Oh mother, tell your children;

[Audrey Vandergraaf]

Oh mother tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House of the Rising Sun

 It was the evening of December 10th, 7:00 pm to be exact, and although Audrey ordinarily abided by the imposed curfew, tonight she was following a ritual of her own. Technically, she was allowed to be out at this time, but there was no way she would return to the dormitory at an appropriate hour. After spending over a year of flying under the radar, attending all of her classes, getting straight A’s and participating in extracurricular activities, this was her night of blatantly breaking protocol… In approximately 23 minutes, it would be the 17th anniversary of her arrival into this world.

Audrey wandered down the pitted knolls with care, sparse blades of wet grass sticking to her leather boots, her tiny frame overwhelmed with an overstuffed purse and a carefully packaged box of decadent cupcakes. She had placed her order days ago at Harper’s Sweet Shoppe; none of the following events would be impulsive, the progression of this evening was carefully planned.

Steadying herself as the hills fell into a flat graveled shore, the ballerina hobbled toward the dock, her movements notably less graceful due to both the heavy load she bore and the vodka on her tongue. She sighed in relief upon reaching the weatherworn dock, lowering her baked goods onto its uneven planks, the wood almost moist from the brisk lakeside breeze. She then pulled a thick blanket from the confines of her bag, struggling against the wind to fan it out as she attempted to lay it flat against the wooden façade; ultimately, the ballerina settled for a few rumpled edges.

She settled herself easily, the liquor in her belly allowing her to sit comfortably in just a sweater despite the dropping temperatures. With great care, her slender fingers played on the intricate lacing wrapped about the baker’s packaging, pulling carefully to reveal a dozen of beautifully decorated cupcakes. As she requested, each was a unique expression of fudge or caramel drizzle on the base of either a French vanilla or German chocolate confection. Inside there was a handwritten note, “Happy Birthday, Audrey!” She held it in her fist before crumpling it up, throwing it to the wind.

This tradition originated in the Hudson River Park in 2008, her eleventh birthday party to be exact. As per usual, it was an outrageous affair, a self-indulgent high society party full of old people in mink coats that she could recognize only by the taglines in Page Six. Her mother caught her sticky fingered in a couture gown beneath a makeshift table, her face and hands coated in fondant as she gorged on a menagerie of the yummiest cupcakes, red velvet crumbs embedded in her bright blonde hair.

Her mother yanked her out by the wrist, leaning in close so that no one could overhear what she was about to say; she proceeded to grab and prod at her daughter’s undeveloped hips and the long gone baby fat of her stomach, calling her a slew of cruel names before grabbing the cupcakes as well, parading Audrey’s childish gluttony for a laugh among the party guests. Then, she tossed them into the river, shouting with a laugh, “For the birds.”

Thus, the ritual was born, and once a year Audrey wandered to the nearest body of water with sweets in hand, although drunkenness was a fairly recent addition to the party.

She unwrapped the first cupcake carefully, her hands unsteady from the alcohol in her veins. Still, Audrey pressed on, picking apart a chunk of the baked good, watching as the sleepy ducks drew nearer once she dropped the first piece of cupcake into the lake. Satisfied that her tasks were in order, Audrey reached into her bag and pulled out a flask, taking hearty gulps of vodka before catching her breath, wiping her mouth on the back of her sleeve, “Happy Birthday to me.”

[Winter Rowley]

It was the evening of December 10th, and Winter Rowley was perched on the topmost branch of a stately eastern white pine, enjoying a spectacular wide-angle view of the lake and the human-made environs beyond. It was the last stop he made on his nighttime fly, and it had always been his favorite. The tallest trees in Pilot Ridge were tucked against the muddy lakeshore. He liked to think of them as his.

In point of fact, the lake was a designated public park, which made the trees public property. Still, he never saw anyone else with their butt in a treetop.

Possession was nine-tenths of the law. Ergo: his.

Every now and then, the breeze would cause the branch he was on to bob and sway, and he’d readjust his scaly feet over the sparse clumps of fragrant needles and flick his wings to steady himself. He looked out over the water again, content to watch narrow ribbons of light break and glimmer over the ripples.

It was nice. It might have even been peaceful, if not for the ducks.

Rowley tilted his head to get a better look at the dock below. He saw the ducks first—morons—swarming the water in front of the aged structure, no doubt in competition for some sort of food. He eyed the girl sitting in front of them with avian accuracy: she was sitting under a blanket and disassembling some sort of pastry with her bare hands. She looked familiar, although all the quacking was making it hard to concentrate.

He lifted his wings away from his back and, with very little ceremony, flew across the breadth of the water and landed with a graceful click clack on the dock’s wooden surface. Immediately afterward, he hopped a full one hundred and eighty degrees and emitted a loud, hoarse caw!

The ducks scattered in panic, quacking loudly as they went. Rowley ruffled his feathers, unfazed. Bread was bad for ducks, anyway—in truth, he’d done them a favor.

He hopped again—click clack—so that he was facing the familiar girl. He took a good look at her, which involved lots of twitchy, robotic head movements to compensate for his lack of human depth perception. Then, he clicked his beak.

Oh. You’re the one who buys Ensure on Sundays.

He blinked at her for a moment, perfectly silent. He took a quick inventory of the things she had brought: cupcakes, blanket, flask. He didn’t know her that well, but he did, at the very least, know that she wasn’t old enough to drink. Who came out to a dock to drink, anyway?

More importantly, why would anyone waste such delicious-looking cupcakes on ducks?

He clicked his beak again, although this time he softened the harshness of the sound with a brief, rattle-like chortle.

[Audrey Vandergraaf]

After tossing the final remains of the first cupcake into the lake, Audrey reached for the second, her fingertips now much stickier than she’d care for them to be. However, she would have to leave them be because licking off the frosting residue would be a mortal sin.

As she fussed with the foil wrapping, she lifted her head to the sounds of a commotion; a large black bird positioned on the edge of the dock was scaring away all of her ducks! Also, how long had he been perched there? Audrey shrugged, slowly coming to the realization that she was drunker than she previously believed. Although, if she were less drunk she’d likely be scared shitless from close proximity shared with the wild crow…

“There’s more than enough to share, asshole.” She scolded the foreign bird, her words beginning to fall together as her enunciation diminished in the an alcohol saturated fog, “Normally, I’d expect an RSVP, but I guess I’ll allow you to crash the birthday festivities.”

Feeling generous, she dropped the entire pastry at the pronged scaly feet of the intruding creature, still not quite drunk enough to attempt feeding the untamed crow by hand. Allowing it to examine the food at will, she fished in her purse for her pack of cigarettes, her hands uncharacteristically uncoordinated as she fumbled with both the Marlboro packaging and the lighter. Eventually her fingers cooperated and she managed to get the filter into her mouth, now lighting the damn thing with relative ease.

She took a sharp inhale before turning her attention back toward the crow, her eyelids heavy as she watched him through an inebriated haze, “Don’t be rude; you already scared my ducks away, so you better eat that cupcake and like it.” Audrey then craned her neck briefly to exhale away from the animal, feeling as though it would be in poor taste to blow cancerous nicotine smoke in its face, “Don’t look at me like that, seriously, it’s creeping me out. They’re not for me, they never were for me, so just fucking eat it.”

Sinking down into the warmth of the blanket, Audrey took a greedy drag, her lungs filling with dark plumes as she gazed half-heartedly at the dreary night sky, “I’m not sharing with you,” she continued speaking at the bird, although really she was just conversing with herself, “Remember last time I had one of those mother told me I had the gut of a middle-aged alcoholic? Well cheers to you, mom!”

The dancer rolled over, the liquor in her otherwise empty stomach audibly sloshing with her movements as she reached for the flask once more, tipping her head back and pouring the stinging pungent liquid straight down her throat. “I mean, I guess she was just trying to perform damage control… I was an awful kid.”

Audrey returned her attention to the bird as if she had been addressing him the entire time, “I guess you don’t remember my childhood, well, ideally I won’t either by the end of this night.”

[Winter Rowley]

Rowley had been able to shift for the better part of a decade, and had been met with a wide variety of reactions in his avian form. Some people—mothers with young children, mostly—attempted to explain his presence in a calm, matter-of-fact sort of way. You can look, but don’t touch. Very good advice, on the whole; boring, but good. Others stared, silently, as though they were trying to drink in their daily fill of the wonders of nature by watching him peck at sandwich bread that had been trodden flat into the concrete. Most people just ignored him; much like his human form, his crow form was not considered to be anything of great consequence.

A small fraction of the population, though, would speak to him directly. He found that he generally liked these people best: they gave him their thoughts, raw and untarnished by the filter of polite human conversation, and this made him feel important, like a big, black public service with feathers.

So: he kept still, and when she began to speak, he listened. He did not, however, listen in silence; he still had his dignity, after all, and she had called him an asshole. He offered a brief, annoyed grunt that was two decibels short of a caw.

No, you don’t understand. They’re only using you for your food. They’re the assholes here—I’ve been framed.

The worst part of being a crow, perhaps, was that it forced you to keep your jokes to yourself.

She tossed one of the cupcakes at his feet. It landed awkwardly, wobbled, and fell on its side; the painstakingly pretty mound of frosting detached itself from the small cake and fell onto the wood in one piece with a saccharine shlick!

Dutifully, Rowley click-clacked forward and used the tip of his beak to pull at the pleated foil. He tugged the cupcake back a few steps, righted it, and nipped at the spongy surface until he had freed enough crumbs to make a decent beak-full.

He chortled pleasantly. He hadn’t wanted the frosting, anyway.

He was visibly intrigued by the strike of the lighter, and he paused mid-snack to watch her light a cigarette. He felt a pang of jealousy; he wanted one, too. In fact, he might have preferred a Marlboro over a cupcake. He stared longingly, until she chided him for it; he flicked his wings impatiently, then, and turned his attention back to the confection at his feet.

She continued to talk to him, and he continued to listen, although the slurring was beginning to make it a bit difficult. She was very drunk. From the way she talked, she had a reason to be.

He looked up at her again, beak covered in chocolate crumbs. Even in the harsh yellow cast thrown out by the nearest buzzing, distant light pole, she was pretty. He might have found it hard to imagine her mother’s cruelty, if not for the memory of his own father’s passive-aggressive favoritism.

He blinked at her again. She was drinking from the flask. After she’d finished drinking, she resumed her rambling, drunken speech—I was an awful kid, she said.

Rowley bobbed his head to the side; with every movement, the gloss of his feathers seemed magnified tenfold. He emitted a gentle, song-like coo.

Whatever. I don’t believe that.

He took a few tentative steps closer to her, dragging the cupcake by its foil as he went. He stopped two inches shy of a foot away and continued to eat.

[Audrey Vandergraaf]

Audrey fussed with the edges of the blanket, gathering it haphazardly about her narrow legs, filling the pronounced hollow between her thighs with a pile of the woven fabric. Her hesitant stare remained centered about the crow, her drunken mind noting its unusually expressive nature.

Am I that wasted? Or is this bird actually grunting and cooing in the rhythmic beats of conversation? Probably the former…

Still taking pleasure in the creature’s spirited movements, she giggled as she exhaled another hazy cloud of venom, the laughter causing her to cough a bit as her eyes winced. Between brief and unflattering hacking sounds, she choked out at a joke, “You got a little something on your…” the blonde playfully motioned to her mouth, as if to say, "Honey, you got a little shmutz."

“Oh God, you are too cute.”

Audrey continued to muse, inching to the side while trying to maintain to the careful structure of her blanket burrito, causing her movements to devolve into a glacial pace. With her fragile arm outstretched, her free hand eventually reached the patent handle of her purse, allowing her to easily drag it across the uneven wood until finally it stood by her side.

She didn’t pause her actions while the kind crow grew nearer, his avian face becoming empathetic; if anything, reading the expression of foreign birds only served as a reminder of her own inebriation.

“You trying to get in on the action?” she teased, pulling a crisp pink envelope from the confines of her bag. Audrey took a final lazy drag of her cigarette and put it out between the planks; normally the dancer was neurotic about disposing her butts properly, but tonight she just couldn’t be bothered.

Fingering the edges of the decadent stationary, Audrey listened to the soft exchange of beak and cupcake, the sound turning her face wistful. “Must be nice,” she began, ripping the envelope open and fishing her slender hand inside, easily pulling out a check while leaving the card unmoved, “being a bird, flying where you please, creating your own home, eating what you want, not being fat.”

Her eyes drifted down toward her stomach. The dancer’s usually flattened and compact abdomen was now distended from alcohol, the unforgiving leotard beneath her sweater becoming more uncomfortable with each additional swig. She folded the check and dropped it into her purse, taking the opportunity to return to the flask once again.

“Stop judging me, crow.” She demanded weakly, taking another desperate gulp of the stinging vodka, “I’m already a repulsive mess, so what difference does it make? I’m sorry, but you’re a bird; you wouldn’t understand.”
She refastened the cap and cradled it in her lap; her hands now were free to grope an eager lighter and the unread letter. “Dear mother, thank you for the gift.” Audrey’s thumb struck the gear and held it down, creating a consistent blaze as she lowered the edge of the envelope into the fire, her eyes glazed over as the feminine papering was consumed in flames.

Reflexes dulled by alcohol, she cringed and jerked her hand forward, the tips of her fingers burned by the rapidly encroaching flame. The envelope was tossed haphazardly into the lake, immediately sizzling before floating away.

“Love, your pathetic bloated sow.”

Audrey’s eyes welled up as she repeated the abuse verbatim, attempting desperately to purge the suffering with liquor, fire, and smoke. Her tears, salty and saturated with mascara, drizzled down her cheeks in linear ashy stains.

“Please, crow, don’t look at me.”

[Winter Rowley]

Rowley made a point to look up at her every time she spoke, although he was not immediately concerned about being polite. Every now and then, he looked at the flask critically, as though by staring long enough he could ascertain how much liquor was left inside. He hazarded a guess: too much.

Still, she had busied herself with her cigarette, which was—for want of a better term—good. Then, she called him cute.

If he’d been sporting his other set of facial anatomy, he might have snorted. Instead, he indulged her joke by noisily wiping both sides of his beak on the dock. Clack-clack.

Better?

He continued to watch her movements with great interest, as though she were the wild creature and he was the spectator of her fascinating behavior. She procured an envelope from her purse. It was his favorite shade of pink. He took another gulp of cupcake, pausing only to investigate her unceremonious ripping of the envelope.

You’re not wrong about the flying.

He didn’t feel it was appropriate to comment on the rest—after all, he was only a bird part-time. In many ways, he preferred it to being a human. Nothing was ever that simple, though. Also, he’d seen a lot of fat crows.

He watched her pull out the check, which she wasted no time in trading for the flask. She told him to stop judging her.

I’m not.

He felt uncomfortable, suddenly, like he had intruded on something intensely private... which, of course, he had. Her sadness was immense; he could see it in her eyes, which were bright with reflected flame. A few moments later, she started to cry. She told him not to look.

He did, though. He couldn’t not look. That was the problem—he’d seen, and he’d heard, and now he wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt if he left her wasted and crying in front of a bunch of stupid ducks trying to eat burnt stationery.

Without warning, he unfolded his wings and sprung into flight. Gaining a decent amount of altitude proved to be a challenge—maintaining his shift was starting to fatigue him—but he gained it, anyway. The house where he rented an upstairs room was only a couple minutes of steady flapping over the treetops. Soon, he was on the windowsill; his was the only window in town that was wide open and missing a screen.

Two hops and an oomf later, he was sprawled naked on top of his unmade bed, cursing the winter chill.

A scramble for clothes followed: boxers, black t-shirt, black jeans, two mismatched socks, all gathered from the bounty of fabric that covered his floor. He dressed himself quickly. Then, he shut the window and turned on the small space heater in the corner. By the time he got home, maybe he wouldn’t be able to see his own breath.

He left the house equipped with all the essentials—hoodie, cigarettes, keys. He’d even had the foresight to bring two big bottles of water, which had been haphazardly thrown into the passenger seat of his black two-door Accord. It wasn’t until he had pulled out of the driveway and into the street that he realized what he’d forgotten.

“Fuck,” he said. He punctuated his eloquent outburst with an exaggerated squint.

Whatever. It was a mile and a half—he could drive that far without contacts in.

The ride to the lake was short and silent, save for the crunch of gravel under his tires as he pulled into the wide-mouthed public driveway that led to the parking lot. He parked in the back, near the picnic tables and deserted playground. The sound of the car door echoed for what seemed like miles.

He walked slowly, partly because he was taking the time to light a cigarette and partly because he felt like the biggest creep this side of Creeptown. He lingered at the edge of the dock, where the incessant quacking had died down to a blessedly tolerable grumbling.

He took a long draw of his cigarette and surveyed his accidental charge from afar: still drunk, not drowned. Considerably better than at least one of the alternatives.

Rowley approached her, then, and this time, the wood of the dock creaked slightly under his weight. He stepped over the forgotten cupcake and came to stand beside her. He did not look as though he intended to sit or talk. He did, however, give her a sidelong look while he smoked, eyebrows quirked in silent question.

[Audrey Vandergraaf]

Audrey’s shoulders sounded hollow as they stuttered against the wooly confines of her sweater, her movements jerky and unexpected as the crow burst into flight. She ignored the mild singe staining her fingertips, her consciousness more concerned with the bird she had scared away. In the absence of her avian friend, the winds blew cool and hard while ducks retreated to the swampy ebbing of the lake.

Alone, she continued to smoke greedily, her head becoming too heavy for her swan neck to support; her pale eyes continued to leak, leaving her feeling weak and ashamed.

“People like me shouldn’t wear their heart on their sleeve…” Audrey mused to the brisk fluttering of the lakeside air. She reached into her purse, pulling out an inconspicuous case of breath mints, “No one wants to see that disgusting, sputtering organ spewing clotted blood down their arm.” She popped the case open, narrow fingers pulling out a single rectangular pill with relative difficulty. Her dry bluing hands quivered as she placed the bar on the mossy surface of her tongue, her slender throat tensing as she swallowed it dry.

Fuck it.

Feeling disgusted by her own emotional explosiveness, Audrey returned to the comfort of the flask, burning her insides with more harsh liquor, her eyelids sinking, disguising half of each iris. A chemical calm was restored as her face fell numb, her body warmed and her belly sloshing with alcohol, she returned both the flask and tin container to the safety of her bag. Now she sat with just cigarettes, her blanket, and the disheveled box of cupcakes.

Her cigarette went out, she lit it again.

As she continued to smoke absently, reminiscing about the crow that had disappeared into the foggy gale, she felt the weight of footsteps against the creaky planks of the dock. Tilting her head up in an inebriated haze, she saw Winter, the guy who works at the Superkwik. She saw him every Sunday evening. He looked at her curiously with deep brown eyes, and she returned the stare, her gaze unwavering.

“What are you doing here?” She inquired, not rudely but with genuine interest, her face blotchy and stained with mascara. Small, sick, and drunk, Audrey took another drag before exhaling back into the wind.