always times when angels are outlawed and locked up."
"Back to your problem though, do you agree that God may be trying to train you? Or maybe he's using you to remove the villains from society?"
"The latter holds some truth. After all, I do get dumped into the human society when everything is going to shit."
"Do you ever do wrong in Gods eyes? Maybe he's putting you down here to clean up society as a punishment."
"All the time. Suicide is one thing he hates. Drug use and drinking is another."
"And you still commit those sins?" He asks, looking deeper into my eyes. I look down, unsure of wether I want to confirm his accusation.
"If you know what God wants, why don't you oblige?" He insists.
"Because it's impossible to be a perfect angel. Especially with a past as fucked up as mine. I can't even cope!" I exclaim, letting out my frustration. I'm allowed to worry for a split second while the old man collects his thoughts, but his response breaks through my worry.
"Have you tried other methods to cope? What if you followed Gods word with dedication like humans do on earth to cope?"
"What humans do is laughable. Don't get me wrong, Father loves the praise, but you don't have to be religious to get to heaven."
"What about those who believe in another religion?" He counters.
"There's more than one realm. The underworld exists, hell exists, reincarnation exists, and there's a few more realms."
"You're making the afterlife sound real attractive when you preface with two bad ones." He retorts sarcastically.
"The underworld is a place of healing. Though I'll admit shit goes down there sometimes, but it's mostly peaceful. When you're healed you can decide to wake from the dead or go to asylum."
"What mythology is that from?"
"Greek. Hell's not all that bad either. People are punished in hell, yes, but many punishments are simply just working for Father or Satan, and really it's a comfortable place if you aren't claustrophobic."
"What about the demons?"
"Demons are just angels of hell. They're fine angels. They just have leather wings and horns." I tell him. He looks out the window for a moment, probably letting everything settle in.
"Why do you need sins to cope? It only makes your problem worse." He says, circling back to our previous topic.
"Because sometimes forgetting or being numb is what I need."
"What about suicide?"
"That's just my cheat to get out of a bad situation. But my armor prevents most attempts. Father made them tighten the suicide chinks, so I have to have a small but long dagger to use them."
"In the times you've committed suicide, did he mean for you to be in that situation? Could that be why you're angering him?"
"I don't know." I respond simply. "Sometimes I anger him by blatantly disobeying."
"Can you give an example?"
"Well, when Wolf was running the lab on angels, he wanted me specifically so he took hostage a few innocent humans that helped me out on earth. Father didn't want me to turn myself in, but I did because I couldn't bear to see them hurt."
"How did he react to that?"
"He left me there to rot, then condemned me when I went to heaven."
"See? He's trying to stop you from being so deviant." He tells me. Not knowing how to respond, I fall silent. After a moment I start coughing again, and the old man tosses me a fresh towel to cough into.
"Get some rest." He demands as he sets down his cup of tea and stands up. I watch as he walks into the kitchen, then I decide to lay down and oblige. Within seconds of closing my eyes I feel my conscious being pulled into the land of nightmare.