Dangling by Yeva Wiest
Copyright 2009 Lyrical Press, Inc.

  • Dangling
  • Yeva Wiest


    • Later that night, just as Fatah had predicted, the men of the city came banging at the door. They were drunk with wine and desire. They wanted sex. They wanted violence. They wanted the angels. To Fatah's horror, Lot stepped outside the door and offered the crowd his daughters. Fatah could not believe he would offer his two children. The girls were barely in their teens. She knew how little he regarded his daughters. After all, they were not the sons he needed to carry on his name, yet she had thought he had some love for them. She knew he had other feelings for them, unnatural feelings, but to thrust them out to be used by those animals was unthinkable.

    Fear, raw and rough, coursed through her veins like shards of glass. For the first time, her heart truly burned with hatred for another person; she wanted to kill Lot.

    Gabriel saw the expressions on Fatah's face. Her agony etched deep lines across her brow and carved hollows of grief beneath her eyes. Gabriel looked at the two girls sitting side by side. They were huddled together as the reality of their father's betrayal swept over them. They had no experience of a man's embrace, and to give them up and let them be hurt in any way was unquestionable.

    Gabriel gathered Fatah close and whispered, "Don't worry. We will take care of you."

    The crowd pounded against the door. Lot's voice could be heard over the melee, urging the men to take his daughters. "They are beautiful," he called out. "Untouched. Pure."

    Incensed, Gabriel's skin turned a dark blue with the force of her anger. Michael also began to change. Their eyes began to glow like burning coals. They opened the door and pulled Lot into the house. Michael's eyes bore deep into those of the man who would betray his own children. He saw into the craven soul. He saw the miserable heart of Lot, and he knew that Lot was less than any man. He was vile.

    They stepped outside. As the door slammed shut behind them, Fatah heard Gabriel utter a piercing scream, and then it sounded as though the Gates of Hades had been laid open.

    Terrible to behold, Gabriel's anger was a devastating power when unleashed. Michael calmly covered his eyes with his shades and watched as a blinding light, fierce in its intensity, pulsed from Gabriel's eyes and mouth, scalding the eyes of the men of Sodom. They stumbled and groped. Falling against one another, they struck out. Their curses filled the air, and rampant desire gave way to hedonistic brutality. The street was chaotic.

    Michael sardonically asked Gabriel, "Well, what do you think? Will God spare these people?"

    Gabriel looked at him and smiled. "No way. They're history."

    "That's what I thought. Let's go