Legacy of Blood-soaked Hands. (STORY PREVIEW)

I have this strange, recurring dream in which I am with my father. We are in an unknown, beautiful park. I am a child again, and the park is empty, without any other person around anywhere. In the park, there is a dried tree, black as the depths of hell, without any leaves. No life can grow on it. It looks so out of place, nothing akin to the greenery around us. It felt like half a tree, half a poison. Pigeons are flying near us; they are so full of life and flight, like cherubs in heaven. The claps of their wings felt like they could bring the chilling tree down.

My father catches one pigeon unfortunate enough to get near his hands. He begins to take off its smooth feathers, then he rips off its frail flesh until there’s blood on his hands, and the unlucky bird is dead. A crow flies over to the dry branch of the lifeless tree from a distance that my eyesight cannot reach. My father drops the dead pigeon to the ground carelessly, as if the pigeon’s life was nothing but a joke.

I stand there in horror and ask him why he did that. He says that if he kills thirteen birds in a row, we will be able to fly. Like any child of a parent, I trust him.

He catches another unfortunate thing, and I turn my head around not to witness the unnecessary cruelty. My gaze fixated on the tree with a devilish crow watching the scene in amusement. I hear helpless cooing, before it’s silenced by the hush of death. Then I start counting, eleven more to go. Eleven more until he stops, and I get to act like nothing bad happened. Eleven more until we either fly or bury a bunch of the innocent. After each death, a crow flies over to the dark tree, weighing its branches that seemed like they could crack any moment. Once there were twelve crows on the tree, I turned my head, and my father was mercilessly holding the thirteenth victim: an angelic white dove. He had a pile of dead pigeons underneath him, the blood on his hands staining the beautiful white feathers of yet another helpless creature. I caught a glimpse of its face: fearful and pure, and then its little eyes looked over at me; a silent plea for me to stop him. My heart broke a little, so I immediately told him we don’t have to fly, that I’m perfectly comfortable with moving my feet on the ground. He tells me that feet sometimes start to hurt and that we deserve wings to fly high. He was staring at the white dove in his hands, the look in his eyes was filled with full hatred. Hatred for something so tiny and helpless. I tell him we can sit down if his feet are hurting, maybe even admire the pigeons and feed them breadcrumbs. And maybe, if we’re kind enough, they tell us a secret of how they fly.

My father turns to me and opens his murder-scarred hands, the white dove urging to fly to my shoulder. At that moment, I think I’ve got him. I suggest we wash the blood off, bury these pigeons somewhere with honor and get some bread to feed their family and friends, but then he tells me someone must die. With his red-stained hands, he takes out a gun. Like the helpless dove that was urged to my shoulder, I urged towards him with the same amount of desperation, but it’s too late. I heard a loud bang, and he was bleeding out next to the pile of dead pigeons. Tears flooded my eyes, and the white dove on my shoulder tried to comfort me by cuddling its little head against my wet cheek. My tears washed away the bloodied stains my father left on its perfect white feathers. I held my father’s corpse tightly.

In that moment, the thirteenth crow flew over from the distance, and instead of weighing yet another dry branch of the tree, it stood right in front of me and said

”What a sweet sight! The daughter continues her father’s legacy of blood-soaked hands!” The crows on the dry branches end up laughing. My dream stops there.