There’s something that I want to do, feel like I have to even. I don’t know what else I'll do. So my Uncle Jonah died recently, Al was torn up about it. She loves everyone and I honestly didn’t care much. Jonah was a drunken bore, he worked in finance control, came home late, stayed up late and was divorced from my used to be sweet used to be aunt. Jonah treated me like a child, he never cracked a smile and avoided any social events that weren’t obligations. Not that he was a failure or didn’t have his moments, it’s that I didn’t talk to him much. Jonah governed his garden and was busy with his work until his death at sixty-three.
He died with a branch through his back, Al cried at her brother’s funeral and she told me about his death. She told me that he climbed a lot of trees that even her other brothers wouldn’t climb but that it was weird for him to do it at this age and that the branch that killed him was birch. Apparently, Uncle Jonah was found on the ground of a national park, on lush grass surrounded by oak trees with mountains in the foreground and bright blue skies. Of course, there are birch trees in this forest, there wasn’t anyone with a motive to kill him nor were there any tracks.
My story starts in a small building with colors so dull I may as well be colorblind along with uncomfortable pale wood chairs with the smell of dirt and dust in the air with a podium and Jonah’s dignified closed casket. Some of my family were there, none really cried except Al but all of them put their best “family member I barely know died, that sucks” expression on including me. The actors in my family tilted their heads and wore a huge frown complete with sullen eyes, the others including the fill-in people just had deadpan eyes and straight mouths. I like to think my expression was a truthful yet grieving over loss life look, it’s not my funeral but if it was I’d prefer honesty over pity.
Hopefully one person cries for me. Al was the first to speak for that reason, I remember that she waddled up to the podium gave a choke on her tears and began “I never thought my youngest brother would die before I did….Jonah may seem like a mature man but he was a child at heart, he always was. He went from climbing trees as a boy to football as a teen to the arcade as a young adult, to gardening as an adult and lastly to his bird houses as a senior.
Jonah always had a hobby he’d be most passionate about and kept it to himself for the most part. Jonah loved his family too, he treated everyone appropriately and did save up some money for them despite his introverted nature and many hobbies. He never wanted children, he always said that he felt like he couldn’t handle them. Jonah was a good man and died at his own terms.” She went on from there with only praise for Jonah, I’d think the strangers think he’s a pretty nice guy and the rest of my family felt sorry they knew him. Personally she was so sweet towards that dull man that I felt diabetic by the end of it.
That night after Jonah’s funeral I drove back to my rental home in my rural city. Went in non greeted from my roommates and with barely any messages on my phone. Jackson was off on vacation, Tod was sleeping and Kyle was moving out. I then watched Kyle’s television while eating Cheetos, we can’t afford any streaming services since I was recently fired.
So I sat there on my couch munching and watching dumb movies until pictures of birds flashed on the screen and a older woman with a soft southern accent spoke “The birds need us, the birds need you! Trees have been being cut down in our local area and we here at Bird Stalkers believe that this hurts the birds. Birds need our help, using our yards and simple shelters for the birds we can give them a home. I know y’all have a yard or you have a tree you can hang one up with. Private trees disturb birds because sometimes they don’t have holes and branches aren’t always safe for them which is why we need you to set up a bird house. Who knows if you’re lucky you may get a rare or injuring bird in your house heck maybe both. If there is a bird with either o these conditions we may buy your bird for a local bird sanctuary. Thank you, contact us with our email website also our phone number is” she then repeats the phone number slightly to many time it then ends with a logo a bird’s eye and talon and a soft acoustic guitar instrumental.
After watching this I remember my uncle after long hours of trying to forget about his shriveled corpse and his drab funeral. I want to set up a birdhouse now for some reason despite how cheesy that commercial was, I could just get a birdhouse at a store but my uncle has a lot of them that are bigger and higher in quality. So I yelled at Tod “Hey Tod!!” I was met with “Shut the hell up its one a.m!! Im trying to sleep!!” “Mind if I hang up a bird house in our front yard?” “Whatever, I don’t care. Neither would anyone else. Nobody cares Adam.” he groans at me. Which was the response I was looking for in all honesty. I love to annoy Todd, he’s an amazing artist, so he won’t be around much longer. Tod has a consistent schedule most of the time and constantly works on projects for galleries alongside his job at a grocery store. Meanwhile Im unemployed since the boss at the gas station was a stubborn dick.Tod did get home late and drunk tonight, he’s not perfect just like me.
Waking up the next afternoon, I immediately text her “Hey Al! Can I pick up one of Jonah’s old bird houses? Im really wanting to try it out and you know, help the birds.”, I look around my living room, just feeling some sudden urge to do so. “Hello son. Sure its at my house, theres only one.” “Could’ve sworn he had more. When can I pick it up?” I hear this chirping out side, my phone makes a vibration.
“Head by whenever you’d like, I’ll leave it on the porch for you. I miss you, I have to head to work. Bye love you.” “Me too” Walking over to go get to the front door Tod stops me “Hey Adam we need to talk” “About what?” “About your shit Adam. What’re you doing right now?” “Im heading out job searching” “good, the art hasn’t been paying well lately. I really need you to support the house more, you’ve been pretty weak on the money front mainly. I can’t keep my studio and this house without your help Adam.” “Okay, I get it” Tod sighs “alright, good luck on the job search Adam.”
I then get in my car and head to Al’s house. Al is my single mother, she did her best but was ultimately barely around and was tired when she was around. Once Im at her house I see it at the steps, its a two story cream colored bird house with a green roof, black windows and a neat opening and closing door for the birds. Have to admit my Uncle Jonah really knew how to choose his bird houses, sure was heavy while putting it in my car. I better get the rarest bird family in this once I hang it up.I then pick up a bird feeder and bird seed for it at at pet store on the way home.
Once I get home Tod is no where to be seen. The tv is on and theres a note on the coffee table “Heading out to get wasted -Tod.” Tod does this whenever something happens. He and his girlfriend have been arguing of late. I don’t know over what, last argument I tuned in on it was something about Tod not being able to do a gallery and his many vices. I hear a rustling in the kitchen so I walk in, theres a severed human hand on the table, its bleeding sever complimenting its red nails. It claws at the table to stand up. I must be having a fever dream, I blink and its gone. I splash some water on my face then head outside with the bird house, hanging up the house on this grey day, I notice that theres my Uncle’s name smothered slightly and written in small letters with sharpie "J O N A H AD LINE".
Jonah always enjoyed some sort of fancy handwriting but this one looks suspicious. My phone rings “Hey Al” “Hi Adam. I heard you were unemployed now. I am honestly disappointed with you. Look, just because you had it hard doesn’t mean that you can be such a lazy prick” “Al can we-“ “No! You are taking me seriously, Im your mother. I offered to pay for your college and I still help you out financially.” “I can’t do this right now..” “Yes you can! You can be passive aggressive towards me constantly but you can’t hold down a job and talk to your mother?!” “Leave me alone!!!” “You still need me, you’re still a little baby. Such a baby of a man. Aww, can’t get a job? Suck it up and get some sort of job or do I have to buy you diapers too?” “Mom calm it with the insults” “Im sure you insult me all the time, you seem to think Im such a push over. Im not. I worked hard to get you to where you are. You are just throwing that all away.” “Mom I’ll get it together!! If Im such a baby then just drop me!!Ok bye.” I then hang up before her response.
I don’t know what happened there.Im heading to my room. Slowly walking below the grey sky into my home, Tod stares at me as the door opens “you okay?” I enter the door and sulk past him while he’s twitching a little erratically on the couch. Then I shut the door to my room softly. I don’t want to be dramatic myself so I slept on my unmade bed complimented with piles of clothes surrounding it.
Once I wake up, I check my computer for any feedback from any of those jobs I applied for. All I find is one email from Bird Stalkers, how the hell did they get my email and how’d they get it so fast?! The message is even weirder it read something like “Hey Adam, we at the bird stalkers association have noticed a very very rare bird in your area. If you may, tell us the colors of the bird in your nest. Then you may have the bird and can receive a cash prize. Just carefully peek into the hole, make sure no one is home and grab some feathers. Thank you, Bird Stalkers”
A bird is already in my house I guess. The reasonable thing to do is to check my nest, whats the worst that could happen I thought. Get bird flu, a bomb is in the birdhouse, someone is there to stab me as I look into the bird house or something ridiculous like that. I haven’t upset a terrorist organization and bird flu isn’t common guess Bird Stalkers just take this very seriously, if Im really going to be murdered or diseased then who’d care? When I get to my birdhouse I see no feathers, so I peak in.
When I look in, I see a dark green dotted wallpaper with a potted fern next to table with a painting of a bird on a treehouse. I stop looking and Im on a tree branch in a birchwood forest at night with a full moon and nothing but the sound and fragrance of nature. Being a calm rational person, I freeze and shake. I don’t know what the hell is happening, so I take a step backwards to look at Jonah’s cream colored house again and then find a new message in the same fancy letters that his name was written in. "FIND THE NAME INSIDE OR WE WILL", well I guess I will or I could just starve to death outside. Checking my phone its on fifty percent but theres absolutely no service and the clock on it is broken. Then I enter the house quietly finding myself with the fern and painting and two doors, one to the right and another to the left. I decide that right is the more instinctive choice so I should go left.
Which brings me into a dimly lit kitchen with a off patterned checkered floor, filled with flies buzzing, and an old man crying and a strange rubber and rust smell. As soon as I take a step he stops crying, a wimpy British old man asks “Who’s there?” “Uhh are you with Bird Stalkers?” “Golly, sounds terrifying. Daft aren’t you? Do I look like a beaked menace to you?!” “Where are you?” “Oh so you prove my point” the old British man gurgles then sighs. “Look in the sink you blind plonker.” The two counters ahead of me have some sort of juice all over them, seeds and some cans of spam. Once I get to the sink and look in I see a long cylinder of mulberry ribbed skin with a pointed snout with brown and red liquid splayed onto it. Upon seeing this I run back to the door leading to the entrance and try to open it. “Whats the matter? Finally saw me, Im guessing.”
It stretches out from the sink “Can’t say you’re very pretty either, ungentlemanly too. Im trying to have a good time in my tub then you head in here stomping about like you own the place. Glad you weren’t the owner but nonetheless. You should’ve said hello and chatted with me. Good heavens, I don’t deserve it?! I assume you think I don’t deserve the polite welcoming of a stranger.”
The worm begins choking on his words “No one cares about me.” “Uhh” “Indeed, see you know it. I expect from your pathetic whinging and timid nature that you’re just like any other visitor to this house.” “So you know where I am?” “Ooohhhh you’re asking more dense questions than them too. Of course I don’t, you bleeding fool.” “Uuuhhh than why’re you here.” “I don’t know, all I know is that this room is safe.” “Its really creepy in here” “Its not that eery. You’re paranoid.” “Um” “Um uh uhhhh. Look! You’re just as pathetic as me, why not join me? Perhaps make some tea or just describe the taste of the tea since I haven’t actually been able to find myself any. While looking at the ceiling and whithering away. Otherwise be my guest, die a terrible slow agonizing distinguishably disgusting death.” the worm then screams, so I ask “Can you stop?” he keeps screaming.
“Please?” “You wouldn’t.” “Okay? Anything you can tell me about this-“ “No nothing in particular.Sit down next to me dear boy.” Its tail pats the counter next to it and I a sit a little farther from where it patted. “Everything is hopeless. You’re going to die. Scream bothersomly for help, hoping this is a nightmare. Then you’ll die, may as well stay here. Eat this trash and soak in these baths.
Its relaxing, unchallenging. Simulates your thinking head for longer, perhaps. Then you’ll die a quick painless death, like the worm you are. No matter how early you are you’ll be eaten by something bigger than you. No matter how late, you’ll also be eaten. At least you’ll last longer however.” “Im leaving” I retort the worm then takes a dive at me and rips off some of my shirt when I shove it away. “You think you can escape?!?! Ha, you’re so hopeless you brainless mop head.” I go to the dark area where the next door should be, then feel feel for the knob. The worm sobs as I leave.
I enter into a meat freezer full of metal counters and dangling hooks, the stench of blood and fog filling my smell.Nearly vomiting I notice on the tiled floor stained crimson a wood letter D which I pick up while plugging my nose.Walking forward shivering and clacking my teeth, it takes a very long time going through the endless hallway. As I walk I keep hearing murmurs picking up “Who’s this?” out of all of them. I continue walking forward looking around and being careful, not to slip for about twenty more minutes.Then I find an obese sack of flesh with a detached head, its a barely recognizable corpse.
No facial features on whats left of the head and he was definitely a man and seems to have no trace of clothing on him. Theres the letter A in his disgusting moist flaps between his crotch and his belly button making me have to squirm my hand slowly into the body. feeling his grease and whiffing the sweat and blood mixture this man’s pig like body was left with. Once Im done I stepped over the body getting to a door metal door.
The door wouldn’t budge, I begin hearing the whispers again. They hiss this time, mad hissing from all over and even some snorts from behind me. Some meaty sounding slaps narrow in on me while I keep manically struggling with the door. I know from scary movies that if you look at something coming for you, you’re going to die even faster. “Fe is” “L th” I remember hearing whatever that means, when I finally feel its cold quivering breath I look. Its the corpse, standing they’re projecting mist from its missing throat. I shove it with all my might and it disappears then I turn to the bank safe door.
Opening it the quietest I can, it still made a loud creaking noise. The door leading to several squawks from the other side of the door. Once passing through the door Im greeted with warmth and a dark vintage 1950s looking living room with a tv on static and a very large couch. Behind the couch theres several rows of mint green cubicles. Suddenly three huge hairless avian masses emerge from behind the couch their appearance revealing thin narrow heads with red wounded looking eyes, beaks with a red pigment, veins sticking out their heads, pitch black pupils, they’re barely feathered with dark charcoal feathers and dark red spots are all over their bodies.
I immediately ran past them towards the cubicles. The birds screech enough to make my ears ring as they make chase in a singular unit of two as the third just walks towards the direction they’re heading after me until I catch a blind spot for them and bolt under a cubicle.The two run past me engulfing the room with the word weak then the third while walking past me stops in its tracks, then it looks under the cubicle at me. The third one just stares at me and keeps staring, lifelessly, drooling even, as it’s beady eyes unflinchingly peer into me. Then it makes a low pitched squawk then walks away from me, so I wait. After a minute or so I hear a thunk on top of the desk above me and can feel the other 2 birds look down at me, the third bird then wanders back where he was staring at me.
Suddenly one of the two peaks its head under the table “WEAK” it screeches then goes for an immediate stab on me which I dodge miraculously by rolling out of my hiding spot while screaming then the other one does the same and skids its beak at my side while the third bird just continues putting their eyes on me absently. “STRONG” I yell at them, they both look at each other then look at me. Upon further inspection inside the room past the cubicles theres a stair way. The birds coo curiously and begin poking me with their beaks except the third one, who just keeps watching from between them. I know its messed up but I then pointed at the third bird and said “WEAK.” They then begin pecking and clawing at the third who doesn’t do anything to defend itself.
I run up the stairs past a huge door and into what would’ve been a elegant white bedroom but its covered in post it notes then I step into an office surrounded by wood walls, inside theres a old Microsoft computer on a expensive looking oak desk. On the keyboard is another letter like the ones I’ve been collecting, an M. Im glad that my name isn’t that long but Im not so glad its not three letters like Tod’s name
. Checking under the rug I find a key after standing on it in front of the desk to pick up the letter, I felt it in the rug. I then leave the plain office and find the other door up the stairway with a key. Opening it it creaks louder than the metal door, a slimy black liquid coats the floor of what the light hits in the solid darkness.
A long high pitch groan and a talon hitting the floor alert me to its size. So I immediately run down the stairs as whatever it is clammers out of the room.Once down the stairs I find the third bird covered in holes and on the ground, the other birds are frightened by a huge long tan creature with razor blade like teeth, the chicks trying feebly to bat it away with their legs while shrieking.
I run past this site and the parasite chooses to slither its body after me as I hear the steps behind me thudding louder and faster.I just run out the already open freezer door into the kitchen. As I run through fog I hear intense screeching and laughing. After thirty minutes of silently speed walking thanks to my two assailants occasionally fighting the other along with running when they got close I finally get to the wood door to the kitchen.
The parasite jumps me as I open the door then the parasite is dragged back into the freezer by the beast. While this is happening I squeeze myself into a cabinet. “Greetings? Who’s there?” the worm says. I find the last A in the cabinet and the worm keeps sobbing as the beast tromps around the kitchen looking for me.
The beast gets to the sink “NOT NOW I-“ it says in a gruff American accent before the worm’s screams in agony are heard throughout the room as this is happening I run out the door into the front room and then out of the entrance and am now back out in front of the bird house but in a strange dirty apartment.
Now written on the bird house is “Adam” in the same font my letters were in. Which come to think of it, is my most used font. I check the time. Turns out, its been six years. I still haven’t gotten a job, I’ve practically disappeared for a few years and now Mom is probably much older than she was when I got in So I’ll still be a disappointment to her.
May as well visit her anyways then actually get a job. After I burn my bird house and after I check up on Tod. I pull my cellphone out my pocket and call him, bells play and vibrate inside the couch. Theres something that I want to do now after I tried to burn the house, after I wrote this, after I visited my Mom’s grave and after Tod vanished. I could just keep living my life but have to kill that thing.
Submitted July 08, 2019 at 12:51PM by TheSwirlso https://ift.tt/2Xx5Evs
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