Nails in the Sky by Duncan Reyneke

Author:Duncan Reyneke [Reyneke, Duncan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Duncan John Reyneke
Published: 2016-01-09T22:00:00+00:00

C.

10. You’ve Got to Have Fun to Make Fun

Alex sat grinding his forehead against a glass panel in the Settler’s Hospital emergency room. A pointed, resolute and hateful grey streak slashed across his countenance as a nurse applied a cast to his sutured arm. Considering what had just happened, and the fact that he still had no idea what the hell had just happened, a fractured arm was his least concern.

Sheila was there. He glared at her.

“Look, lady, he fell off the wall outside the Monument, I don’t know what else you want me to tell you. These things happen.”

“Never used to happen,” Alex moaned.

She frowned at him, and he returned the look with what he hoped was flat hatred.

“Never mind Moodypants here. He’s just pissy because he isn’t going to make the underwater polo team with his new boo-boo.”

The burly woman engaged with the plaster-cast work shot Sheila a glance that said she neither believed her story, nor had the time for her sass.

An hour and a half later, Alex and Sheila strode through the hospital’s automatic doors, discharge papers tucked under his newly set arm cast.

“I can’t believe I broke my arm,” he whined on the car ride home through the twilight.

“Oh pipe down, it’s a fracture. I thought guys loved big, showy injuries.”

“I guess, but I’d have to exist in order to be a guy, wouldn’t I?”

The car groaned around a corner, blowing a gust of dried mulch and lawn clippings up from the wide gutters.

“I’m sorry about your friend. Are you handling this okay?” she asked as they passed under the old crosswalk at the bottom of Settler’s Drive. The yellow glow of the streetlights illuminating the inside of the car for just a second, before each slid by and out through the rear windshield.

“Well, I’ve got a broken arm from falling like ten feet after I inexplicably flew earlier this afternoon. People are disappearing all around me. You’re saying these impossible things. I’m failing the one course I’ve ever loved, and my feet itch, which I know doesn’t have anything to do with anything, but I just thought of it now and it’skilling me.”

“Okay, Alex, I…”

“I feel exhilarated, why do you ask?”

Sheila paused, then pursed her lips and slapped his leg as they arrived at a set of robots.

Alex shoved her back in faux retaliation.“I mean it. I don’t know why... I’m heartsore, about...Ruth, and just really super confused, but my heart’s also racing.”

Sheila parked the car on the side of the road. “I know.”

“I flew earlier today.”

“Yes. You did.”

He ran his good hand through his hair, pulling it back from his face, as if clearing the way as he searched for meaning. “I fucking flew, oh my god, you saw that! What was that? Flying? How did that happen?”

“It’s not impossible, what you did today. It’s a matter of control, and nobody has as much natural control as you do. It’s...never been done before, I can tell you that. Never, by anybody, but that

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