One
One
I woke, as I did every morning, to the soft tapping of a beak against my bedroom window.
Three taps.
A pause of three minutes.
Three taps.
It was Wednesday, so today’s visitor was a starling. Monday’s belonged to ravens. Sunday’s were barn owls. Saturday’s were pigeons. The rest of the week was all starlings. I could never tell them apart.
The routine never changed; the tapping continued until I sat upright, then the bird watched in silence as I stumbled from bed. The moment both feet touched the floor, it chirped three times, cocked its head ever so slightly, and flew away.
Nine o’clock exactly.
This had happened every morning for as long as I could remember. My parents had always insisted birds simply liked me, a kind friend to help wake me and greet the day with. I had accepted that explanation about as easily as I accepted that the sky was blue. Some things just were.
In my sleepy teenage years I had tried everything to de-bird my life. Covered windows, spikes on the sills, images of hissing cats crudely pasted, even a broken clock set to a minute before nine. I was so exceptionally proud of that last one. Alas, clocks were not prescriptive; the birds always came, and I always groaned awake to the same rhythmic tapping.
“Yes, yes, I’m up. Good morning to you too, Stella.”
I had decided on their names sometime in my early twenties when they ceased being seen purely as nuisances. The ravens were all Stefan, the owls all Isaac, and the pigeons all Pablo. The names just seemed…right. I had grown a bit fond of them as of late; they added some much needed life and vibrancy to my days. I even kept a feeder for them full of freeze-dried worms and other such goodies.
Once my teeth and hair were brushed, I assembled a messy outfit, packed my lunch, and made my way down the stairs to greet the day.
The Wednesday man was outside my building as per usual when I emerged into the sun. Always a different man, always in a black suit with shades, always staring up into the sky under the poplar tree. I gave him a curt nod and walked over to my parked car, a beautifully restored first generation red Miata. The day was nice enough that I lowered the top, put on an EDM remix of Chopin’s Nocturne, and took my sweet time making my way into the office. The lights cascaded green as they always had.
I thanked my lucky stars when I pulled into the parking lot and saw a message from Jessica to the parental group chat. Apparently her child had fallen ill with a fever. Sad for the kid, good for me, I’d been dreading having to deal with her today.
For your benefit, I have chosen to skip the mindless banality of work and jump to the good part, after work, specifically later that night when I was tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep.
It was quite often that I was sleepless, my mind simply refused to shut itself down sometimes. Usually giving into the thoughts and closing my eyes netted some positive effect mimicking restfulness, other times I would have to take more drastic measures to make myself sleep. Tonight was one of those nights, and as the night grew long I began weighing my options. Reading, drinking, drugs, a hookup, those were tried and true, but I had grown bored of them recently. Simultaneously, the world outside of my open windows seemed to almost beckon me silently. I tried to shut it out, best I could, but found myself being pulled harder and harder towards that window the more I resisted.
That’s how I found myself on a dark road, nearly a hundred miles out of the city, with only the sound of the spooling turbo to keep me company. The little digital clock on my dash read three in the morning, I had long accepted the fact that I’d be a living zombie in the morning.
I drove with little regard to direction or destination, watching the thick masses of trees fly by to my left and right. My heart had pulled me this far, and it seemed to rejoice with every passing mile as the city lights were replaced by darkness and masses of trees. I couldn’t help but notice the tree branches forming a thick canopy overhead as the road grew lonelier and lonelier—damned near blotting out the faint tendrils of light emitted by the full moon.
In truth, I was the lonely one. Since moving to the city two years ago I’d been wholly unable to create a new social circle, as a result, almost all my days passed the same. The morning bird often seemed the sole tether to reality, a signal of time flowing. The ravens brought gifts sometimes, those days were the happiest. Life in the sticks was unexpectedly more social and vibrant in hindsight. I had grown to miss the simple joys of nature.
I continued allowing my mind, body, and car to wander further and further into the woods until I was greeted by a stretch of road that seemed supernaturally straight and empty. It was the kind of road you saw on an old album cover, perhaps with the band members stretched out on the asphalt—daring a car to hit them. I smiled as I briefly stopped the car over the dotted line, turned off traction control, shifted into first, and revved the engine up to 5,000 RPM while holding the clutch in.
The engine’s screams resonated through the treeline as I dropped the clutch and began soaring down the road with the gas pedal pinned.
90
100
110
The wind buffeted my face with tremendous force, but I just laughed and kept the pedal pinned as I shifted into fifth, eager to max the little engine out while I had road remaining.
I was not so lucky.
While the road did not end, the sight of a figure in the distance forced me to slam the brakes at risk of collision. They screeched violently and I was flung against my seatbelt as the little car did everything it could to arrest all that inertia. The vehicle skidded to a halt just in time as the dark figure in the headlights resolved itself.
A man waited there, in the middle of an intersection, watching me. He did not flinch, did not move.
He just stared.
Perfectly still.
Smiling.
