[Fiction] Taking Flight

Read the third-place entry for our week of February 23, 2025 prompt, The Uncanny

Taking Flight
by Rory Perkins

After school we lie on her roof and watch the birds shoot skywards.

“They are chasing the sun.” She says. “Isn’t it beautiful, how they will never reach it but try anyway?”

I bury my face into the lightness of her hair and nod yes.

***

The night before leaving for college we sneak out to the southern hill and kiss under the stars. The flashlight she has brought turns our naked bodies into outlines of themselves; my sunken chest that she says is beautiful. Her back and the bumps that I have learnt not to touch.

Afterwards, the sky falls in bullets. A hundred birds with wings outstretched, colliding with the ground and digging into the soil.

“They’re digging through the Earth to get to the sun. Most suffocate a few feet underground.”

***

We hardly speak any more. She left for a college down south and I couldn’t afford to escape the town we’d grown up in.

Between lectures I hear stories of wild parties and packed-out plays. Pictures on social media of my love showered in brightness. A sequin dress and face painted ultraviolet.

Hiding out in the dingy bathroom, I find only one that shows her from the back. Taken without her knowledge while she was spotlighted on stage. The outline of something soft protruding in orange light.

***

At twenty-three I drive through the night and half of the next day to see a play my love is starring in. Beside me Beth, the girl I’m dating, doesn’t ask questions. I tell her we are going to support an old friend, and she says fine, half hidden in darkness.

Outside the birds are switching direction. The sun is just visible on the horizon as a thousand wings take flight and shower down bits of soil from where they had buried. I look over to see whether Beth has noticed. Nothing.

At the end of the play I wait to meet my love. Reporters and fans rain down with the flashes of a hundred cameras and she is whisked away before I have stepped out of the shadows.

***

Half a decade later Beth jostles baby Lark on her hip and my love’s new husband deals out shots.

We are on the beach, where a hundred empty eyes stare back at us. A few are still coming in to land, wings outstretched as they touch ground or settle on the waves.

I want to ask if she regrets leaving. I want to ask if her husband can see the wings on her back and if he tells her they are beautiful.

“Stay.” I say instead, and feel a softness brush my chest before she is gone.

***

It has been two years since I last saw a bird claw out of the Earth, but every so often I catch Lark staring up through the skylight. Tomorrow I will tell Beth about the lumps on Lark’s back. Tomorrow I will hold my baby close and dream of taking flight.

A Note From Our Guest Judge, Emma Stephenson

I love speculative fiction that has a light touch. Some refer to this as “magical realism” and that certainly could describe this piece, but there was something about the sparse details and the snapshots-through-the-years structure that made it more than that for me. It was like reading two Sally Rooney characters forced to deal with the fact that some people in the world are really birds—trapped in a mobius strip of flying and falling, forever doomed to long for and toil toward what they can’t have. This one is going to stay with me!

About Rory Perkins

Rory is a British writer focussing on shorter works. He has been published in Vast Literary Press, SoFloPoJo, Passengers Journal, and Artam's The Face Project (forthcoming). He can be found at @rperkinswriter on Bluesky.

This piece was written in response to the prompt The Uncanny.