Chapter Text
There is a bird, a starling, he thinks, that sits caged in the center of his chest. He had been a child, knees not skinned but bruised, rawboned and cold even in the summer sun, when he had first noticed its cries. He was unmoored, no hand in his to guide him, no touch to comfort. The world slid away from him in lazy waves. He had been lonely, so very lonely, before the bird showed up. Armand knew it was a starling because it was extraordinarily gifted at mimicry. With the bird’s guidance, he became similarly gifted.
Just a whisper then, an urge that became an echo that became a suit of armor: you can become someone other than yourself. He didn’t know how he hadn’t thought of it before. The trouble—and nearly all of Armand’s relatively short life had been trouble—had started long before he had experienced the worst of it. It had started when, in a memory he held onto even when there were so many others he wanted to forget, he realized he had been born wrong.
Different names back then, gently admonished and then chastised and then–
Memories like ink in water—a rough hand around his wrist, his shoulder, his neck. Echoes of pain, still stubbornly stuck in his body. Strange, he had been called. Broken. A thing to be used and discarded. He knows now it was true, but he fought it then. Foolish. The backbone of his life now is much more rigid. He is not meant for other people. He does not understand them.
The starling nestles heavy against his lungs. He tries not to be too harsh on the child he was. Armand hardly even remembers him now, as much a stranger to him as the starved and weeping faces he sees on the television advertisements that turn his stomach and send him off somewhere far away. His body remains, piloted by something else. There is nobody around to notice the difference.
An ant colony has made its home in the baseboards of his bedroom, near the closet door. It doesn’t trouble him, he doesn’t eat often and when he does, it isn’t in his room, so they keep to themselves. He fantasizes about tearing open the wall with his hands so he can see the grooved and winding tunnels they call home, a carpet like television static pouring out of holes and hiding spots and onto the floor, across the rug, covering his skin with their tiny, itching legs. There is a hum all around him and inside of him. There is something shadowed watching him from the corner of the room. He wonders if the bird is hungry.
He blinks, and he is lying curled in his bed. Sweat beads on his forehead and the sheets are damp.The sun has set; the apartment is painted in shades of purple-gray. Silence presses into him, heavy and buzzing. Electrical hum from the air conditioner, mechanical rush of the cars outside. The light from the kitchen is dim and uninviting and he wonders if he will be able to stomach anything tonight. His back aches, his abdomen aches. The pain is nothing new but his body feels heavier as consciousness brings it rushing back. Lying down usually helps, but he can’t sleep forever. He gets enough breaks as it is. Dangerous to indulge the impulse too often—he worries that one day he will lay down and never get back up again.
Not today, it seems. He pushes himself from the bed with a deep breath, and lets himself adjust to standing. Darkness threatens the edges of his vision and his head spins dangerously. He doesn’t remember when he last ate, but he hadn’t been awake yesterday, he knows that much. His phone reads 9:45 p.m., 23rd of July. Saturday. Thursday had been a meandering and humid trip to the library, a weekly ritual. Reading in bed. A meager grocery order had been delivered. Out of his budget, but the crowds at the shop were miserable when the weather was hot. Words floated from the mouths of strangers and clung to his skin. The ripe perfume of the masses was overwhelming. So, a delivery.
Friday, though, was nothing at all. He supposes he had been tired. He must have been tired.
Shimmering reflections illuminated by passing headlights tell him it has rained. Perhaps the heatwave has broken, and his body spared him the worst of it. The dizziness is leaving him now, making way for bone-deep exhaustion, and with it, a ravenous hunger. He almost trips making his way to the kitchen. He is nothing but a swirling mass of energy, his body dragging unceremoniously behind him.
The droning LEDs hurt his eyes. He manages to choke down a nutrition shake, alternating with small sips of water. It’s chalky and heavy with artificial sweetness, but it’s food, or as close as he can get to it. He’s learned to take it slow after his days of rest. The body does not appreciate being deprived, but it appreciates being recklessly reintroduced to food even less. Once, when the food refused to take after a particularly long absence, he considered wandering to the nearest medical center for help. But he did not know how to explain that he had not eaten for three days because he had been away from his body. People did not take kindly to such eccentricity. He would not survive if they sent him away.
A spike of pain begins to pulse behind his left eye. The starling is restless at the thought of confinement. He jerkily drags his hand over the light switch and sinks to the hard floor, head resting on his knees. Here, in the darkness, with food in his belly and no prying eyes to observe him, he waits for the rustling and screeching to dissolve into some sort of relief. It has been pulling out its feathers. Too many trips outside. It is tired of having to take over for him. Armand is tired, too.
Before his recent decline, a hazy half-lifetime ago now, there had been many more trips outside. The world had become so loud, though. Louder and louder every day, and Armand began to feel brittle. That was when the bird had started pressing at the bars of its cage. It was worse in the summer. Everything was worse in the summer. The smell, the noise, the sun. It was disgusting. He felt disgusting and sticky and overheated and it was all too much like something else. Something bad. And so the starling took over. It has been weakening ever since, because he is not strong enough to bear anything.
He shudders and realizes he has been holding his breath. He tries to inhale slowly and focus on the comfort of darkness pressing in on him. Safe. Safe and hidden away. He is alone here. He is alone here. It is him, and the starling, and the ant colony. He hopes they have food to eat. He considers finding something to crumble for them, but they have proven resourceful, and he does not want to interrupt their routines.
Armand lifts his head and the clock reads 10:30.
The outside air probably smells better now, the roar of life dulled to a whine and the rain having balanced the heat. He wants to wander. Walking centers him when he is able to, and tonight his back isn’t seizing up quite so terribly. After a day in bed he thinks walking may even be something close to advisable. At night, wandering around the neighborhood is like a dream. Cicada and cricket songs cushion the sounds of the world, and Armand feels wrapped up in it.
The smell of damp greenery, of grass and fertile flora springing to life envelops his senses. A neighbor has planted yarrow in their garden. The perfume is resinous and bittersweet. He does not know the neighbor, because he does not know any of the neighbors, but he appreciates it nonetheless, that they have nurtured their little patch of dirt. He picks a tiny sprig that has been half-tasted by some small animal. Traces his fingers over the tiny petals, lifts it to rub them across his cheek. They are as soft and gentle as eyelashes.
Something rustles a bush, or snaps a twig, or takes a step behind him. It does not matter because immediately and totally, the spell is broken, and the starling is screaming again, and something old and young in his brain is telling him to run, run, run. He should have taken Friday as a warning. We are not ready, it pleads. We are not ready. It is not safe here. There is a crack in the world, and the world is his body, and his soul is spilling out. Home. He has to go home before he loses any more pieces of it.
He makes it to the door with little memory of how he got there. The sounds of the world have risen to a roar, the warmth collects on his skin and again and he is sure something is crawling up his back, or standing right behind him, or breathing down his neck. The front door. The key. He fumbles for it desperately, like a character in a horror film who is doomed and knows it, but still cannot help but try to survive. Something is here, he can feel it. It has been circling him for years. Please, he thinks, please not now.
Breath cuts like a knife through his chest. He doesn’t have the key, must have dropped it on his way back home, and the fear becomes so colossal that something snaps like a bowstring, and everything is silent again, distorted. His body is not his own. He falls to his knees on the threshold and cries and cries and cries. Whatever is coming will hurt him, or kill him, and he will deserve it for ever being here in the first place.
The scraping of shoes against pavement cracks through the silence. Someone has almost fallen, caught themselves, and is standing just out of sight. The starling rails against its cage, and his heart bounds like it is about to explode.
“Fuck.”
Armand startles, pushes his back up against the door. There is a shadow of a man, just outside the comforting glow of the porch light. Is this the shadow who had been watching him?
“Hey, uh,” the voice is hesitant, nervous. Slightly out of breath, like he’d run here. “I think I scared you back there. I feel like shit, I was only out to smoke and I didn’t wanna bother anyone, so I just…I don’t know. I took a walk. Seems like you had the same idea.”
So the man had followed him. And now he knows where Armand lives. He buries his head against his knees, wants this all to be a dream, like before, a bad dream that he could wake up from and go back to watching the ants and reading his library books. And he feels too small now, too desperate and locked inside himself to fight back. He could do anything and Armand would probably take it, because he is a coward.
“This your house?”
Armand stills. He could lie, but his throat is all closed up. The starling wants him to nod but no, no that isn’t safe. He knows that isn’t safe. So he stays as still as he can, and lets his mind float away on the waves of the summer breeze. Shades of green and blue dance across his vision.
“You uh, you don’t have to talk, you seemed pretty shaken up, so…” he steps closer, Armand hears him step closer. He shuts his eyes tighter. Greens and blues and the sound of all the insects of summer.
“I just wanted to make sure you were okay, which you obviously aren’t,” a bitter laugh, followed by a heavy sigh. “And I wanted to ask if you dropped this.”
Armand’s head shoots up at that, and there, glowing in the amber-gold light of the street lamps, is his key, resting in the palm of the stranger’s hand. The wave of relief is so strong he nearly starts weeping again. He darts out to grab it, curling his hand against his chest, and he lifts his head to look at the man for the first time.
His eyes are tired, and kind, and blue-green behind his glasses.