Jeriel

He didn't ask.

I don't suppose it matters. "It would have happened anyway," he said, and I felt his words inside me, as if he were speaking through me. I was too afraid to move. I could only listen.

He told me his name was Jeriel. Somehow I understood it then, though now it seems to be fading from my mind... An angel. My parents used to tell me fairy tales, when I was little, about human-birds, creatures that were from another realm that walked through ours even though we couldn't see them. I didn't think fairy tales could be real....

He told me about this other world... The world I used to read about in stories. "Except they're not stories," he said.

I asked him to take it back. To just give me my life back. He said, "I can't give you what I didn't take from you. All I've done is open your eyes. Nothing's changed."

But everything's changed. I want to feel like he stole this from me. Like I have someone to blame because I'm like this. A hunter. He said I was a demon-hunter. It doesn't mean anything to me. Yesterday they didn't exist, and now something wants me to kill them.

But Jeriel didn't make me this way.

I know that.

Still....

I never wanted this.