Mirrored surface. Dirty feet echoing quiet sounds silent as an angry look. Already scared, and she thought about returning, but her frazzled limbs pushed her down the hallway. Black floor, Black wall, Black ceiling, a continous monotony of non-color: They didn't fork over extra money for swallowable surroundings here.

She was tiptoeing to room 210. Normally, in all earnesty, she would be Flying there, but she couldn't take any more risks this night. Not with the New Arrival. A quick flash of imagination: she was flying with her one good wing then veering too far and the right corridor wall was fluttering close, too close, forcing her into ariel summersaults, before an Out of Control smack against plaster. Shake of her head to smash the image, and now the knowledge that The Orderlies were one hall over making night-check rounds with their stainless steel cart of seringes. And pills. And spongy mountain of cotton balled inside a bowl alongside the Near Empty bottle of sterilizer. Sounds shuddered as flashlights beat into the jangling keys they wore snapped tightly onto belts.
"If they catch me..." she repeatedly whispered, a record player worrying raw an album..."if they catch me." She would Pretend blindness when presented with the jagged locking-mechanisms with their tight, thick straps and iron buckles. Pretend silence. Even when they hissed mockingly to her by the proper name she had painstakenly penciled upon her door in a left-handed childish scrawl. "Miss Lady Butterfly," they would call with plastic grins, and she would see Secret Tools cunningly hid behind their backs.

She wondered if she would have to race to room 210.
But it was with just a few more strides that she quietly passed the other heavy wooden doors. "Room 205" she whispered feverishly to herself. Room 207. Room 209...and she was there, placing a fragile, pale hand upon the sickly cold-feeling latch. Not locked, none of the patients' doors were. And gently the lever turned as she eased herself in.

She could see him from the yellow flash of her sliver-lighted entrance: Knees to his chest and forearms hugged wire-like about them, protectively guarding against some expected horror even in sleep. He was a grain mill worker, with wrinkled leather skin wrapped around hard, trimmed rock that looked as if it were chisled from the riverbed walls near her old backyard. Still dressed rakishly in his second hand T and old Wranglers, which faded sweetly to tattered edges around his knees. Even his cowboy boots had stayed on, had waited, while he slept - the orderlies in charge would no doubt receive Stern Punishment for such a lazy oversight.

She stood still, quietly watching with eyes brightened in awe, head cocked to one side in feline wonder. Earlier in Group that day she had spied his cuts. Not the bandaged mummy white on his swollen wrists, but the cuts that ran up to his elbows like tiny teeth marks chewing skin. He was a New Arrival, so, like all new arrivals, his lips locked food out - and speech in - and his haunted eyes sagged flacidly along the hollowed gray ridges below chocolate lashes. She didn't worry herself too much over his tired looks: She could handle most of the work for him as long as he could steer. She guessed that a man such as this would know plenty of places...Far Away places even. It was the sight of his arms that scared her. She tried to swallow a greasy lump massed stubbornly in the depths of her thoat and winced convulsively when it did not slide immediately down. She wondered if this man's arms could be strong again.

Thoughts fluttered to a stop as motion on the bed drew her attention. He stirred awake as if by the strumming demands of invisible spirits and allowed his pastey, slitted eyes to fall like marionettes to her gown. A warm, milky grin creased his lips as he sighed, the sound escaping breezily and rested. She kneeled, bringing her face just a whisper away from his own. The man's left arm cranked up like a stringed puppet's wooden limb and with his road-mapped-palm, calloused all the way to fingertips before smoothing into bitten nailed points, he touched her shoulder top. Then her neck. Then her cheek. Warmth arrested his interest while he gave slow blinks of his eyelids.
"I'm Real," she assured him, loud trainyard bellow into his sleepy ears. Blue eyes opened, darting frantically from her plush smile to the red nicks on the back of his own index finger. Whites of his eyes saucered wide then stopped seeing her face altogether. He shot a gaze past his ghostly clothed wrist and down the slope of his forearm. Shortly-cropped almond hair swirled quickly as his head whipped upward. His mouth opened to a low, gravelled gurgle then snapped teeth shut, dejected at his own failed effort to speak. A scabbed arm quivered to nestle under his chin as his head fell to the deep indentation and spooned into the hospital pillow.
"You're afraid." Exclaimed mostly to herself and disappointment at this new discovery taunted soft echos back to her from squarely bare walls.
"-can't help't." His voice shook husky. She checked the candled light beneath the door for any shadows of feet, then turned to scan his own shadowed face when assured of her momentary safety. The blue in his eyes seemed frozen in terror, then, swimming, it overflowed onto spiked lashes - the only part of him still capable of defiance or strength. Her heart quaked silently, shuddering under the gown into tangled covers of his bed, as she brought herself from kneeling to his bedside. Her hand shook as she traced an imaginary trail from the slick wetness of white bedsheets beside her to the clammy hands clinging like vines around jeans. Blue eyes widened momentarily as she inched her fingers inside his own.

He barely stiffened but she could feel the automatic wince, the almost-disgust as his hands tried to jerk from her touch. She stared into him - through him - forcing a decision. Her mind clicked seconds loudly, thrumming silent clock tics insistantly from left ear to right. One.
..Two.
She strained her ears and saw with vacant eyes and vivid imagination the orderlies coming closer to her own hastily camaflauged, empty bedroom.
...Three.
The fear grew like a vine - a weed - taking root first through glassy eyes then slowly seeding feelers into shaking hands and body until her mouth tightened convusively around a dried tongue.
Fear. Hung out on a rope of chance... She Could Not Fly Alone. Hung out alone...her hand tightened around his own, squeezing, as if she could force the strength back in: maybe force the fear out. Still became motion and she was heaving his sleep-shaped flesh up from the bed. He looked at her wildly, trying to back away, to shrink from the fury in her gaze.
"It was Decided, I thought. You knew," her hoarse throat spat the words out, blading his mind like knives, "you knew and agreed." The hands on his shoulder shook for emphasis, not needed, as he hung his head. Brown hair shadowed his face for a moment, shadowed his thoughts.

Sun beat the pavement hot under his feet. Only the townfolk would dare call it such, though, since rocks littered the ground and cracks frolicked playfully before closing into ragged street - or gaps wide enough to stretch his broken-down ford to it's limits. A rock flew silently from the tip of his boots and careened into yellowed grass, which russeled quietly at the invasion. He looked to his left and saw old Tommy sleeping in a vacant, dried-out, field. The dog's ears slumped dejectedly about ever-present ribs as he sprawled in slumber. From this distance the porcupine needles homed along his nose and neck weren't visible, but the paw arched protectively about the golden snout proved that Tommy would still need time to remove all the traces of his last encounter.

Beyond the dog, the field ended in a small wooden house encased in the repiticious sway of thigh-high grass. His darkly leathered face creased in a toothy smile which lit his eyes bright when he remembered the croaky voice of Randy Crawlin complaining bitterly that morning of the multitude of porcupines which had attacked his beloved hound last night. Randy's continued gripes had raised a short chorus of "SHUT UP"'s from all the guys working at the mill, including himself. The humor break from work which was always tiring - his hands blistered and shoulders slumped by the time afternoon rolled around, but the methodic chore was strangely inviting - had left him in a good mood. Besides, it wasn't the work he enjoyed most it was the smile on Ruth's face when the paycheck came in. Today had been payday.
He loved the small-town feel and almost brotherly love of his co-workers, but Ruth was disappearing. Bright, cherry-red smiles came seldom, tinkle of her laugh more seldom yet. She wanted a life which, she repeatedly told him, this worn-out, dried-up, town couldn't give. She wanted the nice cloths and busy streets she had grown accustomed to since childhood.
His eyes rested upon the small, aluminum foil wrapped trailer off to the right and he slowly shambled his way up the dirt driveway leading to it's bent door two feet off the ground - supposedly a porch had once littered among the rocks before the entryway, but if any such structure had existed it was dust shrouded in myth. Last week Ruth had told him, in no uncertain terms, that living in "this hovel" was simply unacceptable: but he saw nothing wrong with the small confining space which, to him, seemed to pull Ruth closer, push her smoothly into his awaiting arms. The lack of space was a lover's warm contentment. He knew Ruth would vehemently disagree but when she saw the bulky green of this paycheck things would be alright.

His fingers burned at the touch of the silver, sun-heated handle. Ruth's continuous music wasn't playing.

Now, away from the bed to stretch and regain pale composure. Bending lengthy to tug at his body, a wince of pain when a disused joint pulled wrong. He noticed her watching his arms. They were long, knotty with muscle; throwing wood around had made him strong, the gift of working torture and abandonment.

Eyes raised, and she could see pain flinching within, that and strength, but hidden behind the roll of shoulders. Her angry words hung between them now.

"No," shortly. "Not like this. Here," the smallest smile of all, "there's nothing we can do here. You know it."
"don't know an'thing," the softly haggard words imploring but recieved as a rebuff, she standing stone-faced and scared to leave the room, leave the building, without him. And he, pausing over and over in the shielded darkness of moon light, silent in expectation and distracted once again by worry.

A look, a movement from his lips, soft. A word. "What?" Outside the cry of discovery, running feet past his room, and for a moment she couldn't hear him, "What?" again more strongly in rushing anxiety and his voice swooping back, too loud now: "--said yes."
His eyes questing hers for acceptance, for leadership, and her voice an octave too bright as if to deflect attention from what she was proposing...
"..then just like planned. The window." Words like a sweet smell in the air and she tried to keep her excitement under control as he, once decided strong now, and determined, led her to the window's confining view.

Under the deception of loud noise beyond the room his fist smashed agaist panes, then the deliberate peeling back of glass like shedding of willing skin. Cold. Still winter outside and, now, cold through the windows bright as light.

and on cue -was it? - the sound that was no sound at all, noise through his door, and somebody pushing through the entrance. "What the hell do we have here?" loudly from the Burly Man's mouth, accompanied by quick footsteps bringing him to the couple escaping.
and his own red moment, her strong Mill Worker in truth now. He in motion, arms out to lunge for her go go jess go NOW grabbing her about the waist. He saw her wink and the pink peeping behind a shoulder, then the tilted, obviously bent double behind the other.
"Go on." fiercely, breath a slow trickle of smoke from her whispered lips.
and
they jerking forward and
O and The Man, balance lost, one hand out
in a ludicrous empty grasp.
and
they, stylized as a dance, he arching under, and she, after clearing the constraint of window, was Flying.

Silence. "Daddy?" but silence. Trailor reaked of old eggs and filthy cloths. The trip through empty rooms yeilding only the false fairy sparkle of dust bunnies, that and skitterings or chirps; those she ignored. Slam and the door clanked free as she escaped the entryway. Slow movements while picking spaces among rocks and scratching weeds. She wished her canvas shoes hadn't been lost.
"Daddy?"

Flickering of grass and swish of frolicing grasshoppers replied tauntingly. A quick reversal as she heard a distinct clang from the trailor door. Ouch! from a misplaced step upon a grated rock and disappointment when seeing that the door was broken and swinging into the entryway and back out like a ghostly visitor. Not her dad.
She turned back toward the clothsline and slowly limped on, careful of the blood now seeping like venom from the cut along her foot. Wind picked up cloths along the line and danced with them for a moment before boredom set in and the yellowed T's and childrens underwear went limp. She moved among soiled sheets and flinched when their wetness slapped her cheek. A moment and she was through, since momma's disappearance the amount of clean cloths - or dirty for that matter - was much lower. She fingered the stains on her own ill-fitting Worlds num er 1 chi d! shirt and whimpered.
"Daddy?"...!

Then she saw him and wanted to run but pain striking her feet like blows halted the thoughtless movement. Her dad stood against gray sky like a weak silloette with back to her and arms upraised. She wondered what he saw below in the high riverbed walls and tried to move faster through slicing rocks and thorns. Puzzlement creased a smooth face and she felt fear.
"Da--!"

but he was gone quick as breeze. Small mew fly daddy from her lips and the pain of bleeding feet was erased as she scrambled the last few feet to the edge in please god please daddy panic.
god, give him wings give him wings god, please PLEASE god give him wings so he can fly let him fly please. and PLEASE raising hysterical from her throat. She could see like a microscopic ant her daddy below flailing but silent as he fell. PLEEEEEEEEEEEAAAaaaaaaaaaassssssssssSSSS!

and she saw with perfect freedom, after clearing the constraint of window, the ground below them.