by Richard Al Ledger

Thank God for the weather.

Today marking the last day of summer before the clocks go back and the world loses the hour of light to feed.

Brown tinted leaves clinging to weary trees already beginning to surrender to the stiffening breeze on the brink from somewhere across the never, through the high mountains, holding a chill that wasn't there previously.

The sun, not as strong as it once was, tired from the long season laid bare in public for extended shifts, another term working hard on it's canvas, the brushstrokes causes effect on skins. The clouds gaining a thickness again like that of good meat, spurred by the collecting brisk rains which move along peskily, returning once again from another hemisphere to linger and annoy like they do so gleefully - those cretins the clouds. Those annoying rains and there best friends the clouds love to chatter and spit and wink and clap and spread, subdue those below, a negativity which looms such from a great height.

But – which God to thank? There are many Gods in many forms, some natural, some vaporous, some starlight, and some not even anything at all. Some that are more responsible for today than others. Some more active, more loud and abrasive, whilst others stay more reclusive, hanging back in the shadows of the universe – tucked in behind the black holes and dying stars, there where it is safe and especially quiet. The extrovert Gods often getting the recognition more often than not rather than the hard working less charismatic Gods. Every God aware of the circumstances but silently acknowledge the need, an unspoken importance to have a healthy mixture of both. The extrovert Gods often the ones to get books written about them by the leaders of their fan clubs with mixed successes, often leather bound with transparent sheets of text more akin to cigarette papers, circulated in great halls with steeples, and quickly spread into towns and cities.

He gazes through the window at the rich amber haze of midday, where the sun, still generous for now, hangs in quiet triumph at its zenith. A long golden pause – that fleeting, honeyed stillness in the final breath of high summer.

The bristles of thin branches catch a breeze and scrape on the wooden window frame creating a pleasant noise, like friendly ghosts trying the enter the room to say hello or pass on a note from their dear friend the Reaper. This noise, like everything else, soon falls silent when the breeze carries on its journey further – west or north or beyond the concept of plausibility - the branches return still and silent, the message always incomplete.

Then nothing but a quiet, not even the noise of a near bye ticking clock here, peacefulness apart from the distant sound of a repeated drum march. No record of time being taken, no acknowledgement of a present, nor fathom of what present really is. Time here is all at once or stretched beyond further, an absolute, a forever – surmise what you want during the time where time is not recorded.

He Enjoys the relative quiet, that is apart of course from the sound of one single Crow. The ever present, the one sound that doesn't relent day or night. One single Crow whom announced its presence unexpectedly three days ago whilst he was in bed reading about his responsibilities and then never left even after being shooed at, not even after the threat of a broom. He wonders if it is his mother or simply just a random Crow. At the very least, the Crow is an omen — though of what, he’s still unsure.

He has become quite fond of the Crow, and has even started dreaming about it when he sleeps at night. Not quite a feeling of being a friend, more an accomplice for a purpose he doesn't know about yet, but he's sure he will soon. He is also certain that the Crow already knows what the purpose is, maybe trying to tell him with it's regular squarks in the vicinity, but he does not speak Crow, at least not enough to comprehend. When he dreams about the Crow the bird is identical to how it looks and sounds now, but it's feathers instead sheer white, quite the opposite from the black sheen on the healthy bird at present as he watches and the Crow watches back. The boy enjoys the company of the Crow.

“You can come in now” The nurse announces, stood next to the closed black door. Not sure how long she has been standing there, for no record of time has been taken. She is thin and brunette and very tall, standing almost ten feet even with a crooked posture. Long gangly arms that hang down past the knees, with a striking mole on the right side of her cheek the size of a plump raisin that he does not find unpleasant to look at. Her eyes however seem to be lacking a soul which he finds troubling, just pitted voids sat on the face instead above the nose.

“Thank you” He says, straightening his knees and nodding an acknowledgement to the nurse who stands wearisomely, nodding back. She just stares, at nothing in particular, with a depressed hunch to avoid the ceiling's structural beams. The Crow watches through the window with palpable keenness, eyes gleaming with a knowingness.

The nurse turns the large brass knob, the door creaking open with a reluctant groan. At once, the boy is struck by a dense wave of old air from the room beyond. A thick smell of ancient books and old food, a smell you would use the word stuffy to describe perfectly, like the air has been exhaled too many times without ever being renewed.

“Go straight in” She gestures with a long crooked hand. The smile she offers doesn’t reach anywhere meaningful on her face. Showing no teeth and a dry twist of her leathery chin which hides her mole momentarily. She avoids eye contact easily with the pits.

He looks back at the Crow for reassurance and he's sure the Crow nod's in an encouraging motion, not unlike a parent. Mother is that you?

He steps into the room – beyond the black door. He is immediately met by the wallpaper, an offensive tapestry of dirty mauve green, streaked with nauseous pink loops, repeating top to bottom like some endless, sickly sigil. The pattern vibrates at the corners of his vision – dizzying, hypnotic. His pupils recoil, urging him to look anywhere else, to find refuge from the cloying visual noise.

Pictures adorn the wall to his right, a gentleman with not real eyes, with a presumed wife and suggested small children, gathered in various formations - posed in interchangeable backdrops. The photos all look fake, the postures all forced, the smiles not really there. Body language all wrong projecting through the still images somehow, especially pronounced from the woman and the children, shoulders not relaxed, not wanting to be there, a version of fear. Like they're telling him, they're telling him to get out.

He wonders, fleetingly, what the Crow must make of all this – perched in silence, witnessing silently. Then a shift behind him – the air disrupted. He turns just in time to see the black door swing inward. His last glimpse before the corridor dissolving, and in front of that, the nurse’s face hovering like a mask – eyes empty of self, her fingers clasped around the door frame, nails bitten right down to the flesh on spindly long fingers, bloody and sore looking, then finally just the door where there is nothing to learn.

“Sit down.” Says the other man in the room, a much older man with his back to the boy. The older man looking out of the window at the same midday the boy was looking at only moments earlier, sans the Crow. “Won't you?” The man adds as a polite extension which does not appear genuine.

The younger boy takes a seat on the padded chair closest to him next to a large wooden desk. He scrapes a finger up the green velvet arm rest and collects an assemblage of dust, dead skin and flint under his fingernails, collecting into a small cluster which he observes waiting for the older gentleman to speak again.

“Thank you for coming.” Says the older man with a deep voice. The Doctor, judging by the crisp white coat, still with his back to the rest of the room – a sheen of white against the mahogany and pink and mauve is admittedly quite striking and impressive though sure this surely a performance, a routine practiced many times over.

The Doctor turns around, his hairless face clean shaven almost giving the impression of a rubber mask. A notion of someone fatherless, certainly not a father himself, not in those blank eyes. A parody of a human, an alien of some sort, an other worldly demeanour, one where emotion is considered passé, a numbness through the pours of his skin, no emotion abound, clinical to a tee.

The boy stares upwardly at the Doctor digging his nails into the fabric again without design, a certain subdued rage within the room between the two, at odds somehow, the Doctor who stands at the opposite side of the dusty Victorian writing table, a barrier between them the boy finds comforting as the Doctor looms overbearingly and with intention - he is a shadow, not a proper man.

“Do you know why you're here boy?” The Doctor asks, his voice full and rich and heavy in tone and credence.

“I think that I do, yes.” the boy replies. His voice much quieter, much less sure of himself. A hushed tone that would not fill even the smallest of rooms, not even a small latrine.

“Then you know you have been selected as The Next.”

Selected being the operative term. The boy sure they've had his number for a while. He's seen the lingering stares amongst the Supervisors and smelled scheme in the air, indeed it has been thick almost to touch it.

“I presumed exactly that sir.” The retort is snappy.

“Exactly what, exactly?”

“That I would be The Next.”

“Did you nnnow?” The Doctor replies quickly, his pronounced manner and use of lip almost reptilian.

The boy noticing a very slight wry smirk on one side of the mouth of the Doctor. Indeed, the first show of any emotion on the Doctor's rubber like face since he entered the room. An upward curl from the crook of the mouth, giving the impression of a permanent crack or substantial fold in the mould casing.

“Yes sir I did.” The younger replies in an antagonistic fashion, leaving the possibility open for a harsh retort or snap.

Instead the Doctor simply turns back around, again showing his back to the young man, an act conceived duly of disrespect certainly, and more suspected performance art.

“Do you see them cutting?” The Doctor looks out of the window as a chance ray of midday sun angles into the room, the light hitting his rubber face, causing a sheen not unlike that of a flesh coloured mop bucket left out in the sun too long. Certainly a prefabricated texture the boy decides, certainly not a human skin – a manufactured bark.

“I cannot see them at this moment but I'm aware of the cutting duties, of course...”

The cutting is important, you see.

The Doctor begins to explain at great length. His voice slow and monotone, rumbling through the stale air.

The grass around the complex grows at an alarming rate due to the somewhat unique local climate in a prolonged summer season. The weather in the region dictated greatly by the impressive mountains which loom on the horizon with snowy tips which remain a constant even in the hottest months up high where the oxygen thins.

Hidden somewhat behind occasional light low lingering cloud which loiters around the summit, then trailing down the sharp untrodden pistes that roll disjointed down the jagged side of the steepest slopes with stones before eventually the snow melts, life returning when the oxygen arrives a mile or so from the top and a purple grass begins to grow. A trip of wild brown goats grazes lazily around a midpoint of the mountain – an unspoken border, a tacit agreement with the land, for even they dare not tempt the wrath of the steep, treacherous sierra above.

The good weather coincided with peak term time at the faculty—often the busiest stretch of the semester for the student body, falling just before the late-August exam gauntlet begins. Thereafter the complex closes once again in the autumn and through winter, when the big freeze sets in and the area becomes almost completely inhabitable, mostly off limits to all but the most weather hardened rodents and insects and moles.

Sharp, treacherous showers often punctuate warm summer evenings, trailing behind especially delightful afternoons. More often than not, they give way by morning to long stretches of blustery, generous sunshine that holds through lunch, before the winds settle and the air stills. This rhythmic cycle repeats itself through most days in June and July.

This particular cycle of weather events makes for perfect growing weather for rich thickly rooted, striking green blades of perfectly formed wild grass. A remarkable sheer sheen of amazing beautiful lawn, tightly compacted and resilient in its unified aggressive growth. If left unattended even for a day or two, the grass would quickly become quickly inconvenient and then practically unmanageable shortly thereafter.

The problem became such a perplexing issue that eventually some years back a unique vegetation cutting machine was invented by The Doctor in order the clear the amassing lawn to help create a useable outside space for the attendees of the complex. A metallic structure of macabre effect, looming and overbearing and utterly Godless, but yet effective nonetheless.

Large cumbersome pieces of dullen shaped metals, somehow working perfectly in harmony together in an ingenious work of brutal engineering, bolted together with immense screws and substantial springs and hinges so large if entangled with an errant digit would be removed by abscission without hesitancy during its motion, not even a flinch of hesitancy, its constant and foreboding forward march unrelenting.

Great splatters and wild smears of heavy grease almost artistic throughout the sheer sheets of steel and aluminium and blades, all which share action as if one being in a perfectly manicured metallic harmony and the smell.

No motor involved, no oil necessary no propulsion via pistons, no combustion chambers or spark plugs no mechanical noise no engine ointments no revolutions and no exhausts. The only propulsion here being the flesh of a collective team of five young students from the school selected at random from the complex working, in cooperation and synchronised. The machine working only by human endeavour and sweat, that of an unlucky gabble, a select few chosen arbitrarily from those attending during term.

The large mechanical blades near ones feet which slice through the lawn compressed and swinging like pendulums, rotated by effort and vigour by young hands, those acquiring painful hard callouses through valiant effort which break out into sores and then the inevitable bleed onto levers making them slippery, along with smears of puss and sweat and grease, swung back and forth with large cumbersome crankshaft levers located on the skirt of the behemoth on both sides, the peripheries of the juggernaut, great joints secured by impressively large steel couplings that swing out violently at ninety degrees attached to large unforgiving scythes which gleam with a tinge of watery green along the blade from the dewey grasslands.

Surely the most risky of the jobs within the metal carcass the two operators of unrelenting powerful sabres which pass at high speed close to shins with every step forward, though somewhat fortunate of a breeze of air – a luxury as the mounted blade passes at a rate of knots causing a welcome disruption in the oppressive atmosphere. All whilst three more students through the middle blindly push the beast forward in pre meditated heaves dictated by the hit of a bass drum. No air in this cocoon – a less fortunate consequence for those in the concave chamber, not even a slit in the metal to be able to see forwards or a beam of light, the only operative is to push blindly in the blackness.

Quite often a foot is entangled and divorced from the owner, the unfortunate student in question deemed no longer a worthy worker, capable now only of harrowing screams of mercy inside the tin coffin, often a leg part cleanly cut below the knee joint with attached foot twitching seen left strewn several feet behind the machine leaving a run of black blood exuding from the back of the contraption.

Veins, arteries and blood splatter trail intermittently through freshly trimmed blades of grass, an unsuspecting butterfly enveloped in the mess drowns, unable to fly away. The offed limb located and collected in plastic bin liners by the eagle eyed, closely attending Supervisors who circle the machinery at all times.

The victim in question then promptly eliminated off premises, quickly exited and escorted out and off site, taken the long route if necessary out of view from the rest of the students inside the complex who look through sealed windows in fear that they will be next and true someday the probability that indeed it shall be them chosen.

Those injured students in question are famously never seen again on the complex, becoming new ghosts, eliminated from the class registers, excluded from all conversation within the building and common areas. Names never mentioned by the lecturers or the prefects or the dinner ladies even. Their lockers cleared with immediacy by the muted on site Supervisors, ready for another I.D. card to be inserted into the locker name slot, all completed with remarkable efficiency even when necessity requires multiple clean outs in one day, not an irregular occurrence especially during the hot season.

The beautiful fresh smell of just cut grass often subdued with the particular metallic smell of a new gushing stump, as another goes down and the machine momentarily stops dead. The mortally wounded quickly expedited from their station along the assembly line, those all too brief team mates whom often choose not to look, only pulling down on the red handled leaver to signify the certainty of eviction, that which which summons once again the muted yet attentive Supervisors on damage control, concise, remarkably well drilled, certainly well practised.

Soon after another introduced into the lineup with haste and efficiency from these same Supervisors, clad in chainmail who walk along the the manicured lawn towards the beast impatiently ushering along, their next duty to drum the drum adorned with the arcane insignia, keeping the students on a relentless pace.

The fresh initiate, barely plucked and still wide-eyed, is handed over to fate without ceremony – no names exchanged, no comfort offered. With a nudge, they’re guided to the yawning hatch in the creature’s side, stepping in as if by instinct, swallowed into its mechanical gut, lost from view. From there, only time will tell what becomes of them.

The boy walks across the lawn. To his left the ornate, imposing front entrance doors of the faculty he once ago entered a naïve youngling. The insignia emblazoned above the door arch and on flags located either side of the passage towards the entrance gate. He glances out across the grounds, and from this vantage, can't help but admit they are begrudgingly magnificent.

Chaperoned by one of the Supervisors – decked in chain mail, their face covered with a tarp across the mouth and nose, hair tied into a ponytail at the back, eyes nowhere on the face, just empty chasms positioned where eyes should be as if a new God had to produce a being similar to human with little experience or prior knowledge to try.

These vast Supervisors also almost eleven feet tall.

The boy moves toward the mechanical mass, stationed immobile but unmistakably expectant – waiting, he realises now, for him. The sun flashes off its scorched iron skins, and he imagines the blistering heat radiating within. It stands near the heart of the field, anchored in place, surrounded by silence. To the side, a gated clay tennis court lies empty, and beyond the bowed front of the machine, a few hundred meters north, the edge of the dense woodlands loom like an audience.

A crying female can be heard in the vicinity, likely deep inside the metal shell itself, if she has broken in spirit it is probable that she will be next. He wonders whether he will tender the scythes or be a pusher, not that it matters, just to get through the remainder of the afternoon intact would be an ideal outcome.

He looks towards the sky, not much cloud covering but he notices the sun considerably lower than that of a few weeks previous. The seasons shifting but still very warm, the trending weather becoming more changeable, the clocks changing accordingly today. Soon, snow will gather in growing drifts atop the highest peaks

There is it, my darling, the Crow. The sheer black of the Crow moves in swift motion along the sky line at haste above before slowing. Looking down upon the situation below, as if pondering a move not unlike chess – the Crow hovers above silently, allowing the gathering breeze to simulate motion through the wings, the breeze threading through its feathers to maintain the illusion. Clever Crow, devising a plan no doubt.

He is ushered promptly by the giant Supervisor, giant being the operative word to describe such a elongated human type, those entities who wonder the halls around the faculties and complex. Stalk the grounds, wonder aimless, a forever presence either felt or heard, seemingly no desire to sleep or simply incapable of it. The Supervisor indicating his intention with a pressure from an enormous hand on the boys lower back, no rest in motion, no room for thought, if it is then thought then like thought that doesn't exist to him, thank goodness.

His reasoning now returning toward the serving of the machinery, away from the sunlight and the Crow, succumbed in the chasm the likelihood of an early death through either amputation or exhaustion. No life, not a life. He looks up – gathering warm of the rays of golden light on his face more appreciative than ever, basking his eyelids the glow before his immersion into wide eyed darkness.

Abruptly, now at the foot of the behemoth, its scale becomes biblical—far greater than it had seemed when glimpsed from a distant window, framed by distraction. How he then looked upon, always there was a certain inevitability to it all, and he was correct.

He casts a glance back toward the faculty – those austere windows now filled with distant faces, rows of beady frowns peering down with the same silent judgment he’d once joined in, long ago. Almost ritualistic from here, as though they should be chanting.

From here overhears a continuous low murmur of fear and pain in the underbelly and whispers, occasional weeping and some hushed consoling. A low hum, that of something unrecognisable from within, almost as if the searing humidity from inside radiates causing dystopian sounds through the metal sheets.

He searches the sky – there, the Crow – wheeling slow revolutions overhead, its orbit casting fleeting eclipses that dance across his face. Each pass a momentary blot of darkness. Mother is that you? Give me counsel, please. Should I? Should I?

Darting through the heather, towards the thicker fruit shrubbery, through heavy thicket, towards the poised angular darkness of the woodland cover ever nearer. The Crow darts around the boy, as if giving instruction, suggestion, a flighted guide, somehow understood but not acknowledged, no time for that now. The only consideration for both is haste.

He looks behind at a moments glance, careful not to spend too long detailing his trail, two tall shadowy figures follow closer than he would have hoped. A narrow range especially for those with such an impossible span, two gangly, large, powerful Supervisors in chainmail barrel along janky, slow in motion but their impossible stride devours ground.

Not much time, need to get lost in the woods where the tall creatures will surely struggle against branch and bark and root. The clumsy limbed colossus not necessarily suited to such harsh terrain, unlike the nimble boy who can scatter and hop and evade. He worries losing site of his friend the Crow, taking solace that it will instead observe overhead. He fears losing sight of his companion the Crow, but takes solace in knowing it will watch from above, an ever-seeing sentinel. Cast an eye, my faithful Crow. See the paths I cannot. Whisper safe passage in rustle and wind.

Sunlight blinkers then turns to a broad darkness, as the branched foliage from compact evergreens shade the bright ball overhead. Sprinkles of sunlight dance wildly in the openings and interstices, causing dancing mosaics, almost an psychedelic effect on the textured surfaces abound, encouraged by the occasional stiff breeze passing through, heightened still by the rapidness of his own motion as he scuttles through the maze of stumps and gravel and rocks.

After a moment, the boy senses a new quiet – a stillness that falls over the forest beyond the crunch of his footsteps and the weight of his breath. He steals a quick glance behind, seeing only the familiar earth he'd disturbed moments before. In the absolute distance, two large shadowy figures seen along the cusp of the woods cut frustrated monstrous figures, pacing around the perimeter as if held by some sort of forcefield.

As the boy slows, noting the wide distance now between himself and the looming figures, one of the Supervisors hunched low releases a deep, earth-shaking bellow. The sound reverberates through the ground beneath his heated toes, causing the earth to tremble faintly. Birds erupt from their nests in a flurry, seeking refuge in the open sky; chipmunks dart frantically to burrows; even spiders scuttle and beetles retreat, all driven by the primal tremor of that monstrous roar.

He stops to listen to the siren in its entirety, until the Supervisor finally lacks breath. One of only a handful of times he's heard such roar from gangly giants in his entire time at the faculty, impressive especially at this relatively safe distance. He looks upward to see the Crow circling overhead still, his view broken somewhat between the rustling tops of trees, those which run thinner at their top. The blackened silhouette of the bird and its wingspan defined perfectly on the backdrop of a clear sky above.

Keep going.

Did he hear those words or was it just his inner voice, his imagination, his self preservation? He's sure he heard a voice, a kind voice, that of a young girl. It came through from some place near, some crevice in the mud, a nook through the forestry, somewhere else but internal. The Crow? Is that you? No matter, he decides to take heed from the kind voice and continue his passage away from the faculty. The Supervisors. The Doctor. The poor Nurse.

He sets off towards the sanctity of an unknown away from his previous life, away from the mammoth machinery and the faculty and the gardens. He steps over large sheer white stones and orange rocks, radiant green mud underfoot becoming more saturated and soggy as he continues further from the complex. Hopping over brisk energetic water streams that fall down the hill at pace, warmed snow from the treacherous mountain tops no doubt, getting slowed in the sludgy confines of the heavy muck underfoot.

Just as heavy legs, drained of adrenaline and weary from the cloying underfoot begin to falter, an opening emerges ahead – a whispered promise of escape, an opening up ahead. A small grassy bank, a patch of haven separate from aggressive tree growth, overgrown grasses and shrub, something of welcome change. Happy to observe something other than chopped up clart, scattered weedlings and barked oak tree trunks.

Thoughts of The Doctor and his stuffy interior now a distant memory with the relative distance now travelled. Maybe here he could rest, the air fresh holding holds a welcome chill. Here he could gather his thoughts, maybe even the Crow could join him, still circling overheard above the treeline keeping watch. The sun shines on the oasis in the clearing like a spotlight showing the way – maybe there is a God after all up there looking out for him, not sure which but thankful all the same – maybe this the sun God.

He presses forward with purpose, but the clay clings like grasping goblins – sucking air beneath his feet, curling bony fingers around weary ankles, refusing to let go without a sharp, desperate wrench and fart, each step one exertion after another.

No matter how hard he fights, the grip tightens – each step slower than the last. Errant branches snap under his desperate pull for leverage, powerless against the earth’s hold. He stumbles into the knoll, nearly frozen in place, his feet drawn down like a magnet to metal – metal of all things.

There he stands, plunged into the earth, deep rooted much like tree himself, one and the same with breath and station, a cousin. No longer able to move, both from restraint from the earth and a sapped energy and even more so a defeated will. No matter, at least he has escaped the jaws of the cutting machine, now some miles the other side of the woodland. Not sure which direction he has travelled in terms of compass but content that it was away, away from the compound. He has heard additional bellows from the Supervisors since that first one intermittently throughout his escape, each one more distant than the last, now nothing more than long ago foghorns from another time.

My friend the Crow.

The boy stands in situ the black bird circles around him, stationed prone, his feet cemented in the mud located just inside the verges of the open grassy patch away from the grove and thicket, the warm sun dying, growing feeble, shirking behind the tops of trees, a further chill ensuing not unwelcome in his exertion. The boy holds out an open palm, a platform for the bird to rest, for the Crow must also be tired, an earned break from its sustained period of navigation and support and effort.

The welcome bird swiftly takes heed and sits atop his palm as the boy gets a good look at the Crow's magnificent black shiny coat, black beak almost ivory like and blanket black eyes, though he is sure through staring the boy is convinced the bird is thinking intelligent thought.

Squark! Squark! Squark!

A magnificent noise one never experienced so close.

Squark! Squark! Squark!

Remarkably loud so near.

Squark! Squark! Squark!

Intrigued, he lingers, eyes locked on the Crow – time folding into something less tangible. A chill creeps in as he senses the bird’s gaze peeling back his layers, weighing him with silent scrutiny. It’s as if the Crow holds a private tribunal, and he is both the accused and the witness, exposed beneath those unblinking, knowing eyes.

The birds efficient head movements left to right, the boy cannot shake that he is sure is being carefully inspected up and down, ponderous motion, that before action. They share a quiet moment together, the only noise the light rustle of shrub as a slight wind passes through one side of the woodland, through the open grass bank, back into the trees on the opposite side and away again, the wind Gods.

The boy follows the breeze, eyes drifting downward to the muddy hill’s edge. There, half-buried in the mire, shadowy silhouettes emerge – wiry frames twisted and hunched like forgotten mannequins. Five, maybe six torso’s with brittle limbs, stripped of flesh and utterly devoid of life. As he stares longer, the truth crystallizes – they are skeletons, propped upright in the mud, silent sentinels of some other haunted story.

“Ouch!?” The boy jerks his hand back, sharp pain blooming as the Crow’s beak nips the tender flesh beneath his thumb. A thin trickle of blood snakes down his wrist.

But the bird stays poised, wings spread wide, claws locked firmly around his fingers – unyielding, steadfast. The Crow settles back down as the boy laughs it off and suspends his recoil. “What did you do that for?”

The bird stares into his eyes, making him unsettled, somewhat menacingly. Surely not, he thinks. My faithful friend the Crow?

“Watch it, will you?” The boy winces as the Crow’s talons dig deeper into his fingers and palm. He flicks his wrist desperately, trying to shake the bird loose.

Finally, the Crow releases – but not before leaving behind cruel puncture wounds, fresh and bleeding, the blood spilling over and pooling like dark ink. His hand now striped with thin dark red brushes which congregate onto the ends of fingertips and drip from tips with regularity onto the floor. “What is wrong with you?”

The bird circles before diving abruptly and at speed at his forehead and face, nipping with its strong beak, the Crow relentlessly rips at the skin like the ends of sharp scissors to paper.

“Stop it, please!”

The Crow does not relent as the boy waves his hands in fear – his breathing now irregular, his feet now more gorged in mud, themselves descending further into the earth as he twists and turns to deflect the next attack forthcoming, his movements restricted, his deterrents futile. He is panicking.

Squark! Squark! Squark!

The boy dares to open his eyes, his face now a crimson mask, his face covered in a multitude of deep nasty cuts, worst of which on the bridge of his nose as cartilage pours out of an awkward bone joint, a flap of skin proves easy picking for the Crow whom dives and pulls away lightning in motion, almost too quickly to register pain, revealing more tendon and gristle, exposing cheek bone, the smallest finger gone he notices on the left hand, around the extremities now little coverage, skin and flesh and nail all coming away with ease pick by pick, bone after, the taste of blood in his mouth.

As the boy looks up, he sees not one bird now but many in the darkened turquoise sky, filling the canvas like a moving cloud of malleable horror. The Crow had been signalling for more after all, sounding an alarm, attracting his nearest, a murder of crows, a name now so apt. Premeditated, this is what the Crow always wanted after all, devious bitch the Crow.

The boy looks at his arms, now torn to ribbons, a thousand pricks, nips, pecks, several now much deeper still, his neck similarly bitten up, many open wounds being targeted by the maniacal Crow and his friends the Crows – pulling at sores, ripping at openings, relentless in their feeding, and the blood now much more severe, indeed hard to find a fleshy limb now not utterly covered in it, the land around him sodden with a shiny black gloss.

Then the eye. From the boys periphery he saw a movement but by then it was too late. He grabs his face and this time, for the first time, screams for help. His left eye now in the mouth of a single Crow, not sure which one nor does he longer care. Death to all of them now, death to all the Crows if he could. Then the tongue.

A certain melancholy set in after the tongue, everything got dark and quiet after the second eye, and shortly there after the boy died. It was just before death he realised he and everyone alike was in fact Godless. That there was no pearly gates nor such like, only a cold death – a clean death – an off switch. Pleasing in fact in that moment that everyone shares the same fate, a blanket cause. Death not another consciousness nor a near found realm, not transcendental at all, death being an ultimate, sweet finality, death being the end.

Poised like a scarecrow in the ground sussed by a gathering flock. The Crows had their way with him and over the course of the next three days, had their fill and then some. A lucky fox found him that same evening at dusk and took the meat of the thigh home to his family but not before feeding well himself alone. A family of moles fed heartily on feet and ankles, then retrieving toe bones for nesting. After that, the insects arrived and the serpents, many serpents.

END