Samantha Bilfield
Professor Toomey
English 112
11 March 2008
Winged Imaginations
I wiped the debris off my face. It was only once I had seen that my left leg had been chopped off that I had begun to scream. I wanted to yell, “Help! The tornado threw me around and chopped off my leg and now I’m bleeding and it hurts like a bitch!” but I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough to hold back the tears, so I let them encompass my vision and roll down my cheek like a waterfall. I was nine years old. Could you blame me?
That was the day I lost my leg… and my two parents. The house crushed my father when one of the brick walls fell on him. He died right on the spot. My mother was tossed in the air and cracked her spine. When we were both taken into surgery, I came out with a stump for a leg. They couldn’t save it. My mother, on the other hand, never came out.
Since that day, my dad’s family has raised me. His three sisters and three brothers have decided to bring me up as a group. I live with the oldest sister, Mina. She thinks I need some weird twisted psychiatric help as if I’m tormented by the accident that happened to me eight years ago but the truth is that it’s the least of my worries.
School is like hell to me. The only time I can truly escape is during art. In all other situations, I’m forced to face the jocks who poke their noses into my business and act like they’re something truly special. I hate Jimmy the most. He’s beautiful and blonde, with crystal blue eyes, but that doesn’t mean shit. His insides are real dirty. His insides are damn ugly.
“What you up to today, fairy princess?” he asks.
“Yeah, fairy. Fly away to somewhere far today?” one of his sheep adds on.
They call me fairy. Every single one of them. They started calling me that our freshman year of high school. You think by junior year they would have experienced a little maturing, but these guys are just way too good at acting like assholes to stop. Word actually spread throughout the school and now everyone calls me a fairy, but most people behind my back.
Like I said, I enjoy art. I have visions and dreams that take me to far away vinyards and snowy mountaintops, and although everyone thinks its ordinary imagination that is taking me there, I swear it’s as real as the tornado that destroyed my family. It’s as if I can actually feel the sand beneath my single foot.
But there’s magic to these vivid imaginations or whatever you people like to call them. When I have them, I don’t need my wheelchair. I can fly. I can soar over the water and dive in just as easily as a bird. My wings take me places I’ve never been. So that’s when I decided to draw these real-life experiences that I’ve had that have turned into simple dreams. And in them, I drew myself with wings. I can’t entirely figure out why, but I usually find myself in some exotic jungle or remote beach. It’s where I feel most safe, I suppose.
I don’t think that’s the real reason that they call me “Fairy”. I think they’re simply stuck in their old conservative ways and can’t accept that I, a seventeen year old boy who has been stuck in a wheelchair half his life, am gay. They can’t grasp the fact that I’m interested in men and that scares them.
But they don’t need to worry too much because they’re not my type. They’re the reason I’m at the same damn place I was years ago, on the floor and gushing blood. I can’t believe these bastards brought me to this point. I used to be happy. I used to be so completely content and now that my actions are done, and fortunately unsuccessful, I can’t begin to grasp why I ever cared about them in the first place. These boys are worth no one’s time, pain, or suffering.
This time is different. I call for help but nobody hears me. I tell him it hurts like a bitch. I tell them that I’ve sold my soul to the devil in a shameful attempt to escape this miserable world. This time nobody finds me.
And so here I lay dead. I know it’s my fault. That I shouldn’t have listened. But like I said, they were mean boys. Those boys were damn ugly.
But I’m in the jungle now. And the beach, and the mountains, and the parks, and the air you breathe. I’m everywhere. I fell in love with the brown sand and big curls of the waves. I fell in love with the emerald green treetops, but life isn’t as grand without a soul. And so I linger here, for all eternity, and question whether it was really worth all the trouble…
