It was a Monday morning when Peter Hutchison began to float.
At first, when Peter awoke on this fateful morning, he thought he simply couldn’t move. His head, arms, and legs felt like one of the macaroni pieces that he glued to make macaroni art. He screamed for his parents, who came rushing into his bedroom at the sound of his cries.
What’s wrong? They shouted over and over again.
Peter replied that he couldn’t move.
When his parents tried to lift him up, they were surprised to find that there was an empty space between Peter and his bed. They lifted up the covers and sure enough, Peter was floating exactly an inch above his superman sheets. Horrified, his mother ran to call a priest while the father attempted to move poor Peter. The boy’s suspended body would not budge, no matter which way his father tried to move him. Peter cried and his father sweat, but still Peter’s body would not move.
Hours later, the priest came, fairly certain that this was the work of God’s opposite. He prayed and prayed, and found that there was no devil there. The priest commanded that they find a doctor and that is what the Hutchisons did.
The doctor came an hour later, intrigued by this strange case. He ran test after test on the poor boy and eventually he too had to admit that he didn’t know what was wrong with him either.
The Hutchison’s attempted to feed the small boy, but he insisted that he wasn’t hungry. Thinking that stress had killed his appetite, his parents made him eat anyways. But every time food or drink touched his tongue, it would evaporate into white smoke, vanishing with a small puff! His parents exchanged a worried look.
The next morning, Peter awoke to find that he was now floating two inches above his bed and he still couldn’t move. Again, his parents tried to feed him and again the food vanished. The Hutchison’s feared the worst for their son. If this kept up, they thought, then surely he would not last much longer.
But that was where they were wrong.
Weeks past and still Peter floated higher and higher, adding an inch every day. He still could not eat or drink but he never grew thinner. After missing so much school, his parents decided to hire a tutor, and so he had class every day. Peter complained of missing his friends, so his friends came over, amazed at his new suspended state. The kids told their parents and their parents told their friends and soon the whole town wanted to get a peek at the floating boy.
By now, Peter was close to hitting the ceiling of his bedroom, so his parents cut a boy-sized hole above their son. They cut through the ceiling, into the attic, and finally through the roof, although they were still hoping that his condition would not grow worse enough to float out of their home.
Many townspeople came to the Hutchison home, both to offer their condolences and to witness his strange circumstance. A few touched the boy, hoping to gain some sort of power or to heal their aliments, but nothing ever came of it. The Hutchison’s still sought out doctors and spiritual leaders, but they all agreed that science nor religion could answer for the boy’s peculiar state.
As the months past, Peter kept floating higher, and his parents worried that one day he would float out of their reach. They tried to tether him down with rope, but still the boy would climb inch by inch to the sky. Eventually, they accepted the reality of his condition and tried to prepare themselves and him for the inevitable.
It took six months for Peter to float above his house. His parents stood on their roof to hold the boy’s hand and cry, because they knew as each day passed, it would become more and more impossible to touch their son, or even to speak to him.
In only a couple of weeks they could not touch him.
In few months, they could not speak to him.
And still he climbed.
Higher and higher.
Into the heavens.
