Angel with No Halo Ch. 01

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Taking a slave.
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Fall, fall my little angel,

Worry not my dear,

For you shall be eternally grateful,

Break your wings my child,

Let the inner demons grow,

For you my child,

Are an angel with no halo.

Arthur had the same dream into his psyche every night for what seemed like a month. Sleep studies and MRI exams yielded even less pleasing information, a normal report was a myth in the medical world but some reason he had to be the one to bust it. The same raspy voice crept it's way in no matter what Arthur forced himself to think about, even the plants began to recite the damn words after a while. Apart from inserting probes in his head, he tried every curative technique in the book but to his utter dismay, they all came to the same conclusion.

"Obviously it's in my head, where else would it be? In my dick?" Arthur fumed, all that was missing was smoke escaping his ears.

The campus psychologist wasn't making it any better by her less than stellar real world experience. It was obvious that most of her so called practical experience came from theoretical babbling of a few known dead men. As Arthur shed some light about his opinions, Dr. Baker was a little bit less than pleased. Taking the hint, he calmly excused himself out of her office and started to make his way back to the campus.

Every time Arthur found himself in the halls of the Science building, he always felt a twinge of sadness regardless of the time of day. Even the rare times they were filled with caffeine addicted youths, they always gave off an abnormal vibe. The prehistoric lighting and paint pattern didn't help the atmosphere either, the flat white paint over cracked bricks just didn't give off an aura of academia. The tube lights were always in need of repair but since the social sciences department rarely brought in money, they were fixed on the highly acclaimed as needed basis.

As Arthur walked through the sad hallways, he picked up a red bull from the vending machine. The motto of having something that you don't need always stuck with him, he would rather have a needlessly hyperactive heart and slight headache over the chance of sleeping in class. Attending a private university was stressful enough, paying for it with an academic scholarship contingent on a certain gpa made him feel like Atlas holding up the world. The dreams were sure to kill his semester, there was no way he could study, check up on himself and hunt for a cause at the same time.

The hell does it even mean? Arthur sat on one of the raised floorboards and thought to himself.

He had just started to realize that focusing on the why was pointless, Arthur wasn't going to get anywhere with that train of thought. The only clue he had was the dream itself, specifically the words. With every sip of the caffeine infused drink he evaluate each and every word of the amateurish attempt at a poem. He drank most of the can, roughly 12 ounces, of the sugary drink before the frustration took over. No matter how many times he rearranged the words, it always seemed to make no sense. The only part that resonated with him was the last line, an angel with no halo.

An obscure memory came to the front of his mind that starred a nun, it was grainy and the timestamp was unrecognizable. Arthur couldn't even make out the age of the nun, let alone the face. He couldn't remember much of the details either but the one thing that was crystal, was her muttering the last line of of his so called dream. He starkly remembered the woman offering to pray for him as he was an angel that lacked a halo. It was one of the most random and strange encounters of his life, he didn't even know what he was doing in the church anyways. Arthur was an atheist for as long as he could remember, the choice to visit the church couldn't have been his.

Just as he was about to take another sip of the drink he passed out. More specifically, Arthur dropped like a falling object to the ground. It was like someone had just flicked the off switch to his body, there was no buildup or any type of noise. One second he was fully conscious and the next he was practically a breathing corpse. His pupil enlarged to the point where it completely covered the iris before going dull. The depth was completely gone from his eyes and the pupil looked more like black construction paper than anything.

A split second later, the entire process repeated, but in reverse. When Arthur woke he looked at the can spilling the remaining contents on his shoe and quickly picked it up before it could do any more damage. Once again he continued his train of thought without a hitch, he didn't even realize he blacked out. The only evidence of the phenomena was his enlarged pupil, although it decreased in size it was vastly larger than normal. It was in a fixed state of dilation where it didn't respond to any type of stimulus. Even when he stared directly at the tube lights, for reasons unknown, they wouldn't change.

Steadily, Arthur began to hear muffled conversations that became clearer and clearer by the minute. The oddity of the situation however, was the there was no one in the hallway besides him. There were conversations about various topics, some were from a group of females while others were more discrete and still others were talking to themselves. Instead of getting to safety or reacting in a rational and socially accepted behavior, Arthur simply listened and sipped his drink. There was more intrigue than anything, the odd memory quickly found itself in the back of his mind as he was engaged with more pressing matters.

After eavesdropping on a few conversations he saw a woman sitting next right to him. Unlike the others however, Arthur was able to see her. She looked human with incredibly pale skin, almost as if powder was dumped on her. The woman wore a robe that covered most of her face and extended down past her feet with sleeves that ended at her wrists. Her hands were also powder white, with not a spec of discoloration among them. The lower part of her face was devoid of color as well, even her lips. She spoke is a raspy voice as if she hadn't drank water in days, it took only a few words to recognize the voice. It was the same as his dream. She was attempted to talk but her voice kept cracking. Caught up in the moment, Arthur passed his near empty can of liquid caffeine to her. The woman smiled faintly revealing the cracks in her lips before motioning him to sit closer to her. Hesitant at first he soon complied to her request.

"You now see the past the veil," she whispered into his ear. "I sense the beating of your heart, calm yet anxious." The ominous woman's gaze shifted towards the bottled caffeine, "It is the work of this potion I assume?"

Arthur merely nodded in confirmation. The woman in a matter of seconds had captured every piece of his attention, completely blocking out the voices in the room. She then put her palm on his heart instantly normalizing his heartbeat.

"Who are you?" Arthur whispered in return. He knew not of the reason but it just seemed appropriate.

"I am known by many names child. To some I'm a seer yet to others, the trader."

"The trader?" he asked curiously.

"I chose who went through the gate. A life for a life."

"A life for a life." Arthur mumbled under his breath but he was so consumed by this woman he didn't even realize he was doing it.

"Indeed my child, a life for a life. As before she simply smiled and ruffled his hair softly, often stopping to regain her limited energy.

The confusion was clear but the woman kept at her own speed, occasionally stopping to fix the imperfections in Arthur's hair. The Seer would often bring back people from the dead for a price, in order to bring someone you want back you had to send someone out. Quite literally a life for a life.

"That was long ago my child." She smiled sadly and looked towards the ground, "I hold no such power now."

Despite her tender nature he knew he was about to be asked something, and considering the situation it was reasonable to say that he wasn't in the best position to refuse.

"I need your help to regain my proper place my child. You are the one who dreams of him so you shall be the one to free me."

"My dreams?" Arthur blurted out, then as he concentrated on the woman's face he could sort of make out a resemblance to the nun. It wasn't a perfect match but there were striking similarities. "Are you the nun?"

The seer happened to be somewhat too invested in Arthur's hair. She ruffled it for a few moments before smiling and caressing his cheek with the backside of her palm. She slowly shook her head from side to side before directing him to the ground with her eyes. Arthur saw nothing at first but his shadow. With patience already running thin, he glared at her and asked her what he was supposed to be looking for. Once again the woman just smiled and directed him to his shadow.

This time however, when he looked down he saw his shadow with some hefty tweaks. His shadow was sporting a pair wings that had definitely seen better days. Not only were they littered with holes but parts of them were ripped off. As Arthur scanned the shadow and made his way up to the head he realized exactly what she had meant, here was nothing above his head.

"An angel, without a halo." The seer whispered in his ear before disappearing into thin air.

All that remained was a piece of paper with death written in capitals across it. Instinctively Arthur searched for the woman but there was no one there, even the voices had vanished. His shadow as well reverted back to it's original humanesque form. Scanning the environment, Arthur began to realize that almost everything had went back to normal. He would've chalked up the experience to a caffeine overdose and the severe lack of sleep if it wasn't for the lights. The lights shined brighter than before. Further investigation led to the discovery that none of the light casings were broken, the tubes were in pristine condition as well. The overwhelming visual stimuli launched a full blown assault on his eyes, while the brain struggled to convert it all into conscious perception.

Arthur gave the paper one last look before shoving the crumpled note in his front pocket and downing the last remnants of the drink. He was through the double doors in record time before an ear-shattering thump rattled the premises. Arthur jolted his head towards the sound instinctively and lost his balance, tumbling down the steps as a result. As his body obeyed the will of gravity he felt relatively little to no pain, in fact he just missed the corners of the steps. After rolling down a floors worth of stairs, Arthur conveniently stopped mere inches away from the wall.

A truckload of thoughts rushed through his mind as he brushed the dust off his faded blue jeans and analyzed the double doors, a possible origin of the penetrating noise. The doors were untouched, in pristine condition in fact. Arthur was confident enough to bet his life that glass had shattered during the noise, he was also fairly sure bits of the door windows were following him down the steps as well. Freaky was too light of a word to describe the situation, as cleanliness seemed to be following him. Everytime Arthur looked back, the environment seemed to rejuvenate to mint condition. The dust and gum ravaged stairs were so clean the only imperfection was his own footprints.

Just walk away man, just walk away.

Arthur repeated the thought numerous times before his feet received the message, right before his heart practically exited the body.

The caffeine combined with his anxiety prone self was already a bad mixture, the paranormal encounter provided the perfect concoction for a ticking timebomb. The situation was too much to handle, his ever increasing heartbeat was a testament to that. Arthur raced to the lobby forcing himself to avoid looking back, going against every natural instinct he put up mental blinders and sprinted to the welcome desk of the Science building in record time. The exit was in sight and all he had to do was go through it, somehow he knew that once he was out of the building he'd be safe.

Before he stormed out the building in classic 80's fashion he heard a familiar voice call out his name. He paid no heed and focused on the objective until heard the voice again. It took a while for the mind to match the voice with a face.

"Arthur!" Dr. Baker came rushing over permeating an aura of urgency.

"I'm really sorry about before but this isn't a good time, I'm in a major rush." Arthur hastily spoke, slurring most of the words towards the end. The fact that he was breathless didn't help either.

The chocolate skinned psychologist power walked her way to him, ignoring everything he said in return. She held a stack of papers and sifted through them energetically as if she had just discovered fire. The smile stretched from ear to ear when she finally found the page she was looking for. Dr. Baker handed him the half-highlighted page and stared at him with hope plastered throughout her face.

"Meaning to the Hallucination?"

The school psychologist didn't take kindly to his obliviousness, she scoffed in annoyance and sidestepped to stand shoulder to shoulder with him. Dr. Baker yanked the sheet from him and pointed at a sentence located in the middle of the page. Arthur briefly scanned over the sentence and then the paragraph hoping to use context clues to figure out what it actually meant. Sadly his vocabulary wasn't up to par with the scholarly article, most of the words went in one ear and out the other. Even after reading most of the page, Arthur still held on to the confused expression with a vice like grip.

"You still don't get it?" The condescending tone could be heard from a mile away.

"No I know what hallucinations are but I already told you that I had vivid dreams when I sleep not in the middle of the day."

"Arthur after I read this article I found numerous other case studies that follow a pattern-"

He stopped her mid-explanation when his heart began to pound heavily again. Once again he felt uneasiness in the air, he couldn't quite place it but he knew he had to get out of there and fast. Arthur apologized to Dr. Baker and promised he'd go over whatever she wanted at a later point. He didn't even wait for an answer as he sprinted out the doors and headed straight for the main gates of the campus. He ran past the school guards and headed straight for the dorms, the blinders were up and there was no way in hell he was looking back. Unfortunately one can only ignore instincts for so long, a few blocks away from the dorms the blinders went down and his eyes demanded answers.

A quick shot of relief came upon his person when he saw nothing but other pedestrians. Following the discovery his heart finally began to calm down and go back to it's resting elevated state. With no danger in his Arthur calmly walked to the dorms and ease his mind with copious amounts of alcohol. As he searched his pockets for the keys he realized they lacked a certain texture.

The hell? Arthur thought.

A myriad thoughts ran through Arthur's head as he frantically excavated his pockets for the note, the mind going to darker and darker territories as the seconds passed. All his hands ever came in contact with was varying amounts of lint. He kept searching his pockets while he retraced his steps before making a horrifying discovery. Just like his jeans, the pockets were old as well. There was a hole big enough to easily slide two fingers through in his front left pocket, the same pocket he put the crumpled up note in and judging by how baggy his jeans were, it could've dropped anywhere.

Oh shit, Fucking Baker!

A fresh memory popped into his mind shedding some light on the missing note. Just before the psychologist of misfortune came in contact with him, Arthur was gripping the note tight in his hands. He must've let it go instinctively when she handed him bits of her research. Arthur took a quick peek at his hand-me-down silver watch and gulped down hard. He had ample time to go back and search the premises before the janitors went to earn their pay but, he'd have to feel the uneasiness again.

The universe seemed to be in a generous mood as Arthur sprinted half the distance rather quickly, even the roads were on his side. Traffic was rather manageable with only a handful of a cars in the street. Soon the university campus on was in sights, the giant domed arena could be seen from blocks away. Arthur's heart was pacing at an abnormally high rate yet it felt oddly normal, his lungs should've gave out blocks ago but apparently even they understood the weight of the situation. The adrenaline pumped throughout his body dilating the veins to maximum potential, even with 16% body fat they pushed against the skin.

In a matter of moments Arthur closed the gap and approached the front desk, slamming his student ID on table's surface and collected his breath. With adrenaline still present in his bloodstream, the task took only a few seconds to complete. When he normalized his breathing pattern, Arthur grabbed the ID and went to pass through the security scanners. One crime in a nearby neighborhood and suddenly every institution in a five mile radius has to adopt a code red security protocol.

The guard didn't take too kindly to Arthur's impatience. Every time he stepped through the scanner he it always beeped, there was always something he forgot to take out. The rent-a-cop was about to explode after the fifth runthrough, luckily Arthur was spared the devastation when his sixth and final runthrough went uninterrupted. He didn't bother glancing back at the fuming guard and simply rushed to the science building. It was times like this that he hated going to a large-scale university. Going from one class to the other was practically doing a marathon, Arthur would walk more than a mile a day on the campus alone.

When he finally passed the giant black sculpture of a rectangle, or some daring expression of modern art as the administration called it, the science building was only a few steps away. The weight was practically lifted off his shoulders, all he had to do was enter and pick up the note. Slightly relieved, Arthur slowed his pace and calmly approached the building. It was then he realized the first rule of life, that it's designed to fuck you and it followed its design down to the letter. Not only was there a padlock on the building but a giant hazard sign covering half the door. The building was shut down completely until further notice.

The phenomena didn't make sense, at all in fact. Arthur was gone for a maximum of an hour. There was no way they could've evacuated the entire building, subdued the chaos and persuaded the rest of the populace to simply attend their classes. With a quick glance at the clocktower he realized that classes were still in session and the only person that would have a concrete answer in the sparsely populated area was security personnel. It was obvious he wasn't going to go to front desk security, pigs would have to fly in order to for the rent-a-cop to be mildly cooperative. The next best option was the guard that overlooks the student parking area, he saw her once or twice and she seemed to be much more reasonable than the alternative.

Arthur made his way to the guard's station and awkwardly introduced himself, usually the people asking for help would be in a four wheeled automated machine not standing on their own two feet. Regardless the guard, who introduced herself as Sharon, was much more welcoming than he assumed. She was much prettier close up as well, actually to the point where she was almost too pretty to be working as a guard. She also fit the uniform snuggly, her stacked figure made it seem as if it was designed just for her. Arthur only had a waist up view of her but it was enough to satisfy anyone's day, her chest stretched out the shirt to just the right extent. Everytime Arthur stole a glance at her, he couldn't place it but she seemed oddly familiar. Nevertheless he got back to the situation on hand and inquired about the closed building.