Malachai’s hand reaches out. He has attempted escape before. The record of previous attempts pockmark his bodies. Where once, he had been beautiful, now, he is marred. His dark skin, once smooth, is now cracked and broken where the light peeks through. Like sunlight streaming through a moth-eaten curtain, or a bullet-ridden lampshade, his body pours out light onto the dirty floor.
Inside this storage locker, time becomes irrelevant. Angels have not been subject to time in the same way humans are; along with their other mutations, their need to engage in basic human functions (some of which would have made themselves very relevant after weeks in here) is absent. Malachai had considered it a blessing, when he was a little boy hearing scripture at his mother’s feet. Before she turned him in.
He had always wondered how they broke them, the angels that he saw kept captive. Angels had power that men and women did not. Besides, how could people enslave their own children? How could people enslave their betters? But after months with his wings crying out for mercy, pinned underneath boxes of hidden, forgotten treasures- he could see childhood toys and awards from even this low vantage point. Malachai had become a curiosity, an old toy that didn’t behave properly. If he had not broken already, he would break soon. He only hoped his body would break before his spirit.