The Birds Of Midnight
Content warning for: body horror, gender dysphoria, misgendering of a transgender character, transphobia, death of a minor character, abuse, general violence. 18+ Mature Audiences Only.
Avery village — known for its winged creatures, sometimes seen if one is lucky, or cares to look hard enough. Many tales roam the streets about their sightings. Lillian is only three, when she first hears her neighbour mentioning eyes dark as your wildest nightmares; fingernails smeared with coal-like substances; a screech you cannot forget.
It is here, too, where Lillian first becomes obsessed with the sightings in question. Kinship blooms in her heart for these strange, otherworldly birds — what an odd feeling! Yet, Lillian cannot explain entirely, why it is there.
At the age of six Lillian receives her first canvas, bundled with aged paint tubes, courtesy of her now-deceased grandmother.
The art Lillian creates is mediocre — but she tries, to replicate, what her neighbour had described.
This obsession continues throughout Lillian’s life — even if, at times, Lillian will forget for a handful of months: about the creatures that visit her in dreams. Creatures, she decides to call: The Birds Of Midnight.
In these moments of forgetting, Lillian grows fascinated with depicting scenery, people, emotions and wildlife, instead.
Minutes pass.
Weeks pass.
Years pass.
Lillian finds refuge in losing herself to the artform of painting, a much appreciated distraction from her waking life. She does not question why this distraction is necessary, then sinks into the canvas, until she turns eighteen.
Eighteen.
Lillian is messing around with a man, celebrating what does not feel like a celebration, delaying the part where she must undress.
Something has never sat quite right, about the way her body is shaped. On the canvas, Lillian would rather draw decay, than a self-portrait. Her limbs are too round. Not angular enough. Her chest should be flat — it should be, yet, Lillian does not know why that is. Has never told anyone. Did not plan to.
But then, her lover asks Lillian what she would have done, if she’d been born a man. He teases her, as a joke. Calls Lillian Lucas — and that is when Lillian realizes, she prefers this name.
This idea, of existing, as a man.
There is not a hint of doubt, once it all clicks. It should be strange, considering Lillian is meant to be a woman — at least, that is what they told her at birth.
But it makes sense.
If Lucas was the person Lillian was meant to be.
That would explain All Those Days.
Days, spent staring wide-eyed at a silhouette, in an old bathroom mirror which did not — never — stared back at her.
Something tugs at Lilian’s chest. At her limbs and at the rest of her being so intensely, that she cannot push it away.
It begins that night, when she fools around with this man, however, it does not end there.
Far from an end: it is a beginning.
The once so prominent L. that Lillian would sign across her art changes in shape, ever so slightly. In Lillian’s mind — although she does not tell a soul — the L. does not stand for Lillian anymore. It stands for Lucas. It is a secret. Lucas’s secret. And soon, one year after, Lucas is sharing this very secret with his lover: the same man, who gave him his name.
His lover, is appalled. He says, that he was just joking. Poking fun at Lucas’s own person, because, “You had always seemed uptight. You don’t smile a lot. Sometimes, you remind me of my father when he was still a soldier. I wonder, if you would not have made for a better man.”
As Lucas listens, his skin is ripped apart, from the inside out — to shreds, and pieces that his lover is eating, chewing, then spitting back out.
Lucas tries to convince him, says, “But I am! I am a man.”
“Men don’t look like you,” his lover tells him. And the room fills with a silence, that may as well be water, for Lucas feels as if he cannot breathe, may suffocate or drown, right then and here.
Lucas’s shoulders deflate. “I was joking as well.” He fakes a smile, brushes off his own remark as a farce. “Never mind.”
It is these words, that will condemn him.
When Lucas arrives home, he drags his legs up creaking steps, walks towards a lonely attic filled by his own paintings. With his jaw stained by tears, his paling skin illuminated by moonlight, his sobs greet the morning sun. He finally makes his way back to his room, once he is done mourning, two days later.
In his bed, Lucas cannot sleep.
He is restless. His head hurts. His pulse pounds in his ears, like drums that will not wither, music he never wished to hear. Lucas wants to forget this once-invisible veil that has been lifted. Yet, it is impossible. Impossible to look away any longer. To deny his feelings.
His truth.
Seconds pass.
Days pass.
Months pass.
Lucas paints until morning has swallowed the night, and the night devours morning again. Again.
Again.
Again.
Lately, when Lucas finishes a painting, he often must scrub away thick, black tar that oozes from beneath his fingernails; it is after many cycles of wandering between the waking world and slumber, that he realizes, there is always more paint on his skin than he remembers leaving.
Today, is a particularly bad day.
Time passes.
Lucas stares at his hands, still smeared in something he cannot control.
He ignores it, the odd, trembling in his fingers.
He goes to bed. Wakes. Eats. He goes to bed. Again. Repeats the cycle. Wakes. Eats — Eats. Wakes. He goes to bed. Blinks. Wonders, What on Earth is happening to me?
Lucas walks to the bathroom. His legs shake. It has been a while, since he has not faced himself. The ancient tap screeches as he yanks it open, like an old cackling witch, stuck inside his plumbing. Cold is the water when it hits his skin. Lucas daydreams about having better times to daydream about, as he washes his hands. He observes rose patterns that decorate tiled walls, littered with decay.
His attention shifts again — to his fingers. His nails.
The paint is not rubbing off. Not anymore.
As Lucas observes the blackness sewn into his skin beneath brighter lights, he finds that this shade is not the same, as the paints he’d splattered along with his heart across a canvas last night.
There are emerald reflections, bizarre patterns that seem to run into his veins from where the darkness begins. But it is a small thing. Not big enough to draw attention to one’s eye. Discreet to the point where it could be passed off as a mere scar, or a strange mole.
Lucas ignores it.
For days. Again. There is a dull ache in his heart.
For years. There is a dull ache in his heart.
He continues to live as Lillian. There is a dull ache in his heart.
By the time he is twenty-five, Lucas can longer face the outside world. He has grown wings, shimmering raven feathers. Disease has crippled his body into strange shapes that are sharp, though, not in the way he’d wanted.
His lover is long gone, as are the other people Lucas once knew from his previous, miserable existence — yet, their words remain carved into his skin. As invisible pains do.
Every time he tried to tell someone, that he was not Lillian, but was shut down. Ridiculed. Beaten. Or worse. Lucas remembers.
Lucas opens the attic’s window.
He flies out. Into a night that will not judge him.
And joins the others, in becoming a beast of legends. Onyx crow wings spread flitting in starlit skies.
Finally, he is free.
About The Author: Poet and Author of over 30+ web-serials & novels, published by Tapas Media and Radish, Wattpad Stars Alumnus, Finalist in Neovel’s 2022 Writing Contest 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.
Read The Author’s Other Works: Published Books And Short Stories
