Liberation – short story

The fingernails always went first.  The tips where they were greyish-white began to fade into a stone grey and spread backwards into the pink base of the nail.  The shape would change too, of course; each nail contracted smaller and more pointed like walls closing in and forming a tunnel to nowhere.  The nails were the hardest part to watch.  Khalil would cringe and sometimes close his eyes tight to avoid this horror.  Each time, it confirmed to him that this was not a dream, that he was different, and that at some point, he would have to accept it.

 After the nails, it was the skin right under where the cuticles would have been that turned.  The green seeped backwards through the brown of his fingers towards the knuckles as the skin puckered into a creased leathery texture.  This was enough for today.  Last time Khalil went all the way into this type of transformation, he almost got eaten by a snake.  You have no power when you’re so small.  All you can do is run, and sometimes, your legs can’t carry you fast enough.

 Khalil set the lizard back down on the ground and began to focus his mind on returning to normal.  He closed his eyes again, this time to concentrate.  He remembered the earth brown skin of each finger pushing into the pinkish white tips and when he opened his eyes, his hand was restored.  It didn’t even hurt anymore.  It wasn’t always like this.  He was 15 now, but it started when he was younger, only 7.  

 He remembered, that was back when Momma used to mess around with James from downstairs.  James would always come over real late at night.  Khalil knew it was late because he was already sleeping when he heard the knock on the front door that signaled Momma to lift him from the safe warmth of their shared bed and pull the little blanket out of the closet; the furry green one that barely covered his legs when he laid down unless he folded them in towards his body.  Momma carried him and the little blanket to the living room, where it was cold because the air came in under the door and through the cracks in the caulk around the window.  

 She moved quickly, he remembered; setting him on the itchy green and maroon plaid couch with a heaviness that felt like falling.  Khalil hated that couch.  The cushions felt like the firm bristles of a hairbrush poking into his skin, but Momma told him to go to sleep and he didn’t want to get a whooping.  That’s when she would let James in.  Tall and lanky, James would pick him up sometimes and pull him close to his face, so close, that Khalil could see the skin expanding over little hills on James’s cheeks that he would later learn were “razor bumps”.  Right here, when their faces were almost touching, James would say real loud like he wanted the whole world to hear, “Hey, there’s my boy!” with breath that smelled rancid, like he had always just had a beer and a cigarette.  

 Khalil would usually cry and squirm real hard to try to get down.  This particular time, James, as usual, tired of the squirming; his wide toothy smile closed into a straight line as he lowered Khalil to the floor.  He recalled noticing that the faded beige carpet was in some spots brown and some spots red where muddy shoes had shuffled or fruit punch was spilled.  From here, he watched James walk to the bedroom with Momma, grabbing her bottom as he closed the door.  Noises emerged loudly from the room; first laughter, then a knocking, like wood against wood.  Momma screamed like she was in pain, but Khalil knew better than to knock or try to open the door.  Whenever he knocked before, Momma yelled at him to go away.  One time, James even hit him for knocking.  You have no power when you’re so small.

 At that moment, Khalil heard the tapping, even over the bedroom noises.  His ears were searching for quiet, but found a constant and tiny thud.  At first, he thought it was raining, but when he looked over it was a moth beating against the glass of the living room window like it was trying to get out.  He walked over, clasped the moth gently in his hand, and stared out of the window.  His gaze surveyed the night through the fly screen and iron burglar bars; even in the darkness only broken by blinking streetlights, men and women walked purposefully forward.  Yet, there were some who sat seemingly immobile on curbsides and front stairs, as if stillness would provide shelter against the cold.  Khalil could feel the frigid air flooding in around the window glass against his face and the moth’s wings drumming inside of his little hand like a heartbeat, rhythmic and strong.  He opened his fingers a little to see the moth struggling inside, but didn’t let it go.

 “You trapped now, man.  You trapped.  You can’t never get away from here!”  Khalil whispered to the moth, wondering when the insect would give in and stop desiring freedom.  Then, one part of him wished to also be thus winged.  That way, when James came back in clutching his belt buckle, he could fly away unnoticed and unpursued over the people that walked and those that sat; up, up, to the streetlamps where the moths congregated in clusters.  There, in the misty circles of light, the winged creatures gathered in close hordes like a real family.

 The fingers went first then too.  Shrinking grey and thin, his fingers seemed to verge on disappearing and he couldn’t hold on to the moth anymore.  But, shoot, it hurt!  The pain pinched and twisted.  It felt like when the big boys that huddled under the stairway on the first floor smoking reefer caught Khalil walking to school and turned their big hands on his little arms until the skin stung and burned.  Like then, Khalil screamed.  Tiny hairs sprang from his quickly shrinking forearms like needles pricking by the hundreds.  Both arms buckled stiff, and then began to withdraw into themselves; the flesh puckering and contracting like a ripe fruit dehydrating in sunlight.

 Tears now ran down his cheeks and chin; still, the rapid knocking from the bedroom continued without pause, wood on wood.  “She must not be able to hear me with all that noise,” Khalil thought.  Momma’s screams were loud and hyphenated; her breathy pants punctured the air like those of a woman giving birth.  For Khalil, it was becoming very hard to breathe watching his body change this way.  He closed his eyes against hot tears and rolled up on the floor real tight with his knees against his chest and remembered just being a little boy, without fingers becoming thin legs.  He felt the hurt in his arms subside; they both began to numb as if losing circulation.  When he opened his eyes again, he had returned to normal.

 Since then, the pain had stopped, or maybe he had gotten used to it.  He went all the way sometimes when he found a stray cat, lizard, or other small animal and no one was around to see him change.  He liked to get the animals that could run real fast because you have no power when you’re so small.  He saw books in the library about big animals with power like the lions in Africa that could take down any animal, or even push over a whole jeep and if they wanted to.  But there were no lions in Brooklyn, except maybe at the zoo.  The zoo, where there were too many people and if anyone saw him change, they would probably shoot him or carry him off somewhere in a cage.  He wished he knew how to change without needing to touch the animal, but he couldn’t figure that out yet.

 For now, Khalil liked flying most of all.  Moths were the easiest to catch.  They were just so dang stupid, always pushing against window glass like they didn’t know there was a wall there or spinning around the light bulb like some treasure was inside.  Stupid and slow – never flying away fast enough to escape the clench of his palm.  That’s what scared him about being a moth; somebody might decide to swat him flat against the wall or crush him into a tight fist and he wouldn’t be strong enough to do anything about it.  But oh, how he loved the feeling of flying!  His muscles contracted right under the wings as he lifted from the floor and the air seemed to suspend him as he looked down at the couch and the carpet, separate from his former reality.  Even so, he never stayed in any transformation long.  This was still real life where the utter finality of death always threatened one’s smallness.  

 Khalil really wanted to become a bird, but they weren’t stupid and slow like moths.  Birds, even little ones, flew away before he could even touch their wings.  Then there was one day, the day, when it was sunny outside and Momma hadn’t been home in 3 days and there was no food left in the refrigerator or the cabinets except for canned milk and one box of dry spaghetti.  Khalil was walking purposefully, but he really had nowhere to go.  It was just last year.  School was out for the summer and he hadn’t made any friends; he was too afraid that someone would find out his secret and somehow make his life harder than it already was.  

 It must have been about noon because the sun was real high in the sky, he recalled.  That’s when he saw it.  Perched on the crosshatch metal fence near the liquor store, a raven stood.  The wings, which were in at the body, were so black and shiny that iridescent rainbows shone in ripples across the feathers.  The beak was maybe half as long as Khalil’s pinky, lengthy for a small bird.  But he wasn’t so small – yes, Khalil felt that this was a he – he was as big as a small cat, about a foot tall and plump around the middle.  Khalil’s chest contracted at the opportunity ahead; he noted, the fence wasn’t very high – maybe four feet up from the concrete.  Khalil sauntered slowly forward, feeling, but not looking at the raven; he was afraid to scare it into flight.  He was close now, maybe a few feet away and the raven was still there, Khalil knew it even without turning his head.  

 Quickly!  He reached long and grabbed the bird, uncaring that men sat on the sidewalks near the liquor store with glassy gazes fixed upon him, that the three women who cloistered near the pole at the intersection slowed their chatter at the strange phenomenon.  Yes, it must have been strange to see him there, clasping the bird with all his might, though the strong wings violently resisted his clenching palms like a suppressed explosion.  Khalil closed his eyes, shielding his vision from the squawking beak of the bird, and focused with a concentration more deliberate than ever now.  

 His arms began to tickle where he knew glossy black feathers were sprouting.  The muscles in his legs and arms contracted and his face compressed and extended into what he knew was a beaked countenance like the one he just beheld.  The raven flew away now because Khalil wasn’t strong enough to hold it anymore, but it didn’t matter.  As he glanced down at the shirt and jeans beneath his claws, Khalil knew he too was raven now.  Khalil craned his small neck at stared back at the men and women on the street.  Their mouths gaped in utter disbelief.  Had the stiff beak allowed the expression, this was the moment where Khalil would have smiled. 

 The wings did not take as much strength to lift as when he was a moth, or maybe he was just stronger.  Khalil thrust from the concrete sidewalk and bundled clothing easily, pulling and lifting his lithe muscles to soar above the crosshatch fence, above the stained plank roof of the liquor store, above the telephone poles; up, up to where fourth and fifth story windows revealed old women sitting on recliners watching television or babies sitting alone in their cribs or men strapping their arms tight with elastic strips to inject some hot liquid.  And even higher, up to where the roofs of project buildings formed an emotionless grid of squares with gray lines of streets criss-crossing in between.  Up here, with the wind in his eyes and the world at his feet, Khalil didn’t care where his mother was or if he would eat tonight or if everybody knew he was different because now he had power and he didn’t have to run anymore.  He could fly.