Drabbles of a Screaming Eagle

Soldier was the first rocket-jumper from his town in the middle of nowhere. It began when he had to read one of Shakespearicle's plays for school. He had little interest in the play itself, all except for one scene. The hero propelled himself into the air with the aid of an old-fashioned rocket launcher. While he heard plenty about rocket-jumping on the radio and in the newspapers, there weren't any practitioners in his town. The most logical solution was to become a practitioner of rocket-jumping himself. From what little he remembered of his parents, Soldier knew they were against the practice. They told him he was too young for such an endeavour. "And besides, where are you gonna get a rocket launcher anyway?" His maternal grandmother was the answer. He could not remember the details or the reasoning, but his grandmother gifted it to him on a birthday. Much to his parents’ dismay, he began using it. After his first attempt, he couldn’t walk for a week. He built up immunity after numerous attempts. But he could barely launch himself a foot into the air before breaking his bones. As medical visits were too expensive, he insisted on learning first-aid himself. It was June when Soldier learned how to truly rocket-jump. All he had to do was bend his knees. When he soared into the sky, the wind rushed past his ears. His eyes watered from the pressure. Upon reaching his peak, time appeared to freeze. For a moment, it felt as if he could touch the heavens. Was this what Abraham Lincoln felt like before his tragic accident at the stairs? In less than a second, gravity pulled him down. His head hit the hard ground. His ears rang. Something cracked. Pain shot up his spine. Before he passed out, someone screamed. He couldn’t remember if it was himself. When he woke up in a white room, the town doctor looked over him with a clipboard. “What is your name, young man?” And Soldier couldn’t answer.