As I lay there, pumping blood onto the ancient stone of our town's clock tower, I looked out upon the world. From my seat I could see that it was such a beautiful night to die. The moon, silver and radiant was hanging over my town. I could feel the soft autumn breeze and smell the crisp air of the night. I could see the red tiled roofs of the little houses that made up my village and the brilliant moon hanging softly over them, shining it's milky down like an angels cloak. It was such a beautiful night to die, and so I closed my eyes, expecting to easily drift off into a calm and quiet death.
And it would have been so had I not been still for but a few minutes before I had the queer and eerie feeling that I was being watched. That unmistakable anxiousness one gets was made more unbearable by the fact that I was laying there, near death, holding closed my entrails. I propped myself up and opened my eyes to look about, noticing across from me a single shining eye hiding in the shadowy corner. I wheezed deeply, desperately looking for my voice before calling out, “Who’s there.” The little eye blinked and from it a soft and frightened whisper answered back,
“I don’t know. I am me, I suppose.”
I pursed my lips, trying to furrow my brow. In its voice I could hear a whisper like little girl’s, but something was off. It had an unplaceable distortion to it, a certain strained mangling that invited me into a sense of intrigue. I shot back. I shot back a weak, “Well that doesn’t help, me not knowing who you are.” It blinked again at this and I could hear the ruffle of it shuddering nervously.
“I don’t know who I am... or how to tell you such sir. I can only tell you... what I know true.”
I inquired further, “Well, tell me then what you are?”
She sniffled, “I don’t know me, but I know you... well not you... but your town. I have been here... watching for a time... it seems so lovely down there.”
I curled my top lip and bit it, in doing so pulling in a small breath that summoned a deep and rattly cough. I felt the wetness of some fluid, be it bile or spit or blood upon my chin and I couldn't help but try and jest,
“You could’ve come down from your perch, we don’t bite.” I pulled my hand away from my side to wipe my face only smearing it further with a blood soaked hand, “... Much.”
I heard her take a sharp breath, one that precedes tears before responding back, “But I’ve no way down sir... the lift wasn’t always here. You’re the one who brought it up.”
"Yes...," I thought to myself, "It was rather strange that the lift was already down to the ground floor when I got here."
I pondered on it for a bit too long, and another rattly cough escaped from my chest.
“Could you tell me how you got up here.”
It took a second for her to respond, as her sniffling turned into weeping and the silvery glitter of tears shimmered in the dark.
“M... mother brought me here. "She told me that this was my new home and that I’d be safe.”
I sunk back down into the pool of sanguine essence collecting under me. The poor thing had been left to die, much like I had. To think that someone so despicible existed in this world. What kind of mother, nay, what kind of person would do this to a child?
“How long have you been here?”
“I... don’t know sir. Mother brought me here and told me to stay put. That was when the moon was gone."
I could hear her sniffles turn into a deep sobbing and one last forlorn look crossed my face. Even my own death had lost its grandeur in the face of this atrocity. I lifted my hand out weakly and beckoned, “Come here child, come into the light.”
Her sobbing stopped and I could hear her shuffle in her corner. It took a few moments but she took a breath and asked tentatively.
“A.. are... y.. you sure? No one has ever seen me but mother.”
“Yes child," I said with a broken smile, "I’d rather not die alone.” At that she blinked her wide eye and quietly whispered,
“Ok.”
It was only when she hobbled into the moonlight,that I could see what a pitiful creature she truly was.
The one shining eye I had seen was really the only one she had, as the other two thirds of her face melted into a dark avian visage. A long-pointed beak occupied the space her nose and mouth would have been, save for a small break where the smallest corner of human lip appeared. Near the side of her head there was a large indentation, a meatless holed carved into the space where her other eye should have been. What extended past that was naught but jet, almost violet like feathers, ruffled and unkempt. As they came to where her neck began, it appeared strangely human before turning into a hunched over and broken set of shoulders. One human like arm extended out farther then it should have, and where a hand would have been there were only three long raptor like claws. On the opposite side a twisted and crooked appending gnarled itself into a wing, with low flowing feathers that brushed against the floor. Her mother had loved her enough to try and dress her, sewing together a filthy patchwork summer dress, adorned with the designs of sunflowers. As it flowed down my eye caught two broken legs, broken in the same sense as the rest of her, not figuring whether they be fowl or fair as she dragged herself along in a pitiful gait.
I would be lying if I said she was not grotesque. And I could only imagine the shame and the horror of having birthed such a hellish creature... but she was still a child, innocent and faultless. I held my shaking arms up, and I beckoned her closer. From her half-dead and emaciated appearance I could tell she was also not long for this world, having been sentenced to death up in this god forsaken tower.
As she crawled in my arms, she curled herself into a little ball, nestling herself in my chest for warmth. As I my arms around her I could feel a heartbeat, faint and ever so distant. I closed my eyes and laid my head against her, squeezing with all the strength that a dead man could muster,
“My little one... die with me tonight.”
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