Gutter
by Jonathan Quince
Tuesday, May 17, 2005 11:43:33
And so she came, her boots crunching on shattered glass, and broken bottles, and discarded syringes, and all the filth that humanity had left to fester at its breast. Her nostrils twitched at a stench long forgotten by the inhabitants of these environs; she registered it and ignored it, excluding it from her consciousness. People had wilfully abandoned this place, erased it from their consciences as they embraced it behind closed doors; but she was here to bring the final accounting, to open eyes and heal wounds and boil the guilty in the sewage of their own creation.
She came flanked by men: Hard men, strong men, men with guns. So did her sword’s edge bear down on the den of soul’s rape; so did her sword’s point push through to the underbelly of corruption, saving the heart for another day and another sweep. Amid the sounds of shouts and shattered locks and shots fired, she scanned hallways and rooms, searching for her quarry; and presently, in a desolate corner of shit and drug-hazed death, she found her.
She gathered the young body into her arms, this wretched ball of pain and suffering. Her fingers touched open wounds and oozing sores, healing them, bathing them, soothing them away. Her fingers smoothed back the mangled hair; and as she touched the filth, it did not touch her, but vanished.
Pleading eyes looked back at her, eyes stripped by force of any hope or dignity. They begged her for an escape, for sweet oblivion. She smiled sadly and shook her head.
“You are safe, now,” she said softly. “I am your angel, yes, come to take you away. But I am not taking you to Heaven; I am taking you to Earth.”
And so she bore her charge away, to a different world on the same planet: To healing, to dignity, to verdant pastures and sun-streaked skies where life would no longer be a waste in suffering.