The Angelic Demon By Nova Macknik-Conde I stared at the forest of dark pine trees looming over me, laughing at me, each becoming a vision of the one I used to welcome into my house, my arms, my heart, until he stood over my parents with a bloody knife in his hand and the look of a crazed, cornered, monstrous animal in his eye, his beautiful kaleidoscopic eye, the eyes I could sink into and be lost in those pools of colors and sadness and intelligence and sometimes tinges of humor, but now, only hate and pleading for help. And his gentle hands now flecked with red drops falling to the floor as though the blood was crying, pooled on the wooden floor and creating dark swirling masses of danger, as though it was warning me to run away, far away from this person named Angel I thought I knew. I was able to think all this as Angel’s servants and guards of Fallen Angels growled at me to get going and pushed me toward the forest where my death was waiting as a sacrifice to not Angel, for Angel had changed. Angel had morphed into the God of Death, a Demon, or as I now thought of him, the Angelic Demon.