The Darker Mask by Gary Phillips

Author:Gary Phillips
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2011-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

For two days Flow slept and for two days the big warehouse burned. When he awoke a grayish cloud extended across half of Greenpoint.

Flow thought of Baker. How the smoke contained his ashes. And now the air smelled pungent, like a roasting soul. Flow heard Baker’s sad gagging again, the way he fought to live long after there was a chance. I killed him, Flow thought and hid his face with his hands. But he saw right through his transparent skin, and the smoke took on a queasy, green tinge as if it were inside him.

But soon Flow remembered he was naked on a roof in the middle of the day and crouched down to hide. How would he get back to his home now? He crawled to the edge of the roof and looked down onto the streets. There weren’t too many folks out now, most were at work and the kids still at school. A few people sat at their windows, but they only watched the awful warehouse fire. Nothing else drew their attention. So Flow stood on the ledge and stepped off and he puffed his chest out. A faint wind caught him square in the back, just strong enough to toss him across the street, onto the roof of another three-family home.

He tried this again on the next block, but the wind came on with a bit more power and he nearly overshot the next roof. He had to puff his chest out in order to take off, but then suck it back in again, like a catcher’s mitt, so another wind would push him backward and down just a taste. It was an awkward game of catch and release. But soon enough he could pick a spot on the next roof and stick the landing. In this way he worked himself across the neighborhood, leaping from one building to the next. He’d learned to fly two nights ago, but now he knew how to land. Hot damn! He felt like Superman.

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