The Angel Didn't Believe in Storybook Endings
By Samantha Emery

She sat outside while the rain came down. She wanted to stay there forever, feeling the cold water slide down her skin like the tears she was crying. She hated the woman inside the house.

The girl had run outside the second the woman had picked up the phone, her voice changing from her angered yell into the voice of a 50's television show mother. And it made her sick to hear it. How could the woman’s voice change from that of a demon, to the sweet woman she wished her mother was? But she knew better than to hope for caring from the woman.

She loved her, while she hated her. And the emotions seemed to fit together in this woman... Loathsome and Loveable…
The coldness penetrated her black clothing, but the wetness came forth from inside of her, the rain echoing her tears, which now
doubled up and she collapsed onto her knees, shaking with intense sobs.

She heard a step in front her, and was afraid it was the demon woman. But when she turned her tear stained eyes up, no demon
stood before her, but rather an angel child, who reached her tiny hand down and wiped a tear, almost indistinguishable from the rain, from her face. The pale pink of the angels skin in contrast to the sickly white of the older girls.

"Do you want the storybook ending, or the truth?" The angel asked, kneeling before her.

"I don't want either, I just want out." the girl said, looking back at the ground, where mud was gathering, staining her jeans. "I just
want to leave."

"That is the storybook ending. The truth is, that you have to go back inside and be hated and loved by that woman because she
hates you and loves you in the same way you do her. You have to live with the fact that you don’t feel you belong to her, or to
anyone.”

“I don’t want that to happen, I want you to fix it.”

“I don’t believe in storybook endings, I believe in what really happens, and you should too.”

“How can an angel not believe in storybook endings?” The girl questioned, wringing her hands as she cried.”

“I know better, that’s why.”

Then the angel disappeared, golden hair and pink skin seeming to become rain and fade away, shimmering. She made no noise
audible to the pale skinned, dark haired creature on the ground.

The girl continued to kneel in the mud, watching the mud collect where her knees pushed into the earth. She cried for an hour or
more.

She rose as the sun started to come out, and ignored the rainbow, knowing that rainbows magic were only for the people who got
storybook endings.