Thanks for your words of encouragement and advice! You are one of the only people who likes this piece. I realize it is disconnected…i’m thinking of putting it in a larger work, a story within a story, for an oral tradition feel. Thanks again!
Sci Fi & Fantasy / Flights of Dreams
Flights of Dreams
A twin sister with coffee skin and her brother – his hair looked like a bowling ball when it reflected the sun – lived on a cold island in the Northeast of what was once called The United States. The sky was still blue in those days, and underneath it the girl fished well with a spear made from a car axle; her brother was a clown who could walk on his hands and perform body contortions when she needed a laugh.
Sister, what pictures do you see when you sleep?
Me and you, and mom, on a golden farm building airplanes.
Shall we build one, then?
They laughed while scavenging the city of frigid bricks; with flights of dreams they built a pile of useful equipment in their backyard. The neighborhood helped and cheered them on, throwing its cement fists in the air. Up grew a mountain of old ketchup bottles, grocery bags, headphones, spray cans, mirrors, and sneakers, among other things, all of which were perfect ingredients for a successful flying machine. On the seventh day they rested, and went to see their aunt. Brother and sister took the walk and came around a corner to see her hat-on-head-silhouette strolling through a patch of wheelchairs, old invalid humans, watering them slowly.
In a time before, before twin sister and brother opened small red baby eyes upon the green beauty of Earth, death was something most feared and misunderstood. After certain miraculous medical accomplishments it was legally ordained that, if in a vegetative state, one could be preserved and pause death for hundreds of years, even against their will, if their relatives signed a document. Nursing homes were outgrown; the nation’s population of mute, paralyzed shells, gaping flesh and ribs, grew until there were complications concerning where the living dead, the giant ginger-root sacks of untold stories, should be placed. Most of them ended up in the forest. In the cities, they put them, staring, in alleyways or gardens, and Aunt Belize was a gardener.
And where have you been all week?
We’re gathering things to build an airplane, Aunt Belize!
Aunt, why are you not smiling?
Don’t do things like that!
Why not?
Why can’t we just live and eat and sustain each other, and tend our gardens? Without building airplanes? It’s too ambitious. Ambition was how wars started.
What is wars?
Anyway, it won’t last. There’s no use building it. Wind and rain will destroy your airplane. Nothing humans make can withstand nature. Anything you love will start to slick and rot, and trying to hold on to it just makes it worse.
She was quiet for a minute to make her point. The static old people around her sat and stared anciently, unable to sleep. Their white skin glowed against the dark green grass. Red lights blinked on all the wheelchairs in time with pulses. Aunt Belize sighed.
Look at it this way, she said, spanning her arm out and around towards the vast, ruined city. Someone just as innocent as you had a vivid dream about this city and built it. Now it’s gone. Looks like a waste of time to me. Do yourself a favor and spend time on things that can’t be destroyed. That way you’ll be happy.
The children walked back to their home and looked at the airplane, still in its initial stages, with their small hands on their small hips.
I never thought about it before…she’s right, sister.
Sister pouted.
She always is.
Do you want to build it anyway? To smell the sky and tease the city like the stars?
What will we do when nature tears it all apart? She pouted. That’ll just make us sad. We’ve already lost mom.
Well, said the boy, running up to the pile of useful materials, when this pile of small things is built into an airplane, and nature breaks it up, we’ll have all these small things to use again! He put a pair of sneakers on his hands, stuck a rolling pin out the zipper of his pants and walked upside down. She laughed like a baby.
When the airplane was finally built, the technicolored neighborhood children seeped out and surrounded the beautiful thing. It was a fat airplane with fat wings, dotted with color, mostly red, blue green and white. They had found a real airplane tire for the front wheel. The children jabbered and jumped, ecstatic, all touches and exclamations. Brother and twin waved from the cockpit and started the engines. The propellers were made from old brooms and mops; the fuel was mud.
The children had inherited a few milliliters of mechanical genius, so the engines ran smoothly and the takeoff went flawlessly. Before it caught the wind, there was that gut-kicking feeling that the ascent wouldn’t go through. But of course it did. Brother smiled terrified and looked sideways out of the plastic window, jammed in between a box of crayons and a coffee-table top, as the children below slowly melted, imploding into bite-sized waving fleas in a circus. The blue-gray island city morphed into a diorama against the dangling sunrise – a handheld model – and she held her brother’s hand.
I’ve never thought about myself this way before, she whispered.
From the garden, Aunt Belize looked up and saw the plane. The brother waved out the window but could not see her from that distance. Aunt Belize shook her head, pursed her lips, and cried while the bald freckled old man she was watering named Alfred – underneath oxygen-mask, IV and ivy – laughed for the first time in one hundred and twelve years, and nobody heard him.
She woke up in the fog of her own breath under their shelter on the harbor. IT startled her; she had forgotten that it got cold at night. Straight ahead of them the bay wept and danced under a dime-sized moon.
Sister… he said.
What is it?
Tonight.
They ran out to the lot where the airplane sat untouched. They shivered and watched; all of the cardboard boxes and cassette tapes and sweaters that made such a beautiful plane blended together under the coat of moonlight to form a crocodile-skin. Between them and a city’s skeleton, against the backdrop of memory’s skyline, it was beautiful enough for them to stand outside in what was once February, staring without blankets, for a few seconds before his teeth chattered and he said
It’s cold, come on.
Shh.
They heard a woman’s voice singing sighs. They looked up at a silver woman melting down the cement stairs behind the airplane, arms held out in sacrifice at her sides, eyes closed, lips half smiling, a crescent. She had once been only the transparent fear that has always defined the beginning and the end of human behavior, but tonight had become flesh and blood with a hunger to prove that she could be defined. Her long hair did not cover her naked body. Sister gasped and gripped her brother. The woman danced and sang softly around the airplane cautiously before taking it apart one object at a time. Steam floated off of her shoulders and hair.
Is that nature? Sister hissed.
Yes, hinted the woman, I am time.
They couldn’t move to stop it. All of their airplane’s ingredients landed one by one on the hard ground – guitar, skillet, washing board, flashlight – until eventually the entire pile surrounded the bluesilver woman. She laid on her back and spread her legs to the moon with a smile, before rolling around like she was playing in a pile of leaves. Her hands started reaching and grabbing. She bent the skillet, crushed the guitar, tore the shoes apart, ripped the sweater with her gnashing teeth, breathing a warm fog all over everything until it was soaking wet.
Brother shook his head and turned around. They walked numb back to their shelter and held each other under blankets. After a moment, Sister spoke between sniffles.
We knew it would happen –
Not this soon…
But I thought we’d still have all the things we started with…gone. Just like mom.
You remember how Aunt Belize told us to make things that can’t be destroyed? Brother asked.
Like…dreams?
Yes.
They lay still for a few minutes, staring up at the holed roof. Her eyes froze briefly into marble before she blinked and turned on her side to speak.
Dreams don’t get me anywhere by themselves.
So what do you want to do?
She smiled like a cat and spoke.
Let’s build a better one.
It’ll just get –
I know.
…Like Mom, he said. She turned back onto her back and closed her eyes.
I know.
He turned on his side to face her; he smiled with wet eyes closed, and between his lips the black gaps and white teeth looked like keys of a piano in the moonlight.
11/07
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Rust reviewed Version 1 -
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Despite some small (very small) issues with this story, I actually really enjoyed it – the way it made me feel, the things it made me see, and then the ways it made me see those things. Few stories have done that to me, and this is one of them.
In particular, you show a knack for combining adjectives that don’t seem like they should work together, yet perfectly describe something. A woman melting down the stairs is not a phrase one would normally put together, but combined with her silver appearance and the reverence with which she is mentioned, the reader can imagine a woman moving with a singular grace that cannot be described with mere words.
What I liked most was simply the fact that I could actually picture much of this story as though it were a film. Some things were inconsistent with that vision (fishing with a rod made from a car axle, for example), but phrases like “The static old people around her sat and stared anciently” bring very specific imagery to mind.
Very well done!
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Taoistpunk reviewed Version 1 -
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I Liked some of the imagery here, but I think this falls short of being a children’s fable. I think that if I were a child I would be confused, because, quite honestly, as an adult I’m, well…confused.
It’s nonsensical but not entertaining, like, for instance, Alice in Wonderland, which is a feel I think you are trying to convey. I fear you may have missed the mark, but luckily not by too much. This story could quite easily be transformed into something very magical. I envision anime but with an American conscience.
With a bit more structure and a better grasp of the whimsical, this piece will be transformed, I guarantee.
Thanks for writing it!
BlackOrchid918 reviewed Version 1 -
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I really enjoyed this, it did have a kind of child’s fable feel. I love the idea of this post-apocalyptic type world as a setting for a fable too, definitely gives it a whimsical mystique. Also I like how the Aunt tries warning them about ambition and advises them to set their sights lower. The building of an airplane is also a great metaphor for ambition, what’s more ambitious than humans trying to reach a dominion that isn’t by nature theirs (the sky)? In a way it reminds me of the biblical ‘Tower of Babel’ tale.
Also, I love how the whole neighborhood rallies around the building of this airplane, they all thirst for ambition but only two children are brave (or maybe naive) enough to actively pursue it. Great concept. The overgrown population of invalids lining the streets and alleyways was disturbingly creepy and added to the surreal effect, although I wasn’t quite sure what you meant by saying that the Aunt “waters them.” Does she literally give them water from her watering can or does she offer them food? That was really the only point that was unclear for me. I love the personification of Time ravaging their ambitious dream and forcing them to construct a new one, great metaphor for life and how Time spares nothing and no one. Would really love to see more!
WaywardSonRising reviewed Version 1 -
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i really really REALLY want to like this story. i think it was very creative, and i liked the whimsical feel of it all. overall i thought this little story was great, but there were too many distractions. BIGGEST distraction: no quotarion marks. you NEED quotation marks. i dont know if that was intentional or a mistake, but it definatly detracted from the experience of this story. it made made following the flow of the piece more difficult than it should of been, aking me scratch my head once or twice at who was talking. also, some of your descriptions dont really fit. the first one that i remember off the top of my head was the boy had hair like a bowling ball. a bowling ball is round and hard, it can be any combination of colors. his hair looking like a bowling ball is a stretch, and im not even really sure what your stretching at. also, the neighborhood cheered them on, throwing cement fists in the air? why are their fists cement? are these peoples hands made of concrete? and the time lady… why was she “spreadng” her legs to the moon? im sure there supposed to be some kind of symbolism there, but i lost it. she just seemed kind of odd and horny.
also, id like to talk to you about this line:
“Brother and sister took the walk and came around a corner to see her hat-on-head-silhouette strolling through a patch of wheelchairs, old invalid humans, watering them slowly.”
i read this line 3 or four times, then still didnt understand it untill i read farther on about what a “wheelchair” was. and i know your thinking to yourself “i just explained it in that line, duh”, but trust me, the meaning does not come acros readily. why? because a wheelchair brings to mind the image of a wheelchair, when you say old invalid humands its almost like your are going to be listing something off instead of explaing what a wheelchair is, then shes watering them? WTF? the sentance is kind of a lengthy one, i think if you broke it down a little, and described a wheelchair instead of being like “wheelchair, by the way thats a broke down person”, that this portion would flow a little better.
anyway, to sum up, i really liked the ideas and the little moral of the story. i think it was well thought out, but the delivery just didnt live up to potential. the lack of quotation marks and other factors made the piece to rough.
revanwithin reviewed Version 1 -
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It’s somewhat interesting, but to me I can’t say much more than that. I’m sorry. The writing is nice but I guess your subject didn’t suit my interest. In other words, it’s me not you.
I had a little confusion. I know you probably had something in mind when you wrote the piece but I think as far as thoughts or words spoken you should use quotation marks or italics, something to break it up. That’s my opinion. Really it was very brief, to my mind. I guess I was just expecting more.
Good luck.
Warriorbreed reviewed Version 1 -
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For a children’s fable, i think this was quite good. If anything else, it kept me reading. But what’s with your not quoting the dialogue. It was a little distracting but i still followed the story anyway.
I don’t know exactly what else to say about your story but that its not too bad and not so great. I’ll score you a 6 out of 10. And understand that strictly keep to reading and reviewing sci fi and fantasy, not children fable, so you may want to rely on reviews from other forumers.
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