Emily Poindexter 28 January 2014 Supernatural Story

Francis Gertrude Mosby was the weirdest girl in the sixth grade. She lived with her standard, blue collar parents in a three bedroom house outside the city in the rural town of

Cloggsdale. She was the youngest child and easily outshined by her older sister Margaret, blessed with blonde ringlets curled loosely down her back. Francis had stick brown hair that fell a little below her shoulders with straight across bangs that hit the rim of the oversized glasses that swallowed her face. Unlike the majority of girls in her grade, Francis had not hit puberty; she was small, underdeveloped, and still wore her clothes from the fourth grade. Velvet puppy shirts and

Soccer Chic shirts made her the sixth grade outcast. Boys did not look at her, talk to her, or even acknowledge her existence, unless they were cheating off her worksheets in Math class, which often was the case. Her features were mildly generic. She did not possess any outstanding qualities, but was a master of mediocrity: she wasn’t an overachiever, but typically got B’s in her classes; she wasn’t rich, but also wasn’t poor; she was by far not the prettiest girl in the school, but she was also not the most unfortunate. Francis Gertrude Mosby was the most average of girls.

The one thing that made Francis personally unique was her love for constellations. Before she could walk, her grandfather would take her in his arms at night and walk outside, explaining the constellations and pointing out their various shapes. As she grew, and with the help of her grandfather, she too began pointing out the shapes: the big dipper, little dipper, Cassiopeia, Scorpio.

She would stay outside until her mother carried her in, washed her face, and put her in bed. That’s when she would stare out the window, wishing with all her might that she could somehow get close enough to touch those constellations and coexistence. That’s where she would stand out.

Then her father brought home Petri. It was the second week in November, days before

Francis’s birthday and the dry air had a bitter bite. Francis, as usually, was sitting in her living room on the couch reading To Kill a Mockingbird when her father entered the house. He walked into the living room and stood with his hands behind his back, facing Francis with a peculiar, excited look.

“Franny, darling, I have something for you” he said.

Francis gently placed her book beside her and clasped her hands together. This was it, she thought. She was finally going to get those light pink Chuck Taylor converse clad with light sparkles.

She had been asking for them for months now and knew this had to be her lucky day. Francis pictured in her head what it would be like at school the next day, walking in with her new shoes on.

Marci Matthews, the prettiest and coolest girl in school would be sure to notice them. Since they sit in alphabetical order, with Marci being directly in front of her, Francis would tie her shoe on the way to her seat and Marci would see how cool she was and invite her to sit with them at the popular kids table at lunch. Francis was mentally preparing herself to talk about boys and lipstick and R rated movies, all of which she had no experience with, when her father placed in her lap a stuffed animal of a hummingbird.

“It’s a hummingbird!” her father exclaimed. “I know you were reading that book about hummingbirds and when I saw this at the mall I knew you would love it.”

Francis had lost her words. They had evaporated, were hiding like her constellations. While her father was right, she had read a book about birds, that had been two years ago for a class project on peacocks. She saw her mother standing behind her father, giving her a look that said ‘I know you don’t like it, but you best act like you do or a grounding will be in your future.’ Francis swallowed the salty knot of disdain in her mouth and hugged her father. “Thank you Daddy, I love it. I’m going to sleep with it every night. I’m going to go put it on my bed right now.” With every step she took down the hall, the further she felt from being a part of Marci Matthew clique. As she quietly shut the door to her room, she threw the stuffed hummingbird against the wall. Francis was awoken that night by a slight humming in her room. From her bed she looked out the window and saw the wind was tossing the trees. She went back to bed. But again, she was woken by the humming, which had gotten louder since the last time. As she stood at the window, assessing the wind, she heard the humming from the interior wall of her bedroom. As Francis walked to the other side of the room, she spotted the stuffed hummingbird that was indeed humming. Francis felt oddly relieved that it was just the stuffed animal, and assumed that the animal was battery operated like many other children’s toys. As she picked up the bird to feel for the button to turn it off, the bird squirmed in her arms.

“Oh! I’m seeing things. I need to go back to bed.” As Francis puts the bird down, she swears she sees it blink.

The next day, Francis comes home and goes straight to her room to finish To Kill a

Mockingbird. With her bed made and the bird to her right, she uses it as a prop for her elbow. As she reads, she feels nestling under arm. Believing her elbow is twitching, she pushes the animal between her side and elbow to leans into it.

“Excuse me?”

Francis looks around the room. Her mom and dad are still at work and her sister at cheerleading practice. She is all alone.

“Excuse me? Down here.”

Francis looks down to see the stuff animal staring at her with blinking eyes.

“Would you mind telling me the beginning of this story. Coming in towards the end makes it rather hard to become attached to a story” says the bird. Francis looks at the bird, touches it, and swears she can feel the oiled, slick feathers of an actual bird. She screams.

“Please, don’t scream. I’ve come to grant you your wish. “

“Are you real? How are you talking? What are you?” Francis’s mind blurred with questions and thoughts of her insanity. She stared intensely at the stuffed animal. Through her annoyance of its existence, she hadn’t noticed its beauty. The bird was marbled with an olive green on top and a large portion under its chin was a vibrant fuschia. Its belly, which was appropriately plump, was a pure white. Its body almost seemed translucent, that it could flutter its wings and take flight at any moment. The bird, whose name was Petri, had indeed come to life, with a shrill, strong singing.

“I’m granting your wish to fly, to see the constellations” said Petri. Before Francis could speak, Petri blew a white, silky powder into Francis’s face, some of which she inhaled through her nose. Overnight, Francis’s body began to alter and change with the addition of the powder. When she awoke the first morning, she felt perfectly average as usual, just that she had contracted some kind of reaction to the powder that resulted in an aching back. The next morning, Francis again awoke with a sensation in her back, which grew to more of an itch. On the third morning after she inhaled the powder, Francis awoke to find two small, white feathers in her bed. Assuming they were

Petri’s, she continued her normal morning routine. Then she looked in the mirror. Upon her discovery, Francis’s face fell into unnatural shock and began to cry. When she looked at her back in the mirror, she saw the formation of a set of white wings.

“Petri! What have you done to me?” she asked as she fumbled through the hall, back into her room. She frantically grabbed Petri from his position on the bed and violently shook him. “Why am I growing wings? I’m a monster!” “I granted your wish to fly. If you grow wings, you will be able to see the constellations.

You will be one with the stars. I thought that’s what you wanted?”

“No, it’s not what I want. I mean, yes, I want that. But wings? I’m deformed. I’ve got to stop them. Pluck their feathers? You’ve got to stop this.”

“I’m afraid I can’t” explained Petri, “I only have the ability to administer the spells, not take them back. I only gave you what you wanted.”

Francis ran back into the bathroom and stripped off her shirt, examining her back. Like hinges on a door, she where the feathers started and sprouted. While some were similar to the feathers stuffed in pillows, others were larger, covering more of her small, underdeveloped back.

She grabbed the tweezers from the bathroom cabinet and plucked all the feathers in site, slightly wincing when removing the larger ones. Francis was pleased that by the time she went to bed that night, no feathers had grown during the day. She went to bed relieved, not waking once during the night.

The following morning, Francis woke and rushed to the bathroom to discover that not only were the feathers back, but they were thicker and more voluminous than before. Not able to pluck them all, she grabbed saran wrap from her kitchen and created a makeshift corset to hide her new, budding accessory. Putting on her shirt for school, she could feel her wings wiggling underneath the stretchy pressure.

“Petri, what do I do? You must remove these. I can’t handle them” Francis begged. Petri lay on the bed and refused to make eye contact.

“I’m sorry. There is nothing I can do. I only gave you what you wanted.”

“Where did you get the powder? Who gave it to you?” she asked. “Oh, the people in the constellations, of course. They are expecting you in the next few days.”

“Stop this at once! There aren’t people living in the constellations. Remove them at once!”

Francis demanded.

“You should go up within two days. Your wings will guide you. I only gave you what you wanted.”

After two days had passed, Francis waited in the dark for her house to become quiet and still. She left her house and walked to the edge of the woods, constantly eyeing her surroundings to make sure she was alone. Then she began practicing her flying. She tried jumping, running and jumping, visioning herself flying. None of it worked. Finally, she began flapping her arms, and like a bird, she rose. She rose higher and higher, above the trees in the woods, above her house, above the steeple on the town church. She rose until she found one of the stars making the Big Dipper. There sitting on the star was a man embellished with the most brilliant, black, glossy wings. Francis was mesmerized.

Without turning to look at her, the man began “I’m glad you’ve come to join us, Francis.

We’ve been waiting quite some time for your arrival.” His voice was deeply sinister. Francis was scared.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what this is or who you are, but Petri said I needed to come. I’m just here to get these wings taken off.” Francis tried to remain calm but firm with her voice.

Without turning, the man spoke again. “Come Francis, we’ve been watching you and have been preparing for you. We’ve even made a constellation to be named after you.” Francis glided to the man. She could feel her skin chilling the closer she got to him. “Please, sir, take these wings from me. I love the constellations but I can’t live with them. You’ve got to take them, please. My family will be worried” Francis begged.

“Oh no, quite too late for that now. You’ve crossed the threshold. You’re here forever.”

Francis glided backwards and turned, flying as fast as she could until she hit the invisible force field. She punched and screamed, realizing there was no one there to help or hear her.

“Oh come now Francis, no need for that. You’re one of us now. We are your family.”

As the man turned, Francis saw the pits replacing his eyes and the hole where his heart wasn’t. Behind him surfaced hundreds of others all the same, pits of darkness with no soul. As they stared, she could feel a chill run through her body, and saw that her once pure, white wings were transforming into a glossy black such as those before her. Francis knew she was enslaved, never to return to her average life again.

“I’ve only given you all you ever wanted” he said.