Free Fall
My sight were fixed on the skyline, as gray and mute as my eyes. The vacant grassy fields rippled steadily in the wind. Glancing at my watch, I could see that it was nearing the evening hours of that mid-November day. The air was heavy with the scent of water, the only crack in its placid mask. Beyond the quiet winds lay a howling storm, already with three casualties to its name.
Tony, my old flight instructor, made a deep, disgusted sound. He looked over his shoulder at me, his eyes condescending and clouded in disapproval. It was the way I imagined he used to look at my older brother whenever some half-crazed thought took hold of his racing mind. And like my brother, I would ignore the old man’s cautious warnings, driving poor Tony to near madness. He turned his gaze back on the sky, several paces in front of me, shaking his head in disapproval. From where I was, his silhouette looked something like an old toad, hunched and misshapen against the ensuing darkness. His thick hands rested upon a set of thick hips, a defiant stance against my decision. Finally, he turned in my direction, roughly shoving a white flight helmet into my chest.
“Yer a damned fool for goin’ out in this.”
Wordlessly, I began to strap on the headset.
“This storm is takin’ out planes left an’ right. It’s got traffic control standin’ on their heads an’ runnin’ backwards. It already took out a plane in Illinois. They say it made two planes collide in midair - right up in Manitoba.”
“That’s about a one-in-a-million chance. It won’t happen again,” I reassured him.
“Yer as suicidal as yer dad claims. Gonna git yerself killed if that storm hits before seven.” Beneath his condescending remarks, I could detect a hint of fatherly concern.
“I’ll be fine Tony,” I muttered. “I just have to be in the air when six-twenty-seven rolls around.”
He spat on the ground and buried it with a kick of dust. It was a habit he picked up from one of his military buddies during the Gulf War. Years of repeated use had turned it into an unconscious tic he performed whenever he was frustrated. Right now, I could tell he was more than a little angry with me. “Caleb always said you were a determined one, Cristabel, but he never mentioned the stupid part. Would he really want you to remember him this way? By getting’ yerself killed?”
“I’m not killing myself!” I snapped. Recomposing myself, I took hold of my breathing and continued on.
“Besides, this isn’t for Caleb. This is for me.” I caught his eyes and held his steady gaze. Attempting to look sincere, I turned my normally blank expression into one of solid determination. I knew what I was saying was a lie, but it was the only way I could convince Tony to let me fly in the approaching weather.
Reading my face, his shoulders sagged in defeat. “Yer up in twenty.” I watched him disappear into the traffic control tower before grabbing the messenger bag that had once belonged to my brother, Caleb. Checking my watch again, I saw that it was exactly five. In one hour and twenty-seven minutes, I would officially be older than my older brother had ever been.
I settled myself into the cockpit, readying for departure. In my five year flying career, I had made more solo flights than I could even count. Deliveries, flying lessons, air show support – nothing in the field of civilian flight left untouched. Despite my jack-of-all-trades experience, every type of mission had become a bland string of landings and takeoffs. It was almost comical in a way - just how monotonous flying had become. Whenever I mentioned to people that I worked for a small, Midwestern airport, they became enthralled with the notion. You fly airplanes? That must be so exciting! I never once considered flying exciting. To me, being airborne was the same as driving along some abandoned highway: wearisome but necessary. The reason I strapped on my helmet every morning and sailed off into the cloud dotted abyss wasn’t for some sort of cheap carnival thrill. It was to find the spirit that lived inside of Caleb. I believed that if I could do that, then I could understand why we had to bury him nine years ago.
My movements were automatic, taking me from the safety of the hanger and into the billowing winds that swept the runways. I thought of nothing as I effortlessly put myself into the sky. I circled the airport for a good half hour, counting down the minutes until six twenty-seven. I wasn’t sure why I felt being in the air this time would help me discover Caleb, or why I’d even bothered to calculate the exact minute I would surpass him in age. It was just something I felt I had to do.
Listening to engine’s hum, I shut out the crackling voice of Tony from air traffic control, becoming dangerously disconnected. Through the windshield, I could see a hawk poised in a dive bomb-like fashion. The graceful curve of his wings set off a ringing in my head. I was reminded of my father’s last words to me as I left our homestead for the first and final time. Of the three people he loved in life, I was the last to pry myself from his grasp. And yet, he let me go with the same cryptic message he had given my mother and older brother: When I came back, it would be in a pinewood box.
The town we lived in was called Coalville, Iowa. Only six hundred people had been crazy enough to anchor themselves into that endless expanse of prairie and call it “home”. The industrial age had forsaken these dotted plains, and so they lived and died with the harvest. My mother had been born out west, landing herself in Coalville through a series of misfortunes and mistakes. She couldn’t stand the way my father existed, holding his breath in the late Fall and not breathing again until the earth was resurrected in the Spring. Like heavy weights dragging her into the mud, we were the only thing keeping her from taking flight. She didn’t outright hate us for it, but she grew weary of us.
When I was three, she left the family. I don’t have any resounding memory of her walking out. There was no classic scene in my head of her thin silhouette clutching a suitcase in the door frame. One day I woke up, and she simply was no longer there. To be honest, nothing really changed. She was always distant from the rest of us, standing beyond an arm’s reach in family photographs. Even before her abandonment, Caleb was the one I ran to for scraped knees. He was the one who told grand stories of pirates and fearless knights to chase away the monsters from under my bed. My mother was a mere name upon my birth certificate, forgotten until I was thirteen.
She’d remarried not long after her departure, merely as a means of survival. Her new mother-in-law, a shrill disaster of a woman, called our house that Spring to give us the news of my mother’s passing. “Dreadful, simply dreadful,” she kept trilling into the receiver. “The doctor’s saying it was an accidental overdose. My son’s completely broken up over the whole thing. Oh, it must be even worse for you. You poor dear. You poor, poor dear. You don’t have to be so strong, cry if you really want to.” I remember holding the phone away from my head, confused at her hysterical ranting. Cry? Why would I cry over someone I’d never even known?
My father took us to her funeral, despite my apathy. When Caleb and I viewed the body, I couldn’t even recognize her face. I’d been hoping for something more to be gained from awkwardly staring at her pallid corpse. An apology letter. An I.O.U taped to the top of her casket – even the word “mother” printed somewhere on her tombstone would have been something. But there was nothing. I could feel Caleb’s grip tighten around my hand as we walked away, emotion woven in the strength between his fingers. We were just as much a footnote in her life as she was in ours.
My mind snapped back into focus as the watch on my wrist beeped. It was almost six. That moment was getting closer. For the first time, I felt my stomach tighten a bit. Was this really the last time I would go chasing after Caleb? I could see the sky’s violent backdrop through the rain speckled side window. Beneath me, the rows of un-harvested corn rippled like a restless ocean. It was concerning, but not worth me abandoning my mission over. I felt that Caleb was close. Somehow, finding him would help me find myself.
Caleb often told me that he didn’t feel alive unless he was flying. As a young boy, he would craft airplanes out of paper and toss them into the night sky. His eyes would glass over as we watched them drift across the fields, eaten whole by the summer stalks. After he died, I began to wonder what he meant by “alive”. To find the answer, I adopted the same skill of piloting after he was gone.
Late at night, in the safety of our barn loft-clubhouse, he would talk about things he couldn’t mention in front of our father. He often said the rows of corn made him claustrophobic. I found it strange, years later, that he moved to a large city where giant steel structures blotted out the blue void overhead. I suppose he saw things differently. It was in this way that he was more like our mother. He was a restless spirit, not as rooted to the earth as my father was. They often fought, each one accusing the other of intentional harm or short-sightedness. My brother dreamed of places where the sky was taller than the tassels of corn. My father wanted us to stay together and die in the place where we were born.
I was fifteen, nine years younger than my brother, when I received his late night text. Hours away, on the opposite end of the Midwest, his life was just starting to take off. Tony, a former farm boy himself, had taken Caleb under his wing. I suppose he saw in Caleb his younger self. His age and an old injury had retired him from the skies and confined him to the towers of air traffic control. Through Caleb, I suppose, he could feel that he was still living in the sky. And so he found him work at the local airport.
Under the covers of my tiny bed, I read his question in a confused whisper. Do you think that flying and falling are the same thing?
For the past several days, our conversations had been shallow, circling around the issue of our departed mother. The anniversary of her death had just passed. My father and I observed the event with reserved indifference. Caleb, on the other hand, seemed restless. He missed her in ways that I never could. His question of flying and falling seemed to appear out of thin air, like some sort of misplaced sentence. My response was a simple no.
Then maybe we’re not flying right.
The next morning, Caleb was dead. He’d tossed himself from his apartment balcony, a brilliant backflip onto the pavement below. The newspapers drew parallels between pool diving and his splattering death drop. Man, 24, Cannonballs from Covington High-rise. Young Man dies after Balcony Belly-flop. For some reason, it angered me that they would confuse the weightlessness of floating in water with whatever type of flight my brother was trying to achieve that night. He was buried in our hometown, between the bushels of wheat and rows of corn. Like our mother, he was finally stuck in the Iowa mud, right where my father wanted us.
I left to start a life of flying three years after Caleb ended his with a fall. I made it all the way to the end of the driveway before my father said anything. His hair was stark gray from years of tragedy, his eyes red with disappointment. “You’ll come back here in a pinewood box, just like your brother,” he shouted above the wind. “You’ll swan dive right into the ground, just like him.” His words still rang in my head, even as I was packed away in my small cockpit, chasing Caleb’s fleeting spirit.
I was down to three minutes; just three minutes until I had officially outlived my older brother. Somehow, that left me torn. A part of me was relieved, glad that I hadn’t followed my father’s prediction. Another part of me felt guilty for no longer being Caleb’s “little” sister. The storm was reaching me earlier than expected, the droplets of rain smashing hard against my windshield. I ignored them. Instead, my mind focused on the digital numbers on my watch, dutifully ticking into oblivion. Tony’s cautionary voice was buzzing about a distressed plane, lost in the windstorm. I couldn’t be bothered to listen. I held my breath, counting the seconds as they trickled into minutes. Finally, I watched the last digit change from six to seven.
Nothing.
There was no profound feeling, no moment of sudden inspiration or understanding. Caleb didn’t speak to me from beyond the grave. Whatever reason he had for flying, whatever reason he had for falling – it was lost to me. I’d played thousands of imaginary revelations inside my head, so many that I couldn’t accept this mission failing – but it had. Something inside me broke. It felt like a wrench tightening around my heart. After years of feeling numb, I suddenly found myself sobbing into the controls.
Why the hell was I here?
My plane was becoming unstable in the wind. Torpidly, I put my hands back on the yoke. Tony’s frantic tone cut over the radio. He couldn’t hear me crying on my end, but there was something in his choppy message that sounded as if he was terrified on my behalf. Trying my best to steady my voice, I asked him to repeat whatever he had just shouted. Between the static on the radio and the growing howl of the wind, I could still only hear snippets of his warning. My tired brain pieced together what he was saying one minute too late.
A small passenger plane burst from the clouds in front of me. From the way it was being tossed through the air, I could tell the engines were down. It was relying on wind power alone to keep it airborne. Carried by the strong gales and overlooked by traffic control, our two aircraft had been put on a collision course for one another. I turned my plane into a rapid dive, praying that it would miss me. A shattering crash vibrated through the body of my aircraft as the starboard wing smashed into the windshield of my cockpit. For a brief moment, everything went black.
Like flipping a switch, my mind blinked back into consciousness seconds later. The headset had been knocked off, Tony’s voice forever ripped from my ears. Torn from the twisted metal and devastated glass, I found myself bloodied, broken, and spiraling towards the ground in an uncontrolled free fall. It was such morbid irony; I’d survived getting hit by a plane, only to be sent careening into the farmland below.
A panic overtook me as I thought of Caleb. Was this how he felt when he fell? Had he really chosen such route towards death? Why would he choose to die so exposed and unsecured? Somewhere within the torrent of frantic thoughts, a moment of clarity took hold. I was completely airborne, my hair wind tossed in a stream of dazzling bronze. The sound of raining glass chimed above the rushing air, a beautiful, glistening tattoo of fatal destruction. Everything fit together in a grand tapestry of opposites. My inevitable crash landing was rushing forward, and yet, the very stitching of life’s seams was all around me; fragments I was certain I had missed while confined in that prison of a cockpit. Maybe I just hadn’t been seeing things the way Caleb had. Maybe I hadn’t been flying right this whole time.
With the seconds of my fall slipping past, I chose to face the growing pool of earth below. My body twisted and stretched until it was poised into a swan dive. I gave a sharp intake of breath to catch one last ecstatic taste of the frigid sky upon my tongue. It was in that moment that I was finally alive.
Free Fall Comic Script Version
Synopsis: A young woman takes to the skies 9 years after her older brother’s suicide. She hopes that through living out her brother’s life long passion for flight she can better understand how he lived and why he chose to end his life with a fall.
Page 1
Panel 1: The back of a young woman (Cristabel) with a long brown ponytail and wearing a pilot’s jacket, staring out at the skyline. It is important that this character’s expressions appear more muted than the other characters’ in this comic until Page 5 Panel 4. On the horizon there is a dark line of clouds, with the wind blowing her hair back and the grassy fields surrounding her. A violent storm is blowing in.
Panel 2: An older, slightly overweight man, Tony, can be seen standing next to Cristabel now. He’s holding a flight helmet. Cristabel faces him as he shoves the flight helmet into her chest.
Tony: Yer a damned fool for goin’ out in this. Gonna git yourself killed.
Panel 3: Cristabel begins to strap on the helmet.
Tony: This storm is takin’ out planes left an’ right. It’s got traffic control standin’ on their heads an’ runnin’ backwards.
Cristabel: I’ll be careful, Tony.
Panel 4: Tony spits on the ground.
Tony: Caleb always said you were a determined one, Cristabel, but he never mentioned the stupid suicidal part.
Cristabel: I’m not going to kill myself!
Panel 5: The two stare at each other, with only the wind blowing.
SFX: Wooooooooo!
Page 2
Panel 1: Cristabel turns and stalks towards her plane. It’s a small, one-person airplane. (See a Cessna One Fifty for reference) Tony calls after her.
Tony: Yer up in twenty! And bring a ‘chute with you!
Panel 2: Cristabel is messing with the control panel. Talking into her headset.
Cristabel: Can you read me, Tony?
Tony: See, this is why people don’t take our airport seriously. Try to sound a little more official. Over.
Panel 3: A close up of Cristabel’s hands as she absent-mindedly fiddles with the string pull of her parachute.
Cristabel: Whatever. I just have to be in the air when six twenty-seven rolls around.
Tony: Whatever. Over.
Panel 4: Cristabel maneuvers her airplane to face down the runway. The airplane has a name written on the side. The name reads “Daedalus’ Omen”
SFX: Static noise.
Tony: Roger that, clear for takeoff. Have a safe trip. Out.
Panel 5: Her airplane takes off.
Caption: Nine years ago, my brother killed himself.
Page 3
Panel 1: The scene cuts to Cristabel in the cockpit. She looks bored as she stares at the angry skyline surrounding her. Raindrops are beginning to drizzle upon her windshield.
Caption: He used to fly planes just like this, running them for rich businessmen from one end of the country to the next.
Panel 2: Cristabel looks at her watch. It reads 5:58 PM.
Caption: I felt like I had to be in the air when I surpassed my brother in age if only to try and understand him better.
Panel 3: The radio cackles and catches her attention. Cristabel is curled up on the seat, like she’s not even paying attention to flying.
Tony (Over the radio): Ya there, Cristabel? Be careful of this storm. Ya hear me? Over.
Cristabel: Rog – breaki- p – To- y.
Tony: Nice try, brat. Over.
SFX from radio: Click.
Panel 4: Cristabel has her eyes closed. In the upper right corner of the panel the scene is fading into a flash back for the next panel.
Caption: I should really be nicer to Tony. He’s been a far better parent than mine ever were.
Panel 5: A younger Cristabel is holding a 12 year-old boy’s hand (Caleb). Caleb has scruffy, wind blown brown hair, the same color as his sister’s and a wiry, thin build. He’s staring at the door, looking devastated. Cristabel is in mid-yawn and holding a blanket.
Caption: My mom left when I was three. I couldn’t remember the parts that made her real, and so I never really missed her.
Page 4
Panel 1: Thirteen-year-old Cristabel and a grown Caleb are hanging out near the second floor window of an old, dilapidated barn. It’s night. Caleb is holding a paper plane in his hands.
Caption: Caleb often told me that the rows of corn made him claustrophobic.
Caleb: Flying is like seeing the world for the first time. You’d understand if you were a pilot.
Panel 2: Caleb and an old man, their father, are fighting near the front door. Caleb is holding several travel bags and has his hand poised on the doorknob.
Caption: His heart never really belonged on the earth.
Caleb: I don’t care about this stupid farm!
Father: You’re ignorant, that’s what you are – an ungrateful dreamer like your mother!
Panel 3: Cristabel is watching out of the front window as her brother leaves the house, her father has slammed the door and is standing with his shoulders hunched. It’s one of the few moments where she seems genuinely sad.
Caption: My brother dreamed of places where the sky was taller than the tassels of corn.
SFX: Slam!
Panel 4: A teenaged Cristabel is hidden beneath her covers as she stares in confusion at her phone. On it is a series of text messages from her brother. It reads: “Do you think flying and falling are the same thing?” Cristabel has replied “No.” And beneath that response, Caleb has texted: “Then maybe we’re not flying right.”
Caption: Years later he texted me a strange question.
Panel 5: Caleb is standing on the edge of a skyscraper’s roof. His arms are spread wide and he’s staring out at the night sky, the wind pulling at his clothes. In his right hand, he’s holding a flip phone, the screen lit up.
Caption: After that night, I never saw him again.
Page 5
Panel 1: Cristabel is grown now, walking out her front door with a bag similar to Caleb’s. The shot is of her face. Her father is behind her on the porch, hanging onto the door, looking furious.
Caption: I left to start a life of flying three years after Caleb ended his with a fall.
Father: You’ll come back here in a pinewood box, just like your brother! You’ll swan dive right into the ground, just like him.
Panel 2: Cristabel is back in her airplane, present time. She’s looking at her watch.
Cristabel: Swan dive, huh?
Panel 3: Cristabel’s watch reads 6:27. She’s staring at her watch, looking shocked.
Caption: After all these years, whatever reason he had for flying, whatever reason he had for falling – it was still lost to me.
Panel 4: Cristabel begins to cry. She looks more devastated and alive than she has throughout the entire comic. This is the point where she should no longer be drawn as a mute looking character. The radio is crackling in the background.
SFX: Crcckklee fsssshhttt!
Cristabel: Why did you do it Caleb? Why did I try to be like you? Why the hell am I here? CALEB!
Tony: Cris….los…radar…read me? Cris…bel…Cris….tower!
Panel 5: The shot is of Cristabel’s plane headed straight from a cloud. Emerging from another darkened cloud line directly before her plane is a flashing radio tower.
Tony: CRISTABEL!
Page 6
Panel 1: Her plane crashes into the tower.
SFX: CRSSSHHHH!!!
Panel 2: Cristabel has been torn from her plane and is falling through the air. She is bruised and bleeding, her helmet somehow gone. Plane wreckage is spiraling all around her. Broken glass and twisted metal are creating a complicated pattern of fiery lights against the darkened sky. It is imperative that the destruction somehow looks beautiful and breath taking.
Cristabel: Caleb…
Panel 3: A close up of Cristabel’s face. She is looking at the shattering scenery around her as if an epiphany has suddenly hit.
Caption: It was then, somewhere within the torrent of frantic thoughts that a moment of clarity took hold.
Panel 4: Cristabel’s hand is on her parachute string, as if ready to pull it. But she is hesitant.
Caption: Maybe I just hadn’t been seeing things the way Caleb had. Maybe I hadn’t been flying right this whole time.
Panel 5: She continues to gape at the sky above her, tears forming on the edge of her eyes and flying upwards to join the fiery lights.
Caption: The very stitching of life’s seams was all around me; fragments I was certain I had missed while confined in that prison of a cockpit.
Cristabel: I get it! I get it! This is how he saw things! This is what he-!
Panel 6: She closes her eyes and poses herself into a swan dive. One hand is still hesitantly resting upon her parachute’s pull string.
Caption: For the first time in my life, I finally felt alive.
Synopsis: A young woman takes to the skies 9 years after her older brother’s suicide. She hopes that through living out her brother’s life long passion for flight she can better understand how he lived and why he chose to end his life with a fall.
Page 1
Panel 1: The back of a young woman (Cristabel) with a long brown ponytail and wearing a pilot’s jacket, staring out at the skyline. It is important that this character’s expressions appear more muted than the other characters’ in this comic until Page 5 Panel 4. On the horizon there is a dark line of clouds, with the wind blowing her hair back and the grassy fields surrounding her. A violent storm is blowing in.
Panel 2: An older, slightly overweight man, Tony, can be seen standing next to Cristabel now. He’s holding a flight helmet. Cristabel faces him as he shoves the flight helmet into her chest.
Tony: Yer a damned fool for goin’ out in this. Gonna git yourself killed.
Panel 3: Cristabel begins to strap on the helmet.
Tony: This storm is takin’ out planes left an’ right. It’s got traffic control standin’ on their heads an’ runnin’ backwards.
Cristabel: I’ll be careful, Tony.
Panel 4: Tony spits on the ground.
Tony: Caleb always said you were a determined one, Cristabel, but he never mentioned the stupid suicidal part.
Cristabel: I’m not going to kill myself!
Panel 5: The two stare at each other, with only the wind blowing.
SFX: Wooooooooo!
Page 2
Panel 1: Cristabel turns and stalks towards her plane. It’s a small, one-person airplane. (See a Cessna One Fifty for reference) Tony calls after her.
Tony: Yer up in twenty! And bring a ‘chute with you!
Panel 2: Cristabel is messing with the control panel. Talking into her headset.
Cristabel: Can you read me, Tony?
Tony: See, this is why people don’t take our airport seriously. Try to sound a little more official. Over.
Panel 3: A close up of Cristabel’s hands as she absent-mindedly fiddles with the string pull of her parachute.
Cristabel: Whatever. I just have to be in the air when six twenty-seven rolls around.
Tony: Whatever. Over.
Panel 4: Cristabel maneuvers her airplane to face down the runway. The airplane has a name written on the side. The name reads “Daedalus’ Omen”
SFX: Static noise.
Tony: Roger that, clear for takeoff. Have a safe trip. Out.
Panel 5: Her airplane takes off.
Caption: Nine years ago, my brother killed himself.
Page 3
Panel 1: The scene cuts to Cristabel in the cockpit. She looks bored as she stares at the angry skyline surrounding her. Raindrops are beginning to drizzle upon her windshield.
Caption: He used to fly planes just like this, running them for rich businessmen from one end of the country to the next.
Panel 2: Cristabel looks at her watch. It reads 5:58 PM.
Caption: I felt like I had to be in the air when I surpassed my brother in age if only to try and understand him better.
Panel 3: The radio cackles and catches her attention. Cristabel is curled up on the seat, like she’s not even paying attention to flying.
Tony (Over the radio): Ya there, Cristabel? Be careful of this storm. Ya hear me? Over.
Cristabel: Rog – breaki- p – To- y.
Tony: Nice try, brat. Over.
SFX from radio: Click.
Panel 4: Cristabel has her eyes closed. In the upper right corner of the panel the scene is fading into a flash back for the next panel.
Caption: I should really be nicer to Tony. He’s been a far better parent than mine ever were.
Panel 5: A younger Cristabel is holding a 12 year-old boy’s hand (Caleb). Caleb has scruffy, wind blown brown hair, the same color as his sister’s and a wiry, thin build. He’s staring at the door, looking devastated. Cristabel is in mid-yawn and holding a blanket.
Caption: My mom left when I was three. I couldn’t remember the parts that made her real, and so I never really missed her.
Page 4
Panel 1: Thirteen-year-old Cristabel and a grown Caleb are hanging out near the second floor window of an old, dilapidated barn. It’s night. Caleb is holding a paper plane in his hands.
Caption: Caleb often told me that the rows of corn made him claustrophobic.
Caleb: Flying is like seeing the world for the first time. You’d understand if you were a pilot.
Panel 2: Caleb and an old man, their father, are fighting near the front door. Caleb is holding several travel bags and has his hand poised on the doorknob.
Caption: His heart never really belonged on the earth.
Caleb: I don’t care about this stupid farm!
Father: You’re ignorant, that’s what you are – an ungrateful dreamer like your mother!
Panel 3: Cristabel is watching out of the front window as her brother leaves the house, her father has slammed the door and is standing with his shoulders hunched. It’s one of the few moments where she seems genuinely sad.
Caption: My brother dreamed of places where the sky was taller than the tassels of corn.
SFX: Slam!
Panel 4: A teenaged Cristabel is hidden beneath her covers as she stares in confusion at her phone. On it is a series of text messages from her brother. It reads: “Do you think flying and falling are the same thing?” Cristabel has replied “No.” And beneath that response, Caleb has texted: “Then maybe we’re not flying right.”
Caption: Years later he texted me a strange question.
Panel 5: Caleb is standing on the edge of a skyscraper’s roof. His arms are spread wide and he’s staring out at the night sky, the wind pulling at his clothes. In his right hand, he’s holding a flip phone, the screen lit up.
Caption: After that night, I never saw him again.
Page 5
Panel 1: Cristabel is grown now, walking out her front door with a bag similar to Caleb’s. The shot is of her face. Her father is behind her on the porch, hanging onto the door, looking furious.
Caption: I left to start a life of flying three years after Caleb ended his with a fall.
Father: You’ll come back here in a pinewood box, just like your brother! You’ll swan dive right into the ground, just like him.
Panel 2: Cristabel is back in her airplane, present time. She’s looking at her watch.
Cristabel: Swan dive, huh?
Panel 3: Cristabel’s watch reads 6:27. She’s staring at her watch, looking shocked.
Caption: After all these years, whatever reason he had for flying, whatever reason he had for falling – it was still lost to me.
Panel 4: Cristabel begins to cry. She looks more devastated and alive than she has throughout the entire comic. This is the point where she should no longer be drawn as a mute looking character. The radio is crackling in the background.
SFX: Crcckklee fsssshhttt!
Cristabel: Why did you do it Caleb? Why did I try to be like you? Why the hell am I here? CALEB!
Tony: Cris….los…radar…read me? Cris…bel…Cris….tower!
Panel 5: The shot is of Cristabel’s plane headed straight from a cloud. Emerging from another darkened cloud line directly before her plane is a flashing radio tower.
Tony: CRISTABEL!
Page 6
Panel 1: Her plane crashes into the tower.
SFX: CRSSSHHHH!!!
Panel 2: Cristabel has been torn from her plane and is falling through the air. She is bruised and bleeding, her helmet somehow gone. Plane wreckage is spiraling all around her. Broken glass and twisted metal are creating a complicated pattern of fiery lights against the darkened sky. It is imperative that the destruction somehow looks beautiful and breath taking.
Cristabel: Caleb…
Panel 3: A close up of Cristabel’s face. She is looking at the shattering scenery around her as if an epiphany has suddenly hit.
Caption: It was then, somewhere within the torrent of frantic thoughts that a moment of clarity took hold.
Panel 4: Cristabel’s hand is on her parachute string, as if ready to pull it. But she is hesitant.
Caption: Maybe I just hadn’t been seeing things the way Caleb had. Maybe I hadn’t been flying right this whole time.
Panel 5: She continues to gape at the sky above her, tears forming on the edge of her eyes and flying upwards to join the fiery lights.
Caption: The very stitching of life’s seams was all around me; fragments I was certain I had missed while confined in that prison of a cockpit.
Cristabel: I get it! I get it! This is how he saw things! This is what he-!
Panel 6: She closes her eyes and poses herself into a swan dive. One hand is still hesitantly resting upon her parachute’s pull string.
Caption: For the first time in my life, I finally felt alive.
