Mother Owl .44

His hands are fists and white knuckles as he stares into a rectangle of a screen. His eye ticks.

I have something on my mind, I’m not calm.

He wrote into his notebook last night.

Except for a laptop, notebook, pen, headtorch, bottle with water, Ventolin, anti-histamine tablets, bed, and himself, the room is bare and dark. Only a sunray or two enters through curtains. His eye ticks.

He typed:

“Your calm mind is the ultimate weapon against your challenges” ~ Bryant McGill

Then he pasted it on a stock photo of a meditating person in a red bra and published it. He only trained for three months as a programmer before that incident two years ago, but he learned enough to automate posting motivational memes (#motivation) on social media. Each meme linked to a website paying cash for clicks. $0.01 per click. Statistically, one viewer in one thousand views (impressions) opens the link. Therefore, one hundred open clicks equal one dollar, so you need a hundred thousand impressions to make one dollar. He needs $30 per day to live. So, 24/7/365, his computers spew three hundred thousand motivational memes per day across social networks. If you read a motivation meme today, it’s probably his work. He only searches for the trends in his bare and dark room. But recently, local affairs were frantic, by his estimations.

“It’s all about the finding of calm in the chaos” ~ Donna Karan, on a blue sky.

“I can’t rest,” he says, looking at the screen. This is the 48th hour without sleep. You just can’t sleep sometimes. What he does - searches for trends on social networks and instructs his computers to post a quote with the right SEO and picture capturing the current trend, so he can maximise revenue. He gets $30 for staring 12 hours on a screen, he changes the quotes ten times a day. He also checks Elvira’s profile twenty times.

That afternoon he went shopping. Where he lives, separated from the nearby village by a forest, only a derelict road would take you. So there he goes to the village, with a revolver concealed under his vest, Ventolin in the pocket. He sits in the car, but not starting yet, but he looks at the barn. He gets a tick in his eye, his mouth clenches. He observes the closed barn door. Wooden planks painted red with ironmongery hinges set in a frame. The frame is robust compared to the planks, and it protrudes from the wall in such a way that it forms a ledge at the top frame, where sits an owl. He starts the car. He stops after a few seconds and checks if he has locked all the doors and windows. Check. Check. Then he drove with a baseball hat on.

In the shop, two people stare at him: The owner and his daughter. “They know what I did. They know I can do it again. But they don’t know what it feels like.” He says, pulls his baseball hat even lower, and feel the revolver. Buys items on his shopping list. The man charges him $32.26. He pays and leaves. As he leaves the door, the same moment, a woman walks her French Bulldog right next to the shop entrance. And the French Bulldog goes to sniff him, and he goes: “aaaaaaaaaaaa! Gev away you fookin ratdog!” and stumbles onto the street, trying to breathe, but can’t, he had few freight attacks like this since his mum died. He inhales Ventolin.

The dog woman: “God, I’m so sorry, Ogg, are you alright?”

He gathers all his strength: “Mind your own business!” and stumbles toward the car.

“I wasn’t like this!” he shouts as he starts the car and dosing more Ventolin. “So don’t make me do it!” he adds and makes a gun out of his fingers and aims at the dog woman.

Bang. Bang.

“I’m in charge of how I feel, and today I chose happiness”, with a rising sun.

Evening. He looks at that barn. Owl still there, illuminated by an outdoor lamp. He looks at her with a monocular. Barn Owl. Female. You could see here blackbirds, corvids, chickadees, and other birds common to the temperate zone. He watched them on long walks across the forest before that occurrence.

He takes the revolver and makes himself a bath, put a rose smell, mmmmm - mum’s favourite - got naked and bathed, looking inside the barrel of the loaded revolver, finger on a trigger.

The revolver: A replica of his father’s four-inch barrel .44 Magnum Colt Anaconda. Silver body, wooden grip, six chambers and last six bullets. The original, for obvious reasons, confiscated.

His body curls into fetal position inside the bath, head poking out, and put the barrel inside your mouth with the finger not on the trigger this time. Just having something on your mind.

“I faw fomefing phat phook my wowld and weowganiphed my weality.” He said with the gun in his mouth and rested.

He takes the gun out. “I shot this gun and saw my mum die,” He says and walks out, still wet, naked and armed, and walks out towards the barn with the owl. Then he fires two bullets at the door, and the owl flies away.

He runs back home, leaves the revolver in mum’s room, and goes to his room where the bed and other items are.

“I can never be who I was, but I’ll try to enjoy who I have become”, wavy ocean.

His jaw is clenched, grrrrr, he tastes blood as he wakes up. Finally some sleep, solid seven hours of it. The bottom lip is chewed off, bleeding all over the mouth. He got used to wetting his bed, but the bottom lip is new. The same dream again, his mum looking like an owl killing him with the kitchen knife. “I fear,” he says, pulls the curtain off and looks at the barn. The antihistamine tablet pops into his mouth.

A car rolls in front of his house, he sees it, grabs the gun from mothers room, and still in the wet boxers storms out, in front of the car: “What daya wanna heer?”

The driver just said, “sorry, don’t shoot me, please, this is a mistake, I drove here by mistake.”

“You can fuck off my way now!” And he shot two bullets into the barn door. He hasn’t been there since his mum died. Eugene, uncle, told him he can talk if he needs to, it’s alright. He never talked. To anyone. The car left.

“A winner is a dreamer who never gives up”, with an owl.

Owl is trending today. He also set dating app seven months ago, filled the profile, and so on, without a picture for now just to see what’s there, not serious, it’s not like he wants a girl or something, he’s, he’s quite happy. But there’s one girl, Elvira her’s name. But when he looks at the wet bed, his eye ticks, his fists are clenched, the taste of blood on lips, he can hardly breathe, he knows he’s out of her league. “I’m ashamed of myself and of what has happened to me and what I did.” He said, but typed:

“Today is another chance to get better”, owl still trends.

He enters mum’s room fully dressed. In there is his other possessions alphabetically organised. So put backpack, broom and bike under B. Cloak, comb, and candles under C. Degreaser under D. Etc.

He sits in mum’s chair in mum’s room and cleans the replica of father’s .44. Then he swipes through #motivation to get a feel of future trends. But checks Elvira’s profile instead. Black hair. She’s into mythology and Wicca.

“Owls are messengers of dark secrets and guides through the darkness. They represent dark mother, old, wise, a symbol of decomposition and part of life’s cycle, a reminder that death is part of life.”

According to mythology by Celts, whoever that was, as he read things about owls to learn the trends and about Elvira’s mythological hobbies. He still thinks they could fit well, he could learn mythology to make it work, not that she would be interested anyway. Just a thought.

After nine hours, he left mum’s room and made himself mac-n-cheese. Another three hours in his dark void room, staring at the shimmering rectangle. In the chatroom:

Depressed User: This life isn’t living but surviving

Our Protagonist: Based

Evening, drizzle, owl still there.

He sits and listens to drip drip drip drip drip drip drip from blocked gutter and crounch? Did he hear crounch? Someone is crouching around.

He goes to mum’s room and takes out the replica of father’s .44. And headtorch. Doors are locked. Unlock. Outside. Drizzle. The wind moves leaves doing chsssss-phuuuuu chsssss-phuuuuu and so on. He makes a round of the house. Perimeter clear of intruders. Go home. Lock. Double check the lock. Check windows. All locked. He could get a dog, although the dog could attack him, and he would have to kill the dog. “I could kill again,” he said to himself, “but I paid to know it,” and he points the revolver at his forehead, the same place Indians red-dot themselves. He looked from the window at the barn, saying to the revolver, “I didn’t know I could do such a thing, apparently, I can.” That barn has seen its own share of misfortunes.

“My goal is to win, not to look like I’m winning”, owl.

Owl. The Owl is still there. Or again? It’s night. He takes the revolver from mum’s room to his room. The tick in his eye intensifies. He has never done it before - to take the revolver from mum’s room into his room. His body shakes like a bag of rats. He sprays the Ventolin as he feels his airways constricting. He walks towards the window staring at the owl sitting on the ledge of the doorframe of the red-painted door. “I couldn’t do anything else. It was the only, only option.” The owl looks at him. It landed there the day his mother died, two years ago, and he hasn’t been in that barn since; he always bathed in a fetal position with the revolver to his head since; and he needed Ventolin, antihistamines, and wetted his bed since. He has never fired the revolver since his mum died, except yesterday, four times, and he has last two bullets in that replica of father’s .44.

“I did all I could,” he says to the revolver. Headtorch illuminates the path towards the barn. He walks it. Four bullet holes in the red door. Owl sits at the ledge of the door frame. A regular barn owl. He holds the revolver. “T-t-this will only end one way,” he says and shakes and shiver.

He opens the latch on the door and enters. The owl flies in. His head spins, and the barn flashes light/dark as his head with the headtorch on it spins around the dark barn. Light. Dark. Light. Dark. Light. It’s empty, so much he sees. An empty barn. But the demon crawls out again, and he sees what he saw that midday, two years ago to a day:

Ogg returned early from his birdwatching, the barn illuminated by the sun, midday. He saw a stranger’s car. He went home and looked for his mum, but the house seemed empty. So he grabbed his father’s revolver (who died a few years before, cancer), searched the house, then moved into the barn. There, two men did hideous things to his mother. Ogg shot one in the face. As the other man reached for his gun, Ogg fatally shot him into the chest. His mum died before he could untie her.

Ogg falls on his knees in that night’s barn, wheezing, barely breathing, another freight attack. He points the revolver against the imaginary foes from his painful memory, exactly where they stood before he took their lives. But then he points the gun against himself. “I’m terrified of what I could do,” he says, clenching teeth.

“Wheere’s theee Veeentoleeen?” Ogg wheeez, “shit, I lost it.” He struggles with the loaded revolver against his temple, finger on the trigger, to kill or to die? He presses the barrel so hard that he bruises his skin. His airways now shut off completely, he can’t draw a breath, he becomes delirious due to the lack of oxygen in his brain. Dark. Light. Dark. Light. Dark. He sees his mum again, dressed in an owl’s feathers. She holds the kitchen knife and walks towards him.

“Shhh,” she put her index finger on Ogg’s mouth, then cut his throat, “I’m also terrified of what I can do. We all are.” She says, as she slits his throat, Ogg can breathe again. But something also died. “Something must die for something else to be born!” and he empties the last two loaded chambers into the door.

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger” ~ Nietzsche, on Nietzsche’s head.

For two years, Ogg dreaded going inside that barn. For two years, he couldn’t breathe, he bathed in the fetal position, sucking on a revolver, pissed his bed, shouted at people, and couldn’t ask a girl out. Then he went into that barn, and everything was different after that. He was still sickly looking and anxious, but he started to fix the house a bit, like the blocked gutter. He has a channel on YT about it, Ogg’s Nest, it’s called. He still won’t show his face, though. But he did get a haircut after two years and put a selfie on that dating app. He still didn’t ask Elvira out, but he will get there. My favourite bit? He started to do pelvic floor presses to control his urinary tract better, and he didn’t wet himself once. He even talked to Eugene about his CPTSD. Finally, to cope with the inherent suffering each of us is filled with, to express and release, rather than to hold and store, Ogg sits every day in the barn and writes poetry:

It’s all in the clouds,

And the moon is shining,

The tea is brewing,

I say goodbye,

And drink the tea.

Crisp.

Under my table are my legs,

I should do something,

Something, but what?

So I drink the tea,

And say goodbye.