The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Icarus
by Suzanne Madron

Twenty minutes into the flight everything went wrong. He turned to the co-pilot and nodded toward the sky surrounding them.

“Did you see that?”

The co-pilot was a new guy and he couldn’t remember what his name was. He just thought of him as CP.

CP squinted through the cockpit window at the miles of clouds. He shook his head. “What’d you see, Frank?”

Frank Capretta – Cappy to his friends – pointed. “That cloudbank over there. I swear I saw something.”

“Something?” the younger man echoed.

Cappy nodded. “Looked like a guy out there with wings.” He shook his head and laughed. “Probably just tired is all.”

Both men jolted in their seats as something slammed against the window of the cockpit.

“Jeesis H!” Cappy shouted.

The man staring in at them looked as surprised as they were, except that he was crushed against the glass and dead. Feathers blocked their vision as the dead man’s wings pressed against the window.

Before either of them could react, the winged man slid along the window. His blood smeared in his wake and his body continued its journey around the side of the plane. As he disappeared, they heard a horrible noise from one of the engines on that side of the plane.

“Oh no. You gotta be kidding.”

As if in response, lights began to blink. Somehow the body had taken out the engines on that wing.

Cappy kept the plane as steady as possible while CP got on the intercom to tell people to buckle up and return to their seats, that they would be making an unexpected stop. Cappy could already hear the panic beyond the cockpit door, the passengers had seen the body and they were freaking out.

On the ground a man watched the plane descending toward the desert. He shook his head and folded a pair of wings into a carrying case. He had warned his flying partner not to fly too high, but the young man hadn’t listened. He could have told him that bad things happen when you fly too high.

Fiction © Copyright Suzanne Madron
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

More from Suzanne Madron:

For Sale or Rent

The house across the street seems to go on the market every few months, but this time nothing about the sale is normal, including the new owners. No sooner has the for sale sign come down and the neighborhood is thrown into a Lovecraftian nightmare and the only way to find out is to attend the house warming party.

Available on Amazon!