[an error occurred while processing this directive]

 

Artwork: The Rise of Reptile Aviation by Will Jacques

They Fell from the Sky
Lori M. Myers

It was early morning, 2:30am, hours before anybody could see a thing. The murky sky slithered through Jean’s blinds like venom and checkered her room in purple. Strange sounds suddenly and without warning caused Jean to lie there staring at the water-stained ceiling. They felt like the earth crashing down on her gable roof, like boulders unleashed and about to tear through the beams. They bounced above the house – bump, bump, bump – and trundled down like rogue kettlebells. She felt the jolt of the freefall and jostled about in the bed covers. She listened to the clamor above her, made up stories about monsters forming out of the ether and giant winged creatures landing to do harm. Such were the types of stories she’d make up in her head. Usually, the neighborhood was so serene and silent, a pretty little part of town near Parc Victoria, edged by old time streetlamps and flowerbeds, where at night the only sounds were the chirps of crickets and the murmurs of strolling lovers. But not tonight. Another thud like a weighted bag of concrete, then another, and another.

When it became light enough outside to see, Jean glanced out the window, noticed the restless crimson sky, then her front lawn covered with what appeared to be human bodies of all shapes and sizes, some spread-eagle, others with ankles crossed, lying there on their backs, sides, stomachs, somewhere in-between. Jean’s heart raced. It was exciting to look out and see this ocean of humanity gathered so tightly together, as if they had all made the decision to visit, all at the same time, and all right in front of her house. There was no way that any of this would have awakened her sister, Miranda, who slept like the dead. Nothing could rouse her, not even these heavy, hefty noises thundering down from above.

Jean raced out the door so fast that her body had a hard time keeping up with her feet. A gust of wind tousled her long brown hair as she rushed into the yard barefoot in her pajamas decorated in pink kitties and yellow daisies. She made a circuit in and around the crowd of bodies, leaned forward to touch an elbow, a finger, as if in a clothing store where you just can’t help but feel the fabric. The bodies just laid there, none moved. Corpses? Comatose? Was someone cleaning house up there, deciding what “sparked joy” a la Marie Kondo?

Neighbors came out of their neat suburban houses, too frightened to come close, watching Jean as she leaned over the body of a man with a bald head and then another whose legs were twisted like a pretzel. One woman had her eyes wide open, the whites yellowed, circled by crusty lids and lashes. Her skin looked thin and crinkly as if she was in the process of wasting away but wasn’t quite done. Another man’s hair was being unplugged by the breeze, two or three strands at a time, and the strands floating up and away like flower petals yanked out of their cluster. Just then three more bodies heaved down in quick succession – thwack, thwack, thwack – one knocking Jean off her feet and onto the ground. Jean laid there for a minute, her face planted against the moist dirt. She played dead, closed her eyes, held her breath, imagined herself part of this group of fallen bodies, a feeling of belonging, which had always felt strange for her. There was silence except for the gasps she’d heard from the neighbors as she fell. They weren’t going to cross the line past their own properties. They wouldn’t get involved in this weird situation happening in full view.

Jean picked herself up and brushed away the patches of dirt on her pajama top. She felt superior, as if she was chosen by some omnipresent being for this human smorgasbord. “I’m fine, really. Really, no need to help me at all,” Jean yelled at the onlookers. “Oh, wait, none of you had any intention of helping me anyway.”

More bodies plummeted down just then. They had all the familiar human parts, although their clothing was disheveled as they burst through gravity. She felt proud walking amongst this strange phenomenon of fallen bodies and then to be able to show off in front of this small crowd.

“Whatcha got there, Jean?” asked Mr. Thuman, voice shaking, fingers gripping his mug.

“Mind your own business,” she shouted to the gathering crowd who feigned caring only when they didn’t have to get involved. There must have been a reason why the bodies had torpedoed down onto her front yard, but Jean didn’t have a clue. All she knew was that she’d take care of everything.

“Tell us the truth, Jean. Did you do this?” That was mean Mrs. McDermott who always complained about every neighbors’ holiday decorations and political signs. “Was this something you squirreled out of your evil head?”

“And if it was, what’s it to you?” Jean stood there defiant, hands on hips like some sort of proud superhero, like she merely had to twitch her nose or say the secret word and ghosts would transform into flesh and blood. Her neighbors, some of whom had lived here for decades, others who only recently moved in, seemed suspicious of the two sisters, particularly after the sudden death of their parents. Jean knew of the rumors, noticed their fearful glances toward the house, caught them whispering in tight groups when they thought she wasn’t looking.

Jean looked up and searched for that split in the sky, like a broken zipper, which opened up allowing body after body to tumult down into her world. Where did the bodies come from? Were there going to be more? Will the town ever be the same?

“Nothing to see here,” Jean hollered after a while. Then she lifted the shoulders of one of them and dragged it into the house and closed the door behind her amid the gasps and disapproval of the crowd outside. Jean felt so very special.

***

It was a little before noon when Miranda came downstairs to see a stranger seated in her chair in the kitchen. Jean was banging pots and pans, getting eggs out of the refrigerator, and boiling water for coffee while Miranda stood at a distance, waiting for some explanation, some conversation that might identify their visitor. Jean stopped what she was doing and silently eyed her sister. Miranda pulled her arms deep within her robe’s sleeves and wrapped the fleece around her, shaking beneath Jean’s steady stare.

“Do you want your eggs scrambled or sunny-side-up?” Jean asked.

Miranda took a few steps forward, stopping just short of the kitchen’s entrance. “Hello? Who are you?”

Jean laughed as she turned at the stove and cracked two eggs into the frying pan. “What a silly question. Don’t you know your own sister?”

“Jean, I’m not talking to you.” Miranda pointed at the figure in her chair. “I’m talking to HIM!”

Miranda expected this stranger to turn around and introduce himself or Jean to explain what was going on. Neither of those things happened. Nothing; no response, no reason given.

“Oh,” Jean said, turning down the oven flame. “I’m not sure of his name, he just kind of dropped in.” Jean’s guttural laugh unsettled Miranda, made the hairs on the nape of her neck stand at attention despite the warmth of the robe’s collar. It always had even when they were growing up.

“He isn’t real, right? It’s some inflatable thing you found in someone’s trash. Right?”

“Don’t offend our guest,” Jean said as she got a plastic plate out of the cabinet and gathered some utensils. “Actually, he’s real. At least he was. I’m not quite sure what he is at this moment. But that doesn’t matter. What does is that he feels comfortable and welcomed. Your very late breakfast is ready. Have a seat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“SIT!”

Jean’s eyes burned with defiance, like a don’t-you-dare-cross-any-lines-Sis type of look. Their mother used to warn Miranda, took her aside, told her not to fight Jean, to just let it be. Don’t be a hero. Don’t ask for trouble, she’d say.

Miranda slowly walked around to the other end of the table, kept her head down, imagined a face of horror like she’d seen in those movies Jean always watched, sat in her seat, kept herself in a bear hug and looked down.

Jean placed a fried egg on the visitor’s plate, then poured some coffee as she spoke to him. “Sir, I’d like you to meet my sister, Miranda,” she said gesturing toward her sister. “Don’t mind if she’s a bit freaked out. Miranda, I’d like you to meet … what’s-his-name.”

This “guest,” if one could call him that, was someone Miranda didn’t want to know much less share her breakfast with. The man’s body leaned to one side, his head rested listlessly on his shoulder, eyes devoid of life, skin sallow, his empty demeanor soaking up the energy in the room. Miranda feared he might fall over, imagined his body crushed against the linoleum, the impact causing him to deflate.

“What’s going on, Jean?”

“Why do you ask that? We’re having breakfast. And there are many more mouths to feed.”

“What do you mean?”

“Take a look outside. After breakfast.”

Miranda stared at her sister and, despite the robe’s warmth, trembled. “Jean. What did you do?”

“Oh, here we go. You ask the same goddamn question our stupid neighbors ask. Why am I always being blamed for everything that happens?”

That’s because it’s always your fault, Jean. Always. Miranda lifted her fork between quivering fingers. Just then, she looked down and noticed the yolk dripping off the plate’s edge.

***

Jean didn’t feel lonely anymore. She didn’t even feel odd because as the days passed she got into a routine of setting up the bodies around the house. It did indeed feel like the most normal thing to do in the world, and she took her time doing it because all of them had to be set up just right, just so. She didn’t mind the unpleasant odor that made the house reek of decay and forcing both sisters to take only the shallowest of breaths as they walked from room to room. Jean had purpose now, which brought her joy, but she noticed Miranda wasn’t herself, that she tiptoed around more, slept more, dragged herself to work early, left through the back door, then crept quietly back into the house so Jean wouldn’t hear. It troubled Jean that Miranda was unhappy. She wanted to make up for all of the problems she’d created throughout their lives.

Each morning at breakfast there was another body sitting in Miranda’s chair. For instance, one man who’d joined them for dinner the evening before had a tattoo on his shoulder that read “Mom”.

“See?” Jean said as she spooned out some gravy for the meat loaf. “He can’t be all bad. He loved his mother.”

The next day there was an elderly gentleman in a suit and tie sitting there and Jean felt it was appropriate that she serve him wine with his meal. The next week, Jean had “created” the perfect family – father, mother, daughter, son – and she felt elation in being a part of something so special.

“Can you hear them?” Jean asked Miranda. “The son is going over his day of school, and the daughter is announcing the good grade she got on a test. Soon they’ll be discussing college applications and prom and parties. All the things we didn’t have Miranda.”

Jean called what was going on right outside their doorstep a miracle. It was neither evil nor sacrifices, punishment nor something ungodly. These bodies needed care and respect because they kept falling, yet fewer now than before. Jean wondered if this was a prophecy predicted by some ancient tribe, or an end-of-days. She’d imagined all sorts of things, all kinds of reasons. But never a reason to feel guilty. Never for that. It was meant to be, she told Miranda.

The following morning, as Miranda returned home from her job, she discovered Jean trying to drag a particularly obese woman into the house. “Help me with this one, Sis, would you?” The woman’s skin was thin as paper as though it could tear, her hair gray with bald spots. She had on a faded dirt-stained house dress probably from being prone on the ground for weeks until Jean chose to make her part of their menagerie.

There was silence between the two sisters. Miranda knew the process. First Jean asked, then insisted, then threatened.

“Do it now, Miranda, or else I’ll tell your boss about how the money from the register disappeared.”

Miranda bit her lip until it bled. “You promised you wouldn’t.”

“Then do as I’ve asked. Easy peasy.”

“We had Mom’s funeral to pay for.”

“He wouldn’t care what you used it for. Just that you’re a thief.”

“Why aren’t the police here? With all the bodies out front?”

“They’re all sissies. I point a gun at them when they get too close and they scurry away like cockroaches and then they all get together with the neighbors and chant some stupid prayers. They probably think they’ll get some sort of virus from my new friends. Maybe leprosy, who knows? And if you say anything to them or let them into the house, I’ll tell THEM you’re a thief. Now let’s get to work.” Miranda and Jean could barely fit the obese woman through the doorway.

The next day, the police bordered the front yard with yellow crime tape, a reporter snapped a photograph, and nothing more. No one dared to walk past the bodies much less knock on the front door.

Jean strategically placed the bodies in almost every room in the house. Several were erected in the living room, sitting on the couch, a bag of popcorn by their side. Two became a couple and Jean had them holding hands, the woman’s head flaccid on the man’s shoulder. Of course, they had to watch something so Jean had the television playing 24/7. An elderly man was in the rocking chair, their father’s threadbare blanket over his legs, a book in his lap. There were other such arrangements taking place upstairs. Several teenage-looking bodies were positioned in the guest room. One sat near their old record player, their hands looking like they were in command of the music selection. Three others sat cross-legged on the floor, supported by the wall so they wouldn’t collapse. There was an empty bottle in the middle of the circle for a spin-the-bottle game. Jean had gone to much trouble to form their lips into makeshift grins.

The bodies began inhabiting the home as each day brought another tableau created by Jean. One late afternoon, Miranda arrived home with a tiny theatrical production constructed in place of where the TV had been. A stage made of wood planks had been nailed together and on it were two bodies, one seated and one standing directly behind it. The one standing had a knife clutched in its fist (held tight with duct tape that Jean had provided) as if the play called for a death scene right before the actor bows. Miranda had grown somewhat accustomed to what Jean had been creating in their home, but the play scene terrified her to her core. Their faces were covered in make up, lips smeared in blood red lipstick sloppily drawn beyond their borders, eyelids smeared with black, their ashy cheeks blotched with rouge. That night, Jean made Miranda sit and watch a performance of the play in silence. After an hour, at Jean’s direction, the two sisters applauded.

The bodies in the front yard were beginning to pile up as the transport into the burgeoning home slowed down. One night, as the sisters watched another muted performance on the makeshift stage, bodies began pouring in through the chimney, landing near the couple’s tableau in the living room and causing clouds of ashes to flow into the room.

“How lucky we are,” Jean explained. “Now we don’t have to drag the bodies inside. It’s almost like ordering out and having it come to us right inside our door.”

Jean felt sorry for her sister. She internalized Miranda’s loneliness, her despair, their parents’ loss and what that meant. So she picked out a particularly handsome body to place in her sister’s bed in the middle of the night. She set him up carefully and with all the love this coupling deserved. The man was placed on his side against Miranda’s back, one arm draped around her shoulder, his head buried deep aside her neck. After she completed her work, Jean tiptoed back out and went to her own bedroom, the floor creaking beneath her steps.

The next morning, screams exploded from Miranda’s room. Jean laid there, a smile on her face, a knowing that soon Miranda would come to her senses and display to Jean the gratitude that was so well deserved. What greater gift could she give her sister than the gift of companionship, of love? Jean rolled to her side, shadows there, curves and wrinkled sheets where there were none the night before. The body she had chosen for herself. Her hair still silky, her lips still full and inviting. Jean named her Phoebe. She’d always loved that name. Maybe she’ll choose a different body for tonight, maybe an old man and see what that’s like. Perhaps another later to join them for dinner. And then she’ll set them up in a chair, nice and straight, kept upright with pillows, and they can all play a few rounds of Pinocle. But they’ll need a fourth. Not a problem. She’ll just walk right outside her door or wait for a chimney arrival and pick one out. Miranda can help her carry the body in like she always does now. Jean will teach her how to position it so it looks life-like and real, just like the wax figures at Madame Tussauds. As Jean adjusted her eyes to the new day, there were more tremulous wails coming from Miranda’s room, screams which shattered the mornings before breakfast where there was always a new guest.

Jean played with Phoebe’s hair, forming ringlets that quickly unraveled when released. Then she whispered in Phoebe’s ear, “I could tell you were lonely. I wanted you to be happy, so I gave you some company.”

 

Home