The Pines

The poison should do the trick. The poison would do the trick. It was as simple as that. He’d come back from his short New Year’s Eve vacation, and there would be no more birds. They’d all be dead. It would be wonderful, happy New Year’s Frank! Of course, someone would have to take care of all the dead bodies, but that mess would be delegated to one of his employees, or hired out to some veterinary clinic. And no one would have to know that it had been him all along. They might guess, he’d been going a little crazy over the damn birds, admittedly. But now, everything would be cool, cool like school.

He smiled and leaned back in the old rusting chair he sat in, not minding the smell of age old sweat and dirt that had been sucked into it the past several years. It was the smell of victory. The smell of hard work and a deed accomplished. It suited him just fine. After all, it was he, Frank Alaster, who’d single-handedly revived the local center operation from its long deadly decent into chaos not two years earlier. All those long, back breaking hours had finally paid off, and now he was the boss, the master of his abode, answering only to the white collared gods atop the glass mountain hundreds of miles away. If the numbers looked good, he looked good, and the numbers always looked good. At least they always had.

But the birds had come. And that had changed things. They were unnoticeable at first, roosting only by the dozens in the pines. Then they were only a slight annoyance, a yearly thing, bound to be gone with the first really cold day of November. Or so he had thought. They had flown from who knew where in droves, and descended upon his perfect little paradise of efficiency and hard work, and they hadn’t left with the first cold day of November. They hadn’t left with the first light sprinkling of snow later the same week. They hadn’t left with the first really hard snow near the end of November. And through all the sleet and rain and ice of December, they’d seemingly only multiplied.

The branches of the pines, all three clumps of them, now visibly sagged under the constant weight of hundreds of tiny warm bodies, huddled close together and talking to each other like frantic housewives over the latest gossip. Many of these branches were also bare of vegetation. At the first sign of this destruction, way back in the middle of November, when the birds had really taken hold in his mind as some curse upon his good name, he’d called an exterminator. The guy had come, taken a few quick looks around, and grinned a great big bucktoothed grin.

“No prob, Boss,” he’d said then. Yeah right, no prob at all. He’d come back later the next day with one of those insecticide canisters. The kind you pump and spray. Only it hadn’t been insecticide in it, or so he’d said.

“Don’t worry Boss, this’ll do the trick.”

And it had. That evening, as he walked out to his car he’d taken a glance up at the clump of pines nearest to him. Sure enough, there were some twenty or thirty dead birds lying all over the ground. He’d grunted like a pig in slop, hopped in his car and driven home with a big smile on his face. The next morning, he’d returned to find nearly double the dead birds he’d seen the night before lying on the frozen ground. And by the end of the day, the exterminator had cleaned them all up, and driven off with a smile on his own face, Frank was a generous guy, especially when you did scratched his back the right way, and the exterminator had done just that. No more birds.

That had lasted a whole day. The very next morning, he arrived to a racket in the pines the likes of which he’d never heard before. He had stared up at the trees in disbelief. There, staring down at him were at least as many birds as had been there the day before, if not more, and hundreds more circled and swayed to and fro in the air high above. He had clapped his hands at them, and the ones roosting in the trees bolted immediately, squawking and carrying on like they’d each been kicked in the ribs. He would have liked to climb up there and do just that, but he had settled for clapping, and it had put him in a slightly better mood. Later that same day, as he left for lunch, he had been horrified to find his car covered in white and black shit. Bombs from above. And the birds were back, staring down at him from their spots on the branches above. Another couple claps sent them flying again, but he wasn’t satisfied. His car was covered in shit after all, and that was just about as far as he was willing to let it go.

When he’d called the exterminator back that evening, the guy never answered. The guy never answered because he was too busy being dead. Of course, Frank didn’t know this. He figured the guy was just ignoring him. Maybe he’d killed the birds and then left a little treat behind to beckon even greater numbers more of them in. He’d get another call, and he’d have to go back out and kill em’ all over again, and bring home another fat paycheck in the process. Frank could just see the bastard smiling at the phone, chewing on a bite of steak he’d just taken, bought with the money Frank had paid him for the first job, juices dripping from his flat little chin and oozing from the corners of his mouth.

Frank would come to find out that he hadn’t had time to even cook that steak, let alone take a bite of it. The birds had gotten to him first. But, again, Frank didn’t know that then. And that was why Frank had jumped in his car and driven right out to the exterminator’s house, from which he worked.
He shook his head, trying to rid it of the memory as he sat in his chair, staring out the window in his door at the moving belts beyond. There were only a few employees here tonight, and he’d insisted on closing the place up himself. Let them all go home to their families and friends, get a jump-start on the New Year’s weekend. Frank was generous, after all.

He stood up and walked out the door, and smiled again in spite of himself. This vanished quickly, however. The buzzer went off. Not the buzzer that meant the belts were about to roar to life, and not the buzzer that warned of a fire. This buzzer was the emergency buzzer. And it was quickly followed by the sound of muffled screaming. He realized that whatever had happened had happened while he was still sitting in his office, daydreaming. He couldn’t hear the screams of his employee through his door. And now, someone was covering his mouth, maybe even slapping him. Frank didn’t panic. Frank never panicked. Frank simply acted.

Within seconds his two hundred and twenty pound frame stood next to one of his employees, Sam. Within a few more, the story of the new kid who’d got his index finger caught in a pinch point where two belts connected was laid out before him like an unrolled tapestry. Sam hadn’t even said a word. Just pointed in the direction of the accident. A moment later, Frank was standing next to the kid, who was now holding his right hand like it was a piece of his mother’s favorite crystal. He took one look at Frank and immediately passed out. He was probably certain that he’d be fired, and that had tipped him into the unconsciousness his shock hadn’t yet achieved.

Sam shook him awake again, and the boy instantly began sniveling and apologizing for ruining Frank’s perfect accident record. He damn well better apologize, Frank thought, and he let the kid know just how he felt. The kid had already lost a finger, but after a few words from Frank, he’d lost his color too. Frank turned, ran a hand through his hair, and walked calmly back to his office where he’d call Patty, the lady in charge of accident awareness and prevention at corporate. She didn’t answer. Great, he thought.

A few minutes later, he had called an ambulance, and now stood outside, watching it leave with the new kid on it, his finger recovered and placed on ice. The birds in the pines were silent. He almost forgot they were there, but he could hear the branches creaking under their weight, and knew without even looking that there were hundreds, hell, maybe thousands of tiny black eyes staring holes in him right now. He flicked his cigarette to the ground and went back inside.

Now he stood over the accident site. There was blood soaking into the belts for a few feet in each direction. The damned kid hadn’t had the decency to aim his gushing hand elsewhere. Instead, he’d hit the stop button and jumped on them, yanking his hand free of the pinch point and severing his finger in one quick move. He’d squatted there shrieking like a toddler who’s lost his balloon to the wind, unmoving, face contorted with pain, mouth open and water flowing. Just like a little shit.

And he certainly had ruined a perfectly wonderful accident record. It had been nearly three years, even before Frank had taken control of things, since the last accident. At least, the last reported accident. There had been a few cuts and scrapes, even a concussion, but none of these had warranted serious medical attention, and so had escaped the record books.

A missing finger, however, was a different matter. Frank let his mind wander back to the birds and their imminent demise. This helped to cheer him up a bit. But thinking about them while staring down at the blood stained belts sent a shiver down his spine. His daydream returned, and this time, he couldn’t shake it from his head.

He’d driven out to the exterminator’s place, ready to chew him a new asshole right on his own front porch. He’d arrived slightly after dark, and was surprised to see there were no lights on inside. The guy was putting on the full show, probably squatting under a window and staring out at him. What an asshole. Frank soon found out that he had been the asshole. He had stood at the front door for five minutes, ringing the bell twice a minute, fuming the entire time. He was the kind of guy who let his temper build patiently, like a volcano you’d picnic under cause it hadn’t blown for thousands of years. Five minutes was his limit. Five minutes was zero hour for Frank. His patience had worn out.

Two minutes later, he stood, open mouthed, and with a drop or two of piss in his underwear, in the exterminators kitchen. Oh yes, Frank was the asshole, that was overly apparent. Frank was always the asshole. But usually, the other guy was too. Usually, the other guy deserved it, and Frank just had the balls to shovel it in. It took an asshole to one up an asshole after all, just like it took a thief to catch a thief and the rest of the old adage at infinitum. But this time, that time, Frank had been the only asshole. The other guy had been dead. He’d taken a great big crap on the birds, and they’d returned the favor, literally.

The kitchen Frank half stepped into, half because of the stench, half because of the sight within, half because of the Rueben sandwich he’d eaten for lunch that afternoon which had then suddenly leapt at the roof of his stomach in rebellion, was covered in bird shit. And not just a spatter here and there, or a couple great big heaping piles of it. It was everywhere, nearly every inch. Frank had relieved the Rueben of its prison, graciously turning his head to aim into the exterminator’s Rose bushes next to the back door.

He had let the door shut behind him, bearing a gust of shit flavored wind as it came too next to his face. And there had been something else on that wind. He could smell a faint whiff of what? Steak? Boiled corn? Blood, urine, maybe something else nasty and human? All three, it would turn out. He’d flipped open his cell phone and called the cops immediately. And then, calmly, with an air of, what, class maybe, he had slowly strode around the side of the house, walked across the street, and had sat down on the curb there, pulled out a cigarette, and waited for them to show up. He smoked three before he could even hear sirens.

That had been nearly a month ago. The cops had only stopped calling, at least regularly, last week. And what a relief that had been. The last thing he had needed as Christmas turned into New Year’s was a daily reminder of what he’d seen in that kitchen. Of course, there hadn’t been just bird shit, no. There had been much more. And for a while after, Frank had drawn pure silence from the pines as he drove by or as he walked to or from his car in the morning or evening. They had started up their squawking again, however. They wouldn’t stay quiet forever, and they didn’t leave. And they knew what he’d seen in that kitchen, oh yes.
They’d been there when the shit storm had hit the exterminator’s house. They’d brought it down on him, of course.

But this time it would be different. Oh yes. This time, they’d all die, all twenty thousand of them, all three million of them, all fifty of them. The number didn’t matter. The message did. Sure, the exterminator had used poison, but the kind he’d used the birds had to ingest. Frank had learned his lesson with that one. It had killed them slowly, popping their little bellies as it foamed within them. They’d fallen to the ground still alive, eyes bulging, and heart beating triple time. They’d lain their for a few moments, realizing what had happened, before their tiny little hearts had finally ruptured in excited agony, ending their miserable little lives once and for all. And they’d had time in that moment to whisper to their still living friends, the ones who hadn’t taken a bite of the shit on the ground, that they’d been murdered. An eye for an eye, it seems, was a part of the lessons taught to all young birds by their mothers.

No, this time, it would be different. The stuff Frank had gotten his fat hands on was a fine mist you sprayed into the air. You had to wear protective gloves and a gas mask to use it. Fortunately, it didn’t travel very far in the air, so he wouldn’t have to worry about upsetting the neighbors. It would float through it for a few seconds, mostly on the momentum given it by the sprayer, and land like sizzling drops of hot oil on the backs of the foul beasts in the pines. It would probably kill the pines too, but that was fine. He could easily chalk that up to the massive amounts of bird shit piled up at their feet. That stuff would kill anything, and had.

He walked back to his office. It was well past eight now, but his employees were still around, mostly all standing by the time clock, wondering when they’d be let go. Frank obliged them with a quick wave in the air. He told them to get lost and enjoy their weekend. They all nodded or smiled at him as they hastily punched out and he watched as the last of them trotted out the back door. Time to get down to business. He retreated to his office and lit up another smoke.

The building was tobacco free, smoke free, chew free, but fuck that. He was the boss, nobody there but him, he could indulge in the emptiness of the place with a smoke if he damn well pleased, thank you very much.

He stared down at the pony keg sized jug in the corner of his office, blanket now pulled off of it. The gas mask sitting atop it stared blankly back at him with the eyes of an anxious puppy waiting for a treat held out to it just barely out of its jumping range. He laughed gruffly at it. A moment later, he had the gloves on and was slipping into his jacket. As much as he was going to enjoy this, he wanted to get it over with. He had his own plans for the evening, and they didn’t involve hanging out at work. A couple of bottles of wine and a lace-clad wife awaited him at home. The perfect top to a perfect night, except, of course, for the lost finger. He shook the thought of it from his mind. Only happy thoughts now, he told himself; only thoughts of dead birdie eyes and sexy black lace on wives. He smiled and walked out into the center proper.

The operation went off without a hitch. He stepped out into the chill night air and began spraying the nearest clump. A few dozens of birds escaped the death mist, which was not cool, for they’d probably spread the word just as their fallen comarades had the last time they’d been assaulted. Maybe they’d tell the others to stay the fuck away. The first attack warranted revenge. The second, perhaps, warranted retreat. At least Frank hoped so.

And how he laughed as he sprayed. How he chuckled. It was fun, great fun. Hundreds of little black bodies dropped from where they were perched from limb after limb. Several fell from the sky as they tried to take flight. The shit was potent, certainly. And the best part was that most of the birds that escaped one clump of pines merely flew to the next, where they were sprayed and killed.

He spent twenty minutes, merrily spraying until there was nothing left to spray. He surveyed the destruction. Thousands of tiny birdie bodies lay twitching or lifeless on the ground below the pines and all across the parking lot where they had fallen in mid-flight. Nearly all of their eyes were wide open, staring up at the black night sky with their beady black eyes. As satisfied as he felt, to look into those eyes messed with his sense of balance. They whispered to him of certain demise. Frank flipped off the nearest still warm body and kicked it up into the shrubbery beneath the pines and out of sight.

“Happy Fucking New Years you little shits!” his breath rose in a white plume before him as he spoke. It instantly reminded him of the cigarette his head was aching for. A second later, he was puffing happily away in his office, still wearing his jacket, as he set everything in order for his return from the short three day vacation. It took him no more than five minutes, and once everything was filed, tucked away, or stacked neatly, he stepped back out into the wide open area outside his office, master of all he surveyed. Now all that was left was to turn off all the lights, lock down all the doors, and see ya later.

As he made his circle around the building, locking doors and flipping switches, a growing sense of dread began to swarm in his head. With every step he took, a weight, like a dozen fat crows perching on his shoulders, seemed to push him down. He began to wonder if the gas mask had been working properly. He hoped to god he hadn’t inhaled any of the shit he’d sprayed. It knocked a bird out immediately, but it would probably take a little longer on a human, just long enough to let him feel at ease about it.

He lit up another cigarette, and instantly felt better, though now, a new idea, probably nicotine induced, seeped into his mind. It felt as if eyes, tiny little black things without pupils, were boring holes into his back. He looked over his shoulder a few times as he finished his rounds, but there was nothing there but him. He made it to the last door, the one he’d leave through, without interruption, and the sense of dread grew in his mind again.
He began thinking of all the dead bodies outside. His imagination let them take flight again, only half rotted with beaks colored red.

He’d step outside and they’d be waiting. They’d dive bomb him, pushing their elongated beaks into him, gouging out his eyes, ripping out his tongue, nibbling at his fingers and scratching at his groin, shitting profusely as they tore and ripped at his body. And when the first of his employees arrived three days later, they’d find his mangled body, covered with layer upon layer of bird refuse, propped against the back door, staring out at them with eyeless sockets. Just like the exterminator had stared at him as he sat, slumped over his plate, head turned to the door as if they’d left it that way on purpose before they’d left, a little message to old Frank. “Don’t fuck with us, or you’ll get fucked”, that message said. Too late now, the deed was done. And he turned the knob on the door.

The deep cold of the night air hit him like a freight train. For a moment, he thought he was being accosted by thousands of small wings, bringing with them the winds of death. His nightmare was becoming reality. And then, his eyes took hold of the blank air before them. No wings, no birds, only the blank parking lot, dotted here and there with little black spots that were dead birdie bodies, and in the center, his one lone car, which had luckily escaped any falling birds. He sighed, dragged deep on the cigarette that was almost gone hanging from his lips, and spat it to the ground. Ten minutes later, he was home, but it seemed, he hadn’t escaped the shit storm after all.

His wife was waiting for him, just as he had planned. But she wasn’t dressed in her sexy black lace, and the look she gave him as he walked in the door wasn’t one of come hither seduction. Her eyes spoke of anger though her lips never even parted, and he knew instantly that something was wrong. He’d have to settle her down, and fast, if there would be any chance of nookie tonight. Thoughts raced through his mind. Had he forgotten their anniversary, no, that was in April, safe there. Her birthday, nope, July. Had he forgotten to take out the trash, do the dishes, scrub the toilet, what? As he approached her, he realized the look in here eyes was more anguish than anger.

“Where have you been?” She asked, her voice noticeably shaky.

“Work, I had to take care of a few things. One of the new kids got his hand caught in the belts, lost a finger.” He looked at her closely as these words left his lips. Yes, she was definitely worked up about something, but years of reading her thoughts through her eyes told him that it wasn’t him. She was just angry that he hadn’t been home sooner, when he was expected. There was something else in her eyes tonight. Something that hurt her deeply. Before the words even left her mouth, and before he could say anything himself, an image popped into his mind, and only grew as she finally spoke.

“Ma died tonight. Stan called an hour ago to tell me. The doctors think it was a stroke.”

She tried to keep her composure. She was a strong woman and cried very little. The last time he’d seen her do it was as she watched two-jet liners barrel into two very note-worthy buildings in the big apple. That seemed ages ago. And even then, she hadn’t shaken as she was now. She hadn’t balled her eyes out, as he knew she was about to do now. She had simply sat riveted to the television as streamers ran down her cheeks, her mouth parted in a sigh that lasted minutes, hours.

Now, she began to shake with the early signs of hypervenalation. She leapt up and rushed to him, and he folded her in his arms, pressing her tight against him as she shook violently. She balled and moaned for a good fifteen minutes or more, and when she was done, she didn’t speak, just sat there staring forward at nothing at all for a few moments. Frank said nothing. He didn’t need to. All he had to do was be there. All he had to do was hold her, comfort her with silence and soft embrace. After a long while, and now sitting on the couch, she looked up at him.

“I’m sorry Frank, I know we were planning
something a bit more, enticing this evening, but…”

“Not a word,” he said. He pressed a finger over her lips, and she instantly fell back against his chest, exhausted, spent, done. A few minutes later, he laid her down in bed and crawled in next to her, his arm wrapped snuggly around her belly and his own pressed into the small of her back. She wept off an on through her sleep all that night. He never closed his eyes. Thoughts of tiny birdie eyes and his dead mother in law filled his mind and robbed him of sleep, and a small part of his sanity.

The next day, things were no better. It was Friday, a Friday off of work, and should have been pure bliss. It should have entailed sleeping in, maybe another bedroom encounter, probably another bedroom encounter, and walking around the house all day in his boxers and a t-shirt sipping on coffee and watching sportscenter. Instead, it consisted of phone calls, flight arrangements to California, and the preoccupations of funerary preparations. In a word, the day “sucked”.

The next was no better. His wife put on her proud but hurt face and began to get back into the groove of things. She wasn’t one to let things bring her down for long, even the death of her dear mother. She began cleaning the house like she was expecting the president to come waltzing in at any moment. It was one of the things she did when here mind was preoccupied and she wanted to forget about everything for a little while. He couldn’t blame her. He hated it when she got in that state. Sure, the house looked immaculate within hours, but he could care less about that. It was her nerves he worried about, but every time she had some bought of mad cleaning, it seemed to air her out and settle her down. Within a few hours, she was her old self again, and he was slightly more at ease.

Later that night, they did make love. She seemed to be focusing her every energy into it. It was the kind of lovemaking you can only have after experiencing something truly life shattering. It was like hyperventilating. Everything just rushed out and you did it without abandon, because you had to. It was cathartic, rejuvenating, cleansing. And it was wonderful. He slept like a baby that night, and so did she.

The next day, however, something else alighted in his mind. Judy was more or less her self again. She had a post coital glow about her that relieved him tremendously. It freed his mind up again, and more mundane thoughts than what kind of casket, birch or mahogany, they’d lay his mother in law to rest in. and something nagged at him all day. It was like a piece of meat you get stuck in the very back of your mouth, between the last two molars where your tongue can barely reach. And it just sits there, taunting you with its presence, and going nowhere. He thought back as he sat down to supper, a large steak and generous sized potato, over the past few days.

Then it hit him. He’d sprayed the fuck out of the pines, thousands of little bodies had fallen from the sky to the ground. He’d chucked the sprayer in his back seat, but he had still had the gas mask in his hands as he went back inside. And the nagging thing roosting in the back of his mind, screeching at him like the disembodied soul of some dead bird, came to full light. He swallowed hard on the bite of steak he had been chewing slowly. He’d left the gas mask on his desk. Not the one that faced the door with a few stacks of Monday paperwork lying atop it. The one behind that desk with the computer on it. He’d laid it next to the computer as he checked his companies stock before he left. Fuck, Fuck, Fuck!

The early employees that always showed up and got to work before he even woke might not notice it Monday morning. But they might. The morning shift supervisor who’d undoubtedly enter his office in search of the accident paperwork certainly would see it. He’d delegated it to him on his schedule before he’d left the evening of the birdie holocaust, for the kid normally worked in the mornings and a member of the safety committee would certainly be there early to see that everything was in order. He’d have to go get it after his meal. Otherwise, he might get into some deep shit.

The stuff he’d used on the birds was highly toxic, and though it wasn’t illegal, it could only be used by a certified agent, which Frank definitely was not. He’d purchased it from his hardware salesman, with whom he’d attended high school and run around with on occasion then. Tom Samuels had given it to him, seeing that it was important, perhaps for Frank’s own sanity, so that he could be rid of the god-awful birds. The two had shaken hands, asked each other what had just taken place and both answered “what’re you talkin’ about?” and he’d left with some extremely poisonous shit in his possession.

The safety committee member would see the dead birds, then the gas mask, and put two and two together, and Frank would definitely be in some deep shit. He’d planned on returning the equipment he’d borrowed that evening, wiping out all traces of evidence. It would be obvious that the birds had been poisoned, but most likely, no one would care much. He’d get someone to clean it up; he knew a couple of guys that would be willing to do the job. They spent most of their time looking for work or a bottle of something, and the removal of a few thousand dead birdie bodies would satisfy both needs in one fell swoop. But the gas mask could bring it all tumbling down on him like shit from an overturned cart. He hurriedly finished his steak and left the table, his wife watching wordlessly with unease stretched across her face.

Moments later, he returned with his coat in hand to kiss her goodbye. She looked slightly worried, or maybe peeved, probably both. She couldn’t understand what couldn’t wait for tomorrow at work. She knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t tell her now, now he had to go. Maybe when he got back he’d let her in on his little secret. She wouldn’t care that he’d killed a few hundred birds. She’d understand. And just like that, a few moments after realizing his mistake, Frank was out the door and on his way back to the local center building to cover his tracks more adeptly.

Darkness had settled an hour before his drive.
Trees with lifeless fingers flew by beyond his window and murky stars shone down on his car through wispy clouds immeasurably high above. And with every tenth of a mile cheerfully ticked off by his odometer, a drop of fear pervaded his body. It grew in him like the trees that loomed out of the darkness in front of him before he zoomed past. Unlike the trees, however, the looming sensation accompanying his dread did not fade to darkness in the rear view mirror. He wondered if he shouldn’t just turn around and go back home. He could go in early to work the next morning, grab the gas mask before his morning supervisor got there, and everything would be hunky-dory. No problem.

But he couldn’t. he had to get it now. If he didn’t, too many possibilities, too many circumstances could put him in the pan with the burner turned all the way up to High. It was now, or never. He pressed his foot down a little harder on the pedal and watched as his speed picked up another ten miles an hour. He’d be there in less than three minutes. He’d driven this route to work for the past seven years and knew it like the back of his hand. When he was pressed for time, he could take the corners like a professional driver on a track, and on the straight-aways, fuhgetaboutit. Two minutes and forty seconds later, he eased the car down to a slow twenty as he pulled into the front parking lot of the Local Center building.

He lit up as soon as he stepped out of the car. Sweat oozed from every pore on his body. He wiped his brow as he surveyed the parking lot. A fine dusting of snow had covered everything, which is why he didn’t instantly notice the hundreds of black little bodies that dotted it randomly across its expanse. The idea of all those dead birds made him think about their eyes, and thinking about their eyes made him think about the exterminator all over again.

His eyes had been gone. His eye sockets had been filled with…”Shit!” Black and white guano plummeted from the sky and spattered on his shoulder sending a stream of white down the front of his jacket and tiny flecks of it across his face. One of the survivors had unloaded on him from high above, and his fear was instantly replaced with anger. The image of the exterminator melted from his mind as the gas mask faded into it. “Get in and get out.”

“Wait,” he told himself. “You’re not going to let a bird turd freak you. Just cool it man.” And he did. Rather than barging right into the building through the front door, he stood outside it, patiently finishing his cigarette. He looked up at the black sky above. He could see nothing but the dim outline of thin clouds and the glaring eyes of a hundred stars. As he dragged deep on his cigarette, the sound of something wet hit the pavement next to him. He didn’t even look down, he knew exactly what it was. He waited, his cigarette not quite gone.
Before it was finished, he’d heard another two wet smacks on the pavement and the concrete wall next to him.

His anger was starting to get the best of him. He chucked the still smoking butt of the cigarette towards the nearest clump of pines and watched with shock as they seemed to writhe and twitch like some living thing before his eyes. He blinked twice and stared dead ahead at the pines again. This time, there was no mistake.

The trees were covered with birds. They were completely silent, except for the furtive rustling of wings. Their tiny beaks jutted out from their tiny heads, pointing straight at him, accusingly. They knew what he’d done.

His mouth agape, he looked back down to the snow-covered pavement of the parking lot. Their gaze forced him to do it. He had to witness again what he had done, and maybe see it for what it really was this time. It was murder, plain and simple. Where tiny little bulges in the snow should be, there was nothing. It was pristine except for the tracks made by his car and his own two feet. There were no little birdie bodies out here. They were gone. He shook his head in disbelief. Almost as if in response, the clump of pines nearest him shook as well under the weight of hundreds of birds.

The sound of three more bombs from above slamming into the pavement brought him back to his senses. A fourth struck him square in the chest, and that got him moving. A few seconds later, he was turning the key in the lock, and a few moments after that, he was standing inside in the deeper dark of the center building. He was breathing heavily and the sweat was pouring off of him like milk out of a pitcher. This is what he figured the sounds were that met his ear once the door was shut. His eyes took a minute to adjust, so he naturally assumed that he was dripping, and the tiny smooching sounds on the concrete below him were just big drops of it being pulled home by gravity.

Of course, sweat doesn’t smell like a birdcage that hasn’t been cleaned in a week. Sweat doesn’t really pour off of you like that. Not enough to fill your ears with the sound of its dropping. And suddenly, he realized what was happening. The rustling of thousands of little birdie wings assaulted his ears from above.

He felt as if he were ten again, back home in Indiana. Way back then, in his infantcy, he’d been an avid explorer of the woods surrounding his house. One day, he’d come across a hole in the ground which turned out to be the opening of a cave. He’d gone into that hole with a flashlight that would turn out to be very low on juice and been trapped in the dark a few hundred feet in. the sound of his wailing for help had disturbed the hundreds of bats that had claimed the cave as their daytime retreat and they’d fallen from the ceiling like drops of rain.

He’d been so scared he’d pissed his pants and curled up in the fetal position until the last bat had emptied from the cave. A half hour later, his older brother had found him there and taken him home without a word.

He wondered now if his brother would come to rescue him from this cave. He wondered what his brother might find if he actually did come. His hand was still gripping the knob on the door, and he instinctively turned it to bolt. The smell of birdshit wafted up at him in his movement and nearly knocked him over. The knob turned effortlessly in his hand, but the door wouldn’t budge. He threw his weight into it, half swooning from the smell of the place, and it edged open a bit. A couple of black shapes darted in through the gap he’d made, and he knew immediately what they were. He stepped back away from the door, letting it slam shut, catching the dark shapes in the door jam. Four, maybe five wings fell to the ground at his feet. He could hear beaks and claws and dozens of wings pounding and scratching on the door from outside. He was trapped.

He stumbled backwards from the door and lost his balance as his feet slid in the bird droppings quickly covering the ground. As he cart-wheeled backwards, he told himself it wasn’t happening. He willed it to not be happening. He was just back at home. His wife had given him the bad news, and he was having a nightmare induced by grief in his bed, snuggled up close to his wife. He’d wake up any second, maybe as his head hit the imaginary floor covered in imaginary bird goo and find his wife next to him. He’d hug her gently as the memory of the nightmare faded away and fall back to sleep, never to be haunted by the birds again.

But it didn’t happen that way. His head hit the concrete below and slid a little in the crap covering it. Stars burst into his vision and then everything went black. But only for a moment. When he woke again, maybe twenty seconds later, the first thing he noticed was the wetness covering his face. He gagged on something foul filling his mouth and vomited before he could roll onto his side. It sprayed out over his chest and trickled down the sides of his neck. He sat up; dry heaving, breathing in the fumes growing all around him in between heaves. Could bird shit kill you? Sure it could. It was poison. Enough of it could knock you out. Enough of it could kill you. He scrambled to his feet, pushing hands into the mess on the ground all around him.

He managed to get upright and jog a few feet away from where he had fallen. He realized as he moved that the bird do was falling mostly where he had just been laying, and that now, it was following him. He picked up his speed, being on solid ground again, and raced towards his office. His eyes were beginning to pick out shapes in the blackness around him. Little shadows fluttered here and there all about. The sound of thousands of wings in flight was still pounding in his ears. He finally reached his office door and exploded inside.

The door slammed shut behind him. The smell of bird droppings instantly fell to a manageable level and the sound of wings in flight began to taper away. He turned and looked out the window in his door. Beyond it, hundreds of birds were fluttering about, but as he watched, they all began ascending until they found purchase in the girders high above. He gazed in horror at thousands of tiny little black shapes huddled together. He imagined their eyes, gazing down at him with malice uncontrollable. He was trapped here for sure. If he opened the door, he knew he’d be blasted by another wave of shit, if not a wave of beaks and claws and flapping wings.

He locked the door with shaking fingers and turned around to face his desk. The light switch clicked between his fingers, but the room remained black. He remembered shutting off the power to the lights in the main breaker before leaving two days earlier. It saved money, he was told by the previous holder of his office, and he’d done it since out of habit, not caring to find out for sure. Just the idea of saving money made his head swirl happily within.

Happiness was certainly not swirling in there right now, however. Faint whiffs of guano were still swarming behind his eyes; he held back the urge to gag. He was safe in the office. They’d have to break the window to get in, and he didn’t think they’d do it. They were just stupid birds after all. He inhaled the fresher air around him deeply, and his mind cleared.

His nerves settled a bit and his hands stopped shaking. He was embarrassed to even let himself believe that they had been. And now, in the safety of his office, he almost believed they hadn’t. he willed the birds roosting outside his office away, and just like that, they vanished in his mind. He was calm again. He was in charge of the situation. The walls of his office brought him back down to earth, and he was the boss, the master of all he surveyed, and the parking lot was still filled with thousands of dead birds.

A new sound interrupted his daydream. His eyes opened wide, new sweat formed under his arm and on his forehead. And there it was again. He gaped in horror at the black figure on the desk before him. His desk! His sanctuary! His eyes adjusted to the deeper dark of his office allowing him to take in the visage of a very large bird. Probably a crow, or a hawk even.
The sound he had heard was that of its talons tapping briskly on the hard surface of his desk as the bird hopped closer to him. Its long cruel beak opened and from its throat a terrible screeching sound erupted into the office. It filled Frank’s head like a lead weight falling into it from above. It echoed inside him, from his brains right down to the depths of his gut, sending a jolt of pain through his body.

He opened his eyes from the pain and stared balefully at the large bird before him. It was definitely a crow. Its black eyes seemed to gleam unnaturally in a light that didn’t exist. Frank shuddered, but not in terror. This time, anger bubbled up through him like the steam in a kettle. His hands thrust forward before him at the bird and he lunged forward. It hopped out of his reach, screeching again as it did. This time, the sound of it wasn’t so bad. It was unsettling, yes, but he must have imagined the pain it caused him the first time, for this time, it didn’t bounce around inside his head like a wayward pinball.

He ran into his desk, hitting it at thigh level, and watched as the bird hopped away from him. He darted his left arm out in a wide arc and this time struck the bird across the back, knocking it in a burst of feathers to the ground. It screeched again, this time in pain, or maybe just annoyance. The sound of its thick body hitting the ground filled him with an immense pleasure. He turned and began to raise a foot, ready to stomp the thing to death. He never got the chance.

It was on his face before his foot was a few inches off the ground. He wheeled backwards again, half out of instinct, half out of unsure footing, and his butt landed on the surface of his desk. He wished the desk hadn’t even been there, for if he’d fallen to the ground, he would have surely escaped the fluttering mass before him. But the desk caught him, and so did the talons of the crow. One buried itself deep into his left cheek while the other scratched at his nose, his eyes, his brow, either trying to find a good spot to plunge into, or just having fun scratching him all to hell.

A beak struck his eyebrow, sending rivers of pain through his head. Again it descended, this time striking his eye. He felt like passing out. He raised a hand to cover his face, but it was too late. The bird had fucked him over royally, and it wasn’t done. The third time it dropped its beak, it found purchase in his eye, and he screamed in horrified pain as he felt it being ripped from its socket. A hand collapsed around the thick middle of the bird and squeezed. It made a muffled sort of screech, probably unable to open its beak all the way from the prize held at its tip. He wrapped his other hand around its neck.

He almost yanked it away, but as he began to tug, the left claw still clinging to his cheek screamed at him. He grunted and shuddered with the pain, and then he funneled it into deeper rage, squeezing the bird with all his might. He heard a few satisfying cracks from between his fingers and the bird once again uttered a muffled squawk. Its talons gripped tighter while its free claw scratched wildly at his face, gashing it horribly. He bore the tearing talons for a moment as he clamped down tighter on the crow’s body. After a few more seconds, the flailing claw drooped and hung in mid air, twitching a bit, but otherwise lifeless. The talons sunk into his cheek relaxed and fell away. He chucked the thing into a corner and spat blood on the floor before it.

He had won. At the cost of his right eye, no less, but he had beaten the damn thing. It was dead, just like its cronies he’d killed with a mist of poison. He laughed at the body, mangled by his own hands, still twitching a little in the corner of his office. He felt great, despite the pain searing through his head from the missing eye and the puncture wounds and gashes all over his face. The little fucker had gotten him good, but he’d gotten it in the end.
He almost forgot he was trapped in his office with a thousand more birds squatting on their roosts high above, just waiting for the right moment to swoop down and take their share of his face.

He came back to reality in a hurry, however. He looked up with new fear growing in his mind as he heard the sound of something hitting the door. He watched with terror through his one good eye as a large black shape fell from above and attacked the window with its body. Another fell, and another, until it seemed they were pouring from the girders above in their assault on the window. He felt a scream boiling from below, but pushed it back inside him. Now was no time to curl up like he had in the cave when he was ten. Now was the time to act, or die.
He could handle one bird, albeit with the loss of something very valuable to him. But ten, fifty, a hundred, more? They’d kill him. He knew it. They’d peck him to death. With every one he’d crush under his hand, three more would swarm in. He had to get out. But how?

What had he come for? The gas mask. Perhaps it could help him now. He wheeled around, spied in on his desk, and covered his head with it as the sound of glass shattering into thousands of tiny splinters filled his ears. He watched as dozens of dark shapes flapped into the small office, filling the air about him with noise.
Gratefully, it was muffled by the gas mask. And so was the stench he knew would follow. The air inside the mask was clear and clean.

Finding his face covered, the birds swarming about him pecked and clawed at other parts of his body. Most dug their beaks or claws into his jacket, and he could only feel them tugging at it. No pain. But others clawed at his hands, his jean clad legs. He whirled around, batting his hands in the air, trying to knock them away. They were quickly filling his field of vision, now halved. He had to get out of the office. If he could, he might be able to round the corner and bolt for the door. Once outside it, he might be met by another horde of birds, but his car wouldn’t be far. He’d race to it, and drive away, maybe followed by a flock. He didn’t care. He just wanted out.

Pain suddenly flared from his stomach up. Something wriggled madly inside his jacket. One of the damn things had squeezed in there and was now pecking and clawing away at his stomach. He cried out in pain as the bird relentlessly tore at him. His hand dropped in a clenched fist and ended his misery with one fell swoop.

He couldn’t hear the death squawk from its little mouth, but he instantly felt a dead weight in his jacket. He didn’t dare open it to let the dead bird fall out. Another, maybe ten, would surely fill it if he did. Instead, he batted the birds away from his face again, and made his way to the door fading in and out of his sight through hundreds of black wings.

In a few moments, he was out of his office and sliding around again on shit covered concrete. The floor was covered in it for as far as he could see in the dark. Hundreds of black bodies descended on him from above, slamming into him from all directions, planting their beaks into his jacket, his legs, and his flailing hands. He didn’t care. He was almost gone. Twenty more feet and he’d be at the door. Another thirty yards, his car, and then he’d out run
them to Mexico if he had to.

He raced around the corner, and stopped dead in his tracks. The birds instantly flew away from him, as if carried away on some unfelt wind. His one good eye took in the reason for their retreat, and he could feel warm piss filling his briefs and beginning to trickle down his legs. The thing standing before him was a vision of horror. It instantly reminded him of ancient Egyptian paintings of their gods. Gods with human bodies and animal heads. This thing was like that.

It was much taller than he was, probably seven feet or more. It was hard to make out clearly in the dark, but what he saw made him ten again. What he saw loosed his bladder and his bowels and even tears. He knew he would’t make it. He was certain of it. He dropped to his knees, crying and screaming, shaking all over like a frightened lizard some youth has caught and intends to dissect as painfully as possible.

The birdman before him opened its long slender beak. The thing seemed to arc downwards almost to its waist. What could only have been feathers like those on a cockatiel’s head sprang up from its own as it raised its winged arms, fingers splayed out and upwards as if they were cupping bowls. It screamed at him. A pain deeper than any he had ever known filled his body. He screamed back at it, not even knowing he was doing it. His arms went limp, his back straightened as if he’d been shocked with a thousand volts of electricity, and the feeling that some long hot sword had been shoved down through the crown of his head straight to his gut filled him. The blood vessels in his one good eye ruptured, and his world went red.

The thing before him stared at him bleakly through two great black bird eyes. It never blinked. Those eyes were filled with a hatred that was otherworldly. It continued its screech, its death wail, until Frank was certain he was at the very brink of death. And then it stopped. He fell to the ground as if the very air about him had been holding him up. He landed in a crumpled heap, clutching his stomach, his head, and wailing with a pain that surged through his body like snakes through a hole. As if commanded, he raised himself on one shaky arm to look again upon the bird thing from the past before him. It was still there, still staring at him.

Now it raised its winged arms again, but not as if it were calling down bolts of lightning as before. This time, it flattened its palms before it. Frank watched in horror as its eyes began to glow a pale orange. He began to scream again as the pain washed through his body anew. The bird god opened its slender beak again, and this time, the sound that came from it was like distant growing thunder. It was low, very low, and so sonorous Frank thought his head would explode. The birdman flung his arms out to his sides, palms still facing down, as if he were clearing tall reeds with them. Franks middle instantly exploded.

The world went black for a few moments as the top half of his body launched itself from the waist up into the air. He landed with a thud a few feet beyond his own feet a moment later. Now he wished for the end. He prayed for it. And it would come. He opened his eye to a world of horror. The bird god come to life from the paintings he’d seen of it on the discovery channel was now standing over him. It bent down, the odd arced beak nearly brushing the plastic eyes of the gas mask, and reached a hand down to his face. A moment later, he was breathing in the fumes of a thousand birds droppings. He watched as the bird thing stood straight again.

It looked up, and he followed its gaze. Thousands of tiny black eyes, now visible because they were glowing slightly, gazed down upon him like he had at his steak a half hour earlier. The bird thing raised its hands into the air, and they descended upon him, filling his world with black feathers. He blinked once, and was gone.