Flying Free

a short story I wrote for school

When she was a baby, Alex always waved her chubby baby arms and cooed at any bird she saw. When Alex was in middle school she had recurring dreams of taking off into the night sky with peregrines and would stand on her balcony on the windiest days. By the time she was eighteen, her room was plastered with things related to flying. Michael Cunningham’s “The secret of flight is this -- you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws.” was taped inside her closet door. “If you were born without wings do nothing to prevent them from growing.” by Coco Chanel had been pinned to her poster board. Pictures of soaring birds and people hang gliding were taped on all the spare spots on her walls. A mobile she’d made out of feathers swirled over Alex’s bed. Unused feathers littered her blue bookshelf.

Alex felt like she was made for the sky, that perhaps in a previous life she’d been a bird. She had a narrow face and a slim body, her long arms and legs lending her a graceful quality. Her blue-gray eyes exactly matched the sky on a stormy day and her blue-black hair flowed easily in the wind.

One of the things Alex received on her eighteenth birthday was a Harley Davidson motorcycle, and of all her gifts up till then, she loved the motorcycle like an owl loves the night. The motorcycle was her escape, her freedom, and most of all it brought her a little bit closer to flying. Speeding down the road she felt like she was soaring, with the trees whipping past her and the wind racing over her body. The Harley was her ultimate escape and she lovingly referred to it as her Daydreamer.

Anything else she tried didn’t work. Rollercoasters didn’t cut it, plane rides felt confining and swings jerked her around too much. So it was the Daydreamer that carried her along the backroads. Freedom incarnate. It was on these roads that Alex was disinclined to follow basic rules. She wanted to feel the wind rushing through her hair. She wanted to hear it whistling past her ears.

One dusky evening Alex was hurtling down the hill when out of the corner of her eye she saw something red, the shiny chrome reflecting her headlights. Over the roar of her own powerful engine, she heard a screech of brakes, the impacting sound of metal on flesh. She felt searing pain and then nothing.

She was flying, higher and higher. The road beneath her was a black snake winding through the trees. She was flying higher, soaring, the wind whipping her hair around and caressing her body. She was flying right into the night sky, straight towards the first few stars that were shining like portals into heaven. Then she was gone.

When the police and paramedics got to the scene all they found was a mutilated pile of shiny metal, two wheels, a red Honda Accord with a dented front, and a bewildered old man babbling on about a girl.

Author's Note

feel free to comment on anything (grammatical, spelling) anything to help make this better, thanks guys!

Reviews

[Lyn Anderson]

Why did I know it was going to end this way. I felt like it was headed for a crash ... I would expand upon what it was she saw ...

[The Violent Wolf]

okee, thank you :)

[Marie]

There's nothing wrong with the mechanics of this writing; they grammar, spelling, punctuation, are correct. But The closure didn't seem to work.

[The Violent Wolf]

thank you :) i'll be sure to put more thought into that