Real Owl. Fake Life

Madeleine slanted her head and let her fingers toy with the owl perched on her bedside table. To call it a toy would be an understatement. It was every inch a real owl, except it really wasn’t, but a fairly decent stand-in. She coughed.

The strain ballooning over her chest contracted and bit harsher onto her breathing. Short demanding wheezes traveled intermittently out of her throat.

Months ago, Dad had whispered on his deathbed. “ Maddie dear, would you…regret this?”

“Never.” She had answered.

***

Madeleine poked the owl’s forehead. The microscopic rufous feathers fluttered. Its tubular pupils blinked with it. The petite beak, nestled in white bristle, bobbed its downward curve up and then down. Lethargically, she ruffled through its very plumed head, cringing as she distinguished the plastic frame propping up this impostor, but others would’ve considered it a knee-jerk reaction for a girl lost in her world.

Hunched over his work desk, Dad didn’t stir. Every inch of his torso, aside from those crafty hands, had petrified to a gargoyle. He polished up his chef-d'oeuvre’s talons, a shiny pair of ratchets, the final touch.

Madeleine clasped both hands over her new pet’s neck, weighing the fragility of the material, and slightly rotated it, hating every groan of its limited artificiality.

She mused that she would like pasta for dinner, meatballs with the classic marinara sauce. As usual. Anything else would send her making out with a toilet.

She readjusted her grip and snapped it off.

“Damn. Maddie!” Just freed from jutting out of a masonry wall, the grotesque creature bared its fangs.

She trained her eyes on her victim— a pair of accusatory orbs mounted on a severed lump of stuffing. She was right. Exterminating the fraud breathed life back into her slaving father.

“Why, Maddie?” He reached voluntarily for the cigarette that wasn’t resting between his lips. “For what goddamn reason did you do that for? You, you- Never mind.”

She wished that he would just say it. You disappoint me.

“I wanted an owl.”

Ungrateful, spoiled, capricious. All those descriptions fit her perfectly in a sense. None of them did in another.

“Maddie.” That all too familiar look revisited her father, a wrinkled forehead, and slitted eyes depressed with guilt. “I tried, okay? You have to give me some breathing ground. I asked my friend for authentic barn owl’s feathers, I bought a 3D printer to construct the bird’s skeleton, and I even worked miracles on the neck so that it could rotate a maximum of 180 degrees. One-eighty, Maddie.”

She backed a step. And another. Her gaze pranced at the undulating shadows from outside and rested back on him.

She saw a scaled horn sprouting out of his frontal lobe. Giant bat-like wings unfolded gloriously from his back and blotted out even the squared window atop her bed, with a breadth no longer than her fork. A long tail, tufted black at the very end, wagged from his hide. He, in his primordial ferocity, levitated higher and higher in the room, revealing the paws of an ostrich that replaced his blue overshoes, and luxuriant hair in substitution for his full set of protective gear.

Maddie craned from left to right. Each pop matched her eyebrow’s spasm.

Hello.

Her migraine, that irritating little imp, announced its return like it always did whenever her insomnia lasted over weeks. But over time, she had gleaned a trick. She squinted hard, harder, and the hallucination soon subsided. The trickiest part was convincing herself that it was a hallucination.

“I think I might sleep for a while now.” Maddie yawned. Fatigue caressed her body so very softly, like a tired breeze eager to cease its stirring.

“You do?” He had suggested it and been sharply snapped at the past three days. An unexpected relief doused his earlier fit.

Floorboards were molten lava. Coarse igneous rock encrusted the ceiling save for a 3m diameter vent that was her light. For all she knew, embers will hiss down from the sky any second as smog saturates the air. Eyes shut, she had already walked past him and made her way to the bed. He took that as his cue to leave.

She slipped under her quilt. The satiny sheets, unacquainted with human warmth for some while, shot chills down her spine.

She mouthed a quick prayer. O God, please let death take me this time and not sleep. Amen.

There had never been a girl as misfortunate as Madeleine Crawford, daughter of a toymaker. It wasn’t much at first: some “ah-choos” during pollen-ridden springtimes, a few asthma attacks here and there, and a whole shelf reserved for backup kleenex at their house. Next, rashes paid her unwelcome visits, bright red ones that ooze blood.

From then on, she woke up morning after morning sweating like a pig. Year-long fevers ransacked her frail thirteen-year-old body that kept thinning to a skeleton no matter how she stuffed herself also like a pig. That was when she was diagnosed with XP, the most severe case the doctor claimed he ever came across. She was unfortunate enough to be allergic to thirty types of pollen, grass, and speaking of XP, the sun. The freak’in sun.

“We can redesign your bedroom into a different theme every year, Maddie. Disneyland, the Amazon rainforest, Paris at night.” Her dad comforted her in the beginning, and he sure stuck to his promise.

He quit his job and devoted himself to crafting the most bizarre and wonderful contraptions beyond her imagination. The gallery of the planets and celestial bodies occupies the middle level of her shelf. A 14th-century dollhouse is stuffed under the bed, along with a pop-up book about the Princess’ Bride.

It wouldn’t have been so terrible if not for the repercussions that surfaced sporadically and endlessly. She became allergic to lactose, pet hair, and every source ever listed in the medical history. With probably a couple that were not.

Her father prohibited all contact with the outside world, and he became the only thing she laid eyes on occasionally through ridiculous goggles. She cut off communication with friends who used to come and call on her. Too saddening to explain, so she didn't. For all they knew, she moved out of state, and none of them bothered to check that she was still there. She’ll always be there.

Quickly, her mental health suffered. Anyone stuck 24/7 with nothing but her own suicidal notions would. Insomnia was torture— tossing and turning until she was drooling to have lamb, and a blessing. She had hours of boredom. Dad brought her Shakespeare and Hawking, The Prince and The Encyclopedia of Gemstones and Minerals. She finished everything, but why accumulate knowledge when she’d only take them to her grave? The cycle of working her brain to the maximum yet not being relieved by sleep only left her with schizophrenic episodes.

Some nights, when her eyes were too sore to keep reading, she climbed up her bed and pressed her forehead against the cool glass. She didn’t change position the whole night as she imagined herself outdoors again, shivering, grass tickling her feet, air pumping her lungs… Four years, the beginning of eternity, of living as her father’s caged canary. Maybe she ought to break it to him that all she wants is to go out once more, even if it would be the end of her. But watching him trying so hard to please her, she never did.

Death was awfully selfish this time as well, unwilling to share its most valuable possession— release, what would be Maddie’s balm in Gilead.

Sleep did unload the hypertension that would dilate her pupils up to twice as large. She propped herself up and stretched those long paralyzed limbs. She reached for her phone and turned it on. December 5th. She was out for three days, not as bad as last time.

Her neck snapped towards the smell of lemon pepper chicken fresh out of the oven entering the room. Dad, seeming to have grown more white hair since the last time she saw him, placed down the tray along with a huge box he carried beneath the arm.

“Afternoon, Maddie. How was the beauty sleep?”

She snatched over the fork and began putting food in her mouth. Her stomach still grumbled after she was down two pieces of chicken and a dozen slices of bread. Hunger and nausea waltzed in almost peaceful coherence in her belly.

“Slow down, girl. I don’t want you throwing up later.”

After she finished, he replaced the plate in her hand with the box and grinned mischievously. “Look what I have in there for you.”

“This was… store-bought?” Maddie peeled off the brand label in confusion. He was acting a lot more careless than before. It was his policy that takeout food might contain unknown ingredients, and any product on store shelves could have dust laced over them or some material made out of plastic.

“I cleaned it thoroughly.” He explained.

Her weak heart drummed faster in the chest. Four years of never stepping into a toy shop or grocery market. Who knows what kind of gadgets they sell nowadays? She ripped open the tape and shredded the cardboard, throwing the package aside. She stared at the dark brown mass within and blinked.

A flutter of wings. The same-looking owl she begged her father to make flew out, gracefully circled in the air and perched back on her shoulder.

“Wh-what?” She eyed the beautiful bird then her father. “I- Can it hoot?”

“Thought you’d never ask.” He came around and lightly petted it. “Buddy, give us a hoot.”

It can’t be! Maddie pinched her cheeks to stifle the squeal. That was it. Two short “hoos” followed by a long “hoooo”.

Maddie’s arm trembled where she held this newfound wonder. She did a close inspection of it from every angle. Nothing was amiss except for the wind-up key protruding out of the back of its neck.

Dad noticed her glance lingering at it. “Honey, I- It’s-”

“It’s perfect.” She breathed.

It had been three years since she had come into skin contact with something so full of life. If only for a split second, it fooled her as a real owl that soared in the evening sky. She had caught sight of many in her sleepless nights. It commanded the space it flew across just like those noble beasts, swooping up and down in alternating circles, as if trailing out a double helix structure like the DNA.

Standing behind her, Dad uttered between sobs. “That’s wonderful, my Maddie. Wonderful.”

She heard the obstinate threat she made a week prior. I want an owl. If you don’t give me a living, flying, hooting owl, I won’t eat this meal or any other that comes after it. She had been perhaps a tad uncaring.

He then went through detailedly all the possible programming algorithms it could run. Those were the happiest hours Maddie could ever remember, where they tested scenarios of the owl cuddling against a human being or simply, it catching a prey. Under its facade, a byproduct of human intelligence, she felt a soul entrapped inside, muttering to her.

Aren’t we cut from the same cloth?

Maddie jumped. Her father asked what was wrong, and she dodged around with some half-hearted answers, not wanting for him to send in another of those psychotic disorder counselors.

The week after that, her father reserved a corner of her room for the owl she named “Kelly”. Kelly soon had her own tree to rest on, and a riot of branches as her nest. Chaotic but very authentic-looking. Maddie followed the rule of nature strictly. Though she longed to watch it demonstrate its aliveness, she accepted its nocturnal trait and only turned it on when the two of them were awake. Kelly never ‘spoke’ again, but Maddie had her doubts nevertheless.

Before, she used to watch for owls from her window and forget to breathe when she catches one’s contour high up on an oak bough. Now, they did it together.

Her pajamas bore four narrow tears where Kelly always landed on. Sometimes, she didn’t decelerate.

“Look at the waxing crescent tonight, Kelly. You like bathing in that magical silver, don’t you? I do too, but days are so much more. The sun might be farther distant-wise, but you can feel it more easily. It burns from time to time, but those are the signs that you aren’t some figment of your imagination. You know Pitch Black in Rise of the Guardians? Where folks walk through and not pass you? Yeah, that.”

She slept more regularly now, which was a shame since it meant less time to spend with Kelly.

Come nights, she would eagerly arouse Kelly, and for ten minutes, marvel at her form in the air. Sheer power flexed in those wings, and it was the same power that tethered it mid-air just so that the absence of sounds remained. Yet many times as Maddie beckoned for Kelly to quit the acrobatics, she found her vision swimming to the point that she failed to will her eyelids open. Her biological and anatomical knowledge both drew to the fact that her health was deteriorating, something she once dreamed of she now dreaded.

Maddie was determined not to leave Kelly, so she went dutifully to bed. Hoping that her whacked immune system was not that whacked.

Her father worked up quite extravagant meals for them. Kelly particularly enjoyed the fish stew where they both had to use a fork or a beak to tear the meat off of the bone. Maddie also ordered to have dishes from all over the world which she then showed off to her new pal. Dad shouldered his way in carrying steaming crockpots, sizzling grills, and filled Japanese serving trays. He left since there was only ever tableware set for two.

“Look what Dad cooked us tonight— sushi! Wow. I’ve only read about it in books. What a treat!” She split the chopsticks and poured soy sauce and wasabi into two delicate dishes. The Japanese life she read before resurged in her memory bank.

“He must have taken a lot of tries to roll up all those ingredients. The rice is vinegared, but I’ll eat that for you. The marinated tuna inside you will love. The cucumber adds crispness, the avocado a creamy delight, and the eel sauce sweetness that won’t stick to the bottom of your throat. Dad made me a different flavored one a while ago. It’s funny to think that when I was still a wee baby, he would turn his nose up at the stove, deeming it a woman’s place.”

She didn’t see one more thing coming. Maddie now had endless conversations with her father, compared to their one-worded exchanges in the past.

She invited him to sit down. Their more intimate distance blunted the remoteness of his lab-white gear. Through the vinyl screen that cut out his head, she inwardly flinched that he had changed much from before. He was no longer the young, handsome man, with a creative mind and dexterous hands. And a wholesome family. Friends once looked at old photographs of the dashing fellow, with curls skirting down his ears, and envied that he was her dad and not her brother.

“Can you bring me some more books on Python and C++? Have you heard of the term ‘artificial intelligence’, Papa?”

“I can't say that I have.”

For the first time in her life, coding was a skill she could master then experience the fulfillment herself. She deactivated the wind-up key. Obviously. And connected her computer to Kelly's software to wake her each time.

“How do you think I can program her flight to be completely soundless, Papa?” Owls’ heart-shaped faces are so deceptive for the ruthless hunters they were.

Dad wasn't kidding when he said many years ago that he read every single book he brought her. Some he remembered. Others fell victim to the passage of time from when he first learned them. In either case, he mainly listened to her talk, never interrupting nor correcting her.

Kelly changed everything.

“Papa,” Maddie whispered. “Papa, Papa.” She called louder. He said he was going to doze for a minute, not turn to Sleeping Beauty.

She pressed her mouth against his ear. “Wake up!” He fell straight out of the chair, coloring up his language.

“Gosh, wasn't that a power nap?” Maddie still mocked until she saw his left temple bruising up like a prune. She felt queasy. He was so… fragile.

“How long was I asleep?”

“An hour. Hey, hey!” She snapped her fingers at him before his moans slipped away to soft snores. She fared better when she was weeks insomniac.

“Here.” She got up and fetched him ice from her fridge.

“Thank you, Maddie.” The coldness at least cleared his eyes. “What were we talking about before I zoned out?”

Maddie beamed. “I’ve been thinking for a while now, and…I think we should make another owl!” She blurted.

His widened pupils almost matched Kelly’s in proportion to the face.

“Kelly is lonely, and she needs a partner. If you could just build me the prototype, then I’ll handle all the programming stuff left. I’ve done my research. It’s tricky but not impossible.” Kelly was life brought to her. Time was now right to create life on her own.

“Dear, if you are ready to commit to such a project.” He started slowly, chewing on the words. “Only if you are a hundred percent dedicated, then…I will give you my full support, though…”

“Yes, I am, Papa!” She leaped out of her armchair, circled her arms around him and gave him a hard squeeze. Between all the protection, she remarked that he had lost weight. Some of his joints jutted into her despite the thickness of the fabric. The observation drowned under more intense emotions the next second. “I am, I am so ready! And so excited!”

Dad was all stiff.

Maddie then realized that upon first seeing him in those equipment, which was four years ago, she had sworn to never touch him again. But that hug there…wasn’t so bad.

Once she dug into the idea, she couldn’t get out. Every trial and error attempt fascinated her, knowing that it only brought her one step closer to success. Unlike everyone else, she had all the time in the world to kill. The scientists in her books loomed far closer. This was their daily battle as they raged over not being able to produce what they envisioned. But what joy! What rapture awaits at the finish line!

Dad promised her the model in five months. She pounced into his arms again and thanked him. She yearned to try her code the next hour if possible, but this time, she’ll wait.

He came to see her less and less now. Things went back to what it was before—- them living their separate lives. They had two hours together every day at lunch and went straight back to work afterward. Goodbye was temporary.

She thought of the plumes stitched up by his long fingers and the sandpaper scratching keratin that is to be molded into its beak. Not it. Alex. Alex’s beak.

Dad had to be thinking about her as well.

August 12th. Maddie went to sleep with a different prayer. Dear Lord, when I wake, Dad brings me the frame of Alex. Breathe life into Alex as you have breathed life into the dirt and brought forth Adam.

August 13th. Amazing. She only slept 24 hours. She checked her phone. 8:30 am. Felt strange waking up in the morning.

But one normal timing of an average person’s schedule wasn’t going to normalize her life.

Maddie barely sat down the moment she got up. She paced her room, each stride burned like hot bricks she couldn’t stay on too long. She went through the algorithm she wrote at least thrice, and she vacated another corner for Alex. She kept waiting for the knock on her doors and Dad bringing in lunch along with his creation, but the lunch hour passed without her realizing it. She threw one of the refrigerated stuff Dad left for her in the microwave. Its heated smell was that of sour milk. Right. She forgot about those pre-packaged lunches for almost a year.

Two in the afternoon, she finally forced herself to sit. Her eyes were glued to the lock screen, clicking it every few seconds before it faded out, annoyance building up with every change of digit. She didn’t want to describe her disappointment, afraid that it would articulate into words something worse, feeling abandoned.

Eight o’clock. Maddie gave up glancing at the door every five minutes. She trudged to her desk and hit the “Go” button. Far up in her nest, Kelly’s neck rotated a full 270 degrees, and her eyelids snapped open. An angel of the night, she swooped down, flew past Maddie’s shoulder, and landed on the edge of the table, atop the telephone.

“Ungrateful bird.” She protested.

The telephone then rang. The vibration was felt in her veins. And rang for the second time, puncturing the silence. Maddie let it ring five times before picking it up. It was a century ago that she answered an actual call.

“Hello.” She cringed at the echo, not that it was a microphone or anything. “Who’s there?”

“Is this Madeleine Crawford speaking, daughter of William Crawford?”

“Yes.” Someone was even asking for her. Her palms moistened, which she quickly smeared off on her nightgown.

“I am police officer Lionel Thompson. Your father was in a fatal car accident this morning on Highway 406, between Ealing and Brent.”

The telephone clanged to the floor. Maddie clutched her chest, gasping for air. Open or closed eyes, she could see Dad’s head keeled over the steering wheel. Red caked his almost ebony strands. Red pooled over the car floor. Red streaked the pedal, the wheels, the windshield, and the rearview mirror where the window had shattered and buried some pieces into her father’s skull. She collapsed to the floor, a mercy, since a throbbing backside beat the imbalance of being upright.

“Ma’am, is everything alright?… Ma’am?”

Shakily, she croaked. “Is he dead?” Maddie couldn’t tell that a liquid welled from her eyes and burned the skin of her cheeks.

“No, ma’am. We are in fact, outside your doors right now. Mr. Crawford is at the St. Louis hospital a block down. If we hurry, you might still be able to say your last words with him.”

Crash! The telephone she strenuously retrieved slipped again. She simply couldn’t hold anything in her hand right now.

“Ma’am?”

“Please give me a second.” She yelped.

What would they say when she gives the very opposite of the expected answer? Heartless daughter? But Dad would understand. Thinking about it, he’d really approve. Of course, seeing her on his deathbed would be the nail in his coffin.

“Where was he heading?” She bought time for herself to think.

“We believe Mr. Crawford was heading home from work, ma’am.”

“My father doesn’t work.” She pointed out in earnest.

“Well, we have here documented that he had a half-day employment at the local toy store, where he also holds a night shift.”

Maddie let the handset clang against the leg of her desk. She pulled on the cords as the handset scraped in sheer mockery and opened her mouth but found no words.

Maddie has asked him why he never stayed for the afternoons. He said it was his personal time to “get crafty”. Liar. Show-off. No one asked him to juggle two jobs, with one of them a full-time stay-at-home dad.

Oh! For the sake of Christ, she turned seventeen this June, and he still believed the truth was too much for her to take? Why oh why oh why didn’t he just tell her that they needed the money? She would have settled for simpler meals. She would’ve kept quiet about wanting all those hardcovers. She would’ve tolerated his longer naps during their lunches. She maybe even wouldn’t have demanded for Alex with all the costly materials.

“Ma’am, we have no time to lose.”

She didn’t answer. One minute later, she had put on a t-shirt and jeans, one of the outfits Dad kept filling her wardrobe with, and sat next to the police officer on the passenger seat.

No sunscreen. No glasses. She embraced the sun. Through a car window, under a shade, or fully bathing in its brilliance and heat.

Every light and reflection intimidated her outside, but her steps never faltered. She even at one intersection, turned to face the great fiery sphere embedded in the sky. Her squinting stimulus fired off at an alarming dynamic.

She wanted to see Dad. She wanted to do and say something she should’ve done and said a long time ago, so she kept going.

Only at the hospital bed did she skid to a stop. Cuts decorated his lip, his brow, and his neck. His lashes fluttered like a dragonfly taking off from a tranquil water. His dimples bloomed, as if subconsciously, he was imagining her face when she saw Alex. Maddie inhaled sharply as her line of sight reached the heavenly bird stacked with some other personal belongings on the table. Her hand extended towards its perfectly oval head. As the feathers were about to tickle her palms, she balled into a fist and let it drop. Next, she hunched down and lightly kissed her dying father, lip to lip.

He stirred and opened his eyes, hurting in the process. There were no complaints as he noted that she broke his most holy rule— “Never step outside the house.”

His lovely eyes, plain in the air for her to savor, glistened. Pearls dotted its corners. “I love you, my dear Maddie.”

“I love you too, Daddy.” She leaned over and kissed his temples.

***

Blood splatters appeared after she coughed. Maddie dragged herself inch by inch across the bed and struggled to roll down the blinds. Sunlight streamed through in straight strias over her sheets and pummeled down at the edge, where it branched into a dozen illuminated diagonals. Watching the brightness riding over the walls and finally relaxing into an aglow halo on the ceiling, she smiled.

Maddie craned her neck to the right and wordlessly praised the masterpiece of an owl. It once had a name.

She let her eyes graze the shining outside again, breathing in the sunlight. And slowly, they closed.