inspired by waves of crows

a short story

And a door closed behind me. The man in the room barely visible, silent. I more felt then saw that he raised his left arm.The black wing darkened the whole ceiling which had only been visible as a lighter darkness before. I wasn't scared. This was not a situation to be scared. I knew the darkness quite well. I had heard the click of the door falling into it's lock many times this year. For months now i would visit this house at night.

Sometimes during the day in the hard light of bright sunlight and heat, blue sky and artificial green grass, i would pull out a black piece of down from my hair. Like a little stick covered in lichen from the days when i lived in the forest, my knees always wet from the moss. Now my bare feet had black soles and hard cracked callouses on the edges of my heels.

I stood there for a long time, trying to control my breathing, so it sounded if i was relaxed, if all was as usual.

Suddenly, a screech close to me. I was startled by the scratchy dark call of a raven. I heard the heavy sound of it's wingbeat as it flew away from the window. It must have been sitting on the window sill, without me noticing it. I took that moment to move one foot. A step closer to birdman. Half bird, half man. One black wing on the left, and on the right side a normal arm. A shaman stuck in transformation. The inner circle completed. Once a great grandfather spirit, now more a helpless hungry boy. Yet i knew that during the day he managed quite well. Cutting wood, hauling water,cooking soup from the bones of songbirds that he lured into his house through the open window. The birds gullible, not even deterred by the crimson red curtains, which were being pulled out and let back down, rhythmically, by the draft, as if the house itself was breathing.

Why does he let me visit every night? I do not pleasure him, not sexually. My heart starts beating faster, louder, pounding. I have to move quickly now, and act fast. He will know already that something is up.I can hear his slow brain forming a thought. A thought of how to prevent me from doing the thing we never expected.

We both did not know it had come to this.