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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2042700-Feathers
by beetle
Rated: 13+ · Novella · Supernatural · #2042700
Just snow flurries, I thought dismissively. Then: Wait a minute—
I was in my living room, watching the game.

It went to commercial and I got up to make myself a salami sandwich. I was halfway through this endeavor, spreading mayo on the third slice of bread, when movement out the corner of my eye caught my attention. I glanced out the windows over the kitchen counter then back down at my almost sandwich.

Just snow flurries, I thought dismissively. Then: Wait a minute—

I whipped my head back up, eyes wide as I took in the sight of large snowflakes falling in my backyard.

Unable to believe what I was seeing—it was a partially overcast, but mostly sunny day. In summer. In Pasadena—I put down my knife and bread and hurried to the back door, which I flung open.

It was snowing.

Agog, I stepped down the back porch steps, into a bright, wide ray of sunlight that parted the fluffy, white clouds and lit up my backyard like a stage. My grass, long overdue for a mowing, was flecked with white.

I stood on the stone path like one dazed—which I was—and when a really large flake drifted past my face, I did something the kid in me had never had a chance to do, growing up in Southern California.

I darted my tongue out to catch it.

Then I was immediately spitting the snowflake out again. Or trying to. It clung to my tongue like a lock of hair, and I finally had to pluck it off my tongue with two fingers.

I spit a few times, then held the alleged snowflake up to the light to see what it was.

It was a very wet, but very identifiable feather. A white feather about the size of a Kennedy half-dollar.

“Ew!” I exclaimed, dropping it and spitting again. I’d just had some random, filthy bird’s feather in my mouth and I wasn't pleased about that.

Another feather drifted before my eyes, and that’s when I realized. What’s falling in my backyard isn’t snow . . . it’s feather! It’s snowing feathers in my backyard!

Agog, once more—this time, with my mouth decidedly shut—I looked over at the Daigles’ yard, to the right of mine. No feathers. The same went for the Feldmans’ yard, to the left, and the Thomases’, abutting my yard.

No, my yard was the only yard where it was snowing feathers.

I turned to go back to the house to call . . . someone. The police, maybe. There was a seriously weird, unexplained phenomenon going on behind my house, and I didn’t know what would happen next. A rain of toads? A hail of nickels? A fog of Chanel No. 5?

But as I started to turn, the ray of light that’d seemed to single out my yard suddenly grew brighter, almost like a floodlight.

When I instinctively looked up, something partially eclipsed that light. I shaded my eyes and squinted. . . .

It wasn’t an eclipse. It was something falling. And it looked like . . . a human body. A limp human body, not flailing or moving, just tumbling end over end out of the sky.

I began to back up toward my porch. By the time I reached the top step, the feathers had stopped falling and the body was much closer to the ground. It was, in fact, close enough to see that it had, growing out the back of it, what looked like. . . .

Holy shit! I thought just as, seconds later, the body hit the ground in my yard with a deafening BOOM, kicking up dust and dirt, grass and feathers. I turned my face away, covering my mouth, nose, and eyes.

A minute later, I peered out from behind my hands, through the setting cloud of dust and feathers. I could see a crater in the right back corner if my yard. Hell, the crater was the right back corner of my yard.

I stepped off the porch and onto the stone path again, inching my way toward the smoking hole in the ground.

This is stupid, I thought to myself as I entered the vicinity of the worst of the dust and flying feathers. I should call the cops and let them deal with the crater in my yard that was made by a falling body after the sky snowed feathers. I’m not Fox Mulder or Dana Scully.

Yet I kept moving toward the crater, nonetheless. And when I got to the edge, I steeled myself for a hole full of gore, blood, and body parts, and looked in. . . .

There was no gore. No blood. But there were body parts. Connected, still, to the body. It was a whole person . . . a tall, broad, bronze-complexioned person, wearing a dirty, singed white robe, laying on his side, and moaning brokenly. Next to him, was a huge, smoking sword, covered in green-black ichor.

The moaning intensified, and he rolled a little more onto his stomach for a few moments, half-covering the sword, and I could see, more clearly, what I’d thought I’d seen when he was falling out of the sky:

Wings. Singed, white wings, protruding from his back, but folded against it, as if . . . he hadn’t used them to try and slow his descent.

A winged man just fell from the sky and crashed in my yard, I thought, laughing a short, hysterical laugh. But I quickly covered my mouth because the winged man rolled onto his back and opened his eyes—a startling, striking gold. They immediately fixed on me and I forgot to breathe as he—the angel—opened his mouth and spoke. . . .

TBC

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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2042700-Feathers