Fear of Flying

Standing on a sandy hillside on a cool October morning, Ava observed the activities in the New Mexican desert about a half a mile below and away. Hundreds of great colorful behemoths were bobbing and weaving, trying to escape the lashes holding them captive. A mammoth pink elephant twisted to face Ava as a huge panda moved in between them to partially block her view. A gigantic white snowman wobbled to and fro as if he was trying to escape the rays of the smiling yellow sun about 100 yards to its right. An enormous freakish alien spider glowed red with apparent anger at the men and women keeping the beast in bondage. This amazing menagerie was being tended to by hundreds of people dwarfed by the tremendous size of their captured creatures.

Ava clasped her daughter Celeste’s hand as she watched the choreographed movements of the pilots and their helpers fill their hot air balloons at the Albuquerque International Balloon Festival. The mass ascension of balloons, in the special shape category, was about to begin and Ava and her family had arrived just in time to witness it.

“Mommy, when will they begin to fly?” Celeste asked impatiently.

“I think they’ll take off in about an hour honey,” Ava answered, “ Let’s go see if Daddy found a good spot to watch.”

“Do you think we’ll be able to ride in one today?”

“Daddy said he’ll buy some tickets for a balloon ride but we can’t guarantee he’ll be able to get them. ” Ava said, being sure to leave an out just in case the demand for the hot air balloon rides out striped the supply and they lost out to more enterprising people.

“I hope he can get tickets.” Celeste said excitedly, “Because I love to fly!”

Ava glanced down at her daughter with a bemused look. “You’ve never flown before. How do you know you’ll like it?”

Celeste looked up at her mother sheepishly as if she had been caught in a lie. “Well, I think I’ll love to fly.”

Ava smiled as she wrapped her arm around Celeste’s shoulder and pulled her to her hip. The two turned there backs to the inflating creatures and began the down hill climb to locate Ava’s husband, Jared.

This trip to watch this great balloon event had been planned for a couple of years. Ava had harbored an intense yet secret desire to attend ever since she saw a PBS program on the yearly festival. She marveled at the imaginative designs of the balloons. She was overwhelmed by the seemingly infinite spectrum of colors and shapes as the great balloons, with their minute passengers hanging tentatively underneath, passed over the camera lens like bizarre bloated birds in a great migration.

Ava knew she was connected in a deep psychological way to this event and had to bring her family to see it in person. Her connection was not imagined, for unlike the balloon pilots who needed artificial means to sail through the sky, Ava could fly.

She possessed the talent of unassisted flight since she was a little girl. The mechanism was unclear in fact it was a complete mystery to her. She didn’t need wings like a bird nor need to generate some kind of biological jet propulsion. She could just will it and it happened. Becoming airborne was natural for her and she was able to control her ability with reasonable deftness.

The transformation process for flight was predictable and first required the desire to fly. She then felt a tingle at her feet and legs not unlike the feeling of goose bumps forming on a cold day. However, there was no sensation of cold. In fact, her body became quite warm. The tingle quickly ran up her torso right to the top of her head, causing her fine light brown hair to lift straight up as if she was touching a Van de Graaff generator. She would then get a feeling of weightlessness and would begin to lift and float. Ava could direct her flight by merely thinking about where to go.

She flew without any particular style, not like Superman or any of the comic book characters that fantasized human flight. She would fly bolt upright with her arms to her side. Although, by now she was well experienced with the flying process, she felt tentative about her capability. Ava was afraid to try new techniques for fear of crashing to the ground and never stretched her talent nor flew out doors. For greater than her fear of falling, above all her other fears, was the fear of being discovered, of being labeled a freak. She knew what would happen if people found out. She would be whisked away to some research lab where she would spend her life being poked, prodded and lastly dissected in order to discover the source of her power of flight.

Ava never told her husband about her gift, even after eleven years of marriage. She never told her parents, even after she spent an entire night up in the top of a 40-foot oak tree when she was just twelve. It took the town’s hook and ladder truck to finally get her safely to the ground. She did tell them about the boys who chased her through the woods as she was walking home from school and of the awful things they were saying that they wanted to do to her. She told them that she hid behind a large rock until the boys ran past and then ran back towards the school and found the tree to climb in and hide.

What she didn’t tell, was that she wanted desperately to be in that tree and the next thing she knew she was about 30 feet off the ground floating next to it's protective branches. She flew into the branches and hid there until it was safe to scream for help.

Everyone involved with the rescue looked at each other in amazement. It was a seemingly impossible tree to climb. But, not having any other explanation for her predicament, they accepted the story and chalked it up to one more of those amazing things people can do under the influence of adrenaline, like the lady who lifted the front of a car after it had fallen on her son. Since that day, she was determined to keep this thing she could do a secret. However, the keeping was very difficult. Ava tried to avoid situations where she could lose control of her emotions. She found that strong emotional feelings, such as fear, tended to bring on flight independent of conscious thought. However, fear was not the only emotion that could induce her powers.

When Ava met Jared she had not had any experience with boys. She avoided boys through high school, in fact, she had very few friends at all because of her talent and the fear of being discovered. When she went away to college, she continued to try to avoid people but found it very difficult in the social surroundings of the campus.

Jared and Ava met during a college mixer. The dance had been in progress for at least four hours and the partygoers were beginning to get rowdy from excessive drinking when Jared spied Ava standing alone in a corner across the crowded room. Ava watched him as he approached, trying to act cool as he made his way though the drunken mob. He avoiding numerous collisions all the while not spilling a drop of the two cups of beer he held up over his head. Jared introduced himself and offered Ava a beer when he was finally close enough to be heard over the music blaring from the sound system and the din of screams and laughter. They hit it off that evening and over the next few days Jared perused Ava with focused determination.

At first Ava was evasive, but Jared was persistent and they soon began to date. When Jared tried to advance the relationship, Ava resisted and after many rebukes, Jared became discouraged and began to drift away. Ava sensed the pending break and decided that her fears should not completely run her life. Her inhuman ability should not prevent her from experiencing human intimacy.

One night, when her roommate was staying over at her boyfriend’s apartment, Ava invited Jared to her dorm room. It seemed like no sooner had she hung up the phone, than Jared knocked at the door. That night they made love. Jared was gentle but passionate and at the height of Ava's pleasure it happened. She felt the tingle, but in the throws of first time lovemaking, she confused it with sensations of sensual pleasure. As the feeling intensified, she realized what was happening.

She opened her eyes and saw Jared’s shoulder length black hair standing on end. Jared’s eyes were closed and his back was arched, obviously in the middle of climax. Ava panicked. Her deepest fear was about to become realized and her life would no longer be hers. When Jared finished, he collapsed on top of Ava. He was out cold. The combination of sex and the physical manifestations that Ava experiences in flight seemed to have knocked him out. Ava could feel his warm breath on her cheek, so she felt sure he was all right. She quickly gained control and lowered both herself and Jared down to the now cool bed sheets. Jared was never aware of what happened, but ever since that night he was in love.

Since then, Ava learned how to better control her ability. She avoided emotional distress or excitement, but there were times when this was not possible, especially for a wife and mother. During those times, she had been able to cope using a myriad of strategies. Often just closing her eyes and deep breathing helped prevent levitation.

When Ava was in labor with Celeste, it took great will power to keep from floating around the birthing room. Between labor pains, she sometimes would laugh out loud at the thought of her pregnant body flying down the hall with Jared and the hospital staff chasing her like an escaped balloon at the Macys Day Parade. These outbursts seemed to cause Jared some concern but the nurses dismissed Ava’s behavior as just being under the influence of a hormonal overdose. During delivery everything went well. She was given an epidermal and for some reason it suppressed her flying ability. Ava often wondered if this could be a clue to the source of her unusual ability.

Celeste was now nine. She had thick jet-black hair like her father’s was before he began thinning and graying. However, other than hair color and texture, she looked just like her mother, but that was the extent of their similarities. Unlike her mother, Celeste had a bubbly personality. She was extremely out going, almost precocious, and had more friends than a politician at a fundraiser.

Jared has expressed his concerns over his wife’s brooding disposition and sometimes they spoke about seeking some counseling. Ava would temporarily placate Jared’s worries by half-heartedly agreeing to the idea but never followed through. She knew that someday she would have to tell Jared about her ability but Ava was unsure how Jared would take the news. She was afraid of loosing her husband and always decided to wait for a better time to tell him. That time never came.

When Ava suggested, more like pleaded, to go on this trip to Albuquerque, Jared seemed to take it as a sign that Ava was beginning to crawl out from under from her long-term funk. He enthusiastically endorsed the idea and helped build excitement for the trip by renting movies with ballooning themes and buying children’s books on the subject for Celeste. They both read the books to their daughter many times over until Celeste seemed to become as excited about the trip as her mother. As vacation time approached, Celeste counted the days on a calendar, drawing in a different colored balloon for each day that passed.

Ava and Celeste found Jared at the foot of a gently sloping, sandy dune. Ava noted that a large crowd had started to gather on the crest of the hill above them. People were setting up lawn chairs and unpacking food, drinks and other sundries to make the day more enjoyable.

Jared turned to Ava and said, “Maybe we should stake a claim to some space on top of the hill before all the good spots are taken.” Ava agreed and the three made their way to the hilltop. They picked a spot and sat cross-legged in the rough dessert grass. Ava closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths to help suppress her now constant urge to take to the air. “I hope this wasn’t a mistake,” she muttered under her breath.

“Mommy look. They’re starting to fly,” Celeste yelped with excitement. Ava followed Celeste’s pointed finger down to the launch area where first two, then ten, then hundreds of the once tethered giants were let lose to begin their journey to follow the wind to unknown destinations. Ava and Celeste rose to their feet with the rest of the crowd. Celeste clasped her mother’s hand and joined the chorus of “Oohs” and “Ahs” rising from the people around them.

The wind carried the balloons just to the south and overhead of the hill they all occupied. The low morning sun, coupled with the internal soft glow of the lighted propane torches illuminated the balloons’ fabric in such a way that the colors seemed to fluoresce. The fabulous flock of shaped balloons seemed to joyfully dance in the wind as if they were delighted to be finally released from the restraints that had held them earthbound. The entire scene was more magnificent than Ava had ever imagined.

Ava stood entranced, in awe of the spectacular views. She didn’t feel Celeste’s hand slip from hers. She couldn’t hear her daughter’s distraught calls. She was oblivious to everything except for the great balloon ships floating overhead. However, she did begin notice that the balloons were getting larger in her view. “Are they descending?” she puzzled, “ Is something wrong? Did the wind suddenly shift?” All these possibilities ran thorough her mind except for the one terrible truthful reason that could explain her observations.

It was then that she heard the faint hysterical screams of her child and husband. She looked around but didn’t see them. She didn’t see anyone but the balloon pilots grasping the side of their wicker baskets all staring, open mouthed, at her, some with cameras and camcorders snapping and whirling away.

“Oh my God,” she yelled as she looked down. Far below, she could see the twisted fearful faces of the two people she most loved, looking straight up at her. People began to crowd around her husband and daughter in order to gawk at the floating freak about 30 feet above their heads. Ava buried her face in her hands.

“It’s happened, ”she sobbed, “Now everyone will know. ” Ava stayed frozen in place, unsure what to do as she floating amongst the rising bladders of hot gas and color. She was unable to lift her hands from her face to confront the consequences of her inhuman ability. The desire to just float away and hide somewhere in the desert overwhelmed her. She was sure that news would spread about the woman who could fly and the government, or some more unsavory people, wouldn't stop until they tracked her down. If not for her family below, she would have flown away to a life on the run. “Oh why did I come here?” she muttered over and over into her tear-drenched hands.

Then Ava felt a tug at the hem of her t-shirt. She opened a space between her fingers and looked down. She saw the smiling slightly freckled face of her daughter looking up at her. She opened her fingers wider and focused down, past Celeste, to the crowd of spectators, looking straight up, huddled around Jared far below them.

“Look mommy, I can fly too,” Celeste squealed joyfully. Her daughter was indeed slowly bobbing up and down just a couple of feet from Ava’s waist. Her heart sank at the thought of the dangers Celeste now faced along with her. She reached down and quickly grabbed Celeste, pulled her up, and held her tight to her body.

“Let me go mom. Let me fly,” pleaded Celeste, as she wiggled and squirmed trying to free herself from Ava’s protective grip.

“No!” screamed Ava, fearful of what will happen to her daughter now that is was obvious she inherited her ability. She knew now that she had to leave Jared and fly away to avoid capture. She had to protect her daughter. That's all that mattered.

Ava moved herself a bit closer to her husband so that she could be sure he was in earshot. Tears flooded her eyes. “We have to go darling.” Ava struggled to get the words past the lump in her throat. “I have to protect Celeste please understand. I’m so sorry.” Jared said nothing. He just looked straight up at his family floating in the sky above him through bright red, anguished eyes.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry” Ava repeated as she wiped away the tears streaming down her left cheek with her shoulder while she held on tightly to Celeste. “I love you.” All of a sudden Celeste realized what was happening and resumed her struggle against Ava’s tight embrace.

“I don’t want to go mom. Let me go,” Celeste said as she continued to fight her captivity.

Ava ignored her daughter’s protests and squeezed her tighter almost, she feared, to the point of suffocation. She then willed herself to fly towards the desert's interior and away from the crowd of eyewitnesses.

Celeste continued to try to break free of her mother’s grasp. “Mommy please let me go. Let me fly. I don’t want to leave Daddy.”

Tears flooded Ava’s eyes to the point where it was becoming difficult to see. She did all she could to ignore the commotion below her. She could hear trucks, cars and motorcycles in hot pursuit of the flying woman. She decided to pickup speed and altitude in order to escape the hoard of local television reporters she noticed earlier covering the festival. They had likely been sent to create a human-interest piece but now had the opportunity to break the story of the century. Ava knew this would only be the beginning and had to fly as fast and as far as she could to escape the cameramen’s telephoto lens.

A vast, hot empty dessert stretched out in front of them. Ava had no delusions of being able to survive so hiding, even temporarily, in the desert was out of the question. She and Celeste would have to fly over it and find a small town or even an isolated ranch to hide for a while and maybe contact Jarred. Ava’s heart sank when she thought of her husband now all alone and confused about what had just happened to his wife and daughter. She wished that she had told him about her ability long ago. Maybe if she had, this would not be happening now.

Ava refocused on the task at hand. There would be plenty of time for regrets later, now she had to save herself and her child. Celeste continued to fight with her mother. She begged to be let loose to fly on her own but her pleads only made Ava more determined to escape. Ava instructed Celeste to wrap her legs around her waste and prepared to will herself to fly faster. Then suddenly Celeste stopped her struggles. She rested her head on her mother’s shoulder and looked back towards the festival grounds.

“Mommy look, they’re flying. Why can’t I?” Ava craned her neck to try to see what her daughter was talking about. Celeste was staring at something off in the distance behind them and what ever it was it made her smile and squeal with delight. Ava slowed her forward momentum and rotated around to see what her daughter was looking at.

Ava couldn’t believe her eyes. There were other people flying through the air. She and Celeste watched as what seemed like about a half of the people on the hill begun to lift off and float up to mingle amongst the hot air balloons. One man broke away from the group began to chase after them. He flew completely horizontally with his arms spread out like a deformed eagle trying to catch the raising air in a thermal. When he noticed that Ava had turned toward him, he stopped and waved one of his arms in a gesture to come back and join them.

Ava wiped her eyes with her forearm to better focus on what she was seeing. “We’re not alone,” she whispered in partial disbelief, “There are others like us.” The weight of almost a lifetime of anxiety over her extraordinary ability lifted from her heart. There were many people here who shared her gift. The nature of the event must have attracted them just as it had compelled Ava. “Or is it more than that?” she thought. The reasons really didn’t matter. She was now amongst companions. Ava’s courage grew in proportion to the number of people floating in the sky. She was in the company of fellow fliers who once shared her fears, but were free to express their talent for all to see now that they knew their ability wasn’t unique. Ava released Celeste to fly on her own. She flew circles around her mother as if she had been flying all her life. “Has she?” Ava asked herself.

Ava and Celeste held hands and zoomed over to a group of flyers who merrily encircled each other hugging, shaking hands and introducing themselves, as others acrobatically flew up and down and around them. They zigged and zagged around and over the hot air balloons as they floated by, restrained by the whim of the prevailing winds. The flyer want-a-bes, leashed to their inflated bags, could only watch with disbelief and jealousy.