by Jessie Ulmer
(540 words)
The birds outside my window have started eating through the glass, bloody beaks bared. It’s my fault. I know. Everyone said, if I started feeding them, they’d get a taste for it, but I didn’t know. I mean, I knew, we all knew. Don’t feed the birds. That’s like, rule one. And if you do feed the birds, if you’re already going to be that person, don’t feed them human food. It’s just a few steps closer to the real thing. But I had this bread, and there were these birds, and I thought, what the heck? What’s the worst that can happen? Silly question, really, because now they’re eating through the glass and the grating sound is starting to get on my nerves.
Okay, so. I should explain. About the birds. And the glass. It’s not really glass, more like, hyper-reinforced silicon concentrate. Real tough stuff. My parents really sprang for the expensive stuff, almost like they knew they had an idiot bird-feeder of a son living with them. Almost like they knew this whole “plague of the species” thing was going to last. You don’t even want to hear about what happened to our dog, Fluffy. Seriously. Poodle-mixes shouldn’t have that sort of teeth, but now there’s something in the water and anyway, it’s good my dad had that shotgun.
But the thing about the birds, I guess I just thought some things would stay the same? Like the cute little feathery guys who have been at my windowsill for years. I thought they would have some stability. Some loyalty. But now the birds have teeth, and my dad left, so what the heck do I know? I just thought, somehow, that it wouldn’t happen to me, I guess. Anywhere but here. That’s what they say, you know? Anywhere but here. But now here has gotten a whole lot more toothsome and those birds really are screeching now, and dad took his shotgun when he left, so hopefully this stapler will do. I have it in one hand and a soccer cleat in the other, which is the most use its ever gotten, and maybe that’s why dad didn’t take me with him. Maybe if I’d just played soccer and run fast, like he’d wanted, this whole thing would be different, and I wouldn’t even be here. With the birds. And the feeding.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the shriek of bird teeth on glass, but it’s something, I tell you, almost as sharp as the final shatter, when they inevitably burst through. And I just wanted one thing to be the same. One thing. Fluffy always hated me, but these birds stuck around, and I just thought if they still did maybe I was worth something.
The first beak cracks the glass and I tense up, ready as I’ll ever be, left cleat raised high. I wonder where my dad is now, if one day he’ll have a son who likes soccer more than birds and sitting inside, if he’ll ever hear the news of what happened to me and if it’ll make him a little sad maybe, or if he’ll just shrug his shoulders and move along.
I raise the cleat. And bring it down.
END
Jessie Ulmer is a queer writer and editor with a fondness for magic. She loves ghosts and anything wild and eerie, often using elements of the unreal to heighten themes of representation within her work. She is delighted to edit for Sword & Kettle Press and has been published with Syntax & Salt and 3Elements Review, where her work was nominated for Best of the Net, among others.