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The Creature

Solitude breeds contempt

By Steph RaePublished 3 years ago 7 min read
1
The Creature
Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

That creature – that detestable beast – that barn owl - now haunts me even in my slumber, my last bastion of sanity. No longer content at the peripherals of my vision, a shadow on my days, it invades a once-peaceful time, my little death between the grindings of life. What was once a bookmark, a pause of reality, has become one unceasing extension of horror.

Once, in a past so unfamiliar that it feels a dream, I enjoyed its presence. I spoke to it as it graced my porch, feeding from the table I’d constructed specifically for their kind. It would gently shoulder the smaller chickadees away, and sup while I, evening tea in hand, languished in its companionship. Its hoots were comforting, and I’d often imagine what the thing – I cannot speak its name again – would say to me if I understood its ancient language. Some days it admonished my lethargic habits, but on others it would congratulate me on my progresses. I knew - of course I knew - that the creature was much younger than myself, but I fancied that it possessed immortality, and that I, solitary creature as I was, drew it to me. A partner on the outskirts of life. Deep within the woods, we shared a secret that the rest of the world ignored. I didn’t know what that secret was; I left it up to the creature to bestow upon me when the time was right.

I wish now it hadn’t. I wish so many things.

When she died, I stumbled through the house, feet dragging, heart thumping a quiet dirge, and gathered the pieces of myself. I held myself together with promises and hollow encouragement and attended the funeral. Not in the manner she would have wanted - I was never capable of pleasing others - but I stood at the edge of the cemetery and watched. A specter to the macabre theatre of life. The speaker’s words drifted to me on chill air made ice by his intonations. He spoke of life and love, and I left before he was through. Life and love were all well and good, but it didn’t seem to me that either of those things were useful to her now. I drove away as they dropped her into the earth. I did not need to be there to hear the finality of her body hitting cold dirt. I heard it for many days afterward.

The bird was on my porch when I got home. It spread wings of dun, and I thought it would leave me too, but it settled in on itself and looked out on the yard. It hooted once, a conciliatory tone, and fell silent. We sat together for a time, it helping to burden the weight of existence. I was gladdened that it hadn’t left me.

I wish now it had. I wish so many things.

When was it I realized that it preyed upon me? Each day and night now blend in a muted kaleidoscope of pain, the presence of it drowning me. After she was gone, I sank further into solitude, if that were possible. I performed a marionette of daily rituals but shied from society. Wake up. Shower. Eat. Clean. Eat. Clean. Tea. Sleep. The creature, who I used to call a guide, frequented my porch constantly, and I began to detest its presence. It had the freedom of the world, while I, the shackles of my grief. It mocked me with its flight, its careless existence, and I felt it begin to mock me for my behaviors. I knew – of course I knew – that as a bird, it didn’t possess those faculties, and yet its beady eyes judged me. I ceased feeding it, and that seemed only to antagonize it further. It called to me, at me, and stopped leaving, goading me into action.

I awoke one evening to a great commotion in the attic; somehow, the creature had gotten in. Its call shook me from a sleep in which she and I sat and talked, discussing everything we’d never had a chance to. I had not dreamed of her since her death, and when I sat up, I knew I would never again see her face in the peace of slumber. I became incensed, and stormed upstairs to seek out the subject of my anger. It flapped violently in a circle, hooting and shrieking as it tried to find the window through which it had entered. My old friend. The reason I was not enjoying a quiet conversation with my beloved. Its cries turned baleful as I stepped toward it, hands outstretched. I knew not the intentions I had, whether they were of savior or foe, but as it snapped at me with beak sharp and malevolent, something deep within me also snapped. I grabbed it, one hand on its neck and an arm around its belly as it bit and tore at my skin and threw it bodily out the open window. I watched as it tumbled, and as it struggled to right itself, I thought I had killed it, but a moment later it was flapping and swooping towards the trees, hooting its displeasure back at me.

Later, with the door to the attic locked, as I washed my blood and the loose feathers from my hands, I looked out over the yard, where once it and I had enjoyed companionable silence. My heart faltered, and I wept, my body wracked with anguished sobs of loss and hate and anger. The priest had promised Life and Love. I am out of their reach, now. The secret, that hidden knowledge of the universe that I’d often wished that abhorrent thing would tell me, had been revealed. It was not a mystery of the world, no, but one of my own self. I was beyond the realm of humanity, and perhaps always had been. I froze mid-sob, the sounds of agony ripped from my lungs with the breath that bore it life, as I heard it. A baleful hoot, from the attic. It called again and again, with just enough pause between to convince myself I had imagined it. I looked to the door in repugnance. I knew well that I had ridden myself of it, the evidence of which was still caked under my nails. I moved to the door and pressed my ear against it. The solid wood hummed with each call, but when I threw the door open, I was met with silence. The window stood ajar, curtains shifting in the midnight breeze. I slammed it shut, cracking a pane, and pondered. I had suffered a nightmare, not my first. Ignoring the rusty proof staining my hands, I returned to bed.

I have not slept soundly since. The following evening, the same malevolent cries and thuds emanated from above me, and I spent that evening with my hands over my ears, eyes trained on the ceiling, willing the nightmare to end. Of course, in the morning, there was no sign of commotion. I boarded the window up regardless, and then the attic door off the kitchen, for good measure. It now haunts the attic of my mind, circling round me as I try to live, and hooting disjointed, hair-raising cries throughout my dreams. I feel no rest, no peace, because of it.

My days I spend in attention at the kitchen table, eyes on that door, willing myself to ignore the cries on the other side. Some afternoons, when dampened winter sunlight streams into the room, the sounds seem quieter, more subdued. I can convince myself that it isn’t real, just a manifestation of my guilt and the sorrow of her death, the sorrow of my own soul’s death. At times, I can wrench myself from my watch and sit on the porch as I used to, evening tea in shaking hands, but the creature does not sit with me anymore. I feel it’s nearness, a flicker of movement at the edge of my vision, the rustling of branches in the distant trees, a flutter of wings somewhere deep within my ribcage. It occupies my space; where once I relished its appearance, took solace in its presence, I now detest it, and detest myself for that feeling. On the porch, the sounds from the attic are a muffled, disjointed melody, a whisper of wrongdoing, but it no longer sits with me, and that absence rings louder than the bird’s distant song.

It no longer sits with me.

I wish now it did. I wish so many things.

fiction
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About the Creator

Steph Rae

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious." - Oscar Wilde

28 y/o fiction writer from the Maritimes, CAD.

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