Wings — A City Ablaze Story

By Lori Scharf

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The following is an excerpt from the first chapter of City Ablaze, draft 2

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Wings.

I stare at them in the smudged school bathroom mirror, my hands braced on the counter in front of me.

They stretch out into the space between my back and the wall of empty stalls behind me, refracting the dim light from the fluorescent bulbs that flicker every few seconds. 

Huge. Strong. Monstrous. 

They’re a curse. A mystery. A death sentence. An enigma that follows me wherever I go. 

As a little girl, I’d dance around the living room of my foster parent’s house, pretending I was a fairy. The adults chalked it up to childish fancy. Nothing more than an imaginary friend. A figment of my imagination. 

Until it wasn’t.

Until I was much too old for such games, yet still convinced I had a pair of wings that no one else could see. 

There was no more dancing after that. No more cozy living rooms with loving foster parents. No more childlike innocence. They gave me up. Said I was a freak. Stupid. Crazy. Dangerous. 

They were replaced by doctors, therapists, psychiatrists, and way too many questions. All of them trying to figure out what was ‘wrong’ with me. 

Eventually, I learned to give them the answers they wanted. No, of course I didn’t have wings. They were just a silly game. Imaginary. Satisfied that they had ‘helped’ me out of my ‘childhood phase’. They put me back into an orphan’s home, and I stopped talking about my ‘fairy wings’.

Looking at them now, they look more draconic than fairy-like. Stronger. Heavier. Faster. More like canvas than lace. 

I bring one wingtip forward, slowly bringing my cupped hand towards it. As soon as the wing touches my hand, it dissolves like smoke, only to reform below my hand as I drag it through the wing. Touch. Dissolve. Reform. All the way until I can’t twist my arm any farther. 

It’s this aspect that makes me think I might be crazy. 

How can they be real if I can’t even feel them? If no one else can even see them?

Maybe I am delusional. Maybe my mind is just so broken, that I’ve convinced myself they’re real.

That was one of the theories that doctors had. That perhaps they were a response to some sort of trauma that I can’t even remember. Or maybe it was a rare mental illness. Or maybe I had been abducted by aliens. They had lots of theories, but no real answers. Only more questions. More tests. More hypotheses. 

The bathroom door squeaks open and I jump, reflexively folding in my wings as the noise of the busy school hallway floods the room for a moment. The girl walks right by me, never looking up from her phone. Her protruding elbow passed right through my mass of folded wings without her feeling a thing. The girl continues to a stall. I hear the thunk and metallic click of the door as it closes and locks. I just stand there, staring at the closed door in the mirror. How is it possible that something so real to me is so invisible to everyone else? 

Realizing I’ll look like a creep if the girl comes out of the stall and sees me staring at her, I shake myself out of my reverie. 

Face it McKenna, I reprimand myself internally, You’re crazy. Loopy. Strange as they come. Deal with it. Stop daydreaming. Get back to class and try to at least act normal. 

My shoulders droop. I walk away from the mirror, resigned to my fate. Then I open the door, and walk back into my mask of normality.