The Liar
Chapter One

Computer humming softly, the monitor glowed brightly in the dark. Words appeared across the screen in neat lines, wearing clothing of Times New Roman, 12pt. Near the bottom, the program said this was the eleventh page, but the eyes that were attached to the same body as the hands rattling out an uneven tune on the keyboard never looked at it. They were more concerned with picking out errors in the text.

For once, they tore themselves from the content of the document to flick down to the clock after a particularly wide yawn. It read “1:00 AM”. Meaning that it was already Monday and she would have to get ready for school in seven hours. She reluctantly saved and exited out of Word.

“Aww, but you were almost finished!” protested a voice near her ear. “I wanted to know how it ended!”

The writer jerked violently, turning in her seat to stare into a pair of green eyes she could just barely make out by the radiance of the monitor. Stifling a cry, she scrambled backwards, falling off the chair and sliding across the floor until she hit a wall. Reaching up with a trembling hand, she turned on the lights.

She could see the owner of the voice clearly, now. He was only average in height and leaner than an alley cat. His clothing was worn, but he didn’t match their aesthetic, appearing healthy, though pale and nearly underweight.

“Who-who are you?” she managed, staring up at this stranger who had just appeared in her room.

“I am the Liar,” he declared, sitting down in the vacated seat and crossing his legs as he leaned back.

“The liar?” she echoed nervously. Who would call themselves a liar?

“The Liar,” he confirmed, gesturing expansively. “Lesser-known as the Storyteller Angel.”

“Angel? You’re saying you’re an angel?”

“Yes.” He blinked placidly, stopping his eyes’ curious search of her abode to look over at her, meeting her confused expression calmly. “I am the Angel of Lies.”

“Prove it,” she demanded, having had enough of this madman’s rambling. “If you’re really the ‘Angel of Lies’, you should be able to prove it,” she concluded decisively, crossing her arms in a gesture of defiance.

“And if I said I couldn’t?” he tested, leaning forward suddenly and lacing his graceful piano player fingers together.

“Then I scream and my parents come running and the police are called.”

The Liar grinned impudently, settling back into a relaxed posture once more. “And they would find nothing, because I would make it so they couldn’t see me.” He passed a long hand in front of his face, briefly obscuring his smirk but never his glittering green eyes. “That would prove it—but it might prove embarrassing, too. Ready to believe me for fear of shame?”

“Not. A. Chance.”

He sighed theatrically, giving in with an elaborate seated bow. “Very well, then. I shall show you.” Shrugging out of his jacket, he stood as pulled his t-shirt over his head after setting his fedora aside.

“Wh-what are you doing?! Rapist!”

Rolling his eyes, he admonished, “If I were going to rape you, I’d be taking off my pants.” At this, he gripped his belt buckle to accentuate his point. Her eyes widened and she tried to press into the wall. “Uh, maybe not the best gesture…” Moving his arms up so that they were parallel to the floor, he turned around. There was a pair of pristine white wings tattooed on his back, startling in their detail.

“Tattoos? That’s your proof?” She was incredulous, even as she was still slightly afraid of this man.

He smirked wickedly at her over his shoulder and wings shot from his back, replacing the ink. “Of course it isn’t.” His wings fanned out fully. “These are.” After letting her gape for a while, he asked, “Proof enough?” Awed, she nodded. His wings slowly pulled back in, leaving a slight scattering of feathers across the wood floor. Once the tattoos were back in place, he began dressing, but he left his hat off.

“So you really are…?”

“The one and only Liar.”

Hesitantly, she stood up. She was still afraid of him, but she didn’t think he’d do anything. Because, well…he was an angel. “Can we move to the kitchen?” she pleaded, sounding exhausted. “I need tea.”

“That might be a more comfortable setting,” he agreed. “And I would like some tea, as well, if I may be so bold.”

“Mmmsure.” She wasn’t sure how to react with this “Liar”. It was all so surreal. A trickling suspicion nagged at her that this was merely a dream—if it was, she would hardly mind.

Leaving her room, she padded down the hall and into the kitchen, glad that her parents slept upstairs, where they would not be easily woken. She sat down at the table where the Liar had already taken a seat after setting the kettle to boil.

“If you’re an angel,” she broke the silence, “then where’s the robes and halo?”

“None of that is truth, actually,” he told her. “Angels really aren’t what people think we are. We’re not agents of God. We’re in no way connected to religion, with the exception of its decision to falsify our existence. Honestly, all that is the truth about what is accepted about us is that we have aspects and wings.

“And even the wings have lies mixed in with them. There are all sorts of complicated things involving the number and size of our wings. It’s really more of a personal choice. I can do anything with my wings I want. I could have seventy-two of them, all a neon orange. But I prefer the simplicity of two and white.”

“You were saying that the aspects are true as well?” she prompted, not wanting to picture seventy-two neon wings on this slight, bemused-looking man.

“Yes. We all have aspects. Every one of us is responsible for something.”

“So every time someone says something that isn’t true, it’s your fault?”

“Oh no!” He laughed loudly, head tilted back. “No, no, no. When I say ‘responsible’, I didn’t mean we are the cause of it. We just sort of…hang around. Embody, in a way. As for regular lies—also no. I choose to have nothing to do with those. Cowardice, Manipulation, Survival, and Dishonesty all deal with that kind of thing. As I told you, I’m the Storyteller Angel. The lies I care about are the ones used by artists. Anyone who lies to present something. I like writers the best. I’ve always found them to be the most articulate liars. Without even recognizing what they’re doing, they lie. That’s all storytelling really is.”

“I’d never thought of it that way.” At this point, she was a lot less panicked by the angel in her house than interested in what he was saying.

“Most don’t, I’ve found. But most writers I’ve told this to get it right away and seem to enjoy the comparison. They are perhaps the only people on Earth who enjoy being called liars.” He tapped his lips thoughtfully, gazing off at something nonexistent over her shoulder.

The kettle hissed softly, letting them know it was done. The writer stood and fixed two mugs of tea, returning to the table to let the chai steep by itself on the barren linoleum of the kitchen counter.

“Why are you here? Why would you want to be here?” she asked the Liar, staring at him. He was sitting across the table from her, his green, paint-splattered jacket hanging on the back of his chair and the slogan Awake and Dreaming clearly splayed across the front of his grey t-shirt.

“You’re a writer,” he answered absently, green eyes gazing up at the ceiling. In that way he also reminded her of a cat. They were always staring at the ceiling, as if there was something that was extremely apparent there, but that they saw and she didn’t.

She tugged the sleeves of her sweatshirt down over her hands. “Well, yes, but…why are you here?”

“You are a writer,” he repeated with amusement, rocking forward to turn his attention to her and rest his forearms on the table. “I am the Liar, the Storyteller Angel. Writers are storytellers.”

“Yes, but…”

“You just won’t give up, will ya?” He chuckled, messing up his already-disheveled brown hair as he scrubbed his left hand through it absently. “Okay, here it is. I like to bother writers. They’re the world’s hidden schizophrenics and they’re delightfully fun. So I find one and make a pest of myself.”

“So you plan on sticking around?” she asked faintly.

“Yep!”

“I think…I might just pass out.”

“You’re a liar, I’m the Liar…I don’t see why we can’t get along.” Shrugging casually, he smiled.

His charm was lost on her. “Leave. Now. You can’t be here…this isn’t possible…” The full realization that there was a man with wings sitting in her kitchen at one in the morning finally hit her as she fully got over the initial shock. “You’re obviously insane. I’m obviously insane…”

“I may be a little touched in the head,” he conceded. “And so may you, but this isn’t the product of insanity. Maybe mine…” he mused. “Yes, mine. This is my insanity.” He shook his head and snapped back to attention. “But why can’t I be here?” Pouting, he looked up at her with puppy eyes. He only managed to keep it up for three seconds before he burst out laughing.

“Because I’m sixteen! I live with my parents! If they wake up and come down here…” she hissed, glancing at the stairs apprehensively.

“Then they will find you sitting alone in the kitchen, enjoying a late-night mug of tea.”

“So…only I can see you? Great. Maybe I really am crazy.”

Leaning across the table, he flicked her forehead. “Pay attention. You are crazy,” he informed her brightly, “but that’s beside the point. I already told you, I can control who sees me and who doesn’t. Anyone can see me, if I want them to. Usually, I don’t. I prefer to observe. So if your parents come strolling down here, to them—I’m not here.”

“If you prefer to observe, why are you bothering me?” she asked again, desperately trying to piece this situation together.

“We attach ourselves to the most interesting of our disciples. It’s better than talking to each other.” He rolled his eyes expressively and shrugged at the thought.

“Who are you talking about, ‘we’?” She stood up and brought their tea over from the counter.

“Angels, woman, angels!” He sighed. “I’ll assume you’re usually more observant, and it’s the shock that’s doing this to you.”

“So…you don’t get along with the other angels?”

“That’s not what I said. I said that hanging out with humans was better than talking to angels. I prefer the company of writers better than that of my own kind. That being said, no, I don’t get along with a lot of them. I find some of them are very…uptight. And the ones that aren’t, most of them are trying to live as humans and they don’t appreciate it when angels living as angels come into their lives. The rest, well…I appreciate them for what they are, but humans are just more interesting. About the only ones I do get along with are the other artistically inclined angels. Creativity, especially. She’s somewhat scatterbrained, but brilliant, and always an interesting conversationalist.”

“Do you have any idea how disturbing all this is?” she asked abruptly. “Some guy shows up in my house at one in the morning and then proves he’s an angel after introducing himself as the Liar.”

“Fiction can’t compare with real life…and real life can’t compare with fiction,” sang the Liar cheerfully. “The one looks like the other more and more.”

“Oh, yes,” she agreed fervently. “I can’t tell the difference. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was in a story myself.”

“You are.” At her questioning look, he grinned. “Life is a grand-scale story. And whoever’s writing it is someone after my own heart. Because this is one hell of a lie.”

“The things you say scare me,” she admitted, resisting the urge to rub her arms. “But...I can't tell if they're true or not.”

“Every lie has some truth to it.” He smiled slightly at this. “And in any case, I’ve had a long while to come up with all this.”

After a few moments of silence, she spoke up, “You’re really not going to leave, are you?”

“Nope.”

“How long do you plan on staying?” she questioned, hoping—and sounding like she was hoping—that it wouldn’t be too long.

“How long do you plan on writing?” he returned archly, raising an eyebrow and taking a sip of his tea.

“Until they nail the coffin shut. And even then, they’ll have to pry the pen from my fingers,” she answered automatically, not thinking about the ramifications her answer to his question implied.

“Looks like I’m here until your death, then.”

“Not your death?” she wondered idly.

“I’m an angel. I don’t die.” He blinked at her, shrugging one shoulder.

“Oh.” She looked down into her tea.

“Were you planning on trying to kill me?” he wanted to know, sounding oddly like a small child, the fear and concern another might have conspicuously absent from his light voice.

“I thought about it. For a second.”

“Well, that wasn’t very nice of you.”

“It wasn’t nice of you to barge into my life at one AM on a Monday morning,” she grumped, scowling at him.

“Touché.” He drained the rest of the chai in one long gulp. “Well, I’m off.”

“I thought you said you weren’t going to leave?”

He shrugged. “I’ll be back.”