I enjoyed this poem – it ends on a hopeful note that the narrator’s ‘Dark Angel’ will be overcome, and he may transcend his fleshly, earthly nature in the Name of God. I really liked the imagery – I think “apples of ashes” is a lovely, evocative turn of phrase, and possibly my favourite bit.
October 10th – Lionel Johnson – ‘The Dark Angel’ (1893) – Read it here.
Catch up with the challenge here.
I think Wes is the perfect way to respond to the Dark Angel, and the internal struggle Wes regularly has. He tries hard to be better, but there’s always some temptation to face, and he’s very aware of his own limitations.
Here’s an extract from The Day We Ate Grandad, where Wes and his internal battles are introduced.
The Day We Ate Grandad – Extract
Wes woke up with a start, sweat pouring off him, sheets in a frantic tangle around his calves. He’d hit himself so hard in his sleep that he’d not only woken himself up, but his cheek was sore and stinging.
LET ME THROUGH.
Grandad’s terrible demands echoed through his dreams and into his waking moments, skin crawling with grave maggots raining down from a sky boiling with blood.
It took him a few seconds to work out where the fuck he was; the damp patch on the opposite wall was unfamiliar, the bedclothes were cheap, and the whole room was a cluttered, narrow, low-ceilinged affair with a single window and a storage heater.
He wasn’t in his own flat in Chelsea. It certainly wasn’t his boyfriend’s Kensington penthouse, and his girlfriend wouldn’t be seen dead in a place like this.
It was Tina Harris’s bedroom, in her poky, rented cottage in Pagham-on-Sea. Shagging his oldest friend and unofficial sponsor was probably all kinds of stupid, but it wasn’t like they hadn’t had a bit of fun before.
He’d been friends with her since childhood. When her family moved away, she was his first pen pal. First lots of things, in fact. She’d kissed him once at the bus stop, a peck on the lips that nine-year-old Wes had been baffled but delighted by. Granny Wend had let their friendship be, encouraged it, even; she always said Tina’s family had old power in them. Maybe she’d only said that because even at that tender age Wes had been a sucker for power, but now they were pushing thirty, Tina was still his friend.
He checked his phone, and saw her text.
:Thanks for last night, stud. Call me if you need a check-in.:
He sent a heart back, indulging himself with a moment of self-satisfaction. He didn’t have to rise to the occasion for it to be an occasion. It was just temporary trouble, he reassured himself. It would improve with time, he was sure. Time, and maybe a clinic on Harley Street.
He swiped on something accidentally and opened a video he’d sent to everyone last month; the last thing he’d sent, as it turned out.
“You call me a fucking Judas?” his own wasted voice slurred at him as his face glitched and strobed violently, sliding in and out of his head before he could close it, “Just fucking – fucking kill yourselves. Do the job for her, why don’t you.”
No wonder he’d been thrown out of all the family chats.
He deleted it. There was no point in torturing himself with how much of an arsehole he’d been. He was twenty-two days clean, and the only way was forwards.
Don’t you want to be a god, in complete control of yourself? Don’t you want to have them worship you?
He struggled out of bed and tried to shrug off the Voice in his head.
“No, no, no.” If he said it out loud, he might believe it. “No.”
He could kid himself the Voice was part of the withdrawal process if he tried hard enough. Or he could face the fact it was Grandad, projecting into his sleeping mind while he was weak, probing his innermost desires.
Good luck with that, old man, Wes thought, applying his concentration, and grounding himself in his current reality.
Wes had already rejected the bastard once. There was no way he would allow that monster to enter his world and destroy the life he loved.
I do love it, Wes reminded himself, getting dressed and heading to the bathroom. I still love it. Things are tough right now, for everyone. They’ll get better.
And yet, the offer of worship, the idea of ultimate control, ate away at him, even as his subconscious poked him with warnings of maggots and death.
They threw you out of the family group chats, a spiteful, hurt part of him whispered. Don’t you want to make them sorry?
“That was my fault,” Wes reminded his reflection in Tina’s bathroom mirror. He forgot his own face each time he blinked, constantly confronted with a brand-new person, eyes bloodshot and mouth ringed with toothpaste like rabid froth. He grabbed a towel. “I fully deserved that. If I ever go back to that place, the only thing I’m using that power for is to cure Charlie’s addiction. That’s it.”
I’d make a great cult leader, though.
He shook that thought off with a splash of cold water and started his skin routine. You couldn’t afford to skimp on that, if all you ever made on people were a string of first impressions.
He whiled away the morning trying to quell the feeling of impending doom, but distractions only kept it at bay. There was no shifting the feeling that something wasn’t right.
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