Omen

The first time Terrance sees the owl, it is a Sunday, and it is a Sunday like any other. The nighttime streets are slick-black with rain, and the yellowredwhite reflections of head and tail lights make watercolor masterpieces across the ground. The squeak of her sneakers, alongside the gentle splash as she wades through inch-deep puddles melts into the sounds of the city around her, though it is hardly proper city anymore — more suburbia than the bustle of a downtown square. Normally she feels safe here, within blocks of her home and cocooned in the relative safety of sturdy buildings built long before she’d been born, and that would hopefully stand long after she was gone.

It is the rain, though, that keeps her on edge. The patter on her umbrella blocking out the noises of the rest of the world; her very own little bubble of silence. She wishes that it could be peaceful, but she walks with her heart in her throat, feet speeding over cracks and dips, water staining the cuffs of her jeans dark. At the very least, the weather keeps the sidewalks clear, no one else foolish as she to be out walking with the rain and the hour as unpleasant as they are tonight. Not that she has much choice. This is the same route she walks every day, save for Tuesdays and Thursdays when she works at a cafe in the opposite direction and on opposite hours. Normally she doesn’t mind not having a car, unless it is a night like this one, of which there seem to have been more lately than she can ever remember experiencing this time of year. Maybe this is what they meant by climate change?

A noise breaks her reverie, loud enough to pierce that veil and take her by surprise enough to startle the umbrella away from her body, drenching one side of her almost instantly. Terrance is used to the car sounds; the squeal of brakes and the shushshush of wheels over water. Even the sharp crack of exhaust doesn’t make her jump anymore.

This sound is not the sound of a car.

Her head whips around, looking left and then right for the source. It had echoed nearly everywhere, no one place to point to, and nothing obvious that could have caused it. A scream of some kind — not quite human, but not a desperately hydroplaning car either. Terrance stands for almost a full minute, just looking, peering as far into the dark as she can, and receives nothing but silence for her trouble before she begins to walk once more.

Again, that horrible screech. Lower this time, as if in warning. The sound comes from above her, she’s sure of it now. Directly above her. A chill trickles down her spine, collecting like one of the puddles at her feet in the pit of her stomach. She moves her umbrella with a bit more finesse, leaning back to look up until she sees what she had missed just a few minutes before.

The owl’s pale face stares back at her, cocking its head curiously when they make eye contact as though it hadn’t been the one who called out to her.

Terrance nearly laughs out loud at herself. What a foolish notion. This bird didn’t care about her, it was just a bird, making its little bird noises. Nothing malicious about that. Forget the fact that she had never even seen an owl this far outside of the woods, outside of a zoo for that matter. The owl seems to watch her intently, bowing its little body down and twitching its feathered head every which way. Like it was sizing her up or something, the judgmental little thing. Every time she goes to take a step it opens its beak and screams at her. Why she stops every time it does, Terrance isn’t quite sure why. It’s as if this stupid bird’s glowing night-time eyes have pinned her in place like a mouse, suddenly in inexplicable control of her motor functions.

“What?” she hisses finally, losing the mental battle she’d been having with herself over whether talking to the damn thing was even worth it. “What do you want, bird?”

The bird, shockingly enough, does not answer.

“Perhaps it’s warning you of something,” comes a saccharine voice from behind Terrance, who jumps a solid foot in the air. Her umbrella goes clattering to the ground, a scream caught in her throat as she whirls on the intruder. This is why she hated the rain. Too much white noise, too much distraction. Not safe.

Hand clamped tight over her staccato heart, Terrance blinks past the water now running into her eyes at the intruder. A woman, at the very least. Slender and elegant, nearly a foot taller than Terrance herself, with skin the color of warm ochre. She wears a suit of all cream, down to the doe-skin gloves that cover her long, delicately boned hands. The only splash of color on the woman is the bright red umbrella above her own head, standing out garish and as out of place among this stranger’s otherwise monochrome appearance.

She blinks at Terrance, seeming unfazed by her shock, and gives her a thin-lipped smile. “I’m sorry, did I frighten you?”

Obviously, Terrance wants to hiss. Wants to do a lot of things. Mostly pick up her umbrella and run her soaked-to-the-bone self all the way home. And yet, much like the owl, she feels frozen to the spot under the woman’s gaze. Worse, when the woman steps forward once, then twice, then closes the space between them to cover them both with that giant, red umbrella.

“That’s all right,” the woman coos softly, as though Terrance had spoken at all. She hadn’t. Her tongue feels thick in her mouth, and every time she thinks of something to say, the words seem to slip right from her thoughts like the water in the drain at her feet. “A little fear is good for us. Keeps the blood warm.”

Her body’s lack of response does not keep Terrance’s pulse in check. It thunders, the rush of blood between her ears almost overtaking the susurrus of water on nylon. The woman smells like cedar and spice, close enough in the chilly, damp air for Terrance to think of little else. One of those fine, gloved hands lifts to trace a line over her cheek, and the woman smiles.

“See? What a pretty blush you have, Terrance.”

In that smile, Terrance can see the shape of a tooth not quite right — sharp, inhuman. She wants to scream, wants to flee, but she can’t. The woman’s smile broadens, and the owl gives one last screech from above.

Then the whole world goes red.