Fear of Flying

When he was born, his mother shoved him deeper into the hole and pecked at the sticky broken shell. Of course, he didn't remember that. He did remember sharing the hole with smells and noises like him . Days were blurry for a long, long time.

His first recollection of anything was the darkness and the suffocation, weighing down on him. Why did she do that? There was nothing more scary than that. But as the days passed by, the same presence and heaviness became his safety.

Things were changing slowly. His body was changing, even though he didn't understand it then. But he started remembering things, he started poking his head out of the hole to see what lay outside. But he wasn't ready.

Then the trouble started. The monster noticed them in her house. She started poking them with a long thing, which now when he remembers, was like a tree branch. Their strategy was to shift around and flatter their baby wings in order to avoid getting hurt. But the branch did poke into their skin many times, leaving bruises and pain behind.

After that it just grew worse. The monster took a certain pleasure in screaming at them and poking them. His brother was getting stronger and one day, just disappeared, from the ledge of the deep cavern into nowhere. Mother knew there was trouble, and was scared to leave him alone now, but the monster was persistent and kept laughing at his misery.

Then one day the monster managed to get him out of the hole by poking him. When he cried and tried to go back, he realised that the monster had closed the hole.

Night came, and he sat in a corner shivering away, scared all alone. All he wanted then was his mother's warmth. In the morning, the monster cooed to him and tried to push him to the edge. She wanted to kill him. Why not just do it by sitting on him? Why push him again and again to the deep cavern?

His mother and brother would come often with food. He couldn't understand why everyone was trying to push him down. He hated his brother now. Even his mother kept trying to peck him and get him moving there. He was fed up. He wished he could die.

Many more days passed by. He grew weaker and sadder. The more the monster flapped her hands, the more scared he got. The more they tried, the more he hated them. Every time he saw the edge of the cavern, he wished he was never born. The whole place was now filled with his excreta. A dull silence was all that remained, broken by the monster's screams and attempts.

Then one day, another monster came towards him with another branch that she used on the floor. This one didn't say a word. She was older and bigger. She lifted him in her hands, in spite of his fluttering and threw him off the edge.

His eyes were closed as he saw the end coming near. He fell into a much bigger hole that was cold. Then from nowhere his mother lifted him up, and he saw what she was doing with her wings, so he did it too. And the cavern wasn't a cavern anymore. It became the world.

He always went back to the monster, but she never recognised him. She still screamed, though.