Winged

“Luthic” – of the nature of or relating to stone
“Guise” – an external form, appearance or manner of presentation typically concealing the true nature of something
“Collarbone” – either of the pair of bones joining the breast bone to the shoulder blades
“Royal” – having status of King or Queen
“Dress” – put on ones clothes

A dreary afternoon, late December, the boy is outside clutching bags digging deep groves in the palms of his hands. His mother, lured by the sight of rows upon rows of shoes has ordered him to wait outside while she ignores warnings of not being allowed to smoke in the vicinity and orders weary staff to bring her at least a dozen different pairs. His hair stands up at the back, from hanging upside down from railings and delighting as he swung, head brushing dangerously against the concrete below. The town is bustling, Christmas shoppers almost knocking him down as he shifts energetically from foot to foot, bags swinging into the legs of elderly ladies collecting their pensions. He presses his nose against the window, watching as his mother strides excitedly around the shop grabbing handfuls of shoes and smiling broadly. She doesn’t notice his squashed nose, or the fact that the window of a shop which she could never afford to purchase anything from without the aid of a credit card, is rapidly steaming up. The boy however, does take note of this and writes his name carefully and in wobbly letters in the condensation. When writing his name forward, backward, with and without middle initial and with a prefix of every kind of rank within the Star Wars universe becomes tiring, he flops onto the pavement. Small, sharp stones dig uncomfortably into his legs, and he sweeps them out from underneath himself before repositioning his body against the wall of the shoe shop. Bags on his lap, he rests his chin on the box of a present bought for his younger brother.

It is the first year the boy has been aware of the inexistence of Father Christmas, therefore he is permitted to accompany his mother on a shopping trip for his brother. Yet is occurs to him that the bags contain items of lacy underwear and scented candles he is certain would not interest a three year old. He sweeps the stones into a small pile as he ponders this, before flicking them at passers by. Most are too preoccupied with hanging onto their own multiple bags to do anything more than glare at him, apart from one drunken man who hollers that time spent in the armed forces would sort him out.

After several minutes of this, another man approaches him, this one less red in the face and apparently less inclined to wanting to see the boy shoved into a trench. This man does not hurry past when his legs are pelted with the missiles, instead eases himself into a stiff sitting position on the ground beside the boy. He groans and he lowers himself, clutching his knees beneath a curious, silky robe.

“My Granddad makes that noise when he sits down” the boy informs him, “And my mum bought knickers today that are made from the same stuff as your cloak”

The stranger says nothing, but produces a comb from his pocket and runs it precisely through his flowing beard. It is mainly white, but red in patches and reminds the boy of an accident his cousin had with hair dye several years previously. For several minutes they simply observe each other, the boy unable to tear his eyes from the curious man’s choice of attire and the man’s gaze fixed on the hedgehog like state of the boy’s hair.

“I believe it is you who requires a comb”, the bearded stranger says eventually, thrusting the instrument into the boy’s grubby hands. He had an interesting voice, perhaps eastern European mixed with that of an individual who has filled their mouth with sour confectionary. It made the boy squirm uncomfortably, and twist backwards anxiously to see if his mother was any closer to the completion of her shopping spree. But in curiosity, or perhaps fear, he takes the comb from the stranger and runs it through his hair. Almost instantly it becomes entangled, and he yanks furiously until it is totally embedded pressing against his scalp. The man sighs heavily, and adjusts his robes. His nose sticks out alarmingly, the boy notes since he is sitting to the right of him, and looked dented as if it had taken the full brunt of a fall from a great height.

“Shall I tell you a story?” the stranger asks, fumbling in what appeared to be one of several hundred pockets within his robes. He does not wait for a reply, instead producing a long, thin feather and turning around so violently it is almost inserted into the boy’s nose. The boy takes this without hesitation, it being somewhat most interesting than the comb and ran its soft surface across his fingers. It is spattered with red, the boy assumes from the same source as the dye explosion on his beard.

“Like…a fairy story for little kids?” the boy asks, wrinkling his nose, “No thanks”

The stranger runs a gnarled finger down the bridge of his battered nose.

“A fairy tale yes” he says, “But certainly not one for little kids”

His eyebrows are unnaturally large, stray hairs seeming to crawl across his forehead like spiders. He has a remarkably shaped tongue, almost snake-like, which he flicks disconcertingly over his lips.

“A longtime ago, in a land far, far away-“ the man begins, only to be cut off by the boy sighing loudly and placing his chin on his knees.

“To childish for you?” he enquires, his eyes flickering dangerously, “You want the real story, the true one, the uncensored one?” He is leaning in, long nose almost touching the boy’s own, revealing chipped yellow teeth. Wishing more than ever that his mother would return, and for reasons unknown to himself, the boy nods. Again, the tongue flicks alarmingly as the stranger settles into a more comfortable position, placing in heads together to begin once more.

“Thirty years ago, a child was born in a flat only a couple of miles from where we sit now. His mother didn’t have time to get to the hospital; father was at the pub getting drunk, so Anpu was born in the bath of a crumbling council flat. He wasn’t breathing…you ever seen a baby being born?”

The boy shakes his head.

“Well”, the stranger continues, “Anpu started to turn blue and his mother, not to be impolite but she wasn’t the brightest of women, she screamed. You’d have heard the screams a mile away, all the neighbors grabbed their belonging and ran out of town covering their ears”

“You’re making it stupid again” the boy interrupts

“I apologize” the stranger replies, “Alright, the old lady next door turned off Coronation Street to hear what all the fuss was about. And when she heard the racket she ran through to Anpu’s parent’s flat and rammed the door open. The hinges in places like that weren’t all that strong, and she easily got the door down. Leaning heavily on a walking stick, she hurried to the bathroom and found Anbu’s mother, clutching his desperately, and completely naked in the filthy bathtub. The old lady sprung into action, grabbed the child and blew into his mouth until it was his cries that interrupted neighbors watching television. He wasn’t a pretty baby, he looked slightly crumpled in fact, like a baby bird who has been squashed inside an egg, you ever seen one of those?”

The boy shakes his head, yet makes no comment about the ridiculousness of the story. He seems entranced, grimy face intent, eyes unblinking.
“Have you ever seen anything other than Star Wars?” the story teller asks, peering over his shoulder at the boy’s handiwork on the window, “No matter, I shall go on. The old lady helped Anpu’s mother out of the bath and into a dressing down and found a neighbor with a working telephone and called for the doctor. The entire time, Anpu screamed and wailed, and more neighbors stick their head round the door to see what was going on. When at last the Doctor, a small, round man with tiny glasses which he always wore on the very tip of his nose, arrived he grabbed Anpu from his mother and began to turn him over as one might examine an antique. After a moment, he gasped and leaped into the air, still holding the baby, and the glasses fell from his nose.

“Madam” he said, addressing the old lady rather than the mother, “It would appear the child has wings”
Silence fell upon the tiny flat, even Anpu stopped screaming. His mother, the doctor, the elderly lady and the curious neighbors leaned in to pear and the crumpled child’s back. The first thing to be noted was that his collarbone formed a strange shape. It seems to slope at an unnatural angle, his shoulder blades completely warped into a set of wet and still blood coated wings.

“Bless my soul” the old lady gasped, “He’s an angel”
She fumbled in her pocket for a rosary and clutched it as she observed the child. Though there was nothing angelic about the wings. They were not white and soft as one would expect, but as crumpled and bloodstained as Anpu himself. They were folded in against his body, the feathers matted and the bones of their structure gnarled appearing almost broken.

“How strange” said the Doctor, “How very strange. I can’t say I’ve ever come across anything like this before”

Ever had much experience with doctors?”

The boy shakes his head.

“Well I’ll tell you that’s the last thing you want to hear them say. Anyway, after several hours of whispers in the flats, Anpu’s father arrived home, staggered across the dusty bear floorboards and laid a large hand on his sons head. He said noting, but after a moment grabbed one of the wings and pulled sharply as though he wanted to rip it out of the child’s back. It didn’t take long for him to collapse into a drunken sleep on the floor, leaving Anpu’s mother alone for the night to clean the blood from her sons wings”

The boy fumbled for the comb still trapped in his hair and stared at the storyteller. A chill wind hit the back of his neck, yet he waited expectantly for the man to go on.

“When Anpu was five, his father in a drunken stupor fell from the bridge outside the pub and died. Only weeks later his mother threw herself from the same bridge in grief. Struck me as strange, they were never religious people so I don’t know what she hoped to achieve. Certainly didn’t believe in heaven or hell, number of times I saw her with strange men in the old town centre at night. Anyway, the elderly lady next door took in Anpu and sent him off to the local primary school with a shirt buttoned right up to his neck and a blazer at least five sizes too big in an attempt to cover those wings. They’d grown with him, and unfolded themselves so that they spread out behind him. And every morning he had them painfully tied down under a school uniform. Not that it made a difference. Getting changed for gym they would flap in an unruly fashion, and when Anpu tried to carry a bag on his back, they writhed in protest as though offended that he had squashed them. The other kids thought him strange, didn’t really want much to do with him and the teachers assumed that they were somehow attached to his brain and limited his thought capacity. He was stuck in a corner and given clay to play with rather than joining in the lessons.

Somehow though, Anpu learned to read and some might say it was the worst thing that ever happed to him. When he was a bit older, he was walking home, trailing his bag along the ground to keep the wings quiet when he saw an advertisement in a window of a club I’m sure would scare the life out of you. It was a venue for, well, lets say men in women’s clothes did things in there I probably shouldn’t tell you about. And Anpu thought that wearing a large frilly and feathery dress would be the perfect concealer for his massive wings. So without telling his guardian, he left school, much to his teacher’s approval. His wings had grown too large for any PE Kit they could provide and his chair squeaked constantly as the wings beat against the back of it. Then before the old lady could work out what he’d done, he packed his bags and left her a note thanking her for all she had done for him. By this time Anpu was a teenager, and rapidly heading the same way as his father. He drank daily, sometimes until he had passed out, although his wings twitched throughout the entire time he was unconscious, sometimes the only noticeable sign that he was alive. Anyway, the club hired him and soon he had learned how to inject stuff bought from the dead of night into his wings to keep them still. He was working in this strange place, where all the men dressed as women, and was constantly pale and exhausted.”

Confused, perhaps even dazed, the boy nods eagerly for the stranger to continue. His mother, the shoe shop and Star Wars forgotten, he strokes the feather, eyes fixed on the man.

“I went to the club one night. Don’t ask me what I was doing there; I think I was just curious to see what had happened to Anpu, how he had turned out. He was there, in an overly frilly and feathery dress in an attempt to conceal his wings. A disguise, but not an effective one as grey feathers protruded around his neck mingling with the pink sparkled ones. There were tears in his costume, where portions of the wings had forced their way through the material. He was defeated, lost and bruised, and when I tried to talk to him – nothing. He’d always hidden away, but speech had deserted him entirely. He just functioned – barely, overcome by the drugs injected into his wings”

“Is that it?” the boy asks, face crumpled in wonder, “what happened to Anpu?”

The man coughs and arranges his robe slightly.

“He had a small flat by this point, not unlike the one he had grown up in. It was filthy, the floor littered with needles and feather molted from the wings. And it happens that one night he had been broken in to. What there was to steal, I don’t know. It seems the purpose of it was to torment him. They’d spray painted “freak” on the walls inside his house, torn the place apart. And Anpu just lost it. He thought he might as well finish what they’d started, so he tore down the wallpaper, smashed in any windows they’d forgotten. And when he made his way to the bathroom, to vomit in anger and sorrow, he found a saw they’d used to cut up his table and chair. I don’t know what came over him, maybe he thought that he couldn’t live like that anymore, maybe he couldn’t stand it any longer, so he took the saw, and sawed his wings off”

“He died?” the boy says, eyes glazed and shining

“He died” the stranger repeated, “But before he did he let the whole world know it. He screamed so loud that the entire city heard him. Lights shattered, plunged the city into a blackout. And I swear I’m not making it stupid. For the second and final time in his life, Anpu interrupted old ladies watching Coronation Street.”