Extraordinary

The Flying Man III

/Anomaly_015_Abraham,SD_2013/

It was Sunday, May 1st, and Matthew awoke before the majority of his family at 5:20 AM. He put on a pair of denim jeans and threw on his dad's old 'Abraham Eagles' varsity T-shirt. Breakfast, as always, was 2 hard boiled eggs and a bowl of oat meal.
Matthew proceeded to feed the chickens and pigs along with the 2 Brown cows his family had purchased when he was just a young boy. After feeding and conversing with his cows, he checked the fence around his father's property for holes and weak connections. Nothing was out of the ordinary, nothing ever was.
After morning chores, his family would make the 10 minute walk to the Abraham Savior's Church where 35 families like theirs would bow their heads and listen for the word of god. Matthew never heard anything, but today he felt something different.
Matthew's father led his family into the 8th row of folding chairs which was always the only row open when their family arrived. He kissed his wife's hand and proceeded to push his sons into the chairs they stood before. Matthew made reassuring eye contact with his younger brothers before kneeling and clapping his hands in front of his head like he'd done thousands of times before.
"God?", he asked as if looking for someone in a dark room. "I wanted to ask you for a favor, oh Lord. I want you to show me what it's like to be free."
He opened his eyes and watched his father speak silent words of resentment, his mother's face solemnly looking toward the ceiling, asking for change. He turned his head to see his brothers looking distraught as they plead silently for more nutritious meals and green grass.
Matthew closed his eyes again.
"Show me what it's like to break the chains holding me here. Please. Please god."
People in the church shifted in their seats and itched themselves. Some coughed up dust from their fields and others re-rucked in their shirts after kneeling awkwardly on the floor.
"Get me out of here, God. Oh please god, I'd like to know what else there is out there, up there. Please hear me today" Matthew pushed his mind and concentrated on the target of his words.
"Please, god"
Matthew's father stepped toward him and pulled him to his feet by his collar. "Time to go"

Everyone stood and began a slow march toward the exit doors. Matthew watched as light from the stained glass of the church reached in and around the pews and around the people in the church. He watched as his father passed through the beam, casting a shadow on Matthew's brothers and mother, their faces still stony and lifeless.

Matthew closed his eyes and stepped through the glorious, white luminescence pouring from the stained glass.
"Please god, lift me up and take me away from this place" he plead.
Matthew's ears hummed and the hair on his neck stood on end for a moment before his father pulled him into the dry, dead air of Abraham.
His eyes wide and his heart beating, Matthew knew he felt something, something different from anything he'd felt before.

Upon returning home to his farm, Matthew couldn't help glancing at his family's 3 story grain silo which stood tall over most every tree in the vicinity.
His parents had retired to their bedroom and the boys had gone to work in the neighbors fields, Matthew walked towards the grain silo; Empty, decrepit, rusted, missing bolts and no visible welds. He had to though.
Something told him he could do it, something pushed Matthew up that ladder and onto the steel canopy of the grain silo.
Then, just as simply, something pushed him off, into thin air.

His eyes were closed, and he found himself praying once again.
"Catch me god, hold me" he hoped with his breath held.

He heard a voice below, "Matthew Calvin what in God's name are you doing!?"

"I'm flying", he said with his eyes still closed. "I'm free"

"Get down here right fucking now!", His father yelled as Matthew's brothers came running from the nearby field.

His mother gasped from her bedroom window, tears emerging from beneath her eyes. "Matthew no!", she yelled, although it sounded almost reassuring to Matthew, who was slowly descending to the ground near his father.

David Theodore Jones stood in front of his son, who was 8 inches off the ground with his palms turned towards the sky. Tears rushed to David's eyes.
"Matthew", he said as tears rolled down his cheeks

"Dad", Matthew replied with a little smile, tears beginning to well up in his eyes as well.

They stared at eachother for almost a minute, frozen in time as father and son see one another in new light.

"Matthew", David's smile faded as tears continued to slip down to his chin
"Dad, I'm not sure wh-", Matthew started as his father's hand moved to his waist band.
"Matthew, what kind of monster-", David's eyes became fearful and full of anger and distrust.
"What are you?" he asked as he reached for his gun.
"Wait! David no don't!", Matthew's mother, Maryanne, shouted towards her husband.

The gun went off.

A .34 snub nose revolver, capable of massive devastation at close quarters, slung one round at Matthew, missing him narrowly and finding it's way through his brother's left side.

There was a silence as Philip, Matthew's brother looked at his father and then down at his hands, blood stained and growing numb, before falling to the dusty Earth.

"No. No. No. No.", David repeated as he wept and aimed the gun at Matthew.

Maryanne screamed through her window as 2 of 5 more shots made contact with Matthew's knee and back as he rose up and away from the Earth...

That was the last anyone heard from Matthew Calvin Jones, although he was apparently spotted by a local news helicopter over the city of Abraham. One man claimed to have seen him in the dead of night hovering over a field of cows by Walt Street.

3 weeks after his disappearance, shoes that matched Matthew's were discovered 73 miles south of Abraham in a National Forest.

2 months after Matthew's disappearance, an 'Abraham Eagles' varsity shirt with a bullet hole in the shoulder turned up on the grave of Philip Jones in Abraham South Dakota.