The Pigeon Mistake

Little Billy Carmichael enjoyed taking walks on the weekends. Every single Saturday at around noon he would lace up his blue gym sneakers that were covered in holes and bound out the front door to see what new adventure may cross his path. It was late spring in the vast suburb where Billy lived which meant two things: warmer weather and longer days. Those two things lent their way to an even greater conclusion: longer adventures. He had already trekked across the ravine on the east side of town, braving the fallen oak tree bridge that sat nearly seven feet above the river below. In the dead of winter he ascended the peaks of the town’s frozen garbage dump.

Most people didn’t know that at the top of those garbage piles you could see the entirety of Elk Passing, Massachusetts for miles and miles. Billy knew though. He knew a lot for a boy his age. For example, on his last outing he attempted to cross a massive wheat field that sat kitty-corner to the route 41 highway just outside of town. It was a whole football field's length from end to end.

Billy waded his way through the swirling sea of faded yellow straw, using his favorite gnarled walking stick to part the blades around him with gentle care. But halfway to the end he was cornered by a vicious stray dog. It was a mean-eyed maltese whose white fur was matted and stained black with filth. It was the kind of stray that could only pose a serious threat to those aged eight and under, but Billy had the good fortune of having just turned eight-and-a-half.

It was a matter of quick wits that saved Billy from being mauled by the deranged beast. That and sacrificing the walking stick in a game of life-or-death fetch. And even though it cost him his favorite stick, Billy gained knowledge that no kid, or even adult, had. He discovered that somewhere in the big open wheat field off of highway 41 lived a stray dog with a temper that would make even Cerberus turn tail and hide.

Billy liked knowing things that other kids didn’t. He knew how to replace shoe laces, dry wet clothes on the radiator fan outside the local laundromat, clean cuts and scrapes, tend to bruises and strained muscles. Not many kids his age could say they knew all that. But then again, not many kids Billy’s age ventured off as often as he did. Were the adventures dangerous? Sure, most of the time. What good journey doesn’t have its fair share of danger? But Billy took comfort in the fact that his parents knew he was smart and quick enough to get out of trouble should it ever rear its ugly old head his way.

This was a lie of course. Billy’s parents had absolutely no clue where he was when he went on his adventures and they seldom cared, if ever. Billy’s mother, Marianne Carmichael, was the wealthy heiress to the Huitt Bottling Factory Company fortune. Unfortunately, the people in business with Marianne’s family realized that dealing with an architectural agency made far more sense than dealing with a company that made factories for making bottles. Other businesses realized this and the Huitt family’s bottling factory monopoly quickly became the Huitt family’s financial tomb, and Marianne became one of very few bankrupt “heiresses”. As a result of this she later developed a crippling addiction to hard liquor, making her one of even fewer bankrupt, alcoholic “heiresses”. At the beginning of Billy’s current adventure, Marianne was sprawled out on her living room couch swaddled in blankets and trying without success to lift her drunken head up enough to catch the last fifteen minutes of CSI: Cyber.

Billy’s father on the other hand, Walter Carmichael, never touched a drop of liquor in his life. He instead preferred to guzzle rivers of beer while claiming to be as sober as a clam, a metaphor that Billy never understood and found stupid to be perfectly frank. He didn’t get why a clam would be sober or why it would want to drink alcohol in the first place. Billy also didn’t get why Walter would come home from work every night and scream at him and Marianne.

Walter worked hourly shifts at the less-favored dry cleaners of the two in Elk Passing. The most favored dry cleaner - Lil’ Tommy’s Dry and Press - was doing quite well for itself and their employees were well paid. The one Walter worked at - We Kleen 4 You! - was not doing as well and as a result Walter was not well paid.

Coming home every single night to his mean, alcoholic wife and his 8 year old son who, at least in Walter’s mind, was already disappointed in his father made every night unbearable torment for him. This was one of many possible explanations for his behavior at home besides his knowledge of Marianne’s affair with their next door neighbor, Harold Jones. Another possible explanation for all the hostility was Marianne’s knowledge of Walter’s affair with Amy Goldfarb, the receptionists at the Elk Passing Public Library.

While having full knowledge of the other’s affair, neither Walter nor Marianne had any suspicion that their dearly beloved knew about their own infidelity, which made for a very awkward and incredibly toxic marital paradox. This would also explain why when Walter would scream, Marianne would scream back and throw all sorts of household appliances at him. But Billy didn’t know any of this about his parents. If he did, he instantly buried it in the recesses of his brain to be dealt with, or not, once he reached maturity. Right now his focus was far more singular: adventure.

His plan on this particular Saturday was simple. He was going to explore the entirety of the subterranean parking garage underneath the town square. Billy overheard some kids at school talking about a monster living down there that would eat any kid that dared to cross the boundary line from above to below. To Billy, hearing this was like dangling sweet vermouth in front of Marianne Carmichael at 9:45 in the morning, irresistible. In his excitement about the rumor, Billy asked the children who were talking about it if they would want to go see the monster with him on Saturday. The only reply he received was a handful of rude names and a punch in the gut from Patrick Barringer, the cool kid of 3rd grade. Billy didn’t mind this. In fact, he understood. He wasn’t cool or funny like Patrick Barringer, and he certainly wasn’t strong and fast like Patrick’s best friend Kerry Dinkleman, who was the one who did most of the name-calling. Billy kept to himself and understood that meant kids probably wouldn’t want to be his friend. That was okay, not everyone got to have friends.

Even though he did grow sad from time to time at the fact that he didn’t have anyone to share his adventures with, he did take solace in the fact that he had his pigeon pals to watch over him while he was out and about.

Billy first got acquainted with his pigeon friends in the fall. It was on his second adventure outing to the furthest reaches of Elk Passing. He noticed a group of them happily sitting on the power line outside of his house. One of them had a particularly round body that made Billy giggle to look at. He named this one Ballbird. Needless to say, among his strengths, creativity was not one Billy possessed.

What Billy lacked in creativity however, he made up for with inexplicable luck. As he passed the pigeons sitting sentinel on the wire, Billy offered them what he thought was a simple hello in bird language, that being a whistled, “Twoo-twee-woot!”

What Billy didn’t realize though was that every species of bird has their own distinct dialect. Pigeons in particular are known to have the most complex language of them all, and saying “Twoo-twee-woot!” to a pigeon isn't close to hello at all. What it actually means is, “I am the one you have searched for.”

The pigeons heard Billy say this and Ballbird, whose name was actually Ingam the Wise, turned to his peers with a look of shock. The other three birds returned this look, equally perplexed by this human boy’s sudden declaration. But Ingam, who earned his surname by being a bird of good sense, shook this off. “Need not fret, my feathered kinsman. This human speaks borrowed words of which he knows not. Pay him no mind, he is not the One.”

To human ears, this declaration from Ingam sounded something like, “Twoowoo-twoowoo-tweet?” Billy heard this and wrongly assumed that Ballbird was trying to sing to him. So to be polite, Billy sang back. Billy’s song roughly translated to this:

“You dare to question me? You foul-beaked buffon! My words are as borrowed as your feigned integrity. I come to you and your council with tidings of the True Bridge and you elect to brush me off as a facade? Have you no honor? And barring that, no shame? Thank the Sky Mother that the Elders are not here to witness such heinous disrespect!”

The Covenant of the True Bridge, the religion upheld by most pigeons, centers around the belief that at some point a mythical chosen one will come along speaking in the tongue of pigeon-kind. This chosen one, through their infinite wisdom and kindness, will then act as a bridge that stems the developmental gap between pigeons and humans, allowing the two to share the top position on the evolutionary food chain.

The only beings on earth that are aware of this religion are pigeons. Not even other avian creatures know about the Covenant of the True Bridge. The pigeon is a very secretive animal by nature and they have done their absolute best throughout the generations to keep their faith hidden from the rest of the world.

This is why, as one of the most loyal observers of the book of the True Bridge, Ingam the Wise was shocked by Billy’s response. Surely the messiah he was promised was not a human, and a child at that! The True Bridge was meant to be a pigeon. It had to be a pigeon. Every text he had poured over his whole life reasserted that belief a hundred times over. “It is impossible!” He chirped.

Ingam’s close friend and confidant, Meulor, turned to him. “Ingam, he just spoke of the Sky Mother. The fact that he even knows our tongue at all is grounds to make him-”

“He doesn’t know our tongue! Look at him! He’s a foolish boy masquerading favorable luck as knowledge!” Ingam was absolutely right of course. Billy had no idea what was happening up on that power line at all. In his mind, he was watching four cute birdies sing along with him.

The bird on Ingam’s right side, Iredell, put a feather out to console her friend. “Sire, if there is even a chance that he’s the Bridge we must alert the Elders at once.”

“No! I refuse! I refuse to acknowledge that boy and I abhor any of you who would grant his foolish rhetoric any validity! He’s a pretender and a fraud!” Once again, a completely correct assessment of the situation.

The fourth pigeon on the line spoke next, and he did so with a quiet bravado that commanded the attention of everyone, even Ingam.

“Hear me, dear Ingam, for I, Unthern, shall only speak these words once. The book of the Bridge demands that we grant him our faith until proven otherwise. Such is our way and so it has been. If you wish to renounce him before we have brought the news to the Elders, that is of course your right. But know that the Elders will recognize the boy as our Bridge, and your condemnation of him will see you exiled as a heretic.”

Ingam’s cute button-eyes blazed with righteous fury. He spread his wings out wide and faced Unthern. “You dare to threaten me?”

“I caution you as a peer.” Ingam made a move towards Unthern but he never flinched, not even once. He stood there, confidently staring back at Ingam without concern, emboldened by the presence of his 'True' Bridge.

Billy, astonished by how beautifully the birds were singing to each other, decided to give the big finishing note. “Ingam, heed your friends. Your pride will be your tomb.”

“Then it will be a tomb we share together, false idol!” Ingam howled as he flapped his wings and took off. “To the Elders at once!”

The pigeon Elders resided at the top of the old clock tower that sat adjacent to the elementary school. No one had been inside to run maintenance on the clock in over 20 years, which made it perfect for the wisest members of Elk Passing’s pigeon community to meditate over the words written in the book of the Bridge. Needless to say, after nearly 4 generations of Elders having come and passed through the tower, the current group of sagely pigeons were ecstatic to hear that a potential candidate for True Bridge had finally come along. More than that, they leapt at the chance to leave the clock tower and observe him.

What most of the pigeons didn’t know was that, with little to do besides read the same scripture over and over, meditate, and mate with each other, every single generation of Elders slowly went insane in the isolation of the clock tower. The bird who was meant to be the head of the Covenant, Bastion the Pious, was easily the most senile. So, on the day of Billy’s third Saturday adventure, Ingam was forced to bear witness to the true madness of his religious leaders as they sat once again on the power line outside Billy’s street.

“Now, my little tuck-under pretties!” Bastion said to the other pigeons with a crazed, empty stare. “If the boy answers my questions five, he is truly the True Road!”

“You mean the True Bridge, Elder Bastion.” Ingam corrected.

“Hm? Yes, sure. No. Wait. Yes, all well and good. Let us begin!” Bastion the Pious ruffled his feathers and hacked up a wad of saliva before his gaze shifted down to Billy and the initiation began.

From Billy's perspective, as he set out to start his day, he looked up on the wire and saw new pigeon friends chirping at him from above. This new one was older than the others, dirtier too. That didn’t matter though, a friend was a friend no matter how they looked, and this new friend was saying hi. So, not one to refuse a hello, Billy politely whistled back every time Bastion cooed at him. This is how the interaction actually went.

“Boy! I Bastion the Pious ask ye now, what is the mark of our holy Covenant?”

“A single line. The view of a bridge from above.”

“Correct! What did the Sky Mother decree on the 18th day of her exile before being shown the path to the heavens?”

“That pigeonkind is holier than all other of Mother Earth’s creations.”

Bastion moaned, a vile and retching noise of ecstasy. “And why must we bob our heads whilst we walk?”

“So that we bow with every step, eternally humbling ourselves in honor of our forefathers’ sacrifices.”

“For how many nights do we observe the Holiday of Kramstuccha?”

“Do you take me for a fool, noble Elder?” Billy laughed as he continued to chirp to the tune of the ABC song. “Any well-minded fellow worth their feathers knows that Kramstuccha is a daylight celebration.”

“Excellent! Bread! Bread, bread, bread! Feed the beast! Feed him your soul!” Bastion waggled his head violently, frothing at the mouth as he briefly lost all grip on reality. Once he regained what little was left of his composure he turned to the others. “Let this last query prove the young human’s place among us.” He turned back to Billy, screaming and flapping his wings as he spoke, “Boy! Who was our very first Elder Pigeon?”

In the moment during Billy’s response, just for that moment, Billy ran into a phenomenon that has never been documented by science, journalism, or any form of publication that could recognize it as real. Much like the religion of the True Bridge, it has only been revealed to a select group of beings and is largely kept in secret by everyone who is aware of it. The only reason I am aware of it is because I myself ran into it, multiple times in fact. And, at the risk of endangering my life by divulging this secret, I am comfortable disclosing this phenomena to you now. It is known as a luck hiccup and it is about as self explanatory as can be.

***

Imagine someone with luck similar to Billy, a taxi driver named Freddie for example’s sake. Now imagine Freddie managing to overcome multiple situational hurdles of increasing difficulty over a period of time. Let’s say he somehow fumbles his way into a job interview with a high-powered law firm without having any prior experience as a lawyer. He never went to law school, never passed the Bar. Freddie doesn’t even know what the Bar Exam is. Despite all of this, he nails his interview and goes on to have an absurdly successful first case for his firm’s client. Freddie has no idea how any of this is happening and doesn’t particularly care. Why would he? In a matter of weeks he went from begging his landlord for a third extension on his rent to making a tailor at Tom Ford wait 20 minutes for him while he took a sitting-down piss in the store’s ridiculously fancy bathroom. You can’t buy that kind of power. Not unless you’re Freddie the Taxi-Cab Lawyer.

But luck isn’t an infinite power source that you can mine forever and ever. It’s more akin to a muscle that you have to train and take care of, lest it snap or strain unexpectedly. And, just like an inexperienced marathon runner, Freddie's been using his luck at a full-sprint without regard for the consequences.

Said consequences catch up with poor Freddie in the middle of the closing arguments during the most high-profile case in his short but illustrious career. He’s defending the foolish executive of an Ad firm who’s attempting to plead not guilty for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars. The client absolutely embezzled those hundreds of thousands of dollars but Freddie is a needle's length away from convincing the jury of the contrary. He’s so close to cinching the case. But right then and there his luck muscle snaps.

The Mega Mondo-rito is a style of burrito offered by the semi-popular Mexican food chain Taco Del Loco. It consists of refried beans, onions, cheese, beef, cilantro, mayo, and green peppers. The secret ingredient that makes it “mega mondo'' however, are the three chicken taquitos stuffed inside the center of the dish. It is what Freddie eats every single morning of every day, and every single day he experiences little to no stomach problems. A little gas here and there? Sure. The occasional swamp ass? Obviously. But these are issues that all seasoned lovers of Mexican food know to be benign. Especially lovers of Taco Del Loco. Which is exactly why Freddie has no remorse or fear about letting out a little bit of wind when he feels his stomach gurgling uncomfortably during his court hearing. Over the course of his life, he’s mastered the silent fart to the point where it’s become an art form. Plus, in a packed courtroom the size of a cathedral there’s no way in Hell anyone would be able to finger him as the perpetrator, no matter how rancid the fart smelled. Even if someone did, they would look like an immature and unprofessional buffoon for stopping a high-profile trial just to point out that the defense let loose a stinky fart.

It’s smack-dab in the middle of this thought process that Freddie shits his pants. It’s thunderous beyond belief and carries a revolting stench that stuns the entire courtroom into silence. Freddie, with a river of sludge trickling down his leg, goes mute. He turns on a dime, waddles out of the courtroom, and vanishes into the mens bathroom where he makes a desperate attempt to wash his very expensive Tom Ford suit-pants in the sink. He loses the case, is later fired from the law firm and must return to work as a taxi cab driver. Like Icarus, Freddie flew above the clouds with lady luck as his wings. That is until the sun, the dreaded luck hiccup, sent him hurdling to a humiliating, soupy-poopy demise.

***

Luck hiccups come in varying forms and differing degrees of severeness. Our poor Freddie experienced a hiccup on the more drastic end of the spectrum. Billy on the other hand found his to be far more forgiving on account of Elder Bastion’s crippling madness.

“Boy! Who was our very first Elder Pigeon?” the old bird demanded.

Without missing a beat, Billy responded with all the confidence an eight and a half year old could muster. “Samdnitch tire.”

“Correct!” Bastion screamed. “Correct! Correct! Correct! Correct!”

Billy was not correct.

Ingam knew this of course, and immediately turned to stare at Bastion the Pious in mortified shock. “Elder Bastion, the First Elder was named Gathemmet.”

“Yes. I know. What did the boy say?”

“I believe it was samdnitch tire.”

“Oh well. Close enough.”

Ingam couldn’t believe his ears. “Close enough? Close enough! Bastion, you’re willing to proclaim a false Bridge just because he got “close enough?” How addled has your mind become in that tower?”

Suddenly, Bastion’s eyes cleared up and he turned to Ingam and spoke each word with purposeful, level headed sincerity that could only come from a sane beak. “My dear Ingam. Listen to me now, for I am your Elder. You are smart. You have always been smart. Yet your unrelenting pursuit of perfection blinds you to the miracles that surround us. Look at that grubby human boy down there. To you, he is a mockery of our beliefs. Why? Because he isn’t pigeonkin? Because his head does not bob with every step? He speaks our tongue, Ingam. He answered four of the five questions perfectly. Four out of five. That’s 95% correct.”

“80% actually.”

“So you agree that he was more correct than he was wrong!”

Ingam tried his best. He tried with all the fervor and charisma he had, even coupling it with textual evidence from the very scripture that the Elders devoted their lives too. But it didn’t matter. Bastion argued with or flat out ignored every point he made, eventually silencing him with a raised wing.

“I wish today could have been one solely of joy.” The head Elder cooed with sorrow. “But it seems I now have two decrees to make. The first is to recognize the boy, Billy Carmichael as the True Bridge with all my power as the head Elder of the Covenant of the Bridge. The second is to excommunicate our brother Ingam from our lands, strip him of all his titles and inheritances, and eternally brand him as a heretic. Now, without further ado, time to die!” With that, Bastion and all of the other Elders, having succeeded in finding the reincarnation of their God and having no other reason to continue their lives, all bit down on the power line in unison. They immediately burst into flames as hundreds of volts of electricity coursed through their tiny bodies. One after the other, their charred corpses plopped down onto the pavement directly in front of Billy, the True Bridge of Pigeons.

Ingam’s heart shattered as he looked at what remained of his peers. Muelor, Iredell, Unthern all stared back. Not one of them moved to argue against the ruling. “So,” He seethed, “so you all agree with this? With this child moron being our salvation? Our God? You will happily allow a dead fool to dictate your savior for you without question? Fine. Go ahead. I refuse to be a part of a church that holds convenient circumstance higher than its true values!”

Unthern stepped forward along the wire and once more sought to bring Ingam back to calm. Even with his powerful stature, tears welled up in his eyes at the loss of Bastion. “Look down, brother. Look down at the one you call a moron.”

Ingam followed Unthern’s pointed wing and saw Billy sobbing on his knees. It took him another moment to see the bodies of Bastion and one of the other Elders being held with delicate care in his hands.

“The boy cries alongside us as if our losses were his own. He mourns while you insult and blaspheme.” With a glare of sadness and newfound repulsion, Unthern brought his beak in close to Ingam’s ear. “Leave this place at once, heretic. Before I behead you in Billy Carmichael’s name.”

Ingam huffed at Unthern but made no move against him. “The only heretics here are the ones before my eyes. May the Sky Mother pluck your feathers all!” Ingam took to the air and never looked back. Billy’s wailing cries stabbed at his ears and mocked his pride as he disappeared into the clouds.

For Billy, life after being inducted as the True Bridge changed things very little, as he had no idea this happened to him. He went home and cried to Marianne about watching the birdies die and she offered him a very ineffectual pat on the head before asking him to get her a bottle of “medicine” from the decanter set. Once he got home from work, Billy brought the issue to Walter who told his son that birds were meant for two things: eating and shooting. He then promised to take Billy out hunting one afternoon to get rid of his girlish affection for birds. This was not helpful to the grieving child in any way, shape, or form. But Billy eventually concluded on his own that death is a natural part of life and that life’s fleeting nature may be the one thing that grants any meaning to the sadness and hardships that people experience. With newfound peace calming his nerves he went up to his room, tucked himself in, and then promptly fell asleep, excited for the new day that would follow.

For the pigeons of Elk Passing, life had been altered in a series of monumental ways. The mass-suicide of the Elders left the entire community in grief-stricken disarray and a days long memorial was orchestrated by Unthern, Meulor and Iredell to honor their ascension to the Sky Mother’s nest. In doing so, the three of them won the deep respect of their community and were quickly elevated to the ranks of Elder. Their first acts as Elders were to immediately recognize Billy Carmichael as the True Bridge, repeal the rank of Elder entirely, and create a Council of the Bridge consisting of themselves and two others: a commoner pigeon named Shlenk who had a deep knowledge of the community’s interpersonal relations, and Yowlest, Ingam’s father. The council had come to Yowlest on the day of Ingam’s sentencing with their deepest apologies. Being a bird of reason and respect, Ingam’s father understood and forgave his son’s accusers on the premise that they would allow him a position among them. The three of them found it hard to refuse such a reasonable offer considering the situation.

Monuments were erected all across Elk Pasing in Billy’s image, carefully hidden away from the prying eyes of humans and other animals alike. Every morning pigeons would flock to the power line outside on Billy’s street to hear his words of wisdom and every morning Billy would happily whistle them a tune. Little did he know his songs were deeply profound and affecting sermons on the nature of life and existence. For a false messiah, Billy Carmichael was incredibly good at the job he didn’t know he had. Every now and again a luck hiccup would occur and he would spend minutes at a time speaking nothing but gibberish but the pigeons hardly cared. Outlandish nonsense from the scion of God was just as valuable as the deepest wisdom from anyone else.

The only one whose life drastically changed for the worse seemed to be Ingam, the sole pigeon in Elk Passing who remained truly loyal to the text of the Covenant. As far as banishments go, Ingam’s was particularly unpleasant. While pigeons are almost always seen in outdoor conditions, they are actually more inclined to reside in comfortable, indoor dwellings at the end of a long day. And since their culture places a heavy value on shared resources and wealth it meant that, whether it be in the hollow of an oak tree or a mined-out cavern under the ground, a pigeon never has to look hard to find a place to rest. Unless of course that pigeon was Ingam.

After his exile Ingam searched high and low for a place of refuge. But no matter where he looked he was sent away. Every single bird he once called a friend turned their backs and slammed their doors on him. Even his own father shunned him for his heresy.

“Father, please!” Ingam begged, “See that my actions were only in the best interest of the Church!”

“You may call me father no longer, for you are no son of mine.” Yowlest replied. He refused to look his son in the eyes even for a moment.

So Ingam, dejected and alone, flew to the far reaches of Elk Passing’s wilderness where he managed to construct a ramshackle hut fit for a social pariah of his standing. And it was there, over the course of days in the silence and the rain and the mud, that a funny notion popped into Ingam’s head.

At first he denied it outright and forced it from his mind. To allow any further meditation on the thought would be to grant it validity, and Ingam refused. Inducting such an insane and awful idea into the realm of reason mortified him.

But the days were long and the nights were cold. So, so cold. The winter winds came to feed on the corpse of Autumn, battering Ingam with relentless, frigid malice. The silence waned and whittled the voice of reason in his head down to a whisper, all while that horrid idea grew louder in the dark recesses of his mind. The mental prison that Ingam placed it in groaned and creaked as it thrashed and howled for freedom, always growing louder.

It wasn’t until months into his isolation, when the snow piled high above the clouds and the sun was firmly hidden from view, that the idea finally broke free. Ingam had just returned from yet another unsuccessful outing for berries and seeds when he accidentally tripped over a corner piece of his hut that was not meant to be tripped over. There was a crunch and then a snap as Ingam’s home and only meager source of comfort came crumbling to ruins around him.

Standing in the strewn, scattered remains of his hut, Ingam looked to the sky. All his life, he was told that the Sky Mother was infinite in her wisdom, her life unending, and her eyes all-seeing so that she could forever protect her children on Earth. So why, in her limitless wisdom, had she forsaken him so? Did she hate him? Of course not, the Sky Mother loved all of her children, regardless of their transgressions. So then there must be a reason for his wretched state. There had to be. For all this to have happened to him without any cause, without any purpose, would be madness. No, there was a reason. It was a test. It had to be. The Sky Mother was testing Ingam by having that pant-wetting bastard Billy Carmichael ruin his life and reputation. If he could stay true to the word and ideals of the Covenant, then she would accept him in her open wings.

But what is truth? Ingam thought to himself as he spiraled into lunacy. Every pigeon believed Billy to be the True Bridge, the gateway to the Sky Mother herself. If they all believed it, then it must be true. However, if he believed Billy to be a fraud, then that was true as well. If both sides were right, how could there only be one truth? Was the concept of truth relative? Was nothing true at all? What is a lie if not a truth deemed undesirable? How does someone prove the truth to be true? With undeniable fact. With evidence. But how is evidence gathered? Experimentation.

There was only one way to see whose truth was the real truth, one experiment to restore the Covenant that only Ingam himself had the courage to conduct. If his peers believed Billy to be a branch of the Sky Mother, an undying and eternal being, it would stand to reason that Billy himself would be undying and eternal as well. From that assumption comes another, far more important question: how does one test immortality? Ingam could wait a hundred years and see if the little shit died, but his own bones would turn to ash before Billy was even old enough to apply for college. No. No, no, no. What else could he do? How else could test his hypothesis?

The final answer was laughably simple: He would just kill Billy Carmichael. If he was a god, dying wouldn’t matter to him, would it? He would spring back to life and say something idiotic and everyone would cheer and laugh and throw a fucking parade in his honor.

And thus began Ingam’s campaign to murder an eight year old child. It began as all good scientific endeavors do, with extensive research. Ingam followed Billy every single day and watched him tirelessly. Soon he knew that every Saturday, without fail, Billy would find himself alone after finishing his walking-sermon to the masses along the power line. Ingam’s former colleagues were so stupid that they never assigned a security detail to the voice of God. Perhaps they felt that ensuring his safety would cheapen the free-roaming innocence that gave his words such power. It hardly mattered. The arrogance of the Covenant was something Ingam was happy to take advantage of.

The only random variable would be where it was that Billy went. It was different every week. Ingam was surprised at Billy’s talent for finding so many new areas to explore in such a small town. If he didn’t hate the human boy so much, Ingam might have respected him for that.

It was in the winter, on the day of Billy’s climb to the peak of the garbage dump ,when Ingam struck. Billy was halfway up the jagged pile of scrap and discarded refuse, and it seemed to be nothing but smooth sailing ahead. His only mistake was electing to wear wool, fingerless gloves instead of proper winter mittens. He assumed that the lack of protection from the elements would be balanced out by an added element of dexterity, which was true. But Billy failed to expect a vengeful avian predator hiding in the depths of the pile.

Ingam had been there for nearly an hour tracking Billy during his ascent, waiting for the perfect moment. The oily sludge inside the mound stained and mottled his feathers but he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was killing Billy.

Billy, finally able to see the peak of the pile, reached up his hand and gripped down on an old car battery and started to pull himself up. What he couldn’t see was Ingam standing directly over his fingers, his eyes glittering with evil joy. He drew his beak down on Billy and pecked all of his exposed fingers as hard as his body would allow. Billy cried out in pain as his hand slipped and he fell. In his fervor, even after the hand disappeared, Ingam continued to slam his beak down onto the hard metal of the battery. With a sharp crack, the tip of his beak chipped off and disappeared. Ingam wasn’t bothered by the loss, it was a small price to pay for science.

But of all the variables Ingam had considered, the one he failed to account for was dumb luck, of which Billy possessed in truck loads. As he fell, a stray piece of rebar caught Billy by the jacket. If it were off by a few inches in any other direction the jagged metal would have impaled Billy like a fisherman’s pike spearing a tropical fish. Instead it caught him and, with the momentum of his fall, swung him back into the mound safely before coming unlodged.

The loss of this weight-bearing rebar caused a very minor shift in the mound which bore no ill-consequence to Billy, but resulted in the broken microwave that sat above Ingam to come crashing down onto his left wing. There was a blood curdling crack as the delicate bones in his wing shattered. Ingam would have been hopelessly pinned to the car battery until he starved to death. But as luck would have it, Billy continued his climb to the top of the pile. The exertion of force from his movements caused the pile to slowly shift again. The shift allowed the microwave that trapped Ingam to slowly grind off to the side and then down into the center of the mound, setting him free. The only caveat to his convenient release was the excruciating and agonizing removal of the upper half of his wing.

With the score resting at 1-0 in favor of Billy, Ingam made an injured and humiliated retreat back to the woods. It would take until the snows of winter melted for him to fully heal from his defeat. By the time spring came around, a healthy Ingam, assisted now by a prothstetic wing made of sheet metal and twigs, set his second attempt at revenge into motion.

This new plan required a bit more initial risk to Ingam’s personal safety but, if he executed the first half properly, it would mean watching Billy die without lifting a finger. In the first stroke of good luck he had in months, Ingam managed to overhear Billy telling his mother his plan for his next Saturday outing. He had been perched up on the tree along the property line of Billy’s backyard, watching diligently as Marianne soaked up sun and booze while her son played by himself in front of her.

“I’m thinking of going to that big field at the end of the highway on Saturday. What do you think, mom?” Billy asked.

Marianne didn’t even crane her head up to look at her son. In her alcoholic haze she assumed that her son was Harold Jones. “Thass nice sweedie.”

“Do you want to come with me? It’ll be really fun!”

“I’ll meed you there, Harold. Don’t tell Waldter.”

“Who’s Harold?”

“Billy! Hush!” Marianne scolded with a dismissive wave, “I’m talging to Haredold.” She let out a belch, then a moan of unease, and then fell into a deep nap. Needless to say, she would not be joining Billy.

But Ingam would. Now that he knew Billy’s plan in advance, he could plan accordingly himself. It took the entire week in order to get everything into place, but Ingam had become nothing if not a being dedicated to his craft. Which is why when Billy stepped into the far reaches of the field he wasn’t stepping foot into some average plot of wheat and grass. No, he had entered a battlefield. A battlefield upon which Ingam the Wise commanded with a vicious and frenzied maltese by his side.

It’s no mystery that Billy once again avoided semi-certain doom in that field. However, his wartime opponent and nemesis that he had no knowledge of fared much worse. In the same way that Billy experienced his first luck hiccup during his initiation, that day in the field was Ingam’s first time experiencing one himself.

Upon releasing his war-hound maltese, Ingam decided to fly up above the field so he could get a full, uninterrupted view of his triumph over the “True” Bridge. But as he took to the sky, Billy threw his favorite walking stick in a desperate bid to distract the dog. In approximate terms, Ingam was able to see his imminent victory for about 2.3944 seconds before Billy’s stick collided with his body in midair.

He and the stick plummeted in tandem surrounded by a plume of feathers. The impact against the ground stunned him and knocked all the wind from his tiny lungs. He tried to move but the stick weighed down on him like a fallen oak and prevented even the slightest shift in position.

It took Ingam a moment of frantic gasping and writhing to regain his composure, and by the time he managed that, several developments had already taken place. The first was that Billy was no longer anywhere in sight. If he was still in the field, it was well out of Ingam’s view. The second, and inarguably worse, development was that the maltese was currently bounding towards the stick that Billy threw. The same stick that Ingam was trapped under.

When Ingam woke up that morning, he pictured himself standing over Billy’s eviscerated corpse, exalted in his vengeance and basking in the warm light of the sun. He went back to that fantasy as the maltese clawed at the stick, gouging out his eye in the process. The dream of his successful experiment helped to dull the agonizing pain a little bit. It became less and less effective as the dog continued to remove parts of Ingam while gnawing at its new stick.

Having his eye clawed out of his skull was an experience that Ingam may have been able to consider novel and enlightening in a morbid way, if he’d been given enough time to process the trauma associated with having a piece of himself forcibly removed. It wasn’t until the dog tore off his right leg and chewed his tail feathers to shreds that Ingam’s daydream lost its effectiveness entirely and he abandoned any hope of a psychological recovery.

It took another minute of gnashing teeth and jagged claws being racked against his skin, but the dog finally got a grip on its stick and ran off into the field. Lying there on his back covered in blood with his wounds screaming in pain, Ingam thought about a great many things. He wondered if he was going to die, to which the obvious answer seemed to be yes. He wondered if, when his body was found, would the other pigeons rule his death as a murder? Would they be able to see that Billy killed him? Probably not. He could already hear his old friend Unthern convincing the others that he died by his own fault. That his awful, lonesome death was “justified”. The vision of his own father agreeing with his second worst enemy poured gasoline on Ingam’s burning, seething hatred that raged against everything and everyone.

The sun poked out from the clouds and laid a soothing ray of light on his broken body, but it was of very little comfort. With his one good eye, Ingam looked into the sun and screamed. He screamed and thrashed until his throat tore and bled. Was this his destiny? Was this fate the one that the Sky Mother planned for him? To die wretched and alone in some nameless field? If it was, then to Hell with fate. To hell with the Sky Mother.

“Damn you.” Ingam rasped as he rolled over onto his stomach. “Damn you to Hell.” He repeated this as he began to crawl towards the direction of his hut, and he would continue to repeat it until he reached it. For three days and two nights the only thing that came out of Ingam’s mouth as he dragged his broken body across the ground was, “Damn you. Damn you to Hell.”

His recovery from this most recent failure was much slower and far more painful than the last. Many of his wounds festered but refused to worsen enough to kill him, leaving him in constant, tormenting discomfort. It was like his skin had been covered in angry fire ants that refused to stop gnawing at him. Morning, day and night, eating him away. Always hungry, never stopping.

If madness was what Ingam flirted with before the dog mangled him, it was what he was married to now. When he wasn’t working on prosthetic replacements for his leg, tail, and face he was doodling meaningless symbols and scriptures into the dirt with what was left of his beak. The sole theme of both were vengeance against his wrongdoers, Billy and the other pigeons alike. Insanity, bottomless and unending, was all Ingam had left to call a friend.

***

It wasn’t until the beginning of the summertime when Unthern caught wind of Ingam’s activities. He was so preoccupied with co-running his new theocratic democracy with the other counselors that he had no time to listen to whispers and rumors among the common-folk. Shlenk however kept up with the murmurs passing through the masses. Of all the wives tales and ghost stories, there was one tall tale in particular that he kept hearing. It was a harrowing account of a devilish monster, deformed and insane, trying to kill the True Bridge. Shlenk himself thought very little of the story. It was ridiculous and rather uneventful to listen to, not the sort of thing he’d ever assume to be true. Unthern on the other hand took it very seriously. So much so that he forced Shlenk to return to the streets and uncover more details about the mythical villain.

The hunt for information was long, arduous, and not at all worth Shlenk’s time. All he was able to bring back was an extra detail that whatever attacked Billy commanded a hound and wore the skin of a pigeon.

Unthern’s eyes darkened when he heard this. He called Iredell and Meulor to the Council Chambers for an emergency meeting with him and Shlenk.

“I’m off.” Unthern said with curt finality. “The True Bridge is under threat. Send sentries to his dwelling at once and don’t lift them until I return.”

“What?” Asked Meulor, “I don’t understand.”

“Who threatens the Bridge, Unthern?” Iredell’s eyes were wide with worry. They only grew more fearful when she heard Unthern’s reply.

“Ingam.”

Light rain dripped down on Unthern’s back as he touched down on the soil of the highway 41 wheat field. Though a competent and seasoned tracker he was, too much time had passed for there to be any clear indicators of a struggle anywhere in the field. There were some fading depressions in the wheat where Unthern assumed Billy’s feet had been but beyond that, it was going to be a tough search.

The sunlight behind the clouds had all but faded when Unthern finally saw the blackened, fading blood smears that painted the bottoms of a patch of wheat stalks. He pecked at them with his beak and watched the blood flake off in a powdery dust. He narrowed his eyes, something had been injured here. He took to the sky and fluttered just high enough to see the tops of the grass. Sure enough, a trail of stains led off towards the woods. Ingam. With a heart weighed heavy by duty and determination, Unthern darted forward into the woods following the trail of dried blood.

As he flew, Unthern couldn’t help but marvel at the great distance Ingam had traveled. Given the amount of blood that was visible on the ground after all this time, he must have been gravely injured. To think that he survived whatever ordeal had befallen him made Unthern shudder. A bird of that resolve would be tough to reason with and even tougher to best, if discussion devolved into conflict.

Luckily enough for him, Unthern was wearing his ceremonial battle armor: a metal helmet fitted around the crown of his head, twin blades fastened at the tips of his wings, and a paired set of razor-sharp steel talons. His father had ordered the metalsmith to make them so that when Unthern came of age he could wield them in times of crisis. Unthern could think of no better way to christen his father’s gift.

The dark of the forest suddenly began to lift as a flickering orange light came into view. A single flame, bright and strong, sent the shadows twirling around Unthern. With a determined grunt, he flapped his wings harder and propelled himself towards the fire, landing next to it with a graceful flourish of feathers and steel. It wasn't until he saw what the light revealed that his gusto and confidence left him, quickly replaced by deep unease.

Hundreds if not thousands of tiny, humanoid effigies dangled from the branches around him, each suspended by a noose around the neck. They were made of thin twigs and branches, bound together with vines and yarn. All of them were covered in dry blood. Unthern stared at them, his gaze tracking across the branches until he noticed the tree trunks themselves. They were all marred with unrecognizable symbols that were of no meaning to him. What he could recognize was the clear scrawl in the language of pigeons that intermittently broke up the wild doodles. One after the other they spelled out a disturbing soliloquy.

What do you know when you know nothing of what you know?

Bridges... True? False? Neither. LIAR.

I am, you are, you are not, we are not.

I am not dead. I am death.

Bridges. Bridges. Bridges. BRIDGES.

Burn the bridge. Burn the bridge. Shatter the sky and see the truth.

There were more lines but Unthern didn’t bother to read them. What he saw already was enough to cut a cold, sickening pit into his stomach. It wasn’t long after the pit of unease appeared that Unthern felt a shudder run down the column of his spine. Years of training under his father had gifted him an excellent sense of danger, and now his senses were telling him one thing in unison: Somewhere, hiding in the darkness, eyes were watching him. Eyes belonging to someone Unthern knew.

“Come out, Ingam.” He commanded, his stature propped up and supported by righteous purpose. “We need to talk.”

Ingam’s voice, a rasping and hollow impression of the bird Unthern once knew, echoed out from the darkness. “As a hatchling, I was always so scared of the dark.” Unthern tried to pinpoint where his voice was coming from, but it seemed to originate from every direction at once.

“I would lie awake in my nest, night after night, petrified of the horrid creatures my mind conjured up for me. A one-eyed, nine-toothed, baby eater. A spider the size of an oak tree. A demon disguised as a perfect cloud. How they tormented me.” A dry laugh danced around on the wind. “But I always told myself, “There’s no need to fear the dark. The Sky Mother will protect me. Father will protect me.” Over and over again I recited that same, stupid mantra like a fool. I said it so many times that I came to believe it as an adult.”

“Enough pretense! Show yourself, coward!” Unthern boomed. There was a momentary pause through which all that could be heard was the crackling of the fire.

“The dark isn’t to be feared, my dear Unthern. We always assumed that the monsters hid away in it, waiting to gobble us up. But it’s not true! No, the monsters hide in the light. You would know after all, you’re one of them. You wear a pigeon’s face and parade around in our feathers, masquerading as the just and true and kind. Liar! Liar, liar, liar! Liars one and all! I would know, I used to be one of you too. A monster in a bird’s skin. I lied so well that I even managed to fool myself. But all it took was the mask of night to reveal my mottled skin and empty eyes. When I saw myself, my true self I screamed and cried for months. Now though, now I’m free. Free, free, freefreefreefree! You’ll be free soon too, my darling. Unshackled from the lies of the sun.”

Unthern whipped his head towards the sound of a match striking against a branch. There was a flare of orange-red light as the phosphorus tip ignited, casting away the veil of shadows that hid Ingam. When Unthern was finally able to see his old friend, his beak fell open in dismay and shock.

His body was covered in scars and open wounds. The wounds that were still open had festered into sores, excreting pus and congealed blood onto his blackened, stained feathers. His extremities were half prosthetic replacements, his leg replaced with a single wooden peg and a mangled wing made whole with a jagged and cruel shard of sheet metal. His face was unrecognizable. There was only a remnant of his beak left, what remained was a wild tongue lolling out of a gaping hole. Above that, one cavernous eye socket stared lifelessly through Unthern’s body and into his soul.

“Ingam,” He gasped, “what has become of you?”

“Says the spoiled egg to the rotten apple!” An awful cackle sputtered out of Ingam’s throat. “I’ve stripped myself of the lies our kin fed us since birth. No more fate controlling my life. No more Sky Mother to punish me. No more rules to smother my joy. I’m almost whole. All that’s left is one last errand. The death of Billy Carmichael.”

“You’re insane.”

“Oh, quite.” Ingam said with a devilish, malformed smile. “Your tiny mind would crack too, if you knew what I knew.”

Unthern sighed, unfurled his wings and beat them twice; the honorable bird’s way of initiating combat. “I came here to try and make you see reason. However it’s clear that you are lost. I shall make your death a painless one.”

A howling laugh greeted Unthern’s decree of battle. “Oh, poor Unthern. You don’t know, do you?”

With a scowl, Unthern allowed Ingam one last response as a courtesy. “Know what?”

“You died the moment you landed here.” Ingam resumed his cackling. It was a shrill, mocking noise that drove Unthern to rage, even as level headed as he was. Fed up and eager to return home, he propelled himself forward to grant his enemy the gift of sleep. His armor glimmered a magnificent, regal gold in the light of the fire and the moon. Watching him approach, he almost looked like an angel to Ingam.

That was quickly disproven when Unthern blindly flew headfirst into the shard of glass Ingam had placed in front of himself. With a wet, sickening squelch, the point of the glass pierced through Unthern’s chest and exploded out of his back.

The proud idiot was so stunned by the impact that, even as he stood there skewered like a kabob, he continued flapping his wings. Limping over to him, Ingam put his good feather around his dying nemesis.

“I was surprised that you hadn’t been impaled by the other glass shards I placed along the way here. Dumb luck I suppose. No matter! I don’t need luck on my side. I don’t need anything at all. I only desire. And do you know what I desire now, Unthern?”

Unthern gasped and gagged as blood clogged up his windpipe, making Ingam grin wider.

“I’ll give you a hint.” Ingam giggled and ran his metallic wing along Unthern’s face. “It’s something very, very close to you.” Unthern cried as the tip of Ingam’s blade pierced through his cheek and then screamed as the madbird began to cut his face. Pure and uninterrupted agony was the last sensation he would ever feel.

***

Ingam wasn’t a monster. He wasn’t. The high-and-mighty, piety-blind morons who exiled him thought he was, but that was only their opinion. In his mind, the others were simply unable to understand what he was trying to do.

When he delivered Unthern’s faceless body, still fresh on the pike of glass, to the steps of the Council Hall, it wasn’t done with malice or ill will. Despite what they had done to him, Ingam’s heart was filled with so much hatred for Billy that he actually needed to forgive everyone who shunned him in order to make room for it all.

All Ingam was trying to do was illustrate how obviously fabricated the Sky Mother was. How could a just and peace-loving goddess allow such a fate to befall one of her most loyal subjects? In Ingam’s mind, he was a political, religious, and social activist trying to get his peers to see beyond their blind faith, to consider other possibilities. But they didn’t get it. Instead, when they saw Unthern’s mutilated, faceless body Ingam automatically became a ‘terrorist’ and a ‘madbird’ who declared war on Elk Passing.

In response to his bloody think-piece, Iredell, Meulor, and Yowlest sent the full might of their militia after him, which Ingam thought was a fairly stupid decision. He obviously wasn’t trying to declare war on Elk Passing, what moron would try and win a 1-on-200,000 fight? Clearly, the other pigeons Ingam used to rub feathers with were not as smart as he’d previously given them credit for. A point that was clearly illustrated when, upon discovering Ingam’s hiding place, a fourth of the militia died after being impaled on the other glass traps Ingam constructed to kill Unthern.

Ingam wasn’t there to witness his triumph though. After dropping off Unthern he fled to the one place that no pigeon would ever willingly go. The only place decrepit and loud and filthy enough to ward off most, if not all, animal intruders: the subterranean parking garage underneath the town square. And it was there, in the grime covered rafters of that garage, that Ingam made his new home. It was paradise. His filthy feathers were already permanently stained, so the dirt was a non-issue. The smell of car exhaust went unnoticed by Ingam since all he could really smell was the stench of Unthern’s rotting face on top of his own. Not even the constant noise of cars and people bothered him. After all, nothing was louder than the lightning storm of intrusive thoughts rattling around in his mind.

So there Ingam the Mad sat, scheming and plotting his next move against Billy in euphoric isolation. Of all the things he’d done thus far in his life, this final experiment was going to be his magnum opus. It would, without a shred of doubt, show the pigeons of Elk Passing that he had been right all along.

Little did Ingam know that while he was meticulously crafting his latest plan, the very object of his hatred was waltzing right up to his dwelling place. It was Saturday after all, and Saturday’s were a day for adventure.

***

Billy stared at the steps leading down into the parking garage. His heart beat wildly in his chest, a cocktail of fear and excited anticipation. Over and over again the rumor he heard from Patrick Barringer repeated in his mind. “There’s a monster down there. One that eats kids!”

He doubted a monster was down there, at least not one that ate kids. It would have made the news if anyone got eaten anywhere in Elk Passing. On the whole it was a pretty boring town where very little happened. But he would never find out standing and waiting around. So, with his nerves steeled and fear stowed away, Billy descended the steps.

The climb down was short but increasingly dark with each step. The smell of wet concrete and mud created the illusion of stepping further and further into a medieval dungeon. Billy wasted no time in using that imagery to his advantage. He was no longer Billy Carmichael, eight-and-a-half year old boy. He was the noble knight, Ser Billiam of House Carmichael, come to defeat the evil that dwelled below.

The door to the garage squealed open on its rusted hinges as Billy entered the lot. The overhead fluorescent lights illuminated every square inch of unwashed concrete, a stark contrast to the shadow-veiled stairwell. Looking around, Billy saw only a few cars parked around in random spots. There were about seven cars in all and only one was occupied. Its driver was an elderly woman that Billy recognized as Ethel Waterfell, who worked at Elk Passing Public Library alongside Amy Goldfarb, Walter Carmichael’s “piece of ass on the side,” as he put it.

Billy’s echoing footsteps layered one on top of the other as they bounced off the walls of the garage. The sound traveled to every nook and cranny the structure had, even the deepest ones where monsters hid.

***

Ingam snapped awake from another fresh round of dog-related nightmares to the sound of a door opening. Strange, humans only ever entered his fortress in their cars. What odd man or woman would walk into a parking garage.

The answer exploded into his mind like an atom bomb: A human too young to drive. One that adored exploration, perhaps. Like a child waking up on Christmas morning, Ingam leapt out of his nest and rushed to the mouth of the tunnel that served as his home’s front entrance. Sure enough, there he was. Billy Carmichael in all his boyish glory, fumbling around in a place he did not belong.

Ingam raced to put on his prosthetics. Every single aspect of his long awaited plan immediately went out the window. He realized that was his fatal flaw, his constant mistake and the vehicle of his defeat. He planned too much, he thought too much. For a bird so free from destiny, he continually met his downfall at the hands of fate. Billy though, Billy never had a plan. Billy didn’t think, he only acted. He was Ingam’s perfect counterpart because of his impulsivity. The ying alongside his yang.

“Carmichael!” Ingam screamed from above, spreading his stained and ragged wings out just as Unthern had done to him. “I am Ingam the Wise! Son of Yowlest! Champion of Truth and the Flame that Burns Bridges! Know my name and tremble before me, for I have come to spell your doom!”

Billy looked up into the rafters of the garage and saw the filthy but somehow shining bird squawking at him from above and felt a pang of recognition. He had no doubt in his mind that this creature was the monster that Patrick was talking about. However, the longer he stared at it the more familiar the bird became. He didn’t know how, but he knew that ugly thing. It only took a moment before he finally realized.

Cocking his head to the side like a confused dog, Billy said only one thing to his greatest unknown enemy. “Ballbird?”

With an indignant cry of abject rage, Ingam launched himself at Billy. For the first time in a long, long time, as he careened towards the boy with a body half constructed and a rotting face atop his own, Ingam’s mind was quiet. The howling curtain of madness parted around his thoughts, leaving a stillness that Ingam hadn’t felt in a long time. It felt just like the wind against his feathers: cool, steady, kind in a way that he couldn’t explain. Could this be peace? It had to be. Though it had been far too long, Ingam still had memories of feeling content, and this was it.

He closed his eye, letting the euphoric silence of his mind flow down to his body like a morphine drip. The pain which always plagued him melted away and brought tears to his one good eye. Still, he kept it closed. A part of him was afraid that if he opened it, the nirvana he found would shatter and the world would return to its usual clamoring and painful din.

With his mind clear, Ingam felt another new sensation flutter inside his heart: doubt. Did he really have to kill Billy? If peace was what he already possessed, why give the boy any potential satisfaction should said peace disappear after he was dead. Then who would really be victorious? Was it better to win and live on in wretchedness, or to fail and be content?

It was in the middle of this exact thought process that Ingam opened his eye to see the horrified face of Ethel Waterfell zooming towards him. No, he was zooming towards her. Towards her sitting inside her car. Towards her insider her car with her windows rolled-

It was in the middle of this current thought process that Ingam rammed head first into Ethel Waterfell’s rolled up window, which he hadn’t been able to see. What was left of his beak punched backwards into his face and there was a wet crack as his spine compressed, shattered, and then cracked in half. Unthern’s face-mask became a bloody smear on the window as Ingam collapsed in a plume of feathers.

As he laid on the cold, unforgiving concrete gasping for breath, Ingam thought very little. Shock dug deep into him and prevented any complex thought processes. This wasn’t helped by the fact that most of his cerebrum had just been turned into mush by the impact.

He tried to move his body but there wasn’t a single part of his anatomy that obeyed his commands. If he tried to move his wing, he laid there completely still. If he tried to move his leg, he laid there completely still. The best he could manage was a lazy side-to-side glance with his eye. He didn’t expect much more out of himself. He knew he was dead already, his brain just hadn’t figured it out and switched off yet.

Suddenly, Billy’s face was hovering over him. His obnoxiously large head blotted out the overhead lights like an idiot-shaped cloud. Ingam waited to be mocked, for Billy to stick his tongue out at him or laugh and jeer. But the cruelty he expected never came. Forcing his eye upwards, Ingam saw the boy sobbing profusely. Tears streaked his face in long watering columns that dribbled down his chin. Ingam was taken aback, was Billy crying for him?

Though most of his body was completely numb, Ingam vaguely felt Billy pick him up with tender hands and cradle him close. “I’m sorry, Ballbird.” Billy said in between sniffles, speaking in english. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.” There wasn’t pity in the boy’s voice, not that Ingam didn’t try to hear some in order to re-ignite his hatred. Instead he only heard sorrow. Pure, unfiltered sorrow that only comes from the loss of one close. After all this time, all the attempts on his life, Billy Carmichael was grieving for him?

What a fool he’d been. Ingam the Fool. Like an ancient Grecian oracle, what Billy said all those months ago had come to pass. Ingam fell to pride and it became his tomb. How wrong he’d been to doubt the boy. Any being with the willingness to forgive a beast as wretched as Ingam more than warranted the title of Godhood.

Even though his beak was lodged halfway down his throat, Ingam locked eyes with Billy and spoke his final words with labored slowness. “Boy, speak to me in my tongue. Let the language of my people be the last thing I hear. I beg you.”

Looking down at him, Billy sniffled and made the choice to sing Ballbird to sleep. To the tune of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Billy whistled in pigeon-speak, “Trurble more shoes it they do. Dlung mobey nurnur nonnymogs. Winch in don’t be that way. Whose?”

Ingam, having just heard complete gibberish, stared at Billy as his heart failed. “You can’t understand me. Can you?” He asked with a dying breath.

“Crepes my gurt.” Billy responded solemnly.

Ingam was right. He had been right from the beginning. Every single thing he guessed about Billy had been true. The boy was just lucky. He wasn’t the voice of the sky mother. He wasn’t the savior of pigeonkind. He wasn’t fluent in pigeon. He was just a human-sized bag of inexplicable luck. All along, Ingam the Wise had been right.

***

With a sad, final squawk, Ballbird died in Billy’s hands. He couldn’t believe it. He didn’t want to believe it. It wasn’t fair. All the sweet bird was trying to do was fly over to say hello. Billy knew that Ms. Waterfell wasn’t to blame of course. She was just driving her car. But that didn’t stop him from hanging his head in sorrow.

With a heavy heart, Billy brought Ballbird up from the garage and carried him all the way back to his backyard where he started to dig into the soil with his bare hands. Marianne immediately yelled at him for ruining the yard, but he refused to listen and eventually she huffed off to get her sixth drink of the day.

As he dug, more and more pigeon friends came to watch. By the time the hole was finished, the yard was surrounded by more pigeons than Billy had ever seen before. They lined every tree, the entire length of his fence, they even covered the roof of the garage completely. They watched as Billy placed Ballbird carefully into the hole and placed the dirt back down with slow, methodical rhythm.

Looking up, Billy saw all of his pigeon friends staring back at him. He was amazed at how many there were. Billy had gone to a few human funerals already since his family had a lot of elderly relatives and he knew that every good burial needed a eulogy. So, clearing his throat, Billy began in English, “I’m sorry about your friend. I only saw him a couple of times but he was a good pigeon. He didn’t deserve to get hurt. No one does. I’m not very good at this. I’m sorry.” And then, with a long sigh, Billy made a pigeon noise that he didn’t know meant, “Through death you are redeemed. Sleep well, my brother.”

All around Billy, pigeons began cooing out in unison. It was a beautiful, trilling song that sent chills down his arms and even forced Marianne back outside to marvel at it herself.

“Billy, what on Earth is going on?” She asked her son. Billy turned around and shushed her with such authority that Marianne immediately shut her trap.

“They’re singing for their friend, mom,” he said with grave sternness unbefitting a child, “don’t be rude.” Unbeknownst to Billy and his mom, the truth was far more barbaric. What sounded like a lovely birdy song was actually every pigeon chanting, “Death to the heretic! Long live Carmichael!” over and over again. But the two of them would never know that.