So here I was and I was flying again, but now instead of the forests, I had tall, tall buildings around me. Hardly a soul around, you know? The few folks that were there hardly said a word. Someone shouted something about the American Airman, but so what? I was seventeen, going on eighteen. If someone thought I was the Airman, I was in good company and doing something right.

Down Main, down Broadway. Drunks passed out in the street, the occasional hooker who hadn’t been to sleep all night, no cops. Hooray! No cops! I could do what I wanted.

I made several more trips downtown, and I started going when there’d be more people to see. Eventually, guess what? Yeah the papers, Jane! The papers got ahold of me! They had a blurry, artist’s rendering asking ‘Who is This New Flier?” I mean, I’d gone from being a nobody in a nowhere town to being on the cover of the New York Times! Pretty spiffy, eh?

But I just hadda screw things up, I guess. Hindsight’s 20/20, and now I can see that I was pretty mad about a lot of things in my life. Being the only kid without a Christmas tree at the end of December. Being the kid always left out when they picked teams for sports or guest lists for parties. Finally doing something that got me accepted…and then getting routed out by a rich kid (or what passed for one in our bumblefuck little town, anyways). I guess not seeing the Airman anywhere just made me decide to push the limits a bit. It started with buzzing the locals on Sunday afternoons. You know, buzzing? That’s where you swoop down and skim close as you can. A lotta folks liked it, really. They’d reach up to try and touch my wings, hit my foot, things like that.

But then little things happened. I blew the hat off of a fellow once. An old, rich guy walking along Wall Street. The guy screamed so loud and cussed so hard, you’d think I’d called his mother a two-dollar whore and tried to sell him pictures. After that, it got kinda fun- I saw the same fellow later on, and I dove down and flipped his hat right off of his head with the tip of my wings. No easy feat when you’ve got a chuffing engine on your back, especially in rush hour! I always had to make sure I was downwind, and moved quick enough that people wouldn’t be yelling and alert the poor old guy in time.

I did it to him three or four times, and I think he got angrier each time! Sad thing was, I never knew he had a heart condition . . .

Yeah. They blamed me when he dropped on the ground with a heart attack when I flipped his hat for the third or fourth time. Worse, I was moving too fast, and didn’t look behind me. Some lady was ready for me while I was buzzing the crowd the next day- I was getting used to high-fiving the kids- and she took her purse as I flew over and- Whammo! Ouch! To this day, I seriously think she had a rock or something in her purse. I wasn’t thinking about it then, though. All I knew then was something black hit me in the face, and then I was rolling on the ground, moaning and trying to get oriented. I’d never known what it was to be stunned before, but Jane, that day? Oh, mother did it hurt! There were people crowding around me, shouting. Everyone of them, all shouting, shouting, with angry looks on their faces. No chance to put things right, no chance to defend myself. I heard what it was like for colored kids later, when they tried going to the all-white schools? I know kinda now what they went through. I guess after the old fellow died, I went from being the novelty act to the bad guy.

I didn't know that then, though. All I knew was that my head hurt, and I was in the middle of an angry mob. That older lady (well, not so old now. She was probably in her forties, fifties tops. But old to me when I was eighteen) was in front of everybody, screaming at me like a banshee with her panties in a- oops, sorry, Jane. Yeah, I know- you heard it all on the ranch, but I still don’t like saying stuff like that in front of ladies.

Anyways, she was yelling at me louder’n anybody, and waving that gawd-awful purse in my face. Jane, I got so mad, by golly, when I shook my head and came to, I just grabbed the thing out’ve her hands, and I ripped it up. Yeah! Ripped. I dunno if I was just real real mad and the adrenaline was going, but I grabbed that purse away from her an’ tore it down the middle. All he stuff, whoosh, onto the sidewalk.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

I didn’t look at it, and I didn’t wait for folks to get angrier. I just popped open my wings- that gave me space, y’see. Everyone backed off. – and took off running down the street. I’d never tried to catch wind from that low, but by now I had an instinct about when it would be safe to jump. Sure enough, first time from just a standing height, jump and foom, catch the current and up I went, first six, ten feet, dropped two or three, but then I was high enough to go over the highway, catch all the thermals coming off of the cars below, and then up, up, up where the screaming crowds couldn’t get or harm me.

Quiet, nothing but the wind, the hum of the city, and the occasional squawking bird or distant car horn.

I was free. Free again. No one took my picture, no one in that crowd knew who I was. I was free.

For about, oh, an hour and a half? Someone called in to the papers. Told them the newest flying fella was actually a menace. How he’d gone from playing pranks to killing old men who were pillars of the community, and stealing old ladies' handbags and tearing them up in front of them. That was how they cast me, you know, in the comic books. Issue two or three of the Airman’s funny book, I was this little miscreant who laughed when the old man died and chuckled when stole the purse from a crying, ninety year old lady and ripped up her purse, her social security check and the pictures of her grandkids to boot.

The Times interviewed her, or maybe it was the Bugle, I don’t remember now. But she said that my wings were white, and I was a pale, skinny criminal who should be swatted aside like a moth in a closet full of clothes.

A moth?

Well, you guessed it. I’d spent two grueling years building those wings, learning to fly, getting good at it, the works. And a few pranks and what happens? Suddenly the papers smelled money, and nothing sells papers like conflict. Be it a war, an election, baseball teams, or a little worker versus the company, every paper likes a fight. It sells papers, right? People wanna know how it’s gonna end. I opened up the paper the next day and I find out I’m not someone the cops’re after- I was touted as the arch enemy of the American Airman!

I was scared green. It’s like being in high school and learning the girl you snuck a kiss from at a party was really the fullback’s squeeze, and he’s out for you, you know? You’re dead. My one hope was that the Airman was gonna be busy with a bunch of Nazis or something, and I’d get off easy- get forgotten about, you know?

So, my next move was to lay low. I packed up my wings for a bit, thinking maybe a year would be enough time for New York to forget about me. Maybe I could make a comeback, like that boxer-hero kid, the Brown Bomber? Yeah, that’s what I thought, that if I laid low and kept my nose clean, when I came out again then I could be a hero. Maybe even the Airman’s sidekick for starters, if I wasn’t too old by then.

I graduated from high school out there a month later, and boy, was I glad. None of those rich punks gave a damn about me. Not one. I didn’t even go to prom, you know- they actually could make a rule back then, ‘No Jews.’ Yeah, forget the fact that at least a dozen kids there had at least half-Jewish blood. Their moms and dads all went to the ‘right’ Episcopal church at Christmas and that meant they got in. I coulda made a stink about it, my aunt being who she was and all. But why bother? Not like I could get a date.

When I was done, I decided to take one little celebratory flight. I skipped the all-night party they were throwing (again, not like I’d be let in the door), and got Michael to drive me into the city.

“You sure about this?” he said as we crossed the bridge. Yeah, I was sure. My problem, I figured out, was that I kept flying in broad daylight. Even if it was a Sunday, everyone got to see “The Mothman” in all his homemade winged glory when the sun was out. So I decided to try a bit of night-flying instead.

Well, it didn’t go so good, either.

-----

TO BE CONTINUED...