Metal

  This was a mistake. In my fantasy it was like being a bird- I would fly over the skyscrapers and trees and oceans. Maybe I'd even sing like a bird for pure joy of elevation, and the tiny pushpin people below would wave up at me and say, "There goes a brilliant man". But I was wrong to the point of hilarity. Even now as I sit, a wreck of a human being, I laugh. It hurts but I laugh. I used to say it was hope, incredible hope that lead me to begin my manufacturing. Hope that I would break the world. I'd be free, not just by the metal wings, but by everyone crying my name to the heavens. But it was not hope, it was naivety. Everyone's a little naive I think, but I never once, never even once, wondered what would happen to me should this go wrong. I never said don't, never took the word from others either. So please do not try and comfort me when I tell you what happened. I really was a fool, and it really was all my fault. 

   It stared out as a premise many have had, to fly. I wanted the Personal Airplane, the human mounted wings that would take us up into the clouds and we could feel it all. The sky had not belonged to the birds for hundreds of years now, what argument did anyone have at this point? I wanted them to be elegant. I wanted speed and precision. I wanted people to improve them, paint them, make them into different styles, hell, monogram them. The first ones I made were hawk wings. I'd been sponsored by Bluefuel, a new oil with twice the effectiveness of gasoline, and their logo was a hawk, so I found it fitting. The engines for initial dismount mostly, but hidden cleverly within the feathers. I even got the oxygen mask to fit easily between the sides, where it was accessible but out of the way. Because here's the thing, the thing that burrows into my head like an obsessive worm, that makes me hate the damn thing with a passion even more than my love for it: it worked. Our test dummies flew into the air like angels. But after only a couple test drives, the harness always snapped. We tried everything. It should've been easy to make a harness, but the thing was so big and heavy, everything we tried just crashed the machine. We thought it to be tighter to avoid the smoke, but nothing we tried could get it close enough. We were out of ideas, no materials, clips, nothing worked. 

  I could see it all falling apart. The money, the time, the love I put into this machine was all going to be wasted. Just another worthless project, forgotten by time, a failure. But that dangerous thought, that maybe if I attached it to my own skin and bones, the wings would stay on. That, if they were ingrained in my very being, they would work. Understand that I was desperate. It was as if it was my child, a child I could not let plummet and die. The first sign of doom was the doctor I got one off some site with virus filled pop up ads. On the day we chose I even went to a warehouse instead of a hospital, the same greasy warehouse I built the Personal Airplane in. I remember it was a beautiful clear day, 'a perfect day for flying' I called it as I walked into the warehouse. My tattooed doctor put me under- and it was then the mistake happened. The real mistake, I feel, was that I didn't answer my ringing cell phone first. The ringtone died away as I did.

  I woke up and it hurt. Even pumped full of morphine as I was, it hurt. I could feel it, so foreign and wrong, so wrong, pulsing around the swollen incisions. It was as if a insect had burrowed in my skin and nested. I could bear the weight I found, but it was laborious to move at all really. I had the doctor take a photograph of my back but I couldn't bear to look at it. I ran out in the spotless sunny day and found it heartless now. My shadow stretched before me like a stranger. I wasn't going to turn it on, but I found I couldn't resist. I turned to walk back to the warehouse, but I found it so unbearable to go through those doors again. So when I flipped my ON switch, it was almost an unconscious decision. 

  My feet did not leave the ground, but I felt it move. My stitches ripped along it, spilling blood down unto the pavement. My ribs shifted up in my chest, followed by a sharp snap. I threw the switch to OFF and crumpled. I automatically moved to rip the wings down over my head, but I felt my bones lurch within my body. Instead I clawed wildly, pulling my hands down my bloodstained metal feathers, snapping my nails in the grooves. My hand went back to the switch, wanting it off me so bad...

  But at least I was together right? I was not dead. A broken rib maybe. But I was okay. I was okay right? I tried to control my breathing. I checked my pulse like a good scientist. I sat on the sun-baked pavement for a while. The wings grew boiling hot and burned my skin but I couldn't bring myself to do anything. I called out for my doctor. He emerged and wordlessly handed me my telephone, avoiding the blood on the pavement. It was some inconsequential colleague.

  "It turns out it wasn't the harness at all" he says, light, casual. Apparently he doesn't know. The blood from my broken nail trickles delicately down my wrist. "Apparently Bluefuel had extremely powerful radiation, corrosive to everything. The metal's infused to the brim with it all."

  "That makes sense." I said quietly. He didn't hear me but I ignore his questions. It did make sense. We had tried every harness. It explains why my metal burns have already blistered.

  "You still there? How did we not check for radiation? It's just lucky we didn't try it on anyone alive."

  Don't miss me. It is all my fault, so please do not burden yourselves. I've chronicled all I can, I think. I hope you... learned I suppose? I don't know what else you could gain besides severe warning. My life needs to mean something, so that's what I'm going to think. But you know, this ending doesn't have to be tragic. I'm still naive. Perhaps, for a moment, I'll fly.