Ever since I learnt bout angel tiers as a kid I always wanted to draw em all but only now did i get around to it-
Wanted to have it where they progressively get more abstract and inhuman the higher the tier goes cause who doesnt love a lil cosmic horror? I also took some liberties with the descriptions of all the angels cause lotta them kind of overlap and sound similar.
Fourth chapter of my original fiction. Let’s see what’s in store for Florante Galang’s fantasies.
You can also find more chapters of my original fiction here. Please enjoy.
The day went on easier than before, but only because Florante Galang knew what to expect of today.
His classmates would either avoid him like the plague or talk behind his back as he went about his friendless existence in First Year Section St. Francis of Assisi of Fatima High.
Oh well. At least his fantasies and fever dreams were interesting, right?
Jennifer Tolentino and Laura Reyes used to sit near him in class, but now they sat elsewhere once their homeroom teacher and class advisor rearranged their seats while some dude who never talked to him sat in front of him.
He went to the library instead of the cafeteria today because he usually sat in his lonesome every lunch these days.
His usual friends… acquaintances… well, people he sat with, the Dead Kids were off doing their own thing separately. Weirdoes being weirdoes.
He should speak though. He went to the library during lunch.
He also tended to avoid bumping into the group consisting of Laura and her friends or, much worse, Gerry Jacinto and his barkada.
He was used to classmates and the student body at large looking through him as though he weren’t there or as if he were a ghost.
However, for some reason, he felt like he had eyes all around him, but whenever he stared back at people instead of the floor or his feet as usual, they ended up looking elsewhere. As if averting his gaze.
Was there something on his face or uniform? He hoped he didn’t do anything embarrassing again. However, such concerns left his mind after his trip at the library.
He had one thing in mind. One person. Jenny Tolentino.
Granted, Florante still had his photocopies of the phone book page full of “Tolentinos” and other “T” names as well as the yearbook page featuring a look-alike Jennifer Narcissa Tolentino.
Man, he was acting really creepy now, wasn’t he?
How shallow was his crush on Laura Reyes that he ended up pining for Jenny Tolentino instead? Ah, whatever.
Crushes were supposed to be shallow attraction, right? You needed to really know someone to develop worthwhile feelings for them. Or so he heard. He didn’t believe in love at first sight, although he had his share of, uh, lust at first sight.
Florante found Jenny cute because he knew her they shared something in common. Also, she had puppy dog eyes behind those wide-rimmed glasses.
Why hadn’t he looked at her that way before? Must be because of Laura. And because she might be a fellow angel.
Or at least his imagination viewed her as such.
***
Fantasy of Evolution
An Urban Fantasy Story by Abdiel
How far will Florante’s delusions take him this time?
Disclaimer:This work may reference copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is believed that this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright Law. All copyrighted material referred to in this work belongs to their respective owners. All rights reserved.
***
Chapter 4: Manic Pixie Dream Girl
***
Dismissal time came and went.
The friendless, listless Florante Galang then shuffled towards his school service in order to repeat the Groundhog’s Day loop of him going home from class, waking up again to return to the same class, and having no one to talk to as he ended up scoring mediocre grades on his quizzes and quarterly exams.
Like every other student. He couldn’t complain.
Also, it was not like the Philippines had Groundhog’s Day too, mind you. He just liked the Bill Murray movie and it was the closest point of comparison.
Aside from the eternal afterlife punishment of Sisyphus endlessly rolling a rock up a hill only for it to roll back down by the end of the day so he had to roll it back up again.
The ominous skies were in a dark mood, with the gloomy clouds looking dense and opaque. However, at least it hadn’t shed tears in the form of rain.
His blurry eyes cleared, only for him to see an apparition of the glasses-wearing girl in the horizon.
“What are we?” Florante asked.
“Angels. Demons. Gods. Devils. Deities. Monsters. Different cultures call us different names. We might even be considered superheroes.”
“Really?”
“Nah.”
“I like a girl who understands me but I can confide to as well.”
“How am I supposed to respond to that?”
“No, you live in a society! I live in my meticulously crafted daydream universe that I’ve been using as a coping mechanism since childhood!
You’re a back of the class losers who has gone on a power trip and became mad with power.
Before Florante knew what had happened, he ended up in front of Jennifer’s apartment in Makati again.
Like he sleepwalked over there. Or rather, commuted there instead of straight back to his home.
What was wrong with him?
"You won’t leave things well enough alone. could you?” Jenny said.
“It’s not my fault! The dream me killed Laura! I’d never do that in real life! Stop blaming me for something I subconsciously did!”
“When a man possesses this much power, he does not seek redemption.”
***
To Be Continued…
Florante starts having issues in being able to tell what’s real and what’s fantasy as he continues to dream up plot scenarios for his comic book and uses it to retreat from how miserable his real life has gotten.
Florante still couldn’t tell what’s real and what isn’t as the mysterious Jenny tells him that he’s actually an angel. An Ophanim, to be exact.
You can also find more chapters of my original fiction here. Please enjoy.
Earlier in class, Florante Galang’s idle mind had wandered…
Florante’s life in Fatima High wasn’t always composed of nonstop bullying and socially awkward, cringe-inducing interactions with his classmates.
Some good things happened to him as well, believe it or not.
Once, he had scored a single goal during soccer practice for their P.E. class through a combination of dumb luck, the opposing team underestimating him, and the “steroids” from his asthma medicine kicking in (he guessed… do steroids for asthma work the same as anabolic steroids?).
Perhaps it was adrenalin or the power of suggestion that pushed him forward. The placebo effect, even.
He certainly didn’t do much of anything after scoring that goal, wheezing and sweating profusely as he couldn’t get near the soccer ball again.
It was a goal he remembered but no one else did. Aside from that one shining moment, he was a clumsy set of gangly, unathletic limbs on the field and he almost always did the exercise warm-ups wrong, to his chagrin and his classmates’ amusement.
He remembered the feeling of momentary triumph followed by harsh reality like it was yesterday.
Once he had finished putting on his regular school uniform and storing away his P.E. uniform in his gym bag, he took off to the communal bathroom to answer the call of nature.
He felt giddy for a few seconds, but that washed away as soon as he looked at his face in the mirror.
He brushed his tangled bowl-cut hair with pointy bangs back, the individual strands dampened by his own sweat. He had frowned at how sallow his skin looked. He looked almost sickly.
He had always been slender yet… soft somehow. Embarrassingly so. He was never really athletic and lacked the hand-to-eye coordination required to properly play most sports.
He had narrow shoulders, meeker than a lamb, had clothes a few sizes too big for him, but was intelligent (or so he liked to think).
His reflection revealed his pallid face and frail, asthmatic body, which forced him to admit the lies he’d been telling himself.
He couldn’t fit in with his classmates or the students in his same year not only because he lacked athletic ability like the average person would. He also had the body and face of a 9-year-old girl with a terrible bowl-cut hair.
With that said, like him scoring a goal in that soccer match showed, every dog had his day.
***
Fantasy of Evolution
An Urban Fantasy Story by Abdiel
What is an Ophanim anyway?
Disclaimer:This work may reference copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is believed that this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright Law. All copyrighted material referred to in this work belongs to their respective owners. All rights reserved.
***
Chapter 3: The Birth of an Ophanim
***
Florante Galang’s spindly arms and legs shone with bluish-white electric plasma that formed their own flames and tendrils of power. As he unleashed his otherwise unathletic punches and kicks, they then burned his enemy’s own tentacles away into dust.
His punching form wasn’t exactly boxer-like but the energy he’d gathered inside him and projected outwards into pure blue flame proved sufficient in eradicating this maelstrom of living pasta.
Living pasta, huh? Ridiculous. He must’ve been dreaming. Of course, he was. He got hungry and dreamed of his favorite Italian dish.
He then wielded a lightning bolt that he waved around like a sword in order to hack and slash at the… giant living spaghetti creature with two enormous eyes glaring before him.
Might as well, since this was just a dream, right? An impossibly lucid dream.
It looked that a squid or an octopus mixed with a hearty Italian dish using the machine from the movie “The Fly”. An Italian Kraken, if you would.
‘What the hell is even going on right now?’ he thought. He fought complete nonsense. A fantasy of a childish mind addled by television and video games.
Regardless, he blasted the monster like he was some sort of superhero with uh, blasty superpowers while at the same time dodging its attacks.
He remained in the “zone”, so to speak. Or as he read in the library in a book about positive psychology, his body went through a “flow state”.
He fully immersed himself into using his electricity powers in burning, frying, destroying, cutting, and pruning the spreading pasta fungus monster or whatever, feeling energized, focused, involved, and strangely enjoying himself in the activity.
Only when he drew comics with a pencil and paper or made summarized outlines for the stories in his mind did he feel as hyped as he currently felt.
Florante rescued many a grade school child from the clutches of the plant-like monster, his summoned lightning strikes from the sky shielding them from any backlash or counterattacks from the living, breathing pasta dish.
Finally, he reached her.
The girl he spared in his supposed fever dream massacre. His classmate who nearly got strangled to death by this incomprehensible organism.
Jennifer “Jenny” Tolentino.
He saved her like he was her knight in shining armor. He finally saved the girl when usually a wimpy boy like him tended to be trampled or eaten by the invading ogre.
Right now, he felt more motivated than ever before. Empowered by his own righteousness.
This was the coolest he’d ever felt in his entire life. It felt even better than that one soccer goal he accidentally scored during his P.E. class. All the other times he could remember was him being an embarrassment.
In his other dream—or perhaps nightmare—where he stood up to his bully for once, it felt disturbingly good. But this felt even better.
This time, he wasn’t just venting his anger at imagined versions of his mean classmates.
Everyone wanted to strive to be someone better, after all. All humans wanted to be pure at heart. To become reliable.
For once, he was the badass instead of the wimp. Not bad for a 90-pound weakling, right?
As he got more and more into his flow state, the possibility that he was dreaming became the furthest thing on his mind at the moment.
He wanted to savor the moment without souring it with a disclaimer at the back of his mind. That this wasn’t real.
The wimpy kid who kept a dream journal then got caught unawares by the flying (really, floating) pasta monster’s flood of tendrils that stabbed him all over his body before he got rag-dolled and thrown to the roof of a utility vehicle in one fell swoop.
Damn it. Of course it was too good to be true.
Oh, his hubris. Why would he ever think things would go his way this time when it never did? Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Now on the verge of death, he awoke a second later, his most fatal wounds closed up.
Wait, what?
He then realized that the girl he had just rescued then rescued him in kind.
The damsel saved the knight in distress for a change.
Jenny just healed him with healing energy.
She sat in prayer while a gentle halo of light shown from her head, bathing him in its warmth. Like a wilted plant receiving enough water and sunshine to recover and start photosynthesis.
She was a healer like in one of those role-playing videogames. Or in Dungeons and Dragons. Or one of those shamans or mystics of myth that magically healed people with touch and prayer.
Her aura flowed formless as it enveloped Florante like an amoeba made of amniotic fluid used to feed a baby, her head bathed in its azure brightness like an ornate, gleaming crown.
Her angelic halo.
Wow. Man, was Jenny always this cute?
Wait a minute. He got ahead of himself again. He had a crush on Laura Reyes, not Jenny Tolentino. Then again, Laura had already rejected him, so maybe… Ah! What the hell was he thinking?
More importantly, Jenny seemed just like him. Somehow, she gained powers as he had. Just like Gerry in their final battle in his previous dream, actually.
'Or was it really a dream?’ he thought. Aloud, he exclaimed, “Susmaryosep. You have powers too!”
“Uh… yes,” she answered matter-of-factly.
Glibly, he replied in kind, “Thanks a lot, Jenny! You’re a huge help! Heal me while I stop that gigantic pasta creature with my special attacks!”
“Heal you…? Hey, wait, Gab…! I mean, Flor!”
Surprising even himself with his brashness, Florante then barked at Jenny, “Don’t call me Flor, then. The name is Florante.”
“Wha…?” she started, readjusting her glasses. “Everyone in class calls you Flor.”
“I never told them to call me that,” said Florante. “It’s a girl’s name.”
He shook his head. He had no time to lose. He had a monster to kill and a school to save.
“…LIGHT ARRAY!”
Wait… Light A-What?“ stuttered Jenny, jolting herself up to her feet after seeing Florante do the same.
She got her answer to her question soon enough.
The pinpoint concentrated bullets of electrical energy that formed on all ten fingertips of Florante allowed him to focus the torrents of lightning and thunder he produced by force of will into energy bullets he could shoot like with a gun.
That was the Light Array or an array of light bullets. He based the name off of the main character of the comic book he thought about writing.
Florante’s explosive energy bolts initially measured to about pinprick size before they shot off and dilated to about the size of bullets, yet every bullet exploded like huge blockbuster bombs.
It barely fazed the monster. It regrew the massive burning damage from the Light Array in a moment’s notice, replacing the tendrils set aflame like wicks on a candle or the fuse of a dynamite.
Although Florante made enough leeway in cutting off the spaghetti monster to the pass before crossing the road to get to the other side where it could victimize more people, he lacked firepower to overwhelm it altogether.
The spaghetti-like eldritch abomination simply kept growing and growing. Unrelenting. Unkillable. Unstoppable.
The skies went grey with nimbus clouds as Galang tried again and summoned more and more bolts of lightning into the fray, wielding the arcing plasma that appeared like cracks of light in the sky with his bare hands.
Jenny however dragged him away by his arm before several cars suddenly hurled at him by the creature could crash against him, turning him into roadkill.
"Ah, wait!” Florante said, half-grateful for the save and half-indignant for the interruption. Nevertheless, he froze, more because this was the first time a girl had ever held him like this than for any half-baked sense of indignation.
“Jeez, Flor! I was talking to you!” she said as she pushed him for cover in the church nearest the school. Or rather, the church that was connected directly to the school.
“What did I just say?” Florante admonished in spite of himself. “Stop calling me Flor!”
“Fine!Florante!” She sighed with a roll of her eyes. “…I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”
“Jenny…?” Florante trailed off. “What is it?”
“Listen up, Florante. You’re an Ophanim. You’re pretty powerful for an Ophanim, but you’re just an Ophanim nonetheless.”
“…What are you talking about?” he asked. “Orphanim? Are you calling me an orphan? My parents are still alive!”
“No, an Ophanim. That’s different. Your true form is actually that of a being composed of giant wheels with a thousand eyes on them.”
“…WHAT THE HELL?”
She pinched the knot between her furrowed eyebrows and adjusted her glasses as they both heard a rumble from the distance, like the heavens themselves growling at them through the subsequent thunderclaps after the lightning strike.
“Look, it’s hard to explain, but you’re a wingless angel,” she said.
“Wingless… angel…?” he trailed off. “What are you talking about?”
Jennifer hesitated. Her eyes obscured by the glint of her glasses, Jenny asked, “What do you remember from your last dream?”
“Wait, what? W-What does that have to do with anything?” he asked defensively. “How’d you know I had a dream?”
Jenny looked Florante straight in the eyes. “Just tell me.”
With a gulp, he relented. “I-I dreamt that I… had revenge on some of our classmates then Laura then turned into an angel in order to face me down! Then I blanked out when we faced off!”
He winced when his eyes met with Jenny’s. As though she could tell he had lied by omission.
That he had left out the part where he murdered his classmates in cold blood with his superpowers, thinking it was all a dream or even a lucid dream.
To his surprise, Jenny didn’t spare him a condemning or withering look. Instead, she merely looked confused.
“…That’s it?” she asked.
Huh. Weird reaction.
“That’s all I remember. Oh, and me warning you to stay away from school that day. But it’s all just a dream, right?
Yes, it was just a dream. A harmless dream. All the people he killed were still alive when he came back to school! Not to mention, didn’t he have superpowers in his dream! Why would he out of all people have superpowers?
A weakling like him. Having powers fit for a hero. Preposterous.
"W-Wait, what happened a few days ago? I had a fever back then. I was so sick that I got a fever dream somehow.”
“That was no dream. Everything about it was real.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“N-No way.” Florante slumped against the wall. “B-But that can’t be! I… I killed our classmates in that dream! It can’t be real! That’d make me a murderer…!”
They stood at the foot of the stairs leading to the church, but were then forced to climb it when the spaghetti monster finally reached them, its slimy pasta tentacles of varying lengths and widths flowing through every nook and cranny.
Primal fear and adrenalin pushed them towards the safety of the holy sanctuary, unwilling to even entertain the thought of such disgusting noodles filling their every nook and cranny.
As they ran towards—upwards, really—the church, Jenny asked, “If you truly thought it was a dream, then why were you fantasizing about killing our classmates that day, Florante?”
“Huh?”
Florante gulped, not knowing how to answer.
“I wanted to vent, I guess,” he replied lamely. “They kept messing with me. Bullying me. So I thought up a dream about me paying them back. To release all my stress from them. It was my way of venting, okay?!”
“…What’s your problem, bro?” she accused. “Get some help.”
“WHAT? Hey, it was a harmless dream! A fantasy! I wouldn’t do it for real!”
Galang then saw the disgusted look she gave him and turned away bitterly.
“Of course, you wouldn’t be able to relate, since you’re Miss Popularity and all!”
She looked away with a cute pout, her glistening glasses hiding her eyes. “That’s not it at all.”
Meanwhile, the crawling spaghetti monster with one healthy eye… he shot the other eye to save Jenny, but that was already healing… had gathered up a fresh batch of people to absorb unto it.
Florante wielded a lightning bolt like a shining laser saw blade, cutting through the endless tendrils before they could reach any civilian (or policeman, for that matter).
This electrical bolt could also bend and sway like a jagged whip for good measure.
It still wasn’t enough. The more tentacles he sliced up with his lightning bolt or incinerated with his Light Array, twenty more grew back. Like he was making things worse than better.
As though fighting a ridiculous version of the hydra of Greek lore.
Apparently, he found it easier to kill his powerless classmates than to take down a giant monster by himself.
'Well, duh.’
Come to think of it, when Jacinto manifested superpowers like Florante did, the quiet boy barely won that battle as well.
More tendrils approached them. He could hear Jenny’s reproach in the background. She told him to retreat and hide.
“You’re no match for that monster. Let me handle this!”
“HEY! Wait a second…!”
Jenny proceeded to dodge and run away from the tendrils, using herself as bait. But what could she do with her powers that could possibly hurt the monster? Heal it to death?
She needed help, but nothing he did could affect the Italian pasta creature.
No. It was unfair.
For once in his life, he felt in control, only to have such good feelings slip from his fingers as well? The one blessing he got from the heavens didn’t amount to a hill of beans after all?
'No! It won’t end like this! I won’t let it!’
What happened next was hard to describe. He felt his very consciousness extend outwards.
Suddenly, he could see everything around him. He could see a mouth-agape Jenny back away from him from behind him at the same time as he stared at the spaghetti monster in front of him.
What. The. Hell.
His current point of view reminded him of when he got hurled away by the monster and he spun around, seeing the sky and the ground in a split-second. A topsy-turvy world. Except he could do so now without spinning.
He could see the dark heavens above him and the concrete ground below him. He couldn’t feel his arms and legs anymore, almost like when the spaghetti monster almost killed him earlier.
Most importantly, his eyesight was aflame. Like literally set on fire and pulsating with heat at the same time, shining with their own light.
He could see bright flames burst all around him and his eyes. He blinked his eyes yet could still see with them closed.
He moved, causing everything around him to break. Not unlike the monster before him.
They clashed and got into an entanglement. It was then that he got a chance to look at himself.
Not through a reflection, but through his own eyes. His multitude of eyes. Encased in endless wheels and rings adorned with eyes set on fire, whirling around each other like a complex gyroscope.
He was an Ophanim. Just like Jenny said.
Huh.
Oh, right. He remembered now. He read about them as he did research for his comics about angels. Biblical angels were eldritch abominations that rivaled demons, fallen angels themselves, in hideousness.
He read about them while researching for his comics and decided not to include them in his stories because of how ugly and monstrous they looked.
Most people remember the winged cherubs and seraphs featured in paintings more than these illogical celestial beings that could make you go mad at the sight of them.
“But what is that thing?!” the frightened humans would scream at the sight of him and angles like him. “A destructive deity? A beast? Or perhaps a giant demon of darkness?”
Haha. Of course. He turned into a monster.
A monster who killed his classmates for petty things like teasing, bullying, and pushing him to social suicide.
All he needed to do to win against the spaghetti monster was to abandon his humanity and become a full-fledged “angel”.
Ah, he became a monster to take on a monster, huh? Wasn’t there some sort of quote warning against doing just that?
If this wasn’t another fever dream, what a way for him to go.
Like Godzilla and King Kong, the two monsters battled, with the spaghetti monster drowning the gyroscoping, multi-eyed Ophanim with fiery eyes with its noodly membranes like an Italian red and white sea.
However, before Florante’s Ophanim form could fully merge with the living spaghetti monster, Jenny interfered, blocking the two of them with her own body, her aura surprisingly repelling the both of them away.
“I’m sorry for making you think I don’t understand what it’s like to be bullied or be an outcast, Florante.”
'JENNY!’ was what Florante couldn’t scream because he had no mouth.
He actually saw her move from behind to in front of him in a human eye blink thanks to his multitude of open eyes, which prompted him to will himself back to his original human form to avoid crushing her with the combined weight of his Ophanim body and the tentacled abomination’s gargantuan mass.
Galang’s multi-ocular vision went from 360 degrees all around, up above, and below him to focusing only on the binocular sight of Jenny jumping towards the fleshiest parts of the spaghetti monster, its brain looking like a pulsating bulk of minced meat.
Jennifer again ended up entangled in the slimy web of appendages, her glasses miraculously still on her face.
She turned her head at him and said, “Don’t go berserk like the last time, idiot! I have this all under control.”
'Like the last time…?’ Florante then sputtered, “The hell you do! You’re a healer, not a fighter! You can’t kill that creature!”
She smirked and picked up something inside her bag or purse. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
She ended up holding a moldy ham sandwich inside a plastic bag. Ew. Gross,
“Have you lost your goddamned mind?” demanded Florante. “Don’t throw expired food at that thing!”
But that was exactly what she did, with the moldy sandwich landing right in the middle of the monster with a lame splat.
However, Florante soon figured out that she imbued her aura and essence unto that rotting snack, which made the mold grow. And spread.
For about a few seconds, the al dente tentacles of the spaghetti monster started getting bluish stains all over them. In a minute or two, nearly all of the long noodly appendages got filled with cobwebs of mold.
The suffocating spores spread all over the noodles of the abomination, making its tentacles fall off and its meaty parts rot as though they were diseased.
Jennifer’s healing factor also promoted bacterial, fungal, and moldy growth.
Like Florante’s Ophanim form, the spaghetti monster could not scream because it had no mouth to scream with even as it wriggled like it were having a seizure. Or like a cockroach flipped belly-up trying to get back on its feet.
Tremors made the few remaining healthy noodle arms vibrate around in frenzy as the creature struggled against the overgrowth and unstoppable spread of the malignant mold spores, with it starting to stink with the smell of a moldy wet basement with dead bodies inside it.
In fifteen minutes, every inch of the spaghetti monster got covered in mold. It eventually stopped moving altogether a second or two later, with its body turning into bushels of what appeared to be kinky hair or bushy grass but was actually fully grown mold.
The rotting pasta monster was practically cocooned in cottony, web-like mold. No butterfly emerged from it though. It instead serves as its moldy grave.
Instead of using laser blasts or light missiles to bombard the creature to death, Miss Tolentino used her life-giving powers to propagate mold all over the monster’s noodly appendages until it died. And rotted. And stunk to high heaven of death, bacteria, and mold spores.
Jenny did in fact “heal” the monster to death.
The girl harrumphed, pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, and said to Florante with an upturned nose, “I don’t want to hear a mere Ophanim tell me off about how to deal with demons.”
***
Florante gulped hard, feeling kind of lightheaded at what he just witnessed. He looked at himself to check if he was still human and not a scary set of orbiting fire wheels or rings with fully functional human(?) eyes on them.
Yep, still human. Not a sentient biblical angel monster… thingy.
His normally brown or tan hands and arms looked quite pale though. A shiver also ran through his spine. His face felt numb. Actually, his whole body did. Was he going into shock?
More importantly, what did he just witness?
Aside from killing a living pasta creature, his whole reality shattered like glass.
'I mean, literallyshattered.’
The moldy monster carcass that was once living pasta, along with the destroyed buildings and multitude of people caught in its noodly tentacles, crumbled and cracked like so many smashed mirrors or windows, revealing underneath them untouched architecture and unharmed civilians minding their own business.
Like pulling the curtain off of a puppet stage show, revealing the puppeteer hidden underneath it.
Like the whole incident never happened in the first place.
Was it all a lie? Was he dreaming again?
With her hands on her hips, Jenny said, “There is no ontological inertia when it comes to fights between angels and demons. Once the influence of either is defeated, everything should come back to normal.”
“…What?” Florante just stared at her.
“Uh, there’s no object permanence with fights between angels and demons. Whether the creation and destruction of something becomes true or false depends on whose will shall prevail.”
“…Seriously, Jenny. WHAT?”
What in the world was she talking about?
Jenny pushed her glasses up her nose, smiled, and said, “Long story short, it’s like nothing happened here at all, right?”
A flood of questions flowed inside Florante’s brain, but his tiny mouth didn’t have the means to expel them, which gave him a headache.
Where should he start?
“Th-That spaghetti monster was a demon?”
Well, that was a good place to start as any.
“Yeah. I guess you could say that,” said Jenny, who stared off into space as though avoiding Florante’s own gaze. Like she wanted to be elsewhere.
What was with her anyway?
“Why is there a demon at Fatima High? Why am I seeing demons in Metro Manila? What happened to me?!” he demanded, his mind finally unloading question after question.
He gulped and let his voice go down to a whisper after he became aware of himself.
He looked like an insane person saying such things in a lazy afternoon.
An afternoon sky that, a minute earlier, looked as bloodstained as the streets below, which in turn looked like something out of a war zone.
Jenny stared back at Florante with glinting eyeglasses, her lips a thin, grim line of an unreadable emotion.
“W-What is it, Jenny?” Florante asked, gulping. For some reason, his fingertips sizzled with static and electric sparks. Almost by reflex.
Jenny then said, “Do you remember what happened between you and our classmates?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Those powers you used just now against the monster. It’s the same powers you used against our classmates.”
“WHA…!?”
Florante felt his face drain of blood. He stared back at his sparkling hands. His complexion became like ash.
Wait, how did she know…?
Just what the hell was going on?
***
A memory of a hazy dream reemerged from Florante’s subconscious…
Beyond the entrance gates of Fatima School, past the concrete quadrangle and basketball courts of the grade school campus, and right into the high school building stood the girl of Florante’s dreams who turned his life into a nightmare.
At first, he didn’t recognize her, but then soon identified her as Laura Reyes.
Her hair danced from the breeze like a proud black flag at full mast. Her slim arms showed some muscle definition but not in a bodybuilder sort of way. She was quite the athletic student enough.
Florante wondered back in his dream why she was there, only to have the horrifying realization that she wanted revenge for him “killing” her and all their classmates.
All of his bullies. All of the people who made fun of him. Rejected him. Ridiculed him. He damned them all to hell with anime-like energy blasts from his fingers.
The unbeckoned dream—surely a nightmare for others—served as his way of coping with his bullies’ abuse and the corpse that was his social life.
However, for some reason, the visage of the angelic Laura and her transparent water wings then morphed into a bespectacled face of pure indiscernible consternation.
The grim face of Jennifer Tolentino.
Florante had woken up from his flashback to reality. If he could call it reality.
Perhaps he merely awoke from one dream to another. But that couldn’t be it. Or else shewouldn’t be dreaming the same dream he dreamt!
***
Back at the Fatima High parking lot…
“I-I thought it was a dream…” Florante murmured to himself, the gears inside his head grinding like the wheels or rings of eyes from his gyroscopic Ophanim form. “Right? Of course. Otherwise, none of this would make sense! I’m still dreaming, aren’t I?”
Jenny’s features softened for a hot minute because she furrowed her eyebrows again, which wrinkled her forehead even as her eyes remained hidden by her glinting glasses.
“You used those same powers to kill our classmates, Flor.”
And so a great sense of shame washed over him. Like him getting caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar.
But wait a minute, though! This all happened in his dreams! His imagination! Should he be blamed for his subconscious desiring karma against all of his bully classmates? Couldn’t he have this at least?
His indignation also kicked in, along with confusion. His mind went a mile a minute as he realized two things. One, how did she know about his dream? Two, why couldn’t he dream that dream he dreamt?
He even said as much. “That’s unfair!” he choked out as he became of two minds about the broached subject, feeling equal parts indignant and shameful about it as he withstood the withering bespectacled glare of Jenny’s shining glasses.
Defending himself from her unsaid accusations.
“It’s a victimless crime, isn’t it? At least I didn’t kill them for real!”
Instead of passive-aggressively pulling pranks or offering snide remarks at them in real life, he could just… imagine them getting murdered in his hands! With superpowers at that, so it was more goofy than dark!
Yet Jenny still didn’t respond, which further scratched and clawed at his heart. And on his nerves. Irritating him.
“Would it have been better if I did it for real?” he snapped. “Should I be bullied in my dreams like I’m bullied in real life?”
Even in the comfort of his own mind, he still couldn’t win against his own bullies? Even imagining his bullies getting their comeuppance was off-limits? Couldn’t he even do at least that? How was that fair?
“What sort of sicko fantasizes about killing his classmates, huh?” she answered back. Finally. Refuting both his words and what he was thinking.
So the other shoe finally dropped, and she finally addressed the elephant in the room. Or in the parking lot.
“How did you know about my dreams?” Galang hissed. “Did you read my mind? Or did they all really happen?”
“It’s not important. But you’re a danger to yourself and others,” said Tolentino, who had her hand at the ready while holding some sort of oversized acorn or mistletoe, wielding it like a grenade.
“What’s that supposed to mean…?” Florante trailed off, eyeing the plant she wielded warily, remembering what Jenny did with the spaghetti monster using a moldy sandwich.
“It’s not as if I really have superpowers or anything! I was just venting! You know I don’t actually have the power to kill my bullies in real life! I’m not even sure what’s happening right now is real either!” he rationalized. Bargained, almost.
Sparks flew. Literally. Electrical arcs of power flowed from his body. He hadn’t noticed he’d been getting pressed and heated all this time, which was probably why Jenny felt threatened enough to arm herself with a weaponized plant.
“Why are you blaming me for a dream? Like I can control what I dream about? Don’t blame me, blame my subconscious! Blame my trauma!” he said. He reasoned. That was a reasonable stance, was it not?
“Even if it was a dream, it’s still the dream of a psychopath,” said Jenny, which made Florante flinch.
Their eyes met. Florante’s glistening eyes finally saw the similarly resignated eyes of Jenny, the glare from her glasses gone.
“Flor,” she started after a deep breath, “You killed Laura. Why did you kill her? If it were just the bullies, I’d understand, but Laura? What did she do to you?”
She kind of had a point. What drove him to kill his crush along with his bullies? Not that it would’ve been any better had he only killed his bullies.
Florante went face-to-face with the consequences of his actions from a fever dream he had used to vent his frustrations.
He cringed in horror at what he had done. At what he had fantasized as his coping mechanism.
“…I’m so sorry I killed our classmates in my fantasy! I thought it was all a dream!” he said. He pleaded. He wanted to say that it was just a dream again, but he felt like he was repeating himself.
He cried. He wept openly. And he lied as naturally as he breathed. Or at least half-lied.
He wasn’t that sorry about having that dream. Although it hinged on the fact that it was all a dream.
He was only mostly sorry. Not all the way sorry. Why should he apologize for becoming a monster? Did anyone apologize for making him one?
He was also sorry that Laura had to die back then. If he could redo everything, he’d avoid harming her.
Why did he kill her again? To be honest, because he got drunk with power. For the first time, he felt in charge after his bullies trampled over him all this time.
He had a short fuse and she ended up collateral damage. However, all of his reasons sounded like lame excuses to him.
He couldn’t even explain himself to Jenny without looking bad even though he still felt indignant about being blamed for his dreams.
As Florante blinked back his tears, he felt Jenny back away and ready her acorn bomb at him, as though to finish him off.
The fingertips of his right hand flickered to life with energy in order to zap Jenny away, but he hesitated. Stopped himself cold. He didn’t want a repeat of what happened with Laura Reyes.
With a resigned sigh, his shoulders slumped and the power from his hand faded into the ether. If she wanted to finish him off here and now then so be it.
“It’s best that you forget everything I’ve said and everything that happened here, Flor,” said Jenny. “Let the nightmare pass. Move on with your life from now on. Or else.”
The velvet darkness crawled into the edges of his vision before everything became pitch black.
And then he woke up.
Even that was a dream.
***
Back at the classroom of First Year Section St. Francis of Assisi)…
A few minutes had already passed after the final bell rung. Dismissal time.
Florante heard the door slam from within the classroom, which awoke him to the realization that he was all alone.
What a weird dream. He’d been having one weird dream after another lately.
Something about Jennifer Tolentino confronting him from his other disturbing dream where he killed all of his classmates.
Granted, that was truly disturbing of him to dream up, but it wasn’t as if he had control over the nightmares his bullying induced. Like he said to her dream self, she should blame his traumatized subconscious instead of himself.
Still, he did feel a bit guilty about killing the dream version of Laura, but she did resurrect herself in the same dream, at least.
Ugh. He should have a better coping mechanism than this to deal with his high school life and his ongoing social suicide.
'I'm… I mean, I wasan Ophanim in my dream, huh?’ he thought. 'Wild. I literally turned into a monster back then. Biblically accurate angels are quite the head trip. No wonder they always say, 'Don’t be afraid,’ to people, huh? They’re freak shows and then some!’
His head then turned. A savage movement.
Like a deer realizing it had been trapped. Or headed on a collision course with a truck, the bright headlights mesmerizing it to a standstill.
A minute passed, and he concluded that one of his bullies probably played a passive-aggressive prank on him without revealing their identity.
Probably to avoid ending up on Florante’s list of bullies he sent to his teachers like the little snitch that he was.
Yeah, he snitched. It was his only way to make them somehow ease up on their outright flagrant bullying, only for him to suffer from being ostracized nonetheless.
He pushed such thoughts at the back of his mind.
He didn’t want his mind to wander and open up the can of worms full of his bad memories—of humiliation and unchecked abuse that happened to him on a regular basis—while currently suffering through this dreary weather.
He wished he could forget every day. Erase everything and end up with a clean slate every time. Or he wished it was Opposite Day and his bullies would leave him alone.
Not even suddenly turn into his friends or anything. Just leave him be.
If only.
Most of his days as a freshman were uneventful and boring anyway, if a bit awkward.
He mostly had no one to talk to. People laughed behind his back. He felt extra conscious, afraid of embarrassing himself or doing something cringe-worthy. So he kept to himself.
He’d actually improved from his grade school days of being the butt of everyone’s jokes because on top of being socially awkward, he was more than a bit of a crybaby to boot when he was younger.
At least now, he didn’t cry as much.
Again, he was a spoiled brat who was a bit of a weirdo. He was quick to anger, though. The smallest things could set him off. He wore his heart on his sleeve.
During nursery and kindergarten, he acted particularly terrible. Almost like a toddler.
He even embarrassed himself up on stage when he was assigned to memorize and recite a poem about picking up 50 pesos. He cried after the people up front laughed at his antics.
He must’ve been about 7 or 8 years old when it happened. Embarrassingly, he had the emotional maturity of a 2-3 year old at the time.
He didn’t only cry back then. He bawled. He had a tantrum.
Later on, his tantrums in class got so bad that his mother had to be called in.
Naturally, his behavior wasn’t conducive to getting friends. His only best friend at the time soon abandoned him for being such a crybaby weirdo and for acting too needy.
In fairness to Florante, he somewhat improved and emotionally matured as he grew older. Instead of bawling, he’d only cry to himself quietly, which was an improvement (somewhat).
Soon, he’d only get misty eyed when his emotions got the better of him.
However, the fact that he was so sensitive for a man made him a prime target for teasing and bullying all throughout his childhood life.
What was worse was that when he was even younger, he had zero self-awareness.
So by the time he got older, he could only shrug and sigh in resignation as to why no one would be friends with him, why the girls in his school found him gross, and why he was bullied so often by everyone.
He only had himself to blame.
Hindsight was 20/20. A cringe-inducing 20/20.
He could only cringe in remembrance. He swore once he made his debut in high school, he’d never again act like a huge… er… wimp. Nerd. Loser.
Afterwards, from crying a lot to crying a little, he soon graduated to not crying at all. However, he still had the blues whenever the popular kids and/or his new bullies called him out on his… eccentricities.
This year’s batch of Fatima High School freshmen had a total of 200 plus girls and boys occupying about 5 classrooms of about 40 or so students each.
Fatima had its own grade school too, so many of the kids here had grown up together, give or take several students who were “accelerants” or those who moved from Grade 6 to high school without going through Grade 7 because of their good grades.
The door to the classroom then opened again, startling him. Waking him up from his idle reverie.
A cold wind reminiscent to the typhoon Florante Galang conjured up in his fever dream gusted through the classroom, rustling papers on the desk before swirling his bowl-cut hair around his face, his bangs obscuring his eyes.
The girl who came in merely stepped towards the desk, picked up a notebook she probably forgot on its surface, and walked out again. She was 'What’s-her-name,’ he couldn’t remember at the moment.
Their eyes met, which made Florante turn his attention back to his backpack, pretending to check it out once more, all to avoid meeting eyes with the girl who’d just entered.
He felt her stare at him (if she really was staring), which finally made him remember her name. She was Regina. Regina Something-or-Another.
'Regina Mariano.’
He shuddered, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on his end, vaguely remembering the crying and begging on her part during the dream he had of her and their other classmates.
She was begging for her life. Unlike Laura, who died instantly and came back to life later.
Regina was one of the people who teased him in school and, as a result, he apparently fantasized (consciously or unconsciously) being responsible for her demise.
Yikes. What was he thinking? What was wrong with him?
No wonder he had another dream of Jenny telling him off. What a nightmare he had, with him acting like a vengeful killer.
And, shamed as he was to admit it, it felt good getting even with his classmates with zero consequences. Up until he felt guilty doing so. Up until he faced the consequences of such actions.
Even if he only dreamed it, it was still a screwed up thing for him to think about.
He then looked up and saw him stand in the doorway, the afternoon sunset bathing him in golden light.
It was Alonzo Estanislao. One of Fatima’s infamous Dead Kids.
***
Facing the opposite direction as Galang, Alonzo gave Florante a sidelong glance with a smirk, his round shades that teachers kept telling him to take off while in class (or so Florante heard) glistening in the fading sunlight.
“Hey, kiddo.”
“Hey, Lonzo. Long time, no see.”
“It has, hasn’t it? How you been, buddy?”
They weren’t actually classmates. They belonged in separate years.
Estanislao was a sophomore or second year high school student. Galang was a freshman or first year high school student.
If Florante remembered correctly, Alonzo was in Second Year St. Anthony of Padua or something.
“Long time, no see,” said Alonzo, to which Florante smiled at in spite of himself. “We’ve barely been seeing each other in the Art Club.”
The freshman chuckled. “Yeah. I haven’t been feeling well. Sorry.”
Ah yes. The Dead Kids. They were his only friends in high school, with all of them belonging in different years or different sections. He had no friends in his own section.
He missed them terribly. He’d been having his strange dreams and nightmares ever since they haven’t been meeting with each other all that time.
Their Art Club connection got preempted by other school activities like the intramurals and so forth. They hadn’t gotten together for lunch much either for some reason.
He’d felt even lonelier than before since. He only had his empty existence with his bully classmates for weeks on end since then.
Lonzo walked inside the classroom, his silhouette highlighted by the afternoon sun, his hands inside his pockets.
His smile then turned into a toothy grin, which was the signal for Florante to cover his nose and mouth. However, he did so a second too late.
“Ugh. LONZO, YOU’RE DISGUSTING!”
Alonzo cackled like a villain as he fanned the fumes of his bloodcurdling fart so it’d waft all over the otherwise empty classroom, making it smell like a gas station bathroom instead. “Your reactions are the best, Flor.”
“I told you, don’t call me that!” chided Florante with his hand still covering his mouth and nose. He didn’t dare inhale one gulp more of Lonzo’s methane emission.
“What’s that? I can’t hear you?” said Alonzo, which prompted Galang to move away from him with his bag after he crop-dusted the classroom with his deadly fumes.
“You’re such an idiot,” shouted Florante, but his now uncovered mouth betrayed a ghost of a smile.
Sure, even with the Dead Kids, he was the runt of the pack. But at least they treated him with a modicum of respect and their jokes to him weren’t malevolent.
Florante missed them. He missed Alonzo. He missed the Hidalgo Siblings.
He missed the rivalry between Alonzo and Kalantiaw “Kal” Hidalgo even as Lonzo kept hitting on Kal’s sister Dalisay.
He even missed Jacob “Benjo” Benjamin, even though his clownish antics reminded him of his own classmate’s bullying. Come to think of it, Benjo was his least favorite member of the Dead Kids.
His fellow outcasts were all led by the biggest weirdo of them all, Francisco “Kiko” Celestino, whom he missed talking to as well.
Kiko was the smartest student of his year filled with mostly jocks, muscle-heads, and athletes.
He got made fun of behind his back for probably being the smartest kid in Fatima High School yet having mostly friends or acquaintances from lower years. By being the King of the Edgelords, so to speak.
***
The next day, during lunchtime…
The next day was better. And worse.
After quickly eating snacks instead of a whole lunch, Florante ended up in the library in his lonesome.
By his own volition, sheer whimsy, and curious capriciousness, he began his research on the comic book he’d been working on anew, since info about it had been prominently featured in his latest dreams.
His dreams were reminding him of the germ of an idea growing in his head.
He started on the religion section to research more about the term, “Ophanim”.
Apparently, “Ophanim” or “ophanim” was a Hebrew word, “אוֹפַנִּים”, which meant “wheels”, “spheres”, or “whirlwinds” in English. It could be alternatively spelled “ofanim” or “auphanim”. It was also known as “galgalim”.
They were construed as angels by the one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the Book of Ezekiel, he viewed them as wheels in his vision of a chariot.
Ophanim angels could also be referred to as “thrones” and were a class of celestial beings (along with the “Seraphim” and “Cherubim”) that never slept and stood guard on the Throne of God.
Interesting. His gyroscopic form had a name? Or rather, he was an eldritch angel of this level?
No, no. Wait. His dream self was the Ophanim. In real life, he was still human. Only in his dreams.
Did he read about ophanims before, only to remember it in a dream about it later on? Who knew an ophanim was actually a thing? It must’ve somehow resurfaced in his subconscious or something, right?
Elsewhere in the library, he saw Laura and her friends gather for… research purposes, maybe. By reflex, he hid from her with his Book on Angels and Demons in tow in one of the tall shelves.
Whew. That was close.
It wasn’t only because he dreamed about killing her. Or he had a nightmare where he killed her but he’d never do the same thing in real life. No way he’d do so. Nope, nope.
It was also because he flashed back to why they stopped talking in the first place. When she saw him sketching her and misconstrued that it was a nude sketch instead of him using a rough sketch of her body.
They’d been awkward around each other ever since. He just couldn’t explain himself to her every time.
His stupid bullies who told her he drew her nude didn’t help. Although in hindsight, the fact that he was drawing her was kind of creepy of him to do.
Like he was a big enough pervert to actually draw her in the nude. Then again, his bullies figured out he had a crush on her and used that against him.
Anyway, he had other things to attend to. Like freshman year Algebra homework he considered doing in the library itself before lunchtime was over so that he’d have more free time to draw or plot out his comic at home.
Naturally, like any other normal student (that wasn’t an Ophanim, Auphanim, or Galganim in real life), he didn’t do his homework and instead decided to research on his comic book there and then.
He then remembered the living sentient flood of spaghetti they just fought that the Jenny from his dream claimed to be a demon.
Aside from it being utterly ridiculous, it also made him think about his Ophanim form. What difference did his Ophanim self had with the flying, crawling, and unstoppable spaghetti monster?
Weren’t angels and demons essentially the same, except demons were just fallen angels that betrayed God?
Even Seraphims and Cherubims had horrible descriptions in scripture. The former was a cluster of wings and the latter was different winged animals spliced together.
Biblical angels were hardly angelic and somehow as monstrous as their demonic counterparts.
A bored Florante then got a phone book off of a nearby shelf to look through the names and phone numbers of different people. Perhaps he could use mix and match these names in order to give names to the so-far nameless characters of his comic book.
On a whim, he tried looking for Jennifer Tolentino’s name inside the phonebook, and sure enough he got several Jennifers there. Or rather, several people with the name of Jennifer Tolentino. It wasn’t exactly a unique name.
Besides which, she was about the same age as he was, so he should instead be looking for the name of her mother or father. Or the parents she was living with.
He then got a hold of an old year book back in the 1970s and 1980s.
He idly flipped through unfamiliar faces and year book quotes, hoping to find something he could use for his comic book.
It was harder finding the older yearbooks because they were so old. He noted that Our Lady of Fatima School of Mandaluyong was founded back in 1959. Many of the yearbooks from the 1960s were missing.
Wait a damn minute.
Florante noticed something amiss or at least a bit curious from the pile of yearbooks he read.
He found Jennifer Tolentino’s name in another yearbook. Obviously not from their batch of students—they were freshmen and they had three more years to go before they’d get their own yearbook—but one from the 1960s.
The picture staring back at him was the spirit and image of Jennifer “Jenny” Tolentino from 4th Year Saint Patrick of Ireland, the same section Francisco “Kiko” Celestino belonged to.
What the hell was going on here?
Jennifer Narcissa Tolentino or someone named like her who also looks exactly like her was enrolled into Fatima High back in School Year 1966-1967. Or about 30 years ago.
So the fever dreams—or rather, the nightmares—he’d been having all this time of him murdering all his bullies and confronting an angelic form of his crush or facing off against a giant spaghetti monster weren’t in his imagination but real?!
His world, or perhaps his head, then started spinning.
What was he to do now? All the relief he felt when he awoke from his dream, only for him to see evidence that it was real in his real life…!
***
In a hazed frenzy, he had the old yearbook and phone book filled with names under “T” for “Tolentino” Xerox-copied for later reference.
He had no friends so he couldn’t ask around for Jenny’s number and address from any of his classmates without arousing suspicion or him looking like a creep.
So he found out which Jenny Tolentino or Tolentino Family on the phone book was the one he shared a classroom with the hard way.
He dialed numbers on his parents’ landline asking for her, saying it was her classmate, crossing out the numbers who said no or had a different-sounding Jenny on the other line.
He found out the name of Jenny’s parents from overheard conversations in class when he pretended to be asleep and his classmates pretended he didn’t exist.
He half-remembered her saying where she was from Makati while Laura, who was from Antipolo, stayed with relatives in Metro Manila. It was when the three first met.
Ah. Makati. This info allowed him to shorten his list of Tolentino candidates even further, with him crossing out any phone numbers and addresses listed outside of Makati.
He looked for a girl whose parents were named either Bartolemew or Myra Tolentino or even anyone directly listed as Jenny or Jennifer Tolentino in the Makati area just in case she lived alone.
This went on for days or a little over a week, since he had to hide what he was doing from his doting parents who wasn’t used to him chatting away on the phone.
He kept calling and getting wrong numbers until in the final ten numbers in his list, he hit the jackpot.
“Hello…?” said a familiar voice.
Ah. It was her. Jenny, his classmate. Bingo.
Shit, he didn’t know what to say. So he hung up, gathered himself, got a piece of pad paper, and wrote the topics he wanted to cover. Uh, for posterity.
He had so many things to talk to her about. Like how did he end up becoming an orphan-whatever. That scary angel form that looked like a gyroscope with eyes on its rings.
Or what happened when she said he should forget about his nightmares and live on in blissful ignorance, even though this only made him more curious to discover the world she belonged in.
She was an angel herself, wasn’t she? That was how she was able to attend that same high school twice from 30-something years ago yet still look like she hadn’t aged a day.
Or maybe she was a vampire. He wasn’t sure.
He called Jenny again, introduced himself as Florante, her classmate
“Florante…? How’d you get this number?” she asked. “Did Laura tell you? Wait, that’s impossible. You’re not even on speaking terms with her.”
With a sigh, he then told her, “I remember.”
“Excuse me?”
“I remember you told me I was an Ophanim. I remember you told me that I killed our classmates. That I killed Laura. I remember everything.”
He then hung up his landline, left his home without notifying his parents, and flewtowards the address indicated in a Post-It in order to confront Jenny about his and her special powers.
***
A few hours later…
Reality ensued, much to Florante’s chagrin.
So after a while of jumping atop roofs and scaling buildings, he took a jeepney to the village where Jennifer resided. He specifically went to her apartment.
“Susmaryosep,” he said under his breath. 'What the hell am I doing?’
Again, he let his emotions dictate his actions instead of logic. Just like in his fever dream.
He’d normally never dare to do this, but he figured that this was an “Anything goes!” type of situation. He was a superpowered teenager like something out of TV or comics.
So naturally he could throw away common sense since he was faced with extraordinary circumstances, right? What else was he supposed to do?
Maybe have the self-awareness to notfly towards Jenny Tolentino’s apartment after searching her phone number and address for almost a week.
Orhe could’ve just talked to her at school like a normal person about his weird dreams rather than learning her phone and address in the most roundabout of ways.
She herself really was an angel, just like him. Perhaps like him.
Or at least some sort of supernatural creature that knew terms like “Ophanim” and whatnot.
An Ophanim was a form of an angel after all, right? Was he an angel? Was she?
Like in television or the movies, even from outside her apartment building he could feel her presence. The one girl in his class aware of what he did and what he was.
He felt his back stiff and he turned to slowly look at the bespectled girl behind him.
He didn’t become aware of her until now. He’d been so focused on Laura and finding a way for her to forgive him that he completely ignored how adorable, even pretty, Jenny was with her hate-filled eyes as she glared at him.
Yikes. Oh yeah. He turned into her stalker, didn’t he? No wonder she was so pissed. He didn’t mean to do this.
However, the mystery behind her enrolling in Fatima High decades ago spurred him to action and confirmed his suspicions. He wasn’t dreaming. He really did turn into an Ophanim.
For an instant, hair at the back of his neck and on his arms rose up, his breath quickening and his heartbeat pulsing. When he used his powers to scale buildings and jump through rooftops, he didn’t feel as exhilirated as he did now.’
He felt the thrill of genuine, hair-raising fear. He didn’t know whether to feel excited or horrified. Her look only lasted a second but it stabbed at his heart like a dagger made of ice.
“What do you want, Gabriel?” the bespectacled girl asked, the hair on her head starting to dance and twirl from an unseen gust of wind.
“There you go again,” he said. “My name isn’t Gabriel. It’s Florante. And who are you supposed to be? Michael? Uriel? Or maybe…!”
His face flushed when he saw her grab the bottom hem of her skirt to keep it from blowing upwards too.
“I’m Raphael,” she said.
“The ninja turtle?” he joked, only for him to black out like before. The sheer lameness of his joke jolted him awake.
***
Florante shook his head and woke himself up from his daydream, shutting the yearbook he found as the bell for the final period rung, signaling that lunchtime had ended.
'Yeah, right. As if that’d ever happen,’ he thought to himself.
Obviously,someone—a relative, maybe—also named Jenny Tolentino attended high school in Fatima High. That was all.
Jenny Tolentino wasn’t an uncommon name, after all.
Jennifer wasn’t an immortal angel or demon or fairy who had been high-school age since the 1960s. Or even earlier. That was just silly of him to believe.
She was an ordinary school girl who he subconsciously integrated into his flights of fancy.
He second-guessed himself. Maybe he was dreaming about Jenny all this time because he was developing feelings for her.
He’d fallen under the same pattern once again. Every time a girl paid the slightest bit of attention to him, he couldn’t help but imagine becoming their boyfriend or something.
'So pathetic. Get a hold of yourself, man!’ he scolded himself. He almost rolled his eyes at himself but did so inwardly since he’d look weird doing it for real.
He waved his fantasy off and went back to the classroom even though he still photocopied the phone book page for “Tolentino” listings and the 1960s yearbook profile of the Jennifer look-alike and name-alike.
***
To Be Continued…
Whose side is the right side in this conflict? What a silly question! Of course the angels were the good guys and the demons were the bad guys! Right…?
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the ranks of the angels? Even if one of them clasped me suddenly to his heart, I’d wither in the face of his more fierce existence. For their beauty is really nothing but the first stirrings of a terror we are just able to endure and are astonished at the way it elects, with such careless disdain, to let us go on living. Every angel is terrifying.
So I hold back – I swallow back the bird-call of black grief that would burst from me. Ah, who is it we can turn to for help? Not angels. Not other people. Even the knowing creatures already dumbly see we do not feel at home in our interpretations of the world, though there is, perhaps, a specific tree on a hillside we settle on over and over. Or yesterday’s stroll remains, through the usual streets – the comforting loyalty of a habit that took a liking to us, that moved in and now will not leave us alone.
Oh, but the night. Night with a wind that comes as if filled with infinity and gnaws at our faces. This is what awaits every one of us – that looked-for, tender disenchantment of the night – so hard for hearts alone to bear. Though is it any easier for lovers? They make use of each other to hide what they know what must otherwise come.
Don’t you see this yet? Fling this emptiness out of your arms, back into the spaces into which we breathe and suddenly the birds will feel the more expansive air, will sense it, perhaps, with a more fervent flying. Yes – the springtimes needed you. There were stars waiting to be seen by you. A wave rolled to your feet in the past, or as you strode beneath half-shuttered windows, the bowed violin leant itself to you. All this was your mission. But were you up to it? Weren’t you more often distracted by anticipation, as if everything about you was there only to herald a beloved? (Oh but where would you keep her – what with strange thoughts looming in and out of your head from dawn to dark, so often staying in the night?) Rather, if desire tempts you, sing of the lovers those famous ones, though even their love’s not immortal enough, those – you almost envy them this – forsaken, abandoned and unrequited, who have so much more loving in them than those who are satisfied. Like them, begin and begin again the eternal task of praising! Remember this: the hero lives for ever. His death is no more than a pretext for being, for his latest birth – whereas lovers are withdrawn, sapped and spent, back into Nature, as if it had no strength left to create their like again. Have you imagined the love of Gaspara Stampa? Recalled it so intensely that any girl – deserted by her lover – might emulate her fine example and might say to herself: let me be like her! Because isn’t it time this oldest of heartaches finally bore us some fruit? Isn’t it time, though still loving, we learned to wrench ourselves free of the beloved and, though trembling, endure as the arrow endures the tensed bowstring, becomes something more than itself in the leap of release? For our point of rest is nowhere.
Voices. Voices. My heart, listen, listen as only the saints have done before you till a gigantic calling lifted them bodily from the ground and they rose, impossibly, still kneeling, still unaware, so intently they listened. Not that you could hear God’s voice – far from it. So then listen to the wind’s, its ceaseless message rising out of silence, bringing whispers of all who died young. Didn’t their fate come to you to speak quietly when you stepped into churches in Rome or Naples? Or didn’t some sublime epitaph impose on you? Remember, so recently, that day – the plaque in Santa Monica Formosa? What they ask of me is gently to shake off the sense of injustice that still troubles their deaths and sometimes hinders them a little, holds them back in the onward process of their soul.
It’s true enough, of course, no longer to live on earth is strange, to abandon customs barely mastered yet, not to interpret roses and other auspicious things, not give them meaning in a human future. No longer to be as we have always been, in those endlessly anxious hands – to leave even our name behind us as a child leaves off playing with a broken toy. Strange, no longer to know desires desired – strange to witness the involvement of all things lost suddenly, each drifting away singly into space. And truly, to be dead is hard, so full of making up lost ground, till little by little we find a trace of eternity. Yet, the living are wrong to draw such distinctions so clearly: angels (it is said) are often never quite sure whether they pass among the living or the dead, since through both these realms, and forever, eternity’s flood tumbles all the ages and in both their cries are drowned out by its roar.
In the end, the young-dead do not need us: they are weaned off the earth mildly as a child will outgrow the mother’s breast. But we, who long for such great mysteries, we, for whom sorrow is often the path on which we progress – can we exist without them? Is the old myth really nonsense? The one about the mourning of Linus, how music first broke on the barren wilderness; how, in the startled space left gaping by the loss of a boy like a god, emptiness rang as never before with what holds us rapt, comforts now and can help.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies(1923) Translated by Martyn Crucefix (courtesy of the Enitharmon Press – http://www.enitharmon.co.uk)
I love them and I can’t wait to show my fiance who’s playing a Deathpact Angel in our Ravnica D&D campaign (named Rota Gunnr because he’s been on a God of War kick lately and likes the Valkyries).
I love how powerful Michael is. Like, he is terrifyingly powerful. He killed Lilith with a snap of his fingers. He opened a portal to Purgatory WHILE he was wearing powersuppressing handcuffs. He should not have been able to do that, though. Michael from world 2 couldn’t use his powers when he was cuffed, so how could our Michael? Is he just that powerful? But why didn’t he just, escape? Like, he can open a portal to Purgatory, but he can’t open the handcuffs? Or teleport/fly away? I’m a little confused.
How do angel powers work?
Do I know?
Do you know?
Do the writers know?
But, also, I actually don’t really care. Because it’s just so awesome.
(Side note: will Cass become more powerful, now that Michael is free? With the whole “the more angels there are, the more powerful the angels are” thing? Or does Michael specifically need to be in Heaven for that to work?)
