So Here I Fall- Short Story~

And so here I fall. I might as well squawk my story to my maker, or to the fallen one, for that matter, to save valuable portions of my eternity later. And for those mind readers out there that may happen to be reading from this twisted old mind, have a seat.

Oh, and I am Mr. Macao. But you can call me Francis.

I had, at one time, a purpose. My Ara, a beauty from… I know not, for it did not matter, though I guess probably anywhere from here to South America to Europe and back. She was beautiful, and wonderfully kindhearted. She was my purpose at a time.  I found her one dull, fog-riddled afternoon. I walked through the marketplace nearby glancing around at fruits I had no willingness to try to pronounce the names of. Why haven’t I heard of these before, I had thought before turning to the next cart. She stood overlooking some eggs, she holding one carefully between her thumb and finger. I stepped closer, and fell into the cart, smashing several dozen eggs. She softly smiled at my awkward stumble into the food, and turned to take off.  I picked up her hand-basket, still by the cart, (paid for the smashed eggs) and took it over to her. She thanked me, and I asked if she would like to go out to eat. She said yes.

                That was the start. Many months, years passed. We had been engaged to be married, and had a little apartment high above the palm tree tops, our nest high above. We possessed a view of the ocean in the far distance, almost obscured by the smoke from the few factories. She loved the view of the sky. I was not terribly moved by it, because, it was just sky, right? I was working at a sort of factory where we take raw lumber and make it into assorted shapes, such as those found in hardware stores. To be honest, I have no idea what they are used for. Crafts maybe? Glued to dresser drawers as knobs? I still don’t know. I was a higher up in the business, and we lived pretty well. We had accumulated enough money that we had a bit to spare, and so she thought a parrot, a beautiful macaw, would be a great thing to get. I knew I shouldn’t argue, so I went along with it. So we went out to find one, and came home with a large red bird, decorated with blue and yellow patches accompanying the scarlet on its wings. Pure white was the top half of the beak, pitch black was the other. Its tail, a kingly cape, greater than itself, was stretched with brilliant red and a strangely plain blue. His name was Jim.

                She loved Jim, and Jim loved her right back. I liked Jim, and often I would scratch his head at night when I came home from work. I however, was not as bonded to it as she must have been, because shortly before now, the bird and she were practically the same being.  But she must have spent every waking hour with that bird, because it learned words, after having it for but three days. It would say numerous things, such as calling us by name, or for our guests, it knew how to say “watch your step” because of the sudden step up just inside the door. It said hello, goodbye, please, thank you, and the like, and used them appropriately. The one thing I never will understand was how it came to mimic Ara’s voice so well. At first, it had its own voice, but that didn’t last.

                It was bizarre how quickly things happened. Things were going great, except for a few little annoying habits, but hey, who doesn’t have some? Mainly it was picking her teeth. I don’t know why it bothered me so much. But she was going to stop, and I was going to make it that way. That was the starting point, I think, for the months to come. I would point it out to her, she would stop, but five minutes later, she would begin again. More firmly I would tell her. She looked at me somewhat annoyed, and stopped. Then started. Then we would end up in a yelling match, me telling her how unappealing it is, her explaining how I was basically “training” her (and, in hindsight, I was), unlike the free creature she was and always should have been. I don’t know how to describe the feeling, but after that, after pride in how right I was took up my body, grief, ghastly painstaking sadness and horror, in how I had just tried to control who my life was going to be made with, rose up and ate at my pride, my whole being just devoured, and I cried as I wondered how I really felt under my blanket of anger and tears.

We fought this war between us several times. It was the same thing, different times, each volatile and venomous in content. We would pick at our flaws, sometimes picking at what we loved about each other because of our low ammunition, hurting ourselves as well. Sometimes we would pick on what each other was meant to do. We used our previous labors of love to each other as weapons, or perhaps leverage. She didn’t want to be controlled by me forever, and at this point, I cannot blame her,  so she told me she had to leave. I held back tears while she packed to return to her family. I felt myself burn inside, my own fault, as I saw her leave and migrate home. She packed her car and left, forever.

                The next morning I heard her voice wake me up. I rose, stumbled up and out of bed (I could afford to, it was the weekend) I greeted her, and she wasn’t there. I looked down at the bird that said the phrase again, and again. Well, this is new, my parrot now sounds like Ara. I cursed my luck, that bird and the whole vile world as I made coffee. I had lost her! But surely, it must not be late. I can call her, apologize, and ask her back. It was a long shot, but what else was there? Keep being alone, forever alone? I looked for my cell, and I found the remote instead, and pressed POWER while I grasped it. The television flashed to life, spewing news at high decibels at me. I grasped the remote, and mashed my index finger on the Volume Down button. Take that, screaming newscaster! Ok, back to work. I set the remote down and dug my hand into the couch cushion, past nasty old cereal, and grasped my little cellular phone. The news on the TV made me aware of a shooting last night, and the next report came on. I glanced at the phone, and looked up at the screen, down again, and up again, in a snapping fashion. A car crash lit up the television. Good God, that poor car, practically in half by that semi! I looked at the wreckage. Whoever was in the car must have been practically obliterated, or by the charred look of some parts, incinerated.

                I looked close. Blood flowed away from my face; I turned what must have been the color of a fresh corpse, and lost communications with my arms and legs, and jaw. I sat limp, mouth agape, looking at the pieces of my Ara’s car. Ara’s car! She had been driving! I didn’t believe it, I couldn’t! I grabbed my phone and hurled it at the hellish image, and it was gone when the glass cracked and exploded and colors of fire and sparks were seen in the now open box that was the TV. I stared for a good two hours at that box, trying to comprehend. The image on screen burned inside me, a permanent scar on my brain. God, Ara! Oh, it can’t be! Even now, looking back at what I know with my deepest being is true, it can’t be!

                I unplugged the TV for fear of flying sparks and threw myself into bed, a clump of pillows and sheets and now one sobbing man. I didn’t remove myself until I once again had a small grip of reality, and ambled into the kitchen. Jim squawked, and said something in Aras voice again, but more crackly this time. “Water please” Jim said. I grasped the water, listened to Ara’s voice coming from my bird, and cried. I gave Jim water and went back to bed.

                Days went by, more of the same, until I had a visitor come by. Apparently, Ara wrote me a letter, signed and sealed, and was going to send it when she got home. I thanked him through teary eyes and he said to me, “I wouldn’t know what I would do if I were you” and then he left. What? What he would do? I thought for a few minutes at the possibilities, and then when I realized, the tears stopped, then started full force again. I sent her home! I made her drive! Good God, I killed her!

                I pushed forward with my life to a degree, but every other thing reminded me of her. For days, I could not clear my mind of the vision of that crash.  I then would cry for another twenty minutes, pull myself together, and go sniveling back to the task at hand. I could not believe that she had just died overnight, and I was to blame! Sometime during that evening, I pushed the thought away. Well, it wasn’t all my fault, right?  She was the one who decided to leave, and besides, she could have left earlier or later and been fine. That was my thinking at the time.

                I spent the next week on vacation, because there was a need to sort through all the stuff to decide what was mine and what went back to Ara’s family. I was just beginning to sort through the clothes when I heard Jim, “ Ara, come! Ara, come!” Well, that’s just great. The parrot doesn’t know what had happened, but how was I supposed to tell him? I, not being Ara, did not respond. Then, he started talking like Ara did. Wow, Jim sounded so close to her voice… Almost creepy. Then he called for me the way Ara did, sweet and slow, and I walked over with a very sarcastic look on my face to the side of his cage. I told him not to do that again, and he recognized that it bothered me, and laughed and bobbed his head.  I shot the offending parrot a dirty look as I walked away and he laughed again. I brushed it off. He was much more talkative, with just me around.

                The next day was very similar, sorting stuff with Jim, who made side comments and mimicked Ara and I. Only I had my first breakdown today. Suddenly and without warning I thought about that demon image of a semi and a much smaller car that had contained the one I had loved, and still love, despite our now otherworldly boundaries.  I considered the idea that I was to blame. I started spiraling, cussing until I reassured myself with some poorly made excuses like,” Well, according to the court, I did not illegally kill her, at least not voluntarily” which would suffice to hold me together at the time, but all you need to knock over poorly made walls is a little wind and time.

                Wednesday, that wind began. The funeral was due to be that day, and much to my later horror, I had chosen to stay home. It started at noon, and somewhere around 12:30 I began to freak out again. The funeral happens only ONCE, and it’s not like movies where the reruns will be shown on TV in the near future. And nobody I know video tapes a funeral to play back later. Ok, ok, it’s still going on now, right? I can just leave and go there now? Oh, and burst in on the middle of a funeral!? Plus, I can hear them now, and here’s Francis, who lived with Ara the last few years, and was the last to see her, WHO KILLED HER, who decided it wasn’t important to come, but came to save his fragile mind!

                And so I stayed home. Second biggest mistake I’ve ever made, right behind letting Ara leave.

                The next two days I was treading very carefully. I felt my glass shell begin to crack. The parrot did not pick up on it. He talked like she did, more and more. I cried, in hindsight it was probably for my own sake, not Ara’s, but it was pain for what I hadn’t done. I had to make more excuses, more feeble reasons I didn’t kill her, but I was running out of ideas. I felt like I was being chased.

                Yesterday I ran out. I sat all day, on the couch, with a little temporary TV in place of the big smashed one, the little one being placed next to Jim’s cage. I watched the tiny picture, but my eyesight began to fail me, so I glanced to Jim instead. He moved around, tilted and bobbed his head, normal behavior. Until I noticed he used one of his parrot-y toes to scratch at the edge of his beak. I laughed, and slowly I became to realize that this was his equivalent to picking his teeth. Then he talked again, in Ara’s voice, “Don’t train me…”, then, much slower, cutting the sound of silence, ”I, perssssson, toooo.” What vile blow to my smashed mind! Oh, horrible and lowly creature of Reminders and of Fault—of Guilt and of Insanity! I stared at it in horror, thinking about the possibility of our bird being possessed by Ara’s spirit. I was losing it. I was up all night, listening to the countless replaying of Ara by nature’s tape recorder, forward and creepily backwards, and I kept thinking about the crash, the fight, the funeral, and my now mostly smashed pile of excuses. I picked up the unread note that was found in the crash, and tore it open. Sweet, flowing words strung together pierced at my now decayed and damaged soul, the pain both hurtful and vital, as if it were the needle for the vaccination for my grief over her, piercing my now weak skin. Her mellifluous message, forgiving but not accepting, soothed me, but still I blame only myself.

                The next morning Jim summoned up something he must have been working on for weeks. He literally replayed the last fight we had, the day she left. That broke me. Every painful word I slung at her, and she me, came spewing out of a creature 1/3 of my size, in full detail and definition, and the tears left red markings down my face. I tried to shut the scarlet bird up, but I couldn’t, not without hurting it. And I was certainly done hurting beings of my affection. I can’t stay here; no longer can I be with this burdensome reminder of a parrot, who I love very much, though I cannot stand the torture of.

I tore the magnets from the fridge, and plucked up one piece of paper and wrote “take care of parrot, Jim” and picked through the pile of magnets for one that could hold the note to the fridge. I kicked the glass through the door that went out to the balcony and much to my surprise, it did not shatter, but fell out in one piece, disappointingly, but for an act such as this the glass would not limit. Then I turned back. I looked at Jim, and spoke with love and insanity laced in my voice, “Just say one more thing, and I’ll plunge myself from my nest and perhaps by some miracle I might fly” while I proceeded into the hallway, opposite to the balcony, and screamed, “Go on, tell me!”

                “Watch yoooour step” Jim enunciated from in the living room. Indeed, I thought. I ran, with all my excuses long been shot down, and jumped through the broken glass onto the ledge. I perched precariously for a brief moment, tempting death to push me. I stood in retrospect; I could have sold the parrot off and have been free of my reminder. However, I wasn’t about to lose another loved one. Not again. I looked back, looked down, up, and said nothing. Beautiful weather for some flying, I thought, and pushed back on my right foot. I began to fall, and reality plucked and pierced away at my wings, and I dropped.  And that’s why I’m telling you, in midair, my story.  But it’s OK because flying is lovely, even when vertical and down. Now, death is waiting to swoop down and take my poor splattered soul up in its talons and pull me away, so I must be off.  

Think of Ara’s full name had she been married. Then google it.