Aberrant: 2011 - The Leaf and The Wind

[Clayton the Smith]

It was the terrible secrets of men that motivated him to succumb to the life of a hero. It wasn’t any one particular or peculiar incident that drove him to his lifestyle, but was the culmination of the years in which he had seen things in which would drive lesser men mad. Once he obtained his magnificent ability to do what he can do better than anyone prior to his acquirement of said ability, it wasn’t something that he needed to contemplate doing, nor did he pause for a moment when the time to act arose, and that is what makes him a True Hero.

The Sun Rose, he called it. It was a tulip, and it was a precious gift to him from a lost friend. He recalled the tale with great ease, as it had been a recent tale. The morning sun was high in the sky, and it was hardly considered a morning for the town of Seattle. The ocean smell was strong, and a breeze traveled the alleyways of the inner city with intention of escaping the elaborate and copious maze that the city had become. A young girl traveled on the wind as if she had made the transformation to a leaf of a tree, wearing a green school uniform, carrying a red bag, and she had the better part of a tulip stem woven through her braid, leaving the flower poised above her left ear. She floated gracefully until she hit a dead end, with a proverbial wall.

Opposite the leaf stood two men, facing each other and gleefully sharing a story of past engagement. The girl stopped as she noticed them, and it seemed their attention diverted to the girl almost immediately. The larger section rocked his great and stiff arm toward her, and the leaf flinched, dead in the air. He told her to come, but she would do no such thing. Behind the leaf appeared a spider, a small and disgusting man wearing a pair of ratty shoes and a cabbie hat.

The leaf appeared to be a fly now, caught between a stern wall and an intricate web. She ran against the wind, but was soon caught in the dangerous trap with the wall closing in fast upon her. But the web broke, and several seconds later there was a terrible and deafening boom. Loose papers took to the sky, and the spider was crushed against a wall. Alive, he was, but conscious, he was not. The wall blinked their eyes, and the leaf seemed to be caught in a shock herself. A trail of dust rose after a blur, and there was another deafening boom as the wall broke and scattered across the ground. Soon, the leaf was more afraid than curious, and she took off into the wind once more, unaware that her flower had been plucked from her sweet braid.

The wind seems to never stop in Seattle, a grey wind equipped with only The Sun Rose, and a penchant for street-style justice.