All That You Love
an excerpt

It rained frogs again today.
Only little ones this time, and only for a few minutes, but a rain of frogs is a rain of frogs, I suppose.
Relatively speaking it's not all that strange, but I can't help but feel every time it happens that it means something is coming. I feel different today. I don't want to go out; this feeling is like waiting for an important parcel which is already late.
I probably just drank too much last night. But maybe this time is different. Maybe someone is coming.
But I think that every time, and no-one ever comes.

_____

The building was old, and looked out of place. The sun was high overhead, and it was very mild, considering it was January. But still, the building gave off a feeling of rain – not the kind that pours, but the kind that seems to hang in the air, too miserable even to fall.
It was tall, and imposing, and made of dark stone. It looked a little gothic. It bore obvious marks of age but did not look to be in a state of disrepair, unlike the rest of the street, which was a mess of concrete and looked like it harboured walls full to the brim with asbestos. Not that there seemed to be many residents to suffer the ill effects.
I stood looking up at it for some time; if anyone had walked past, they would have thought I was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. But no one did. The street seemed deserted. It was ten in the morning, on a Monday, but even the little row of shops was closed – boarded up in fact – and deathly silent. Not a curtain twitched. I half expected to see tumbleweeds blowing across the empty road, or vultures picking at a carcass.
Was this really the right place? Oh, you’ll know it when you see it, the guy had said, laughing through what sounded like a nasty case of bronchitis. You’ll know it, for sure. I’d thought he was just a little senile, a touch demented; now his weird, hacking laugh made more sense.
I looked again at the sign above the two columns of intercom buttons.

Eschaton House.

I shook my head. This is it, all right.
After a couple of seconds’ hesitation, I reached for the button, and pressed. A crackle of static burst out of the speaker, and cut off abruptly, followed by the decisive click of the door unlocking. I pushed it open and stepped in; it was warm, and to my great surprise, did not smell of urine, but of oriental cooking. The floor was not concrete, but carpeted – and clean. The walls were clean, too, and a tasteful shade of cream; all very strange for such a run-down part of town. I frowned, taking in a pleasantly simple frosted glass light fitting. Weird.
I wasn’t used to these places being so neat. My usual place was your average block of flats mostly inhabited by students of the local university: rich with the smells of microwave food, smoke, and vodka, the air ringing with shouts and laughter and the sounds of video games, the constant hum of activity and life.
A faint clattering noise far away brought me back to myself as I stood in the foyer wondering why I felt so strange, why the tiny hairs on my arms and the back of my neck were standing up. The faint smell of food was coming from above me, and this reassured me slightly; remembering that I was here for a reason, and fingering the money in the pocket of my jeans, I headed for the stairs.

Nobody was answering. I’d tried knocking, ringing the doorbell, calling through the letterbox. Nothing. I knocked again, harder this time, and leaned against the door frame, listening for activity inside. I hadn’t come all this way to go away empty-handed. I wasn’t even sure I could remember my way back to the centre of town from here. And who had pressed the button to let me in if nobody was in? I looked up and down the corridor. It had all the unnerving calm and sterility of a hospital in the early hours of the morning. I imagined wards frozen in time behind the heavy doors – a nurse stuck forever holding a needle in the arm of a patient, who in turn lay eternally with their face skewed sideways and screwed up, the expression of one who does not like needles. I shuddered at the idea, and took my ear away from the door.
Just as I was turning to leave, the next door down swung open with a loud creak, startling me so much that I tripped over the tabby cat which had been creeping up behind me. The cat and I both screeched; I fell to the floor, hitting my head on the banister on the way down and landing with an undignified thud, and as everything faded to fuzzy blackness, the cat fled into the arms of the girl who had opened the door and was now leaning out into the hallway.
Probably no more than a couple of seconds later my vision returned, swimming up at me from the depths of my brain in a slightly sickening manner. I slowly sat up, rubbing my head, and found myself looking up at her, as I had looked up at the building itself several long minutes before.
It’s not easy to put into words the first time I saw her, even though in my mind I still see her exactly as I did in that first instant, standing above me, the cat in her arms, looking down at me with earnest concern.
She was wearing navy blue Chinese silk trousers, patterned all over with shining golden dragons and red phoenixes, and a simple white tank top. Her feet were bare; she wore no jewellery, and as far as I could tell (although I’m certainly no expert on such things), no makeup. What struck me first, though, was her hair – a mane of dirty gold strands framing her elfin face and tumbling all the way to her hips. The light behind her head lent her a bright, fuzzy halo. Her voice, when she spoke, echoed faintly, like bells.
“Are you ok?” My head was still spinning.
“Are you an angel?” I asked groggily. She laughed, putting her cat down and reaching her hand out to help me up.
“Wings maketh not an angel,” she said, and with no explanation, led me into her flat and closed the door.