His.
“Yes Father?” I said, through the night that separated us and through the rain that streaked my face.
He answered me in images. They flashed behind my eyes like epilepsy, taking my sight.
The street.
The girl.
The deed.
The cage.
The knife.
The flames.
That night I dreamed but didn’t sleep. I saw Him before my brain, behind my eyes. A suit of feathers. A hole in His face, and that tongue. No man should ever have to see that tongue; even inside of a dream no man should see that. It is enough to separate you from your sanity.
And it did, in the end, it did.
A BAG OF BIRDS
It was Monday, it was always Monday. At lunch, in the canteen, Angela overheard a conversation between two mothers, one saying how much she wanted to go to the south of France during the first week of August and the other how she planned to go to the Algarve during the second, taking the children, flying away from this nameless northern town on stiff metal wings. Angela, dirty with jealousy, threw the crust of her sandwich in the bin, went down the corridor to the office with a heavy tread and booked both, taking the two weeks for herself, and taking the opportunity away from her colleagues. In the afternoon she listened to the two women talk about her. They had seen her name go up on the tired corkboard that hung above them and knew what she had done. She didn’t care, but the air was thick with her crime. Eventually one of them said, “So where are you going then?” over the grey felt partition between her desk and theirs.
“Isle of Man”, Angela said as she typed.
The women complained about Angela for the rest of the day. She heard them remind each other just how rude she was, how terrible she looked, that lazy crazy bitch, and when she went to bed that night those words echoed around the warehouse of her bedroom, stacked high with boxes with women’s names.
The next day she woke to find that three little chaffinches had died and one of the two magpies she had been keeping for good luck. She knelt on the plastic floor of the second bedroom and held their lifeless, flightless bodies to her chest. She cried for them, and then for herself.
The dead magpie sat in her sweaty palm. Magpies were such beautiful creatures up close, more iridescent blue than black, like a nocturnal rainbow in a white night sky. She wasn’t ready to let him go, she wanted to appreciate his beauty a little longer. But of course one magpie would only bring sorrow, so she placed the dead bird at her feet and walked over to the one still living, perched on the chest of drawers.
“Come on”, she said quietly, and wrapped a stubby hand around its body, restricting its wings.
The bird’s head twitched this way and that, trying to get a look at its dead friend, who Angela collected from the floor. She held one in each fist and took them to the hallway where the walls were lined with bird bodies and their alabaster bones. With a big hammer and a long nail she pinned them both to a clear patch, somewhere between neat rows of starling skeletons and the big soggy owl she caught last summer and who had died on the previous Tuesday. She sat on the dirty carpet, her back to the wall, and watched as the wings of the living bird strobed black blue and white as they flapped furiously, then weakly, as the last of its life drained out of the hole she made in its chest. Even in death she appreciated their beauty and she looked forward to watching them rot and smear down the wall, leaving their delicate bones exposed, all white and beautiful.
She stood up and regarded the mesh of bones and nails and broken bird, faded in patches from the bleach she sprayed at it when the house got warm and the smell became unbearable, a high contrast display of all the loss she had felt. She had known them all, and loved them in her own way, but now they were as hollow inside as she.
She looked at them and
“Yes Father?” I said, through the night that separated us and through the rain that streaked my face.
He answered me in images. They flashed behind my eyes like epilepsy, taking my sight.
The street.
The girl.
The deed.
The cage.
The knife.
The flames.
That night I dreamed but didn’t sleep. I saw Him before my brain, behind my eyes. A suit of feathers. A hole in His face, and that tongue. No man should ever have to see that tongue; even inside of a dream no man should see that. It is enough to separate you from your sanity.
And it did, in the end, it did.
A BAG OF BIRDS
It was Monday, it was always Monday. At lunch, in the canteen, Angela overheard a conversation between two mothers, one saying how much she wanted to go to the south of France during the first week of August and the other how she planned to go to the Algarve during the second, taking the children, flying away from this nameless northern town on stiff metal wings. Angela, dirty with jealousy, threw the crust of her sandwich in the bin, went down the corridor to the office with a heavy tread and booked both, taking the two weeks for herself, and taking the opportunity away from her colleagues. In the afternoon she listened to the two women talk about her. They had seen her name go up on the tired corkboard that hung above them and knew what she had done. She didn’t care, but the air was thick with her crime. Eventually one of them said, “So where are you going then?” over the grey felt partition between her desk and theirs.
“Isle of Man”, Angela said as she typed.
The women complained about Angela for the rest of the day. She heard them remind each other just how rude she was, how terrible she looked, that lazy crazy bitch, and when she went to bed that night those words echoed around the warehouse of her bedroom, stacked high with boxes with women’s names.
The next day she woke to find that three little chaffinches had died and one of the two magpies she had been keeping for good luck. She knelt on the plastic floor of the second bedroom and held their lifeless, flightless bodies to her chest. She cried for them, and then for herself.
The dead magpie sat in her sweaty palm. Magpies were such beautiful creatures up close, more iridescent blue than black, like a nocturnal rainbow in a white night sky. She wasn’t ready to let him go, she wanted to appreciate his beauty a little longer. But of course one magpie would only bring sorrow, so she placed the dead bird at her feet and walked over to the one still living, perched on the chest of drawers.
“Come on”, she said quietly, and wrapped a stubby hand around its body, restricting its wings.
The bird’s head twitched this way and that, trying to get a look at its dead friend, who Angela collected from the floor. She held one in each fist and took them to the hallway where the walls were lined with bird bodies and their alabaster bones. With a big hammer and a long nail she pinned them both to a clear patch, somewhere between neat rows of starling skeletons and the big soggy owl she caught last summer and who had died on the previous Tuesday. She sat on the dirty carpet, her back to the wall, and watched as the wings of the living bird strobed black blue and white as they flapped furiously, then weakly, as the last of its life drained out of the hole she made in its chest. Even in death she appreciated their beauty and she looked forward to watching them rot and smear down the wall, leaving their delicate bones exposed, all white and beautiful.
She stood up and regarded the mesh of bones and nails and broken bird, faded in patches from the bleach she sprayed at it when the house got warm and the smell became unbearable, a high contrast display of all the loss she had felt. She had known them all, and loved them in her own way, but now they were as hollow inside as she.
She looked at them and
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