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Bird Cemetery

Abracadabra into macabre

By Mescaline BrissetPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 10 min read
Top Story - January 2022
10
Photo by Jonnelle Yankovich on Unsplash

News

16th July

Story of the day

Madame La Fayette led her daughter by the hand as she struggled to break free from her mother's tight grip. The little girl was dressed in a barn owl costume, ready for her first ever stage performance. She ruffled up her feathers from pieces of brown-orange fabric sewn into the carboard by her mother. Mia felt that these feathers could lift her up to the sky, and her mother was just pulling her into the ground, which was not a pleasant experience. The other children were disguised as different birds, tempting with the colours of their feathers: the furious blue, green, yellow, and orange of peacocks and parrots; grey of pigeons; the brown shade of sparrows; and the black intensity of ravens. All the kids were just as excited as they were on their first day of school, except this time the stake was much nicer and funnier.

The theatre building was tall and had a glass roof with metal-framed windows for quick ventilation. It was an unusually hot summer, almost 30° C degrees of searing heat, so all the little birds were suffocating in their costumes. All the water dispensers in the building did not have enough necessary cups, so the parents' faces looked extremely concerned. They tried to arrange appropriate couriers among themselves responsible for buying beverages from local stores, so that the bodies of the children-birds were properly hydrated. It happened, however, that one girl passed out on the stage and was immediately taken by ambulance to the hospital. After this incident, all the parents looked even more distraught, but they couldn't stop their kids from attending the most exciting event of the year. The biggest worry was – will they survive to the end without losses of life? All lips and eyes seemed to hang on that question in the stuffy atmosphere of the building.

A play written by one of the teachers was called “Owls and Other Birds” and Mia played one of the leading roles. She was so excited that she started the preparatory process well ahead of schedule. She hooted a lot in the house, even before she went to bed, and her mother also noticed hooting throughout her sleep. It was supposed to be a great event for children, parents, and the whole school, which counted on excellent advertising for their institution. No one could have foreseen that the results of all this turmoil would turn out to be other than intended.

The first disturbing sign in heaven and earth was the appearance of real birds in the building. They flew inside in flocks, and since it was daytime, they were mostly pigeons, sparrows, and crows guided by a few ravens. They began circling in the air around the children on stage. The little birds in disguise seemed calm, not even frightened by the number of their real counterparts surrounding them mercilessly. From the outside, however, from the point of view of the parents’ public opinion, it looked much more macabre.

When the larger birds started pecking at the children's feathered costumes, the parents demanded that the show be stopped. However, the hordes of birds that seemed to protect their victims made it impossible to reach the actors. It was as if the real birds were performing some secret ritual only known to them. Some impatient female parents tried to enter the stage, terrified of the situation and its possible tragic outcome. The school’s organisers of the show tried to stop them, equally petrified and confused.

Photo by the Author

All of a sudden, the children turned into real birds with real feathers and started flying out of the windows in the ceiling. One by one, they merged with the air above the building, gliding in higher gravity. The children-birds looked content like never before, finally freed from their parents' embrace before and during the show. I didn’t notice any frightful moments neither on their faces nor on their little feathered bodies. They flew away with their new parents and it was the last time we saw them on the ground, or rather naively soar across the sky.

The story, however, is not complete with the picture of children-birds disappearing from the air above us, because our journal managed to recover the memories of children who, after leaving the theatre, landed in a dangerous area of a nearby airport. The first-hand accounts of children are presented below. They were found on wooden slats scratched with claws, which we managed to emboss on paper to retrieve the last known words of children.

*

The mist is incredible. I can’t see anything in front of me, only my guide – a raven. We all have one, almost as if we were assigned our new parents. I’m not afraid. I’ve always wanted to fly, but never thought it would be in this unusual and unexpected way. It’s great! First, we flew over rural England; I saw a country road; white and brown fences covered with moss; fields with sheep, goats, and cows. They looked like matchboxes stuck in the carpet. I had never flown before, even by a plane, so it was a whole new experience for me. – Rob

I miss my dad… We used to do similar trips every Sunday before lunch. Of course, on the ground, not in the sky. We played tennis on Saturdays, another terrestrial experience, but drifting in higher air corridors and drowning in clouds is so much more exciting! I never knew that the clouds are just fluffy pillows made of cotton candy and you can lie on them like under the duvet in bed… Only if you are a bird like us now, of course. It’s just an unimaginable experience! – Tom

I miss mud walking every weekend! I can't do that now because I am a bird, a pigeon. We stopped at the Brewers Fayre pub in Mulberry Tree. We couldn’t eat anything there like other people, just crumbs from human’s tables, but we found a bird feeder and plenty of treats for our palate. Lard; hemp and sunflower seeds; millet, buckwheat, and barley groats. I even had a piece of dried apple and pear for breakfast, almost like at home, so it wasn’t that strange at all. – George

I miss my mum and her apple strudel. She made a different cake every Sunday, and my favourite was the strudel. I heard George found bits of dry fruit in his meal, but he refused to share them. He didn't even admit it until we left the pub! It’s only our first day as birds and we are already so hungry. It's good that it's summer now, because I don't know how birds are doing in winter. It must be freezing cold in the higher air then. – Lyra

I miss my mum. She looked so sad when we left with the birds. I wish I could say goodbye, I even opened my beak, but no words came out of it. I'm a bird now, a real barn owl, I feel freer, but I miss my voice! My mum used to say that I always speak without asking, but now I don’t speak at all. It’s so sad! To cheer myself up, I create new shapes from objects and buildings in the lights of a night city. In this way, the road strewn with lamps becomes a bicycle chain, the bridge bends like a fork, the structure of the stadium resembles a ladder, and the shapes of the roads often remind me of fish sprinkled with candlelight. But the cold air makes me feel far from home, far from my mother. – Mia

Ludwig suddenly began to hyperventilate, choking the air in large amounts as if it were his enemy. He looked terrified, though it was hard to tell from the face of the sparrow he had become. He gasped for air so incredulously as if he were suffocating. I wanted to resuscitate him, but forgot that I am a bird now, a crow, so I was not able to do it. One of the barn owls with which we were flying directed us towards the airport, where we could find oxygen masks in the meadow. They must have been there after a plane crashed nearby or something. We filled them on the ground and took them into the air to have a safe package in case he had problems again. I had to play the mother because I am the eldest of the children. I’m almost sixteen and in “Owls and Other Birds” I played an old woman who has a barn owl – a wild bird that is not easy to tame. It is strange that owls did not fly there with us, only one pigeon took us to the airport grounds and left us here. We don't know where to go on, because we don't know the area, well, we've never been here in the air, only the land seemed a bit familiar, because from this airport I flew on vacation with my parents. But it didn't look the same, everything has changed since I am a bird. I miss my human abilities, such as reading. I'd like to read more books. I feel that my journey as a human has only just begun, and since I became a bird, I won't be able to do many of the things I'm used to. Could someone disenchant us from this strange spell? – Roxie

*

The testimonies appeared to have been written before the worst happened, as they are still positive in tone. The children-birds were found at night at the airport at sign 22 CAT II/III S4, on the green-lit dashed line of the runway.

Photo by Dim Hou on Unsplash

The other side of the line looked much more complex. As soon as the children-birds disappeared from the eyes of the spectators of this extraordinary theatrical performance, their parents lost their minds. When the news of birds found at the airport came a few days later, they were induced with images of blood and carcasses (as some of our readers may find these pictures vastly disturbing, we will not include them here). They seemed to be under the influence of some secret spell that real birds had cast on them, however it seemed unreal to get them out of it, so they were buried as they were found. All the children lost their lives there, none survived, so even disenchanting them was pointless. However, at least the families could understand what happened to their children and how the spell worked, even though they couldn't do much to prevent it anyway.

The children were found bound together as with an invisible chain. My first impression of the scene was that they were scared, so they kept close together, and the power of the air and the plane caused their bodies to fuse together. I might be wrong, but the fact is that they had to separate them because they had different real parents, so they have to be buried individually. They will all have little white crosses in the grass next to each other in the cemetery. What a macabre from this awkward abracadabra.

*

An update

26th July

As I write my report now, children's bodies are buried and they lie in the smallest coffins in the world, children's coffins. Life in Essex will never be the same again after this local tragedy has turned into a tragedy for our nation. I hope that our residents will find the strength to deal with the grody consequences of what happened to our little ones. God bless them and they all rest in peace.

Marc Rayleigh

Daily Gazette

Essex County Chronicle

– THE END –

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

***

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You can find more stories, articles, and poems by Mescaline Brisset on my Vocal profile. The art of creation never ends.

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About the Creator

Mescaline Brisset

if it doesn't come bursting out of you

in spite of everything,

don't do it.

unless it comes unasked out of your

heart and your mind and your mouth

and your gut,

don't do it.

so you want to be a writer? – Charles Bukowski

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