Floating Baby - https://bit.ly/3W5Wh5j

When Mrs. Donna Wills went to her baby’s room to check on her one-year-old son, he was floating above the crib, in a standing position looking down at her. She rushed to him, grabbed him and held him close. “I must be hallucinating. He couldn’t have been floating in the air…but he was,” she said and put her son back in his crib. Immediately, he rose up, she grabbed him, and, as she did, her husband came home, and she hurried down to meet him.

“Hi, Donna,” he said and kissed her. “How’s my family?” He took Bobby and held him. “How’s my boy?”
“Arnie, I want to show you something.”
“What’s that, honey?”
“Put Bobby down.”
“Okay. There y’ go Bobby,” he said and put him on the floor. “Watch Bobby.” As he watched, Bobby rose up, went into a standing position, smiled, gurgled, and went to his father, who held him. “Donna, what…? Uh, let ‘s go sit down before I fall down,” he said and they went into the living room. “This is unbelievable.”

“I think we should take him to the…the…God, who would know about this?”
“Let’s start with Dr. Jones. He might know what to do?”

Donna was sitting with Bobby on her lap when Dr. Jones entered the examination room. “Hi, Arnie, Donna. What’s up with Bobby?”

“I’ll show you,” Donna said and put Bobby on the floor. Bobby gurgled, rose up and went to Dr. Jones, who held him.

“I…I don’t believe it. How does he do that?”
“We don’t know, Dr. Jones, but we hoped you might know?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t. The university has a para psychology department. I would go there.”

At the university, they demonstrated Bobby to a psychiatrist/parapsychologist, Dr. Mason. “Well, Mr. and Mrs. Wills, this is an amazing phenomenon. Unfortunately, I’m afraid I can’t imagine how or why your baby can fly. We deal with paranormal activity. If you thought your house was haunted we would investigate, but…uh, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you about Bobby.”

“Well, thank you for your time, Dr. Mason,” Arnie said, and they left.

The Wills' sat in their car in silence for several minutes. “I guess we’ll have to hope he grows out of it as he gets older. What else can we do?” Donna said, and they went home.

As Bobby grew older, he didn’t grow out of it; he was still flying, and the Wills could never let him out of their site. They imagined that he would fly out of their reach. When he was five, he was able to control his flying, but Donna home-schooled him to be sure he had controlled his flying. Bobby learned so fast that she had difficulty keeping up with him. By the time he was eight, he was speaking Spanish and Russian fluently, and, by the time he was twelve, he was immersed in physics. The Wills thought he was probably a genius, so when Bobby was fifteen, they sent him to an acclaimed private school. His teachers all agreed that they could not teach him anything because intellectually he was far above them, so he was sent to a university. By the time he was twenty, he had earned two doctorates and became known as a brilliant physicist. His peers admitted that they had difficulty understanding his theories.

When he was with his mother and father, he felt like a stranger. He felt that he wasn’t in the right place, but he couldn’t define what the right place was. When he was thirty, he was given his own laboratory at a major university and a place to live on campus. No one bothered him. He sat alone for hours and produced hundreds of scholarly papers, and, as time went by, his body changed. Each hand grew a sixth finger, his arms and legs became shorter, and he shrunk to four feet. A four-inch antenna grew over each eye, his brain grew, and his skull grew to accommodate his growing brain. No one had seen Bobby in a year, so no one knew how he had changed.

The scientific community contacted the president of the university to request that he ask Bobby to give a lecture. The president contacted Bobby, who agreed, providing the lecture be held just outside the door of his apartment. His conditions were met and the day arrived. The greatest minds had gathered to listen to Bobby, and the time came. His apartment door opened, and he stepped out not looking at his audience, and went to his podium. There was a gasp from his listeners as they witnessed what they couldn’t imagine, someone who didn’t look human.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the scientific community, for several years, I have been changing and I have become what you see. For several years, I have felt like a stranger here on your planet. In fact, I am a stranger on your planet. I know now that I am from a distant planet where my brilliance is common. You have tried to understand my theories, but you could not because I and my kind are superior, and you are inferior. From the time I was a baby, I flew. No one knew how or why. Now, I know why. Look up. You can see an object. That is the vehicle that will take me home. It will not land; I will fly to it, and after I fly to it, your inferior planet and all life on it will disappear. We have decided that there is no justification for you to exist. Goodbye,” he said and flew like a bullet to the ship. The second he disappeared from sight, the earth exploded and the particles that were once earth, flew into a million directions.
                                                                                The End

While teaching communication skills and writing at a community college, Mr. Greenleaf wrote short stories and plays. Since retiring in 2000, he has written short stories, novellas, and plays. Latest publisher: Once Upon A Crocodile.