Weightless

Flight Risk

"Raaahhhhh!" Koda groaned, stretching out her violet-tipped wings against soft, fluffy clouds. She wished she could bang her head against the ground in frustration, but the pink sky-floor wasn't hard enough to make her point.

This place was infinite boredom; wasn't Heaven supposed to be paradise? Certainly not for Koda. She desired action, she wanted romance, she needed trouble. This way of life, or afterlife, was too simple, too easy. Many mortals spent all their numbered days striving to come to this place after death. How could anybody live so lamely? There were many other angels and saints around, perfectly happy, but Koda couldn't understand their simple, peaceful ways.

Koda had never been peaceful.

In her own life, she was a prankster who flew through everything by the seat of her pants. She never cleaned her room, she'd mix together random food items into an inedible concoction, and she always said the first thing that came to her mind. She was plenty intelligent, but she never put much effort into her education. She didn't see the point in working hard in subjects she didn't care about. "When will I ever use algebra?" she would muse, tossing a math textbook aside. She assumed never.

She was right.

She died young, barely in her teens, now immortally stuck in an adolescent mindset. There was no use for math in the afterlife, no use for most of the things she learned in school. She wished she had somebody to talk to, but she had, of course, died first out of her group of friends. She had so many great stories to tell, yet nobody to listen. It took an irritatingly long time to get to know someone; if only she could jump straight into being besties with anyone of her choosing. Instead, she preferred to avoid everyone. They made her uncomfortable anyway. She didn't know why, she just couldn't relate to them. She felt like she didn't belong.

If she was honest with herself, she was surprised she made it past the Gates at all. She had never been very religious, nor had she paid any mind to her conscience. The consensus for her to be miraculously allowed entry was that she had good intentions, which she supposed was true. She had been quite the deviant, still was, but she always meant well and been a true friend to many. She had been known for standing up to bullies as well as authority figures.

Koda gazed down at the world below. She missed that place; oh, the things she got away with! She imagined what she would do if she could go back. She envisioned herself swooping down with her magnificent silvery-white wings and scaring the pants off of businesspeople and hobos alike. She saw herself bent over laughing.

She turned over, onto her belly, and studied the mortals far below with a keen eye as they went about their daily lives. She saw a woman purchase a probably boring paper from a small news stand. The worker running the stand was a scrawny teen boy more focused on his cellphone than his job. She watched some orange-clad men doing construction work on a cracked road. She wondered if they ever used the traffic cones as megaphones; she knew she would. Or maybe she would use one as a substitute dunce cap for the man, four stories up in a nearby office building, hurriedly stuffing his face with somebody's packed lunch from the break room refrigerator. He could've just as easily had the complimentary Pop Tarts.

Suddenly, a winged silhouette flew across her field of vision, vanishing as swiftly as it had appeared.

"Hey, we're not allowed to leave!" Koda shouted to herself as she jumped back in surprise. "Especially in broad daylight! What if somebody sees you?" She thought a moment. "Well, if nobody sees you, then there shouldn't be a problem.... Clever, buddy! That means I can go too, right? I need to stretch my wings!"

She was about to leave, faze through the floor right then and there, when her obligatory door chimes rang. She froze, waiting, to see if her visitor would barge right in and list off every reason why she could not ever go back to the beautiful blue planet.