Pixel Stained

Yesterday was Pixel Stained Technopeasant Wench day, and I missed it!
It was all Mamatas fault, he posted a story a while back and threw me off by mention of April 29th. I think it was some Greek thing.

Anyway. In typical Spanish fashion, I'll post my story late. Here ya go. This originally appeared in AlienSkin.





Noble Death

by Sara Genge




Sam didn't know what to make of it, but he knew that this might be the end of the world. It would surely be the end of his world.

What else could an angel mean, here in Chicory Hospital, way too far from New York to be one of those homeless apocalyptic preachers, way too far from Rome to be an advent of the second coming. Hell, way too far from anywhere to mean anything in particular.

The angel looked more or less feminine but Sam wasn't taken in. He might wear his hair in a sort of bun but he was flat chested as they came, and there wasn't a bulge in his tight pants, not a cleft either, just a nothing, an absence of sex, of essence. There was also the mater of wings. The shot out from their firm anchor on the angel's back, bent at the ceiling and came cascading down, littering the bed with feathers. This thing wasn't a human being. What could such a being want from him? Could it be the morphine? He had never hallucinated on morphine before, but it tended to give an absurd tint to his perceptions.

He looked around. Alzheimer Bob in the next bed was looking at the angel with fascination and gripping the small cross on the chain on his neck. Therefore, he wasn't the only one who saw it. Could this be real?

"Hail, Sam, full of grace, the Lord is with you," it said.

"No..." Sam moaned. He couldn't speak clearly with the mask stuck over his mouth.
Why had this being come now, when he was finally dying? After three years of chemo and three surgeries, you'd think he had the right to die in peace, but no, this thing was bent on complicating his last moments. He was spoiling Sam's death, that's what it was doing, and Sam didn't much appreciate it, to tell the truth.

"Blessed are you among men."

Uh oh, here it comes, thought Sam. I wanted to die lucid and now I'm hallucinating the annunciation.

"And blessed is the fruit of your loins," came the conclusion.

The angel disappeared and Sam was relieved. He concentrated on his breathing, was it getting shallower? He tried to make it shallower. He had been technically dying for the last 6 months and he intended to end it here and now, when he was well anesthetized and high on morphine. This wasn't going to drag out one second longer if he could help it.

"Fear not, for I am with you"

"You again!," Sam said. "Go away".

"The lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want," said the angel.

"Sure, sure."

"Abortion is a sin, Sam," said the angel.

"What the hell are you talking about?," said Sam.

"Didn't you hear me when I said, "blessed is the fruit of your loins"? You are with child. Struggling to kill yourself at this point isn't just useless (who ever heard of someone who successfully tried to stop breathing) but a crime against God." The angel spoke well; he rolled his punctuation with his "r"s.

"Nurse! nurse! I don't want this visitor, nurse. Help! Nurse! Get rid of this man!," shouted Sam.

The nurse didn't come.

Sam felt the tumour that was killing him fighting a winning battle against his respirator. It was lung cancer, small cell carcinoma they called it, one of the worst, and he hadn't gotten it from smoking, he swore... but now he must be rambling.

"Come on, Sam," said the angel with a sweat voice, and then sternly, "React, dammit! If I had my choice I would have chosen a woman but He said we needed a guy this time. Come on! Get a hold of yourself man."

The angel placed his hand on Sam's chest and muttered a prayer. Sam felt the nodule in his chest stir, twist and slither closer towards his skin. It made a gurgling sound as it fought to free itself from pumping arteries and rasping alveoli.

He screamed in pain.

"The lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want," repeated the angel. The tumour seemed to sense the being and crept up, closer, closer to the surface. "He leads me on green pastures..." Sam almost passed out. The tumour erupted from his chest amidst a cascade of lungs and tissue. His blood frothed and coagulated.

The angel cooed at the creature and the tumour gurgled.

Sam died.



End