Fellow Elephant's Bookshelf Press author Judy Croome is sponsoring a giveaway of 20 print - yes, PRINT! - copies of The Fall: Tales From the Apocalypse.
Hop on over to Goodreads to enter. Ends January 1, 2013.
16 December 2012
03 December 2012
On a Trans-Atlantic Flight
I was thrilled to get a message from a fellow writer the other day who had just finished reading The Fall. He said he really enjoyed my story in the anthology. It's flash fiction, really. It's quite short. We talked for a little bit, and the conversation turned to the fact that my first published short story also had a flight theme. The story was originally published online with Divine Dirt Quarterly, which is now out of print. So I thought I'd post the story here for you all to read. If you like this one, I'm sure you'll enjoy my story "Flight Plans" in The Fall.
On A Trans-Atlantic
Flight
I used to think I could
see God in the clouds. Not in an indefinite expanse of clear blue,
calm and crisp and quiet, desperate in its infinity, but somewhere up
there, among the water vapor masses between us and eternal sky. Not
in gray and grumpy nimbostratus, nor fine feathered cirrus, but in a
fair weather cumulus blanket and the sun beams like knitting needles
that pierced it, the ends of which, I was sure, illuminated some
somber earthly occasion - corporeal cessation. But certainly God was
in the clouds, sending forth that sun vector to call an angel home.
Necks craned and
twisted, bodies pressed forward against restraints just for a glimpse
out of the small windows of a 757. My first flight. Even as we lifted
from the ground, the Earth tried to pull me back, urging me not to
endeavor to things for which my body was not made. Or perhaps the
weight on my chest was God, knowing the human race was too curious
for its own good, placing a firm hand of protection, holding us
close, leashing our titanium bird lest we flew too close to the sun.
My head swam, unsettled
by artificial air pressure, though it may have been the sight of the
clouds that did it. Nerves and terror and elation and uncertainty
coagulated in my stomach. Expecting a breeze, a mist, a warm breath
on my cheek, I considered holding my breath, eyes squeezed shut, as
white opacity filled the tiny bubble windows. Curiosity, though it
may or may not have killed a cat, overtook my timidity, prying open
my expectant eyes just as the clouds broke.
Did you know the sky
goes on forever anyway, that you could follow it and it would never
lead you anywhere, not to peace, nor to happiness, nor to god, and
did you know that the sun knits blankets of cumulus clouds to shield
my fragile and naïve heart from such despair? I used to think I
could see god in the clouds. But there, above it all, atop a secular
cumulus quilt, I saw that my geometry was all wrong: the gilded
shafts I had been certain were line segments, with an Alpha and Omega
– originating from the hand of a benevolent god and ending far
below, soul escalators bringing the dead into eternal bliss - were
instead rays, of all things, capped at one end by the stinging sun,
extending onward forever.
On a trans-Atlantic
flight, I searched urgently for validation, winged hope. I found only
science and weather, impressive but not divine, water vapor polluted
by a need to push our limits, to stretch, to disintegrate our mortal
restrictions. Puffs of little substance whose mass is no match for
the hard nose of human determination, pierced by a persistent sun
whose light will outlast even the clouds as it is reflected back,
changed by the tangible clutter of temporal curiosity, fractured,
bounced, splintered, and so on, et cetera, ad infinitum.
I may never fly again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)