Fiction by Phil Holt
(c) 1989
Albert was boiling water for his Friday evening macaroni and cheese dinner when he looked down and saw that his feet hovered four inches above the kitchen floor. Albert’s fingers tried to close around the macaroni box, but it wasn’t there anymore. He looked up from the boiling water and saw that his hand was suspended above the box. His heart began to race. He felt like he was being lifted up in an elevator.
“Oh, my! I’m floating!”
Albert felt his body was a balloon. He lifted off the ground until the bottoms of his shoes were level with the top the lampshades. His stout form was perfectly straight, as if he were standing still.
“I can’t believe it.”
He didn’t want the next door neighbors to hear. Albert was cautious. He was content to float carefully above the floor and drift slowly forward until he bumped into a wall. Then he gently pushed himself away and moved slowly backward. Albert was astonished that he could reach out his hand and touch the high ceiling with his fingertips.
He looked down as he breezed over his single chair and the table already set for dinner.
The placemat.
The silverware.
The bowl.
They all looked foreign from above.
He forgot all about eating.
“Oh, my!” Albert said.
His arms waived and tingled, and his breath became deeper. A joyous peace overtook him as he left his daily worries on the floor. He began to giggle—light, airy, childish—and his face widened into a broad smile.
This is so gentle, he thought.
Every inch he moved was slow and controlled. It was a graceful maiden voyage. The hours passed quickly as he drifted elegantly over his bed, his cluttered dresser, and his couch. The high ceiling of Albert’s apartment allowed him to practice ascending and descending. He found that he could control his altitude by will alone. Wishing to go up brought him near the ceiling and wishing to land brought him near the ground, though he never once touched the floor.
The more he practiced, the more speed and control he had. Soon he was confidently pushing off his apartment walls with his legs and executing slow, graceful midair somersaults: head down, legs up and over, head up again. He found that he could float completely upside down, and by making light contact with the soles of his shoes, he could walk on the ceiling.
By midnight, Albert was spent. He lay down perfectly straight in the air, but made sure he was over his bed just in case he fell when he was asleep. He played it safe. He reached down and turned off the light.
In his dreams, he drifted back to earlier that afternoon. He walked home from the city bus stop to his apartment. He saw a flock of pigeons flying through the air. He stopped and watched them beat their wings and go higher and higher and higher. He wished for an instant that he could fly away with them. He felt his heart skip.
That’s silly.
He walked on.
He opened the door to his apartment building and slowly walked up the stairs to his second floor apartment. Soon Albert was boiling water for his macaroni and cheese dinner and thinking about how the pigeons effortlessly left the ground.
That must feel wonderful, Albert thought. I sit in that office all day long, locked into that chair. Albert was tired of his job, of riding the bus back and forth to work, of his one bedroom apartment, of being balding and pudgy, of being painfully shy, of being trapped, of being alone.
He wanted to be free.
He wished he could fly.
In his dreams, he lifted off the ground and took off after the pigeons.
The next morning, when the alarm went off at 8 o’clock, Albert sat up, stretched, and yawned. He looked down and saw he was hovering above his bed.
“That’s the best I’ve ever slept,” he said.
By late Saturday morning Albert could float horizontally like a dirigible and replace light bulbs in the suspended ceiling lights. He fancied himself a blimp, hovering low over a packed football stadium with glowing messages on his sides.
All weekend Albert played an elaborate game where he pushed himself off a wall, curled up tight like a ball, and gently bounced off the floor, walls, and ceiling.
He called it Albert Ball.
I can’t tell anyone, he thought, as he watched the Sunday evening news. Nobody would believe me anyway. If I were show anyone they’d think I was some sort of freak! He decided to keep this secret to himself. He’d just float around the apartment after work and on weekends.
Each day of the week Albert awoke at 6 o’clock. He conducted his morning routine with both feet firmly on the floor. He showered, shaved, dressed, ate breakfast, and took the bus to work.
With each tick of the clock on the wall above his desk, he could feel his body fighting the swivel chair. When Albert first got his job, he thought the chair was plush and luxurious. Now it was a manacle. A trap. Albert yearned to break free of the chair and leisurely float above his coworkers, defying the rigid cubicles.
By 4 o’clock the pressure began to take effect on his body. Albert felt his stomach tighten. He could hear his heart quicken. He began to perspire. Yet the world seemed much lighter and brighter than it did in the morning. He smiled inside.
When 5 o’clock finally came, Albert walked quickly out the door, down the stairs, and into the busy street. He dodged construction workers, teens in T-shirts and blue jeans, men in dark blue suits with newspapers, women in trim business suits, clutching briefcases.
He caught the bus at 5:15, barely finding a seat before it began to roll. By now his heart was pounding. It seemed to get louder with each beat.
Surely people can hear it, he thought.
Nobody looked.
After twenty or thirty stops that seemed totally unnecessary, the bus approached his stop. He pulled the cord, stood up, and pushed open the door. He walked quickly to his apartment, burst into his apartment, locked the door, threw off his jacket, and soared around the room!
By Friday night, he could maneuver like a fighter jet. He raced around his apartment at Mach five. He dove low to the ground only to swoop up high and turn in tight midair ovals. Circles!
ONE!
TWO!
THREE!
He did nose dives, mid-air cartwheels, and the loop-de-loop: four full floor-to-ceiling circles!
This is living! Albert thought. He laughed so hard his stomach began to spasm. His face hurt. Finally, Albert lay still, floating slightly above the floor, deliriously exhausted.
On Saturday morning, Albert looked into the bathroom mirror. A pale, portly man stared back at him. He realized he had spent the entire week indoors.
Enough floating, he thought. I need some sun.
He decided to go to the park. In a blue T-shirt and white shorts, Albert walked five blocks to the park and sat underneath the trees on a green park bench. The sun warmed his arms as he looked up at the brilliantly blue sky. He heard the playful shouts of children and melodic songs of the birds.
Birds!
To float through the park! he thought. That would be fantastic.
He sighed and felt himself become lighter. He gripped the bench.
No! What am I thinking? I can’t do that!
He got up and walk hurriedly across the green fields to the lake. Someone would see me. I’d be found out. He walked around the lake three times and watched the ducks and geese take off from their water runway. He felt ill. He felt like he was being torn apart inside. His body tugged at his mind.
“What could it hurt?” his body asked. “I’ll stay in the trees. Nobody will see me.”
“Forget it!” his mind said.
The bickering went on in his head as Albert circled the lake another time and another. By the band shell, he bought a Popsicle from the man in a red, white, and blue ice cream truck. As he reached the wooden stick of the Popsicle, he knew what he had to do. Albert walked across the park to the dense brush at the edge of the park. He looked to make sure nobody was around. Once. Once again.
It was clear.
With a wide smile, Albert slowly lifted off the ground. His body caught the wind, and soon he crested the tops of the tall oaks and maples. He gently brushed his feet along the tree tops. The leaves looked like waves of a green sea rolling and cascading in the wind. For a long while he skipped across the foliage as he made the leaps and turns of a dancer in a graceful ballet.
The birds sang the lilting melody.
On impulse, Albert gave a strong push off one of the branches and drifted out over the field. He rose high into the air until he could see the ground spread out in all directions. He looked down and saw the tops of heads on little bodies. There were children and grown men playing softball on tan dirt diamonds. They hit the ball and scampered from base to base. He saw families who sat on red and white picnic blankets and passed out tiny lemonade glasses and sandwiches from square wicker baskets. Young men threw Frisbees and played volleyball with young women. Dogs ran to catch sticks. He saw the glass dome of the green house and the tiny fenced in yards of the zoo.
He drifted east until he hovered over the lake. It was a blue pearl that shimmered in the sunlight. Walkers and joggers orbited the lake. Albert noticed the slow, steady pattern. People would enter and leave the orbit, but the lake’s pull remained constant. There were always people circling the water.
Albert took a deep breath and began a graceful loop upward like a Ferris wheel that carried him arcing high into the sky. His lungs filled with air as he floated along on his back in the soothing sun. He could feel the gusts of wind on his arms, and as he reached the top of the circle and began to head toward the earth, he could see the earth spin around to greet him. Albert began a series of intricate and elegant turns. Each shift in weight or flick of the wrist sent him in another direction. Albert was an acrobat, tumbling and turning through the air.
Gradually, he began to drift back to the ground. The sun was lower in the sky than before. As he came closer to the ground of the park, he noticed nobody was playing softball. Nobody was tossing Frisbees. Nobody was jogging. Albert looked down on a huge throng of people. Hundreds stood with their eyes glued to him.
You fool! he thought. You just had to fly, and now look!
Cars were backed up for blocks. As he got closer to the ground, he saw white vans on the grass carrying satellite dishes and dozens of television cameras fixed on him. Flashbulbs exploded.
As he drifted back toward the ground, he heard screams and saw the mob rush toward him. He panicked and shot back up in the air.
“Oh, no! Oh, no!”
He felt his head would burst. His heart was thrashing in his chest. His mind was going numb.
“What am I going to do? This is horrible!”
Tears dripped down his cheek. In the distance he saw his apartment building. He looked back on the growing crowd and took off toward home. He was a missile hurtling toward his target. Houses, yards, and trees were blurs under him. Under the rushing wind car horns and people shrieking.
Albert touched down in front of his apartment building and threw open the front door. A woman screamed in the street. Albert flew up the stairs, threw open his apartment door, slammed it shut, and triple locked it. Albert knew he did not have long. He became a blur. He pulled the wooden bed slats out from under his mattress. He pounded nails through the slats into the door jamb. Albert could hear his heart pound in his ears. His arms ached as he shoved the couch against the door. He felt his back twist as he hoisted the dresser on to the couch, scattering clutter everywhere. His breath grew short and sharp as he wedged the mattress against the top of the door.
The fox was trapped and the hounds were coming.
“He’s up there!” someone yelled. “He’s in that room!”
Albert looked out his window. He watched the monstrous crowd grow. He sat on his floor, and his eyes welled with tears.
The sky in the window was pink turning to dark purple when the phone rang. Albert picked up the receiver.
“Hello?” Albert said.
“This is CNN,” the voice said.
Albert turned on the television. He saw footage of himself arcing and diving. He saw close-ups of his own face. They showed his eyes closed and mouth in a blissful smile.
“Nobody knows who he is or how this man achieved his solo flight,” the television said. “Authorities say the man has apparently barricaded himself in his apartment.”
Albert hung up the phone.
The whole world knew. He plopped onto the couch and stared numbly at the television. He glanced occasionally at the ringing telephone. Soon he unplugged the phone but stayed riveted to the screen. He watched himself soar and dive over and over and over. Albert heard a loud amplified, tinny voice calling out to him.
“This is the police!”
Albert looked out the window. Squad cars lined the streets with banks of TV cameras behind them. A large crowd of onlookers stood behind yellow barricades.
“We want to talk to you,” the tinny voice said.
Albert stuck his head out the window. “Please go away!” he pleaded.
“Sir, we just want to talk to you.”
“No! Just leave me alone!”
Albert imagined himself strapped to a large white table blinded by bright lights. Masked scientists probed him. He knew the rest of his life would be spent as an oddity. A human exhibit. People from around the world would flock to see the Floating Man.
Saturday turned to Sunday. The morning was slate gray. A sleepless Albert looked out the window. Red police lights flashed. The cameras fixed on him. Gawkers huddled under blankets. Albert knew what he had to do.
He climbed out onto the ledge.
“Look! There he is!” people shouted.
“He’s come out!” someone screamed.
Albert looked at his tormentors. “I just wanted to fly,” he said.
He leapt from the ledge. He drifted out over the crowd and hovered over them.
“He’s really flying!” people screamed.
Albert’s tears hit the hood of the squad car.
Slowly, he began to rise. He looked down and saw the trees. He saw the buildings. He saw the highways become more and more distant.
Up and up he fell.
Birds passed far beneath his feet.
He crested the white gentle clouds.
He felt the warmth of the sun tingle his arms.
He began to smile.
His smile lit up the sky around him.
Albert wondered if he would miss the earth.