The Man Who Flew Like A Bird

Grey eyes encircled by bloodshot whites watched the heron off in the distance flap its large wings. As if by magic, the bird rose from each fall perfectly. Oslow wondered what it would be like, being lifted up effortlessly from each fall. Instinctually. He could only seem to fall lower.

The soft thump of the bird's wings could not be heard at this distance but Oslow, caught in the web of his dreamland, snatched the sound out of the air regardless. He had an active imagination. Maybe that was half the problem.

The bird kept on, faithfully adhering to its path to nowhere. Or maybe it was going somewhere. Surely even birds had some kind of desire. Or maybe they didn't at all. Maybe they just felt the joy of soaring, of flying, of living and that was good enough. What would that be like?

Oslow’s breaths slowed while the woman across from him tapped her fingers against her arms.

“Honestly, Oslow. I’m trying to help you and this is what you give me? Christ. I’m going home. I’m done with this.”

Oslow’s eyes jumped from the window to the framed poem on his gray wall, then onto the lamp with its unworking bulb, and finally landed on his sister who was standing in the open threshold of the door to his apartment.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice deadened but sincere.

“No one thinks so anymore.”

She stormed out, slamming the door behind her.

“I just can’t seem to get it right,” he said to no one in particular.

Casually glancing back to the window, his spirits fell. The bird was gone. He had hoped to watch the sun color its back as one or the other inched closer to the horizon. No such luck. He wanted to be free like that bird wandering through the sky to a place it didn’t yet know. Oslow shifted uneasily as memories of his parents found their way out of the locked closet in his mind. They had been kind to him. They would have watched the bird with him.

But they were dead. They'd been dead a long time. Twenty years.

It was an uneventful thing, which always struck Oslow as distantly funny.

He left the window in favor of the grey kitchen.

Grabbing a pad of paper and searching for a functioning pen, he wondered if his parents knew that day that he had been born broken. He had been born with big sad eyes that looked tired from the moment he exited the birth canal. Mother and father both spoke in length with the doctor who reassured him all was normal. Heart, lungs, and brain all functioned normally. In fact, the doctor believed Oslow would grow up smart and strong.

Oslow did.

It didn't do anything for him except give him a keen understanding of his failures.

Oslow hunched over the table, taking care to make his note legible. Sadness colored his weeping heart blue. Before signing the note, he looked at the large collection of picture books sleeping in his bookcase.

After his parents died, he had and his sister had spent several years in the orphanage. It wasn't often a good time, but someone had come to read them books and he had liked it very much. Now, all he could do was attempt to pass that feeling on.

He tried to smile at the thought of reading to the orphan children, bringing them a moment of fleeting joy but the curve would not dance on his lips. Instead, a greater sorrow hit him.

At 29, Oslow had not found a morsel of happiness. Worse than that, Oslow had begun to believe even in his heart that his existence hurt others. No one loved him just to love him. In this world, Oslow thought, you just can’t afford to be sad. You can’t afford to hurt.

With this thought pressing against his head like the goose egg of an injury, Oslow left his apartment without locking the door. As he stepped into the hallway, he stopped. Had he tried it all? Was this it?

He frowned and went back inside.

Pouring himself a large glass of cold water from the fridge, he plopped as many ice cubes into the water as the cup would allow. Brushing his teeth with copious amounts of toothpaste, he hoped the trick would cheer him up as it sometimes did. Rushing back to the kitchen with the minty flavor still tickling his tongue, Oslow threw back the glass of ice water. Cold spread from his mouth to his nose. It slipped down his throat.

Oslow felt no more happy than he had before. His lips curled down as tears began to dribble down his face.

Picking up his phone he called his sister. “Oslow, I was just over there. What in God’s name do you need?”

“I just wanted to tell you I love you. You left without a hug or anything.”

An exasperated grunt met his nervous ears. “You’re grown.” He stayed quiet. “Why don’t you go to the gym or something? That helps right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well there you go.”

“Stace?”

“Hm?”

“Have you always hated me?”

"I've never hated you." Stacy didn’t miss a beat. “Is it always about you?”

A cramp deep in his chest made him say a tender goodbye before hanging up the phone. He set it beside the note on the counter. Grabbing the plastic countertop with both hands, Oslow let his tears fall to the floor, to the note, to wherever they wanted to travel.

All he wanted was to feel something besides the sadness festering in his heart. He had seen therapists and worked out until his legs collapsed. He had eaten strange diets involving fish, lettuce, and little more. He had moved, gambled, pretended but nothing fixed the part of him that was broken. Every day he became more convinced he was the only accident on the face of the Earth.

Pulling himself together with a few rough sobs, Oslow righted himself.

Oslow walked to the bridge.

It was a drastic choice. One he had to be careful about.

This afternoon, in front of the reddening sky of evening, Oslow had decided it was enough. He toed the edge of the bridge. One foot dangled, then the other began to join it. When his body hit the point of no return, he heard somebody yell not to do it and he cursed himself. One more person he would ruin. Too far gone to listen to the words of a nobody, Oslow teetered one more time and fell off the edge of the low bridge.

Down Oslow tumbled, careening towards the gentle water below him. Wind whipped around his clothes, tugged on his hair, pulled the corners of his mouth into a smile.

In the few seconds before he hit the water, Oslow tasted the chaos of living. And it was beautiful. It was feral.

Looking at the rapidly approaching water, Oslow realized that with his arms outstretched, fingers caressing the air, and body plummeting freely, he was happy. The joy did not spark from the certain death looming before him but the freedom and sense of self erupting from within him. Some far-off thought told him that the universe loved him in a sick, hectic way. The way of lovers, Oslow thought as he hit the water.

He remembered the sirens. He saw the lights, both the blue and red of the warning lights and the white surgical lights hurting his eyes. Oslow remembered the beard of the man who hooked all sorts of lines up to his body but not his eyes. Days after the incident, he pushed his mind to paint a picture of the man’s face but he could not.

His sister never came to visit. As he rolled around to consciousness, he was faced with a delicate-looking nurse with a big, plastered-on smile.

Oslow immediately could see it was a farce.

"Good morning, Mr.-"

"I'm sorry."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm just sorry you look so sad." Softly, he continued, “I'm better. So...you can be too.”

There was happiness in his belly for the first time in a long time. He couldn't shake the feeling of the universe. And he was glad to be bothered by something.

The grey eyes tracked a bird as it flew toward the sunrise. It was just as beautiful as the sunset birds but there was something undeniably more joyful about its flight. It was playing.

A wry grin slipped onto his mouth.

Maybe he would try skydiving.

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Thanks for reading. Years and years ago, I wrote this for a college project. Never really managed to get it how I wanted even though it was one of the best grades I'd managed on creative writing. I like how it is now. Robust.