Free A Guardian Angel by Phoenix Williams

warmth. She looked up at him with her
crystalline eyes, stepping close. “Call me.”
    “I will,”
Andy promised.
    She kissed him.

-Chapter Eight-
    Lumnin's
Finest

    Dreams swam through
Andy's mind as he lay asleep, disheartened. This time Andy was on
stage, playing guitar and singing Baba O'Rielly to a crowd of
featureless faces. He wasn't doing too bad. Once the song concluded,
he stepped off of the wooden platform and headed through the club
rather than back through the bowels of the backstage labyrinth. Many
people congratulated him on his performance, some requesting
signatures and photographs, others throwing out their affection for
him. He must have been a big deal.
    You must be a big
deal, Andy thought to himself, in order to wear an overzealous red
suit like he did. His custom made black leather cowboy boots were the
only thing breaking his entire red attire. He looked and felt like
hot shit. That was only reinforced by the multitudes of unfamiliar
faces appreciating him aloud.
    He walked past them
all and stepped outside into the empty streets, eager to leave his
fans behind and get on with his night. He wanted to be alone. His
performance had lacked in his opinion despite what anyone else told
him. He hated doing covers.
    “Hi,” a
fragile voice came from the side of the door. Andy was surprised by
it and turned fast to see a small nine-year-old girl sitting
passively on a green metal bench.
    “Hello
there,” he said in hope that that was going to be the end of
the conversation. It wasn't.
    “I'm your
biggest fan,” she told him. Her tone, however, seemed unexcited
upon meeting him.
    “Oh really?”
he said, sounding interested. “Well, what's your name?”
    “Haley
Flynn,” she told him with apathy.
    “Well,
Haley,” Andy started, walking over to her and getting down on
one knee so that his gaze was level with hers. “I'm your
biggest fan.”
    She smiled,
overjoyed. Andy felt proud of himself as he patted her head and
turned away. He started to walk to the park across the street.
    “Please don't
kill me,” she said.
    He stopped for a
moment and looked back at her. Nothing came to mind when he searched
for a response. She just stared at him indifferently as if nothing
had happened, and after a moment, he turned away and continued his
stroll.
    Nothing gave peace
to his darkened heart quite like the park at night. It seemed empty,
almost as if it only existed for him at that moment, waiting for him
to visit and welcoming him with warmth when he did. The trees
assembled in gnarled attention for him. He almost wanted to offer
them to be at ease, but he knew nothing could change their respect
for him. It was returned.
    But it wasn't the
trees he came to see. There was a small pond hidden off of a trail
near a tiny pedestrian bridge that was his favorite place to slip
away from the world and reflect on himself as a human being. And
finally he had found it.
    As he slipped off
his boots, he stared into the water's surface. He saw stars in the
reflection. He watched the moon dance in the delicate waves. Only
here could he see all of the universe and feel like the only one in
it. Like he was lost to the rest of existence and no one could come
find him, even if they wanted to. He was glad no one wanted to. It
gave him comfort rather than made he feel lonely. It rebalanced him
so that he could eventually go back out into the sea of gibbering
idiots.
    He dipped a toe in
and was shot in the back. He witnessed the bullet exit his chest in
horror. There was nothing that he could do now except fall into the
water, never to resurface.

    Steven had drunken
himself into a minor coma by the time Andy had awoken in the late
afternoon. Andy did nothing to wake him and instead left with his
car. The keys were in their usual spot.
    He pulled up in the
alley beside Jacob Flynn's house and shut off the engine. He sat,
pondering in the dull silence of the driver's seat, wondering why he
had come here. He had all of the