The bus creaked , swung like a seesaw , and then suddenly it was gone , lost from the view of the camera .
The fate of the children — I turned off the television and drifted to sleep . ...
When I woke , it was to the sound of alarms . Charlie was sitting on the windowsill , whiskers twitching as one police car after another raced past our street . I ended up grabbing my coat and running to where the commotion was . None of the children survived . No , that ’ s not right . One of them did , only for a few seconds , before a shaky finger — amidst a hold your fire , you damn rookie ! command — pulled the trigger twice . The little girl fell .
It was nothing too fanciful . She didn ’ t sprout any wings .
For three mornings , the next town found themselves in places other than their beds .
Three months after , crime spiked to an all-time high . Our city was in chaos . Quick-handed , quick-footed . Each and every high place was a refuge to pickpockets , murderers , escaped convicts ( jail-breaks here and there ), prostitutes , and chronic masturbators . For some reason , people with a taste for night activities were the first to be gifted .
Three years in . Bodies littered the street when the nation ’ s crimefighters took to the sky . Cleaning them was easier .
Scientists initially believed that flight was the next step to human evolution . Of course those lab-people would think that way , except there weren ’ t any change to the way people talk , dump , sense things . They gained the ability to fly , there were no proper explanations . Physics was out of the question . Nobody paid attention to the Laws of Gravity anymore .
The Holy Church and its constituents called for quarantine . That is , until the Pope was found dead by head injury — he banged his head on the ceiling of his private lavatory .
Anarchy was a short-lived threat . Governments stabilized when politicians started conducting meetings on top of clouds .
Thirteen years ... well . Everybody else became birds of the same feather . Everybody else .
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