eternalrosesample

She watched the girl get out of a small green car, hoping that she was alone.  The girl was three blocks away, walking in her platform shoes, and cheap dangling jewelry.  She watched the girl move through the street shadows.  The two birds in her lap took flight from her stroking and flew the distance in seconds.  One, the larger, dropped to the sidewalk just in front of the girl.  It opened its beak and screamed a hellish caw.  The girl stopped cold.  Goosebumps raced to cover her entire body.  Again that horrid sound, another bird dropped behind her.  When he sounded, she spun on her heal and looked into one beady black eye.  The beak of the bird was opened.  A sound that did not seem like one any animal might make came from its throat.  It sounded like a radio, a song.  She let down her guard.  It was three o-clock in the morning, not a good time to let any guard down, but then, this was no songbird, it was bait.  The black flock streamed from the open window three blocks away, racing to join the two ravens with blood stained feet.  They flew in silent unity, a pitch-black cloud in the night, blotting out the moon and the stars, and soon one more life.

The girl took a step off the sidewalk and the sound that came from the raven beak split her ears.  The flock dropped to the ground.  Only a minute had passed since she stepped out of the car with one hundred dollars tucked into her bra.  It would still be there when her body was found.  From above she saw a nightmare.  She thought she really was asleep.  It was not so long ago she had seen this movie.  Tippy Hedron attacked by crazed seagulls.  It was nighttime now, so why not ravens.  Wake up!  But no, reality is stranger than fiction.  These were real birds.  They started bombing her.  Dropping from behind.  The bird in front of her began hopping.  She took a step to follow.  Why?  A step in the wrong direction, and she was whopped by another bird.  Follow the blackbird.  Was that really a song?  The tune seemed familiar, a song from her dreams.  She took a few more steps.  The raven hopped away.  The birds soared and circled like bees swarming but not biting, unless her direction faltered.  Her bare arm trickled blood.  Can blackbirds carry rabies?  Fuck, can they really swarm, and did it even fucking matter?  She crossed the street, hoping for a car to drive by.  If one had, the driver would only have seen a shadow in the corner.  His mind would not have register flock of blackbirds swarming.  That was impossible except in nightmares.  The girl was led around the corner, her heart beating too fast, faster even than when she had fucked for the hundred bucks.  Nightmares can push past all limits on reason.  She saw the open window.  More birds were flying out.  There was a steady stream, like a black river, flowing in the sky.  The line of shadow flew across the moonlight, around a streetlight to add even more substance to the swarm around her head.  She walked toward the only opening they gave her.  The only sounds were the tapping of her thick soles and the flutter-slap of way too many fucking black wings.

She stopped to breathe.  The birds had used up the air and there was not enough to maintain her pace.  They dove on her.  Their pounding bodies and pecking beaks piercing her skin.  She bled from seventeen different holes and two outright tears.  Rabies.  The only sanity her mind would allow.  The she looked up to the window, no more birds.  She saw a shape, a blot.  That blot seemed to absorb light.  It was blacker than shadow and in a misshapen form that resembled a very large man.  There seemed to be one bird left on a shoulder.  It was this building that the lead bird was hopping toward.  Now the girl understood this dream.  It was not.  No fucking way she was dreaming this shit.  No fucking thing in her life could be represented, symbolically or otherwise, by this fucking terror.  She turned, about to take a step, and she was pummeled.  The birds hitting her so hard they broke their own necks.  One buried its beak and head into her stomach like a spear.  No retreat, just lots of blood pouring into her shorts and down her legs.  The blood was only equaled by the burning pain and outright fear.  She ran toward the open door.  It was the only clear path.  Fuck, she had a hundred bucks.  She’d pay the monster, for she was sure that was what he was, and well, maybe she could buy her sanity back.  Inside the stairs were lined with more birds.  Here, the pigeons were mixed in.  Again, that one stubborn lead bird leaped up from one stair to the next.  Behind her, outside, a wall of ravens seemed to be hovering just out of reach.  Inside the floor heaved with their excited flutter-claps. 

She stepped up the stairs.

Three flights up there was a door.  The first bird stood beside the closed portal, waiting.  He had lots of friends, and a sharp beak, but no hands.  He could not open the door.  It stood tall; its head nearly two feet from the floor.  She thought the black bird looked like a marine at attention.  The few, the proud, she kicked its head into the wall, the fucking dead. 

The girl opened the door.

From inside, above the din of the remaining birds, she heard the click of the door.  A great swell of waves rose and ebbed like a tide as she turned her rolling flesh to greet the girl.  The amount of blood flowing from the girl was surprising.  The birds did not usually have to use quite so much determination.  She motioned with thick, knurly finger, directing the girl closer.  The girl turned her head from side to side, more ravens behind, extreme ugliness in front, and choosing ugly over swarming, rabid ravens, a short step toward the horrible woman in the center of the room.  The puncture in her abdomen assured her this was a good choice.

“The fuck’re you?”  The girl said weakly.  Her energy was fairly used up.

“Raven,” she whispered.

“Raven?”

“Like my birdies, my pets, love.”

“Jane.”

“Huh?”

“Gonna, kill me, call me Jane, not love.’

“You’re a tough one, Jane?”

“I been on the street a time, it happens.  All my cute got used up.”

Raven laughed.

Jane winced.  The hole near her navel was burning.  She pulled up her shirt, stopping just below her breasts.  The hole was pushing blood out in pulses.  She knew that was bad.  There was a small black feather sticking to the wound like a bandage.  Jane removed it.  She touched the stab wound with her finger.  The blood was warm and slick.  She drew a line from the hole to her breastbone stopping just between Ms. Pride and Ms. Joy, her husband had named them on their wedding night, almost a full year earlier.  She wet her finger in the blood again and drew another line.  They formed a cross.