The Rise and Fall of Kitty Wake

A fable-like tale of a girl who levitates whenever she is in a good mood.

Deep breaths. Happy thoughts. A sense of blood rushing to the head, and the rest of Kitty Wake's body felt cold, like cool water were running right under her skin. Yes, each drop of blood in her was moving upwards. Then Kitty moved upwards. Kitty lifted into the air. The wind softly breezed through the unkempt grass and trees.  Her movement was quick. It didn't take long before the rope tied to her ankle began to tug on the tree bough she used to secure herself.

Kitty's condition caused sufferers to levitate whenever experiencing happiness. The happier the person, the higher the levitation. Most people with Kitty's condition feared drifting into the stratosphere to die from freezing or asphyxiation, but most people with it were also too melancholic to ever get the slightest bit off the ground. The melancholy was self-pity over their affliction and fear. It worked out pretty nicely, actually, not considering the melancholy. 

Kitty Wake could levitate, however. She could not go out in public without having to have a ball and chain secured around her ankle, and she never went out in public without stares following her like a shadow.

What she knew, but never truly put into words or told herself, was that she wasn’t afraid of floating into outer space. Her greatest fear was crashing into the earth. So, she learned to lower herself with a low burning discomfort, like how Laney Kyle and Xander Streage were kissing each other the other day.

Xander Streage: curly hair as black as oil and eyes as blue as the sea that glimmered soulfully. They always seemed to be getting an eyeful of whatever there was at the other end of the galaxy. Just the thought of those eyes lifted Kitty six feet up, without her noticing it! It went unnoticed. She was grounded by how his always admiring eyes seemed to scrutinize when he looked at her during that conversation. His eyes fell on her. Their fall was the same as hers; a tragedy.

This provoked Kitty to wonder what was so great about Xander Streage besides the fact he was attractive and in proximity? Xander, who would look at a pebble on the ground romantically, probingly, profoundly, and warmly, usually looked through Kitty or past Kitty. I this eyes did fall on her and notice they were on her, it was the way things were when Kitty fell every morning: a tragedy.  At first she was heart broken by the revelation, but next came the sensation of a spell being broken. It was as though weights attached to all of her limbs were removed. “To hell with him," she said. Why worry about a boy when you can fly, Kitty Wake, she asked lecturingly

Rise, because I can. Come down, because I must. 

Up. Down. Up. Down. She felt secure in her newly required skill, and decided the next step didn’t have to wait until tomorrow. She removed the rope.

Rise. She rose. Go down. She did. 

What about left and right?

What about left and right, and back and forth?

She tried moving her feet, but her legs were like jelly. Jeez, her feet and the air seemed to be polar opposites refusing to touch. She went through swimming motions, slicing her arms through the air. When that had no effect she tried backstrokes, but she continued to be stationary in the sky, able to mover her limbs around, but not able to move. It was the same as the ballerina pirouetting in a music box. 

This was the most time she spent in the air. For many years Kitty slept on top of her comforter each night, free of her ball and chain. Her nose would be touching the poster-covered ceiling when she woke, and from the despair of realizing it was all a dream, she would fall onto her bed. The bed would make a violent metal sound of springs and a metal frame getting hit by a force they weren’t made to withstand. The day before this day, the metal frame succumb to the abuse. Her mattress lay on the floor. There was no longer an under under her bed. She hated that mattress. It was noisy, and so sturdy one could serve a meal on it. She called it table-bed. 

Above any other hope, she hoped she could develop the ability to fly, to rise above simply levitating. and be something like a bird. She held her arms out. One last effort. Fly. All of her blood rushed to her hands, then to the her finger tips. Involuntarily, her hands reached for the open sky before her. Her body became stiff and horizontal.

Flowing through the air, Kitty had a bird’s eye view.  It was just as she thought, she was meant to be avian. For the first time ever she could see the the city’s skyscrapers in the distance. She decided to pack a small bag and go to there. It was truly a revolutionary idea, for no one from her village  ever left it. 

Kitty went higher into the sky, 49,209.6 feet to be exact; grazing the ozone. Stay clear of the stratosphere, Kitty Wake, she told herself lecturing-like, like the mother she always wanted and made a hell of an effort to be for herself.  

The height made specks out of the people, and Kitty would be a speck to them, she assumed, but odd things stick out like a sore thumb. Every single villager stood outside, pointing at the object in the sky. It was too big to be a bird. It was too small to be a plane. Literally everyone was wonderstruck, dumbfounded, flabbergasted, etc. It was all because the mystery of it. The only things they knew about what they were seeing was that it could be a large bird, or a small plane. It occurred to them that it could be neither of theses things, but no matter what it was, it was an incarnation of grace.

Nothing more miraculous would ever come anywhere near the village. A marvelous story was taking place above them, and it was theirs to tell. They would tell it to anyone with ears, even though everyone they knew was there. They would simply compare and contrast observations. The local newspaper would talk about it, and at last the little village would get all of the attention it wanted, on national news. The world would come to the village in droves. The world would want to know the entire story. The same as how the folks watching Kitty in the sky wanted to remember it all and acted as camera men, juggling capturing the moment and experiencing it. It  was a compulsion to capture this moment, a form of taking ownership of it. It was because anything anyone in the village ever had they didn't have long enough. They didn't have time to grow sick of something, and that was the only way they could show they cared.

Kitty froze and posed herself with her hands on her hips, marveling back. “Would you look at that! They can’t stop looking at me!” She couldn’t stop the temptation of revealing herself.  With clenched fists, she headed for the village like a meteor.

“It’s coming here,” the villagers said to one another. They asked each other why and they shrugged to display confusion.  What would a graceful creature have to do in this village that never meant anything?

When Kitty came into view the villagers no longer believed what they were seeing.  Literally everyone told everyone “It’s Kitty wake,” incredulously. 

“Am I in trouble,” Kitty asked the police officers who took a stance, holding their belts and looking at her like she was a danger.

The police officers had no idea what they were doing. In the whole history of the village never was there an arrest. There was never a crime.  The police officers would not know illegal activity if it pulled out a gun and shot up all of Main Street. Crime was unknown to them. So was a flying person, and the logic of the officers was that if it was unknown and in the village, it was a cause for alarm. 

“Are you all right,” the senior officer asked Kitty.

“I’ve never felt better,” she assured. 

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going out of town.”

“Out of town?”

“Yes.”

“You were flying!”

“That was how I was getting out of town.”

“Nor do many people leave the village.”

“Because they have no way to. I figured if I could do one thing no one else has ever done before, why not another? You see?”

The officers were speechless and eying her ankles.  

Kitty noticed this and said, “It’s an improvement, don’t you think, officers?”

“I don’t know what to think,” the senior officer confessed, rubbing his eyes in the way frustrated people do. The officer was a man who was perpetually tired, and all of the excitement was quick to drain him.

“Am I under arrest?”

One officer whispered to another officer, “how do we make an arrest? Were we taught how to make an arrest?” Take heart that there was good reason for the officers’ ignorance. Police training only lasted three days. Its curriculum concentrated on being watchful of suspicious activity and doing paperwork, and even that knowledge was hardly ever applicable. 

The senior officer asked Kitty why she wasn’t wearing her shackle. 

“I don’t need it.”

“But what about your condition?”

“She has a condition,” literally everyone asked.

“She has a condition that requires her to wear the ball and chain,” said the officers.

“What’s her condition,” asked someone.

“Maybe it’s the same as mine,” somebody else chimed in hopefully.

It turned to babble suddenly. The police had to calm populace down.

“You see this, Kitty Wake,” the senior officer began with a wagging finger and reddening round face, “You’re a public menace!”

“Let me go and I’ll get out of your hair,” Kitty pleaded.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, insisted she tell them about her condition. Kitty explained her condition, an ability to levitate in moments of ecstasy, an as suddenly as the villagers amassed into a great big noise. They levitated, not with the inclusion of the police, Laney Kyle, and Xander Streage. 

It brought everything to light. Everything made sense. A weight had been lifted off the villagers' shoulders, imposed by this belief people shied away from talking about. It was this belief that every villager was there for a reason. Not oh, the economy is bad. I grew up here, and there’s a low cost of living. It was a belief that every villager was there for the same reason, and it was the same reason that no one ever left. The belief lived in everyone like a genetic trait, and heere it was, dangling its 327 pairs of feet in the air. Were all of the ancestors rounded up and put together to be each other’s problem, like a leper colony? Was the village the only place that could keep everyone on the ground (if it was, it served no good now)?

One by one those who rose fell in rapid succession thanks to fear's potency.

A boy got off the ground and immediately asked Kitty, “How did you learn to fly,” 

“I...prioritized. I realized that the only way I could take control of my condition was letting go of everything that I was afraid and made me sad, and I put all of my thoughts into getting off the ground. I told myself,  I rise because I can, and I come back to earth because I had to. It took some practice.”

“Will you teach us,” asked the villagers.  

Kitty asked herself why she should. Will they apologize for all that they did to me all of these years? Will they respect me? Will they love me? Will any of those things mean anything to me if they were to happen? Will it do anything to my conscience if I were to fly off without a word forever? The answer to the last two questions was yes. Being respected. Being loved. Being able to fly. In her mind they were all the same.

Lifting off the ground, she informed them that she was planning to go to the city for the night. She asked the villagers if they would mind. 

“No. No. No,” the villagers said politely. 

“Practice while I’m gone.” She suggested they all tether themselves, if floating off was a concern. “Think of happy thoughts.”

Kitty flew towards the setting sun in the rosy pink sky. The villagers did not delay and were secured to some post with some cord, and already practicing when Kitty was still in sight. Laney and Xander sat on a hill watching. They were also holding hands. Laney wondered why neither Xander or her were capable of levitation, then she told herself she'd rather not know. Instead she asked Xander, “Do you think Kitty will come back?"

“She said she was going to the city tonight. But maybe she’ll go to the city tonight, then another city, then another city.”

“No matter where you go, there you are. I hope she realizes that...Do you want her to come back?”

Xander replied, “I want her to have all the happiness in the world. She won’t find that here.”

The sun was down. At seeing how gigantic the buildings of the city were, she felt weak and wanted to take it in at ground level, distance and started walking the rest of the way. Back in the village, the levitators were barely getting off the ground. Everybody gave up and went home. It seemed like it would be that way for good.

Author's Note

I sent this to Bartleby Snopes and was told about awkward writing. I worry that this story is overly preachy and sappy. I sent it to Bartleby hoping to be told more. Just tell me if I should put this thing out of its misery.