500 words a day

532 words - 20th July 2009

Various ways of flying had been something that Graham had spent far too many hours and days and weeks thinking and planning and scheming over, ever since he was a small child. No one ever took him seriously, assumed it was just a bit of a laugh and that he’d make a model plane or something along those lines or at best something like a fancy version of the hang glider.





For the last couple of years though he’d got much much closer though. No one knew about it, he’d kept it entirely to himself, apart from Gladys of course. She had been involved right from the start, well involved in a supportive backroom sort of way. She made sure he always had plenty of tea and sandwiches. She came out with him on all the trials, making sure there was no one around to see them, taking him to hospital, at least 6 times now and explaining away the injuries so nobody asked too many questions or got suspicious about his project. She was wonderful and he decided long ago that as soon as he’d flown he was going to ask her to marry him. He’d fantasised about flying with her, soaring above the town, over the woods, across the ocean to Europe- he knew it couldn’t happen though, she’d not been trained like he had and the muscular development he’d put himself through was both painstaking and potentially impossible for a woman, especially one as frail as Gladys. Still, she could meet him on the other side; he’d need a support person and someone on the radio to contact in case anything went wrong.


He didn’t yet know how other fliers would react. He had a theory that they might treat him, other birds that is, as a threat. He knew a bit about bird behaviour and knew for instance that if a rare bird, like a pet, escaped into the environment that wasn’t its natural one, where there were no others of its kind, a bit of a loner, standing out like a sore thumb; other birds nearly always attacked and killed it. They were vicious killers birds, very territorial too. So he was a bit concerned about that but he was going to be well protected and planned on carrying a pepper spray and wearing thick body armour, lightweight though so it didn’t stop him getting off the ground, modelled on the stab vests that the police used but also using a lot of the technology of space programmes to ensure lightness and not too much sweating.


This was probably the most expensive part of his project in fact and he often worried that a smart investigator or just someone a bit nosey, might draw the right conclusion and find out what he was up to once they noticed he was in frequent contact with scientists from NASA.


Still, it was almost too late for that. Next week it should happen. He should fly, independently, with his suit on and wings obviously, but without any kind of artificial propulsion, purely using his amazingly muscular arms and the beautiful set of wings he’d manufactured and perfected over the years.








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Steve Wybourn





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