Nightflower Candor

Look closer. The gray house, the dead grass, the unwashed car. This hideous stain in otherwise perfect neighborhood uniformity. Now do you see that speck in the backyard?

            Meet Joe.

            Joe cuts out sections of the newspaper. Smooth lines into sharp edges with one swift motion. He stacks the cuttings beside him and gazes up at the sky. Does he see us? No—he’s looking for something bigger, deeper. Something akin to God but not quite. These thoughts are merely speculation, of course, but his face speaks what words cannot render. A soft breeze tickles his nose causing a sneeze. He digs for meaning but feels foolish.

            Meet Wind.

            Joe does not read the cuttings and chooses one at random. He begins folding a simple pattern. His fingers move like machinery and manipulate a nearly-but-not-quite perfect paper airplane. He folds the rest and they all sit there proudly.

            Sunlight peeks from the overcast as he studies the wooden fence on the other side of the yard. Look closer and you see the dead grass is not really grass at all but thousands of decayed paper airplanes. Old to new to very old. Years of ruin.

            Today will be different, he thinks (probably).

            He considers the first airplane before letting it rip. He remembers making it just six minutes ago. Such a short amount of time to be something but expectations latch on and never let go. This is an airplane. It is supposed to fly.

            Joe holds the plane steady and closes one eye for proper targeting. He lines the plane’s nose with the fence’s horizon. Not above, not below, but precisely where wood touches air. He bends his elbow back and launches the plane with hope but hope dies quickly and it crashes without spectacle. The paper graveyard thickens with a new body.

            He deals with the disappointment silently and lines up the second. Second what—airplane or disappointment? Both! The second plane plummets to its grave, lost in the anonymity of all the dead paper and buried years.

            He lines up the third.

            The fourth.

            The fifth.

            Now the sixth. People say six is a cursed number but not this baby. It rides the wind like a fucking stallion. The plane reaches for hopes and dreams but soon nosedives against the fence. The wind shifts. The graveyard grows.

            Seven. Let us talk about the seventh. This divine number! The one that will change all the others because it is written in the heavens. Yada, yada. He measures it carefully and imagines the trajectory. He feels the wind at his back. He becomes the pilot.

            The plane soars until crashing like the others. Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen are all lost in the wasteland. He handles the last one and frowns. Fourteen…

            He looks at the fence and prepares for flight but notices something. There is a mark on the wood where the sixth plane had crashed. His frown twitches into a possible smile.

            The paper had left an impression.

            He lines up the fourteenth and throws it but regrets the finality of it. Today is supposed to be different! He steps clumsily into the graveyard to chase it. The fourteenth flies smoothly while poor Joe slogs through dead planes. Some of the weathered ink from days past is legible, but still—he does not read them. His eyes are fastened on this day’s fourteenth beauty, but it suddenly turns in the wind and flies back in his direction. Now he runs away from it with surreal terror as if this very thing has been haunting him his entire life.

            The plane strikes him in the back of the head but we cannot take credit for this. We are only spectators, remember, freefalling spectators, but what a wonderful literary gesture. The paper airplane struck him on the head. The newspaper clipping struck him on the head. The significance struck him on the head. We’re closer now.

            He recovers from the paper graveyard before it swallows him and he collects the plane from his shaggy hair. He unfolds the pattern and reads the words.

            He finally reads the words.

Joseph Clancey Hillman, 41, passed away in a gruesome plane crash today. He was a beloved son and awful friend. He cherished gravity and the laws of aerodynamics but failed as a commercial pilot. He is survived by no one. A plane crashed into his backyard and removed any clue of his body so there will be no service. In fading memory of so and so, may he rest in whatever state he is lucky to be in.

            Joe looks up at the sky and, this time, sees us. Not God, not whatever else he may have hoped, but the nose of our plane. The obituary slips from his fingers and falls like a stone. I scream with the passengers but he does not.

            Meet Death.