Angels Are Bright Still, Though The Brightest Fell

Leon Van Damme was crashing, he was careening out of control, his reserves empty of the energy created between moving bodies. After the ghost of his father had resurfaced, and the reality of the life lived as a depraved apartment loner smacked him in the face, he felt himself folding into the only unbiased comfort he knew – the Church.

As he strode towards the statutes of his childhood, Leo attempted to imagine the first time he entered the sanctuary religion provided. He must have been only an infant, cradled in a woman's arms- curled up somewhere loud. He felt like it must have been a plane, the woman and the baby pressed against the window in the rear of the cabin. The roar of the turbines filling both mother and child with the cleansing sensation of total deafness. The flight felt natural to Leo, as a child he always felt as if he’d been displaced; a foreigner from the opposite coast. He couldn't understand the motives of his mother to bring him across the country to the church of Monsignor Van Damme. He also failed to grasp the intentions of the Monsignor when we took the child in under his wing, giving Leo his name, and raising him as his own. Leo figured that the Monsignor couldn't possibly be his father, the vow of celibacy held at too high a regard for a man in his position. However Leo was raised as his son, motherless and quite easily fatherless. The weight of the ever-loving church adding power to every syllable the Monsignor uttered. Despite the obvious facts, the Monsignor was a father to Leo, and the only one he knew – the one he grew up fearing, respecting, and trying to escape.

It was barely light out, the sky ever so slowly shifting from the color of pitch to the color of water only slightly above the sea floor. Leo hadn't slept since he’d ingested the words of the 23^rd Psalm. Since his eyes had followed the eerie timeless curves of his father’s cursive. He could not rid himself of the heavenly ghost of the Monsignor and the devil that pervaded his own soul. In his attempt to rectify the echoes of his past, he would have to return to the source of his conflict; the great-hallowed walls of the church.

He reached the steps, hesitated only slightly before raising his arms towards the heavens to heave the great doors open. Before his fingers could press against the withered wood, they parted in front of him. Magically the seam between the doors widened. Leo was awe-struck. No doubt was it his father opening the great doors to his healing – welcoming him back to the belief that everything above us is gold and important - covered in miles of plush carpet. Leo Van Damme stood, mouth agape before the church, tears welling in the corners of his eyes. He blindly stumbled forward, ever so ready to fill his stores with light and the warmth that seeps through the pores of accepting people. Leo closed his eyes and fell through the doors.

“Outta my way, fucker.” said a gruff voice.

It was all a sham apparently.

Leo in his rush of good-intention had fallen onto the muscular shoulder of a washed-up guitarist. One of the lonelier sad-saps to inhabit one of the sardine-can floor plans of Castle Apartments, Leo recognized him, but forgot what color he went by. He pushed his way past, unperturbed by the moment he had interrupted, lost in his own problems.

Leo reeled and collapsed to his knees. He hung his head and laughed. A devout laugh that percolated within his marrow and refused to dissipate. The gravely chuckle reverberated between the arched walls of the sanctuary and were carried skyward. Tears spilling down his face his got to his feet, strode towards a young nun who stood terrified by his ruckus and kissed her heavily. He felt like the soldier in that picture, holding her around the waist and leaning over her admirable figure.

Finally Leo felt divine

He left the nun where he found her, shell-shocked, but surprisingly not agitated. Leo practically skipped home; again with his heartbeat in his ears, he felt the roar of the engines and the sensation of flight.

Psalm 23

"The lord is my Shepard, I shall not want"

Leo Van Damme gripped the yellowed paper in his trembling hands.

"He maketh me lie down in green pastures,

He leadeth me beside the still waters."

It had been at least twenty years since he'd seen these words, and they still had the same effect as they'd had back then.

"He restoreth my soul."

Every last syllable, every last letter housed the great loving sentimental act, and the hellish rage of Leo's father. Each earthshaking vowel, each thunderous consonant reverberated between his head and his heart with such speed it brought him to the cusp of tears. Leo was his father's vision, however nothing Leo could have possibly ever been, would be perfect enough for the admirable and important Monsignor Van Damme.

"He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name sake."

Reading the words that he had so long ago forsaken, Leo found himself longing to be held by his father, and healed, like so many others by his chosen profession. After his father’s death every embrace felt stifling, it reminded him of his youth living under the yoke of the Church, and his father’s godly aspirations for him. He had spent so much energy in his adult life trying to escape his father’s celestial reach, and he though he went about it rather well. He left the catholic inbred suburbs for a lost urban center – long ago forgotten by gentrification – where he’d have to find his own deities. However his best laid plans evaporated away, after last night. drunk off his ass behind Ray’s Liquor, he faced the wrath of his father’s disappointment and the devilish repercussions of said alienation. Having lost his inner-city enlightenment to the demons of loneliness and apathy, Leo found himself falling back in into the faith of his childhood.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”

Leo sat in the darkened room, the afternoon light filtering through the dilapidated blinds, desperately holding the withered paper in his fingers. Written long ago on the yellowed paper in the practiced calligraphy of a catholic priest was the 23^rd Psalm. Well-worn creases ran across the sheet like city blocks, dividing the fanciful text into simplified bits. The Monsignor carried this piece of paper with him to every funeral he ever lorded over, long since memorized, he found solace in that fact that the words were still there - the verses easily within reach during trying times. Much like how a cowboy carries a bullet in the seam of his hat, Leo’s father carried the handwritten scrap of verse for his biblical six-shooter – custom .23 gauge.

“I will fear no evil: for thou art with me,

Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

Leo folded the paper and placed it gently back in the shoe box containing the last of the trinkets his father had left him. He closed the box, and quietly kissed the lid, before looking up, smiling, and whispering a humbled, “Amen.”

When Comparing Your Bellyaches

The setting sun hung slowly above the horizon, as the buildings in front of Leon folded in and out of focus. He sat slumped against the western wall of Ray's Liquor, an almost empty bottle of whiskey engulfed in a paper bag hung loosely in his hand. His chin against his chest, he exhaled slowly, and thought about the condition he found himself in at the moment. Walking home from work earlier that day, after twelve hours of constant berating, Leon was suddenly his with the full force of his loneliness. With his degrading enthusiasm for his work at the station, the music he relied on for so long no longer comforted him. He had stopped, and took a different turn at the corner of Sunset Terrace and Benson Street, and headed for the liquor shop.

Presently, Leon's insides were bathed in the golden warmth of the whiskey, and his outsides were washed in the savory glow of the setting sun. He lifted his head, and rested his gray hair against the chipped concrete wall. However, he waited to open his eyes, he felt the dried tears on his face, and laughed half-heartedly to himself. Any consciousness he felt at the moment was from the neck up - everything else was in a state of blissful ignorance. At the moment, the booze had done its job, and Leon no longer felt as pathetic as he had a few hours before. Leon reflected on the fact that it had been years since he'd seen a sunset, usually he was locked in the windowless booth at WTF; riddled with angst and happily perched upon his soap box. At this thought he opened his eyes and toasted the horrible forces at be, for allowing him this moment, and drained the last of the bottle. With a hearty belch, he sighed and readjusted his back against the wall. Losing himself in the swirling pinks and oranges that infected the sky in beautiful wispy veins, Leon slowly closed his eyes, letting the image burn itself into his corneas. The thin stretch of skin had just enveloped his eyes when they suddenly flew open again at the sound of bone crunching against knuckle. Leon glanced about wildly, only seeing the fading visage that the sun had latched in front of his eyes. With the sun in his eyes and the added numbing rush of whiskey coursing through his blood, He was in no state to move. Much less defend himself from whoever lurked near. Leon stood, feeling his way up the wall, his fingers dragging unevenly across the crumbling surface. Blinking his eyes rapidly in an attempt to jettison the sunset from his eyes, his vision began to slowly return. He realized that he had made it further down the alley, closer to the dumpster behind Ray's Liquor. With his knees buckling about below him, he threw himself into the shady corner between the dumpster and the wall. In this cool low place, Leon gazed skyward and ran his hand through his hair. As he lowered his head back against the cold metal and lazily looked in the direction his head was facing. He saw him. In the alleyway directly across Sobchak, he saw a lone figure hunched over something. The figure looked about wearily; he appeared to be contorting his neck in obscene and maniacal ways. For five minutes Leon stared, mouth agape, at the demonic figure in the opposing alleyway, harvesting a soul for their sordid collection. In his rapt concentration, Leon forgot he was hiding, and let out a high pitched hiccup that reverberated between the wall and the dumpster, before launching itself at the demon. He was terrified; the demon would surly come for him next. His pathetic light would fill the next of the devil's vials, sitting in wait for eons just to fuel some satanic cocktail. Leon closed his eyes tight, hoping that his forced blindness might make the searing pain of the demons claws entering his chest, a little more bearable.

When Leon did open his eyes, he was alone, and far from the inner circle of Hell. The sun had set hours before, and the whiskey being found seemingly used, had released itself from his body. Both instances leaving only a searing ache in Leon's left temple. He got to his feet, and stumbled to the entrance to the alleyway across from where he'd been sitting. Leon looked around and scratched his head. "Oh well...” he sighed, as he kicked a piece of loose gravel into the alleyway,"so much for facing my demons."