FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #5

            A boy with a parrot on his shoulder was walking along the railway tracks.  Although, plodded, or even trudged may have been a more appropriate term for the young man’s gait.  His clothes were ragged and worn, his shirt torn to shreds and stained with blood, the hem of his pants tattered and dragging in the dust.  Dried blood was crusted on his back, the result of a number of deep puncture wounds.  Both shoulders were hunched and fresh blood flowed freely from the left, where the parrot’s talons dug in and held.  As for the boy’s face, it held a horror of its own.  Lips were dry, cracked and peeling.  A set of three scabbed over slits ran down the boy’s left cheek.  And as for the boy’s eyes…they were gone.  Nothing remained but two hollow sockets, tainted by the muddiness of blood that had ceased to flow.  The boy had seen fifteen summers.  He would not see a sixteenth.

 

            He’d always been fascinated by the exotic.  Growing up in the dustbowl, surrounded by flat land, corn and cattle, he’d always dreamed of something he knew existed beyond his small world.  As he’d grown he’d learned the ways of the farm—how to appreciate the land and how to till it.  From the time he was a young child, his days had been spent with his father, working the land, embracing the sun, knowing the utter joy of water on parched lips.  But the nights had belonged to his mother.  Her love of learning was of a different kind—that of the classroom.  During the day, she taught while his father and he tilled and after dinner, she sat him down and gave him the joy of the written word.  She’d taught him to read, as any good schoolteacher would, and he’d grown up on stories of the world beyond.  Of sailors on the sea and princes fighting dragons and swashbucklers and their swords.  There were books that depicted far off lands—deserts with pyramids, mountains covered in snow in summer and jungles filled with dark mysterious creatures that would lure you in and never let you out. Oh yes, he’d been fascinated by the exotic.  Had he known to what end his fascination would lead him, he might have contained it and been content with what he had.

            One Saturday afternoon, he’d made his way into town with his mother’s grocery list in hand.  His father and he had finished early that day and when the need for a trip into town was mentioned, he’d immediately volunteered, for a trip into town allowed him the luxury of daydreaming.  And while he browsed the aisles of the general store for his mother’s groceries, he could also see if Mr. Taylor, who owned the store, had attained any new books for him to read.

            He’d walked into Mr. Taylor’s store with pirates on his mind.  He was in the middle of Treasure Island and he couldn’t halt the scenes of sailing and buried treasure and “yo ho ho and a bottle of rum” running through his head.  With the thought of how comfortable a wooden peg leg could actually be, he greeted Mr. Taylor and started down the first aisle.  Suddenly, he froze.  “No,” he thought.  It had to be his imagination and the fact that he had swashbucklers on the brain.  He turned around and looked back at Mr. Taylor.  But there it was, in plain sight.  Mr. Taylor was sporting a black eye patch on his left eye.  How odd.

            “What happened, Mr. Taylor?” he asked.  Mr. Taylor looked up at him questioningly.  “To your eye?” he prodded. 

            “Oh,” Mr. Taylor replied absently.  “Just a bit of an accident.  Or a misunderstanding, you could call it.  But look there, young sir.  I think you’ll see something you’ll like.”  And Mr. Taylor had pointed to a place behind him and he’d turned. 

            His heart stopped as he beheld the most beautiful bird he’d ever seen.  The parrot was a brilliant ruby red, with emerald tips on its wings and cerulean tail feathers.  It resided in a cage, yet the bars did nothing to mar the bird’s beauty.  And somehow, the bird did not seem contained.  It was in a cage, true, but something told him that this bird would not be held against its will.  He stared at the bird, drinking in its splendor.  And then the bird’s eyes had met his.  They were bright yellow, rivaling the color of the sun, but more than that, the bird had a piercing, intelligent gaze.  He wanted that bird.  And strange as it sounded, the bird’s stare implied that it wanted him as well. 

            “Is he for sale?” he asked Mr. Taylor, intent on finding a way to raise the money to meet Mr. Taylor’s price.  But Mr. Taylor had refused any type of payment, telling him that he was granting Mr. Taylor a favor, saving him from having to clean the cage and feed the thing. In all actuality, it seemed Mr. Taylor was quite eager to be rid of the thing.  So after gathering the groceries he’d almost forgotten he’d needed, he’d opened the cage and the parrot had immediately perched on his left shoulder, content to sit there as he walked home.  He’d never asked Mr. Taylor where the bird had come from.  And Mr. Taylor had never volunteered the information.  In fact, he never saw Mr. Taylor again.  Two days later the general store was deserted and Mr. Taylor had disappeared.

            He arrived home that day and sneaked in the back door, hesitant to let his parents see the bird.  Something told him they would not approve of his new pet.  He wasn’t sure why, but he felt it deep in his bones.  And the parrot seemed quite content to stay hidden.  In fact, he sensed the bird would somehow prefer to be seen on its own terms.  A slight sense of unease overcame him for the slightest of moments, but the bird nipped his ear affectionately and the feeling disappeared and the excitement over his new prize returned.  And so he stashed the parrot in his room and then ran back around to the front and delivered the groceries to his mother.

            After that, things began to change.  A sort of pall descended on the farm.  Nothing so severe that he didn’t just chalk it up to a change in the season or the direction of the winds, but enough to create a tension that hadn’t been there before.  The corn did not grow so high as it had in past years and his father began to worry about their crop not meeting quota.  His mother grew tired and ill and she began to have coughing fits so severe that specks of blood would spit into her handkerchief.  What should have been a simple cut turned into a catastrophe when infection set in and the doctor had to be called and his father’s arm amputated.  His family was disintegrating and through it all, he felt a strong need to cling to the parrot that remained hidden in his room.  The bird gave him comfort and something told him his bird would still be there after all else was gone.  As things got worse, he cleaved more to his pet, never suspecting that there was any correlation between the two. 

            His mother died a few months later.  The doctor's diagnosis was tuberculosis.  While her husband and students surrounded her grave and mourned, he left the funeral service early, unable to bear the grief as the vicar recited the 23^rd Psalm.  He ran home and immediately locked himself in his room.  As he sobbed uncontrollably, the parrot perched on his shoulder and he took comfort in its presence. He never noticed the evil look of satisfaction living in that set of yellow eyes.

            Two weeks later, crazed by grief at the loss of his wife and driven to madness, his father had set the house on fire and then calmly lain in the bed he’d shared with his wife, waiting to burn alive.  Noting his father’s absence in the field and then seeing the smoke mixing with the clouds, he’d rushed back to the house, determined to save his father.  He couldn’t bear the loss of a second parent so soon after the first. 

            But as he’d tried to race through the door, the parrot had flown out to meet him and blocked his way.  He shoved the bird aside, thinking only of his father’s safety.  But as he tried to open the door again, he heard the loud thunk of the lock sliding shut.  Confused and terrified, he bolted to his parents’ bedroom window, thinking to break in.  He picked up a large rock and heaved it through the window, shattering the glass.  But as he prepared to lunge into the smoke and flames, the shards of broken glass rose up on their own and flew through the frame which had moments ago held them intact.  They battered his face and arms and he shouted at the burning sensation he felt as the pieces of broken glass sliced his skin. 

            Fighting through the remains of the broken window, he looked up and into the bedroom, which was now drenched in flames.  His eyes raced through the room, searching for his father.  He located his father's form laying in the bed and tried to meet his father's gaze, silently begging his father to not give up.  But his father's eyes were pinned on something located over his shoulder.  He looked behind him and met the yellow stare of his bird.  With a horror so great it nearly consumed him, he saw the malevolence living in his bird's eyes and realized that all this tragedy was of the bird's doing.  Tears burning his eyes and throat, he turned back to the shattered window.  His father was grinning maniacally as he succumbed to the fire that was licking at the frame of the bed.  With one last surge of determination, he lunged for the window once more, desperate to try and save his father.  He never made it.

            He felt the weight of the parrot land on his left shoulder.  No longer comforted by its presence, he tried to throw it off, but to no avail.  The parrot’s talons dug into the muscle of his shoulder, causing skin to tear and blood to flow.  “Get off!” he shouted, swinging himself around wildly, attempting to dislodge the bird from its perch.

            “Never.”  The word resounded in his head, as if someone had just whispered it in his ear.  Struck by terror, his eyes glanced up and met the sharp, stabbing stare of the parrot.  “You are mine.  I chose you and I shall have you for as long as I wish it.  You would do well not to fight me for it will only increase your pain.”  The bird’s words rang harshly in his ear, a voice so cold it iced over his heart.

            Unwilling to accept that this parrot, this thing of beauty that he had once held in such reverence and awe, had any hold over him, that it was anything more than a bird, he began once again to fight and struggle, sure that he had the ability to overcome this thing that put thoughts in his head.  But it would be to no avail.

            “So be it.”  The finality of the bird’s thought was severe.  Releasing its talons from his shoulder, the bird took flight.  A sense of relief flooded through him but it did not last.  A piercing scream sliced through the air and he felt the bird’s beak puncture the skin on his back.  He tried to run, but the bird would have none of it.  He felt the bird’s weight hurtle into his back and he was knocked to the ground.  He screamed as the bird continued to batter his skin with its beak and talons. 

            “You will never be free until I wish it so!”  The voice of the parrot screeched in his head, a horrendous parody to Long John Silver’s parrot’s “Polly wanna cracker?”  Rolling over, he tried to bat the bird away, but his arms and face only suffered the same abuse his back had moments ago.  And when he could fight no more, the parrot delivered its final blow.  Determined to leave him totally dependent on the bird, it plucked out his eyes, leaving him blind and in the dark. 

            Utterly defeated, lifeless, he gave up to the will of the parrot and his own desperate fate.  Tears trickled from the blank holes where his eyes had once been as he faced a life of darkness and despair. 

            “It didn’t have to be this way,” he heard the bird say.  “You chose this.  And now what do you have?  Nothing…only me.”

            He’d left town that day, letting his feet carry him away from the only home he’d ever known.  He would not let the poison he’d unleashed on his family contaminate the rest of the town.  Following the directions the parrot gave him, he’d stumbled and staggered into the never ending grime of the dustbowl, leaving his life behind.

 

            He’d been walking for a month.  The parrot had lodged its talons in his shoulders that first day and only released him to bring him food or water.  For some reason he didn’t know, the bird seemed to want him alive.  It continued to sustain him, making sure he survived.  Funny, because his only wish was for death.  His fascination with things that didn’t belong in his world had caused the death of his parents.  This damn bird on his shoulder had destroyed all he loved.  He intended to return the favor. 

            As he continued to stagger along, his ears pricked.  There it was again.  A train whistle.  The long, shrill, glorious sound of a train whistle.  He turned towards the sound.  It was getting louder, coming up from behind.  His heart quickened as he prepared for the end that was coming.

            Depending on the sense of his ears, which had developed rapidly since the loss of his eyes, he waited until the train was only seconds away.  “Only when you wish it so, huh?”  he said.  “I think not.”  And he leaped in front of the train speeding down the tracks.  In his last moment of life, he felt the sharp talons that had made his shoulder their home for the last week release.  But he gained nothing in his death because the bird felt no loss.

 

            As the numerous passengers milled around, morbid curiosity reigned.  Some boy had leaped in front of the train.  On purpose.  There had been no chance of stopping.  The loud thump and jerk of the train had set everyone’s thoughts racing.  Questions were asked, seats exchanged, doors and windows opened and heads stuck out the side. 

            Amidst the chaos, one girl sat calmly on her seat.  She was in the middle of Treasure Island and nothing was more compelling to her than the adventures of the characters living between the pages of her book.  Not even some crazy dead boy.  At the sound of a screech, she glanced up, thinking her mind must be playing tricks on her.  But when she looked out the window, her heart skipped as her gaze was captured by the brilliance of a piercing yellow stare.   

 

 

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