There once was a boy who lived all by himself in a very large city. Both his parents had very respectable and time consuming jobs in the community and because of that, the boy was very wealthy. When he had been much younger, he would always go out and buy many expensive things and lavish himself with costly presents to make up for forgotten birthdays and special holidays that his parents always seemed to miss.

He never did mind the loneliness though. He was perfectly content with having a large penthouse all to himself, never having to worry about curfew or having to keep his room tidy. He thought that his life was the ideal utopian dream, the picture of utter happiness.

Yet years of isolation, repression and accumulating pain slowly turned that bright, smiling boy bitter. Money no longer brought him the same satisfaction as it once did. He began disregarding certain rules set out by his distant family and soon he found himself wandering the squalid streets of New York; dirty and disheveled and so much more alone than he ever thought imaginable.

It was a few weeks later, on a night with no moon, that he met a fey, anorexic girl that showed him hell and called it a gift.

She told him of a magical place that accepted everyone, claiming it was the very definition of the word salvation. Her large eyes were wispy and so vacant, yet filled with such a profound love that the boy could not turn down her offer to bring him there. She took his hand in hers, not noticing how the boy shivered slightly at her frigid touch. It was there that he made his first journey into a brimstone heaven.

Days passed as if they were nothing. The people of the makeshift paradise were all pale, almost transparent and iridescent. Their skin shone silver under the harsh neon lights and their veins stood out like flowing blue rivers. Everyone's eyes were so unnaturally bright that it almost hurt the boy to look into them.

He was slowly assimilated into the masses of wandering pixies, learning their ways and felt loved and protected continually. He now joined in their activities, finding absolute pleasure in the way everyone floated from room to room, injecting their arms with a variety of brightly colored poisons. Translucent powers were spewed haphazardly onto broken shards of glass, only to be arranged into neat rows and inhaled moments later.

The boy was in ecstasy. Colors became electric, nuclear and explosive. He would spend blissful hours just staring up into the moon, enraptured with the way the outside world started to seem less vivid, less plastic-bright. Soon, a small gathering of delicate fairies swarmed around him. The light words they spoke, stung like needles to the boy's ears, buzzing and humming like wasps in a jar.

With every conversation, the boy could feel a little more of himself rub off and float away with the sound.

***

"Do you know why they make these out of glass?" an emaciated, pastel haired girl asked him once. With one stretched, gaunt hand, she motioned toward the powder covered glass shards. The name 'Angel' was inked so deeply into her flesh, she would never be rid of it.

"No," the boy responded with honesty, finding it odd how he could see the skeleton of the young girl pressing against her flesh as if it wanted to escape. Two very large welts were clearly visible under the thin veil of skin on the fey girl's face, an Angel with devil horns.

"It's so you can see what you've become," she whispered before the temptation became too great and they both leaned down and sharply inhaled. The boy frowned down at the bleeding angel, even though he thought she looked frightening and beautiful and godlike right then.

That night, when some girls and a couple of boys sat around him, the boy noticed for the first time since he had been there, that everyone looked like skinny broken angels. Looking down at his own hands, he saw with mild fascination he was becoming transparent, like cellophane. Soon anyone would be able look right through him to whatever was behind him, like he wasn't there at all…

***

It was only a few days later, after Technicolor poisons were injected into the boy's body, did the screaming begin.

The boy whimpered as the screaming grew louder, surrounding him. He heard all these voices crying out in pain. They cried out in fear. They cried out in anguish. They cried out in disbelief as an angel of redemption reached down and clutched onto them, dragging them toward the heavens only to release them to the depths of a fiery hell.

They fell. They collided. They shattered.

The boy's heart pounded louder that night, louder than he ever recalled hearing it. His nervous eyes darted fervently, soaking up the neon lights that pulsated and practically purred with an icy cold radiance that scorched the boy alive.

The whole world was screaming now.

Every father, mother and child shrieked in intense agony. The boy could feel their harsh breaths against his hollow cheeks. The voices were pleading, almost begging. They were all suffering as they all burned. They all writhed in pain.

The boy felt like Snow White in her coffin; entombed in ice.

He was woken up rather harshly by a group of the thin sprites that wrapped dirty cotton strips around his wrists. The boy could dimly see the shimmering of a shard of red tinted glass to the side of his hand.

There was so much red around him. It soaked into his clothing and merged into the cracks in the concrete floor. At the time, the boy could not figure out why he felt such sadness at having his fellow pixies flutter wildly above him, tenderly caring to his arms that felt so tremendously heavy.

But it was too late.

The boy could practically see oblivion swirl around him, scooping him up and carrying him away from his body. It was a strange sensation; like being pulled out of cold water into warm air. The shouts of the scrawny fey grew dimmer and dimmer as the boy shut his all too empty eyes.

He realized right then and there, as the tarnished angels carried his weightless body away that he had been offered heaven, if only he could get through hell first. Warmth embraced his chilled bones, soaking him in a pleasant glow. He was cocooned in that heat, allowing it to fill the area his sold soul once inhabited.

He only hoped that maybe, just maybe this new metamorphosis wouldn't have to be as bad as his first.

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