By: Sopi Sanikidze
View all Sopi Sanikidze's works
Act I: Angel
It started with the cravings.
It was funny, actually. I suddenly had the urge to consume immense amounts of dairy. Cheeses I previously couldn’t stand the smell of I ate like I was starving. I downed a gallon of milk everyday. And yogurt felt like the most divine of desserts.
Then came the protein cravings.
I ate an obscene amount of meat and when my family decided to go vegetarian because they were worried about the amount I was eating, I started to consume beans and nuts. So many beans. Before, I never had this kind of obsession. But if they had a high amount of protein, I was eating it.
Then it all stopped for a while. A month, maybe. Everyone figured it was just a weird thing for a growth spurt.
I suppose it was a kind of growth spurt, but it wasn’t because I was getting taller.
I was in school when the first incident happened. I was in the middle of a math exam that I was failing miserably. I hated this class and my teacher.
I wished that I could’ve lighted that stupid test on fire. It was all useless anyways. Who needs…what was this? I can’t remember. But it was a stupid, pointless class.
I leaned back to crack my back, because being curled over a paper is less than comfortable.
The next thing I know I’m on the floor with the sound of my classmates screaming and the concerned face of my teacher hovering over me.
What the hell?
Did you see how her back was?
Someone call 911…
They took me to the hospital. I was tested over and over again.
Nothing showed up. No tumors, no brain issues, nothing. I was perfectly healthy. I was so healthy they were confused. Everyone has some bump or scratch or something, but I was perfectly fine.
The second time it happened, I was asleep.
I woke up and fell out of bed, screaming. I hurt. Like the worst muscle spasm you ever had, but it was concentrated to the entire length of your spine.
It only got more horrifying when the cracking started.
Pop, pop, pop. My vertebrae jolting then locking then jolting out of place again. My spinal cord felt like an elastic being stretched and stretched until it was one pull away from snapping.
This time I didn’t seize and I didn’t black out. I was awake for all 15 minutes of that absolute hell.
When I went to the doctors this time, something new appeared on the X-rays. My spine had managed to twist itself in a way that meant I shouldn’t be alive. But I was. And aside from that and the trauma of that quarter hour of pain, my body was a perfect specimen of health.
My parents consented to the hospital to keep me under observation. Nothing happened for a week and then it happened again. This time it was longer and it hurt more. It felt like someone was pulling my spine apart. I could hear it cracking and shifting. They had to knock me out to keep me from writhing, but I still remember feeling the pain even while I was asleep.
When I came to, I was looking at confused doctors and my horrified parents, all staring at a screen from my latest scans. They had taken images from the day before the incident, as they did everyday. There hadn’t been any change.
The pictures from afterwards, however, were drastically different.
My spine looked like it had been redesigned. New vertebrae had formed in my spine, along with tiny bones that leached into my ribs, looking like support beams. But the big thing was the two new sets of bones that appeared between my shoulder blades and my spine. Two bones locked into a joint on either side, with slim filaments of cartilage sprouting from them.
And the X-ray of a bird next to them.
***
They started to grow steadily after that. No more spasms, no more sudden bouts of pain. Now it was a constant, dull pain that I felt all the time.
As the days went by, the scans showed the masses were starting to get bigger. That’s what I call them, I refuse to call them what they say they are. In turn, the skin on my back started to bruise, then pale when they pressed up against my skin, making my skin go taut and painfully itchy.
My parents had all but given up on me, visiting me less and less, always with the same wan smile and the generic platitudes. I didn’t blame them. They never asked for this.
They told me not to scratch it, that I would just inflame everything, as if my back being inflamed was the worst of my problems when I had two “masses” ready to burst out of my body.
At one point, the itching annoyed the doctors enough to handcuff me. They didn’t want me to contaminate their experiment.
I don’t think they realized how desperate I was.
I went into a bathroom and dragged my back against an edge, until I was bleeding everywhere. I didn’t care, I just needed the itching to stop.
They were banging on the doors, demanding I unlock it for them, then calling security to break it down.
Too late.
My skin and muscle finally gave way and the new bones and sinew attached to the masses fell out of me in an ungraceful mess of blood and other bodily stuff.
They found me on the floor crying with the two lumps of meat and bone splayed out behind me, attached to my back.
***
I had thought the itching was bad from when I was growing.
I had no idea what was to come.
Everyone thought that the slabs of flesh stuck to me were the end of it. But no. Next I had to deal with growing in my feathers.
That was itchy.
It was like having fire ants bite the inside of your skin, then having to deal with ticklish, soft, feathers move through that bite. This time they lost the hand cuffs and just put me in the equivalent of straight jacket mittens. And this time they baby proofed everything so I couldn’t scratch myself on surfaces.
Hell would be too kind a word for that.
At least they were prettier.
***
And then the media got wind of it.
As it turned out, doctors weren’t really supposed to talk about my “condition.” Apparently, the government had taken an interest in me and didn’t want it getting out.
But one of the nurses really wanted her 15 minutes of fame.
She had snuck a photo of me, standing under the lights of an MRI room, waiting to be tested, my growths on full display. And she posted it on all sorts of media. Instagram, twitter, tumblr, reddit, facebook, anything.
It went viral.
And then when it was confirmed by all the experts that the photo wasn’t doctored, the photo went viral again.
They tried to keep me away from all their screens. They didn’t want to upset their specimen, as if my mental state wasn’t borderline as it was. But I saw how all the News Stations reported on it.
They’re doing experiments…
A life form from another…
It is possible that it is undergoing accelerated evolution…
A child of Satan…
The… who will choose another Mary…
I wasn’t any of that.
I was a sad being that couldn’t even be considered human any longer.
Act II: Sin
(Trigger Warning: Self Harm/Suicide. Please read at your own risk.)
Where’s mom? Dad?
Stupid. I haven’t seen them in what? A year?
What’s wrong with me?
Ha. You think they know? No one knows. Because you shouldn’t exist.
I wanna go home.
Home? You’ll never have a home again. Think of how they’ll look at you.
What am I?
A monster. A freak. A stain on the Earth. On humanity.
No. I’m not even that anymore.
Now I’m just broken.
And somehow, that feels good to know.
So I wait until lights out to being my ending.
There isn’t much I could do. All the corners are padded and I’m stuck in my super mittens. They make sure to keep dangerous stuff away from me unless they’re under guard.
So there’s only one thing left for me to do.
I stare at the wall in front of me.
I’m ready to end.
I charge towards it, head first.
My head hits the wall with a sickening crack and my head spins. I fall to the floor, watching the whirling colors.
I have to get up. I have to do this quickly.
Again.
Again.
Again.
I finally start to bleed.
I’m crying now. It hurts. It hurts a lot. But I’m used to the pain. I’ve been through worse.
“Why?!” I scream and ram into the wall sideways in anger.
I feel my shoulder crack and pop and I fall to the ground, moaning.
And then I feel the bones move against each other.
I stare in horror at my arm as the bones roll against my skin, then painfully pop back into place.
“No.” I whisper.
I stare at the wall for a moment, then ram my elbow into it. I hiss as the bone audibly and visibly breaks.
Crumpling to the floor, nausea roiling my stomach from the pain, I watch as the bones move back into place and then see the bruise fade from my skin.
A sound comes out of me. A horrible, wailing, keening. It’s disgusting.
I’m not supposed to–
It’s not natural–
The doors burst open. They must’ve heard me.
“You’re going to hurt yourself!”
The guards grab me and I see a doctor flicking a needle.
“No! Let go of me!” I can barely see through the tears. “Let me go!”
The doctor approaches me.
“No! Get away!” My voice breaks and all of a sudden the lights flick on.
“What the fuck?” Someone yells. I struggle harder and the lights flicker brighter.
“Let! Me! Go!”
You can’t stop me! This is the one thing I have control over or I’m supposed to. Stop trying to change it. Stop it!
Stop touching me, let go, let me go, I want to go, make it all go away–
Fingers are digging into my brittle bones as the lights start to strobe. I grit my teeth and scream.
Make them burn. Make them float away into ashes. They won’t hurt you anymore as dust.
The lights shatter and all of a sudden I can’t see anymore, all there is is white.
But I can hear them.
A sizzling sound.
Screams.
And I can smell it. Like barbeque.
It all goes dark a moment later. I can’t see, my pupils dilating to try and adapt to the darkness.
When I can see again, I want to throw up. I do.
The guard and the doctors lie on the floor, their skin charred and white… something… dribbling out of where their eyes should be.
I crumple to the floor, staring at it all.
More people rush in.
I don’t hear them. I don’t struggle when someone pushes a needle into my forearm.
All I can see is the corpses and their eyes.
***
The government takes me away after that.
It was their right too, apparently. My parents signed away their parenthood months ago. I was now a ward of the government.
I hope they’re happy.
They throw me into a padded room with no lights. On good days, I get the mittens. On bad ones, I’m in a straight jacket.
Good days are when I participate willingly in the experiments where they need my cooperation.
Not all of the experiments need that.
They cut off my pinky.
Stay still.
What are you doing? Why do you have– no!
Hold her down.
No, let go of my– AH!
Holy shit they were right, her bones are hollow.
The little bitch can fly!
Now what?
Now we see if it grows back.
By the end of the day, and after crying out from feeling like my bones were being cracked and reshaped, I had a new pinky.
But that was only one time and it was compulsory. They could chop off whatever whenever. But something they couldn’t control was my power over light.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what they want. A flying weapon that has a hard time dying and can melt people’s eyeballs from their sockets. And they want to see how far I can go.
They keep me in darkness all the time except for the experiments. My room has no windows and no cracks for light to seep through. When they fetch me, they black everything out and wear night vision goggles.
The only time I see light is when they put me in a bright experiment room. Every time, my formerly blind eyes feel like screaming orbs of pain.
I’m starting to dislike the light.
The darkness is lonely and maddening, but at least it doesn’t hurt me.
Besides, in the dark I can think of things to accompany me. In the light, everything is far too clear.
My first creation was a blob. A light purple thing who couldn’t talk, but would sidle up to me. I named him Jerry, because I couldn’t think of anything else. He was warm and couldn’t see me, what with the fact that there was no light and he didn’t have eyes. Sometimes I would cuddle him to my chest to help me sleep.
After that I made animals. Bunnies, puppies, kittens and butterflies. All flitted around at the corner of my eyes and I could watch them play as long as I didn’t look at them directly.
So I tried making mom and dad.
It had been a while, but I could still remember them. Dad had a slight bulge in his nose from a fight that resulted in a broken nose. Mom’s right tooth slightly overlapped her left.
I remembered them perfectly.
But I couldn’t get their eyes right.
All that was there were empty sockets. Then the bubbling white would track tears down their cheeks. And then their skin started to char. And that god awful smell would waft into the air. And then I’m vomiting. And they find me screaming because my parents aren’t there, just horrible corpses that they can’t even see.
You were supposed to be the most beautiful thing in our lives.
Why did you have to ruin it?
And then they would open the door and watch as I “developed.”
***
Use your light to break this glass.
Ok.
Use your light to melt this metal beam.
Ok.
Use it to kill this chicken.
What?
Do you want the straight jacket?
No.
I’m sorry, chicken. I’ll make you again. In the darkness.
Kill this prisoner.
What? No!
Why not?
He’s a person.
And I can’t make him again. No more people.
He’s a prisoner of war.
I don’t care!
Fine then. Shoot him.
Wait!
BANG BANG!
Lock them up.
No wait please–
Again and again and again. Day after day after day.
***
“Hello?”
I look up at the sound.
There’s some blobs of color in the darkness. I frown. I don’t recognize the pattern. I don’t think I made them.
“I know someone is in here with us.”
“Us?” I ask.
12 circles appear suddenly in the darkness. I gasp, shutting my eyes, expecting the sharp pain of the light.
Nothing.
I squint one eye open.
No pain from the light emanating from the circles.
Not circles. Eyes. All in different colors.
“Who are you?” I ask the eyes. I feel that I should be crawling up the walls, screaming for help because there are strangers in my prison.
But I don’t.
Because… why?
“Not who. What.” A pair of eyes, a dark purple, come closer to me and interrupts my thoughts. “And we should be asking you that. You are the one who gives us our forms.” The voice is smooth, dark, and sounds like the finest of music to my ears. It makes my muscles relax, almost against my will.
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course not, you’re hanging onto the human definition of sanity like it’s the last thing you have.” He, I think it’s a he, based on his voice, pauses. “Oh, it is the last thing you have, isn’t it? And you’re not doing a great job of keeping it.” His voice is making it hard to think.
“Why are you here?”
“You made us.”
“No I didn’t. I would’ve remembered.”
“Ah, but you’ve forgotten. Your mind is no longer intact.”
“So I’m crazy, then?” I’m not exactly surprised, but it still stung to hear it from someone out of my subconscious, apparently.
“In the human sense, yes.”
Human sense? Like they are something else? Well, I suppose they are something else. But what about me?
Oh right. I’m not human anymore.
But, I mean, I’m still kind of human, right? That’s how I was raised. So I have to be.
Right?
“What is your name, not-human child?” Purple eyes asks me, pulling me out of the whirlpool of despair I swirl down whenever I re-realize my species status.
“My name?” I had one of those, didn’t I? When my parents still loved me. When I was more than the growths on my back. “I… I can’t remember. I’m not sure.”
“Oh? That’s no good.” There’s a shuffle of sound and the eyes get closer to me once again before they dip. I feel warmth and something solid to my side. “We need to call you something.”
“The people outside call me Subject.”
“That’s no name.”
I sigh. “I know. But that’s all I have.” What could I do? They made me forget.
“No it’s not. You have your wings.”
My lip curls and I look away from his eyes, all the eyes, and into a corner of the darkness I’m used to.
With a rustle of sound, the one with green eyes comes forward and drags their hands down the edge of my right growth. I yank it away with a hiss of sound.
“Maybe we’ll call you Angel.” Green eyes says.
“No!” The word is torn from my throat. “I’m not an angel. I’m the farthest thing from an angel anyone can be. I can’t even stand the sound of the word.”
“Hmm…” Purple is silent for a while. “Then, and this is just a temporary name, mind you, I’ll call you Sin.”
***
“Tell me, Sin, what makes you angry?” A voice pulls me away from a fitful slumber.
“Hmm?” I raise my head from my knees and search the darkness for Purple’s gaze.
“Angry? Why do you want to know?”
“I simply want to know more about you.”
“…I think most people just ask people stuff. Like, ‘what’s your favorite color?’”
“Alright. What’s your favorite color, Sin?”
“…I’m not sure, actually. Colors seem kind of pointless here, right? The only thing that has colors are your guys’s eyes.”
“Then I’ll ask my first question again. What makes you angry?”
“Um…” I had to spend too much effort thinking about that question. “The normal stuff, I guess.”
“What would the normal stuff be?”
“Acne? Social injustice… bad people? I dunno–”
“Are you really trying to tell me nothing makes you upset?”
“No, I am human after all.”
There’s a moment of quiet and then he starts to laugh at me. It’s a beautiful laugh, but it makes my skin crawl.
“Human? Human?” His eyes move closer to me. I can feel his body heat.
I scooch away from him until I’m backed into a soft corner.
“My lovely, lovely Sin. You are not human. In case you haven’t noticed, you have wings.”
“Stop.” I whisper.
Something warm– no wait, his fingers– grip my face.
“You are worth so much more than that.”
I can’t listen to this. My hands clap over my ears, but then coldness grips my wrists. Looking up, I see silver and blue discs staring back at me.
I think they’re holding my hands.
“Let go!”
Purple leans in closer and I can feel a warm breath on my face.
“Make us, my little angel.”
I struggle against the three of them, heat pricking my eyes. “Don’t call me that!”
“No?” His fingers brush through my hair. “Prove us wrong then.”
They need to get off. I don’t want them touching me, I don’t want them talking to me.
A voice that sounds like mine but isn’t whispers in my head.
Make them burn.
With a small scream, I stare into Purple’s eyes and pull.
There’s a small flash of light. Nothing like the stunt I pulled before, but it’s enough to see six shadows. And then Purple’s eyes are flying away from me, hitting the wall with a crash. I gasp and curl into myself. I don’t want to smell it. I don’t want to hear it.
I don’t smell the cooking smell.
I don’t hear sizzling.
Instead, I hear laughter, and this time, the sound is like dark music to my ears.
Purple moves in the darkness, as if unharmed.
“See, now I know you’ve earned your name. Trying to fry me like that. Definitely not an angel.”
I hear his footsteps get closer to me, and then he’s directly in front of me again.
I whimper. I don’t want him to touch me.
I don’t want to hurt him.
“Easy, Sin.” He whispers. He moves next to me against the wall and settles. “I’m right here. You’re safe with us, I promise.”
I don’t move. I’m frozen in place.
Slowly, he starts to talk nonsense. It fades into background noise, then to pleasant buzzing in my ears.
Bit by bit, I relax, until I find myself leaning into Purple’s heat. He wraps an arm around me.
“Good.” He whispers. “Good.”
“What are you?” I whisper. My eyes are starting to feel heavy. My body feels pleasantly numb.
“Sleep, Sin, we’ll still be here when you wake.”
***
“You still haven’t answered my question.” I say, staring up at what I’m assuming is the ceiling, but I can’t be sure because of the darkness. The six others are lying in a circle around me, enclosing me in a circle of warmth. They’re a comfort, even though I can still only see their eyes, each pair a different color. “What are you guys?”
Purple shifts beside me, looks down at me. “Sins, of course.”
“Sins?”
“Yes.”
His gaze shifts away from me. “Why don’t we introduce ourselves? I am Lust.”
The one with orange eyes sits up. “I am called Gluttony.”
One with lemon yellow eyes is next. “Greed.”
Someone with pale, pale blue eyes speaks up next. “Sloth.”
Next, emerald green eyes. “I am Envy.”
And finally, molten silver eyes. “The sin of Pride.”
It was odd. Aside from Lust, all of their voices seemed to constantly shift. It was impossible to tell their gender, the cadence of their tone, nothing.
“Interesting.” I say. Quite frankly, I don’t know how to respond to that. I think I’ve heard of these people before? Weren’t they an anime? No wait, the seven deadly sins are a bible thing, aren’t they?
“That’s all you have to say?” Lust laughs. It’s a very nice laugh. Husky. Sweet. “Aren’t you curious as to what we can do?”
“You can do stuff?”
“Obviously.”
“Oh. Well, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” I still don’t know how to respond to this kind of thing. Lust is right, I’ve well and truly gone mad to think of this stuff.
He tsks at me. “Oh this won’t do at all. Where is your backbone?”
Warm fingers tilt my chin up to his purple gaze. “One does not grow wings, does not summon us, without a fire in their souls. Something that rages inside them, begging to escape. And I can see it in your eyes. It’s there, but hidden.”
I can’t keep up with his gaze and my eyes flick away from him.
“You are mistaken. You said so before, I have nothing left in me.”
“Bullshit. Eyes up here, Sin.” His voice is commanding and I can’t disobey him. “Regardless of anything and everything that has happened to you, you still want. Right now, it’s love and I am the closest of us who can offer that to you. That is why only I speak to you. And yet, you’re not begging for me.”
“Uh…”
“I am Lust. When someone looks at me, I appear to them as the person they want the most. The person they would do anything to possess. Everything about me, my looks, my smell, my voice, all of it is tailored specifically to whoever looks at me. To you. But you don’t beg for me or my touch? That means that you want, you need, something else. Something that none of us can offer because you aren’t going insane for us.”
“You just said that I want love, though.”
“Yes, you want it, but it’s not what you want the most.” His hands grip my shoulders, shake me a bit. “What do you want?”
“Nothing.”
“Lies!”
The door bursts open as Lust shouts.
“Let’s go,” the guard says.
“No.” I want to stay with them. With Lust. They’re safe. They don’t hurt me. The darkness doesn’t hurt me.
“Grab her.”
“No!” I shriek as they tear me away from Lust. “No, I want to stay here!”
“Crazy bitch.”
“Lust!” I cry out. “Please!”
“What do you want?” Is all I can hear him say as they drag me out and slam the door, trapping the sins inside.
***
They’ve figured out that I love my room.
Instead of threatening me with the jacket, they threaten me with keeping me from my room.
They order me to kill a prisoner.
I don’t.
BANG BANG!
They order me to kill a prisoner.
I don’t.
BANG BANG!
They order me to kill a prisoner.
I don’t.
BANG BANG!
They keep me in the light room, the experiment room.
Every day I don’t kill the person they want, they keep me in there for another day. Week? Month? I don’t know anymore.
I want Lust. I want the sins. They make me feel safe.
“Kill this prisoner.”
“Please let me go back.” I whisper. “Let me go back.”
“You can go back when you kill this prisoner.”
I look at the man in front of me, bound and gagged. He looks at me. My growths. I think he’s praying.
To who?
To me?
How dare he.
“Kill this prisoner.”
I don’t want to.
“Kill this prisoner.”
Bang bang?
Kill him.
Kill him.
Kill him.
Kill, kill, kill kill, kill kill KILL KILL KILL KILL KILLKILLKILLKILL
“SHUT UP! EVERYONE SHUT UP!”
Everything is a blinding white for a second.
And then it’s all black.
Act III: Wrath
I can see.
My eyes don’t hurt. Lights are out in the experiment room, but the light is not gone, not like in my room. Small pieces of it fade in from other places in the building.
The prisoner in front of me is charred to a crisp.
My handler is charred to a crisp.
Looking up in the observation window and the dark dust coating it, I think it’s safe to say that the scientists looking at me are charred to crisps.
My head tilts to the side.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I turn my head to the new source of sound. Gluttony, their orange eyes glowing in the shadows approaches me. Their form isn’t much of a form. It’s a vacuum, like a section of space shaped into a human, except for their eyes. They notice me staring at them.
“You’ll have to give me a form. Only Lust has one right now, because that’s his thing. To look like who you want the most.”
They stand over the charred form, then grind his face into black dust under their foot.
“Hey!”
“Don’t let this one be on your conscience. He was a follower of me. A glutton. He hoarded food from his people, charged them a ridiculous price for it, while he sat and ate to his heart’s content.”
“You’re talking to me now. Are you saying I want you instead of Lust now?”
“No.” An orange curve appears on where their face is supposed to be. “It means you’re one of us now.”
“One of– what does that mean?”
Their shadowed form bubbles, seems to become more solid. Now I see a solid outline of someone. Stick thin arms and legs, spindly torso.
“Think about it.” A long, bony finger taps their head-shape. “You’ve long since been something human. You’ve rejected your body, your angel-ness, I guess.” Their voice transitions, becomes deeper, more male. “We call you Sin, but you weren’t quite there yet. But now?” He gestures to the carnage, a cracked skull starting to phase in underneath the shadows. “You burned people alive! I’d say you’ve made it all the way there.”
I open my mouth to respond, but then alarms go off, and I hear people running.
“We have to contain the subject!”
My lips curl and a sound comes out of me. One made of pure rage.
“Go.” Gluttony’s eyes bore into me. “I think you’ve figured out what you wanted. Lust will be so pleased.”
My body turns on it’s own. It feels like it’s possessed by something other than me, but it feels so right.
I follow the sounds of the people who hurt me. They’re coming towards me, trying to find me.
I want to be found.
I’ll do what they ordered me to do.
“There!”
I turn around, my growths, no, my wings, brushing the floor.
I smile at them. I pull the faint light from all the resources around me.
“Kill.”
The hallway goes white and then back to normal. I sway then fall to the floor, exhausted but exhilarated. I start to laugh as euphoria fills me.
There’s blood everywhere, which mixed with the odd barbeque scent, creating some sort of perfume that makes me feel high.
I hear footsteps and look up, ready to fight again.
I stare into beautiful purple eyes.
The form I gave Lust is from a dream I didn’t know I had. Hair that looked so much like gold it could probably cut, perfectly tanned skin, and those eyes. So beautiful.
“H-hi.” I squeak out.
He drops in front of me and smiles, so brilliant I could faint. He wraps his arms around me and I breathe him in and close my eyes. I feel like I’m at home.
I feel like I’m loved.
“I have a new name for you.”
***
He uses the blood from the people I’ve killed to slick damaged and untamed hair back from my face. He smudges charcoal from the walls around us over my eyes. He cuts the bonds from my wings.
I’m afraid to look at them.
Grabbing my hand, he leads me to a wall that one of the sins have blown up to escape the building.
A deliciously cool breeze wafts away the scent of blood and charred flesh for the smoke and chemical smell of a city. The orange and blue lights cast perfect shadows over Lust’s face, making him appear so beautiful, I feel like I shouldn’t be able to comprehend it.
As it is, I can’t look at him for long. The light of the city shoots needles of pain through my eyes and I have to close them.
“We’re free now.” Lust says, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and cradling my head against his chest, shadowing the worst of the lights. Enough that I can squint my eyes open. “No one can dare tell you who you are and what you want.”
He picks up a shard of glass, not caring as it cuts into his hand.
“You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”
He shows me the glass and I look into the reflection of myself.
“Oh-” I gasp. “I’m-”
“Beautiful.” Lust finishes for me.
“And that’s coming from the sin who’s objectively and subjectively the most beautiful creature in the world,” Envy chirps.
I don’t know if I can be called beautiful. My body is an obvious wreck. My hair has white streaks in it from strain. My cheeks are hollow, my skin tight and deathly pale. Bones push against that skin, making me look horribly breakable.
And my wings…
Envy smoothes a hand down my hair. “We’ll make you healthy again,” they promise.
“My… wings though–” they rustle painfully against my back and I wince.
They’re no longer the pure white feathered growths I once knew. They’re twisted and matted where there aren’t bald spots., with smears of charred flesh across them. A few red feathers are starting to grow in the patches
The same red as my eyes.
“Oh please,” says Pride, his silver eyes shining with mirth, “the wings you had before were human beauty. Now they’re just your beauty. We’ll build you back up and those feathers will grow in eventually.”
“And,” Sloth adds, “we all have them.”
With a swish of sound, all six of the sins released wings like mine from their back. The only differences were the colors, which matched their eyes.
“Now come on,” Lust says, “we have to teach you how to fly, Wrath.”