Some Kind of Paranoia
There was definitely a bird in the car.
He'd sat down on the seat, closed the door, blasted the AC and turned up the music. Twice he'd hit send on a phone call that wasn't really important, and yet now—Now.—he was hearing the sound of it. Chirping. A pleading little chirp that meant a tiny, hungry little son of a bitch.
It repeated. He wasn't crazy.
Slightly applying pressure to the brake, he cocked his head and listened. It was quiet. Was it aware of his own awareness? Somehow had he acquired a prescient avian stowaway? Feeling the subtle vibrations of electron flow in the cortex of his brain and transliterating them into the demonic language of flying dinosaur descendants?
The car coasted to a stop as the light dangled, crimson above the intersection. Deep below the cushions of the passenger seat, the malevolence was thrumming. He moved his hand cautiously to the volume knob, dimming the little comfort he received from pretending it had been the music he had heard. Often enough auditory hallucination caused him to believe his phone was ringing, or his roommate had returned home.
The final inches between him and complete insanity might have been just that easily traversed. Now he was hearing birds. That was all.
Even with the music subsumed by the thrush of the air conditioner, he heard it again. He pulled the tenuous hand back from the volume knob. Why would such a stupid, unlikable, noisy creature—truly the vermin of the skies—crawl between the glass of his window and the rubber of his door frame? Hadn't he carefully eyed the gap he left as he entered the store? No man could have gotten a hand farther in than the elbow, but now he was playing host to wings and spidery, three-towed legs.
The fan needed to be silenced. The flick of a hand, jumping to the knob and back with a surge of adrenaline, accomplished the task handily. The road sounds were all that remained; white noise punctuated with rude horns and cell phone yammer. Sounds so unlike the greedy blip of hungry sparrow lungs that even his own addled mind could scarcely confuse the two.
Just as he was sure he was safe... just as the imposing sun had begun to cook the soft golden hairs on his forearms... just as he was reaching to reapply some greatly sought after temperature control, there was something. A sound.
It could have been anything. A slightly over-stressed shock. A different sort of traction causing one tire to slip. Someone having an orgasm, somewhere. The likely answers outnumbered the absurd, but still only the one had any purchase in the slippery footing of his mind.
Bird.
The one lucky stroke was the impending approach of home. With care and practiced grace, he slid the car into the spot, too tense to heave the sigh of relief that sang in his thoughts. Surely the bird had heard it anyway, though, master of mind reading that it was.
Would opening the door summon it from its hiding place? The thing about birds that kept him up most nights (and woke him with a start on all others) was the furious faceful of of feathers and hollow bones that would surely result from an encounter with one. The courage he sought to open the far door evaded him. Without a hooked implement to pull open the handle, he would need to reach fully across the passenger seat, grip and pull, exposing important internal organs to puncture, ravage and birdsong. He leaned farther away and trusted in his ability to duck and roll from the car.
If a stuntman could do it at speed, surely at a standstill it would be hardly a task at all.
It was brief, unpleasant and heartracingly intense, but resulted in no injuries—beak inflicted or otherwise. Peering up from cover in the wheelwell, he observed no interlopers. He reached up and tenderly rolled the window down, leaving a likely escape hatch for the creature. A dead bird in his Kia would be almost less pleasant that a live one.
His notebook, shopping bags and sunglasses he left in the seat across from him. They would remain unmolested without him, and would not be ruined by the bonechillingly cold blast of CO2 he planned to cleanse that compartment with in the morning. Something told him a fire extinguisher was the natural enemy of most suburban birds.
He'd sat down on the seat, closed the door, blasted the AC and turned up the music. Twice he'd hit send on a phone call that wasn't really important, and yet now—Now.—he was hearing the sound of it. Chirping. A pleading little chirp that meant a tiny, hungry little son of a bitch.
It repeated. He wasn't crazy.
Slightly applying pressure to the brake, he cocked his head and listened. It was quiet. Was it aware of his own awareness? Somehow had he acquired a prescient avian stowaway? Feeling the subtle vibrations of electron flow in the cortex of his brain and transliterating them into the demonic language of flying dinosaur descendants?
The car coasted to a stop as the light dangled, crimson above the intersection. Deep below the cushions of the passenger seat, the malevolence was thrumming. He moved his hand cautiously to the volume knob, dimming the little comfort he received from pretending it had been the music he had heard. Often enough auditory hallucination caused him to believe his phone was ringing, or his roommate had returned home.
The final inches between him and complete insanity might have been just that easily traversed. Now he was hearing birds. That was all.
Even with the music subsumed by the thrush of the air conditioner, he heard it again. He pulled the tenuous hand back from the volume knob. Why would such a stupid, unlikable, noisy creature—truly the vermin of the skies—crawl between the glass of his window and the rubber of his door frame? Hadn't he carefully eyed the gap he left as he entered the store? No man could have gotten a hand farther in than the elbow, but now he was playing host to wings and spidery, three-towed legs.
The fan needed to be silenced. The flick of a hand, jumping to the knob and back with a surge of adrenaline, accomplished the task handily. The road sounds were all that remained; white noise punctuated with rude horns and cell phone yammer. Sounds so unlike the greedy blip of hungry sparrow lungs that even his own addled mind could scarcely confuse the two.
Just as he was sure he was safe... just as the imposing sun had begun to cook the soft golden hairs on his forearms... just as he was reaching to reapply some greatly sought after temperature control, there was something. A sound.
It could have been anything. A slightly over-stressed shock. A different sort of traction causing one tire to slip. Someone having an orgasm, somewhere. The likely answers outnumbered the absurd, but still only the one had any purchase in the slippery footing of his mind.
Bird.
The one lucky stroke was the impending approach of home. With care and practiced grace, he slid the car into the spot, too tense to heave the sigh of relief that sang in his thoughts. Surely the bird had heard it anyway, though, master of mind reading that it was.
Would opening the door summon it from its hiding place? The thing about birds that kept him up most nights (and woke him with a start on all others) was the furious faceful of of feathers and hollow bones that would surely result from an encounter with one. The courage he sought to open the far door evaded him. Without a hooked implement to pull open the handle, he would need to reach fully across the passenger seat, grip and pull, exposing important internal organs to puncture, ravage and birdsong. He leaned farther away and trusted in his ability to duck and roll from the car.
If a stuntman could do it at speed, surely at a standstill it would be hardly a task at all.
It was brief, unpleasant and heartracingly intense, but resulted in no injuries—beak inflicted or otherwise. Peering up from cover in the wheelwell, he observed no interlopers. He reached up and tenderly rolled the window down, leaving a likely escape hatch for the creature. A dead bird in his Kia would be almost less pleasant that a live one.
His notebook, shopping bags and sunglasses he left in the seat across from him. They would remain unmolested without him, and would not be ruined by the bonechillingly cold blast of CO2 he planned to cleanse that compartment with in the morning. Something told him a fire extinguisher was the natural enemy of most suburban birds.
posted by Maximillian @ 8:01 PM
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