Clipped Wings

Like Magic

**One Month Ago**

It was a long day, I sigh as I place my work bag on my kitchen table. I remember the look on the interviewer's face when he asked if I believed in magic. Of course not. But the look on his face... it's almost like he wanted to prove me wrong.

But magic is not real. That is one thing I am sure of. I scoff as I think about it, placing a microwave dinner into the microwave. I heat it up, and while I'm waiting for it to finish, I go to my room an wash off my makeup.

I look into the mirror to make sure I got it all off, but then I see a movement beneath my eye. It looks as if all the veins under my eyes have gone black, and I back away against the wall, terrified. I hear the microwave beeping, but it is distant, and I ignore it. I look into the mirror again, but there's nothing wrong with my face. It must have been my eyes playing tricks in me.

I head towards the kitchen, almost trotting, and pull my dinner out of the microwave. I am about halfway through the pitiful meal when it happens.

It feels like someone has put a giant clamp on my back, and my entire body goes rigid. It is searing hot, and honestly I think it is magic... I can't breath, and I'm on the floor. Within seconds I have passed out.

***

I wake up in a pool of my own blood and bile. Gross. I try to get up, disgusted with myself, but it hurts, and there is a weight pulling at my back and shoulders.

I roll up, looking over at my back. Wings. Small, soft, and jet black, matching my dyed hair. It's just a prank, I tell myself, pulling off my shirt to take them off. I reach behind and grasp around my back until my hand touches downy feathers. Feeling around, I realize with panic that they are attached to my shoulder blade and the wings tremble as they acknowledge my hand touching them. I feel my hand touching them, and I begin to shiver, scared.

What did that interviewer do to me? I am standing up, panicking now. What the hell did that interviewer do to me?

I can't do anything about it, I realize, so I decide I may as well examine them. But I am still disgusted with myself. I spread them out, each one can't be longer than a foot and a half, and the feathers are too soft, like a baby bird's. The feathers at the tips are coated with blood, they must have bursted through the skin in my back, although it had healed by now, healed too quickly.

I make my way slowly to the bathroom, unused to the new addition that drags at my shoulders. I strip down and get into the shower. I don't know how to wash them, so I just run water through them.

You're a freak. I've always felt like a freak, but this just proves it. Maybe you should have listened to that interviewer. You stupid, stupid boy.

By now I am out of the shower and I have dried off. I put on some clothes, but I don't bother putting on a shirt.

This is your fault, the voice in my head doesn't belong to me, but it does, and I start to cry. This is all your fault. Freak. Stupid. It's not just the wings, you've always been this, on the inside... a freak. A monster. The words aren't mine, I know that, but I know they are, and I don't know what to do. It doesn't feel like me, but it does. It doesn't sound like me, but it does.

Freak.

Monster.

Your fans don't want a creep, a freak of nature. It would be easier to accept you as dead than something... inhuman... He is right. I am right. Tears continue to roll down my cheeks, and I look into the mirror. It isn't tears, it's blood. I am crying blood.

Wimp. Coward. You would rather die than face up to what you've become.
It's right. I put my hands up to my cheeks, blood slipping through my fingers and running down my arms. I've had enough of this. Whether or not this is a bad prank or magic, I want it over with. I punch the mirror, breaking the glass, as well as splitting the skin on my knuckles. I grab a shard and press it to my bare chest. I don't know what I want, or even what I'm about to do, but then the doorbell rings.

Talk about saved by the bell.

"Adam?" I hear someone call out. It's Tommy. "You weren't answering you're texts and I just-" he stops mid sentence, and I can only imagine he found the puddle of blood and bile. "Adam?!"

I hear frantic footsteps, he's coming closer. And then he bangs on the locked door. "Adam?!" He tries the doorknob several times, but with no success. "Let me in!"

"Just... leave me alone..." I say quietly, my voice cracks, and its obvious I'm crying. "Go away."

He doesn't. "Stand back," he orders, and after several tries he kicks the door down, only to find me standing there, shard pressed against my chest, blood dripping down my cheeks and arms, and with soggy, freakish wings.

"Oh-" he grabs my wrist with one hand, pulling the shard out of my hand. "No, no," he picks me up with ease, much to both of our surprise, and carries me over to my bed. He places me down and dabs at my face, he doesn't even mention the feathery appendages that have somehow managed to attach themselves to my shoulder blades.

"No more, okay? We can't have any of this." I'm so out of it he's treating me like a child.

Because that's what you are, a child, an idiot who doesn't know right from wrong.

"Go away," I say out loud to the voice, but Tommy hears me.

"I'm not going anywhere until you stop this," he gestures to all of me.

"I'm not a child," I snap.

"I know, but somebody needs to take care of you." He brushes his hair out of his face and attends to me. This is a whole new side of him I've never seen before.

But this is also a whole new side of me I've never seen before.

(A/N: Haha this is a tad better than the first chapter, don't you think? Well thank you so so much for reading haha I know it sucks but eh whatever, I'll keep writing for me and whoever actually reads and likes this ^~^ )

**Updated A/N: So, after rereading this about a year after I wrote it, wow it moves way too fast, sorry.**