He watches the amber, iridescent light of the streetlamp above him as it shines down upon the old, grey sidewalk. Pinkish, brown bubble-gum circles decorate the grey slate. The rain falls incessantly down and the glow around the streetlight grows larger and larger. Rivulets run down the slight incline toward the deep, dark throat of the city. All the pain, suffering, and sins are being washed into the cesspool down under. For a while, the city will have a clean gleaming look to it, until the persistent stench of humankind smother and taint it again.
On a step in an alcove to a barbershop, huddled against the door, he sits. His blonde hair is dirty and streaked with filth. It hangs across his forehead and clings to his neck; it curls over the edge of his used-to-be green sweater. His blue eyes are dull and tired. He struggles to keep them open, and he has a dirty grey blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His legs are pulled up against his chest, because although it is summer, the rain falling relentlessly in the streets in front of him, has brought a chill with it.
His stomach hurts from hunger, because it is a struggle to get small change from most people. They think he will waste it on drugs. Considering they are all on their way home to a warm meal, a loving family, a cosy bed, so even if he used the spare change, they dug out from the bottom of their purses for drugs or alcohol, would that not ease his own personal suffering. How judgemental they are. Tonight, when they go home, they will swallow their prescription drugs and sleep the slumber of the righteous.
He is not here because he has a drug problem. He is not here because he has a drinking problem. He is here because he has no family. He grew up alone.
Hungry and lonely - the faith and believe he once had in other people, soon proved to be empty hopes.
Sometimes he will see the pity and fear in people’s eyes. Fear that at any moment, in the blink of an eye, they could be plunged into the same situation as him. Mostly though they avoid him, quickly pull out a few cents, and hand it to him, putting it cautiously into his dirty outstretched hand.
When he ran away from the system, he went into the big, wide world with a basic education, no skills and nowhere to live. For fifteen years, he lived within the confines of the orphanage, only leaving every Sunday with all the other boys to go to church and then herded back through the large ornate gates back to his room. A room he shared with nineteen other boys. Meals were always served at the same time, every day, three times a day. A strict, scheduled day.
Then, suddenly, it was all gone.
He enjoys sitting way up high on the tall buildings and he has never had a problem getting to the really high ones, even though they are all accessed controlled.
Most people look through him.
Invisible he is.
Although he mostly waits for rush hour, because then the lobbies are full and if he sneaks in, keeps his head down, he is normally able to get to the service elevator. Most times it is more difficult to get out of the building again, when he wants to leave, because then he must walk through an empty lobby. Security guards do not always understand.
The first time he noticed he is different from everybody else was the day he flew from the roof of the Catholic Orphanage where he grew up.
He was only seven years old. As far back as he could remember he collected feathers. Whenever, wherever. He used to pick feathers up from the ground and then keep them in an old tea tin at the back of his cupboard.
When the box was full, he used to go up to the roof of the large brick building, and then huddled under the shadow of the large wooden cross, with the sun shining down on his head, turning his fair skin dark brown, and his already blonde hair, strikingly white, he used to sit for hours concentrating intently on his important task.
Sister Anne liked to point out that he was her little angel, with his huge blue eyes, which seemed pale and eerily unusual, especially against his dark, tanned skin, and white hair.
The other boys at the orphanage, for some reason, did not like him, all that much. He was a shy boy who liked to keep to himself, living in his own world and always imagining he could lift off from his feet and sweep up with the wind. How he would fly high up in the sky, only a speck between the clouds, and then look down upon earth and see it all in one glance.
He could spend hours in this daydream, when the other boys his age used to run around, and play the latest craze of the season, like marbles, or tops.
He took advantage of Sister’s Anne soft spot in her heart for him. He used to beg her continually for super-glue, which she used to give to him now and again, with a pleased smile on her face when she saw the childlike delight in his eyes.
Painstakingly he glued every feather he had, onto a long, skinny stick, which he had plucked from a tree. He fashioned the stick to fit the length of his arm, from shoulder to wrist. When the stick was covered sufficiently, he then started with the next row down, making sure they overlapped each other. He did not want to make the wings heavy with criss-cross sticks, and he liked the way it flapped in the wind when he held it up.
It took unbelievably long to make his wings. Feathers were a scarce commodity and then when suddenly the box was empty, he hid the pair of wings securely under the eaves, behind the large cross on the roof, so that the wind would not carry it away while he continued to collect more feathers.
Since he could remember, he believed he could fly, and it was a sunny day when eventually both his wings were complete. There was a slight breeze brushing against his warm skin. He concentrated, biting softly on his tongue, which was protruding slightly from between his lips, while he carefully super-glued the sticks to his arms, lengthwise. It proved more difficult to glue the second wing than it was to glue the first one, but eventually, sweat making droplets on his forehead, he had them both glued in place.
He stood on the roof and slowly he lifted his extended arms up and down, testing his new wings against the wind. They looked magnificent, although a multitude of shades in grey and black, and collected from every pigeon and crow who ever dropped a feather over the grounds of the orphanage.
He stepped forward and stood on the edge of the three-storey institutional redbrick building and then he leapt, without thinking twice.
For a moment, he soared through the sky. He felt the wind in his hair, the breeze kissing him softly on his cheeks. He felt laughter build up in him. Flying felt familiar to him.
Then he started plummeting.
He saw the ground rushing toward him with unbelievable speed. He fell and rolled, and the shock shuddered through his body. He waited for the darkness of death to descend over him, but it did not happen.
He heard screams coming toward him and then he was looking up into many faces.
He smiled his sweetest smile up at Sister Anne, as she kneeled beside him, crossing herself vigorously, repeatedly.
She said something in Spanish, and then she asked, “Are you okay, Lucias?”
“I seem to be.” He smiled up at her innocently.
Sister Anne held up her hand and asked, “How many fingers?”
“Five,” he answered, and she gasped.
He laughed. “Three. I am okay. Really.”
“Move all your fingers and toes,” she commanded sternly, moving onto anger after her initial shock.
He moved them all, and then Mr. Reynolds, the caretaker, lifted him into his arms and carried him to his bed, in a room he shared with nineteen other boys.
Mr. Reynolds lay him down in his bed, while Sister Anne hovered over him.
After Mr. Reynolds left the room, she exclaimed, her anger moving on to disbelieve, “Lucias, this is surely a miracle. You did not even break a bone. Sister Angelina, will be here soon and she cannot believe it either.”
When Sister Angelina arrived, they talked in rushed sentences, amongst themselves, and they decided he was unbelievably lucky. It was thanks to God only that he did not kill himself.
Sister Angelina announced that evening in study hall that going up to the roof, ‘will forthwith be strictly forbidden’.
His flying experiment kept him busy for the following two months, because as his punishment he had to clean the bathroom on his floor, this included scrubbing the inside of the toilets, all seven of them, until he was able to see his face in the porcelain. He also had to say fifty Hail Mary’s every evening for a month.
Six months after his short, yet glorious flight, he overheard Sister Anne tell Sister Angelina, that he, Lucias, had never been ill. Even when he was a little baby, he hardly ever cried. He had never been sick once, that she could ever remember. Since his stunt, she has spent many sleepless nights, contemplating, and trying to recall a single day when he even had a runny nose.
It is true, he has never been sick.
© Rosaline Saul
Delivery 2 - 3 weeks.
