Tyrannia by Alan Deniro

he took—to prove, once and for all, that he wasn’t her sycophant, as I was.
    He started sprinting toward the border. The angel moving toward us had drawn his gun, and the gun’s wings unfurled.
    I kept following the water man. Soon the mist completely enveloped us. I lost his trail, but I assumed the angel and gun following us had as well. Unable to see far, I stumbled around for quite a while, devoid of direction. I thought about Lydia’s face—both of her faces actually—and wondered what I’d seen in them, what I’d hoped to accomplish by helping her out of a jam. I heard hissing gunshots here and there and I was afraid. The roar of the waterfall was deafening. I was afraid of getting caught in the waterfall, getting sucked down into whatever wet hell was below the earth’s barren surface.
    At some point when it was starting to get dark in earnest, I must have reached the border itself. Close enough to touch. I actually bumped into it, and quickly stepped back. I didn’t die! The waterfall was cold and squishy and felt, I don’t know, like I was touching an idea. I was pretty sure I was going to die there, that there was zero chance of home, or even my stupid pawn shop job.
    Then I felt someone stroking my hair. No one was behind me who I could see. Then it stopped. For a second—a second—the waters parted in a sliver of a crevice. There was a humming sound. On the other side, I could see strange beings, with imprecise, blurry features, sitting on a hill, intently listening to music I could not hear on account of the humming, coming from instruments I couldn’t see. The hills were shot with green so bright that my eyes were slain. But I couldn’t stop looking. It was like looking into Lydia’s actual face again, except it didn’t bother me at all. There were tall grasses and thickets, and paradise’s blackbirds soaring above them, between silver clouds—
    Then the crevice closed. It was stupid not to jump through.
    But, you know, I’m not sure that I didn’t. I mean, I walked back to my Civic. I did. The Civic was there. The angel and gun were poring over the Hummer, but paid me no mind. I was miniscule compared to the other entities at work. The watery man was nowhere to be found. I was soaked and also scared. I drove back to my trailer and drank for a few days, thinking that would fix things.
    And then, I went back to work. Although things were different. And still are different. Mostly little things. Mops don’t work particularly well inside the store; they’re always soaked. Mist comes into the shop at odd times, making the guns unusable. We’ve stopped selling them. My boss doesn’t mind since business is better than ever. Tons of cars. A lot of people on horseback have shown up recently, so we have opened a livery next to the gas pumps. My boss gave me a raise, on account of my “valuable, noble service.” I moved out of the trailer on the edge of town and into an apartment complex.
    I’m looking for a confidant, someone to follow, but no one has shown up at the store like that.
    The angels and their guns are no longer fearsome to me. Several angels live in my apartment complex. They smoke a lot.
    I often wonder about this—their dwelling amongst mere mortals—and I think I’ve finally figured it out. The angels are mere weapons—the sycophants, if you will—and the winged guns call the shots. The winged guns reproduce, follow or break customs of society, fall in love. They don’t live in apartment complexes like the angels, but rather in burrows deep underneath the earth. The guns travel great distances through underground, pneumatic tubes. I had always thought these were gopher holes in the desert, but obviously I was wrong.
    And so, everything that happened with Lydia makes perfect sense to me now. If you’re not a gun, then you’re an angel. This includes me. Lydia was probably a gun. It doesn’t matter if you’re made of water or not, or flesh and blood, or . . . well,