Birdface and The Nothing
Birdface arrives in The Nothing on a Saturday evening at two minutes past ten o’clock. She is seated in an armchair, rocking back and forth, her white garb fluttering against mahogany red. The TV before her flashes grey radiation onto her bruised knees; this could have been something for the poet in her to devour, if it hadn’t been true.
Her surroundings are grim. The faintest trace of a shadow disappears, swallowed whole by the ever-growing pit in her heart. Black. Bleak. Dripping with words she dares not speak, at the risk of ringing stale, in front of a crowd too meek.
The sound of an echo, of the past and footsteps, come tapping at a door. Birdface wants to know — more about this place. She pushes against her feet — shoes she doesn’t remember ever owning, then falls, to her pretty little doom.
It is only because of the wind lashing, cutting and dancing, whispers across her skin, that she knows she has not landed. Because if she closes her eyes, or blinks a third time, nothing appears but the reality of what does not.
She crashes into something soft. Something welcoming. Something that reminds her of her mother’s apple pie, the waves of the ocean, the ticking of the clock, and needles. And now, the hospitality that once was dissipates; it is replaced by a numerous amount of hollow screams.
Birdface figures the sounds are coming from her, for where else could they possibly emanate from when she is alone? Yet, alone in The Nothing is quite a fragile concept. It breaks apart, as easily as the legs of magpies, caught stealing gold by the ledge of summer-borne windowsills.
The liars that dragged her down here on a fateful day surround her. They all look. They do not say, a word. Birdface’s pulse returns to the veins she carries in her wrists. She begins to panic. She forgets how to breathe. She considers running. Away. Again. But she cannot. The soles of her shoes are a tad too used. They would peel. They would stick to the ground, and leave her with many a more blisters, the pain of tomorrow. The hurt of not knowing. Of never learning what may become of her, if she does not seize an opportunity. Every. Single. One of these: Opportunities — which one first? She ponders on it. There were many. In the past. In the future. But where are they now? Her ears buzz.
Birdface looks around. It is clear, she is not part of that timeline anymore. She does not belong. She is just the dust of the dust of another skeleton burned in a big machine.
There is a hand. There is a candle. A second hand, now. More pairs of footsteps. More shouts that begin to sound like chants, lively songs, if Birdface pretends hard enough.
If only she could remember how she wronged another. If only Birdface could speak, and ask, the contents of this place would melt into simplicity, the absence of worry. As running an errand is, and buying milk for her roommates is, and getting out.
Isn’t… it strange? Faces — who’d sewn the habit into their lives of belittling her — come to mind. Who are they? Did she have roommates? Or, were they just figments of a dream? That dream. The Nothing knows which one she is thinking of.
Ballrooms.
Gowns.
Laughter and then wine.
Blood.
Birdface grabs the candle because it taunts her with silence. Touching its bottom makes its flame disappear. She steps forth. Her toes knock over a trashcan. She parts her lips, however, the air is dry, and the pendant around her neck heavy. What remained of her voice box is gone: Birdface realizes this when she tries to curse under her breath, and forgets what a curse entails or even means. Good for her. The Nothing never enjoyed bad words.
Out of the garbage slithers a snake. It is silver, like her skirt, until it turns purple, and then green.
Birdface isn’t sure she is seeing quite right. Maybe she picked too many flowers. Maybe she did not smell them enough before throwing them away. So, she rubs her eyes. Once. Twice. Until they itch, and she is stopping, and huffing.
There is a piece of her that beats. If she were alive — thump — it could have been her heart. The piece wonders if life meant anything. Thump. It dies, like sand being blown off a hat, the miserable screech of a kitten echoing throughout the deep night.
Thump.
Birdface does not linger.
Next to the ivy and the weeds, the snake follows her through, further — further, further into The Nothing. They starve. They unite together as they perish. Birdface remembers the pact when she sees the ocean, the shape of her soul.
She had promised not to die. That promise brought her here.
About The Author: Author of over 20+ web-serials & novels, published by Tapas.io, recent addition to the Wattpad Stars program, and Winner of Tapas’s 2018 Summer Writing Competition, Beau Van Dalen’s stories have amassed a total of over one million reads online — between short stories, poems, novels and scripts, he can always be found with a pen in hand.
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