Prometheus
When my father was diagnosed with hepatic cancer, the birds from my childhood came home.
There are six of them. Big, broad-bodied eagles that crouch on the gutters like gargoyles and judge any entering the houses. I want to believe they’re the same ones from my childhood so desperately. Maybe because then I could believe some greater, divine power existed- a power that could keep my father alive.
It’s as much of a comfort as it is an annoyance in seeing their downy piles of feathers building up in the corners of the doors. My Dad does not feel the same way.
He’s always been weird about birds. Ever since I was a kid, I would watch him sit on the porch and throw rocks at them if they landed on the fence line. In the long, muggy summers, he’d tie nets over the dense, leafy citrus trees and dangle old silver CDs from them in an effort to scare them off. I’d leave sweaty smears on the glass from where I’d press my head against the window in the kitchen watching him.
The window is now no-longer sweat smeared, permitting an unobscured view into the overgrown grass. Mossy stone faces of cherubs peer at me from the weeds, while the grass rustles with the movement of six large bodies. The citrus trees have long since shed their nets and CDs, and their fruit has fallen in rotten groups on the floor for the birds to eat.
“You need to shoot those damn things,” Dad’s voice says like clockwork. He doesn’t look up from the paper he squints at, a cigarette dangling dangerously close to the pages.
I sigh. “Dad.” I’ve had this conversation again and again. “I’m not going to shoot them.”
He pauses, turning a page with a scattering of ash. “Bastards. They’re ruining the garden.”
I want to tell him the garden’s been ruined since the divorce. Growing up, my parents had always been the type of parents you prayed would divorce each other. Neither me nor my Dad ever thought it would happen, I think. So when Mum filed for a divorce, I think Dad lost any reason to upkeep the garden. After all, who was he to bring fresh-cut flowers to after another yelling match?
He always tells me to shoot the birds, or stone them, or something else awful. It’s déjà vu, it’s a time loop, it’s a fortune reading. Dad will tell me to kill the birds, I tell him no, and he’ll complain about the garden. It’s always inevitable.
So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.
Dad was home from the hospital this weekend. His sleeping hours started dwindling well before his diagnosis. First, it was the pain that kept him awake, but now it’s nausea from the medication.
Dad’s home was remarkably old. Built with wood, but later reinforced with brick and plaster. His restless nights, unfortunately, impacted me. He had a habit of wandering around, causing the wood to groan with each step, and forcing me from the blissful blurs of colourful sleep.
I stared at my empty doorframe, waiting for his shadow to pass under my doorframe. Most nights, he’d go to the bathroom several times. Other nights, he’d slink away to the living room and find something to keep himself mindlessly occupied. His most recent hobby had been reading a long out-of-date phone book.
His shadow passed under my door, a symphony of wooden groans following. I wonder what names and numbers he would read about tonight before I’d find him asleep in a heap on the couch- book at his feet. I shifted onto my side, pulling the blankets up beneath my chin to fend off the late autumn chill.
“Damn birds…”
I found myself sighing into my comforter. The birds, again. I let my eyes close, drifting in the gloom of my room again. No doubt, he’d complain to me tomorrow morning over the breakfast table about how the birds somehow kept him up.
Letting your somewhat-elderly father wander around the house at night wired on a potion mix of medications is wrong. I understand that. I should’ve climbed out of bed and coerced him into going back to his room.
But what you need to understand is he did this all the time. I was warm with sleep in my bed, and my dad’s wandering habits weren’t unusual.
I returned to my confusing tangle of dreams. Sinking below the colourless gloom into worlds of unexplorable depths and vivid colours that I knew would fade from my memory in the morning. I thought the first shot was part of a dream I no longer remember. But the second woke me up.
When I sat up, the third shot went off. A cracking, sharp noise that pierced the still night air. Instantly, I threw the comforter off and felt cold wood beneath my feet. I pushed myself forward, nearly falling into my cupboard as I scrambled for the door and down the steps to the kitchen.
Instead of a shot, it was a scream that tore through the air this time. The back door was unlocked, the flyscreen swinging in the breeze. I stepped onto the back porch and searched instantly for the source of the scream.
In all of my years of hearing my father scream at my mother, I had never heard him make that noise. But I quickly came to understand that it was him who made that sound. It was the guttural scream of a wounded creature, high and frantic and undeniably in pain.
I quickly understood why, too.
Two heavy bodies slouched on the porch before me. Blood pooled among their feathers. One of the bird's sides still heaved roughly, its eye twitching in its socket as it scanned the stars above.
My gaze followed the carnage. The knocked-over pot of basil. My father’s discarded gun. The four remaining birds swooped back and forth, perching on the back deck. My father.
I tilted backwards, feet moving without thinking. In the dark, I could only make out blurry features. My father stretched his hand out towards me, his body convulsing beneath the heavy-bodied mass. His mouth hung open in anguish, the scream long since having died in his throat.
The birds. The birds. They were swooping on him. And not in the way that birds swoop on trespassers in their territory. He was their prey, a meal, something to pick apart and toy with.
“Dad?” My voice barely escaped. I had no breath to say anything. “Dad?”
He responded with a hoarse voice. Not words, just a weak, dry sound that made him curl onto his side.
One of the birds turned to me, pulling on my father’s abdomen before approaching me. Something lumpy and viscous hung from it’s beak. I took a step back, pressed against the railing of the porch.
The bird didn’t waver, placing the object at my feet like an offering. My knees buckled as it took a few hopping steps back to observe me. I landed heavily, slouched on the wooden deck. Hunched over the object, I now realized it was muscley, dripping with blood. It was dominated by uneven large, lumps of yellowish sores.
I turned my head away, retching at the sight of my father’s cancerous liver.
I didn’t want to open my eyes. If I turned back around and looked, I’d have to lay my eyes on my father again. His hoarse wails had been silenced. No uneven breathing, no thumping sounds of movement. If I looked, I would see my father’s dead body.
I looked.
The three remaining birds sat on the railing beside my father’s carcass. The one before me spreading its wings and joining them. They stared down at him, ruffling their feathers and clicking their broad beaks.
I took a step towards him. “C…” I tried to take a breath. “Can I see him?”
It was stupid. Asking birds for permission to see my father who they just mauled. Their gazes turned to me, but they made no movements indicating aggression.
Stepping over the dead bird bodies, I crouched next to my Dad. My whole body shook, and I watched as my hands trembled as I moved to hold his face. His skin was wet, and I couldn’t recognize what had once been his features between the mangled scratches and the tears.
The birds watched me, and I watched them through fast, thick, hot tears that had gathered in my eyes.
“You killed him,” I told them. “You… you… y-” My breath hitched, unable to convey my words as I groaned lowly.
I fell backwards, back against the wall, sticky hands resting in my hair. Feelings came and went, muddling together like a toxic wave that crashed over him. Was I relieved his suffering was over? Angry the birds had killed him? Regretting that I never told him to go back to his room? I don’t know. I felt all of them and none of them.
Only when the sun rose I called the police.
As the operator picked up the line, I found myself by the kitchen window again. Somehow, I managed to ask for an ambulance. Those birds remained, perching over my father’s carcass and watching him with unwavering certainty.
The operator asked me to stay on the line, but I found myself wandering away from the phone.
Dodging around the rivers of blood that stained the wooden porch, I found my father’s discarded gun by the tipped-over plant pot. For a long moment, I stared at the sleek silver barrels and polished wooden handle. I found my fingers wrapping around it without a second thought, lifting it towards me like an alien object.
The birds didn’t move. They simply accepted it. One by one, their heavy bodies fell with a splash of crimson onto the earth. As if they acknowledged they had achieved their one ambition. Four shots. I dropped the gun amongst their downy piles of feathers.
I don’t know if those birds were sent by some greater power. I hope they weren’t. I don’t want to stare into the face of divine punishment if that is what it looks like.
