Back to the Apartment
The air jerked him hard, pulling the skin of his face off his skull and knocking the wind out of him. His wings stayed straight, so did his heavy cat body. His human half stood erect, the arms out at his sides like he was balancing on a rope. He looked down and saw his forelegs dangling above a slowly panning street. Jared was flying.
“Holy shit!” he hollered. “Haha! YES!” He pumped his arms into the air. “Woohoo!” He got some strange looks from other folk who were flying, but he didn’t care. Like the gentleman he’d seen in the SUV, he gave them a big ol’ wave and a goofy smile, some of which were returned in kind. Jared swooped and dived his way across the block, getting a good feel of what he was and wasn’t capable of. He felt like he could climb to the heavens and then dive to the earth full tilt. Only when his wing muscles were starting to ache did he make the return to his apartment where he stood in the middle of the carpet breathing hard and shaking.
“Wow… Hahaha… Holy shit… Oh my God… That was awesome.” Heart racing like crazy, he went to the kitchen and grabbed himself a glass of water. Once his pulse started to die down, he laid down on the couch and turned on the TV. Now his curiosity was burning again, and he wanted everything there was to know about the sphinx world. It came to him in a whirlwind of channels and internet pages. Everything from the human universe was mirrored like in the skunk and wolverine universes, but with their own mystic flair. The same movies and celebrities all existed, their features sharpened and honed into something more mediterranean.
The biggest shock came when he found out why the city looked so massive in the pictures. All of sphinx-kind was located in different hypercities across the world, one for each major region. The one Jared lived in was on the east coast of what would’ve been the United States. Another was on the west coast, two more in South America, and about a dozen others on the other continents. Between them was nothing but unmolested wilderness, all of it teeming with life unconcerned with urban setbacks or a worsening environment. The sphinx was a wise creature, thus it treated the planet it lived on wisely.
Written by TheGreatJaceyGee on 11 June 2024
