Leonard Edison’s wife has a dark and frightening premonition – that her husband will die before his next birthday. Leonard, aware of this forecast, responds with the animal instinct of fight-or-flight – he wings away on an affair with a former student, engages in a series of petty crimes, neglects his dying mother, moves in with his strange, disaffected nephew (who is living off the spoils of a lottery win) and even flirts with the shadowy Toronto Goth world. While he soars towards a new life that might slow the advance of fate, Leonard finds that fate keeps changing its many bird-like appearances: sometimes, the wings of darkness are hard and audible; sometimes, they are obscured by bright but fatal light.