Johnny Wraith Stories

With winds as wings and clouds as feet, Caelum, lord of the skies, soared the heavens – the heights his domain forever before the first man born from soil below. Always had he been faceless as air, unchained of even the weight of dust, free to ride the ethereal currents as horses, or to close his eyes and drift, to be tickled by his brother and sister stars.

But the gods were always lusty.

Caelum had held back his passion to dirty his feathers too long, an eternity. So he aimed his head down, tucked his wings, and plummeted to earth.

A Caelum priest looking up and watching from the streets that night agonized,

“The brightest star of the heavens has fallen, leaving blackness in its place! Our prayers will no longer be heard!”

A passing shoemaker replied,

“The gods don’t understand our voices, so it doesn’t matter whether they hear us or not.”

“Blasphemy!”

“Stuff it old man. To the gods we’re nothing but ants. We’re lucky when they don’t accidentally step on us.”

“Blasphemy!”

Having abandoned his heavenly perch, winged Caelum tickled treetops with his belly, making forests laugh fluttering birds from their branches. He swept the hills’ bends and curves, and gusted through canyons and crevasses, chilling the earth with his touch, mixing with her sand, leaving little dust devils in his wake, their spinning winds crying,

“Father! Don’t leave us!”

But their lives were short. Without him there to keep them turning in his breath, the helpless infants stopped whirling, whimpered,

“Father!”

once more, dropped their dust. and died.

“Blasphemy, my ass,” retorted the shoemaker in the streets.

“You must beg pardon for your words!” plead the priest.

“As long as the little birds drop dead from the sky and their nests, young men meet miserable ends at war for old men’s sakes, whores give me itchy balls, and dogs go hungry in streets filled with food carts, I’ll keep on blaspheming.”