| 169: Fragile |
[Mar. 22nd, 2007 ~ 06:28 pm] |
Fragile.
Winters in Los Angeles are not harsh. Some rain, some winds; at night the temperatures rarely drop below the forties. It occurs to Gabriel-- distantly, like some dry fact learned from a textbook-- that he should be grateful for this.
It's hard to be grateful when sick. He has a miserable cold-- the homeless clinic said it was only a cold, something many, many humans get every single year. It turns his head into a throbbing localized pain and makes each breath an irritation to the dry swollen tissues of the throat and sinuses. The sneezing gives him a migraine, but the coughing may be the worst-- it rattles in his chest like dead leaves, works up to his sore throat, and exits the body as hacked-up phlegm.
Only a common cold.
By itself he thinks he could bear it. Everyone else does, after all. All of them, the humans, they go about their days sniffling and sneezing and it's not the end of the world for them. But then there are the aches and pains unrelated to the cold. The scratches and scrapes that accumulate-- this graze on his arm from climbing over a chain link fence in a hurry, this scratch on his hand from a stray half-starved cat he'd attempted to pet, this scraped knee from tripping somewhere and landing hard-- he doesn't remember the details of most of them. The world seems to consist of nothing but rough asphalt and concrete, stray nails, hard sharp metal edges at every turn. And violence. Among the destitute even the smallest gain by one may be an incentive to others to take, to steal.
(And such a shock, the first time he'd felt hands taking away his cup of change-- such a mystifying shock, when he'd struck out in unthinking possessive anger, and there had been no crunch of broken bone in answer, only a laugh. "That the best you got, gramps?" And a blow returned. Eye for an eye....)
And there are the stiff joints that come from sleeping on asphalt with only cardboard as a mattress. That come from the fact that he's old. Michael didn't have to turn him into this, he thinks fuzzily at one point. Human would have been punishment enough by itself, but aging human, failing human? With joints creaking and bones aching in the cold mornings, with shortened breath and thin skin that breaks easily and vision blurred and hazy? With hands that sometimes start trembling for no reason at all?
On top of it all there's hunger. Thirst isn't so bad; there are drinking fountains and so forth. But the hunger.... It never really goes away. Even when there's food and he eats, he's thinking of what he'll eat next, what's the next meal, food food food. Survive. Need food. The body demands these things of him, rules him by its tyranny of constant necessity.
He had always known they were weak creatures, the humans. Weak and fragile. So easily broken, in body and also in mind. So easily snapped and shattered by the forces of nature, of which he was one.
Now he sits on the bus bench, the sidewalk, the steps of churches he dares not go into. Coughs to ease the pain in his chest, which is so much like that when Lucifer ripped his heart from him. Holds out a hand for stranger's charity, receives the quick looks away, the "Honey, stay away from him." Hears the muttered words falling from his own lips, nonsense syllables, conversations with people that are never there when he turns to look at them.
And knows fragility, not as as the destroyer, but as the destroyed.
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gabriel * the prophecy series (movie) * word count: 615 |
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sick