Originally published in Washington State University’s Land Escapes literary journal. Read below…

The angel was sick and tired of college parties. She sat on a table littered with red cups while drunk twenty-somethings aimed ping-pong balls that passed straight through her, hollering and slapping each other on the back whenever they succeeded at their game. The air was close and hot, scented by too many bodies and polluted by too many voices, and though she could pick out each person clearly in the dim light, she found them inconsequential, impermanent, and largely uninteresting.

She was here because of the boy who was passed out on a couch halfway across the room. His skin was pale against the cracked leather, his legs splayed and his head lolling to one side. He’d had too much tequila, spurred by some onlookers in a drinking game earlier in the night. His heartbeat was sluggish, but his breathing was still deep and even. The angel knew he had nothing to worry about—not that he was doing much worrying in his current state. He might need his stomach pumped, in which case somebody would discover him soon and he would spend a miserable night in the ER, which would serve him right for pulling this stunt and wasting the angel’s time. She thought he would most likely get away with only a nasty hangover. Either way, he would wake up tomorrow, which meant she didn’t need to be here. The angel gave a long-suffering sigh heard by no one. She really hoped somebody would try to wake the boy up soon. This whole divine stoicism gig was getting irritating, and she didn’t want to wait all night for nothing. 

The boy’s friend—who would have noticed the boy by now if he weren’t such a prick—was in a corner, drink in hand, chatting up an unremarkable girl. She touched his arm, and a smirk pulled at the corners of his mouth, the boy entirely out of mind. The angel silently cursed him out.

A girl in blue caught the angel’s attention. She stumbled into the leather couch, sloshing beer onto the boy’s shirt, then caught her balance and sat across his legs, spilling more of her drink on him. The apology she offered was slurred beyond recognition, but he couldn’t hear it, so the angel supposed it didn’t matter. A group—possibly her friends—approached the girl, who looked like she might vomit. The angel certainly hoped so; it might make for something interesting in this dull, god-awful place. A member of the group tugged at the girl’s hand, trying to get her to stand up again. Somebody nudged at the boy. He didn’t stir, and they shook him harder. Finally, the angel thought, ready to be done with this whole pointless thing. But the group got the girl to her feet and moved on. The angel grunted in disgust. Another ping pong ball whizzed through her head. 

The boy’s heartbeat thudded to a steady rhythm, thrumming through the angel and marking the beginnings of a headache behind her eyes. It slowed ever so slightly, and the boy began to dream. On the floor, the cracked screen of his phone lit up and began to vibrate, shuddering its way across the hardwood until it was halfway under the couch. It went dark for a moment, then spat out a message notification that the angel didn’t care to read, but thought the boy probably should, if he would just wake the hell up. 

The angel was considering doing something rash, calling in a favor in order to get someone’s attention, but she knew she couldn’t. Why was she always sent down for the ones who woke up? The ones who did this every weekend, who were always fine, who did not need her to babysit their sticky, sweaty parties. She sat on her table, stewing in a potent mix of fury and boredom. The thought that everyone in this room would die one day gave her some comfort, but right now they were only wasting her time. The boy’s heart rate crept lower, but she was no longer paying attention. He would wake up tomorrow. He had nothing to worry about.

His phone lit up with another message. Then a third. The angel vaguely wondered who cared for this boy enough to give a shit about where he was on a Saturday night. She scanned the crowd again, hoping for some cheap entertainment. Disappointingly, the girl in blue continued to keep her alcohol down. Predictably, the boy’s friend continued to be a prick.

This kid has a problem, she thought, He needs some real fucking friends. 

The angel pushed her fists into her eye sockets as her headache deepened.

Then the boy vomited. 

His breathing halted, replaced instead by an awful, squelching gurgle, and the angel lurched to her feet. The taste of bile raced up the back of her throat. If she had been solid, she would have knocked over the game of beer pong and several witless bystanders in her rush to the couch. She jammed her fingers down the boy’s throat, but they passed right through the putrid clot of sick that was choking him. Useless. She scrambled back, searching for a new target. She hated this fucking job. 

She reached for fistfuls of partygoers’ hair, smacked at their drinks, even swung her fist through a boy—but feeling only a vague sense of unease, he gave a brief, compulsive shudder and moved on. 

The angel was no longer thinking about wasted time. Somebody needed to do something right now. She screamed at them, desperate rather than angry, but her words existed only in that liminal space that no soul could occupy. Damn you all to hell.

The girl in blue finally lost the contents of her stomach, but the angel didn’t look her way.

In the corner, the boy’s friend was still talking to his girl.

The angel hoped he would never forgive himself.

The sound of the boy’s heartbeat ricocheted through her skull like the tolling of a massive clock whose gears were finally grinding to a halt. The angel’s blood felt hot; her mouth burned with the taste of alcohol and acid. A chorus of glee rose up from the beer pong idiots. The boy’s friend said something unfunny, and his girl laughed. The girl in blue was dry-heaving, taking in lungfuls of precious air. The boy’s gurgling quieted. Time was jilted. The clock ran out. 

The angel knew perfect silence.

The boy lay unmoving, though the angel could almost imagine that his chest still shifted in a shallow dip and swell. His shirt was damp with the girl’s spilled beer and crusted with his own vomit, the darkened fabric clinging to his skin and standing out against his bloodless face. His limbs were at the odd angles of the drunk and sleeping, but the angel could do nothing to arrange them with more dignity. She was no more there than he was. 

A single drop of liquid rolled down her intangible cheek and fell, burning a hole in the carpet, eating through the floorboards. 

A few partygoers caught the faint scent of ozone and fire, but none saw the angel, and none ever would.