The Angels

Amelia Hall has had the same job for the past two years. All she had to do was to press a red button every time the buzzer buzzed. It was a boring job that she wanted to quit, but due to recession was not getting another job..... also the pay was decent considering she had no work to do and gave her enough time to do what she wanted to on the job. Amelia walked into her office, kept her bags beside her desk, sat down and picked up the book she had been reading.

Half an hour into her book, the buzzer buzzed and she pressed the red button. Almost as if on cue to her pressing the red button, she heard an in-human scream. Amelia quickly walked out of her office to see who else had heard the scream, but was surprised to see that no one else had been affected. She walked to the stairs and went up to the second floor, from where she thought she heard the scream coming, but of no use as no one seemed to have heard the scream or at least pretended to.

Amelia went back to her office and sat down behind her desk. After about fifteen minutes the buzzer buzzed again and she pressed the red button.She heard the scream again, this time coming through the vents of her office. She quickly got up and closed the window blinds and walked over to her desk. She hid her bags in one of the big drawers of her desk and took out a flashlight and proceeded towards the vent. Upon opening the vent grate, she saw it was big enough for her to crawl in, which she did armed with a flashlight..... thus began a waiting game for the next scream to be heard.

An hour passes before she hears the scream again, this time coming from her right. She flinched as she put her ear against the cold metal walls of the vent. Unable to decipher the location of the screams, she decides to proceed further into the vent. Going ahead she finds a forked vent, and decides to go right, as thats where the screams we came from earlier as per her presumption.

After crawling slowly for about half an hour (which seemed like eternity to Amelia), she came to a downward sloping shaft. She heard muffled screams coming from the bottom of the shaft. She stuck her arms out and pushed herself down the shaft. A minute or two later she saw a light coming towards her and she immediately put her hands firmly against the vent walls to slow her downward movement, but of no avail. By the time she reached the bottom of the vent, her arms were tired and her hands were crimson red and burning.

Amelia decides to rest for a while to regain some strength in her arms and hands. All of a sudden she hears the screams again, and looks down from the grate to see how high she was in relation to the floor of the room. As the screams turned into a whimper, she mustered her courage and decided to take a peek from the grate and survey the room. She looked around and saw people who were glowing or had some radiance around them with their hands cuffed behind their backs. A steady trickle of golden colored blood was flowing out of their wounds. Besides them there was another person in a black robe in the room with his back turned towards her standing tall behind a glass box. He was nothing short of a giant. Taking the opportunity, using the last few ounces of her strength she kicked open the vent grate and jumped out into the room.

As soon as her feet touched the floor, the screams and whimpering stopped. As Amelia stood there in shock looking around her, she realized that the people she saw earlier weren't humans, but angels.

She looked at the glass box again to check upon the black robed giant, but his back was still towards her. Amelia, despite being drained out of energy (thanks to her little escapade in the vent) somehow felt at that very moment flush with energy..... it was as if the radiance from the angels was rubbing off on her. She went to the closest one and whispered "Psst... I am going to get you out of here, but you have to trust me". The angel looked at Amelia with terrified eyes, but nodded in agreement. Amelia just couldn't understand as to how and where did she muster so much of strength and courage.

Removing a bobby pin from her hair, Amelia got down to the task of slowly un-cuffing all the angels with quivering hands and glancing at the glass box time and again keeping an eye on the black robed giant. As soon as she un-cuffed the last angel, they shimmered and vanished into thin air and the giant was nowhere to be seen. Puzzled and amazed at the turn of events, Amelia was in a state of shock. What had just happened..... she pinched herself on her forearm.

A ray of golden sunlight through the blinds hit her face as Amelia woke up from her slumber..... her arms aching, hands burning, hair undone and the mark of the pinch on her forearm having turned black due to clotting of her blood. Startled she looked at the vent grate which was securely fastened and every thing was in it's place. The buzzer was buzzing and as she hit the red button, she waited with abated breath to hear the scream. There was none. Her supervisor came to inform her that her shift is over.

As she picked her bags to leave for the day, she looked down at the book she was reading "Angels and Demons"..........perplexed as she was with what had happened, she stuttered out of her office thinking was any of it real or did she day dream..... none of what she thought explained the ache in her arms and hands.