Not man. Not woman. Yet the handsomeness and strength combined with the beauty and softness drew her. She saw them and couldn't look away, seemingly paralyzed by them. It was a power she couldn't begin to comprehend, and she wasn't sure she wanted to. Because understanding the complexities of the pull, knowing what was so fascinating about the contradiction in their strong beauty could be disastrous. It could destroy everything. She feared losing this thrall, the intoxicating hold.
She was on her way to work, stopping at the neighborhood coffee shop for a latte and a cheese danish, her usual. She chatted with the barista--as she believed they were called in sophisticated circles--and once she had her breakfast, she turned to leave.
They were standing by the newspaper rack. One short, one average. They both wore loose white slacks, cotton and airy, the kind one might wear to the beach to be cool yet avoid sunburn. Their shirts were also loose, multi-colored. The short one wore a combination of reds and yellows, while the average one wore blues. Their hair was long and blonde, falling about their shoulders and shining beneath the sun coming in from the shop's front windows. Most might think these two were left over from the 60's, two hippies that just couldn't let go.
She made eye contact with each separately. Then--though she kept wondering how it was possible--she made and held eye contact with both at the same time. Their eyes seemed a gray-blue at first, but then they changed colors, kaleidoscoping through the entire spectrum of color.
She couldn't just see them. She could feel them. They were looking at her, through her, inside her. They were memorizing her, and she tried hard to memorize them. The looseness of the clothing made it impossible to judge their gender from body type. Their faces were strong, sharp at the edges, but still softening within. Their full lips were slightly parted beneath their perfectly straight noses. She had seen men with some of these facial features and women with others, but neither with all of them. She couldn't figure out which they were, but somehow she knew it didn't matter. How could it? Something that felt so simple and beautiful didn't need those kinds of categorizations.
Suddenly she gasped, as if she had been forced to hold her breath and finally released it. She looked to the barista who was simply going about her duties.
"Do you know them?" she asked, pointing toward the pair while looking at the barista.
"Who?" the barista questioned, following her pointed finger to the newspaper rack, a look of confusion on her face.
She noted the confusion and looked for herself. The two were gone.
A week passed and while it was impossible for her to forget them, she was able to push them into the back corner of her mind, hidden away. Their eyes, ever-changing in color, appeared in her dreams, the single reminder that faded each morning by the time she rolled back the sheets to get out of bed.
The coffee shop was unusually busy for a Tuesday morning. She was second in line and fishing in her purse for cash when a strange melody entered her mind. It was beautiful, without question. It reminded her of hymns she sang in church as a child, yet not necessarily religious. There were words and they could have been religious for all she knew. They weren't English words. Yet somehow she knew it wasn't that kind of hymn. It felt especially for her.
The barista saw her and began filling her order without waiting for her to place it. She was too preoccupied to comment. She followed the hymn with her eyes. It was coming from within the shop, even though no one else seemed aware of it.
They were there, standing where they were seven days before, their eyes shining at her in a rainbow. She was slightly aware that someone was trying to get her attention, and then fully aware when the customer behind her nudged her arm and pointed at her waiting order. When she looked back, they were gone.
The hymn remained.
She followed it out the door and walked for several blocks, her danish and coffee absently clutched in her hands. It led her to them, standing beneath the "Walk/Don't Walk" signals at the corner of two streets that she suddenly felt unfamiliar with, regardless of the fact that she had lived in the city her entire life.
"Who are you?"
The hymn continued but they responded, voices mingled deep and sweet like blackberry jam.
"We are the acolytes. We are pure. We are what you cannot be."
"What's that?" she asked, making a mental note to look acolyte up in the dictionary later. Aside from that, she was unaffected by the ambiguous nature of their response and the fact that the two spoke as one.
"Perfect, unchanged. The original children. Unsegregated, uncorrupted. True."
"Why do I feel so...drawn to you?"
"You have seen us. You noticed us and because of that you are drawn to what no one else can see or know."
"I noticed you. Nobody else can see you." She was talking more to herself, processing this odd situation.
"You are not like others of your kind. You are special. More like us than should be possible. We wish to know how you are this way.”
“I don’t think I could explain it if I knew.”
“It is not for you to explain,” they said sharply. “It is for us to discover.”
“And how exactly are you going to discover it?”
A delivery truck rushed through the intersection, startling her. She jumped and looked away only for a moment, but when she looked back, the pair was gone again. This time the hymn went with them. She exhaled in frustration.
“Fabulous.”
She visited the coffee shop more often, hoping they would return. She wanted to go back to the intersection where she had first spoken to them, but she couldn’t remember which one it was. All she could do was hope they would appear again at the shop. She had looked up acolyte in the dictionary, learning that it meant servant. That really didn’t help her understand who this pair was. She refrained from calling them people. Something told her they weren’t people. Not in the way most would think.
They aren’t human.
That thought made her mind spin. She had always been a skeptic. Ghosts, aliens, psychics, supernatural--all things she looked at with disbelief, all things she had to see to believe. She had never seen any of them. This pair she had seen. She believed.
The dictionary also went on to mention biblical terms. Acolyte was mostly biblical and religious. Acolytes were servants of God, another thing she didn’t believe in--at least, not in the Christian sense. She believed there was a higher power. If it was God, she wasn’t certain, and knew nobody could be certain. People can’t know what they haven’t seen or experienced. She was sure of that.
The newspaper rack stood alone. The barista stared at her as she stared at the rack, as if the newspaper rack were going to sprout legs and walk away. The barista didn’t know what she was really staring for. She knew if she blinked they could come and go without her knowing. They moved illogically fast. Gone before anyone could see them twitch a finger. They would come. She knew they had to come. They hadn’t discovered how she was the way she was.
She was washing her hands in the restroom when the hymn returned. She jolted upright, staring at herself in the smudged mirror for a moment before hastily wiping her wet hands on her pants and hurrying out through the bathroom door into the empty shop, nearly running over the barista in the process. She dodged tables and nearly knocked over a couple chairs until she saw them, standing by the newspaper rack.
“I’ve been waiting for you. How come I don’t get to see when you come and go?”
“You could not see it even if you looked right at us.”
“So, about this discovering thing you want to do…” She trailed off, hoping they would offer information. They said nothing. “Uh, maybe we should go to my apartment. Because if other people can’t see you they’re going to think I’m a nut job talking to myself.”
“Very well. Return to your domicile,” they said. She could almost taste their voices, like a precious sweet elixir. “We will find you.”
“How?” she asked, but they were gone almost before the word passed her lips. The hymn remained. She wasn’t following it, but it was on the path to her building. She knew they would already be in her apartment. She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but she knew.
They stood in the living room by the sofa. Her cat was weaving around their legs, rubbing against them and purring, an action of which they seemed oblivious. She dropped her purse on the table by the door and felt confused.
“Uh, do you want something to drink. I’ve got some soda. There might be some beer, but I’m not sure if--”
“We do not need or want these things.”
“Okay. Cool.” They stood in silence, the only sounds being the purring of her cat and the noise from outside. She was about to open her mouth to speak when they interrupted her.
“Disrobe.”
“Excuse me?” she asked, taken aback by this command. Did they just say what I think they--?
“Disrobe. Remove your clothing.”
“Um, okay, I think we’re going somewhere I don’t want to go,” she said. “I don’t even know who…what you are. I take off my clothes and next thing I know I’m in some alien abductee support group talking about my experience with the anal probe.”
“We are not aliens. We have told you what we are.”
“Acolytes. Servants of God. Yeah, I’m not sure I believe that.”
“You believe it. Within you believe it all, and you know what we are.”
She paused, not wanting to say it but knowing she had to. “Angels.”
They nodded but said nothing. The three of them stood in silence again. They were waiting, and she couldn’t believe what she was about to do as she began unbuttoning her shirt. Once all her clothes were sitting in a pile at her feet, the two looked her up and down. They glanced at each other and then looked back to her.
“You are anomalous,” they said. She scowled in confusion. “You appear to be of the female type, yet you have that.”
She followed their gaze downward to what they spoke of. The penis she wished she didn’t have was small, due to years of hormones, but it was still there.
“I wish I didn’t have it,” she said. “Eventually I’ll get rid of it.”
“How?”
“There’s this surgery and--” She stopped suddenly and glared at them. “Somehow I don’t think you care about the surgery.”
“You were created both male and female type,” they said, their tone inquisitive and possibly amused. She wasn’t sure. “Female inside and male outside.”
“You understand it better than most people,” she said with a smirk.
“We are not people.”
“Right. Forgot.”
“You are much like us.”
“You said that before,” she said. She was beginning to get uncomfortable, and a little chilly. “Can I put my clothes back on?”
The pair did not respond vocally. Instead, their clothes disappeared. They didn’t remove them. They simply vanished to reveal their naked angelic bodies. Silver, iridescent wings unfolded behind them. The wings brushed the floor and crested slightly above their heads. She stared in awe at them, noticing that they too had male and female parts. Unlike herself, they also had female genitalia to go with their breasts and penises.
“I’ll take that as a no,” she said finally, not able to take her eyes away from them. “So…we’re all naked. This is kind of weird.”
“You are of both types, but humans were not meant to be both types,” they said, ignoring her comments on their nudity. “Only we were made to be both types. In you it conflicts. You cannot exist as both, only one.”
“Pretty much.”
“Your contradiction is fascinating.”
“Glad I could amuse you,” she said sharply, becoming frustrated. “Look, about this whole naked thing. I really don’t--”
She stopped abruptly and sucked in a breath as an amazing sensation filled her. It was as if someone was touching her, caressing her. Yet no one made actual contact. She looked to them, hoping for some kind of explanation and got it in the form of the flames surrounding them, flames that changed colors much like their eyes. The warmth of the flames seemed to fill her up. Her body began to tremble with the intensity of it. She felt like she would explode if this kept up. But it didn’t. It stopped and the flames disappeared. She looked to them, breathing heavily.
“Holy shit. What was that?” she asked between breaths.
“You are much like us. We wish to appease your conflict. We will share of ourselves with you.”
“By giving me the strongest orgasm ever?”
“The pleasure is a side effect of the process.”
“As far as side effects go, I can’t complain.”
“You wish for us to appease your conflict?”
“Appease away,” she said, amazed at how easily she was taking all of this. Part of her, the skeptical part, was still thinking this was a dream, thinking she would wake up in bed, her cat curled up beside her and no angels anywhere. She ignored that part. Because if this was a dream, she wasn’t about to ruin it with common sense.
The flames began again and she was shocked into standing upright, her back arched slightly and she closed her eyes, breathing in gasps as the sensations of warmth passed through her in waves. Her legs shuddered and her upper body convulsed, but she did not fall. She remained standing, held up by their power and the warmth. It vibrated within her, slowly at first and then stronger and stronger until she was crying out. By the time the process reached its climax, she wasn’t sure she could take anymore. She exploded with one last cry of pleasure, and then she collapsed.
She awoke several hours later, lying on the floor of her living room. Her cat was curled up next to her, purring in its sleep. The angels were gone. The room was dark and cold, yet she felt warm. It was a warmth that came from within and spread throughout her body. She knew it was from them. It wasn’t a dream.
That night in bed, the warmth intensified. She fell asleep and in her dreams she felt a muted pleasure like that which she had felt the first time. It numbed her conflict and she slept better than she ever had before in her life. As time went on, she never had a bad night’s sleep.
She still had the surgery two years later, becoming as female as was possible with current medical technology. But the warmth remained with her. The conflict was still calm within her, and every night, she knew she was sleeping with angels.
FIN