Here's my first draft. I'm looking forward to going through and polishing it up this week.
Scud Run
Derek thought about the day they took down the powerlines on his street. His shirt had stuck to his back almost as soon as he and his brother sat on the front porch to see the men coming through their neighborhood. They hadn't been used for almost a year, but the city hadn't made it a priority to remove them until then. He remembered his dad looked sad when he came home from work and saw they were gone, but just made a comment about how it might raise the property value.
In school they'd watched an old movie about a man who had to emergency land a plane. It was supposed to be a true story, but in it the pilot had flown through a cloud. The class laughed at the absurdity of it. After the film the teacher showed them real videos of pilots flying through them, and then showed them the first incident of the changing clouds. The video showed a woman hollering about how low a plane was flying through their town.
"They're gonna hit a building. They're gonna crash," the lady screamed.
The plane was dangerously close to crashing and it landed in a field outside of the town. The video cut to a close up of the man's wings and they were bent in.
"I wasn't aiming to do a scud run," he said. "I had to. I swear I had to. Look at the plane."
When Derek and his brother woke up they liked to go outside and watch the sky. They saw the planes fly under the clouds sometimes, and other times watched the clouds sink towards the Earth. One time they tried to chase one as it fell. They thought they'd be able to get up into the cloud and ride it back up.
That same summer, after the poles were taken down, they decided to touch a cloud. There was a big church at the edge of their neighborhood, and behind the church was a large field. Every so often they would see a cloud lowering down towards the ground and it always looked like it landed in the middle of that field. One morning right before the sun began to rise Derek's little brother woke him up.
"A cloud. I see a cloud falling. C'mon, let's go."
Derek threw some shorts and a hoodie on and the two of them ran out the door. They cut threw a neighbor's yard and ran as fast as they could. Near the edge of the field was a small covered pavilion with two old wooden picnic tables. They sprinted past it and kept their heads up in the sky looking for the descending cloud. It was gone, but as they looked around they saw fog all around them.
Derek reached out scooped his hand through the fog. He watched as the fog curled around in his hand. He formed it in a ball and raised it in front of his face. He blew out and the fog swirled all around him. His brother laughed and grabbed some up as well. They made them into balls and pushed them at each other. Instead of spreading apart the balls joined into one another. Derek pushed it easily, but his younger brother actually had to strain to get it to move.
"I've got an idea,"Derek said as he pushed down a little on the ball of fog and made a curved edge on it, until it almost resembled a seat. Then he picked up his brother and placed him in the makeshift saddle. His brother sat a top the fog with a big smirk on his face. Derek gave his brother a small shove and watched as the fog and his brother floated through the air.
His little brother hopped off and grabbed some fog. He clumped it together and began to make it into a rectangle. Once it was big enough he pushed it to about knee height and stepped on it.
"I'm standing on it. Look Derek, I'm standing," he said with a laugh.
Derek tried to put his body weight on it, but his foot just broke through.
As his brother stood there he made small bounces that tested the weight he could put on the fog. The two brothers locked eyes, and silently began running around scooping up even more fog.
A short time later they had 15 rectangles. Derek placed the first one about three feet off the ground. He stacked them all on top of each other and they became slightly locked together. He could move them around as one unit, but one could be removed off the top or bottom easily as well.
Derek instructed his brother as they began to make a makeshift pair of fog steps into the sky. Before long he was watching brother climb higher than the pavilion. He was laughing as he said that his brother should try to get to the same height as the light pole on the field. As he watched him go he kept his eyes on his brother to make sure he wasn't going to fall off the side. He called out, "only go as high as the light. Any more than that is too far."
His brother reached the light. It was at least 15 feet in the air. Derek started to tell his brother to come down, when he saw him start to panic.
"Derek," he shouted. "The fog. It's disappeared down there."
He'd been looking up the whole time, and hadn't noticed the first tier of stairs was completely gone. The atmosphere had shifted and the fog was clearing.
"What do I do?" his brother shouted.
Derek looked around frantically. He could feel the absurdity as he looked for anything to help. A pole that long, a jet pack, a plane flying low. He panicked even more at thought. They weren't in a flight path, but it was always a possibility that a plane could fly overhead.
"Look," Derek said, and pointed a little higher.
There was a cloud drifting near his little brother.
"Use the fog to get to the cloud."
His brother used the same technique he'd been doing, and clambered his way a little higher up to the cloud. At first he could only see a faint outline of his little brother, but then he popped his head over the side and waved.
"It feels like the softest pillow in the world," his brother said with a smile in his voice that betrayed the nerves they both had a moment ago.
"Most clouds sink," Derek shouted. "They must be a little different than the fog. Can you try jumping on the cloud?"
He held his breath as he watched him start bouncing on the cloud. There was always the possibility that he would break through, and his brother would careen towards the ground. Derek thought he would try to catch him. It'd be better for them both to be hurt or dead than to just watch him splatter on the grass.
The cloud slowly started to lower back down. Both of them whooped and hollered. As it got closer to the pavilion Derek pulled out one of the picnic tables and clambered up to the top. As the cloud floated just above the pavilion he dove onto it next to his brother. He sank down into the cloud, but it held his weight. The two laughed uncontrollably as the cloud sank the rest of the way to the ground.
Topic: First Draft: Scud Run (Read 1028 times)