Last updated: May 8th, 2025
Fear of Flying is a story that I originally started as a webcomic. It’s about an alternate timeline in which extradimensional ghost energy/magic (called Aether) started leaking into our reality through abandoned places (Fissures), which, if left unchecked, can develop into hazardous pocket dimensions. Some people develop a special magical organ called a Pearl, which gives them control over Aether and a cool dragon form. In dragon form, they can hunt and devour the ghost-like monsters that emerge from, and ultimately close, the Aether Fissures.
Kay is a young man with no clue about his goals in life, who finds an abandoned Pearl and becomes the target of dragon-cops, suspicious government agencies, and numerous creepy Aether phantoms.
Comic Prologue
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- Wouldn’t it be great if we all knew what the hell we were supposed to be doing? “Make your own path!” they say. “Go out there and find out who you really are!” Yeah, that sounds really great and motivational. So what, does that mean that ‘who I really am’ is a depressed trainwreck with no friends?
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- I wish someone would just tell me what I was meant to be. At least then I could be disappointed in myself for failing to meet that goal. As it stands I don’t even know what the goal is, so I don’t know how I feel about my lack of progress towards it. I don’t want to be in charge of my own destiny. I make terrible decisions.
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- Maybe I’ve already found my purpose and I don’t know it. Or more likely, it’s still out there waiting for me and I’m just too stupid to find it.
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- Fear of Flying Prologue – Pearls Before Swine
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- I take this path home from work every day. It’s usually pretty quiet. There’s always that fun risk of being randomly mugged but at least I don’t have to steer through crowds of people. Hey, at least if I get mugged, I’ll have a good excuse to stay home from work for a few days. Did you know Cincinnati was halfway through building a subway system in the 20’s, but it was abandoned? Really neat and creepy. I pass by one of the barricaded entrances on this walk. It’s just these big metal doors slapped over a cracked concrete tunnel. They’re always covered in fun graffiti. Every now and then the lock gets busted by someone or it rusts enough for them to replace it. I’ve always been curious and jealous of all those urban explorers on YouTube, but also way too afraid of ending up spit-roasted by a lost race of underground subway-dwelling cannibals. I, uh… I watch a lot of bad horror movies. Well, today, that big metal door was open.
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- There was an intense, cold, white light coming from something small on the ground, just inside the door. As craned my neck to look at it, my music started skipping and breaking up. The source of the light was a ball – a crystalline sphere the size of a nectarine, swirling with marbled pearly colors. Light radiated off from it in pulses, like a heartbeat. I mean, come on, I had to touch it.
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- So actually, I gave it a little kick first. Just a gentle shove with the inside of my foot. It was lighter than it looked and rolled easily, making a sort of hollow ceramic scraping against the nasty concrete floor of the tunnel. The light from it pulsed brighter as it rolled, then dimmed back down a bit. It gave me the weird sense that the ball was upset or surprised at being moved. I hovered my open palm over it. I wasn’t sure if I was expecting it be hot, or maybe electrical, or even radioactive. Can you feel radiation? I don’t think so. Either way, the air around it didn’t feel like anything, except maybe a little bit heavy, like the pressure in the air before a thunderstorm.
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- …!
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- I was suddenly a different, bigger, stranger version of myself, and both versions of me somehow existed in the same place at the same time, like a double-exposure –
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- – that was weird. My hand felt a little bit tingly, but that’s all. Also, the weird glowing ball thing was completely gone without a trace. So now I was just a weird kid standing in an off-limits area staring at my hand and possibly having vivid hallucinations.It was definitely time to move along.What was that, though? Could that have been a ghost or one of the other crazy things you might see in abandoned places? I’d never had any kind of aether sickness before. I felt really violated at the idea. Despite my social awkwardness and anxiety, I’d always thought myself to be… well, better than that. Getting your head screwed with by ghosts was for people with really poor self-care, or, I dunno, addictions and such.I could only hope that this would never come up again and I’d forget all about it soon.
