I stared at nothing in particular as my bare feet just barely brushed against the fine sand that covered the entire stretch of land below in white.

It was a quiet night with the susurrations of the ocean lapping against the shore and the soft crashing of breaking waves throwing themselves repeatedly into the jagged rocks that stood about twenty meters on either side of me.

The palms of my hands trembled as they blanched around the wooden platform that looked out towards the beach. To be honest, I never really liked nature, but to be someplace calmer than the screams within the place I was supposed to call home was enough for me.

I sighed as I tipped my face up to the heavens and squeezed my eyes shut.

Before the friction between my mother and father had grown unbearable, my father had been an amazing storyteller. Every night when my bedtime loomed ever so closer and closer, he'd tuck my reluctant self into bed and drag a chair up to my side. Then, without my invitation, as usual, he'd start another story he had yet to tell me.

"Did you know that there are angels in heaven?" he'd asked me, only a wisp of a smile on his face.

Eyes wide with curiosity, I'd shake my head. At the time, I'd only been so entranced with his stories because I'd rather do anything then go to bed, but I'd become genuinely interested as time passed.

"Well," he'd start with a faraway look on his face, "Angels are people who look just like you and me, but they have wings the color of snow and beams of light that weave around them like gold thread. When it's day, the light that surrounds them shines down on us, but when it's night and they go to sleep, they hide their lights so that no one can snatch it away from them when they're not looking. Because after all, those lights are the lives of the angels and to take them away would mean that the angels would die."

"What about the stars?" I'd asked, knowing that those tiny pinpoints of light studded against the night sky like beautiful gems were the only ones keeping the earth from being too dark.

"Ah, but there was one angel who was good and kind," my father had said, "He decided to give his light to the night so that the earth wouldn't be blanketed in darkness every single day when his fellow angels went to sleep."

He'd paused then, pondering about his tale, "And though he was kind, without his light, he couldn't live anymore."

"Couldn't the other angels share their light?"

"It didn't work that way," he'd whispered sadly, "To share their lights with the kind angel would be deceiving to themselves. Because without keeping the light close to them only, the angels who shared would die along with the kind angel."

I'd considered this and even being no older than eight at the time, I wasn't upset at the melancholic ending. In fact, I had all but reacted to it. The lull of my father's deep voice that quivered like the string of a cello's C had coaxed my lids to lower over my eyes and my chest to rise and fall like a rhythm to match his voice.

"And you know what?" My father had mused softly, thinking that I was asleep, "Your mother is like my light to me and I think that if she were to ever deceive me by sharing herself with someone else, I wouldn't be able to live."

I'd heard those words as a child, and although I didn't quite understand why my mother would pay any attention to anyone but my father whom she'd always said she loved, those words stayed with me.

Even now, when the sound of my father's voice no longer sounded like that beautiful C.

I opened my eyes to look at the inked sky, a thin film already covering my eyes with glass.

My bottom lip shook, and no matter what efforts I put up to quell its movement, I couldn't stop it.

Why did my mother have to go one and share herself with someone other with my father?

Why'd she have to go and break his heart?

I didn't want to think about it.

I didn't want to care.

I didn't want to love.

The glass in my eyes hurt, flowing down in liquid tears and carving my face with misery.

People always thought my father was the one who didn't satisfy my mother enough — the one who had hurt the fragile woman he'd married.

If only they could hear the plaintive notes of his voice when he cried silently at night or the painful rhythm of his heart when it beat in that agonized part of his chest, they'd understand.

That he was the one being hurt by her.

And then, for the smallest fraction of a second, I wondered how long it would take for her to kill him, like the angel who didn't have his light.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.