Paper Cuts (The 52)

The 52 is a year long project in which I post a story each week based on photographs I have been sent by readers. They appear each Monday at my website, and from now on will subsequently appear here. This story brings us up to date, and is based on the photo, uploaded here as a cover, by Andy J C Hannis..

Paper Cuts

by Andy J C Hannis and Richard Wright

A woman swoops low over the park, her briefcase clutched tight and her grey suit jacket rippling hard in the wind. She has her hair tied back and one of those disposable plastic visors over her face to protect her from intemperate weather and avian incontinence. So many people can fly these days that you can buy those things over the counter wherever they sell mascara.

Her visor reflects the bright morning sun, giving her a face of golden light. I roll my eyes, even though she is majestic.

The sleek line she holds as she banks left into the blue glass canyons of the financial district is admirable. I am led to understand that flying in that classic stretched out pose that we all remember from the comic books is murder on the core, and there's a cottage industry producing specialist Pilates DVDs aimed at toning the deep, long muscles of fliers. You no longer see the unsightly and obese bobbing about on the air like truculent balloons. Self-respect keeps them grounded.

I miss them. Their clumsiness made me feel better. You may point the finger and flame my smugness if you choose, but I didn't have much to be cheerful about in those early days.

A runner streaks past me on the park footpath, his legs a kinetic whirl, and I can't help but wonder what he's clocking. There are speed limits on public walkways now, but this gentleman doesn't care. Litter is scooped from the ground by his backdraft, and floats back down like delinquent rain.

*

Two years ago the world woke up with super powers. It took a while for anybody to realise this, because the circumstances in which people might discover that they can shoot ice from their every appendage (the detailed implications of which make me shudder in all manner of ways), or stick to walls, or project their thoughts halfway across the world, are surprisingly few. It took weeks for anybody to discover that they could leap tall buildings in a single bound, because nobody was really trying to.

Of course, after the first few manifestations, people experimented. There were many comical deaths. I'm sorry, that's harsh, but you must have laughed too. Fantasy and reality got mixed up, and people made rash assumptions about which super power they probably had. Many threw themselves off buildings, only to have the ground explain to them in the crudest of terms that their new ability was not flight.

I was as excited as everybody else, or course. I couldn't wait to discover what my super power was.

I was due a crushing disappointment.

*

I used to live in a lovely modern apartment, back when I was an accounts manager - a sunlit cream and chocolate luxury. You would have been impressed by it, I hope. After all, that was what it was designed to do. Like the rest of my life, it was a shallow farce. I understand that now. Still, I'd love to have that apartment back.

Look at where I live today. A tiny one bedroom in a grey block that looks more fused than built. All that saves it from being a slum is the lack of malice among the inhabitants. It's a polite downfall of a place, where many of us with less than dazzling abilities have ended up. Next door to me lives sausage-eating Dave. He has the ability to consume as much as he wants without gaining weight, as long as it's sausages. Not much of a power, but one he has embraced. It makes him abominably flatulent, which may explain his slide down the social hierarchy and into purgatory.