They always tell you not to imitate what you read in the stories or watch on TV, that it’s done by professionals. I am taking my life into my own hands by doing this. I don’t care about the risks because this will be the first moment my life has been my own for a very long time. Today I am going to fly away from this place.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, it’s hard to think clearly, standing here at the edge of The Tower with a contraption built from pipes, canvas, and a million feathers strapped to my back. The height is dizzying and exhilarating and honestly it makes it hard for me to think clearly. My name is Corbin Day and my father built the Prison City of Jericho. I am a prisoner just as much as any other person who lives here, the only difference is that my cell is nicer.

My dad is the greatest architect in the world, that’s why they asked him to build this city. Neither of us are criminals; neither of us belong here. My dad designed this entire city with its looping mazelike streets and gargantuan protective wall as a way of safeguarding humanity from the horrors that it had helped to create. The problem is that they locked those horrors up here behind these walls and decided that the guards would never leave either. They decided that they needed a Warden who knew this city inside and out. Someone who knew every secret corner of this place. There was only man with that knowledge which is why my dad is the unwilling Warden to society’s monsters.

We live in the tallest building in the city, The Tower. It was fun at first, being a kid with full run of a building that seemed as tall as the sky. I was too young to understand that The Tower was going to be my entire world, the only place I would ever know. Going outside isn’t allowed. I’m the son of the warden; I’ve been told that if the prisoners ever found out about my existence, they would kill me just to hurt Dad.

More than anything I don’t want to die.

The walls look impossibly high; no matter how old I am they’ve always seemed larger than life and dominate the landscape of the city. They represent the borders that are never to be crossed. The prisoners try to combat the grimness by painting murals on the walls. They created landscapes that I’ve only seen in books and video feeds. Sometimes my dad looks sad when I ask him about the places he visited when he was younger. I know that he has regrets about building Jericho.

I wonder if he regrets building the city or if he only regrets bringing me with him when he knew I wouldn’t be allowed to leave.

I wasn’t being entirely truthful when I said the wall was a border never to be crossed. Jericho would never survive if things couldn’t pass in or out at all. There are trains that come in and out through secure tunnels. They bring in food and supplies and ferry out the dead and waste that accumulates. No one living here can board the trains; I don’t know what mechanisms ensure this, only that there has never been a successful escape from Jericho. The only way to leave on the trains is to be dead.

The only things that are truly free to come and go as they wish are the birds. They come in giant flocks. There are always an impossible number of crows and seagulls and pigeons all flying freely without any regard for the height of the walls. Their feathers accumulate on roofs and anywhere they settle for a length of time. I started collecting their feathers because they were pretty, the oil spill sheen of the crow feathers and the mottled greys of the seagulls and the metallic grey of pigeon feathers became my treasures. Looking at them allowed me to imagine where they might have come from before arriving in Jericho. I collected them at first just for that short escape into fantasy, for the chance to imagine that I was a bird too.

It didn’t occur to me until a year ago that maybe I could be a bird too. I had seen diagrams about how to build gliders before but I had never thought about them as an opportunity for escape. Building the glider took a lot of time. I hid everything from my dad because even though he regrets this place, he will never try to leave it. And he wouldn’t let me leave either, if only out of a desire to keep me safe from harm.

I love my dad, but if I stay here much longer I think I might go crazy. The Tower used to be a palace but now it gets a bit smaller every day.

I built the glider on the roof of the tower from spare pipes and a giant sheet of canvas I stole from a supply room. In all honesty I could have flown away two months ago but the weather was too cold, too damp for my glider to ever have a chance to make it over the wall. So instead I began to sew feathers onto my wings: I attached every feather I had ever collected. As I sewed feather after feather I watched the weather obsessively for the right conditions for my flight.

That day is today. I’m strapped into the glider with the wind pulling at me, urging me to leap from the edge. Today I will either fly or I will fall. I’m not sure which scares me more.

The wind is pulling harder now and this is the moment, if I don’t do it now then I never will.

I take a breath and take that leap and…



I fly.

Please grant me the strength not to get bitchy at preachy vegans for their habit of preaching the evils of meat eating.

I accept their choice in diet and reasons for doing it and I don't question their reasons for doing it. Is it so much to ask to get the same treatment?

What I don't accept is the part where I am a bad person for eating meat. My family buys meat from a local smoke house, we get our eggs from our landlord who raises her own chickens.

Why is it that despite all this I am the bad guy?