Joshua's Guardian Angel

The frightened five year old called repeatedly for his parents as the flames began to lick at the footboard of his small bed. The thick smoke clogged his throat so the sound he emitted was more like a feeble croak. With the last of his voice, he whimpered for his friend no one could see. “Sealy!”

A beautiful, dark-haired angel with large white wings appeared above the bed. Despite the dire straits that the boy found himself, she smiled and teased him, rumpling his messy mop of dark brown hair playfully. “I am not a mattress.” The boy had never been able to wrap his mind around the pronunciation of her name. “It’s Cee-elle.”

His big blue eyes were awash with tears and still he managed a grin. He was safe if his guardian angel was with him. She had never failed him. “Sealy!”

She held out her arms to him. When he scrambled into her embrace, she pressed him close and wrapped her wings tightly about him. “Only breathe against my dress and you’ll be fine, darling.” The boy nodded. He liked the smell of Ciel. Clean. Fresh. Pure. Like a field of spring wildflowers after the rain. He’d remember the scent of her as long as he lived.

The fire was everywhere. There was no avoiding it. Ciel walked through the inferno with her small charge tucked close. She mourned the loss of the other inhabitants of the house who did not escape. They were leaving him an orphan, but he would not be alone for long. Her sweet, shy boy deserved the wonderful, loving parents he was about to gain.

He hadn’t known how long it had taken to leave the flame-engulfed house. The next thing he knew he was lying on the cool grass well away from any threat. He preferred the smell of Ciel to the smell of smoke and air.

Ciel heard sirens and shouts. One shout from a caring neighbor made her smile. He would be fine now. “Have a wonderful life, Joshua. If you need me, just call,” she whispered, kissing his soot-smudged cheek.

She was watching as the neighbor, Roy Chasez lifted the boy carefully into his arms.

“You okay, Josh?” the man asked as he hugged the boy close.

“Ciel,” Josh murmured. “Ciel, my angel saved me.”

Ciel gave a sad smile as she faded. “I kind of liked being Sealy…”

Ciel remembered the sweet, little boy with the gapped-toothed smile fondly. “Yes, I remember Joshua,” she told her superior. She had toasted her wings that night and they had never quite recovered their pristine white beauty. To this day, they were tinged with a golden color.

Selma next presented her with a scene of a scruffy, dark-haired man stupidly sitting on the rail of a lighthouse. His seat was precarious to say the least as he tossed a bottle of something into the air repeatedly and caught it.

Ciel had no particular like of adult humans. Many of them seem to hold the key to their own misery. She preferred to help those who could not control their destinies, innocents – children and animals. “The fool is going to get himself killed,” she announced blandly.

“That is Joshua today.”

The angel sighed sadly. “He had so much promise.”

“He has fulfilled much of it.”

“And is tossing away the rest, it appears.”

“You don’t care?”

“From what I have seen adults are a careless lot. They should care more.”

“Joshua will die tonight if no one intervenes.”

“I don’t do adults.”

“No one else is available, Ciel.”

Ciel’s jaw tightened in anger. She didn’t want to care what had made the shy child she had known so despondent he was contemplating such an end. She didn’t want to care – but she did.

“Talk him down, Ciel,” Selma instructed her.

JC Chasez carelessly tossed the bottle of Cristal in the air and caught it. Though his seat looked dangerous to some, he had no particular fear of heights. He swung his feet back and forth as if he sat on a porch railing and not hundreds of feet above the churning sea below.

And did it really matter if he fell? In the entire scheme of the universe, who was he? Fans would turn to some other artist for music. His well had run dry. The music within him had died somehow. He hadn’t been able to write a single lyric, play a single chord. It was gone.

That’s how he had come to this God forsaken place. At his family’s urging, he had left the parties, late nights, and temptations behind to “relax and recuperate.” Las Vegas. New York City. Los Angeles. Miami. Those places were too distracting. He couldn’t hear his muse above the noise. Now, he had crashing waves, sea birds, and wind for company. He was alone – and still couldn’t find the music. He was washed up at 26. Well, Joey had once said JC peaked at 14 and was headed downhill ever since. Sadly, it looked like his friend was right.

“You’re an idiot.”

At the sound of a female voice beside him, JC missed the bottle in midair. He watched as the bottle of very expensive champagne plunged into the rocky surf below. “Fuck.”

He peered at the woman perched next to him. Well, a rather beautiful, young woman – if you didn’t count the big, golden wings on her back against her being a woman…What a get-up! She wore some gauzy, white gown with a gold belt. “Ya missed Halloween, lady,” he felt compelled to point out.

Ciel gave him an irritated smile. “And you are still an idiot.”

Damn! She had the biggest, bluest eyes and the sweetest, little mouth…If her whole demeanor hadn’t announced she saw him as the biggest loser in the world, he’d be tempted to go get another bottle…

“Ya canna be a real angel,” he told her.

“And why is that?”

”Cuz angels are kind and sweet and have white wings. I knew a angel a looong time ago. She n’ver busted my chops.”

So, he did remember her…Wonderful…A drunk remembered her! “I just bet you never gave her a reason to.”

“Ima not drunk…a wee bit tispy…”

“Then why are you up here?”

He grinned at her. “Why’re you?”

“Because you are.”

“Came to keep me cump’nee. Tha’s sweet.”

“No. I came to tell you to quit being an idiot and to convince you to go inside.”

“Aww…ya care…”

“My Lord only knows why,” she muttered.

“Ima not gonna jump.”

“I am glad to hear it.”

JC went to toss a companionable arm around her shoulders. Because of the voluminous wings, he misjudged and was thrown off balance. Instead of grabbing at her to steady himself, he over compensated in the other direction. A brief moment later, he was free falling.

“Sealy!” A name from his far distant past tore from his lips.

“Joshua!” Ciel called out, seeing the large, frightened eyes of the remembered child. She swept down to grab fistfuls of his shirt. He had gained some weight in the past years and it was difficult for the small angel used to rescuing toddlers and small pets to suspend a grown man in midair. “Hold on,” she commanded to calm him.

Surrendering, he wrapped his arms around her. Pressing his face into the curve of her neck and shoulder, he breathed deeply. “I remember your smell, Sealy,” he whispered.

With fading strength, Ciel managed to carry him back over the railing and into the house. Stumbling through the rooms of the renovated lighthouse, she deposited him on a messy bed. When she made to leave, he grasped at her gown.

“Sealy, stay.”

“I can’t, Joshua.”

“I’m scared and I’m lonely. You said if I needed you—“

As she had when he was a small boy, she rumpled his curls and kissed his cheek. “Joshua, be brave and face whatever it is.”

“I don’t wanna…”

She shook her head. “Good-bye.”

“Sealy…”