(DOWNLOAD) "Getting Shot from a Tree (Short Story)" by Confrontation * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Getting Shot from a Tree (Short Story)
- Author : Confrontation
- Release Date : January 22, 2008
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 50 KB
Description
I am the boy in the tree with clipped wings. The clipping is a process repeated without regard to season, the harbinger the scars that cover the blades of my shoulders, which begin to fester and leak purple blood that my mother dabs with a cloth from a bucket of water and ice. My father ties me face down on the straw bed, covered with an oily cloth from the shed lest my sweat and spit and blood ruin the mattress. My voice twitters off the walls, rising to shrieks as the pain increases, and the ice water that my mother applies with so soft a touch burns deep my flesh, more like a soldering iron to skin than relief. This goes on for days, my scarred skin tougher to break than it once was. But then, like a baby turtle pushing through its egg, the first hints of a gangly, placenta-soaked wing emerge. Within the next sunrise two full wings are exposed, laying flat on my back, my muscles untrained to move them. I have imagined the day when I could flap flap flap my newly birthed wings and defend them from my father, who digs into each open wound with a pair of secateurs, finds the joint as if he were carving a roast, and severs the tendons--tearing out the wings with his free hand as my mother cleans black bile from the wounds. All the while the wretched taste of oil fills my mouth as I bite the cloth from the shed, holding back my final scream, a deafening crow of hurt. By the time a metal poker heated in the fire is used to cauterize the wounds, I feel nothing. My father cleans himself with the hose, burns the wings and his clothes in a steel drum, and my final memory before blacking out is the smell of burning flesh and the sound of dogs barking.