A teenage looking girl is perched on a lab desk, smoking a cigarette, dark hair falling over one eye. She looks nervous and edgy and has been chain smoking for the past 20 minutes. Throughout the interview, her eyes are fixed on the cigarette.

Where did I come from? The sky. The wind and the earth. The birds and the bees and all that jazz.

What am I? An angel. Not a seraphim, a dominion or an archangel. Just an Angel, created by our Mother Earth, from the flesh and feathers of her birds. I suppose you could call me a Guardian Angel, although I don’t really live up to the name. I’m as human as you, except with fucking huge wings sticking out of my shoulders.

They aren’t what you expect either, are they? No white and gold, glowing feathers symbolising the angelic link with God and all things heavenly. You see the dark feathers and grey feathers and the broken feathers and the tatty feathers. Angels are as natural as you and the rest of the human race, and our wings show it. Just like a birds wings except much bigger. They have to be, to lift our weight; especially mine. (wink)

Angels aren’t as angelic as the clergy would have you believe. Me? I’m clumsy as hell, a little ugly and shy. I have dark hair, instead of fair, and, as I already explained, bird-like wings.

I can die, just not easily. I can’t walk through walls, or transport myself millions of miles in mere seconds. Maybe the seraphim’s can. I will ask next time I see one. Though, to be honest, they’re probably too busy singing in their little exclusive choir of God’s favourites.

There’s a certain jealousy that pretty much all of the angels in the third triad, who don’t have their own significance, harbour against those that are favoured by Our Lord God. The Almighty. In fact, we wouldn’t exist as entities if Our Mother did not wish us into creation. Yeah, we’re thankful to Mother Earth, but if I asked if you had heard of me before today, you would say no. You’ve heard of every other type of Angel, but not us plain old joes created long after the original angels. We were created when God created birds. Goddess wanted some of her own lapdogs and so created us, meshing the birds bodies to create beings that were neither Angelic nor human.

We’re just animals like you. A scientific joke created long before science. Funny ain’t it. I don’t speak many languages, I’ve never met God, or Goddess for that matter. I am physically able to reproduce in the same way as a human – so you don’t have to study that. The only difference is these wings.

Yeah, I look young, but I’m not. I’m an old woman these days, not that it shows. It’s a weird sensation to feel old and young at the same time. The years of wisdom drain the energy from my young limbs which strain to fly.

I can fly too. But it’s exhausting work. Try lifting yourself unsupported into the air and you’ll see why. I’m a chainsmoker too! My poor lungs, eh? (nervous laugh)

I suppose you’re going to probe me, find out exactly why I am the way I am. I can’t stop you can I? Well, yeah I can, but I’m too tired of this eternal existence to stop you. Maybe you’ll kill me. I like the idea of that. Our Lord and Lady did not consider how it would be to live like this. They created us, but they do not understand what it is to be us. If you draw a picture of a house, you still do not understand what it is to be a house.

No, I’m not religious either. I don’t believe. I just know because I was created from it. It’s the worst place to be in. People should stop trying to prove or disprove the existence of higher powers, because it is much better to be blissfully unaware, and believing in the fiction of religion rather than in painful knowledge of the reality of it. Trust me, I know from experience...