Icarus
Mum left when I was six. She said she couldn’t stand it anymore. She said that she had given all she could, but that she had to get away. She blamed me.
I remember the morning she left. I remember the shouting and the tears, and I remember her telling Dad that he could go with her… Instead he stayed, and cried solidly for a week once she had gone. He told me that it wasn’t my fault.
For the last ten years, it’s just been me and Dad.
I haven’t slept in four days and I haven’t eaten in two. I have stopped taking my medication. I’m sitting here in my room making paper jets. I feel as if for the first time in years, I am able to see clearly. The pills that I have taken since I was a little boy have stopped me from seeing life the way that I’ve wanted to. The pills shut down a side of my brain and left a huge empty hole.
Since I stopped taking them, everything has come flooding back. Before then, I couldn’t remember the details of Mum leaving. Before then, I felt as if I was constantly being monitored and watched. Controlled. Since I stopped taking the pills, my dreams have returned, my dreams and my nightmares. Every time I close my eyes, my visions are of a brutal, graphic and beautiful nature. Last night I saw the Minotaur and a nymph. Last night I saw centaurs, griffins, harpies and a hippocampus. Last night I saw Pegasus.
Superman is on the telly. He has just flown around the earth to reverse time and save Lois Lane. Dad always says that it’s unrealistic and impossible, but I think he is just cynical. He is in the kitchen now. Dad that is, not Superman. He is rustling around, cooking up some lunch. He is putting some music on. Sinatra. ‘Come Fly With Me’. Dad’s favourite.
He is unaware that I have stopped taking the pills. He trusts me now, and doesn’t demand to watch me take them each day. He says that I am old enough and mature enough to take responsibility for my own actions, but that everybody has a limit.
‘A clever man knows when he has had enough,’ Dad often says.
I’m looking down upon the world now. My bedroom is placed twenty-two floors up in a block of flats in central London. The giant window opens out to an amazing view of the city, the roads, buildings, traffic, people, parks and river. The river is not far from here. I collect the paper jets that are scattered over my bedroom floor and throw them upwards into the bright blue sky. For a minute or so they dwindle in the cool summer breeze. No direction. Spinning in circles, as they begin a slow descent towards the earth.
I look to the sun. The brightness blinds my eyes, and I am temporarily caught off-balance. I grip the side of the window to steady myself. I am climbing up on to the ledge now.
It feels like I am a king looking down on his kingdom. From up here, the people below are equivalent to a dot on a giant’s thumb, a sea of ants going about their daily routines. Some work, some beg, some appear to do nothing at all.
Everything is beginning to make sense. The medication has worn off and finally my eyes are open. Dad says that we all have limits, but my limit is the sky. My dreams are trying to tell me something. I have a destiny to fulfill. A duty I must attend to. I can hear Dad singing along to Frank in the other room,
‘…Once I get you up there, where the air is rarefied...we’ll just glide, starry-eyed…’
Lunch must almost be ready. He’ll be coming in here any minute with a plate of food for me. He’s gonna be so proud when he sees what I can do. The song is ending…
Pack up, let’s fly away!
I lift my head, so that I am looking directly in front of me and no longer at what lies beneath. I push my arms out to either side. Spread my wings. Prepare for lift-off. On the count of three. One. Two.
I can hear Dad coming into the room. He screams and leaps toward me.
Three. I jump.
He’s gonna be so proud.
