Fight Or Flight

I heard the distant mumble of words in the distance. I couldn’t tell what the words meant. In front, it was as though a mosquito net obscured my vision, and as I began focusing on the shapes, the greens, and browns, I realised I was outside.

My senses began heightening so much, it was as though I was watching a film and perhaps, I was. The green from the leaves and the smells of the nature around me, of rain and grasses, filled all my senses like a balloon. The one thing that distracted me, was the ringing. I tried to match sounds with what I was seeing ahead of me. A Road, a junction with cars bashed into each other, the murmur of chatting around large vehicles, with their flashing blue lights twirling around, disturbing the calmer sounds of the nature.

I found my brain begin to focus more and more, pressing through the sounds, shifting nearer to the surface. An accident. One of the car’s doors bashed to pieces. The driver was still mangled in between the seats. I tried calling for help. No answer. I sneaked further towards the crash, realising it was a woman trapped inside. Her brown, scraggly hair covered her face, apart from a section which was covered in scars. It was as though her eyes beamed down at me, even though they were completely lifeless, then I knew.

I could feel my breathing becoming more rapid, trying to register what I’d just witnessed. It was certainly me, my hair, my body, my eyes... I was a sceptic when it came to the paranormal, but there was something inside my mind telling me that something wasn’t right. Was I a ghost, watching my own body being crushed?

In every movie or book, when a person witnesses their own body, nobody around can see you. I stared around me helplessly, watching firefighters and police running to the scene, their metal cutters in hand. A van seemed to have crashed into my car with some force. I tried to make sense of everything. My car, the stickers peeling from the front window, my emergency blankets piled up at the back.

Passers-by, who had stepped out from their own cars, shone phones in the direction of my body. The whispers and gossip pierced through my soul.

“STOP IT.” I cried. I knew they couldn’t hear, but I wasn’t really in my right mind.

To my surprise, at the exact moment I shouted, the crowd fell silent, like they had heard me... they were staring in my direction. A fire fighter, unusually tall, wafted their hand right into my face. I began to panic. That wasn’t in my nature too; I was usually quite calm and relaxed but something told me to overreact. I cried some more; I wasn’t in control. Words were no longer coming out, just a squawk. My body became lighter the more I panicked. My arms felt as if they were as light as clouds, and when I peered to look at my fingers and arms, they had disappeared, replaced by feathers and wings.

I was hovering above the road now. My legs were like sticks. No calves, no skin, just twig like legs. Catching a glimpse of myself in my own car’s door I finally saw my reflection for what it truly was. An owl. A barn owl from the patterns and colours I could see. I flew higher and higher, above the tops of the trees. The crash merely looked like tiny ants in a mound. I hadn’t the faintest idea what or how I was doing this, it was as though somewhere, wired inside, the mind of an owl was operating my body, and I was the just the conscious inside. Some people believe, that when a person dies, they come back as a creature and I possibly thought this was the case. The human part of the brain was overloaded with panic, that I was hovering so high above the rest of the world, the other, seemed confident, in control.

The piercing cries of squawks echoed along the wind and around the tops of the trees. Everything inside me told me to investigate, in a strange way, the noises sounded comforting. As I flew towards them, they were getting louder. As I appeared I was now a bird, it made sense why everything was suddenly enhanced. My sense of smell could breathe in the mossy smells of the grasses, the rain as it landed on the grass. My eyes really felt as though HD vision was built inside. A movie being played constantly. I could see the tiniest of mice nesting in the meadows, many other species of birds for miles chatting to each other.

I had no time to compose myself. Suddenly, my body, without warning, urged me to swoop down. A fat, grey mouse, chewing on wheat, was the only thing my eyes focused on.

My mind hadn’t time to blink, when I stared down to see my beak, piercing into the flesh of the field mouse. My human memory felt queasy. Every time I stared down, I saw the image of the mouse, lifeless in my mouth. It wasn’t for me to eat, I could tell, and as I soared through the wind towards the calls, everything clicked.

A nest box was perched on the tree trunk. It was pitch black, but with my new eyesight, I could see tiny owlets crying for their mother, were packed together tightly inside. I perched upon a branch, next to the babies, pushing my head and dropping the mouse inside each tiny beak. I watched them chomp huge mouthfuls, their heads bending backwards as they ate. As I stared at their tiny bodies, glimpses started playing inside my mind. Short snippets of three children, the same amount as the owlets in front of me.

The birds began morphing into human children, as I was still stuck in owl form. They started playing together, building sandcastles on the beach, even though no such scenery was there, only the darkness of the nest box. They were memories. My own memories, of my own children. That time we all travelled to the beach on the hottest day of the year, in June, after school, watching them play amongst the sand, as I sat in my deckchair. I smiled, until the memory slowly faded, I was greeted again by three tiny owlets begging for my attention.

All three squabbled, tearing and stretching the rodent around. I cooed for them to calm down but their urge to eat was too strong. My mind could now see them as human children again. I imagined their owl faces as child’s features, all three fighting as I argued, aggressively, on the phone. I was driving my car. The car I’d just seen crash, along winding roads, full of twists and turns, the wind trying to pull me over, while I cried for my children to stop. The video of them wresting for the remote, stuck inside my head, before I realised, I was out of control. The wheels felt loose, and the steering wheel felt as though I was driving a bumper car at a fair. I was being pushed into the bushes at high speed before I tried to break to save myself.

That was where my memories ended, just the imprint of all three children’s faces frozen on a cracked phone knowing that something was wrong. The moment the light reached my eyes, I was inside the box once more. I could feel myself losing control again, but this time I was falling from a height, my wings flapping but with no momentum behind it.

I gasped. I felt the same way, as I tumbled through the air backwards, the last images, of scared little owlets crying out for the mother they were losing.

BUMP.

Complete darkness...

Expecting my head to fall on something hard and dry, I was pleasantly surprised to feel the soft feeling of feathers under my head. My eyes were blurry, but I opened them with caution, seeing a more human like surrounding. A hospital ward. Even though my head was fully rested on a pillow, the back of my head started to throb, the pain moving around my body.

Three children. Not owls, but real human children, sat anxiously, perched at my feet, turning around to look at me. My arms outstretched, cuddling them, and squeezing them with all my might. My eyesight may not have matched that of a barn owl anymore, but turning to the right, I saw a window on the other side of the room. There sat an owl, out in daylight, twisting her head and nodding in my direction. We knew.