Felix, Fly

Wall graffiti longs for something better. With the help of a new friend, he finds the courage to discover his freedom.

It was not the most breathtaking place to be tacked upon a wall for eons. Surely other drawings had it better, were lucky enough to be stored somewhere safe, away from the outdoor elements.  A crumbling concrete wall is so uncomfortable for its subjects. And itchy. People don’t know that about walls, but they can be horrifically agonizing for those who have to live upon them. This particular wall, which overlooked an abandoned alleyway, featured a mural of two skeletal wildebeests. No background, nothing fancy �" simply products of some talented teenage troublemaker’s sparse imagination.

The beast we are concerned with had a name, and was currently imagining calling some place more comfortable home, like a brick wall. He had heard, or more likely, conspired within his own lonely mind, that brick walls were the way to go- smooth as silk for their subjects, with the added bonus of a rough exterior that discouraged the unwanted caresses of passersby.

He wasn’t sure who gave him his name or why he even had a name. Maybe the designation had arisen from the constant conversations Felix had with himself. He would debate countless times a day, always coming to the same conclusion: who cared? He was Felix, and he was a mural, and that was that.

Felix always wondered what was running through the mind of the hooded street artiste who painted him awkwardly draped on top of the body of another.  To pass the time, Felix sometimes recalled that shady night of his birth. First, he did not see. The first thing the living Felix did was hear.

He remembered first that his four legs were formed, the wet spray of black ink pulled downward in simplistic, wavy lines, ending in clumpy hooves. His barrel of a torso followed, then his neck. The outline of his body was splotchily filled in, headless Felix inwardly flinching at the cold, pressurized paint jaggedly sprayed to represent the wild fur of a wildebeest. His head was last. As the boy with the bandanna covering his mouth worked at his head, the mouth, the bullish nose, the delicate eyelashes, the world gradually came into dim, fuzzy focus around Felix.

Though he tried to move, he found himself already seared to the back of another. He was born and at once trapped in a reality not of his choosing. After putting on the finishing touches of his masterpiece, the boy dropped the hollow spray can with a hollow clang. He stepped back, pulling down the bandanna in the process and breathing deeply. He admired his painting. Felix, his ears perked, waited, excited to hear all that the boy had to say about his new creations. The boy stared for several moments, his eyes narrowed. Finally, his brow unfurrowed.

“Goddammit, I suck,” he sighed defeatedly and loped away toward the faint, rosy sunset that dawn had exposed to the world.

And so Felix and his companion were left behind, abandoned by their creator.

In the years since they had been fused together, Felix had heard nary a word from his lifetime partner. The beast did not seem to be alive except for that agonizing, tortured breath he took every few minutes. Felix resented his silence, coupled with his own apparent destiny to be an empty skeleton cursed to forever drape over this nameless companion. The one below him did not complain, did nothing but wordlessly weigh Felix down, and so Felix was alone.

Felix, merely dry, cracking bones, took in the environment around him, staring out from empty eye sockets. Like he did every day. It wasn’t a very scenic view; clearly that teenage Picasso did not have the artistic eye he had hoped he did.

And what could poor Felix see from his permanent perch? Patches of dry, scraggly grass, an old man’s abandoned toupee. Scattered bits of trash here and there, a puddle of scummy, fly-infested water. Rusted hulks of framework leaned against the opposite wall of Felix’s alley way, someone’s car at one point. Someone’s pride and joy, once fresh upholstery and gleaming paint, now left to rot under the Midwestern sun.

Poor Felix was peeling. Everyday brought the inevitable closer: he would eventually fade away, scratch away in patches. Scraps of Felix would float around the city, evaporate into dust and Felix, never having truly lived, would die. This inevitability did not distract Felix from the fact that every day was exactly the same. Felix would stare with his unblinking eye sockets out at the alley that was home. He would look first at the sprigs of grass, and then glance at the sandy dirt. Train his gaze on that rusty framework. Occasionally he could hear the muted clicks of footsteps as citizens of the city strode by his alleyway. Every Tuesday afternoon, a young girl with blond, tangled hair in a windbreaker would stride down the alleyway. Occasionally, she would glance at Felix and his twisted companion as she passed. As much as Felix willed her to hear him, she always continued onward, exiting the alleyway.

If I could leave, he would think to himself, I would step out of this painting onto my knobby feet, stretch my knobby knees. Point my knobby head at the sky and breathe in fresh air.

But even fantasies lose their luster the longer you fixate upon them and so, there were long stretches of time when he would go back to unseeingly seeing the world around him. It was routine, after all. For years, Felix had been trapped on the back of that mouth breathing and catatonic wildebeest. The monotony was amazing in its safe yet never-ending dullness.

One day �" he knew it was a Tuesday because he had tried and failed to get the walking girl’s attention yet again �" something caught his eye. Hazy gossamer wings, tan little thing, it alighted on his forehead, slight as a kiss from a moth. A soft tickle of frail feet silently scraped his forehead. Feathery antennae reached down, perused his face, studying every grey detail, every sharp angle. Before today, Felix had never before seen a butterfly, didn’t even know what that was. He only wished he knew the creature’s name.

Every day the butterfly would visit him, but never spoke. She instead would walk the length of his face, scratching his bony cheeks with her puny princess feet. Felix could not respond, frozen in time as he was. She seemed to understand and soon had a napping spot picked out, just under Felix’s right eye socket. A friendship built in silence, something he had not asked for but was here nonetheless. A small miracle.

One day, the impossible: she spoke.

“Felix,” she caressed him with barely a whisper. Her voice had so many overtones, laden with rich pinks and pillowy purples. “Felix, it’s time to get up. You were not meant for this wall. Felix, you’ve been sleeping. It’s time to get up and live”.

I can’t, he thought, willed her to understand. The wall is where I was born to stay.

“Felix, it’s time for me to go,” she told him, her large, shiny eyes staring down his empty eye sockets. “I want you to come with me, you just need to follow. I was like you once �" stuck on a miserable wall, but I met the challenge and flew away.”

As if to demonstrate that fateful day, she stretched her wings and looped away from Felix, flying a lap around the abandoned alleyway. She returned, landed just under his eye socket.

“Now I fly wherever I please,” she continued.

Felix’s eye sockets, suddenly seeing, stared at her. Gently, those fragile and spidery wings began to contract and expand. She fluttered an inch from his eye socket, steadily returned his gaze.

“Felix, fly”.

And for the first time since his birth five years ago, he felt the strangest sensation. A pull in his neck. Like a thick rubber band that is tugged to its limit. What are they called? Ah, muscles! Contracting and expanding. But the two-dimensional skeleton was still set in stone. This was a foreign concept for him and he focused on this strange new feeling. Felt newfound tendons tense as he struggled to stretch. This was effort to he had never employed before, could never bring himself to employ.

“Felix, fly”.

If he could shake his head, he would have. Did she not understand this was impossible? He was a thoughtless spray-painted sketch whose only purpose was to defy shaky authority with his very existence. Felix was doomed to decay upon the wall.

The butterfly sensed his surrender, and fluttered against his empty socket, tickling it with her wing.

“Felix,” her tiny voice screamed. “Fly.”

He struggled to close his eye sockets to get away from this aggravating cheerleader, a blink!  Something so small �" could he have done this the entire time he had been up on the wall? Felix strained against his concrete prison, and after several grueling minutes began to feel the surface around him break. He felt a low groan as the wildebeest trapped beneath him realized his struggle. Smoky dust rose into the air as Felix, this dilapidated skeletal outline, freedom fought. Suddenly- a burst of wings, the birth of feather antennae and the wall cracked in two. The creature below him whined at his suddenly exposed, delicate skin and Felix could feel his accelerated, panicked breathing.

Gray, translucent wings, fragile at first, grew stronger with each flex. Delicate antennae tentatively poked out from the speckled and shaking wall, and with a final burst, it collapsed. Two butterflies were witnessed leaving the scene, one gray and one tan.

Author's Note

This is the first draft of a piece that I am hoping to use as a jumping point into a series of linked stories. All stories will somehow utilize the theme, "finding freedom." What is your general impression? Does the flow of the story make sense? Are there any unclear parts? Is it completely cliched and confusing?

Please be brutal.

Thanks for your time!