You dress hurriedly, button your shirt hurriedly, and you run.

You run without thinking. You run home. You run past your doorman. You run into your apartment. You run into your girlfriend’s embrace. You run into the smell of her shampoo. You run into her open arms.

And you cry.

The wings are gone.

But in their place, you feel a small pair of wings flapping on your neck. You slap the back of your neck as though bitten by a mosquito. Shiloh looks at you, surprised. You have no answers for her, but you loosen your hair from its ponytail to hide the feathers.

You discover quickly you’re molting. You’re losing feathers, and laughing lightly, Shiloh scoops up some black feathers that trail behind you wherever you go. “Did you sleep with a dark angel?” she teases.

You don’t reply. Maybe they’ll just fall out on their own. But still, you feel the wings beat against the back of your neck. You hope beyond hope she doesn’t notice them. The dark wings should blend in with your hair.

But still the question remains – why? Why have they appeared?

You wonder what is happening to you.

Micah said he had answers.

You have to find him again.

You need to know what’s going on.

But first, you must go to your mother.

As you rush to the hospital with Shiloh, she tells you more of the details. Normally, lyrical, Shiloh is short with her words. “They thought it anxiety,” she explains, “she couldn’t slow her heart. Your mom isn’t the anxious type. She still can’t get it to slow.”

“A heart attack?” you wonder.

“They don’t know.”

“You seem distracted,” Shiloh confronts you in a way that is unlike her, “is it the dark angel?”

“Something like that,” you admit.

***

A few hours later, as you are walking out of the hospital room and toward an intern, you feel a strange sprouting sensation at your ankle. You yank up your pant leg and see a handful of ivory feathers clustered into a thick wing fluttering in the cool, sterile breeze. Luckily, Shiloh is glancing at her phone, and the only other person around is a beautiful intern pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair.

She smiles at you, her grin radiant, and blushing, you pull your pant leg down. Hopefully, she didn’t see anything. But the damage is done – you feel the swift quivering of the wings on your skin.

At first, you think it’s something fleeting and embarrassing – something akin to an erection. But when Shiloh and you make love that evening, you notice the wings fade. They don’t return that evening.

Or the next morning when you awaken to make her waffles for breakfast.

However, you do notice something odd, when you walk into the hospital to visit your mother, a new set of wings have grown on your eyelashes. Luckily, they’re black and curl up near the corners of your eyes, so they blend in with your eyelashes, but you feel their every movement.

And they appear only when you’re talking to your mother’s cardiologist.

She’s sweet, but unassuming. She wears a white lab coat and plain scrubs, and an engagement ring. But when she smiles, you think she seems nice. And you wonder what it’d be like to be her wife.

That’s when you know the wings aren’t a strange, sexual thing.

But when a new pair appears on your pinkie just like the first time, you grow curious. The same colors too – the lovely turquoise and brown.

Micah reappears as well.

You have so many questions for him, but he does not speak. He merely walks with you. He follows you to a coffeehouse. One you have walked to several times.

But this time, when you see Jacqueline, the barista, your heart begins to palpitate, your hands grow sweaty, and your lips feel dry. You have so much you wish to say to her, but you have lost the nerve.

You stand outside the coffee shop, heart in your throat. That is before you see your reflection in the window. That is before you see the six foot tall pair of wings the color of milk attached to your shoulder blades, glimmering and shimmering like stars.

You gasp.

“It’s never been about lust,” Micah whispers, “your seraphic metamorphosis. It’s been about love.”

end.

Isabelle Palerma

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This short story is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.