On the Wings of Dreams

Again I was stumbling but this time amongst tables and chairs that dared to slow me down. Marketers who wanted compensation for my desperate fleeing that tumbled their wares threw rotten produce but my feet were too nimble and not yet strained by the exertion of distance and time. I was able to leap side to side, dodging, from wall to wall, scaling outstretched poles to swing past windowsilled rooms where lovers’ sweating moans of ecstasy were momentarily interrupted by this scurrying beast of a fugitive.

I scurried onwards, sometimes on four limbs, fingers clawing at whatever drainage passed by me to give me purchase and my trail trained feet an extra springboard to launch myself further from the pursuers.

I knew I was increasing the distance between us. I could feel it. The immediate past was no longer a baggage of loathing weighing me down, but a misbegotten rampage of wrongful accusations that had turned happiness into a prosecuting jury. I was leaving it behind. I could feel it.

Muscles grew into tight bridges across my shoulders, fanned deep ridges down my back, bulked an already strong torso into a powerful blood and air reservation tank. Thoughts of tears and frightful cries, lobbying shouts and fingers pointing, faded into a watercolour painting that I barely noticed passing me by as I made haste over rooftops lit only by a perfect glow from above.

I looked up. The brightness was so close. I could touch it. As I ran, I reached my smooth aerodynamically inclined arms upwards, feeling the simple motion grow strength and power out from my back. A rush of cool air suddenly slid down my legs pushing thatched roofs away from me. My hands reached towards the circular brightness in a desperate bid to put more and more distance between myself and everything that was wrong about what I was leaving below. I heard shots, knowing what it meant: that the frustration of not being able to catch their accused was being taken out on some other helpless sap in the wrong place at the wrong time just so the authorities could hold an example of justice-met up to their obedient citizens. I could play hero or I could run to live another day.