Savage Tales

amid the light.
    We went up and onward still, until we felt the cooler air from the doors. And the light that came through them was even louder, and we had to taste it and all that air that felt so different. We took our chance when the door slid open and went over all those people.
    I followed her but the wind was so strong out there and the light was so bright. I soon lost sight of her. My mind was a mess and I ran on instinct. I don't know if I was scared. I don't know if I was happy.
    I rested a while on a tree in the shade, until I had to see that great light again that lived so high up in the sky. How could it get so high up there? So, so bright.
    I flapped my wings as hard as I could, and I rose, rose, into delirium, joy, infinity, and the great light. The great light smiled down on me and I went up to greet it. It never once looked away, and I wouldn't look away either.

SEC OND CHANCE

    At age four he had no mother and a father too far gone in the anonymity of the pool room, that found him alone in a tiny studio apartment with cigarette butts on the floor, newspaper plastered over the windows, and the female corpse of a parent warm and gathering flies. He called to her and shook her till even his young mind knew it was over, it was done, and he made his way into the hall, a yellowy maze of corridors and stains that his mother refused to let him linger in, no place for a boy to play. Now that she was not around to forbid him there, the hall lost its attraction. He found the stairs at the end and winded down two floors, stopped at the glass doors to study the world outside. A cement truck passed swirling its gray offal like a bear stirring honey. A school bus loaded with ones like him went by. A black woman with a baby carriage.
    Enough of watching, he pushed the door and went out. The glass that had shielded sound suddenly kicked it up into his ears. Fumes from a truck, he coughed. Blasted sand into his eyes, he fumbled and turned, took steps.
    When his eyes once more opened, he was in the street and a beast of a sedan was on its way. He closed his eyes and hoped it wasn't, wouldn't, and although nobody wanted it to, it did.

    "He'll live but he's like a bottle of fizz. His insides – nothing but fizz. He could have been a goner. Should have. No boy is meant to handle that kind of a lashing."
    "Perhaps he's a special boy."
    "If he wasn't before, he is now."
    Laughter, medical joke.
    "He had pieces of fender all the way up in his armpits."
    "God. No boy –"
    "You said, you said."

    "Class, we have a new student. He will be joining us in the middle of the school year now because of certain events in his life I shall not go into, but suffice it to say that he is very special."
    Ronald Cunningham raised his hand. "Does he have special powers, Ms. Wertham?"
    "No, Ronald."
    "Spider powers? Like Spider-Man."
    "No, Ronald. He –"
    "Super strength?"
    "Rather that answer these silly questions, I think it best just to show you. I introduce to you... Phil Sucitta."
    There was silence and all eyes to the open door. A mechanical servo sound and in rolled a boy with little movement, his little finger fingering a little knob on his armrest which served to direct his movements.
    "He's a robot!" said Ronald Cunningham.
    Ms. Wertham wanted to go to Ronald and slap him upside the head, but she knew that by the time she reached his desk her temper would have cooled and it would have all been for naught.
    "Class, say hello to Phil."
    Class: "Hello, Phil."
    "Phil, say hello to the class."
    The class listened, but only heard a wheezy, whispery sound.
    "Talk louder," said Ronald Cunningham.

    Years later, it was Phil's first day of college, and he was moving into the dorm. He wheeled into the lobby with his guardian, an albino Korean man named Taehong Kim. There was a college lad behind the counter playing a video game, blowing up children on the moon.
    "I'm here to move in," said Phil.
    "Hold on, I'm almost done."
    "Don't you have a pause button?" said Taehong Kim.
    "You're right, I do." He paused the game and looked them over. "What're you guys supposed to be?"
    "Moving in," said Phil. "And I do hope you are ready for me. And I do hope I have a room on the first floor as I requested. I do hope. I'm full of hope."
    "You are," said the college lad. "Let's see how things stand." The boy looked over some files, a clipboard, frowned. "Things look unwell. We've got you on the fifth floor."
    "I specifically requested the first floor. I