Author(s): Roy Freirich

General Fiction

Anne-Hagen is having lunch in a fast food restaurant with her best-friend Jimmy and her father, when a suicidal gunman opens fire, killing her father and others. "Winged Creatures" tracks the survivors' struggle to live with the choices they made that day, and to regain trust in the ordinary world.Anne develops a religious hysteria and becomes revered by the town-but blackmails Jimmy into muteness, all to protect the secret that nearly destroys him and his already fractured family. Charlie, a devoted father and driving-school teacher, walks away with a bullet graze, and attempts to press his luck at a casino. Fear and loneliness drive the restaurant cashier, Carla, into desperation, and she begins to neglect her infant son. ER physician Dr. Laraby fails to save the shooting victims, and turns to his wife as someone to "save". Psychologist Ron Abler tries to help the survivors deal with the aftermath, but meets resistance - the repression and denial that must surround the memory of the event itself." Winged Creatures" explodes the myth of "closure" with an after-the-cameras-go-home look at the real and lasting trauma of gun violence - ordinary people driven by secret torments and dangerous compulsions, in flight from their own memories and dreams.