For what? None of the medical personnel had ever made any helpful determinations, as far as he knew.
Allowing your child to be an experiment for money was abuse. All along they had been getting paid for samples of his blood, for the never-ending tests and experiments. They had told him that. His father was a scientist, and Ashar felt that role had played a part in his status being delegated from child to lab rat, but attaching an explanation to it did not help to lessen the pain.
The memories played through his mind as Ashar drove away. Ashar recalled examining the strange bones the morning he had awakened in the hospital. In the privacy of the bathroom, he had traced the ridges with his fingers, measuring their skin-covered one-inch height, thinking about how he could possibly hide the four six-inch width spans. The top two bones had started between his shoulder blades and slashed down and inward to just beneath his rib cage, the bottom two mirroring the top two, except in the opposite direction. None of the bones touched another. He’d been marked with an X of bone.
They had been fascinating then. He had known they would somehow make his life more difficult, known his peers would ridicule him. That initial reaction had proved true.
As he’d run his fingers over the taut smooth skin that covered them, a thought had taken root. He had imagined wings, seen in his mind a giant spreading mass of feathers lifting him up above the world.
He had dreamed of four wings holding him aloft for moments when sleep had claimed him, after the pain had settled into a dull numbness that night.
Ashar had believed that those images in his dreams would become truth. He had begun to wait and continued to wait for the wings.
He’d never told any of the medical personnel that he’d come to the conclusion that the bones would be wings. Nor his parents. Perhaps it had been a self-preservation he had subconsciously known was needed. He hadn’t even been able to say it out loud to himself.
To everyone else, they hadn’t belonged, they had grown for no plausible reason, and he had become nothing more than research. The doctors had gone on to label them floating bones and done biopsies and scrapings, peered over countless x-rays and cat scans. Concluded nothing.
To him, Ashar had never let go of the thought that they would become wings. Just because he hadn’t sprouted feathers yet didn’t mean he was wrong.
Someday, with no logical reason to back it up, he believed that the bones that had caused him so much grief would become exactly what they were meant to be. Powerful wings. And not two like depictions of most things that had wings, but the four he had seen in his mind. Wings with feathers glistening, fluttering, and soft as fur.
While his parents had huddled at his side and doctors had bent over his screaming, delirious form, he’d hovered at the brink of a world that held possibilities only movies presented.
Uniqueness.
Power.
The supernatural.
A purpose had been born inside of him that night. He’d listened to the mumbles of hypothetical jargon over the next few days while his mind clarified his future reality.
Wings.
Someday his back would flow with feathers and he would lift his four wings to fly.
He still had no more proof that it would be true, but he was grounded in the belief. Someday, he would have his answer. Today, he didn’t want to care.
His only plan now was to head west, away from Washington DC and all its research facilities, to make a new path. Maybe Kentucky or Arkansas. Or further south. The ocean could be nice. Seafood, beaches, lots of sun.
Somewhere outdoors. He felt free outside, unconfined. Away from stark white walls. Out of the glare of probing lights.
Maybe he wouldn’t even stay in the States. Ashar contemplated Ireland, thinking of pictures he had seen of acres and acres of green land. He’d read a lot of books during his containment and found escape in reading about different places around the world. He imagined going to Ireland would make it pretty difficult for anyone to find him. He really didn’t know for sure.
If his parents even wanted to find him. Ashar shifted in his seat, rolling his shoulders back, gripping the wheel. He blew a long slow breath out, and glanced at the folded piece of white paper that sat on his passenger seat before jerking his eyes back to the road.
No, he couldn’t allow them to find him. Whoever had sent the letter had told him what they intended for him next, and he could not let that happen.
For today, his only plan was to keep on driving until he ran out of money or gas, whichever came first. To find a job somewhere. Disappear. Live. Keep his bones a secret. To never be called a freak again.
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