In October 2017, we published “Katie Flew Again Tonight” by Trent England. The story is written from the perspective of Paul, a man whose wife, Katie, can inexplicably fly. As her abilities grow, it becomes clear that Katie will one day leave—and Paul will be left behind to navigate the mundanities of life without her. Let’s discuss what makes this story so impactful.
How do you say goodbye to someone you love? That’s the central question explored in “Katie Flew Again Tonight,” which I read at a time when I, too, dreamed about simply getting up and flying away from news cycles and social media feeds. Maybe that’s why the magical realism of this story pulled me in. Katie’s ability to fly is presented as an odd quirk without a definable cause, but nothing scary or all-powerful—it’s simply a part of her, and Paul must decide how to love this part of her and the inevitability of her leaving.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Read Trent England’s story and get back to me so we can talk about structure and character complexity.
Structure, worldbuilding, and creating tension
When a writer is interacting with Something Cool that defies the rules of our reality, there’s a temptation to over-explain how that Something Cool works (it’s me, I do that). We see this in many fantasy and science fiction texts, where long sections are devoted to explaining the drama of the ruling family or the mechanics of a device with big narrative importance—which gives the reader essential information, but can also feel like an exposition dump.
England takes a different and more cinematic approach: He explains the “rules” of the women in flight through Paul’s interaction with his friend Adrian, which happens almost immediately in the beginning of the story.
I felt guilty every time he and I talked about Katie behind her back, as if I were auctioning away pieces of my wife. But there was no other way of talking about Katie—and long ago, about Adrian’s wife, Quinn—without divulging the details of her flights. In the beginning, the wives had made a point of introducing all of us husbands to each other, encouraging us to be friends. The wives knew that we would need a support system, though we never became friends so much as we remained a fraternity born of necessity, and over the years, I have lost contact with all of them except for Adrian.
Through this paragraph, we get a few crucial pieces of background information: There are other women who can fly in this world, they know each other, they all have husbands who have formed a support group, and enough time has passed that the only husbands remaining are Adrian and Paul. Quinn, Adrian’s wife, left long ago, and we never find out where, but we can infer that her departure absolutely wrecked Adrian, just as it wrecked the other men: Felix went no-contact, David is in jail, Luís went off the grid, Yuri is in a mental hospital, and Vince took his life. We later learn that Adrian tried to take his life by jumping off the same spot where he last saw Quinn take flight.
The scene ends with a chilling line: Adrian suggests to Paul that he “clips her wings” because it’s what he should have done with Quinn.
Listen, that line is absolutely horrifying, and it comes from a man who is presented as having nothing to lose—the lack of Quinn is enough to send him in a tailspin, and he doesn’t want that to happen to Paul, too. But these last two beats also create such a rich sense of tension in the story because the reader wonders, Will Paul somehow prevent Katie from flying, trapping her in their shared life? And if she leaves, will he end up like the other men? Those questions are fascinating because they immediately define Paul’s motivations: He doesn’t want her to leave, and he doesn’t want to end up like the other guys. Those are the stakes. Now, we’re curious about what choices he’ll make. We keep reading.
Complicated character choices
Paul’s character has two clear paths here: He can become controlling and possessive, or he can let her go. The question of which path he’ll take carries us into the next section with Katie, and we get to see their dynamic. This is another area that made me absolutely love this story: Paul and Katie’s relationship is really sweet, and that makes the inevitability of her leaving all the more difficult.
Paul never presses her to know where she has been, but he tracks how long she has been gone, and he’s fully aware that she’s flying for longer and longer periods. And yet, when he comes home after his visit with Adrian, he forgets about the question of clipping her wings because she is celebrating a promotion, and they talk about something mundane: paying off credit cards with Katie’s new income. “The talk was all of earthly matters, distracting me briefly from the knowledge that Katie can fly.” This sentiment persists throughout the next section; Katie flies less and less as she settles into her new role, and she and Paul simply live their lives together—she visits the jazz club where he plays, they take long rides on the subway together, and they are absolutely unremarkable despite our knowledge that Katie can fly.
This happy period is disrupted by Adrian’s suicide, which is the catalyst for Paul to more directly talk to Katie about her flights. And rather than acting out in anger or jealousy, Paul simply asks: “Where will you go?”
I love this question, and I love this scene. Where will you go implies that Paul accepts Katie will one day leave, and this acceptance comes after we see what their life looks like if she stays: positive, happy, supportive. There is no malice or ill will, only the comfort of their routine and their respective jobs. Later, Paul asks if she has purposefully not been flying, and Katie says: “I want to stay as much as you want me to stay.”
Y’all. So sweet. But also, complicated: Paul and Katie are in a partnership, and Katie is presented as someone suppressing her own instincts to remain in a life she loves, with the person she loves. Unfortunately, she can’t fight off that instinctual pull forever—and Paul makes no move to keep her tethered. He is aware of what he wants. But he knows he can’t keep her with him if she feels compelled to leave.
I wanted us to stay positioned as we were forever. I wanted to weigh her down and drag her with me through the world, to yoke her unto myself, both of us waiting on line at the post office or standing in the kitchen waiting for water to boil or wandering like nomads through the supermarket aisles. I thought about the grounded life that lay before me—the menial tasks accomplished by foot, as well as the countless stairs I was sentenced to ascend. Now it all seemed so boring and lonely.
The language here is carefully weighed: “weigh her down,” “drag her with me,” “yoke,” and even Paul’s awareness that he is destined to stay grounded (“the menial tasks accomplished by foot”). Earlier, Katie’s job was something that grounded her, as was their life together—now, Paul is aware that she can no longer stay grounded, that she has fought off her next phase for as long as possible. He kisses her goodbye. He watches her leave.
It’s a beautiful choice and a heartfelt goodbye, but it’s also one that tells the reader Paul will survive, unlike the other men in the support group. The strong, companionable sense of love between Katie and Paul is never one-sided. They support each other in their respective pursuits, and Paul doesn’t express any resentment toward Katie’s more stable and higher-paying job or even the long stretches of time he spends away from her. Their dynamic throughout the story explains why Paul makes the choice the other men did not: He embraces her nature and lets her go so she can thrive, rather than falling into self-destruction or jealousy as we see with Adrian.
Love, as explored by this story, is not born out of convenience or settling into domesticity—it is the ability to love a person’s nature completely, even if it means ultimately watching them change and move on. The ending is as tragic as it is graceful, and that’s what makes it feel complete.
by Rebecca Paredes