Born Different

Faye Aitken-Smith

Copyright 2011 Faye Aitken-Smith

Smashwords Edition

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All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Front Cover Image © REN Photography

Front & Back Cover Design by Kayla Wren

Because we all have wings, but some of us don’t know why

Don’t be afraid, love will mend your broken wings

Prologue

Gabe had gone as far as he could go and now he was stood at the edge of the steep cliff. He was all out of options...there were very few choices left, if any. The throng, of what seemed like over a hundred people, inched closer towards him. Gabe was convinced that he even heard some of them shouting for him to jump.

They had all driven him here, each and every one of them, in their own way. What sort of world is this, thought Gabe? He’d never felt like it was for him! He was special and different and he had carried that on his shoulders like a heavy weight for all of his life. And now, after eighteen relentless years of it, enough was enough.

Gabe drew in one last deep breath. He looked down over the cliff’s edge, down to the very bottom where the waves crashed, frothed and fought back. It was a hell of a long way down.

Gabe looked up to the bright summer midday sun and, believing with all his heart and soul that this was what he had to do, Gabe jumped.

Chapter 1

Still dripping wet from his hot morning shower, Gabe strolled into his bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him. The bedroom light was still turned off and his thick lined curtains and wood slatted blinds were still shut firmly tight, so as not to let any light or curious eyes in.

Gabe took a moment to stay in the absolute dark for a while. He let himself disappear into its black hole of nothingness for a few luxurious seconds more before getting on with his imposed morning routine. Gabe felt peaceful as he let the sensation of just being at one with the dark air fill his imagination. If he stayed still, he thought it was like he wasn’t really there at all. He could disappear. Gabe for a moment let himself believe that he didn’t exist and this thought left him feeling absolutely serene.

A thought surfaced in Gabe’s place of tranquillity, reminding him that he had an exam to sit this afternoon. His last one. And this very real thought, brought him immediately back to the present moment. Back to a not as pleasant reality, where he did actually exist and the feelings of peace and nothingness disappeared instantly, opening the flood gates for all the worries he was trying not to fret about so that they came through now in a torrent of abuse.

Gabe wasn’t looking forward to the exam at all but, he reasoned to himself, seeing as it was his last one it meant that there were no more exams to sit ever again. No more school. No more lessons to sit through and endure. No other kids to deal with on a daily basis. No more school routine. He had made it. He was eighteen years old. A man, legally at least, and he was nearly free of the place that he had felt imprisoned him.

After today, he only a week or so left before the real last ever day of school and the only day that really mattered to Gabe; the final day, the day of The Exhibition, Speeches and Awards Ceremony.

Gabe was only interested in The Exhibition on the last day. He wasn’t planning on receiving any awards but he was planning on exhibiting all his art works and, with any luck, his artwork would grab some one’s attention. Enough so, that someone would give him a job to walk into of some sort or, ideally, buy all his paintings right there and then with a great big wad of cash and commission him to do more.

Ha ha. Dream on boy, Gabe thought to himself. But he could dream on. ‘Dreaming on’ was all he had going for him at the moment.

Gabe’s paintings could be found hanging on the walls all over his school and Gabe noticed that people were always stopping to look at them. Gabe liked to watch how his paintings changed people, how some had been left a little shocked, others confused and even some were, on occasion, slightly repulsed by them. His paintings always drew comments and, most importantly to Gabe, questions and stories. Everyone always had a reaction as to what his paintings meant to them. Gabe thought that that was what art was all about, how people translated the images when woven together with the facts and experience of their own lives. Gabe loved that about art. Gabe thought that his paintings distracted people out of their boxed minds so that a light was turned on for a little while, as the painting or drawing reflected on their deep hidden souls.

Gabe had to prepare a speech about his art which had been worrying him even more so than The Exhibition. He should really be allowed to just focus on the art and not be distracted preparing some justifying waffle interpretation of his art works and inspiration and other such bollocks.

Even if he did prepare the best speech ever, which was extremely unlikely, giving the speech up on the stage in front of the whole school, all the parents, teachers and any other attendees, which were likely to be certain influential people in the city, all full of themselves and dressed to impress each other; all those eyes on him, judging him, whispering! No! There was no way on this planet that that was ever going to happen.

Ever since attending The Exhibition in his first year Gabe had, on many occasions, found himself rehearsing and playing out the day in his head, the big day when it would be his turn. Seven long years, Gabe had daydreamed about how he was going to arrange his little art space area, what he might say to anyone that might ask anything, how he would indeed respond if some big collector or gallery owner gave him a wad of notes. And always, Gabe played out the moment when it would be his turn to get up on stage, in front of a packed school hall, the sea of faces and piercing pairs of eyes directed at him. He went over how he would have to focus on the stairs, for fear of tripping up in front of everybody. How he would have to remember to shake some sweaty hand of whoever, probably the headmaster who might even utter his first ever words to Gabe personally. Gabe had succeeded in avoiding the man his entire school life. One last handshake to go, “By the way, I was here too! I know you know that I was because it is a bit obvious to everyone that I am bit different. The teachers would have filled you in on whatever gossip, or lies, they had collected proudly like good little disciples. Good luck with everything and all that but I’ll be off now!” And then Gabe would imagine taking to the microphone.

At this point, Gabe would feel sick. His legs would start to wobble, as if he was on a small boat on choppy waters, then the ground would start to wave and swell like the sea, antagonising the leg wobble so that they gave in and turned to jelly. Then Gabe would feel his lips go dry as, at the same time, the saliva in his mouth was being over produced, sliding down the gills of his throat as his stomach turned doing inside-out flip manoeuvres, as it worked whatever he had eaten back up his oesophagus, causing Gabe to get a fit of gulping swallows to battle the inevitable. Gabe knew there was a good chance his nerves would compel him to projectile vomit over the audience.

He’d even had nightmares about it. Similar to the ones when he’d been a kid and dreamt that he was turning up to school as usual, walking across the gravel of the playground, head down. And then he would suddenly realise, when it was too late and everyone else had stopped and had started staring, pointing and laughing at him, was that he was naked. Stark bollock naked. Naked without even a school bag to use to hide himself. Gabe had the exact same dream about being up on stage. Gabe took this as a sure sign that this was not his path in life. Hell, Gabe spent most of his life trying to avoid people. Trying to get them not to notice him, even if it was impossible for them not to. Putting himself in their line of fire was against every one of his natural and learnt instincts.

The more Gabe thought about it, the more he thought that he should just give the whole day, The Exhibition included, a miss. He only really needed to get his art work down there at some stage and then he could let it speak for itself. He just had to move it all from his studio in the garden, to the big school hall and leave some cards out with his details on it. And then he could just leave and never need see another pupil, teacher or brick of the bastard school ever again!

It was a very tempting proposition. A far easier and less nerve wracking way of doing things. He could get his friends to help him transport the huge canvases, and a sculpture that he had goaded himself into making this week in a final all-out effort to make the desired level of impact needed. (The sculpture that he hadn’t started yet. The sculpture that he had no material to sculpt it out of; no wood or marble or anything suitable. Or no idea how to sculpt, which was probably more of a problem. Or indeed, what to sculpt.) And then he could be back hiding out in his studio, on his own and free, by the time the hall doors opened up to the general public for The Exhibition. Not going felt like the right thing to do. It felt nice and relaxing as opposed to the other option which only ever left Gabe feeling gut wrenchingly nervous to the point of neurotic.

But there was just too much hanging on The Exhibition. Gabe knew somewhere deeper inside of him that he had to be there. He couldn’t leave anything to chance. The Exhibition was probably going to be the most important day of his life so far and he had to go the extra mile and give it his all. Even if he ran away before the speeches, he had to show his face around his work. It was the least he could do. If he was so desperate for someone to take an interest in his art work, he had to at least show them the respect of turning up. It was time to grow up and face a few fears if he was going to get anywhere in life.

If no one noticed, appreciated or liked his art enough to take it to another place, then he would be truly fucked.

Gabe reached over to the darkest corner of his room and he tried to locate the little switch on the lamp that was always on his desk. But he only succeeded in knocking down the precariously stacked pile of books that had been balancing amid his computer, sketch books, plate of half eaten food, discarded tubes of paint, brushes, dried up palettes and God knows what else, with a great domino effect, crashing din.

“You bloody clumsy fool!” Gabe cursed himself and in a burst of frustration, he swiped his arm over the top of the desk clearing it of almost everything including a pint glass that smashed in the process. And, once again, Gabe tried to find the tiny switch that he knew was hiding there somewhere.

“You alright up there?” Gina shouted up the stairs.

“Yes, fine mum.”

The lamp gave a low, warm, orange glow to the room. Just enough light for Gabe to barely see what he was doing but still leaving enough darkness to hide the mess and filth of his room. Enough darkness to hide in the shadows, all of what Gabe would rather not look at first thing in the morning.

But at least the desk was looking neater now! That was a start. If Gabe’s room was a tip, his studio was worse. His life was a mess and Gabe knew that it was time to start clearing up quite a few things. School was going to end and with that, so was everything about his old life. Everything was going to change, at last. Everything had to change! He couldn’t go on living like this.

Gabe selected the music he wanted to listen to and turned the volume up. High.

The first beats of the song banished the silence and were a welcoming distraction from the constant train of internal, mostly anxious, dialogue that was plaguing him today. As the music washed over him, he gave an audible sigh of relief.

Gabe opened the desk drawer and got out all of the things that he needed. All the paraphernalia it took to keep his secret...a secret. Gabe had plenty of secrets, but this was his biggest one, his huge dark secret that he thought was the cause of most, if not all, of his problems and therefore what he blamed for all them on bad day, and there were lots of bad days. Out of all of his secrets, this secret was the one that he was by far the most ashamed of! Everything else really just paled in comparison.

Gabe looked at his dimly lit reflection in the full length mirror. He made himself look over every part of his, partially, shadowed body until he caught his own eyes looking back at him.

Gabe stopped still for a moment and he looked back, deep into his own eyes.

“I am me,” Gabe told himself.

It gave him goose bumps every time he did this and Gabe involuntary shivered as he felt a pleasant effervescent chill start at the crown of his head and oscillate down his body in a wave.

Gabe stayed looking right back into his own eyes and staring at his own pupils in the reflection of the mirror Gabe tried to recognise that there was someone there. He tried to recognise himself. Gabe tried to witness that he really was, alive. And more than that...that he was conscious of the fact that he was alive, living a conscious life in this body.

This always excited Gabe and he needed this thrill. The thrill of knowing something special. Only he didn’t know exactly what it was. The thrill halted the worrying in its tracks and the thrill counteracted the burden of what he had to do now.

Gabe looked at the items on his desk now with resentment and he knew that he should just get on with it and take it in his stride but, if anything, the procedure it took into hiding his secret, got more laborious and frustrating by the day. It depressed Gabe, but he had no other choice. He could hardly act like a normal kid and just throw on his clothes, eat his breakfast, kiss his mum goodbye and run out of the house. Gabe was not a normal kid.

Without turning his head, Gabe shook the blue glass bottle, popped the cork and poured out a good few drops of the apparently healing, blended essential oils into the palm of his hand. He rubbed his hands together thoroughly to cover them completely and to warm the oil. Then he began to massage and moisturise the dry, cracked skin on his upper body that, like the periphery hot lava from a recently erupted volcano, was red and raised, angry looking and seemingly creeping forward and expanding by the day.

Gabe started on his neck and then he moved onto his shoulders. His fingers expertly felt for the knots in his twisted muscles. He tried to avoid any open wounds as he massaged deeper, in a feeble attempt to try and make the pain go away.

Gradually, Gabe worked his way around to where the dry skin turned into thick dying flakes on top of cracking, so deep, that red crevasses of blood were visible between the split layers of skin, like thin red rivers running through the valleys of the steep differing stratum of flesh.

This was the skin that covered his shoulder blades. This was the delicate skin of the thin flesh that covered the bones and joints of the growths on his back. Gabe had been born with these growths. They protruded from his shoulder blades. They were, much to his horror, as much a part of him as his arms and legs were.

As Gabe had hit puberty, the growths, along with the rest of his body, had grown and changed and morphed into something quite different from their adolescent self. Their initial under developed, small and delicate form, had transformed to become something now quite large, cumbersome and dominant. He had grown from the boy with a slight hump, in his dressed appearance, to now a man with quite an apparent deformity.

Gabe was sure that he was a man, or at least on the brink of manhood. He had all the usual characteristics of a man. He sure as hell was not a bird or a bat or a butterfly or indeed any kind of insect. He just had these growths, or to be more accurate, wings.

Gabe had wings.

Chapter 2

Everyone is born different but some are born more different than most and Gabe believed he had been born a lot different to everybody else.

His mum, Gina, had named him Gabriel. Like the angel. But Gabe didn’t feel like an angel, quite the opposite, Gabe felt like a complete and utter freak.

If everyone had been born with wings, then Gabe would probably have never had the need to give his own a second thought. But, as far as Gabe could tell, nobody else had wings. Gabe was so special and different that he was unlike anybody else out there in the whole wide world and therefore, therefore he felt, despite the knowledge that there was nearly seven billion different sorts of people on the planet, that he was actually very much alone.

Gabe closed his eyes and he inhaled deeply through his nose and exhaled fully through his mouth. Then slowly, as he counted to ten in his mind, he inhaled air into his lungs until they were full and his breath held steady. Gabe kept his chest high and puffed out and when he could not hold his breath for any longer comfortably, Gabe exhaled slowly and with control, and he tried to let go. With each tiny slow breath out, he tried to let go of all the stresses he had built up inside of him. The tensions, the resentments, the fears, the worries and the accumulated anxiety.

Exhale, deflate, release and let go.

Inhaling again, Gabe stretched his wings out wide. He stretched them out wide and then wider. As wide as they would go. Unfolded, unfurled and free. Expanded, extended and excellent.

Now that he was free, Gabe looked at his dimly lit reflection again. He looked at the contours of his image, at his wings, at himself. In this pose he was as no other human being would ever see him.

This was who he really was and no one would ever know.

Gabe stood tall and straight with his wings expanded proud and he held this position for as long as he could. He tried to remember to breathe. And as he breathed into the pain he tried, with each breath out, to stretch his wings that little bit further. The pain was intense but Gabe was always determined to hold out for just that one second longer. His stamina fought an internal battle with the lower voices telling him that if he gave up now then he was a failure. An ugly failure. And that failure was all that he was capable of. Gabe told himself he was weak and unlovable if he couldn’t hold out any longer.

With every second, Gabe bullied himself, taunted himself worse than any other human had tried to. He pushed forward through the pain barriers until he was tortured. Until the pain threshold finally overtook the powerful strength of his rarely expressed and usually repressed anger and self-hatred. Until he started to shake, the trembles graduating to full body convulsions. Until it was physically impossible for Gabe to hold his wings out expanded for another second more... only then did Gabe collapse his wings down, exhausted.

He had broken a sweat and had to bend over, hands on knees, to support himself as he panted, red faced, trying to get his breath back again without retching. Gabe focused on the pattern of his rug and he tried to stare beyond the solid object in an effort to try and take his mind off the sharp as a knife, stabbing pains and agonising aches that he felt down to the bone. Way down to the marrow. Right down to the very core of his being.

Pain crossed Gabe’s back and it burned so deep, Gabe felt like he was on fire. As usual, he knew that he had opened some of the old wounds with his efforts. Gabe felt the sensation of the wet, colder blood trickling down over his skin; almost tickling in the reflection of the more intense sensation of the burning furnace beneath.

Gabe knew that he needed to exercise more. He really should make more of an effort to get some fresh air and natural light onto his back, shoulders and wings. He had been forced to mix with the general public for too long and it showed in his health. He needed to build up his strength and do something more about helping himself to heal.

“But how exactly am I supposed to go about doing that?” Gabe angrily muttered to himself. “I can’t exactly strip off in the city and just start flapping my wings about!”

Gabe shook his head and had a wry laugh to himself. It wasn’t that funny but Gabe was in no mood to cry about it today.

What was he supposed to do? If he exercised them, they got bigger and he didn’t want his secret getting any bigger. It was enough to cope with as it was. At least, when he let them wither, that despite the extra pain they were easier to bandage, to hide, to conceal and keep hidden. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

The only time Gabe had the chance to live with his wings out, was when he isolated himself away from the rest of the world in his art studio in the back garden. So Gabe spent whatever little spare time he had in there, painting with his wings out, getting some much needed exercise or just doing nothing but staring up at the sky dreaming of a better future, a future filled with sunny days and carnivals. Of living life with his wings out all the time and never hidden; of being a great and celebrated artist, rich and famous; of talking to Grace, the girl he had had a crush on but never spoke to; or of being reunited with his long lost dad.

Day dreaming of all these things was preferable to Gabe’s reality, which was that he was usually sat, dying of boredom, in lessons at school or hanging out, in the cold and damp outdoors, with his friends that he didn’t really like anymore; courting trouble and committing, mostly by proxy, but Gabe was certain that was illegal too, crimes.

Gabe could put a lot of his issues and problems in life down to the fact that he had been born this way. The wings had set him apart, physically, socially and so too mentally. He may not have resembled anyone physically but Gabe was just as sure that no one felt, thought or saw like he did either. Only he wasn’t sure if the wings had made him this way or whether it was another defect of birth.

Gabe often held the debate with himself about having his wings removed. Cut the problem straight off with a surgeon’s knife. At least then he would look normal. It was an argument that was never far from his thoughts. He was sure that there were talented surgeons out there that could do it and getting ‘corrective’ surgery seemed to be like a national past time these days.

Plastic surgery, once the domain of the rich and the damaged, was now just another consumer item ‘must have’. Anything you wanted done or changed was achievable and for sale right there on the high street. It was just another one of the millions of consumer choices available. Surgery was just another fashion house, only it happened to trade in human skin. Bigger boobs, flatter stomachs, lifted faces, pouting lips like the movie stars, pert ripe round butts…wing removal?

As Gabe began to wrap the bandages around himself he thought of how much he would love not to have to go through with this rigmarole every single day.

But so far Gabe had convinced himself to keep his wings, for all sorts of reasons and excuses, but mainly because there was no way that he was going to go showing them to anybody else. Let alone rooms full of doctors, specialists and nurses and God knows who else. No way! And Gabe thought, What if? What if he did have his wings removed, what then? He would look normal but he knew that he could never be normal. If he no longer looked the way he did now, what would he be then? Just like one of the masses? Gabe couldn’t think of anything worse.

Half bandaged Gabe looked at himself again in the mirror. He was a freak of nature. He’d had no other choice than to become an outcast, a loner even, although he wasn’t as keen on that term. Loners are odd in a bad way and besides, Gabe had friends. There were other freaks, other outcasts and they had banded together too and were as much a group in the school dynamics as any other clique. Gabe had Frank, Dave and Johnny. All of them damned.

One of Gabe’s favourite tracks came on and he turned the volume up even louder in an attempt to drown out the voices in his head. He closed his eyes and let the music touch his soul. He let the baseline beat with the rhythm of his heart and he felt the melody lift his spirit. Gabe listened to the words being sung, speaking of exactly the way he felt. The music Gabe loved expressed all the things that he identified with deep within himself, but was never able to verbalise so well.

“It’s eight darling!” Gina shouted on cue like she did every single weekday, telling him what he already knew. And, as if her voice set off his mobile phone, it vibrated across his bedside table, letting him know that he had another message.

But it could wait.

The daily ritual of the wrapping up of the wings was quite complicated to get exactly right but Gabe was an expert at it now and could do it with his eyes closed. Oil, massage, bandages cut to size and wrapped around, pinned and secured. Scissors. Another length of bandage cut and wound the other way, pinned and secured. Again, another length of bandage cut and wound around to bind the other two together, wrapped, pinned, taped, secured. Done. Then a vest, T-shirt, shirt. Check, double check. Finally, always a heavy jumper to cover the whole lot; whatever the weather, rain or shine.

It was now the end of the last summer term of school that Gabe would ever have and he had been relieved that, so far, it had been a cold damp one. He preferred the cold, well that was not strictly true, but the heat was unbearable dressing the way he did, with all those layers. The fact that he had never peeled off even one item of clothing in his entire school life, even when there had been heat waves, just exacerbated the situation and made the other kids view him even more ‘different’ than they already did.

Weird mentally, as well as physically, was what they all smugly calculated and whispered even if they weren’t the type to shout it at him.

He wasn’t stupid. Did people presume that, because of the way he was, that he couldn’t hear or be affected by what they were saying? That he didn’t notice them all stop and point and nudging their friends who would, unsubtly, turn too and pretended not to stare in his direction?

Perhaps they assumed the weird mental thing meant that he couldn’t quite comprehend them delighting in their own disgust or simply, and more than likely, they just didn’t care. Judging him made them feel that much better about themselves. Gabe liked to think that he didn’t care too, that it sorted the wheat from the chaff. And anyway, he would never be friends with people like that so it did him a favour. He didn’t have to bother!

But how was he going to explain it away anyway? There was not a sufficient enough excuse for acting like a weirdo other than being a weirdo.

Gabe sniffed the arm pits of a t-shirt and threw it into the far corner in a make shift, ‘needs to go in the wash’ pile and he opened his drawer to see if any clean ones had magically appeared in there.

Not that he thought it really mattered if he stank, no one ever got that close to notice. Gabe, like a spare part, had spent his entire school life sat at the back of classrooms on his own, due to his size and the potential obstruction to others visibility of the teacher that his deformity might cause. People didn’t seem to know how to communicate with him and in all honesty Gabe had trouble following them. He noticed that people rarely, if ever, looked him in the eye. They might stare from a distance or even clock him in their peripheral vision but not one of them ever really looked Gabe straight in the eye. The ever present paradox of it all was that Gabe’s deformity that was so obvious, had also made him disappear.

At least it was all over now. Gabe had hated school. Hated everything about it. The teachers had quenched his desire to learn by their insistence on the forced leaning of irrelevant facts and probably false theories and one-sided debates. And they had miraculously made even the most interesting of subject matter, mundane and stressful. Gabe was sure that it wasn’t just him that thought this as all the other students were now hysterically revising for these exams. No one seemed to have actually learnt anything in the two years of sixth form. If they had, surely there would be no need to revise, they would have already learnt it in the lessons and stored it for life in their brains to be easily recalled when needed? But as far as Gabe was working out, nobody had lucked out on this, there was an obvious flaw in the system.

There had to be a better way. Gabe found he learnt more on the internet or even just watching a documentary on the TV. He could learn the words to a song after hearing it only a few times, but when it came to remembering anything he’d been taught in school...it was impossible. Gabe hoped that one day they would realise that. Maybe one day the people who decide these things will figure out that no one really learns without passion and excitement, and to turn great subjects into monotonous tasks was monstrous.

But Gabe had his suspicions that the deal of school was to turn out brainwashed humans behaving like malleable robots that could be easily controlled. Gabe suspected that the main aim of school was for the masses to learn to do as they were told in the pursuit of a civilised society where the rich and powerful didn’t have to deal with ‘out the box’ thinking and creative minds which would only causing rebellion and uprising. If the masses were clued up and free thinking, then those in power would have to share their wealth and everything would change and people might then start to live with nature rather than destroying it, and no big business or current government could survive that. They knew that, as long as you kept people warm, fed and entertained separately, all in their own little box of space then they weren’t going to have too many issues with the world outside their front door. The only issues the masses would have would be the ones ‘they’ let them have. To increase fear and thus consumption of whatever it was ‘they’ wanted you to consume next. It was all business really. Control, power and money. The three mistresses of the Gods of the modern world. Everything was just clever tools to manipulate the people through their inherent human natures and manufactured human desires. Human beings are easily brainwashed. Gabe was aware of the traps and he didn’t want to fall into them.

Gabe tried to do something with his hair, it wasn’t short and it wasn’t long, he hadn’t had it cut in years but it just seemed to grow up and out and not down like it was supposed to. He ran his still oily fingers through it to give it some weight but that only made it look greasier.

He gave up, every day was a bad hair day and Gabe thought that everything would be different in his ideal world.

Gabe had long ago come to the conclusion that he and most, if not all of the other kids in the city were kept at school more as a mass child sitting and brain washing exercise as opposed to anything else. Like an enriching education. School kept them all in one place and off the streets and off their parent’s hands, so that they could go to work to pay for it all. School broke their spirit so that they could all be rebuilt, moulded and controlled, so that everybody was pretty much the same as everybody else by the time they left. Gabe thought that this was what everybody strove for; to fit in, to conform, to join the masses. It wasn’t for him but he had no doubt that most kids must enjoy school enough; being in an institutional environment, being controlled and instructed what to do and believe every hour of their day. Living by the bell. They must do because most chose to continue to live like it for the rest of their lives.

But Gabe wasn’t like everyone else. Gabe would never fit in, he would always be different. To live like other people? It was impossible, even if he had wanted to. But, he didn’t want to.

He could have done better in school if he concentrated the teachers had said. But Gabe did concentrate; it was just that he was concentrating on all of the things that interested him, which was not what the teachers were talking about. Do the maths, he thought.

Gabe was concentrating on what was going on outside of the classroom window. Gabe was focused; it just was not on the class but on what was happening out in the car park or on the street beyond or even the park beyond that. Gabe was studying the colour of the light that day, or the way the clouds were rolling across the sky. Sometimes Gabe was observing everything with such a thirst; it was like his eyes were drinking up every little vivid detail. A sweet wrapper discarded, a dog taking a shit, a figure in the distance that could be a ghost, a leaf falling down off a high branch in a swaying Waltz. These were the things that were occupying Gabe’s mind.

Mostly though, Gabe just clocked out altogether and went on a mad day dream where he wasn’t there in the classroom at all. Gabe could go anywhere for hours in his own head. But more often than not, Gabe was just wishing that he was back home alone in his studio where he could paint and just be, free from the bandages.

He tried to listen to the teachers, he promised himself to focus on the class but his brain wouldn’t let him. He might hear the first sentences at the beginning and that would set him to thinking, to questioning, to daydreaming. Gabe was concentrating on all the things that you couldn’t necessarily see with the naked eye. Gabe was constantly thinking, analysing and having ideas and fantasies and he couldn’t stop doing it as much as he couldn’t stop having wings.

He hadn’t wanted to go on to the sixth form, he didn’t know why he couldn’t just work on his art at home and attend The Exhibition, but that was not possible. They ‘saw potential’ they had said and Gabe hadn’t known whether to be offended or take it as a compliment. They had added that he ‘needed to get some more guidance with his art and take some ‘real subjects’ too as a back-up plan for the real world.’

The ‘real world’? All Gabe knew about the real world was that people just got into other routines and put their heads into the sand and lived out there lives like robots. And Gabe thought that perhaps it was wise not to take advice off of people that didn’t seem to be having great lives themselves. Why should he take advice off anyone who wasn’t living the sort of life that he thought he would like to live? If he’d of wanted to be a teacher in this dirty city...then sure. But he didn’t, so they could shove it!

But as Gabe had less idea then than he had now, which was still nil, about how he was going to go about living his life and his mum and the teachers had basically insisted with a heavy dose of emotional blackmail. Making it clear he could not attend The Exhibition if he didn’t attend the school. What else was he going to do? There weren’t any jobs to go to, let alone ‘good jobs’. Staying in school would keep him away from his gang of friends and their dodgy ways of making money. And, probably as important as The Exhibition, there was Grace; the girl who Gabe had still not managed to summon the courage to speak to yet. She would be going on to the sixth form, so in the end, Gabe had signed up.

Within the first week, Gabe had a panic attack. He hadn’t had one before. Gabe had since come to believe that the panic attack was obviously a warning sign. His body was trying to tell him something. His rational voice had not been listened to, he was doing something that he really didn’t want to do and his body had rebelled.

He had been in the long corridor before classes when suddenly, for no obviously apparent reason, he felt like he was choking. What his body usually did without Gabe having to think about, suddenly decided that it wasn’t going to do it anymore. Like breath. His throat had just constricted tight shut and his heart had started beating loudly and faster than he thought was possible. The blood and feeling had drained empty in his arms and his legs, from the tips of his fingers and toes up, leaving them cold and numb. And Gabe thought, after a few long seconds, that he was going to die.

This was it! Right here and right now in this hellhole place, in front of all these idiots and strangers would be where he experienced his last moments on this earth. And as he had struggled to breathe and not pass out, when he was sure that his whole life was going to flash before his eyes like he was told it did in your dying moments, various other kids had stopped and had started pointing and whispering behind their hands to each other and looking at him with shocked, repulsed and twisted faces. And as seconds passed in slow motion, Gabe could see that some had begun to dither about whether they should approach him or not. He then had the impounding fear that he was going to be exposed, that someone was going to stroll over ‘the hero’ and take his jumper and shirt off of him. Someone would inadvertently reveal his secret. Reveal his wings.

Gabe was then more petrified about people trying to save his life for fear that they would see his wings, than of dying! When of course they would have all seen his wings anyway but at least then he would be dead.

Panicking during a panic attack is just about the worst thing you can do. Thinking back to the incident now, Gabe reddened and shook his head at the thought of himself pathetically pleading, somehow through his own blind terror, with the growing crowd not to approach, not call an ambulance. Just on the small off chance that he might live.

The worst thing about the whole incident was that Grace, the Grace that didn’t usually notice that Gabe existed, had come up to him. She had told him that everything was going to be OK. She told him to breath, to stay calm. She had touched his arm, told him that it was just a panic attack and that he’d be alright in a minute.

He couldn’t look at her, he had to just close his eyes and try to think, to focus on staying alive. Focus on an inner light, on convincing his lungs that it was OK to take in air again.

Soon he was breathing ‘sort of’ normally and he was embarrassed, mortified, blushing as much out of shame as lack of air. It had passed, everything back to normal like nothing had ever happened. But that fear, that new depth of ‘facing death’ terror, that had never left him.

Sometimes; when something happened now, like there were too many people in a room encroaching on his personal space or if he was doing something that knew he shouldn’t really be doing, which was happening now more so than ever; Gabe felt it again instantly, usually only briefly but almost as intensely as those first few breaths into that panic attack. When everything stops still in suspended animation for a few long lucid seconds and Gabe recognises that different, dry, metallic, pungent taste in his mouth. That now familiar taste of all-consuming fear.

That day, Gabe had learnt two things; one was the knowledge of a new depth and dimension of terror and the other was that he now knew, without an absolute shadow of a doubt, that he would rather die than let anyone know his secret.

And now after two long and laborious years on top of the five he had already spent at secondary school, it was all over. Only, like a caged animal, Gabe was now familiar with his surroundings. And as the day of freedom approached, Gabe was now thinking and beginning to suspect and worry that perhaps he didn’t quite know how he would survive out in the wild.

Not that Gabe thought of the school environment as his world, that zoo with the other animals in it. But at least here he knew his place. He had fallen into a role and character. It was not the best one, the leading role, the jock or the girl magnet, it certainly was not a role he would ever have chosen for himself but it was not the worst one either. Gabe was ‘the kid with the hump’!

There were certain kids far worse off than Gabe in the school meat market, he knew that. Hell he was best friends with some of them! Had been best friends with them Gabe reminded himself but now his life, future and sanity would be better if he walked away from them too.

Chapter 3

From the pile of clothes on the floor, Gabe pulled out the first jumper that came to hand and put it on over his shirts, t-shirt, vest and the swathes of bandages. He made a series of last checks to make sure that everything was concealed completely and then he did the finishing adjustments for pain; rearranging himself, trying to get as comfortable as possible. Making sure that not too much of the mottled red rash skin was appearing over the neck line. No visible tell-tale blood spots.

When Gabe was finally content that he was completely, utterly and totally hidden, only then did he feel safe enough to open up the curtains and tilt the blinds to let in some light and reveal the new day.

Gabe peered through the gap in one of the slats so that he could see out to the grey skies and beyond. Everything was still wet with the tail end of last night’s storm that was still pissing it down; puddles of water covered every surface and there was not an inch of sun in sight. And Gabe thought that only he could gleam a little delight out of this depressing scene of summer.

Everyone else was always hoping for sun and warmth so that they could throw their clothes off and walk around half naked. One day, Gabe thought, he would like a tan and be able to throw his clothes off with the same carefree abandon like everyone else did. Without a care in the world, walking around enjoying the good weather. It was all anyone ever seemed to go on about. Sunny days, beach holidays, suntans, nice sunny weather. It drove Gabe mad but at the same time he would have given anything to do the simple things that most other people took for granted.

Gabe was so often forced to go against the grain of what everyone else thought was acceptable or enjoyable to do and not because he always wanted to, even though that is what everyone else had to presume and think. Gabe believed he couldn’t be more damned if he tried.

Out in the pouring rain it was a day like any other. Grid lock traffic, people busy getting from A to B, living out their routines, their lives. Day after day. The red brick houses topped with grey slated roofs lined up, one after another. The cars, sat bumper to bumper, belching out further plumes of grey. In all of its chaos, it looked static. Day in day out, it looked as if nothing ever really changed.

Looking out of the window, Gabe always had the urge to jump, to fly. If only he could rip off his bandages and open his bedroom window and just fly straight out, he thought. Give today a miss and just fly up high above all this instead and see it all for what it really was, insignificant in the grand scheme of things or all so vitally important? He wasn’t sure.

But Gabe couldn’t fly, even if he wanted to. His wings were too weak. Gabe was certain that if he just pulled up the blinds, opened the window, stood on the ledge and jumped now, he would only go straight down and hit the ground hard. Possibly breaking both his legs and destroying his mum’s flowers in the process and no doubt causing her to worry that he had finally lost the plot.

But that didn’t stop him wanting! Gabe really, really, just wanted to soar up into the sky and be free. He wanted to glide around for a bit in the space where there were no other humans, no shops, no cars, no school, no exams. No money so therefore no lack of it. No stress and hassle and pressure. Just the sky and limitless possibilities. The sky, Gabe thought as he looked at the black clouds rolling away, was the greatest canvas of them all. Ever changing, never the same sky twice. The gateway that led on to the rest of the universe, to far further than Gabe could possibly imagine and even when he tried to imagine how far infinity might be, it blew his mind away.

And somewhere inside him, even if he didn’t hear it, there was a knowing, deeper whisper that left him yearning. It was telling him what he knew but daren’t acknowledge; that he could be there, should be there even. But he wasn’t!

Gabe didn’t much like his current reality. He seemed to be living in the wrong one. One where he didn’t fit. He was square peg in a school of round holes. He knew it was all a miracle; The Big Bang, The Solar System, The World, Evolution, life and being born, being conscious. From the centre of the earth to the very edge of the universe and everything in between, Gabe thought was a miracle. He wanted to know the answers to it all and try and figure some of it out. But it blew his mind. Like the chances of being born as you...’the individual you’ were impossible, like winning the lottery over a hundred times over, and the jackpot, not just a tenner. Gabe knew that every day and every little thing and every single person was a mind blowing miracle but reality didn’t seem to reflect much of that! No one else seemed to realise or care.

For whatever reason, Gabe saw that people just wanted to get on with their day, their plans, their deadlines, their routines, their lives. And it all looked pretty boring and mundane. Perhaps, if everyone knew how special and unique and lucky they were, what a complete miracle everything was, then they would celebrate every day. Celebrate life, celebrate their similarities and their differences, be kind and friendly and dance down the street. Sing a merry tune. Just be a bit more bloody jolly about the whole situation.

Gabe tried to like people, he tried to like everybody or at least try and see some good. He had read somewhere that the thing that you most disliked about someone was nearly always the thing that you despised most about yourself. Gabe still hadn’t figured that one out yet. It could very well be one of those things that needed to go into the psychobabble bin. Or it applied to the masses but not to him, as he often realised. But Gabe found it too hard to see other men and women as his spiritual brothers and sisters when they were invariably so ignorant and boring or just plain unfathomable. It wasn’t that he didn’t like them, more that he just did not get them.

To Gabe, there was a bit of a vacuum between him and them. That’s what it was. Like a vast gulf or a giant valley. It may not have been visible but they all felt it.

Gabe looked out at all the faces in the street and he didn’t know why everyone was so miserable. Perhaps it was for the best, the way things had worked out what with all the evil and suffering that was about too. Perhaps if everyone just celebrated and partied all the time, nothing would ever get done. If there was no order and routine, no people in power or government telling people what to do, no laws or rules, would most people just descend into savage like behaviours? Were the majority of people not able to self-govern themselves, with their own high standard human right morals and human kind principles? Would they ever be?

But the way things were now, with everyone always so busy and so stressed out and suffering from this, that and the other, there had to be a better way. Gabe had read that in the sixties they took LSD to open their minds but now, they took Prozac to block out their minds! And Gabe didn’t believe much of what he read, Gabe reminded himself that everything was invariably lies and that he had to do his own research before he believed in anything, but Gabe could believe that.

As Gabe watched everyone getting wet in the rain, making themselves ill to go and clock in somewhere for the day, he wondered why it wasn’t preferential to have a more simpler life, even if that meant only having what you needed. Would that be such a bad thing? If everyone had just what they needed? And if they weren’t so busy, could the masses be trusted with more free time on their hands? Could people be trusted to educate themselves without having to be locked in a class room and forced to learn? Was all this misery optional? Did everyone need to work like slaves just to buy the latest ‘must have’ bit of stuff? To work their way up some invisible ladder so that other respected them for that rather than for their true qualities. Or was all this a part of the next crucial step in evolution? And did it really matter? And how the hell, thought Gabe, was he going to go about sorting out the whole world’s problems when he struggled to cope with his own?

As Gabe looked out between the slats of the blinds of his bedroom window, out to the far reaching grey of the real world going about its business, it cast a dark shadow over his heart and left him with a passionate desire to live out his life another way.

And then there she was. Grace. Like a welcoming ray of golden light and clarity breaking through the grey clouds of dark reality. Grace was secretly the reason behind Gabe’s own morning routine. He knew he would see her if he was ready in time. Grace was walking to school at the same time, like clockwork, like she always did, always had done, every school day for years. And now it was the end of the last year and she would probably never walk past his house ever again. Her routine was going to change and she would, in the very near future, be walking another way.

Chapter 4

Gabe had first met Grace a long time ago. They had been friends in infant school and then for a while in the juniors; then Grace’s family had moved house to a better area. Grace had gone to another school and Gabe’s life had filled up with the friends he still had now. Gabe might even have totally forgotten about ever having had Grace in his life but Grace had turned up again in the same secondary school. Where now everything was very different. Their eyes and minds had been opened up to all the other stuff in those few years apart.

The name of the game at secondary school was to fit in and be liked and Grace had naturally been absorbed into the crowd of The Beautiful. Gabe had no other option other than to fall into the crowd of The Damned. There were lots of other gangs and cliques and other students but as far as Gabe was concerned, there was Grace and her friends at the top, high and bright, and him and his friends at the other end of the spectrum in the school hierarchy; at the bottom of the heap, as low as you could go without falling off the edge completely and into oblivion. And everyone else, Gabe and his friends just bulked together as being in the middle.

Gabe remembered the first day Grace had turned back up in his life again. A lot was happening that year; Dave’s father had been arrested, Frank’s mum had died of cancer and Johnny, looking back knowing what he knew now, Gabe knew that he would have certainly already had committed his first crime and perhaps even took his first drug. Everything had already started falling apart.

But when Gabe had set eyes on Grace again, not only was she stunningly beautiful but Gabe had been transported back to the memories of those days of being a little kid again and he had realised that he had felt more like himself then, a himself that he had liked being.

Grace seemed to have remained pure, while Gabe and his friends and their lives were rapidly going downhill to a darker place. They were skidding along rock bottom and they were probably irretrievably damaged already. But not Grace. Grace had appeared like an angel, clean and beautiful and somehow more knowing. She did not appear to have any of the hang-ups or esteem and confidence issues that Gabe had. Gabe thought that Grace must have been born knowing exactly how you went about being a beautiful human being. She was blessed. She was just perfect.

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