When I turned 8 years old my mother told me about nets and glue. She didn’t know my future but she wanted to prepare me. We were, for two generations, a wingless family. My older brother had excruciating back pains at 13 and we thought it might happen to him but then the pain evaporated and he had a smooth back. No ripples or points. Just skin marred by a few pimples. I didn’t want it to happen to me. The winged were ridiculed in society. They were trapped and often imprisoned.
“Humans aren’t meant to fly,” they would chant. It was ungodly. Unholy. Earth angels lost and oblivious to gravity.
One night, when I was 14, I couldn’t sleep. My back throbbed. I removed my nightgown and saw my skin pulsating. It was happening. I was growing wings.
“Mom,” I yelled. She appeared and stared at my naked body. She put a hand over her mouth. Already my wings were erupting. There was nothing she could do. Dad appeared and draped a blanket over me but my wings grew and the blanket fell. After an hour, I had fully grown wings. I let them flutter and I was lifted into the air. I flew through the house and then out into the night. It was so beautiful from the sky. I had so much freedom. I wasn’t tethered to the ground. I was a flying human with great joy. I think I flew to St. Louis. The wind and my wings carried me. That was when a giant net erupted and pulled me to Earth.
“You’re a child of the Devil.” The man had a collar. The Church. They carefully lifted the net and glued my wings. I became a joke. A weird thing. A freak amongst normals. They kept me in the Church and displayed me every Sunday.
“Didn’t your Mama tell you about wings,” asked the preacher. “No one gets freedom on Earth. We are all tethered.”
They gave me a bucket of water every day and instead of bathing I dipped my wings and fiddled with the glue. One day I would be free. One day I would take to the skies again and be the magnificent creature I was. A woman with wings.
THE END