The wings were bleeding again. They hadn’t for several weeks, but now they were. They were beautiful though. The blade of the wings were a deep steely grey, splashed with darkest black and bloodred and were rimmed with a pure downy white. She had spent hours, days, sitting on the floor staring up at them. The blood from the re-opened scars trailed down her back in two slow parallel lines, mirroring those running from the bleeding stumps of the wings. A draft passed through the room and the wings on the wall rustled as if they were trying to shrug off their bonds and fly away. A single steely grey feather came loose and drifted towards her. It was over a foot long and glistened in the vague starlight and the sharper light of streetlamps many stories below. In the distance, firework painted the sky with blossoms of red, white, green, yellow, blue light and the distant thunder of the explosions nagged at her ragged nerves.
The overwhelming shadow of the dark wings on the white wall was looming over her, weighing her down, but getting rid of them would be like discarding a part of her soul, a part of her past. Crumble it up like a used piece of tissue and throw it away, burn it. She couldn’t. Even if she hated the memories and wanted to forget, she couldn’t. They were part of her, had changed her and she couldn’t go back to what she was before. A year had already passed since that day when her wings had been cut. They said that she had done it to herself, that he couldn’t be blamed. She had been drunk, she had worn make-up, she had worn a short skirt. She had been young and naive.
The floating feather settled softly against her naked feet. She carefully picked it up and slowly twirled it between numb fingertips. It looked sharp. Like the wicked blade of a knife. She could even see the sharp edge glinting in the dim light. She held her other hand up in the gloom and looked at the intricate web trailing across her wrist. Slowly, as if in a trance, she pressed the glinting, steely edge against that delicate, pulsing web. She expected pain and blood, but there were neither. The feather was just a feather and slid over her skin without breaking it. She had cut herself before. Not the wrist and not a blade, she hadn’t dared. But she bore a scar on her forearm, near the elbow. It was two inches long and ragged at one end. She had used a sharp piece of plastic to scrape a wound on her arm, but she couldn’t make it bleed, it hurt too much. In a way she had felt better afterwards, not good, but better. In other ways, she felt worse. But she understood people who cut themselves now.
A series of colourful explosions shook the window and made the young girl flinch. She stood up and walked to the large window where the night was pressing its dark sweaty face against the panes. A freightened shiver ran down her spine as she looked out at the pulsing, throbbing darkness. She could see people walking along the streets below her. They seemed happy, talking, laughing, sharing the night with each other without a single thought of what happened out there every day, every hour. People being hurt, killed, destroyed. Angels being cut down by the monsters of the world, without anyone doing anything, innocents being blamed for their own hurt. And the monsters walked the earth, free to cut down more angels.
A pale translucent face stared back at her from the darkness beyond the cold glass of the window. The ghost of a young girl, of her. The dark, sad eyes glared back at her, taunting her for her weakness. They were staring at her disapprovingly, judging, narrowing in disgust. And behind that ghostly face hung a mirror image of the wings, sparks from the explosions outside glinting in the shimmering grey feathers, like a dark reminder of everything bad that had ever happened to her.
Suddenly furious, she whirled around and launched herself at the wings. She tore at the steely feathers. Blood sprang from her hands. Cuts opened, spattering the wings, the walls, the floor and the girl with droplets of crimson. Thin rivulets of blood were running down her arms, staining her skin. As her rage faltered and grew dim despair settled over her. With tears streaming down her face, the girl crumbled to the floor, staring up at the wings that gleamed mockingly. Not a single of the bladelike feathers had broken or come loose, some had been stained and coated with blood that looked black in the darkness. A piece of white floating in the air caught her eye. She blinked to clear the blurriness caused by tears. More whiteness came into focus. She reached towards the closest piece of white. It swirled, dancing away as if afraid of her reaching fingers, but she caught it and brought it closer to her face.
It was down. Pure white down filling the air like drifting snowflakes. She got up on her knees, put her hands on one of the wings and pushed the bloodstained feathers apart. Beneath the sharp, steely grey feathers was a layer of pure white down. But the layer wasn’t smooth and clean. There were patches where the down had been torn off and others where the blood from her hands had seeped through, staining that clean whiteness. The patches, both bare and stained, burned her eyes, hurt her mind.
She stumbled backwards, gasping for air. Her eyes were stinging and her lungs burning. Her mind was returning to that night one year ago. She could feel his hands, his weight, the heat of his breath. She needed to get out, to run away She tore at the air, struggling to move and draw breath. She stared transfixed at the wings as if waiting for them to come after her. She tore open the window.
The cold blast of air that struck her stopped her raging mind. She leaned against the side of the wide-open window, still staring at the wings and took a deep ragged breath. The cold, December air washed over her and cleansed her of the smothering fear that had seized her. She turned to face the cold night, drawing breath in deep cleansing waves. The stars shed their cold, pure light over her, lighting up her dark face. The thoughts that had been raging through her mind for a year started to slough off her as voices rose to her from below, counting down.
10. She put her hands on either side of the window. 9. Her breath slowed down to a slow steady rhythm. 8. All thoughts of that night were gone. 7. Gone in the light of the stars she had finally let in. 6. She had hurt for so long now. 5. Maybe it was time to let it stop. 4. She leaned out, letting the air pass over her. 3. She stepped up on to the windowsill. 2. Her thoughts were being blown away by the cold wind. 1. As the voices from below merged into one joyful roar, a single question was left in her mind:

Could an angel fly without her wings?