Touched By An Angel

     This sooty-faced angel who visited me in childhood, possessed no angelic wings…

     Touched once by the black angel of my childhood, this person was someone I trusted, someone I loved (but no more), and someone who I looked up to!

     Eyes that were wide and a face so seemingly innocent, it could have mirrored my youthful one. I will be telling this tale of horror to the reader in metaphors and in a vague description of the assaulter. Names are left unmentioned…

     In childhood, my bedroom was in the basement of my parent’s house. Only recently had the dismal, cement walls been covered with sheetrock and painted over with dark blue paint. There’s one window to this room I had, a basement window, narrow and could not be opened to allow the fresh, summer breeze in. Not to mention, it was curtained off. There was a bluish rug that wasn’t very comfortable on bare feet, even when wearing socks. I remember that room had a musty, dank odor typical of any basement. Very little natural light shone in, it was only artificial light from two lamps I had.

     From fourth grade until I moved out after graduating high school, it was my dismal bedroom. Often in my stories, I write of this room with one of my characters inhabiting it. It makes a perfect setting of foreboding horror. The character is often young and a future antagonist of the story. 

     One day, parents gone, my capeless angel thundered down the creaking, basement steps, to visit me. Without knocking on my door, which had no locking mechanism, the door was swung open. My angel gazed at me with inebriated eyes and a crooked smile. That image haunts me to this day.

     “Wanna do the dick-dance?” The angel asked me in a mocking sort of way. And I tried to ignore it at first, but that became impossible. “HEY!” 

    I remember keeping my eyes forward on whatever it was I was doing, and did not reciprocate at first. 

     “Dick-dance! Danny does the dick-dance with other boys cuz he’s a fuckin’ faggot!” The soulless angel slurred.

     Passing the threshold of my door, this angel slammed it shut, cursing at me for my silence. 

     Standing right behind me, as I sat at my desk, staring into my computer, unable by this point to truly focus on the screen, this angel began slapping my on one side of my head, then slapping me on the other side, and this angel took turns slapping one side and next the other. I started crying. 

     “Hey, Danny, I know you got porn on your computer! Play something and turn the volume way up!” 

     Then my silence broke, as I yelled, “Yeah, well it’s not faggot porn!” 

     For answer, the angel punched the back of my neck. Again, I started crying and this angel mocked me for it. “Come on! You did the dick-dance with your friend, Mark!” 

     I was too young, small and slim to fight back. Then grabbing my chair by the back, this angel with strength, pulled me wlaway from my desk. I buried my face into my little hands. “Dick-dance!”

     As ordered, I laid on my bed with shirt off. The angel took their imaginary robes off and had a box of markers. Then, the angel started doolittling on my exposed skin. Drawing penises, vulvas, and breasts. And scribbling curse words, I even remember the color of the marker; green. 

     Both our pants came off and the angel handed me the marker to draw on their skin. Same things. What followed will not be revealed in this narrative. I consciencously chose this and will only give you, the reader, merely a glimpse of the horrors I faced in childhood all those years ago…

     I was touched by an angel, many times in that childhood dungeon. Where the angel’s wings and cape had burned away.