MARIO ALIBERTO III
CW – death, grief
The Value of Flightless Birds and Other Useless Things
It’s not the hacking wet coughs that fill Leo Bostick with panic as he startles awake, but rather the blackbird perched upon his chest. He blinks away the remains of a fitful sleep, thinking, This can’t be real.
If it were a dream, it would not be all that strange. But if it were a dream, would he feel the painful violation of the bird’s claws pricking his flesh?
No. Not claws, he corrects his sleep-muddled mind. Talons. Cats have claws, birds have talons.
Leo is motionless in the living room chair’s full recline position, save for the arrhythmic rise and fall of his bare chest. The bird looks down upon him in silent disposition. There is something to be said about the weight of the bird. It doesn’t matter the bird is not particularly big—about the size of a television remote—the creature possesses an unnatural heaviness, as if its body is comprised of bricks, not feathers and hollow bones.
Leo grunts, gnashing his teeth, choking on stale saliva. The bird is unfazed, casually surfing Leo’s undulating chest with a steadfast calm, opening and closing the dark spread of its wings as if gliding upon a light breeze. Reflected in the dark pits of the bird’s eyes, Leo’s pale visage, stretched long and thin, gawps in pain.
When the intensity of the pain subsides and his breathing steadies, he tries to shift his weight underneath the bird, rocking from side to side. It’s a feeble attempt to jostle the creature loose from its perch, and the bird hardly seems bothered at all. Frustrated, Leo snatches a shallow breath and attempts to close the recliner. His body disobeys his commands. He feels a bit like a taxidermized insect pinned to a display board.
He calls out, “Evelyn,” barely a whisper.
Pain, worse than the bird digging into his chest.
It is always in these waking moments he must remind himself that Evelyn is dead.
…
…
…
Ten days since she left him. Seven days since he buried her. Alone at her grave. No church. No children between them. A burial and he an old man weeping into his hand. Seven days he sits and sleeps in the chair. It was their agreement. If he was angry, he could not come to bed, and the chair was where he slept.
He is very angry.
At himself. Not her. Never her.
He wants to die in their bed. But in order to do that, he must find a way to forgive himself first.
The bed is where Evelyn spent the last weeks of her life, before the lung cancer finally won out, an oxygen tank a constant presence by her side. They had slept in the same bed every night of their marriage. It wasn’t until Evelyn was dead he slept in the chair.
Angry at himself for how helpless she made him.
What was there to do?
Other than to fix her oxygen mask when it slipped off, just so she could breathe a little easier.
Useless, other than to hold her hand.
How could he ever forgive himself for being so pathetic?
A shooting pain sizzles from his chest to his arms as his heart trembles beneath the pressure of the bird’s grip. He looks down.
The bird’s feet are swallowed whole by his chest, up to what he guesses are the knees of its black stick legs. A full body cramp seizes him as the bird’s talons pierce his heart. wringing it out like a wet dish towel. The bird slowly descends into him, legs disappearing next, only for the process to halt at the bottom of the creature’s black belly, little ripples cascading along Leo’s pallid flesh as if he is a pond in which someone has sunk a stone.
The bird will be the death of him then.
He has wished for death before, and many times since Evelyn passed. But not like this. Not like this.
Not in this chair.
He does not want to die angry. He does not want to die alone.
He needs her forgiveness, but she’s gone. And he cannot forgive himself.
Leo reaches up a hand to shoo the bird away, but it snaps its beak with a terrifying clack, as though his fingers are fat, fleshy worms it would pluck from his hand and swallow whole. A single caw, a warning from a pitiless creature with feathers the color of dreamless sleep.
He clacks his teeth at the bird. With what strength remains him, he pushes up from the chair and stands. He wheezes and coughs. The bird sticks to him, unconcerned by its change in perspective.
He manages a step. Two.
What he must look like, the ridiculousness of it all not lost on him. An old man in his underwear struggling to walk with a bird latched onto his chest.
None of it is amusing.
The bird opens its beak, revealing a small, charred seed tongue. Again, a shrill caw splits the bird’s beak into dual razors. Leo coughs once, harshly in retort, too sluggish to cover his mouth with his hand. His throat burns, and bright red drops of blood speckle the bird’s glossy feathers.
His heart beats a weird cadence: beat, beat-beat, nothing, nothing, beat, beat…
He drags his hands along the walls of the hallway that lead to the bedroom. His legs grow tired and his feet slide on the carpet. The bird is squeezing his heart so tight that the simple act of breathing becomes equivalent to sipping oxygen through a straw.
A fleeting thought that blackbirds are never good omens, are they?
He has made it as far as the threshold of the bedroom, stooped over and leaning against the doorframe. He wants to scream, but he has no breath for it, his lungs crushed like empty paper bags. The bird is not alarmed. It coolly flicks its head from side to side, so quickly that it appears to be looking at Leo one second and then away the next, at the bed. Taunting him.
So close. Only a few more feet.
The bird is halfway gone. Its eyes blink, once, twice. To hell with it. He moves a foot. His arms and legs are tingly and numb from the exertion. He’s exhausted from the effort, sweat beading upon his brow. He sucks in a pittance of air.
Slowly, the bird sinks below surface level, until only its head pokes out of Leo’s chest, its beak pointed in his direction reproachfully. Then it is gone, swallowed up inside of him. He feels it rustling around. No. Not rustling. Roosting? Is that the right word? He can’t breathe. Can’t think straight.
He never imagined the end like this. He was supposed to go first. Better than being left behind.
He lies down.
He would not ask for another second of life without her.
If this is the end, he wishes for it to be quick, but more than that—infinitely more than that—he would trade anything, he would give anything, to have Evelyn next to him, fixing an oxygen mask on his face, so he could breathe a little easier. Next to him, holding his hand.
A coughing fit overtakes him, and he is lightheaded. His breath, wet and hitched. Something sticks in his throat, and he expectorates it in his throes. A black feather floats lazily from above, completing a graceful descent onto the bed.
His breathing, though shallow, is easier. He is no longer in pain.
A melting sensation in his chest spreads throughout his body, down into his toes, his fingers. The bed is oddly warm. He recalls how the heat of their bodies spread beneath the comforter. Evelyn’s leg crossed over his. All these days without it, and here at the end, he can feel it still.
He picks up the feather and holds it gently like one of Evelyn’s fingers.
Not alone. Not truly.
Maybe blackbirds aren’t so bad, he thinks, and perhaps no small act of comfort is ever useless.
Mario Aliberto III’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has previously been published with Tahoma Literary Review, Thread Literary Journal, and Everyday Fiction Online. A recent mentee of the novel writing contest Pitch Wars, he lives in Tampa Bay with his wife and daughters, and yet the dog still runs the house.
Art by Ijeoma Anastasia Ntada