Read On Black Wings for Free Online

his chin on my head. “I can get rid of it if you want.”
    “It’s fine.” I patted his hand. “It just shocked me, that’s all.”
    “Why don’t I drop the kids off at your sister’s, and she can take the whole tribe to school in her minivan?”
    “Sounds good. Let me help get them ready.” I felt so stupid. It was just a dream. God, I need to lay off the booze.
    “Want me to call you in?” He pulled away and slid off the bed. “I could call Janice and-”
    He stopped. He was quiet.
    I turned with a smile. “What?”
    Something spooked him. He blinked at me twice. “Your back. What are those huge scars on your back?”
    Terror. Abject terror. It couldn’t be! I felt my heart drop, and my chest started to beat wildly. It can’t be. I rushed, I ran into the bathroom, I thrown off the sheets and I ran as fast as I could.
    There they were. I saw them in the mirror facing our sink. Two huge scars running down my shoulder-blades. The flesh brown and pink, my light-blue bra-strap covering them, the scars rough and calloused.
    Scars right where my wings should have been.
    “My God.” Brad stood behind me as he looked at them.
    I felt my head go light. If he wasn’t there, I would have fell on the floor when I fainted. Everything faded away into gray.

CHAPTER VI:
    It’s Hard to Breathe
     
    Ash is in my hair, in my nose, and on the horse’s back.
    I cough and sit up, rubbing my eyes. Oh my God, where am I?
    No! No, I want to be home with Brad, back home in his arms. Oh God, why? Why am I here again, back in this dream?
    Why am I falling in and out of these dreams? What does it mean? I want to be with Brad, I want to be home. I reach back and feel for scars, and I can’t tell if there are any or not.
    Jesus, why me?
    The city streets are choked gray with ash. It looks like a snowstorm, but the air stinks of smoke, and the heat makes me sweat. Ash piles up along the sidewalks, and I can’t see more than fifty feet down the road. Stoplights along the road blink red and yellow, creating luminous colored spheres of light in the ashen fog.
    I’m going crazy. I have to be going crazy. I pinch myself, I beat my legs, and I scream, coughing on the ash. Nothing I can do can wake myself up from this nightmare.
    The horse keeps walking, and I check myself. That same damn number seventeen shirt. My cheap sneakers. No socks. Gray cotton shorts. Dead phone.
    And no wings.
    “Where are we going?” I slap the black horse’s back. Just speaking makes me cough, as the air burns my sinuses and makes me gag. Jesus.
    We pass by empty cars sitting in the road, covered with sheets of ash like piles of fresh snow. Headlights cast eerie beams of light through the ash, fading away in the storm of soot. Inside open car windows I can see people’s clothes where they last wore them on their seats. I’m covered in ash, and I shake myself off as I beat on the horse again.
    “Answer me! What is going on?”
    Here I am, alone in a dead world on a dark horse.
    And I’m crazy enough to try and talk to him.
    We ride by a park so covered in ash it looks like a winter wonderland. Awnings, porches, cars, steps, statues - everything is beautifully covered, and it almost looks like a magical, perfectly wintry scene of peace and joy.
    If it weren’t so hot.
    I’m sweating through my shirt, looking around for anything, any explanation, any reason, or any destruction or clue of what happened.
    Nothing. Just a dead world covered in ash.
    There’s no craters, no massive plumes of smoke in the sky, no atomic fireballs, and no rubble - just death everywhere. When the towers went down the streets filled with dust, but that was dust and ash, sort of like this I guess. Did something explode, have we been hit by a meteor, or has a volcano exploded?
    Maybe there isn’t that much oxygen and I am hallucinating?
    But why would I live and everyone else die?
    Hallucinations, maybe.
    Maybe I’m in a hospital bed somewhere, drugged up, I hit my head, and