ANGELS AND DEMONS - short story

Katarzyna Nowocin-Kowalczyk
Mar 21, 2024
19 min read

Updated: Sep 11, 2025

June 15th, 2022

story from the book: NOT EVERYTHING IS LIKE IT SEEMS Life-written Fairy Tales for Adults

by Katarzyna Nowocin-Kowalczyk (Catherine)

And it happened once that during my journey called life, I got lost in a dark forest. And this forest was getting denser and denser. Getting darker and darker. I didn't see the path. I couldn't see the light. I couldn't see the door. I wandered in the narrow, cramped, closed corridors of some dark labyrinth of black trees that took on increasingly scary forms. Demons lurked everywhere I looked. And at some point these corridors became one narrow and dark corridor, going down steeper and steeper. I was falling and collapsing into some rock abyss. A well without water, in which, when falling, I was spinning in circles. And it was getting colder and colder there. Darker and darker. And I was getting weaker and weaker and more and more lost. Increasingly sad.

I didn't have a map. I didn't have a flashlight. I didn't even have a candle or a match. At least that's what I thought at the time. I was alone and very lonely. And the thoughts were terrible. Dark and getting darker. Gloomy. Like the corridor where I was trapped. Thoughts were like worms crawling in the head in all directions and causing chaos of thoughts. The head was heavy with these thoughts. Breasts were squeezed by some iron hoop. It seemed that the heart had been crushed by a pile of stones. Some kind of debris. And I carried more bags of stones on my back and bent under them. I walked slower and slower. Without strength. I felt as if my soul had fallen to pieces. To millions of particles that have scattered throughout the Universe. And I couldn't find them. I couldn't glue them together. I couldn't find myself. Until I finally forgot who I was. My soul fell apart and with it my whole world fell apart.

There were so many demons. And the more I focused on them, the more I wanted to get away from them, the more they cornered me. And there were more and more of them. As if they spontaneously multiplied under the influence of these wormy thoughts. It was enough for me to think of one of them, and he immediately dragged a whole army of more demons with him. And these demons danced their demonic dance around me. And me? I was sitting, or rather lying huddled and terrified. Lonely. Unhappy. Without strength. I pretended to be alive, even though I was dead while I was alive.

And these demons were my past. Little did I know at the time that I had dragged them from the past to my future, which was the present, when in fact it was still the past. Behold, I dwelt among the demons. And I myself became a demon. A demon to myself. I lived in the past and I was the past. But I didn't understand this at the time.

And I was so focused on these demons that I didn't even see that among these dark demons, there were bright figures who reached out to me. As if they wanted to show the way. Help. I ran away from them. I was afraid of the light. I hated my demons, and at the same time I clung to them and didn't want to let go. And instead of light, I chose darkness. Impotence of action.

It became more and more difficult to breathe. It became more and more difficult to live. The soul hurt more and more. She cried in me and I cried with her. I wanted to feel nothing. I wanted not to think. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to forget. I wanted to die. And I didn't know I was dead. I was in hell and I hit the bottom of hell. I was in the hell of my own mind.

I wandered through this hell for a long, long time, and even longer. I stopped counting time. Because there is no time in hell. In hell, time seems to be an eternity. It is long, heavy and dark. In hell, time is darkness without end. Because in hell there is only hell. A desert without water and life. No air. No light. Lots of debris, stones and garbage. And a lot of dark demons that for some reason are close. Like friends. You love them and hate them at the same time. You shout in despair, “Go away! Disappear! Leave me alone!"And in a moment you run after them and beg, “Don't leave. Don't leave me. I don't want to be alone." And you cling to them.

I visited all the dark corners of hell. And since there was no light, I found only some rubble everywhere. I stumbled over stones, fell under those stones, and carried stones. And from under the rubble of stones I pulled out another rubble, and another, and another. Pain. Regret. Rejection. Loneliness. And I believed in all this so much that in the end I myself felt like this unnecessary rubble. I worked hard to move the rubble, gather garbage, and rummage through garbage. And this rubble kept coming and going. Sisyphean work. And even though it was only in my head, I was very, very tired. Thoughts create emotions. Hell is darkness. A cosmic black hole that like a vacuum pulls in all the space garbage to dump it all on your head. Hell is hell. A prison. A garbage can. I became a prisoner of my own mind, even though I didn't know it at the time.

Sometimes at night I would look at the stars. And it was only in these stars that I found temporary solace. And I so immensely missed those stars. Somewhere inside I felt, I knew that this world of earthly hell is not my world. I knew that my real home was somewhere out there. And there is warmth there. Light. Well being. Comfort. And my stellar family is there. My sisters and my brothers. Luminous angels. I wanted to go back there. Tears rolled down my cheeks, and I whispered, "Why did you throw me off here?" Why did you leave me? Why did you leave her alone?”

And one night, when I was looking at the stars, when I was again feeling the pain of my soul being torn to shreds, when tears were flowing from my eyes again, when I felt so very, very lonely and abandoned by everyone, I suddenly turned on another button in the computer of my head. A button under the name: Phone to a friend. The button that I just forgot about staring at the demons of darkness. And that friend was myself. And only I could help myself. The button, in fact, was called: Troubleshooting. First, however, I had to diagnose this problem. I thought, “You can't live like that. This is not life. This is hell. I don't want to live like that. I don't want to be in hell. There must be some doors here. There must be a way out. There must be an answer.”

And then I asked myself, “What are you choosing? Heaven or Hell? You were in Heaven. You know the path. Now you know Hell. What do you choose?”

“I choose Heaven." I heard my own loud words. Words that came out as if from my inner self. From my soul. And in these words there was great faith and power. There was certainty of what I was saying. I felt it. I was that. I spoke words that were like a spell. They were an intention. They were a choice. They were a decision. They were another button in my head that I hadn't seen before, although I talked about it and thought about it, but while in the dark, I didn't hear or understand my own words that I was uttering myself. I didn't understand my own thoughts. And I didn't understand my own emotions. I couldn't hear my own heart. My soul. My own intuition. Because intuition is the whisper of the soul. The whisper of a luminous angel. I was blind and deaf. I ran away from myself and chased myself. I went around in circles wandering in the depths of the labyrinth of hell.

And when I said those words, magic happened. I felt as if I had opened the door of some invisible cosmic portal. And although this portal was invisible, I saw it. I felt it. I felt it with all of myself. As if communication with the Universe has been restored. With my own soul. After all, the soul is the Universe.

And through this portal answers I was looking for began to flow, not knowing that I was looking for them. "You are Love. I am Love. I Am." I heard inside me. These words resounded in me like billions of star bells. And at the same time, I had the impression that these words were sung by the whole Universe. “I am Love. I Am." I repeated. And I was relieved. It got so light. I smiled at myself and at the whole Universe. “I am Love! Yes! I am Love!” I just forgot about it.

I felt, but I could see that through this invisible, though visible, cosmic door a powerful stream of beautiful golden light is pouring down upon me, which entered me through the top of my head into my heart and filled all of me from within. And it was so good. So good. Serenity. Joy. Happiness. And this enormity of love, which I could not embrace with either my hands or my head. Love wrapped me with its cloak, but at the same time it poured into me and flowed out of me. Everything was One. I was Love and I was in Love. And that was when I woke up from a nightmarish dream. I remembered who I was and why I was here. I was in heaven again, because heaven had come to me. Or maybe it was here all the time, only I didn't see it. Because I didn't want to see.

“I am Love. I am Love. I Am." I repeated happily, and tears ran down my cheeks. Tears of emotion and happiness. I was no longer alone. I had myself. And I had the love of the whole Universe. Because the soul is the Universe. And where there is love, there is life. And I felt that I wanted to live so much, so much, so much. Again, I want to laugh happily. I want to live! I want to live! I want to live! I want to fly high again! May this moment last!

I wanted to feel again. But this time differently. Knowingly. Wisely. I looked at the trees. They were green again. Beautiful. Alive. Their crowns climbed up to the sky, and smiling leaves danced in the wind.

“Everything is One” I thought. ‘But I choose.”

I lay down on the grass. And this grass was green again. Green as grass. I touched it with my hands. I felt roughness and softness at the same time.

“Everything is One” I thought. ‘But I choose.”

I looked up at the sky. And that sky was as blue as the sky. And I felt that I am that sky. And in this sky, somewhere far away, a heavy black cloud appeared. It sailed away into the distance. But I no longer focused on that dark cloud. I was looking at the blue.

“Everything is One,” I thought. “But I choose.”

I closed my eyes. The portal reopened again. And here before my eyes, like in a cinema, a movie started screening spontaneously. But as if I was watching it simultaneously from various sides. Multidimensionally. Multi-temporal and multi-spacial. Here I was an observer, a spectator in the audience in the cinema, and at the same time an actor who is in the middle of this film. I was also the director.

I was standing on a hill. In front of me somewhere below, a big field was stretching to the horizon. Like a battlefield. I felt like a general before the battle. I felt the strength of the general. Calmness and concentration. I felt that the fate of this battle in this field depended only on me. And here I saw that an army of soldiers from hell was running towards me, in a tight formation. Small distorted caricatures of themselves. I saw their horns, their tails, their hooves. They ran towards me, leaving behind a cloud of dust. This sight made me laugh. It reminded me of a computer animation. Of some kind of game. And then a thought came to mind,

“Maybe I am a character from my own computer game. I am a character and a player at the same time? I'm the one who creates this character and I play this character. I create the worlds in which this character moves.”

I watched the attackers approaching me and I laughed more and more.

"Do you really think you're going to win with me?" I thought.

But evidently that's what they thought, because they were getting closer fast. And in me there was peace. And such a huge sense of security and strength. I knew that whatever happened or didn't happen, they wouldn't do anything to me. Because they have no power over me. Because I chose heaven. And he who has chosen heaven always has the care of heaven.

And here, for some reason, I thought, “Michael.” And before I finished thinking, I saw Michael coming down from heaven and holding a sword pointing upwards in his hand. As if he had heard my message. And behind him a whole army of angels of light descended. I looked at him overjoyed, as if I had met my brother. And he looked at me the same way. We looked into each other's eyes as if we had known each other forever. Friends and siblings at the same time. Suddenly, he turned his head for a moment. He looked at the demons swirling in the field and pointed his luminous sword at them. And at that moment, the whole army of darkness turned backwards and began to flee even faster than it had arrived here, leaving behind only clouds of dust that fell on the field. To the ground. And Gaia hugged this dust and turned it into fertile soil.

Michael looked at me again with a smile and love.

"You are my brother." I said, sure of what I was saying.

“Yes." There was serenity in his voice and a kind of joy due to the fact that I met him.

"Will you sometimes lend me your sword?" I asked.

"It's yours." He replied by stretching out his hand towards me, in which he held a luminous sword. “Use it wisely.”

And then I understood how powerful thought is. Because thought creates. It is enough to change the thought, and the whole reality around me changes. My world is changing and I am changing. Because a change in thought changes perception. The character I play is changing. And my goal as a player playing this game with this particular character and this particular character, which after all I am myself, is to reach the highest level in this game. And each subsequent higher level activates new skills. Thought is like a keyboard in the computer of the head, but I decide which key to press. I understood what I knew before, but I didn't seem to understand. I realized that I was the one creating. I'm the one holding the joystick in my hand. I have the power to create. I create my darkness and my light. My angels and demons. And all this is One, but I am choosing. I realized that what I was thinking, what I was talking about, what I was focusing on, I am attracting and experiencing. Because everything is energy. Similar attracts similar.

And I realized that my whole life is really going on in my head. And what I see is the illusion of a computer game. I realized that everything I had experienced and was experiencing was an illusion. A hologram. It is an energetic reflection of my beliefs and convictions. I realized that this character in the battlefield game is really fighting herself. And this struggle takes place within herself. Within me. I am my best friend and my worst enemy at the same time. I am an angel and a demon. And it is I who choose.

I also understood that the doors of the portal connecting me to the Universe have always been where they are. Only I didn't want to see them. Because I didn't really want to open them. I closed myself off to the whisper of my own soul. I focused on darkness and I saw only darkness. And I didn't want to see anything else. I became a prisoner of my own darkness. My dark thoughts. My past, which I clung to so tightly. I forgot about my luminous sword of Strength, which I always had. I gave up my sword and laid myself on the sacrificial table. I became a prisoner of my own mind. I blamed others for this darkness, but I did it to myself. Me alone. Because I stopped trusting myself. I stopped believing myself. My heart. My intuition. My soul. I stopped loving myself. I stopped trusting In Love. Love flowing from the Source of Love. Love that loves unconditionally. Love, which is freedom. Love, which is Light. Love, which is my Strength. My Michael’s sword, but after all mine.

I was the one who created all these dark demons. I let them into my house and fed them with my dark, wormy thoughts. And while feeding the demons, I starved myself. I gave my power to the demons. I took love away from myself and closed myself off to love. I focused on demons. And what you focus on grows. I pushed myself into hell. I became a prisoner of hell. And being in the prison of darkness, I forgot who I was. I forgot where I came from and where I was going. I forgot that I am the Light. I forgot about my sword, about my strength. I forgot that the only way out of hell is the way up. And that's what I recalled.

The moment I chose Heaven was the moment of awakening from a deep, nightmarish dream. The moment when I found the stairs to Heaven. My decision to move out of Hell and live in Heaven marked the beginning of a new stage in my journey called life. The beginning of a new path that began at the very bottom of hell. The beginning of hard work on yourself. And this beginning was difficult. Because I was still in hell full of stones and rubble that I was tripping over. And there were still demons there. And these demons did not disappear immediately. They existed and did not let go so easily. But now I looked at them differently and saw them differently. And I had the impression that they were asking for something. And the more they asked, the more they clung to me. And I, a million times a day, repeated to myself the phrase I once heard,

“When you go through hell, do not stop. Go. Someday it will end.”

And I was determined to get through this hell as soon as possible. I didn't want to be there for a nanosecond longer than necessary.

And now when I woke up and got my sword back, it turned out that it's not so dark in this hell. As if someone had turned on a light in it. Powerful light. And I understood that that light is me. And in that light, I saw that hell has colors and is not so terrible at all. Well! As soon as I illuminated the dark corners, it turned out a lot of beautiful things were hidden there that I had simply not seen before. I understood that by bringing darkness to the light, I was discovering what had been hidden so far. I am getting to know the Universe. I am getting to know the mystery of which I am a part.

I also found a map. I found my inner GPS, which is my heart. My intuition. My inner voice, which I had not listened to before. An angel who points the way and whispers quietly,

"Your only task in this life is to be happy."

But when you happen to turn off navigation, it's easy to get lost in the dark forest. The head screams loudly as if it wants to be louder than everything and louder than itself. But for some reason, it is the heart that always knows what is best for you.

When I recalled who I was and knew where I was going, while walking through this hell I was no longer huddled. I walked with my head held high. Still barefoot, but in spurs. I put on my shoes later. But I was the one who chose those shoes and consciously chose the path I was on. I walked boldly and attentively. I walked with the curiosity of a child who gets to know the world. And learning to walk anew in this new world, which opened up to consecutive rooms, each of which was more beautiful than the previous one, I sometimes stopped, sometimes stumbled over old rubble and sometimes fell. Sometimes the darkness squeezed by the throat and the demons pulled backwards. But I already knew how it worked, even though I was still learning myself. And I understood more and more what free will was.

I learned to forgive and I forgave. And each forgiveness was like throwing off a few tons of ballast. It was another step up on my journey to heaven. By forgiving and letting go of the past, I freed myself from the pain. And each forgiveness turned the angel of darkness into a beautiful angel of light who smiled at me with joy, love and gratitude. Because that's what the angels of darkness asked me to do. They asked for forgiveness. Forgiving, I freed them from the costume of a dark robe that turned white. The angels could return to heaven. They did the job that I asked them to do. By releasing my demons, I was releasing myself. Forgiveness is the key to delivering from hell.

On this journey through hell, I understood the power of gratitude. I understood that gratitude is the key to abundance. My pass to Paradise. I understood that pain is when there are expectations. I exchanged expectations for gratitude. And with gratitude, I release what I no longer need and make room for the new one that comes and manifests in Abundance. And with gratitude I accept this New. Gratitude is the key to the gates of paradise.

And once, looking up at the starry sky, I listened to the music of the stars. And suddenly I heard myself saying in a surprised voice to myself,

“How light my head is.”

And then I realized that thoughts weigh. And a lot. I realized that the lighter the thoughts, the lighter and more enjoyable the journey.

I looked gratefully at the stars. And these stars blinked at me, talked to me, sang for me, and danced their stellar dance for me. And I felt harmony. Balance. Unity. I felt that my body, my soul and my head were one. The Holy Trinity. And I felt myself flowing and dancing to the rhythm of this stellar music. I spin in the most beautiful tone. Vibration of the energy of Love. And these stars were with me and in me and around me. They were everywhere. And I was one of them. I was a star drop in the evaluation of the energy of the Universe, and I was the whole ocean. I was everything and nothing at the same time.

I am a star drop in the evaluation of the energy of the Universe and I am the whole ocean. I am everything and nothing at the same time.

Now, when I sit on the shore of the ocean and look at the horizon, there is only this moment of Now. There is no yesterday, no tomorrow. It is only Now. The past has remained in the past. The future is a mystery. And my life goes on now. At this point, Now. I look at a tree and I am that tree. I look at a bird and I'm that bird. I look at the water and I am that water. I touch the earth and I am the earth. I meet another human being and I am that human being. Because the other human being is just a different version of me. And sometimes, this human being is lost in his journey, just as I was. And then I tell him my story.

“... And it happened once that during my journey called life, I got lost in a dark forest. I got lost and went to hell. I fell into the darkness where I met many demons. And in this hell, it was cold. Because there was no love there. There was no light. I died. And when I died, I chose life. I chose freedom. I chose myself. I chose love. And when I did, I was resurrected. I found the stairs to heaven. I found myself. I understood that the demons were demons because, like me, they were lost in the darkness. And like me, they desired light. They desired warmth. They desired love.”

Angels and Demons. An illusion in itself. Like two but one. Thanks to demons, I found myself, got to know myself and returned to myself. Thanks to demons, I remembered who I was. I remembered my wings, which I had hidden in my backpack. And when I spread them out, it turned out that they are beautiful, big and strong. More beautiful, bigger and stronger than I could have imagined. And thanks to these wings, I was able to fly to the stars. To heaven. And this is heaven, as if it came down to me. Here, to the ground. Thanks to demons, I understood what absolute love is. Demons turned out to be my best teachers. Because sometimes something has to hurt for us to notice it. And when I gratefully hugged them, black angels turned into angels of light. Thanks to demons I came to know angels and dwelt in heaven among angels. Thanks to demons I became an angel myself. Heaven and hell are a state of mind. Perception creates our reality.

The journey through hell turned out to be the most interesting journey of my life. The most difficult, but also the most sublime and instructive. After all, we learn by experiencing. Now I'm talking about the blessing of depression, although not everyone understands it. But those who have gone through a similar path and understood their lessons look at it similarly and speak similarly. They smile and shine like the most beautiful stars. They spread around them this wonderful glow of the energy of love, which magnetizes with its beauty. They don't chase love. They do not run away from love. They are love. Because love is the path, the truth and the life. People call them angels.

I fell under the heavy cross many times. And although I was seemingly alone, I was never alone. I just didn't always want to see a helping hand extended towards me. Sometimes it was a word, sometimes a smile, sometimes a gesture, and sometimes it was just someone's faith in me. Presence without words. But it was precisely this silence that gave solace.

The angels smiled at me and whispered quietly,

"Choose love. Trust yourself. Trust your heart. Your only task in this life is to be happy."

The angels showed the way, but they respected my choices. My free will. The demons did demonic things. But in a way, they also respected my choices. After all, I chose this darkness and wormy thoughts myself. They only gave me what I chose. And they also showed me the way. Because these demons seem to be saying,

"What else do we need to do to finally make you remember who you are? How much more hell do we have to throw on your head so that you can get out of hell. To trust yourself. To make you love yourself. To draw your sword of Strength. To choose love. Because only with love can you disenchant yourself and disenchant us. Only love will lead you out of hell.”

Thanks to this journey through hell, I returned to the stars. Once I got lost in a dark forest. But sometimes you have to get lost to find yourself. Thanks to the demons, I understood that not everything is like it seems to us.

*****