Authors: Peter Moore Smith
The light was general over all of California, I thought, laughing to myself, on all the living and the dead. The light pushed
itself into me, through my eyes and into my body and down inside my skin like a billion microscopic needles, and it illuminated
everything, laid everything out, my organs bursting into flames, my ideas of what happened to Angela jumping to life like
the orange flickers in a brush fire.
“Why is he so white, Daddy?” I heard the little red-haired boy asking. “Why is he so white?”
I turned around and said, “You’re pretty white yourself.”
There was a man holding the boy’s hand, pulling him back toward a towel. “I’m sorry,” the man said, a bashful look on his
young-father face.
The red-haired boy kept asking, though, directing the question at me. “Why are you so white? What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was just born this way.”
“It’s not nice to say things like that to people, Peter. There’s nothing wrong with him.”
“But he’s so white.” The little red-haired kid was only five or six years old. I turned around again, still smiling — I was
grimacing, is the truth, that aberration on my face — the skin of my body reacting to the bright sun, the heat of it, the
infrared rays of destruction, the fire she must have felt.
Increased sensitivity to the sun.
I was burning, just as Angela had burned. I was igniting, I could feel it. I was combusting. I could finally feel something
real, something I wasn’t supposed to feel. It was pain. It was the agony of reality itself. I was eight years old again, that
day by my mother’s pool. I was about to rise up like a phoenix.
I was as bright as a sparkler. I was a white-hot camera flash, a roll of film pulled open, completely exposed.
My eyes were stinging, but I forced them to stay open, forced my lids as wide as possible, letting clouds of tears form, cataracts
of sunspots and amoebas, floaters, motes, points, and specks of blindness. The migraine that had begun with Lester’s blow
to my head had gone beyond any kind of pain I had ever experienced — this was a slow-motion seizure, this was wild rapture,
epileptic, ecstatic, this was a fugue elevating my consciousness beyond pain into a horrible, soul-twisting rhapsody. I wanted
more light to flood in. I didn’t care about the burning. I sought it. I hoped for it. I even looked up into the sun and imagined
my eyelids melting away, the flesh searing off my bones. Because this was what happened to her. This was Angela’s final moment.
Her entire body had melted, blistered and blackened, then turned to charcoal, ashes, dust. I wondered if she felt it growing
hotter. I wondered if she understood in the last flashing seconds of ignition where she was. I wondered if her bones glowed
like coals in a night wind.
What color were her bones?
Blue, I decided, blue like the flame on the stove — fantastically blue like her eyes had been that first moment I had seen
her — blue like the spots that had formed on the ceiling of my parents’ basement.
Blue, I thought.
Blue, blue, electromagnetic blue.
I thought of Angela and her armful of hyacinths, blue and white, the light that seemed to emanate from her. I was looking
into the heart of light again, the silence.
“Angel.”
I heard my name. It was her, she was calling me.
I lived my life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender.
I saw her. I stepped forward.
Into the light. Into the heart of the light. Into the uncertainty itself.
It was her. She was calling me. Saying my name.
“Angel.”
And so I stepped across, into the light, toward Angela.
“Angel,”
she repeated in a voice no more than a breath, her arms wide to receive me.
I walked through the blinding curtain of illumination and let the photons fall over my body like a photoelectric rain. I saw
both particle and wave, as though through a prism, the colors splitting, dividing, the reflection and refraction patterns
displayed across the insides of my burning retinas.
I stepped across the quantum divide… I opened the box.
W
E RAN A TOX SCREEN,” A BRIGHT VOICE WAS SAYING, “AND
discovered just about everything in there, the entire medicine cabinet, not to mention an alcohol level through the stratosphere.”
I had a dim recollection of having been inside an ambulance and was presently looking up at the white perforated tiles of
a hospital ceiling. My eyes would barely open. “We only gave him a topical anesthetic because,” the voice continued, “well,
Jesus Christ, this guy won’t be feeling anything for weeks.”
“Is he coherent?” another voice asked. “Or should I wait?”
“Coherent? I don’t know. Why don’t we ask him?” A face appeared above me. “Are you ready to talk, Angel?” It was a doctor’s
face.
“Yes,” I whispered with hardly a voice at all. “I think I can talk.”
“There’s a police detective to see you. Do you feel up to speaking to anyone right now? Or would you like him to come back
later?”
“A detective?”
Another face appeared. He had glasses, graying hair. “My name is Detective Dennis,” he said. “Would you mind answering a few
questions?” It was him. It was the man in gray.
“Questions,” I repeated.
“Did you know a woman named Jessica Teagarden?”
My lips were swollen. I could barely move them to speak. “Yes.” I was suddenly enveloped by a screaming pain. Every centimeter
of my body was burning, on fire. “I knew her.”
“Because we found the… the ashes of a human being in the parking lot behind the Horace & Geary Funeral Home.” He sighed.
“And we’re afraid that it might be her. Do you have any idea of what might have happened?”
No.
I closed my eyes.
No.
This wasn’t it. This wasn’t right.
W
E RAN A TOX SCREEN,” A BRIGHT VOICE WAS SAYING, “AND
discovered just about everything in there, the entire medicine cabinet, not to mention an alcohol level through the stratosphere.”
I had a dim recollection of having been inside an ambulance and was presently looking up at the white perforated tiles of
a hospital ceiling. My eyes would barely open. “We only gave him a topical anesthetic because,” the voice continued, “well,
Jesus Christ, this guy won’t be feeling anything for weeks.”
“Angel?” It was my mother’s voice. Her plastic features appeared above me. “Angel… what did you do?”
“Mom?”
“Oh, Angel, Angel, my sweet Angel.”
No.
W
E RAN A TOX SCREEN,” A BRIGHT VOICE WAS SAYING, “AND
discovered just about everything in there, the entire medicine cabinet, not to mention an alcohol level through the stratosphere.”
“Do you think it malfunctioned?”
“Malfunction is an understatement,” I heard a voice say. “It became confused, I believe, by the implants. It thought it was
human.” Tyrell’s face appeared above me. “Commerce is our goal here at Tyrell,” he said. “More human than human is our motto.
Angel is an experiment, nothing more. We began to recognize in him strange obsessions. After all, he is emotionally inexperienced,
with only a few years in which to store up the experiences which you and I take for granted. If we gift him with a past, we
create a cushion or pillow for his emotions and consequently we can control him better.”
“Memories,” the doctor said. “You’re talking about memories.”
“But it was bound to fail.”
“Shall I retire it?”
“I don’t see any other option.”
W
E RAN A TOX SCREEN,” A BRIGHT VOICE WAS SAYING, “AND
discovered just about everything in there, the entire medicine cabinet, not to mention an alcohol level through the stratosphere.”
“What happened?” I said. “Where am I?”
“Cut! That was fantastic.” Ridley Scott smiled down at me. “Let’s do it again, okay? Only this time, Angel, you’re even more
confused. Everybody back to their positions.”
W
E RAN A TOX SCREEN,” A BRIGHT VOICE WAS SAYING, “AND
discovered just about everything in there, the entire medicine cabinet, not to mention an alcohol level through the stratosphere.”
I opened my eyes and saw him. He stood over me, his eyes looking past me, looking through me. I thought I heard the fluttering
of feathers. He reached over and touched my eyelids, closing them, saying,
“Shhh.”
“Who are you?” I asked, eyes closed, looking up into the comforting darkness. “Tell me who you —”
“Shhh,” he
said.
“Shhh.”
W
E RAN A TOX SCREEN,” A BRIGHT VOICE WAS SAYING, “AND
discovered just about everything in there, the entire medicine cabinet, not to mention an alcohol level through the stratosphere.”
I had a dim recollection of having been inside an ambulance and was presently looking up at the white perforated tiles of
a hospital ceiling. My eyes would barely open. “We only gave him a topical anesthetic because,” the voice continued, “well,
Jesus Christ, this guy won’t be feeling anything for weeks.”
“What happened?” My voice was whispery despite the extreme light in the room. My eyelids were swollen, too, even my tongue
felt bloated. “Where am I?”
A pink moon appeared above me. It was Silowicz, his white stubble in patches on his craggy skin. “Angel,” he said, “why don’t
you tell
me
what happened?”
“Don’t tell my father,” I begged.
“Please?”
Silowicz looked down at me, and the haggard skin of his cheeks drooped. “Angel,” he said, as if just saying my name would
persuade me.
“Dr. Silowicz…”
My psychiatrist glanced over at the young doctor who had also appeared above me, a man with a black, blunt haircut and a face
like a movie star, a face so bland you could project anything you wanted onto it.
The doctor hesitated, then started talking. “Angel has a fairly severe sunburn and was already blistering when he was admitted.
He’s going to be extremely… uncomfortable for quite a while, maybe even a couple of weeks.” He paused, shifting his gaze.
“But at the moment, I’m more concerned with the drugs and alcohol in his system.” I could sense in his hesitating voice that
he disapproved, not only of me, but of my psychiatrist as well.
“Thank you,” Silowicz said curtly. “But I’m personally more concerned with the drugs that are
not
in his system.”
The bland young doctor seemed about to respond, then just shrugged and disappeared from view.
“How long have I been here?” I asked.
Dr. Silowicz seemed almost apologetic. “They brought you in yesterday.”
“How did you know I was here?”
I could feel my skin crawling beneath the layers of gauze that had been wrapped around my body. There was a sliminess forming
there that could have been the blisters themselves or the topical anesthesia, I wasn’t sure.
Dr. Silowicz looked down at me, and his eyes were bright, like the liquid eyes of a soap opera actor. “Frank sent someone
to look for you, an investigator. He had been trailing you before, apparently, and when you disappeared from the airport,
Frank called him. He called an ambulance when he caught up with you on the beach, and the EMT guy must have found the bottle
of medication in your hand… the Hapistat. The prescription had my name and reference number on it, I guess, so…”
“Increased sensitivity to the sun,”
I repeated.
Then everything went dark, like the iris closing at the end of a Warner Brothers cartoon.
______
“Angel” — My father stood over me, his bald head gleaming in the antiseptic light — “what are you doing to me?”
Fucking Silowicz, was all I thought. He had told my father even when I had specifically asked him not to.
“To
you?”
I should sue, I thought. It was a flagrant breach of doctor-patient confidentiality.
“Why would you burn yourself like this?”
“I needed to see the light,” I said. “I needed to look inside the light.”
“You’re not making any sense, Angel.” It was Melanie. I could see little Gabriel on her hip.
The iris closed.
It opened. Angela appeared above me, her eyes like twin blue suns.
“Angela,” I said. “I stepped across. I opened the box.”
“Who’s Angela?”
“I stepped across,” I insisted.
“That’s okay, honey,” the pretty nurse with soft blue eyes sang. “You don’t have to step across anything. You stay right where
you are.”
The iris closed, then opened.
It was Frank who appeared above me this time. “You’re going to heal, Angel,” he said. “You’re going to heal, and then we’re
going to take you home.”
______
I had the feeling it was dark outside. How long had he been in this room? Three days? A week? My shoulders, neck, and back
were covered in a layer of gauze, and I felt an unpleasant greasiness beneath it, but I didn’t dare move for fear of creating
a new ripple of pain.
With every breath, I perceived a new sensitivity, a distinct tingling.
“I think I’m starting to freak out,” I said to no one.
I pictured my skin falling away from my body like the flesh of a boiled chicken.
The pink moon appeared. “You sound agitated, Angel,” Dr. Silowicz said. “Do you want me to call the doctor?”
Then he vanished. He had taken a chair somewhere to my left, over by the window, and I could hear his disembodied, sandpapery
voice.
Agitated? I was fucking hysterical.
“Just talk to me.”
Oh God,
I was thinking,
oh God, oh God, oh God.
My skin was prickling, and millions of tiny spiders were running across my skin.
I could hear Silowicz leaning back in the chair, the metal legs screeching across the linoleum.
I let my eyes close and felt a scratchiness beneath the lids. Could I have burned the inside of my eyelids? Was that even
possible?