The Fall – Fiona Egglestone
March 3rd, 2009 | Published in Volume IV: New Order
He awoke, bruised and bloodied. Lying naked on the ground, a spasm wracked his body. He felt cold and pain, coursing through his body for the first time. Disorientated, he tried to stand. To begin with, he had no idea who he was, or what had happened to him. Without the familiar weight of his wings, he staggered, struggling to find his centre of balance.
Voices, laughing. The sound of glass breaking. He stumbled into a trash can as he tried get up. Someone was yelling at him, but he did not understand.
He was not prepared for the violence. In his weakened state, he could not fight them off. He went limp and submitted to whatever indignities they chose to visit upon him. Pain filled his being, and he cried out. Darkness followed swiftly.
Lights and sirens. A cacophony of voices ebbed and flowed as he lapsed in and out of consciousness.
“Man, somebody really fucked this guy up!”
“Uh-uh. We didn’t think he was going to make it, but he’s pulled through so far.”
“What the hell was he doing out there anyway?”
“Who knows”
“Another John Doe? That’s the fifth this week.”
“Not the usual type though, this guy was clean.”
“What a waste. You’d think someone out there would be missing him by now.”
Gradually, he became accustomed to his new environment. At first, when he woke, everything was dark. Panic welled up within him and he cried out. Was he now blind as well as wingless? A warm, soft hand caressed his forehead, and a voice like rich, dark chocolate reassured him. He was going to be all right; his face was bandaged at the moment due to his injuries, but as far as they could tell his sight was unaffected.
Time passed. He had no idea how long he lay in the hospital while his injuries healed. In the darkness, he listened to the soft beeping of the machines, the sound of footsteps in the corridors and the chatter of the nurses as they did their rounds. Pain punctuated his days. They had given him a button to press to allow him to regulate it. It did not take him long to discover that he preferred the physical agony to the emotional turmoil which threatened to overwhelm him.
His dreams were haunted by falling. Hurtling through the sky like a shooting star, his feathers torn away one by one by the force of his descent. Again and again he relived the fall. Wingless and broken; the ground rushed up to welcome him. Emptiness overwhelmed him. In his arrogance, he had challenged the Authority too many times. They had warned him, but he had ignored them all. They did not understand. Once the brightest, the best of all of them, he’d been secure in the knowledge that he was loved. No longer.
Bitter realisation hit him: he reeled from the blow. Cast out and alone, he wept for what he had lost.
He turned his face to the wall. They had removed the bandages from his face now, but there was nothing he wished to see. A nurse had given him morphine earlier; he often cried out in his sleep. It was disturbing the other patients. He knew the drug would wear off soon, and then he would lose himself once again in the visceral sensations of his broken body. How else could he bear it? He longed for death, but that final oblivion was denied to him.
He woke with the sun streaming through the curtains, feeling curiously numb. He wondered whether they had put him on a different type of medication.
Luella was on duty today. When she saw he was awake, she went over to sit with him.
“You had a visitor today, John,” she told him. “Middle-aged, well dressed. Good looking.” She smiled and continued without waiting for him to reply. She was used to his silence by now. “Wouldn’t say who he was, just said that I should give you this.”
She handed him a small gift box.
Inside the box lay a single pure white feather.
“What kind of strange gift is that?” Luella asked, shaking her head as she walked away.
A single tear traced its way down his cheek. “Forgiveness,” he whispered.
All the staff noticed the change in him after that day. In hushed tones, they talked about how it was nothing short of a miracle that he had survived at all. He would always be scarred, but it looked as though he would eventually be able to walk again. When he was well enough to leave, Luella helped him find a place to live, and encouraged him to apply for a job at the hospital. He kept the name John, because by then he was used to it.
The hospital quickly became his life, his reason for being. The nurses noticed that the patients were comforted by his presence. Those he spent time with often seemed to get better quickly, or found their pain lessened. More than once, Luella found herself wondering who, or what he was. She hoped that one day he would recover his memory, but he never gave any sign that he remembered his former life.
*****
He sat on the ledge on the roof of the hospital for a long time. The sun sank lower in the sky. He could always be found up here at dawn or dusk, whatever the weather. Rose, mauve and deep purple edged across the sky, shot through with the last few golden rays. His joints protested as he got slowly to his feet. His hair was white now, and a labyrinth of wrinkles traced their way through his scars; a map of life imprinted on his face. Looking up into the sky, he stepped off the edge of the building, and flew.
© 2008 Fiona Egglestone