#138 Wings

by Brian Corbett

I called my brother’s name with more strength than I knew I ever possessed. I shouted twice more, awaiting a response that would never come. The waves lapped the shore at my feet as I searched the horizon, bright sunlight blinding me. The feathers tumbling onto the sand atop the rolling surf made me ill. I knew. This is what it had come to. Father did what he did to save his reputation. Admired by all for his talents he would not have the truth known. It was he who forced himself onto me, his hidden, unknown daughter, and when Icarus discovered him in the act father set forth his plan for the demise of his young son. Icarus loved and trusted father. He knew nothing else. Poor Icarus’s brain, addled since birth, was not capable of understanding evil. He simply followed father’s plan. The exhilaration he must have felt, soaring high and free like the great gulls, swooping and dipping, climbing again only to dive courageously, must have shown him release like he’d never known. Icarus was out there, somewhere. I felt somehow responsible, even though I was also a victim. I vowed then and there to spend my life seeking out father and exposing him for the monster he was. My very existence was a secret, but from this day forward I would see to it that the world knew that this highly skilled genius was, in reality a brutal, cold blooded beast. Icarus and I deserved it.