It was an experiment
gone wrong. Hours of labor, days of sacrifice had all come to waste. The
department building was all but abandoned that week. The grad students were on
holiday and my fellow researchers on leave. The professors had also taken their
time off at the end of the semester. It was just me and Bob, each in our own
space.
I was frustrated at not
getting the results I had so direly hoped for. All my research and planning had
told me that I would get the right chromatography peaks. But they weren’t
there the first time, or the seventh. I gave up after that seventh failure
because they say seven is the magic number. And if I couldn’t get it the
seventh time, I wasn’t gonna get it the eighth or the eightieth time.
In a mangled mess of
emotions I slammed out of the lab and went downstairs. The lift chimed onto the
ground floor and the heavy glass doors were overcast with an orangey hue.
Sunset through grey clouds. The security personnel weren’t at their desks. The
immediate outside looked deserted. It wasn’t like an abandoned campus. The
lawns had recently been mowed, no dust-laden benches around. The place was
simply devoid of people that afternoon. But there was a presence that loomed
heavy on the air. In the thick of the campus garden, there was a flock of
birds. They were swan-like but appeared flightless; perhaps they were just
hatchlings, albeit over-sized. They seemed disturbed, lost, out of place. I
wasn’t exactly sure why they were there in the first place. I hadn’t known of
rare migratory birds flying to this bleak part of the world and laying eggs in
the middle of academic complexes. As I stood watching them, they started
waddling. There were about half a dozen of them and each was heading in a
different direction. They were visibly confused. The cause of their disturbance
then manifested before my eyes. A dark, winged figure was swooping down in circles.
The hatchlings quacked nervously. An ominous fear gripped my insides. A big-ass
crow, almost the size of a Labrador, was gliding closer.
I felt one among the hatchlings and sprinted
as fast as I could. Its wings flapped somewhere above me and a putrid smell
wafted down. I saw some of the hatchlings waddling away, their feathers all
ruffled. A little ahead of me was a star-fruit tree; from one of its lower
branches hung a water-gun. I darted towards the tree, hid under its foliage and
reached for the water-gun. It was heavy, and filled with something fluorescent
green instead of water. A bio-hazard symbol stamped on it told me that this was
no ordinary water-gun. It should not have been hanging around this way. Just
like those hatchlings were out of place. Just like the gigantic bird had no
business being anywhere near me. Yet it was there and it was attacking the
hatchlings one after another. The little, flightless creatures were bleeding
from their backs, where the crow had pecked them with its hungry beak.
The hatchlings ducked
under shrubs and bushes. The crow landed on its claws near one of the bushes.
The hatchlings were screeching, in fear and foreboding. I took the water-gun
with the biohazard symbol into my hands and went in like I had seen numerous
soldiers in my brother’s PC games.
The crow was cawing
back at the hatchlings with a venomous look in its deathly red eyes. As I moved
into its field of vision, it jumped around to face me. In a flash it was
heading right at me, moving with the agility of an experienced predator. My
hands shook. I tried to aim for its beak. Whatever the fluid was inside the
gun, I thought it would harm the big bird most in the face. Eyes were also a
good option. I tried my best to aim at it and pressed the trigger. A gooey mess
emanated from the tip and shot toward the bird. It fell a few inches from the
bird’s claws, fuming. I figured it was some form of concentrated, acidic toxin
that was definitely capable of harming the feathery fiend and shot at it with
renewed vigor.
At close quarters, the
putrefying smell was at its worst. The bird opened its beak wide to caw at me,
and with it came the smell of death, of decomposing flesh. I backed up several
steps, still trying to aim the toxin at the bird. But I was as good as a storm
trooper in hitting my target. And the bird was springy on its feet.
The bird backed me into
a bush and then sprang at me. With a strong, scapular movement it knocked the
gun out of my hands. Never have I known fear as in that moment. The
overpowering smell made me gag. The bird flapped its wings at me, thrashing me
from all sides. It reached up to my waist and snapped at my arms. I was
flailing my limbs every which way, keeping my eyes shut since it had struck the
gun out of my hands. I could not bring myself to face the unbelievable evil
that was attacking me.
I heard a plonk and
felt the feathers cease moving. The bird had fallen still at my feet all of a
sudden. I looked up to find Bob carrying the long, metallic arm of a mop. He
had hit the bird hard and immobilized it. Bob didn’t seem ruffled by the size
of the bird or the mess that I was in. Before I could thank him for knocking the
bird out, he turned around and started walking back towards the department,
like it was all in a day’s work for him. Run a PCR, cast a gel, knock a bird
out, decontaminate some plates. No biggie.
With Bob gone, I was
alone with the crow. The hatchlings seemed to have run off too. I stood watching
the bird for a while. It was lying on its side, with half a wing unfolded
beneath it. Then I saw its claw twitch. And I knew it was gonna get back up.
Instinctively, I made the worst decision of the day and jumped onto the bird’s
back. Before it could get back into its full senses, I grabbed hold of its
sticky beak and twisted it around. I held the beaks shut with my hands and
hoped that the bird’s neck would snap away. It turned out to be harder than I’d
expected. The head turned almost a full three-sixty degrees. I began to get
worried that perhaps this humongous beast could rotate its head like an owl. My
hands felt weak from pulling the beak and I was scared that any moment the bird
would rise and snap at my fingers.
But the neck twisted
some more before coming loose. I let go of the bird and its head limped loose.
It was surely dead. Yet my fear had not dissipated. Just to be sure that the
monster was put down at last, I dug out a matchbox from my pockets and lit that
bitch up. The feathers caught fire easily enough. It burned without protest,
and with it the fetid air combusted as well. A greenish flame surrounded the
burning bird.
I should have run away
from it the moment Bob had struck it down. Instead I killed it with my bare
hands, burning the features of the disgusting creature deep into my memory. Try
as I may I cannot forget its gory eyes and the feel of its grimy beak. And that
is how I got myself this unrelenting fear of birds.
