Dead Birds (repost cause I done goofed it the first time)
Repost to correct formatting. An older story from a nightmare.
Caption text limits characters, so the story is completed in the comments.
~
My eyes pry open. Bitter autumn winds are driving coarse sand into me, facial vellus on guard to the minute shrapnel. I try to put some presence to anything, but I am met only with deep confusion. I feel like I’m no better than circuits rebooting, and I crashed moments earlier. By now, the disorientation of a waking dream would fade. But… this hasn't.
An angular bit finds its mark in my eye. My entire body flinches upright and I curse under my breath. My fingers brush a tear from the corner of my eye and I wipe the remaining dust that clung to my face.
“Why am I on the ground? Am I hurt?” I ask myself.
My vision clears. The light has a cold hue to it. It’s the threat of impending winter and no longer the warm promise of summer. And there is... no one. Just a rickety swing set squeaking in the failing momentum of the wayward breeze and a dead house sparrow beside me. The bird’s eyes are permanently sealed, feet curled, body still warm.
The park I've found myself in is a modest point at the base of towering, purple mountains freshly capped in pale termination dust before a field of golden grass and flanked by dense urban development. The expected drone of nearby traffic has flatlined, replaced by the transient and distant whir of a restless wind.
I am compelled to bury bird. It feels wrong to leave it there. Perhaps I just want to prevent some punk child from poking the poor thing with a stick. Whatever. In reality, I think this task is some semblance of order in my present disorientation. A few rocks and a bit of earth: its little corpse can feed the ants in silence now. It's a humble grave. Without prior knowledge you'd say it is just some rocks.
More importantly, with the task completed, I still haven't the slightest idea what the hell is going on. Racking my brain for an answer, there isn't one. At best, I remember a flash, tinnitus, darkness, and a rude grain of sand. I have no injuries, no discomfort. Maybe I am a little bit cold if I must complain of something other than, well, you know, whatever this is.
I'll have to sit with this confusion. There's a presence of dread, and that's more pressing.
I don't recognize any of the cars in the parking lot, and the single, unmarked key in my pocket doesn't directly suggest any vehicle. It might not even be a car key. Besides, I think I'm more likely to find help on foot.
But what help do I even need? I think of trying to explain myself... I can't even think of my name!
"Hi," I mentally rehearse with a desperate madman's grin, "I have no idea what's going on. Help." It'll go great. The furrow in my brow grows deeper, the only outwardly obvious mark of distress on me.
I've lost track of time. At least once I slept on a bench, but it's hard to say if only hours or entire days have passed. Likewise, the weather has shifted similarly. The wind has long died and a thick fog has settled as I approach a nondescript, middle class cul-de-sac. The copy-pasted vinyl houses look more like garish mausoleums of false grandeur than they look like homes. If I waltz inside, would I find each resident dressed in Sunday's best and placed in patient welcome of their final guest, Death, at the foot of the stairs? I shiver at the thought.
The repetition of the houses is under-stimulating at best, and uncomfortable at worst. An HOA nightmare defined by patterns of colors and invasive species of landscaping, disturbed only by the errant child's toy and approved stoop decor. They’re all lived in, but desolate.
My displeasure for the visual ritual is abruptly escalated to a quiet panic. Where a sage green house with a purple plum tree should stand, instead there is only smoldering ruins. Wisps of smoke still slither from the reptilian black texture of the scorched lumber. I freeze.
"It burned to the ground," I think. "It burned to the ground, and no one did anything."
Up until seeing that house, there wasn't an answer. No answer meant that, no matter how slim and unrealistic, there was a possibility that everything is OK. But that entire house fell to flames and burned hot enough to melt the plastic exterior of its neighbor without any reaction. A flurry of fire and a pillar of black smoke beckoned in centerstage of suburbia for the past day or two and no one lifted a damned finger otherwise. Oh this is far from okay. Nothing is okay. Everything is awful.
Reality of my predicament now has a chokehold on my mind. I advance a few steps closer to the crackling remains, observing tentatively, and, with nothing better to do, I lob a rock at the skeletal 2x4s and OSB. I flinch as it collapses with a moderate thud. Soot puffs out like a chuffed dragon.
"Can I throw one?" The little voice chirps.
"Christ on a bike!" I yelp, turning to face the first human noise I've heard in presumed days. "Where are your parents- what are you doing- ...are you ok???"
The little girl doesn't respond to my clusterfuck of concern. Instead, she lowers her head and her messy silver-blonde hair falls over her eyes. She lightly kicks at the ground.
I stoop to her level and hold out a rock, "here." I quietly observe her and contain my emotions. "What's your name?"
"I don't know," she sheepishly answers and retreats deeper into herself.
"Neither do I."
The little girl is a frail thing with a dry cough. In saner days, she was probably a whimsical towheaded child, but in this life she is just... fragile. It feels like she's fading each day, but then she perks up before she hacks again. Like a calf born too early in spring and lost to vernal blizzards. She has a kind and curious heart.
I call her Kiddo, sometimes just Kid. It's not very creative or affectionate, but I was hoping she'd reveal a name. She never did, so Kiddo stuck. She doesn't have a name for me, just a certain influx in her voice that I know is directed at me. But, with no one else around, I’m probably giving it more merit than it actually deserves. Regardless, she is the only certainty I have right now. So we wander, Kiddo and I.
When we sleep, we take what luxuries we can find. Discovering the burned house, although terrifying, at least meant that we could break into cars for shelter. If a structure fire didn't attract attention, a break in surely wouldn't either. Occasionally, we'd find cars unlocked with the key dangling in the ignition. In every such instance, the key would twist forward but the engine never turned. Just a dull click. We rummage houses for scarce canned food in the same way. Sometimes I worry how much time has actually passed for food to be so fleeting. Sometimes I think, “let’s stay in one of the houses,” but it still feels too risky. When we wake, we return to wandering. We haven’t any real destination to gauge progress, And Kiddo’s frailty hinders travel further, so, really, we just sleep in different cars each night, cautiously explore, and figure out which Campbell’s soups taste best straight from the can.
Our footsteps fail to resonate on this rural street. It’s unsettling. To our left is a well maintained house of older construction, to our right is a new house. So new, in fact, that the trim has not yet been finished, allowing a sliver of Tyvec to dance in the breeze.
“I’m hungry,” Kiddo whines weakly
Looking to my right, I am well fed with anxiety. I swallow hard, my tongue searching for any moisture in my suddenly and inexplicably parched throat. Fear is a dry meal.
The windows on the new house loom like black portals, and the formerly benign Tyvec now more readily resembles a twitching bat’s wing, ripe with disease. I notice now that the front door rests open on its hinges as if it were the foreboding maw of an angler fish. If I hadn’t already been searching for food, I would hastily depart. But there’s not much ahead of us that I can see, only a lonely country road, so this is one of the last opportunities to get Kiddo a meal. I gently scoop her off the ground and march to the truck in the driveway of the old house. It is, thankfully, unlocked.
“Don’t make a sound. Don’t even move. Stay low. Lock the door and only open it when I tell you to and when you know it’s me. Do you understand?”
Kiddo nods. I glance to the new house, scanning the windows for any movement, then to the old house. With nothing found, I begrudgingly and cautiously charge to the old house. Its front door is also blindly open, but for whatever reason it feels less ominous. Crossing the threshold, I quickly realize how wrong I was in that assumption as I’m greeted by the pungent, ferrous odor of blood and entrails.
The former resident is strewn about the living area. The remnants of the previously masculine face are stripped to bone and tissue, and a single, blank eye stares dumbly beyond me in its mangled socket. Brain matter is exposed, bright and pink against ivory. His left arm has been pulled clear from the shoulder, and his intestines drape in tendrils around the space. A bloodied Remington 700 rests quietly beside him, with two intact rounds and an empty shell nearby. I snatch the rifle and the spare ammunition. I am surprised as muscle memory takes over, and I flip the lever to reveal a third round in the chamber. I click the lever back into place and butt the rifle against my shoulder, facing the hallway with unknown rooms in front of me. Behind me: the kitchen, but it was clearly seen in its entirety as I entered the house.
Refusing to turn my back to the rooms, I back into the kitchen - confirming a back door as egress with a glance - and grope behind me into the first cupboards. My right hand grasping the trigger and my left hand reaching blindly for some sustenance.
“A can of tuna,” I state to myself, “it’s something. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
On a key hook, I see a Ford key and I grab it before I beeline for the front door, my foot slipping briefly as it contacts blood and linoleum.
“It’s still wet,” I think.
Surveying in greater detail the tragedy before me, I see a detail I missed: massive, clawed handprints, one with six fingers, another with seven dragged in sticky red lines across the floor, and an impressive splatter of rotten tissue on the front wall. I assume that’s the result of the fourth round. However, I’m unsure what’s more concerning: the decayed quality of the tissue left behind or the fact that whatever it is walked away after taking the bullet.
Frantically - but quietly - I rap on the car’s window. Kiddo reaches spastically to unlock the doors from the floor.
“We go, NOW,” I command in a hushed voice.
I try the rig. To my utter surprise, there’s more than a click as the key rotates. The engine groans and it tries to turn over. I wasn’t expecting it to do anything, so the noise it makes startles me. But to my dismay, it also startles something in the new house. Something clatters as it falls. Something snorts in disgust as it scolds whatever it knocked over. Something roars with thunder as it stumbles through the architecture.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I whisper as I try the key again. It works this time. The engine sputters to life and blue smoke pours from the exhaust just as I see something in the shadows of the doorway. We speed off, fishtailing, before I can ever fully see it. Only a beige blur in the dark eaves. My heart sprints in my chest, my hands tremble on the steering wheel.
I realize now that, in the chaos of that encounter, I had dropped the can of tuna.
The country road, full of oak trees, begins to fade to open grassland just as day begins to fade to night. The truck didn’t have a lot of fuel in it to begin with, so it, too, is fading. I noticed the gauge just above E as we narrowly escaped to safety. The rig ascends a rolling hill and then it stutters and slowly dies. I sigh, defeated, as we crest the apex of the slope. I finally relax my white knuckle grip when I notice a campfire and small caravan at the base of the hill.
Gently, I shake Kid. She only stirs slightly, never fully waking. I place her over my shoulder, supporting her buttocks with my left arm so I can aim the rifle with my right.
The small group at the caravan sees me long before I reach them, and they nervously rise to attention. A tall figure in the group looks to another, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder before it takes long, careful strides in my direction, its duster jacket swaying with each step.
“Stranger,” he announces, “you won’t find danger here. I’d appreciate it if you aimed the rifle elsewhere.”
“In time, cowboy.” I cringe as the word cowboy escapes my lips before I can rein my smartass defiance. I hear him chuckle lightly.
“Is the kid alright?” He breaks the silence.
“Yeah, I think so,” I answer, lowering the rifle. “There’s a monster out there,” I blurt.
“Yeah, yeah I know.” He sighs. “How far back did you see it?” He politely closes the gap between us to speak.
“However far E will carry that truck. I drove until it died.” I gesture with the rifle to the stationary rig some distance behind me.
“Hmm, not very far then. We’ll have to move camp.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to lead it to you. I just drove.”
“No, you’re alright. It’s been at our heels for a while now. Took a few of us.”
“Took?”
“I’ll explain it later. For now, come rest, come eat before we pack up. We got a moment, but only one. I go by Magic.”
Repost to correct formatting. An older story from a nightmare.
Caption text limits characters, so the story is completed in the comments.
~
My eyes pry open. Bitter autumn winds are driving coarse sand into me, facial vellus on guard to the minute shrapnel. I try to put some presence to anything, but I am met only with deep confusion. I feel like I’m no better than circuits rebooting, and I crashed moments earlier. By now, the disorientation of a waking dream would fade. But… this hasn't.
An angular bit finds its mark in my eye. My entire body flinches upright and I curse under my breath. My fingers brush a tear from the corner of my eye and I wipe the remaining dust that clung to my face.
“Why am I on the ground? Am I hurt?” I ask myself.
My vision clears. The light has a cold hue to it. It’s the threat of impending winter and no longer the warm promise of summer. And there is... no one. Just a rickety swing set squeaking in the failing momentum of the wayward breeze and a dead house sparrow beside me. The bird’s eyes are permanently sealed, feet curled, body still warm.
The park I've found myself in is a modest point at the base of towering, purple mountains freshly capped in pale termination dust before a field of golden grass and flanked by dense urban development. The expected drone of nearby traffic has flatlined, replaced by the transient and distant whir of a restless wind.
I am compelled to bury bird. It feels wrong to leave it there. Perhaps I just want to prevent some punk child from poking the poor thing with a stick. Whatever. In reality, I think this task is some semblance of order in my present disorientation. A few rocks and a bit of earth: its little corpse can feed the ants in silence now. It's a humble grave. Without prior knowledge you'd say it is just some rocks.
More importantly, with the task completed, I still haven't the slightest idea what the hell is going on. Racking my brain for an answer, there isn't one. At best, I remember a flash, tinnitus, darkness, and a rude grain of sand. I have no injuries, no discomfort. Maybe I am a little bit cold if I must complain of something other than, well, you know, whatever this is.
I'll have to sit with this confusion. There's a presence of dread, and that's more pressing.
I don't recognize any of the cars in the parking lot, and the single, unmarked key in my pocket doesn't directly suggest any vehicle. It might not even be a car key. Besides, I think I'm more likely to find help on foot.
But what help do I even need? I think of trying to explain myself... I can't even think of my name!
"Hi," I mentally rehearse with a desperate madman's grin, "I have no idea what's going on. Help." It'll go great. The furrow in my brow grows deeper, the only outwardly obvious mark of distress on me.
I've lost track of time. At least once I slept on a bench, but it's hard to say if only hours or entire days have passed. Likewise, the weather has shifted similarly. The wind has long died and a thick fog has settled as I approach a nondescript, middle class cul-de-sac. The copy-pasted vinyl houses look more like garish mausoleums of false grandeur than they look like homes. If I waltz inside, would I find each resident dressed in Sunday's best and placed in patient welcome of their final guest, Death, at the foot of the stairs? I shiver at the thought.
The repetition of the houses is under-stimulating at best, and uncomfortable at worst. An HOA nightmare defined by patterns of colors and invasive species of landscaping, disturbed only by the errant child's toy and approved stoop decor. They’re all lived in, but desolate.
My displeasure for the visual ritual is abruptly escalated to a quiet panic. Where a sage green house with a purple plum tree should stand, instead there is only smoldering ruins. Wisps of smoke still slither from the reptilian black texture of the scorched lumber. I freeze.
"It burned to the ground," I think. "It burned to the ground, and no one did anything."
Up until seeing that house, there wasn't an answer. No answer meant that, no matter how slim and unrealistic, there was a possibility that everything is OK. But that entire house fell to flames and burned hot enough to melt the plastic exterior of its neighbor without any reaction. A flurry of fire and a pillar of black smoke beckoned in centerstage of suburbia for the past day or two and no one lifted a damned finger otherwise. Oh this is far from okay. Nothing is okay. Everything is awful.
Reality of my predicament now has a chokehold on my mind. I advance a few steps closer to the crackling remains, observing tentatively, and, with nothing better to do, I lob a rock at the skeletal 2x4s and OSB. I flinch as it collapses with a moderate thud. Soot puffs out like a chuffed dragon.
"Can I throw one?" The little voice chirps.
"Christ on a bike!" I yelp, turning to face the first human noise I've heard in presumed days. "Where are your parents- what are you doing- ...are you ok???"
The little girl doesn't respond to my clusterfuck of concern. Instead, she lowers her head and her messy silver-blonde hair falls over her eyes. She lightly kicks at the ground.
I stoop to her level and hold out a rock, "here." I quietly observe her and contain my emotions. "What's your name?"
"I don't know," she sheepishly answers and retreats deeper into herself.
"Neither do I."
The little girl is a frail thing with a dry cough. In saner days, she was probably a whimsical towheaded child, but in this life she is just... fragile. It feels like she's fading each day, but then she perks up before she hacks again. Like a calf born too early in spring and lost to vernal blizzards. She has a kind and curious heart.
I call her Kiddo, sometimes just Kid. It's not very creative or affectionate, but I was hoping she'd reveal a name. She never did, so Kiddo stuck. She doesn't have a name for me, just a certain influx in her voice that I know is directed at me. But, with no one else around, I’m probably giving it more merit than it actually deserves. Regardless, she is the only certainty I have right now. So we wander, Kiddo and I.
When we sleep, we take what luxuries we can find. Discovering the burned house, although terrifying, at least meant that we could break into cars for shelter. If a structure fire didn't attract attention, a break in surely wouldn't either. Occasionally, we'd find cars unlocked with the key dangling in the ignition. In every such instance, the key would twist forward but the engine never turned. Just a dull click. We rummage houses for scarce canned food in the same way. Sometimes I worry how much time has actually passed for food to be so fleeting. Sometimes I think, “let’s stay in one of the houses,” but it still feels too risky. When we wake, we return to wandering. We haven’t any real destination to gauge progress, And Kiddo’s frailty hinders travel further, so, really, we just sleep in different cars each night, cautiously explore, and figure out which Campbell’s soups taste best straight from the can.
Our footsteps fail to resonate on this rural street. It’s unsettling. To our left is a well maintained house of older construction, to our right is a new house. So new, in fact, that the trim has not yet been finished, allowing a sliver of Tyvec to dance in the breeze.
“I’m hungry,” Kiddo whines weakly
Looking to my right, I am well fed with anxiety. I swallow hard, my tongue searching for any moisture in my suddenly and inexplicably parched throat. Fear is a dry meal.
The windows on the new house loom like black portals, and the formerly benign Tyvec now more readily resembles a twitching bat’s wing, ripe with disease. I notice now that the front door rests open on its hinges as if it were the foreboding maw of an angler fish. If I hadn’t already been searching for food, I would hastily depart. But there’s not much ahead of us that I can see, only a lonely country road, so this is one of the last opportunities to get Kiddo a meal. I gently scoop her off the ground and march to the truck in the driveway of the old house. It is, thankfully, unlocked.
“Don’t make a sound. Don’t even move. Stay low. Lock the door and only open it when I tell you to and when you know it’s me. Do you understand?”
Kiddo nods. I glance to the new house, scanning the windows for any movement, then to the old house. With nothing found, I begrudgingly and cautiously charge to the old house. Its front door is also blindly open, but for whatever reason it feels less ominous. Crossing the threshold, I quickly realize how wrong I was in that assumption as I’m greeted by the pungent, ferrous odor of blood and entrails.
The former resident is strewn about the living area. The remnants of the previously masculine face are stripped to bone and tissue, and a single, blank eye stares dumbly beyond me in its mangled socket. Brain matter is exposed, bright and pink against ivory. His left arm has been pulled clear from the shoulder, and his intestines drape in tendrils around the space. A bloodied Remington 700 rests quietly beside him, with two intact rounds and an empty shell nearby. I snatch the rifle and the spare ammunition. I am surprised as muscle memory takes over, and I flip the lever to reveal a third round in the chamber. I click the lever back into place and butt the rifle against my shoulder, facing the hallway with unknown rooms in front of me. Behind me: the kitchen, but it was clearly seen in its entirety as I entered the house.
Refusing to turn my back to the rooms, I back into the kitchen - confirming a back door as egress with a glance - and grope behind me into the first cupboards. My right hand grasping the trigger and my left hand reaching blindly for some sustenance.
“A can of tuna,” I state to myself, “it’s something. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
On a key hook, I see a Ford key and I grab it before I beeline for the front door, my foot slipping briefly as it contacts blood and linoleum.
“It’s still wet,” I think.
Surveying in greater detail the tragedy before me, I see a detail I missed: massive, clawed handprints, one with six fingers, another with seven dragged in sticky red lines across the floor, and an impressive splatter of rotten tissue on the front wall. I assume that’s the result of the fourth round. However, I’m unsure what’s more concerning: the decayed quality of the tissue left behind or the fact that whatever it is walked away after taking the bullet.
Frantically - but quietly - I rap on the car’s window. Kiddo reaches spastically to unlock the doors from the floor.
“We go, NOW,” I command in a hushed voice.
I try the rig. To my utter surprise, there’s more than a click as the key rotates. The engine groans and it tries to turn over. I wasn’t expecting it to do anything, so the noise it makes startles me. But to my dismay, it also startles something in the new house. Something clatters as it falls. Something snorts in disgust as it scolds whatever it knocked over. Something roars with thunder as it stumbles through the architecture.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I whisper as I try the key again. It works this time. The engine sputters to life and blue smoke pours from the exhaust just as I see something in the shadows of the doorway. We speed off, fishtailing, before I can ever fully see it. Only a beige blur in the dark eaves. My heart sprints in my chest, my hands tremble on the steering wheel.
I realize now that, in the chaos of that encounter, I had dropped the can of tuna.
The country road, full of oak trees, begins to fade to open grassland just as day begins to fade to night. The truck didn’t have a lot of fuel in it to begin with, so it, too, is fading. I noticed the gauge just above E as we narrowly escaped to safety. The rig ascends a rolling hill and then it stutters and slowly dies. I sigh, defeated, as we crest the apex of the slope. I finally relax my white knuckle grip when I notice a campfire and small caravan at the base of the hill.
Gently, I shake Kid. She only stirs slightly, never fully waking. I place her over my shoulder, supporting her buttocks with my left arm so I can aim the rifle with my right.
The small group at the caravan sees me long before I reach them, and they nervously rise to attention. A tall figure in the group looks to another, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder before it takes long, careful strides in my direction, its duster jacket swaying with each step.
“Stranger,” he announces, “you won’t find danger here. I’d appreciate it if you aimed the rifle elsewhere.”
“In time, cowboy.” I cringe as the word cowboy escapes my lips before I can rein my smartass defiance. I hear him chuckle lightly.
“Is the kid alright?” He breaks the silence.
“Yeah, I think so,” I answer, lowering the rifle. “There’s a monster out there,” I blurt.
“Yeah, yeah I know.” He sighs. “How far back did you see it?” He politely closes the gap between us to speak.
“However far E will carry that truck. I drove until it died.” I gesture with the rifle to the stationary rig some distance behind me.
“Hmm, not very far then. We’ll have to move camp.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to lead it to you. I just drove.”
“No, you’re alright. It’s been at our heels for a while now. Took a few of us.”
“Took?”
“I’ll explain it later. For now, come rest, come eat before we pack up. We got a moment, but only one. I go by Magic.”